The History and Theory Debate: Defining the Role of Theoretical Reflection in Historical Scholarship

In a seminal 2006 article titled ‘The History of Theory’, historian Ian Hunter diagnosed a core predicament within contemporary humanities discourse. His opening line starkly observed a profound lack of consensus regarding the very object of theory and the language used to conduct it. He pointed to a landscape of ‘rivalrous theoretical vernaculars’, citing divergent thinkers from Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton to Noam Chomsky, Jürgen Habermas, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida. From this, Hunter concluded it was fruitless to seek a common object or shared language for a coherent history of theory. Fredric Jameson, directly engaged by this critique, responded with a polemic entitled ‘How Not to Historicize Theory’. He accused Hunter of being ‘anti-theoretical’, mired in empiricism, and practicing a form of ‘positivist censorship’.

While this specific exchange may not itself be deemed historic, the theoretical positions it represents are deeply emblematic of enduring debates about theory in history. Similar foundational disputes, such as the early 1980s discussion between Perry Anderson and E. P. Thompson, illustrate a persistent pattern. A closer analysis reveals that the debate over theory’s role has accompanied the academic discipline of history since its inception. To properly engage with this debate, however, one must first clarify the interconnected notions of theory and history as disciplinary practices.

The Spatio-Temporal Foundations of Historical Discipline.Traditionally, the discipline of history has developed through specializations defined primarily by blocks of time and space. Spatial frames range systematically from the local to the global, incorporating regional, national, imperial, and continental scales. Temporal frames similarly span from specific moments to vast epochs, including the day, year, decade, century, and broader historical periods. Historiography, defined as the history of history-writing itself, has evolved along analogous lines of specialization.

When historical specializations emerge that appear unrelated to explicit spatio-temporal differentiations—such as ecclesiastical history, legal history, economic history, gender history, or environmental history—they are nonetheless defined by implicit temporal and spatial characteristics. All subject-specific histories are fundamentally histories of specific chunks of space and time. For instance, the prominent social history of the 1960s and 1970s predominantly operated within a national framework. Thus, the discipline defines its object, whether explicitly or implicitly, as phenomena located intrinsically within space and time.

The Inevitability and Function of Theory in History.This brings us to the crucial question of theory and its relationship to history, and to Hunter’s skeptical conclusion about theorizing theory. On ‘the question of theory’, Hunter is both right and wrong, particularly when focusing specifically on theory of history. He is correct in observing there is no unified ‘common object’ or ‘shared language’ of theory. However, he is mistaken in concluding this lack of unity is a problem. The theory of history consists precisely of the philosophical and reflexive discussions about what the object(s) and language(s) of history are or should be.

Formally, theory of history constitutes the philosophical examination of all aspects of our descriptions, beliefs, and knowledge of the past, functioning in both descriptive and normative modes. It poses epistemological questions about the characteristics of historical knowledge, methodological questions about how this knowledge is achieved and validated, ontological questions concerning the mode of being of ‘the past’, and ethical-political questions about the uses of the past. Many historians engage with these theoretical questions without explicit awareness of doing so.

This descriptive/normative duality is inevitable given the sheer variety of ideas concerning the discipline's identifying characteristics and historical practices. This variety and normative character are not unique to history. As scholars Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison argue in their Foucauldian history of science, the knower's self is always an epistemological and ethical issue. Since Immanuel Kant defined epistemology as a battlefield and Arthur Schopenhauer conceptualized objectivity as a ‘will to willlessness’, subjectivity has been seen as an internal enemy to be tamed by objective procedures.

Consequently, striving for objectivity is simultaneously an epistemic and an ethical ideal. It is therefore unsurprising that profound theoretical reflection often arises in the sciences during paradigm shifts, a term famously coined by Thomas Kuhn, when old consensuses break down. In this light, Jameson’s critique of Hunter’s empiricism and his lack of engagement with theory’s fundamental purpose holds significant validity.

The Three Practical Functions of Historical Theory.Theoretical reflection on history's nature fulfills three key, interrelated practical functions. First, it legitimizes a specific historical practice as epistemologically and methodologically superior. For example, Fernand Braudel’s reflections on la longue durée aimed to legitimize Annales School history in the 1960s. Similarly, Eric Hobsbawm’s writings on ‘history of society’ sought to legitimize his Marxist approach during the same period.

Second, theory provides a programmatic function, outlining a specific agenda for future research. Both Braudel and Hobsbawm argued that history would become more ‘scientific’ if historians seriously engaged with notions of model and structure, and recognized the hierarchical layers of historical time.

Third, theory performs a demarcation function. It draws borders to distinguish a favored way of ‘doing history’ from others, which are often excluded or degraded, thus defining the community of ‘real’ historians. Braudel again serves as a prime example, explicitly excluding histoire événementielle (event-history) from ‘scientific’ history while embracing the social sciences as a prerequisite for ‘structural’ history. Through legitimization, programming, and demarcation, theoretical discourse actively shapes the discipline's contours and priorities.