Historism

Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany (as Historismus) and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.

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.^[1]

Historism is not to be confused with historicism,^[2] 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.)^[1]

Quarrel with logical positivism

Because of the power held on the social sciences by logical positivism, historism or historicism is deemed unpopular.^[3]

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 Poppers 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.^[5]

Notable exponents

Notable exponents of historism were primarily the German 19th-century historians

• 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, ISBN 0-8195-6080-4.
• 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).
• Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 366.

Further reading

References

• Heinrich Rickert
• Historical school of economics

See also

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.

Contemporaries

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.^[9]

^[8] among critiques of historism.

Ranke's arguments can be viewed as an antidote to the lawlike and quantitative approaches common in sociology and most other social sciences.^[7]

[6]