Abstract
This article shows that some postmodernist sceptical doubts concerning the attainability of knowledge of the past are based on an inconsistent conception of truth and objectivity. After a brief summary of the postmodernist challenge for history concentrating on four basic arguments, I will depict Donald Davidson's conception of truth and interpretation. According to his theory of radical interpretation, the meaning of our most basic words is tied to historic situations in which a triangulation between speaker, interpreter and the world takes place. The concepts of truth and objectivity also originate in these situations. On the basis of this theory most forms of scepticism lose their force: for interpretation to take place one has to assume that the other is largely right about the world. More over, the community's standards of truth and objectivity cannot be tested against a more ultimate standard. Hence it is not intelligible how the objectivity and truth of our most basic and shared beliefs understood in a non-epistemic way, might be questioned. In the conclusion I will elaborate on the implications of Davidson's theory for history and argue that it renders the common forms of historical scepticism implausible while supporting a 'deflated' historical realism and at the same time avoiding the mistakes of naive forms of realism.