Historism () is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century
Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on Hermeneutics for the events, acting persons, and historical periods. The historist approach takes to its extreme limits the common observation that human institutions (language, Art, religion, law, State) are subject to perpetual change.
Notable exponents
Notable exponents of historism were primarily the German 19th-century historians Leopold von Ranke
[Beiser 2011, p. 366.] and Johann Gustav Droysen,
[Colin Cheyne, John Worrall (eds.), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, Springer 2006, p. 266.] 20th-century historian Friedrich Meinecke,
[Beiser 2014, p. 133.] and the philosopher
Wilhelm Dilthey.
[Koslowski 2006, p. 4.] Dilthey was influenced by Ranke.
[Wallace and Gach 2008, p. 27.] The jurists Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn were strongly influenced by the ideas of historism and founded the German Historical School of Law. The Italian philosopher, anti-fascist
[ BENEDETTO CROCE. Il filosofo napoletano fu l'unico grande intellettuale a prendere pubblicamente posizione in Italia contro le concezioni razziste e contro le persecuzioni antiebraiche attuate dal nazismo e dal fascismo, in scritti e interventi pubblicati sulla sua rivista « La Critica » e su organi di stampa stranieri.
Translated:] and historian
Benedetto Croce[Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer (eds.), Neo-historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History, and Politics, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2000, p. 3.] and his British colleague Robin George Collingwood
[Collingwood himself used the term "historicism"—a term he apparently coined—to describe his approach—for example in his 'Ruskin's Philosophy', lecture delivered to the Ruskin Centenary Conference Exhibition, Coniston, Cumbria (see Jan van der Dussen, History as a Science: The Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, Springer, 2012, p. 49)—, but some later historiographers describe him as a proponent of "historism," in accordance with the current meaning of the term in English (see F. R. Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience, Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 404).] were important European exponents of historism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Collingwood was influenced by Dilthey.
[David Naugle, "R. G. Collingwood and the Hermeneutic Tradition", 1993.]
Ranke's arguments can be viewed as an antidote to the lawlike and quantitative approaches common in sociology and most other social sciences.[Wallace and Gach 2008, p. 14.]
The principle of historism has a universal methodological significance in Marxism.
Contemporary thought
20th-century German historians promoting some aspects of historism are
Ulrich Muhlack,
Thomas Nipperdey and Jörn Rüsen.
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was influenced by historism.
Criticism
Because of the power held on the
social sciences by logical positivism, historism or historicism is deemed unpopular.
Georg G. Iggers is one of the most important critical authors on historism. His book The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, first published in 1968 (by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Ct.) is a "classic”[Berger 2001, p. 24.] among critiques of historism.
Another critique is presented by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose essay Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben ( On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, 1874) denounces “a malignant historical fever”. Nietzsche contends that the historians of his times, the historists, damaged the powers of human life by relegating it to the past instead of opening it to the future. For this reason, he calls for a return, beyond historism, to humanism.[Friedrich Nietzsche: , first published 1874, translated 1909.]
Karl Popper was one of the most distinguished critics of historicism. He differentiated between both phenomena as follows: The term historicism is used in his influential books The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies to describe “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history”.[Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, 1993, p. 3 (italics in original).] Popper wrote with reference to Hegel's theory of history, which he criticized extensively. By historism on the contrary, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits. Historism does not aim for the 'laws' of history, but premises the individuality of each historical situation.
On the basis of Popper's definitions, the historian Stefan Berger proposes as a proper word usage:
See also
Notes
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Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, 2nd rev. edn., Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Ct., 1983, .
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Stefan Berger, Stefan Berger responds to Ulrich Muhlack. In: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute London, Volume XXIII, No. 1, May 2001, pp. 21–33 (contemporary debate between a historism-critic and a historism-supporting historian).
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Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Frederick C. Beiser, After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840-1900, Princeton University Press, 2014.
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Wallace, Edwin R. and Gach, John (eds.), History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology: With an Epilogue on Psychiatry and the Mind-Body Relation, Springer, 2008.
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Peter Koslowski (ed.), The Discovery of Historicity in German Idealism and Historism, Springer, 2006.
