This book contains an argument that is summarized in this first chapter. In very brief outline, the argument begins by showing, in Chapter 2, that the philosophy of a discipline should draw on its historiography in a particular way, so that the philosophy of historiography should draw on the historiography of historiography in this way. Chapter 2 also argues that the philosophical issues concerning a discipline should arise from that discipline itself, as shown in its historiography. Chapter 3 seeks to write the required historiography of historiography, and that search, in disclosing its own presuppositions of writing historiography, discloses also the philosophical issues that arise for historians, which have to do with their factual and moral judgements made in a context of a multiplicity of choices. The form that these philosophical issues take for many contemporary historians is a worry about the postmodern destabilization of historical reality, and Chapter 4 analyses postmodernism, overcoming its problems for historians by showing its practical limits. Finally, Chapter 5 shows how, in the light of those limits, the historical world may be established in our factual and moral understanding.

Next we explain how the various elements of the book connect to each other. While the book is organized in terms of five chapters, including this one, the titles of which give a broad overview of their contents, the ongoing argument of the book is presented in a series of sections, listed on the Contents page, each naturally following its predecessor throughout.