Det funktionelle kildebegreb og virkelighedens fortid i historisk forskning

In recent debates over historical theory, it has often been asserted that postmodernism destroyed the ontological realism of the past, forcing historians to concede that they could not posit the real existence of the past as a basis for research. In fact, that concept had been abandoned before postmodernism came along. In Scandinavia, Bernard Eric Jensen in the mid-1970's introduced the notion that subjectivity inevitably triumphs over objectivity in perceptions of the past.