Developments in Modern Historiography

Collections of essays surveying the historical discipline at the end of the 1970s heralded the new approached being developed, approaches that promised a rich diversity and cosmopolitan pluralism in the face of the uncertainty of historical reality. The essayists in this successor volume, surveying the work of the 1980s, finds that these new approaches have not brought satisfactory results, and argues that traditional practices, reassessed and properly understood, constitute the true scientific grounding of the discipline. Objective reality is obtainable, the historian's subjectivity can be understood rationally, historical sources and causal strategies can be managed objectively. In brief, a truthful account of the past is possible, but it must be both objective and subjective.

LEON J. GOLDSTEIN Professor of Philosophy in, and former chairman of, the Department of Philosophy, State University of New York, Binghampton
GEORG G. IGGERS Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York, Buffalo
GERALD N. IZENBERG Associate Professor, Department of History, Washington University, Co-Director of its Literature and History Program, and Faculty Member, St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute
MICHAEL A. KISSELL Chief Research-Associate, Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow
EERO LOONE Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy and Political Science, Tartu University, Estonia, and Board Member, Institute of Philosophy, Sociology, and Law, Estonian Academy of Sciences
ARTHUR MARWICK Professor of History, the Open University
SIDNEY MONAS Professor, Department of History and Department of Slavic Languages, University of Texas, Austin
ANDRUS PARK Professor of Philosophy, Tartu State University, Member of the Presidium, and Acting General Scientific Secretary, Estonian Academy of Sciences
THEODORE K. RABB Professor of History, Princeton University
RICHARD T. VANN Professor of History and Letters, and Director, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University