I introduce the book's defence of humanistic explanation by contrasting the explanatory goals of many humanities scholars with the “hermeneutic” misconception of humanistic research currently dominant in north America and elsewhere. I trace the origins and perpetuation of this hermeneutic misconception, according to which humanists seek primarily to interpret and evaluate discrete cultural phenomena rather than to explain them, to Dilthey's famous distinction between “understanding” and “explanation” as well as Windelband's equally well-known contrast between the supposedly “idiographic” ambitions of the humanities and the “nomothetic” ones of the natural sciences. I argue that, contrary to the hermeneutic misconception of the humanities, many humanistic scholars seek to explain general patterns in (art-)historical data rather than interpret and evaluate discrete cultural phenomena, and they do so using historical explanation, theoretical definitions of categories, and other humanistic methods. I claim that the humanities are far more defensible when correctly recognized as contributing to the production of knowledge through offering explanations of the phenomena they study. The book's emphasis on methodological pluralism is introduced in criticizing the narrow, impoverished conception of the humanities as primarily hermeneutic in orientation.