The Marginalized Role of Theoretical Debate in the Historical Discipline

The institutional place of theory within history has always been marginal, and many practicing historians with empiricist leanings, like Ian Hunter, harbor mixed feelings toward it. This resistance is historically rooted in the opposition Leopold von Ranke himself constructed between the methods of history and philosophy. From this dominant perspective, theory resembles an uninvited visitor persistently asking the wrong questions at the wrong time and place, and, perhaps more egregiously in empiricist eyes, offering unsatisfactory answers. This ‘bad news’ view of theory is not without historical cause.

Since history solidified as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century, claiming privileged epistemological status over non-professional approaches, debates on theory have followed a clear cyclical pattern. During periods of relative uncertainty about history’s disciplinary status, Theoriedebatten and Methodenstreit become heated and occupy center stage. Conversely, in eras of relative certainty and academic recognition, such debates recede to the disciplinary margins or beyond. Widespread theoretical discussion is, in this sense, a symptom of challenge, epistemological uncertainty, or even perceived crisis.

This connection is logical because such debates concern the discipline’s foundational epistemological claims and, by extension, its societal functions. Thomas Kuhn’s suggestion of a direct link between crises and scientific revolutions has made historians particularly sensitive to such diagnoses, with challengers of dominant paradigms often cast as Kuhnian revolutionaries. Consequently, debates about theory invariably involve history’s disciplinary credentials. Given the discipline’s reliance on claims to epistemological superiority, challenges to objectivity—the cornerstone concept of scientific disciplines since the mid-19th century—have been central to these theoretical exchanges.

From the viewpoint of the sociology of science, theoretical debates are directly linked to battles for scientific legitimacy, supremacy, and academic recognition. In periods of intense competition for intellectual capital between factions within the same disciplinary field, theory becomes a primary battleground. This phenomenon is not unique to history but is characteristic of all pluralistic or polyparadigmatic disciplines, including sociology, economics, and psychology. Theoretical intensity thus signals a struggle over the discipline’s core identity and direction.

Typical for these periods of heightened theoretical interest is a concurrent surge in attention to disciplinary history or historiography. This is often motivated by a desire to anchor a preferred methodological conception in the discipline’s origins, preferably with its ‘founding fathers,’ to bolster its academic credentials. Therefore, increased interest in theory and historiography usually coincide. The remarkable growth of historiography over the past decade is directly related to the epistemological uncertainty following the flourishing of postmodern theory within historical studies.

From a philosophical standpoint, debates on theory in history have also remained peripheral. Although numerous philosophers—from Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas—have philosophized on history’s nature, philosophy of history never became a major, recognized philosophical specialization in most parts of the world. It remained the pursuit of a dedicated, often poorly institutionalized few. Consequently, theoretical discourse in history has largely been the domain of a small group of specialized philosophers and ‘reflexive practitioners’ within the historical discipline itself, perpetuating its marginal status even amid periodic, crisis-induced revivals.