The article is devoted to the question of the correlation between the formation of philosophical methodology in the modern era and the problematization of tradition in the humanities. The authors believe that the theme of tradition was one of the starting points for the development of humanitarian knowledge and, at the same time, contributed to the methodological expansion of philosophical research. Already at the end of the 18th century, romantics, fascinated by antiquity, made attempts to rationalize the emergence of religious texts from the Middle Ages. Their predominant interest in history led to the assumption that any form of knowledge can be rationally reconstructed. However, in order to do this it was necessary to expand the factual account of each of the studied phenomena. The romantics thereby largely anticipated the research intentions of classical positivism, without turning away from the defining role of intellectual intuition, which grasps the experimental content of consciousness with a concept. All humanitarian knowledge (history, psychology, linguistics) from the second half of the 19th century developed in this direction. The authors pay special attention to W. Dilthey’s interest in the topic of tradition and the congeniality of philosophical hermeneutics and the late phenomenology of E. Husserl. Further, the role of phenomenology and hermeneutics in the development of historical methodology is analyzed on the example of the Annales school, and then the role of the latter in the origin and development of structuralism. In conclusion, the authors hypothesize that the philosophical traditionalism of R. Guenon and his followers, declaring their rejection of New European rationalism, reproduces the general methodological model of the era and anticipates postmodern intellectuals.