ABSTRACT
This chapter situates the primacy of method in relation to popular ideas about history within contemporary debates. In contrast with influential positions in theory of history – such as narrativism, postnarrativism, empiricism, hermeneutics of suspicion and presence theory – the present book has argued for the primacy of method for understanding historical relations to the past. This chapter summarizes the main arguments for the primacy of method in history presented in the book. It emphasizes that the historical method of invoking the perspective of meaning of historical agents is something simple, irreducible and basic – something without which there cannot be ‘history’ as a specific way of rendering the human world intelligible. It is perhaps the simplicity and familiarity of the historical method that have led philosophers of history to underestimate its fundamental role for understanding relations to the past in historical research. In conclusion, the chapter argues that the primacy of method in history is connected with underexplored ethical questions about historical understanding.
