Introduction

This volume deals with the philosophical quarrel about the nature of action explanation; in particular, whether explanations of human actions, be they past or present, are a form of causal explanation or teleological explanations. The introduction consists of three parts: The first generally introduces the central issue that the volume attempts to tackle. The second part provides a brief historical overview of the debate to help the reader understand the relevance of this philosophical quarrel, as well as how both philosophical fields, action theory and philosophy of historiography, are interrelated. The third part provides an overview of the contributions to this volume and draws some connections among the topics they discuss.