Abstract
Keith Jenkins' desire to abolish any concern with history arises from a mistaken identification with Nietzsche's approach to any concern to understand a 'real world'. Our concern with understandng the past, however, should rely on an epistemological base which takes seriously both that which we seek to understand and the conditions under which that concern is pursued. Both Popper and Gadamer provide models for us both in how we understand the problem we are faced with, and how we should preserve our desire to understand the past. This article argues that this desire to understand the past. This article argues that this desire to understand the past needs to be pursued seriously to do justice both to that which we seek to understand and to ourselves as serious pursuers of knowledge. The individualism that Jenkins adopts in following Nietzsche needs to be countered by an acceptance, following MacIntyre, that we should always attempt to formulate criteria by which we seek to discriminate between the work of different practitioners.