<p>Among the many research methods on education, comparative research is an ancient paradigm that has paved the way for the production and accumulation of knowledge in education. But what has been discussed is that at the end of the last century, there was already an academic crisis of comparative studies by scholars. The crisis revolves around issues such as research propositions, research methods, and paradigms. The purpose of this paper is to sort out the history of the comparative method as a methodological philosophy and to point out the academic rationale behind the establishment of different research orientations. In order to re-examine the legitimacy of comparative methods in educational research and find ways to overcome the crisis, it is necessary to trace the diverse directions of comparative education research from the perspective of the history of social ideas, as well as to explore how to seek the production of universal valuable educational knowledge. The discussion is starting from the sociologist Comte, the advocate of the comparative method as a unique social science research method. Then this paper discusses the universal methodology provided by Durkheim, Spengler, Vico, Weber, Dilthey, and other scholars, and sorts out the methodological orientation of comparative educationalists, which are summarized as positivism and historicism methodological traditions in comparative education, spanning from the inception of the discipline to the present day. Finally, I try to clarify the long-term picture of comparative education research after the humanistic turn in the contemporary context, that is, to produce educational knowledge full of cultural sensitivity under the premise of acknowledging the coexistence of multiple national cultures. In today’s national multicultural educational orientation, historicism has gained higher legitimacy than positivism and provides a possible horizon for thinking about how to return to the educational cultural traditions of the national spirit.</p>