The conceptual difficulties which the human studies (humanities, Gesiteswissenschaften) confront directly, in sharp contrast to those encountered by the natural sciences in the course of their development, peripherally, as it were, turn upon the problematic character of the very categories through which the humanistic areas of research are constituted. In the human studies conundrums, paradoxes and even contradictions arise as soon as we begin to reflect upon their subject matter and not on the frontiers of disciplines as is more typical in the natural sciences. The problems typical of the natural sciences arise as we try to solve problems or answer questions; in the human studies the most pressing problems are typically problems about the nature and form of the inquiry itself. In science disagreement turns upon how we are to answer specific questions; in the human studies it is more a matter of disagreement about what questions to address. Indeed, the most distressing problems that arise in the human studies tend to bear upon the very nature of the subject under investigation. "What is literature?" "What is religion?" "What is society?" "What is it to explain something?" In the human studies these questions are not luxury items as their counterparts in the natural sciences tend to be. When these questions raise their ugly heads the very foundations of disciplines are being called into question.