Human cultures generate meanings, and the history of ideas, broadly conceived, is the study of these meanings. An adequate theory of culture must therefore rest on a suitable philosophical enquiry into the nature of the history of ideas. Mark Bevir's book explores the forms of reasoning appropriate to the history of ideas, enhancing our understanding by grappling with central questions such as: What is a meaning? What constitutes objective knowledge of the past? What are beliefs and traditions? How can we explain why people held the beliefs they did? The book ranges widely over issues and theorists associated with post-analytic philosophy, post-modernism, hermeneutics, literary theory, political thought, and social theory.

"...ambitious and well-reasoned book...[Bevir] gives us a more valuable - if less ground-breaking - book. It is more valuable precisely because it engages the methodological and phenomenological literatuer to a degree that a rigidly defined 'logic' would not...this worthwhile study should be of interest not only to philosophers of the history of ideas but also to those who see themselves primarily as practicing historians of ideas." The Review of Politics