Abstract

Eighteenth-century historiography was not, as Meinecke argued, "the substitution of a process of individualizing observation for a generalizing view of human forces in history." This generally accepted view involves a metaphysics which, though characteristic of nineteenth-century historicism, rejects the primarily contextual evaluation of eighteenth-century historicism. This underlying form of evaluation developed not with individualism, but with aesthetics. Though usually considered a product of the eighteenth century, aesthetic historicism can be traced to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which began in the late 1680s and culminated with the "war over Homer" of 1714-1716. This argument explored the problem of evaluating the art of other historical ages. The implications of this position are that historicism was not an essentially German movement and that historicism was not a rigid antithesis to the Enlightenment