The problem of historiographical evaluation is simply this: By what evaluative criteria might we say that certain works of historiography are better than others? One recently proposed solution to this problem comes by way of Kuukkanen’s postnarrativist philosophy of historiography. Kuukkanen argues that because many historiographically interesting statements lack truth-values, we cannot evaluate historiographical claims on a truth-functional basis. In the place of truth, Kuukkanen suggests that we evaluate historiographical claims in terms of justification. The problem with this proposal, as I will argue here, is that it isn’t at all clear what it means for a neither-true-nor-false claim to be justified. Moreover, this proposal also runs into trouble with the factivity of knowledge. The solution I propose here might be called “two-valued” postnarrativism, which retains Kuukkanen’s framework, except with a stricter ontology devoid of neither-true-nor-false historiographical statements.

In arguing for this approach to historiographical evaluation, this paper will be structured in the following way: First, I’ll describe Kuukkanen’s postnarrativism in more detail, focusing especially on his account of historiographical evaluation (§1). Next, I’ll introduce two problems that accompany this account, one originating from the factivity of knowledge (§2) and the other from trying to divorce justification from the concept of truth (§3). Finally, I argue that not only might these problems be solved by simply committing to all historiographical claims being either true or false, but that Kuukkanen’s account is especially amenable to this (§4).

史学评价的问题很简单：根据什么评价标准，我们可以说某些史学作品比其他的好？最近提出的一个解决这个问题的方法来自库卡宁的后叙事主义史学哲学。Kuukkanen 认为，由于许多史学上有趣的陈述缺乏真值，我们无法在真值函数基础上评估史学主张。代替真相，库卡宁建议我们根据正当性来评估史学主张. 这个提议的问题，正如我将在这里争论的那样，是根本不清楚非真非假的声明是正当的意味着什么。此外，该提议还遇到了知识的事实性问题。我在这里提出的解决方案可能被称为“双值”后叙事主义，它保留了库卡宁的框架，除了一个更严格的本体论，没有非真非假的史学陈述。

在论证这种史学评价的方法时，本文将按以下方式构建：首先，我将更详细地描述库卡宁的后叙事主义，特别关注他对史学评价的描述（§1）。接下来，我将介绍与此说明相关的两个问题，一个源于知识的事实性（§2），另一个源于试图将证明与真理的概念分开（§3）。最后，我认为这些问题不仅可以通过简单地承诺所有史学断言是真还是假来解决，而且库卡宁的描述尤其适合这一点（第 4 节）。