ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines and discusses some recent developments which challenge philosophy of history in its traditional forms, especially ‘postmodern’ approaches to the philosophy of history. It points out certain similarities and contrasts with the work of R. G. Collingwood, regarded by some postmodernists as an honorary forebear. Traditional methods of historical inquiry were subject to systematic challenge by the work of White in the 1960s and 1970s as historians became used to some of their methods and modes of inquiry being increasingly questioned. Postmodernism as applied to history implies, at least, that historical truth, of the sort historians are popularly supposed to provide, is unattainable. This is for two reasons: first, that the past has gone and therefore our statements cannot correspond to it (or be known to correspond to it); second, that language as such is self-referential and characterized by endlessly deferred chains of meaning.
