Much recent scholarship has emphasised the problems inherent in all representation, the subjective and constructed nature of all experience, and the historical and social specificity of all reasoning.

Not quite post-modernism: the author describes the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy. (2:23 min)

The debates generated by this scholarship often focus on post-modernism. Post-modernists reject all foundationalist epistemologies: they deny that we ever can justify our knowledge by reference to given empirical facts or self-evident logical truths. I adopt something akin to this post-modern view by arguing that all semantic meaning, and so knowledge, depends on a particular context. After all, if all knowledge depends on a particular context, neither an empirical fact nor a principle of reason can be given to us as an unquestionable and basic truth. Unfortunately, however, post-modernism has produced a widespread, unhealthy dichotomy in the way we think about the problem of objectivity. On the one hand, far too many post-modernists promote a playful nihilism. They condemn the traditional ideal of objectivity not only as intellectually untenable, but also as inimical to freedom, and in its place they champion an 'anything goes' attitude to truth.(In addition to the works of Derrida, Foucault, and arguably Rorty, see J. Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. P. Foss, P. Patton, and P. Beitchman (New York: Semiotext[e], 1983).) They would have us abandon the very idea of objectivity. On the other hand, far too many opponents of post-modernism insist on a traditional ideal of objectivity as the only bulwark against an invidious culture of relativism and irrationalism, perhaps even social chaos. (A much discussed example is A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987. In many ways, however, the same might be said of J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. F. Lawrence, 1987). They would have us ignore the manifest problems in the traditional concept of objectivity. Actually, however, we can accept the absence of any given truths capable of providing foundations for our knowledge without thereby adopting an irrationalist relativism. We can do so simply by shifting the focus of our epistemology from a search for given truths to a defence of a human practice. In analysing the form of justification appropriate to the history of ideas, therefore, I oppose both foundationalist objectivism and irrationalist relativism.

	Thinking Points
	Is it more accurate to speak of "histories" rather than of history as a single, objective reality? Without language, would history be merely a series of unconnected events?

(For an attempt to avoid these two extremes by drawing on the hermeneutic tradition, see R. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, 1983. For an earlier version of my position, see M. Bevir,'Objectivity in history', History and Theory 33 (1994), pp. 328-44.)In accord with my anti-foundationalism, I deny that there is either a particular method or a decision procedure that we can use as a criterion of good history. But I also argue that there is no reason why we should assume that we cannot have accurate knowledge of past intentions. Objectivity in the history of ideas rests on a combination of agreement on certain facts, an extensive use of criticism, and a comparison of rival views in relation to clearly defined criteria. Historians cannot pronounce their particular theories to be decisively true or false, but they can make rational decisions between rival webs of theories, and thereby pronounce their theories to be the best currently available to us.

In conclusion, Mark Bevir here outlines the theory of semantic holism. (3:56 min)