Historism

Historism (Italian: storicismo) is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century[1] Germany (as Historismus) and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanitarian or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought (cf. comparative historical linguistics etc.).[1] It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.

This article is about historism as a philosophical and historiographical theory on historicity and awareness of the past. For the similarly used term historicism, see historicism. For the method of interpreting the biblical apocalypse, see historicism (Christian eschatology). For a school of art and architecture, see historicism (art).

Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding (see 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.[2]

Historism is not to be confused with historicism,[3] nevertheless the English habits of using both words are very similar. (The term historism is sometimes reserved to identify the specific current called Historismus in the tradition of German philosophy and historiography.)[2]

Criticism

Because of the power held on the social sciences by logical positivism, historism or historicism is deemed unpopular.[4]

Karl Popper, one of the most distinguished critics of historicism, criticized historism, too. 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”.[5] 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:

I deliberately use the term ‘historism’ (and ‘historist’) rather than ‘historicism’ (and ‘historicist’). Whereas ‘historism’ (in German, Historismus), as represented by Leopold von Ranke, can be seen as an evolutionary, reformist concept which understands all political order as historically developed and grown, ‘historicism’ (Historizismus), as defined and rejected by Karl Popper, is based on the notion that history develops according to predetermined laws towards a particular end. The English language, by using only one term for those different concepts, tends to conflate the two. Hence I suggest using two separate terms in analogy to the German language.[6]

Notable exponents

Notable exponents of historism were primarily the German 19th-century historians Leopold von Ranke[7] and Johann Gustav Droysen,[8] 20th-century historian Friedrich Meinecke,[9] and the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey.[10] Dilthey was influenced by Ranke.[11] 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[12] and historian Benedetto Croce[13] and his British colleague Robin George Collingwood[14] were important European exponents of historism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Collingwood was influenced by Dilthey.[11][15]

Ranke's arguments can be viewed as an antidote to the lawlike and quantitative approaches common in sociology and most other social sciences.[16]

The principle of historism has a universal methodological significance in Marxism.[1]:127 The essence of this principle, in brief, is

not to forget the underlying historical connection, to examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose in history and what principal stages this phenomenon passed through in its development, and, from the standpoint of its development, to examine what the given thing has become today.

— Vladimir Lenin, The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University[17]

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”[18] 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; see The Untimely Meditations) 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.[19]

Contemporaries

20th-century German historians promoting some aspects of historism are Ulrich Muhlack, Thomas Nipperdey and Jörn Rüsen.

Also the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was influenced by historism.

See also

Notes
  1. Alexander Spirkin (1990), Fundamentals of Philosophy., translated by Sergei Syrovatkin, Moscow: Progress Publishers, ISBN 978-5-01-002582-3, retrieved 15 January 2011  First published in 1988, as “Основы философии”
  2. Raymond Boudon and François Bourricaud, A Critical Dictionary of Sociology, Routledge, 1989: "Historicism", p. 198.
  3. Historicism in the sense given to it by Karl Popper, namely the search for historical laws.
  4. Morera, Esteve (1990), Gramsci's Historicism: A Realist Interpretation, Routledge, p. 11.
  5. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge, 1993, p. 3 (italics in original).
  6. 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, here p. 28f. (italics in original).
  7. Beiser 2011, p. 366.
  8. Colin Cheyne, John Worrall (eds.), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, Springer 2006, p. 266.
  9. Beiser 2014, p. 133.
  10. Koslowski 2006, p. 4.
  11. Wallace and Gach 2008, p. 27.
  12. Chiarini, Roberto (2008). L'intellettuale antisemita (in Italian). Marsilio. p. 94. ISBN 978-88-317-9635-4. 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: BENEDICT CROSS. The Neapolitan philosopher was the only great intellectual to publicly take a position in Italy against racist conceptions and against the anti-Jewish persecutions implemented by Nazism and Fascism, in writings and interventions published in his review "La Critica" and in foreign press organs.]
  13. Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer (eds.), Neo-historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History, and Politics, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2000, p. 3.
  14. 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).
  15. David Naugle, "R. G. Collingwood and the Hermeneutic Tradition", 1993.
  16. Wallace and Gach 2008, p. 14.
  17. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 473.
  18. Berger 2001, p. 24.
  19. Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, first published 1874, translated 1909.

References
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