ABSTRACT
This book stems from reflections on methodology in the study and writing of history, especially the history of political thought. In thinking about what are, and ought to be, the characteristics of these activities, it has seemed necessary to my mind to enquire closely into the nature of the phenomena they deal with-provisionally, for example, past events, present evidence, and human activity in relation to history generally; and ideas, thinking, and arguments in relation to the history of thought. Rather than omit them, I have chosen to present these considerations (in the form of organised arguments) as preparatory to the principal conclusions I advance regarding the topic of historical methodology, and it is their inclusion which warrants this book’s description as, in part, a contribution to the analytic philosophy of history. Further, to the extent there are lines of consistency between the different areas treated, the book as a whole is indicative of a more general philosophical position under which its content is subsumed. Where addressing theorists, then, it is unreasonable to expect the general run of historians (with the exception of historians of thought, much of whose material is itself theoretical), to take any special interest in much of what follows despite its being centred on the methodology of their discipline. They might, however, be interested in the conclusions which analytic theorists of history reach, and the more so the more prescriptive these conclusions are regarding what is after all their, the historians’, activity. Yet it is understandable that ultimately such interest remain, for historians, merely ‘academic’; rightly, examples are of far more immediate relevance to practitioners than a list of prescriptions from theorists. Insofar as this is a book of theory, then, the instruction it contains is poles apart from telling historians what they ought to do. Rather, it tells philosophers what historians, in the main, actually do; further, it tells them that this is also what they ought to do in any event. In so doing it contains far more instruction for philosophers than for historians.
