Abstract

The article deals with John Hermann Randall’s theory of history, namely, the philosophical account of what it takes for an object to be a historical object. The goal of the article is to highlight the deep connections existing between Randall’s philosophical views on history and the writing of history, heavily indebted to Dewey’s and Woodbridge naturalism (the so-called Columbia Naturalism), and his historiographical work. In the first section, I briefly sketch some major aspects of originality of Randall’s historiographical work, as well as the intellectual context to which he belonged. In the second section I lay out the most important features of Columbia Naturalism. In the third section I discuss in detail Randall’s theory of history, focusing on its ontological, epistemic, and epistemological features. In the fourth section, I confront Lovejoy and Randall’s historiographical works in order to show how philosophical theories affect historiographical practices.