With the assistance of the theory of comparative ethics, which claims that morality cannot be justified in a traditionalist way in today’s society using so-called higher truth, the author has no choice but to take into account some other substitute for morality in assessing the behaviour of historians in the public space. For the author, such a substitute is contractualism, which claims that the institution of ethics and even morality has never known narrowly defined boundaries and therefore that it has never existed in cultural isolation. The theory of contractualism then justifies why it is reasonable to submit to a certain system of reciprocal norms on the assumption that others will likewise submit to them. This also results in the consequence that there is no threat of sanctions for violating the unwritten rules of ethics, but only the relativization of these standards. In this philosophicalmethodological context, an attempt is made to characterise the social-creative milieu of the Czech historical community over the last thirty years.