ABSTRACT
For many, history is not an academic interest; it is important to life – and it is particularly significant at a time when the conventions and norms of religion and science no longer hold firm. People want to know who they are and where they have come from, and so they turn to history – to family or local history, to genealogies and chronicles, but also to stories and accounts of historical figures, of nations and civilizations, and even histories of the world. The problems that historians and historiographers are, or have been, faced with, then, are also the problems of the philosophy of history. But the philosophy of history itself has a history and it, too, is disputed ground. Many historians find themselves confronted with challenges concerning the presuppositions of history, and this is a matter of the philosophy of history.
