The first task of historians of ideas is to use relics from the past to reconstruct as historical objects the weak intentions that constitute the hermeneutic meanings of utterances made in the past.

Mark Bevir discusses some philosophical theories of meaning. (3:34 min)

Only afterwards do they turn to the task of relating these historical objects to one another in narratives or theories, although, of course, the theories they already hold will influence the way they reconstruct historical objects, and no doubt as they devise further theories so they will modify their understanding of the relevant historical objects. No account of the tasks of a practice, however, can tell us everything we want to know about it. In particular, I have said nothing to answer the question of how historians should set about, first, reconstructing historical meanings from the relics available to them, and second, justifying the narratives or theories they develop around the hermeneutic meanings they thus reconstruct. Consider a group of students who want to know what a particular utterance means. Suppose they consult the works of several eminent historians only to find that the historians disagree among themselves. What the students need is a way of deciding which historian best describes the meaning of the utterance.

At one extreme, some scholars suggest that historians can justify or condemn an individual theory as conclusively true or false, with every reasonable person then being bound to accept that theory. Some of these objectivists pin their faith on a particular method. They argue that the use of a particular method will always reveal the meaning of an utterance, or, more usually, that it is a prerequisite of reconstructing the meaning of an utterance. Thus, they conclude that historians can justify a theory by showing it was reached using a special method which necessarily produces a true understanding of utterances, or, more usually, that historians can begin to justify a theory by showing that the alternatives were reached by methods which cannot generate a true understanding of utterances. heir faith on pure perceptions of the relevant facts. They argue that once we have a theory in front of us, we can see whether or not it accords with the facts. Historical theories rest on historical objects that are founded on facts given to us by our pure perceptions of relics from the past. Thus, they conclude that historians can justify a theory by showing that the facts prove it to be true, or at least that the facts do not prove it to be false. At the other extreme, some scholars deny that historians have any way of justifying their theories; they imply that we cannot make any sort of informed decision between rival historical theories. All of these sceptics argue that if we define the history of ideas as the study of the intentions of historical figures, we make the history of ideas an impossible practice. Some of them reject the very possibility of our having knowledge of other people's minds: they argue that historians cannot recover hermeneutic meanings because hermeneutic meanings are intentional. Others reject the very possibility of our having knowledge of the past: they argue that historians cannot recover hermeneutic meanings because hermeneutic meanings are historical.