ABSTRACT
There are two important issues commanding the attention of philosophers of history today. One is the question of the truth and objectivity of history. There have been three major lines of attack upon the truth and objectivity of history. First, the facts of cultural relativism, and postmodern writing on the nature of language have cast doubt upon the possibility of written history being true. Every culture views the world differently, through the lenses of its own concepts and interests, so how can any account of the world be thought true? According to the postmoderns, language has no important or regular relation to the world, so we should not expect descriptions of what has happened in the world to reveal reality. Second, the fact that interpretations of past events and societies vary with the cultural prejudices and personal interests and convictions of historians seems to imply that none of them can be true or objective. Certainly many have drawn this conclusion. Finally, historians often describe patterns of historical events in metaphorical terms, for example, as the growth or decline of something, as a revolution or contest, and some philosophers argue that metaphorical descriptions cannot be true or false. Rather, they say, such descriptions merely suggest ways of viewing the events involved.
