Historism
Encyclopedia
Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 (as Historismus) and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. It pronounces the historicity
Historicity
Historicity may mean:*the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory*the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth or legend, for example:** Historicity of the Iliad**Historicity...

 of man, his binding to tradition, and the awareness of humans affection by their past.

Historist historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

 rejects historical teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...

 and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding (→Hermeneutics) for the events, acting persons, and historical periods.

Historism is not to be confused with historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...

, nevertheless the English habits of using both words are very similar. Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...

, 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
The Poverty of Historicism
The Poverty of Historicism is a book by twentieth century philosopher Karl Popper which seeks to persuade the reader of both the danger and the bankruptcy of the idea of historicism.-Publication:...

and The Open Society and Its Enemies
The Open Society and Its Enemies
The Open Society and Its Enemies is an influential two-volume work by Karl Popper written during World War II. Failing to find a publisher in the United States, it was first printed in London by Routledge in 1945...

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”. Popper wrote with reference to Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...

's theory of history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, 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
Stefan Berger
Stefan Heinrich Berger is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, UK...

 proposes as a proper word usage:

Notable exponents of historism were primarily the German 19th-century historians Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke was a German historian, considered one of the founders of modern source-based history. Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources , an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics .-...

 and Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen
Johann Gustav Droysen was a German historian. His history of Alexander the Great was the first work representing a new school of German historical thought that idealized power held by so-called "great" men...

, later Friedrich Meinecke
Friedrich Meinecke
Friedrich Meinecke was a liberal German historian, probably the most famous German historian of his generation. As a representative of an older tradition still writing after World War II, he was an important figure to the end of his life.-Life:Meinecke was born in Salzwedel in the Province of Saxony...

 and the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...

. The jurists Friedrich Carl von Savigny
Friedrich Carl von Savigny
Friedrich Carl von Savigny was one of the most respected and influential 19th-century jurists and historians.-Early life and education:...

 and Karl Friedrich Eichhorn
Karl Friedrich Eichhorn
Karl Friedrich Eichhorn was a German jurist.Eichhorn was born in Jena as the son of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. He entered the University of Göttingen in 1797. In 1805 he obtained the professorship of law at Frankfurt , holding it till 1811, when he accepted the same chair at the new Friedrich...

 were strongly influenced by the ideas of historism and founded the German Historical School of Law
German Historical School
The German Historical School of Law is a 19th century intellectual movement in the study of German law. With Romanticism as its background, it emphasized the historical limitations of the law...

. The Italian philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...

 and his British colleague Robin George Collingwood
R. G. Collingwood
Robin George Collingwood was a British philosopher and historian. He was born at Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands in Lancashire, the son of the academic W. G. Collingwood, and was educated at Rugby School and at University College, Oxford, where he read Greats...

 were important European exponents of historism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Also the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...

 was influenced by historism. 20th-century German historians promoting some aspects of historism are Ulrich Muhlack, Thomas Nipperdey
Thomas Nipperdey
Thomas Nipperdey was a German historian best known for his monumental and exhaustive studies of Germany from 1800 to 1918. As a close albeit critical follower of Leopold von Ranke's famous ideal of writing "history exactly as it happened," Nipperdey sought comprehensive coverage of every major...

 and Jörn Rüsen.

Except the named critics of historism, Georg G. Iggers ist 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.) may be named a “classic text” of historism critics.

A further kind of critic is presented by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, who wrote his essay Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben (On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, 1874, →The Untimely Meditations
The Untimely Meditations
Untimely Meditations consists of four works by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, started in 1873 and completed in 1876....

) against “a malignant historical fever”. He stated, that the historians of his times, the historists, damaged the powers of human life by re-ligating it to the past instead of opening it to the future. Therefore, Nietzsche calls to a return, beyond historism, to humanism.

Further reading

  • 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, p. 21-33 (contemporary debate between a historism-critic and a historism-supporting historian).
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