The choice of the research topic is justified by a wide philosophical interest in explanation and understanding, and the great methodological significance of these concepts specifically for the philosophy of history. As shown in the introduction, during the last decades significant transformational processes have been taking place in this area, which are associated with the development of postanalytic philosophy of history and are still in need for systematic study. This dissertation is intended to fill this gap and is devoted to the study of methods of explanation and understanding in postanalytic philosophy of history in these three aspects: 1) historical, 2) theoretical and 3) applied. The central focus of the thesis is to identify the philosophical and methodological significance of the concepts of explanation and understanding in these aspects, namely: establishment of historical prerequisites for philosophical and methodological conceptualization of the concepts of explanation and understanding; clarification on the development of relevant methods in contemporary English-speaking philosophy; analysis of the position of postanalytic philosophy of history and definition of its specificity compared to other kinds of philosophy of history – analytic one that studies mainly historical cognition, and continental one that studies mostly historical process; inquiry into the role of methods of explanation and understanding in methodological research of postanalytic philosophy of history; uncovering of the applied value of these methods. These three main aspects have also determined the structure of the work: a separate chapter is devoted to each of the aspects of postanalytic philosophy.
In the historical aspect, the development of methods of explanation and understanding in the Western philosophy of the 19th—21st centuries is examined through the works of Auguste Comte and Johann Gustav Droysen, as both contributed methodologically to the further split of philosophy into analytic and continental, as well as through the representatives of continental, analytic, postanalytic philosophy. In the theoretical aspect, the meaning of methods of explanation and understanding in postanalytic philosophy of history is explicated specifically in the methodology of counterfactual history at the general level of analysis and in the methodology of intellectual history, history of ideas, biography at the individual level. In the applied aspect, the use of philosophical and methodological notions of the postanalytic philosophy of history is demonstrated through the analysis of two historical examples. This way the dissertation considers the diversity of philosophical approaches by reveling historical premises, theoretical positions, and the applied use of the methods of explanation and understanding in the philosophy of history, revealing the historical consequence of the split of philosophy and also the postanalytic approach that overcomes this schism through a combination of different traditions.
Postanalytic philosophy, which emerged as a development in the analytic philosophy of the 1980s, has become a unique combination of analytic and continental approaches. The most famous representative of this philosophy is Richard Rorty, who highlights the methodological diversity of the historiography of philosophy, and in the philosophy of history this direction is embodied by such researchers as Quentin Skinner, Mark Bevier, Aviezer Tucker and so on. The first chapter of the dissertation investigates the historical development from continental philosophy and analytic philosophy to postanalytic philosophy, whereas the second one analyzes the theoretical work of postanalytic philosophy of history. Finally, the third chapter focuses on the application of methods of explanation and understanding, which is demonstrated on example of two historical events. The author resorts to the analysis of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster using the methodology of counterfactual history, formulating the understanding of the event based on various causal explanations. The second example concerns the ideological evolution of the early Dmitry Dontsov, where postanalytic approaches to intellectual history and biography are used.
Keywords: Richard Rorty, liberal utopia, ideology, Absolute Other (Stranger), sentimental education, philosophy of education, empathy, social hope, ethnocentrism, historiography, rational reconstruction, cultural politics, pain, violence, dualism of body and mind, phenomenology.
