Historicism is often regarded as a distortion of properly "historical" understanding; but if one attends to the rhetorical aspects of historical discourse, it appears that ordinary historical narrative prefigures its subject by the language chosen for description no less than historicism does by its generalizing and theoretical interests. Descriptive language is, in fact, figurative and emplots events to suit one or another type of story. Rhetorical analysis shows even an apparently straightforward passage to be an encodation of events (...) in the form of pseudo-tragedy. Generic story-types constitute the latent meaning of narratives and are understood by readers, often subliminally, through the figurative language of the story. The acknowledgement of linguistic determinism resolves a number of problems of historical theory and entails a qualified relativism of historical accounts. (shrink)

Focusing on the close connection between Friedrich Nietzsche's historical thought and the discourse of German historicism in the second half of the nineteenth century, this article argues in a thick contextual reading that Nietzsche's second VomNutzenundNachtheilderHistoriefürdasLeben(1874), needs to be understood as a reflection on the political dimension of historical consciousness, outlining what I shall term a In contrast to the standard emphasis on Nietzsche's presumed aestheticism, he is shown to react to rather specific developments within the contemporary intellectual context, (...) such as the establishment of specific historical foundation myths for a new German nation state, exemplified by the public monuments and commemorations of the 1870s, the effect of such foundation myths on the political imagination of historical scholarship, and the intellectual antagonism between Basel's and the German nation state. (shrink)

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social (...) power or, authority, is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nassim Taleb’s dismissal of history as based on the “narrative fallacy”—which reads our present knowledge of past events into our reconstruction of the past—is based on a fundamental misconception of what historians actually do. Historians do not, as Taleb presumes, try to infer general, predictive laws from “hard” facts, as do natural scientists; instead their aim is to discover the causes of unique historical facts among antecedent facts. This is no different, in principle, from “narrating” the cause of (...) a supernova by referring to physical causes. The construction of universal historical laws would admittedly be a fool’s errand, but that is not the task historians—as opposed to historicists—actually set for themselves. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nassim Taleb’s dismissal of history as based on the “narrative fallacy”—which reads our present knowledge of past events into our reconstruction of the past—is based on a fundamental misconception of what historians actually do. Historians do not, as Taleb presumes, try to infer general, predictive laws from “hard” facts, as do natural scientists; instead their aim is to discover the causes of unique historical facts among antecedent facts. This is no different, in principle, from “narrating” the cause of (...) a supernova by referring to physical causes. The construction of universal historical laws would admittedly be a fool’s errand, but that is not the task historians—as opposed to historicists—actually set for themselves. (shrink)

The study of literary texts appears at the moment to stand at a decisive juncture. Trends in critical thinking over the last decades have questioned the possibility of recovering a text's historical meaning. At the same time, there is a newly insistent plea for a return to “history” in the interpretation of literature. Before a rapprochement can occur, however, we need to have a clearer understanding of how both historians and critics understand “history” and of the ways in (...) which postmodernist thought positions history and the role of the historian with respect to issues of literary interpretation at the forefront of contemporary critical debate. (shrink)

A great irony abounds in much of the current literature on historicism.1 As William Dean began to detect over two decades ago, a good majority of historicists, although placing an ontological and epistemological premium on historicity, promulgates a historicism that ignores most of history, the history of nature. In particular, today’s historicist theologies, especially those of the postmodern and postliberal variety, are so fixated on human histories—and, even more narrowly, on the socially, linguistically, and narrativally constituted (...) particularities of very localized religiocultural histories—that they remain disconnected from, irrelevant to, and unconstrained by what we know about the history of humanity as a .. (shrink)

Introduction Philosophy, Georg Lukacs once observed, originally arose as a cultural response to loss. The unified totality of immediate, meaningful social ...

In Another Philosophy of History, J.G. Herder claims that his aim is not to compare and judge different cultures, but merely to describe and explain how each came into being and thus to adopt the standpoint of an impartial observer. I argue, however, that there is a tension between Herder's understanding of his own project—his stated doctrine of historicism and cultural relativism—and the way in which it is actually put into practice. That is, despite Herder's stated aims, he (...) is nevertheless unable to avoid justifying premodern forms of life and making context-transcending evaluative judgments in the process of trying to understand cultures on their own terms and holding them up as exemplars vis à vis the Enlightenment. This tension presents the challenge of accounting for it in the most charitable and illuminating way. I argue that this goal can be achieved by appealing to the resources of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which enables us to disclose two enabling conditions for Herder's project of which he was not explicitly aware, viz., the internal connection between understanding and justification and the enabling character of prejudice as the condition for the possibility of understanding as such. (shrink)

One of the central problems in philosophy since Kant has been that of the possibility of a science of human culture. Dilthey, Croce and Collingwood devoted their energies to this task, in an atmosphere marked by an intense hostility between positivists, who represented the tradition of naturalism and historicists, who represented the tradition of humanism. The positivists, led by Comte, Buckle, Mill and Taine, argued for a science of man modelled on the prevailing methods of the natural sciences. Typical of (...) this approach was the attempt by the English historian T. H. Buckle:to accomplish for the history of man something equivalent, or at all events analogous, to what has been effected by other inquiries for the different branches of the natural sciences. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century European thought, especially in Germany, was increasingly dominated by a new historicist impulse to situate every event, person, or text in its particular context. At odds with the transcendent claims of philosophy and--more significantly--theology, historicism came to be attacked by its critics for reducing human experience to a series of disconnected moments, each of which was the product of decidedly mundane, rather than sacred, origins. By the late nineteenth century and into the Weimar period, historicism was seen (...) by many as a grinding force that corroded social values and was emblematic of modern society's gravest ills. Resisting History examines the backlash against historicism, focusing on four major Jewish thinkers. David Myers situates these thinkers in proximity to leading Protestant thinkers of the time, but argues that German Jews and Christians shared a complex cultural and discursive world best understood in terms of exchange and adaptation rather than influence.After examining the growing dominance of the new historicist thinking in the nineteenth century, the book analyzes the critical responses of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Strauss, and Isaac Breuer. For this fascinating and diverse quartet of thinkers, historicism posed a stark challenge to the ongoing vitality of Judaism in the modern world. And yet, as they set out to dilute or eliminate its destructive tendencies, these thinkers often made recourse to the very tools and methods of historicism. In doing so, they demonstrated the utter inescapability of historicism in modern culture, whether approached from a Christian or Jewish perspective. (shrink)

Revisionists such as Quentin Skinner, J. G. A. Pocock, and John Dunn argue that in order to understand an historical text, one must recover the particularity of intended meaning. According to this view, in the sphere of political/ social reality, thought has no universal truth, no independence of its context, no significance for the present, and no meaning beyond the author's intentions. Although this is a variant of classic historicism, it goes far beyond the latter. A study of Gramsci's (...) historicism shows that only the first of the above claims is entailed by historicism or justifiable in its own terms. The revisionist program would prevent us from understanding our own political ideas as they are founded upon our philosophical traditions. (shrink)

In this volume, Ernst Troeltsch embraces historical relativity while rejecting historical relativism, and thereby provides a model for the philosophy of history. The volume remains as relevant as it was in 1923.

Philosophy of history before the nineteenth century was based on the classical theory of history. That theory, in justifying the purpose of historical studies, maintained that history was a storehouse of good and bad examples; was of particular use in educating statesmen, since it provided them with vicarious experience; and was a more compelling moral guide than the abstractions of philosophy. The unquestioned authority of Polybius and other ancient historians, as well as. of the definitions of (...) class='Hi'>history by Pseudo-Dionysius and Cicero , perpetuated the exemplar theory. The rise of professional, academic historical study rendered it irrelevant; Bolingbroke was its last notable exponent. (shrink)

There are various perspectives from which the meaning of historicism can be understood. Historically, the interpretation of historicism has predominantly been interested in either questions concerning historical methodology, or the relationship between the natural and human sciences, or the normative consequences of historicism. My intention is not to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of these different research approaches, but rather to supplement them by confronting the meaning of historicism from the perspective of a different question. Did (...) historicism in the late 18th and the early 19th centuries formulate a notion of historical chance or of historical contingency, a notion of what is neither necessary nor impossible in history but rather the result of accident and chance? To answer this question, I begin with Reinhart Koselleck's interpretation of historicism presented in two rather short essays, "Der Zufall als Motivationsrest in der Geschichtsschreibung" and "Über die Verfügbarkeit von Geschichte". In the next step of my analysis, I confront Koselleck's interpretation of the historicist sensibility for contingency and chance with Odo Marquard's conceptual distinction between two notions of contingency and chance. This line of argumentation gives rise to a definition of historicism as a theoretical sensibility for the "fatefully accidental" (Marquard). I further support this claim with an analysis of Savigny's legal history, of Schleiermacher's theology and of the "anti-Faustian" (Werner Busch) art of Caspar David Friedrich. Historicism ultimately teaches us that history is never the exact outcome of the intentions of historical actors. Though human beings undeniably act in history, they cannot make history or at least cannot make it as they please. It is in this regard that I find, in my concluding remarks, Hermann Lübbe's description of historicism as a "sermon of human finitude" to be wholly accurate. (shrink)

It has been frequently stated and repeated that even good Kant scholars are embarrassed when confronted by the task of determining the place of the philosophy of history within the framework of the critical enterprise and of the total philosophical system delineated by Kant. What in general is Kant’s relation to history? Does historical experience acquire a proper meaning within the general theory of scientific experience founded in the Critique of Pure Reason, one that is not based incidentally (...) on the question, “How is pure natural science possible?” Has Kant ever asked, “How is the science of history possible?”. (shrink)

The phrase 'beyond historicism' is usually associated with Bielefeld historians like Hans Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, who attempted to turn the study of history into a social science, but a better candidate would be the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who happened to teach as well in Bielefeld during the 1970's and 1980's. Luhmann had little affinity with the project of his colleagues from the history department. He took the opposite view that the social sciences suffered from a (...) naive enlightenment view and should become more history minded. Like the historicists of the early nineteenth century Luhmann was indirectly inspired by the philosophy of Leibniz. Although Luhmann's theory of social systems may seem miles away from the daily interests of most historians, it can be interpreted as an Aufhebung of historicism. This will be demonstrated for two important concepts, the autopoietic system which incorporates the historicist notion of individuality and the concept of second order observation which can be read as an abstract redescription of what historicists meant by the historical method. (shrink)

On its publication in 1957, _The Poverty of Historicism_ was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.' A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on (...) the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker. (shrink)

With the publication of Being and Time and Truth and Method philosophical hermeneutics seems to have become the official philosophy of history, with exclusive rights on the questions arising from the fact-of-having-a-past. From now on the epistemological approach of the German historical school, reaching a peak in Dilthey’s thought, is unanimously recognized as definitively overcome, aufheben, by the ontological interrogation of hermeneutics. But, with the same unanimity, it is also recognized that the reasons behind this overcoming and their validity (...) are not readily apparent. For, as it has been shown in the literature, Heidegger’s critique of Dilthey proves to be partial and lacunar, whereas Gadamer’s is straightforwardly ambiguous. Our paper assumes as its first task a re-evaluation of these critiques and of the hypotheses proposed in the literature with regard to what could be the problem with Dilthey’s epistemology. In this sense the paper argues that the problem resides in that the fundamental concepts on which it is based are bound to miss the peculiarity of history by idealizing it and masking the power relations inhabiting it. As a second task, our paper proposes an investigation of whether philosophical hermeneutics itself manages torise to the expectations through which Dilthey’s thought is evaluated. As it will become manifest, the answer to this question is in the negative. That is why, in the end, we will defend the necessity of a post-historicist and post-hermeneutic philosophy of history. (shrink)

This is the first full study in English of the German historicist tradition. Frederick C. Beiser surveys the major German thinkers on history from the middle of the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century, providing an introduction to each thinker and the main issues in interpreting and appraising his thought. The volume offers new interpretations of well-known philosophers such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Max Weber, and introduces others who are scarcely known at all, including J. A. Chladenius, (...) Justus Möser, Heinrich Rickert, and Emil Lask. Beyond an exploration of the historical and intellectual context of each thinker, Beiser illuminates the sources and reasons for the movement of German historicism—one of the great revolutions in modern Western thought, and the source of our historical understanding of the human world. (shrink)

Michael Warner, a literary critic with a keen sense of history, wrote in 1987 that “New Historicism is a label that historians don't like very much because they understand something different by historicism. But nobody's asking historians….” This essay is an answer to questions nobody asked me, questions about interdisciplinarity and the differences between literary critical and historical practices. A return to historically informed literary criticism, which many critics still consider a dominant trend in the profession, emerged (...) in the early 1980s following the publication of Stephen Greenblatt's acclaimed Renaissance Self-Fashioning . Reacting as it did against the decontextualized abstractions of New Criticism and Deconstruction, the movement soon labeled New Historicism sought to breathe new life into canonical texts by relating them to non-literary texts and social practices of their day. This historicist inclination should have formed the basis for a coming together of the movement's practitioners with historians interested in literary representations. But no such merger has occurred: New Historicists evince little interest in the systematic, archivally based study of history, and historians have at best shown indifference to the work of Greenblatt and his followers. (shrink)

The tension between individualism and universalism in historicism goes back to Leopold Ranke's version of the movement's early stage. Ranke's experience of the Revolution of 1830 helped to effect the first of the many resolutions which this tension would receive, but it helped also to endow this resolution with the one-sided individualistic distortion which has burdened the movement ever since. The initial emphasis on the individual as particularizing comes from Ranke's conservative reaction to revolution as a universalizing aspect of (...) history. But despite this overt emphasis, Ranke actually moved toward universal truths in his history, harmonizing them with his historical individualities. (shrink)

A critical account of the case for historicism from Popper to Foucault, this volume, originally published in 1989, shows the viability of an historicist account of knowledge by replying to traditional objections and the need for defenses of realism and reference at the heart of most alternatives to historicism. The book provides insights to those in philosophy as well as literary criticism, intellectual history, history of science, and cultural criticism.

A critical account of the case for historicism from Popper to Foucault, this volume, originally published in 1989, shows the viability of an historicist account of knowledge by replying to traditional objections and the need for defenses of realism and reference at the heart of most alternatives to historicism. The book provides insights to those in philosophy as well as literary criticism, intellectual history, history of science, and cultural criticism.

Throughout the twentieth century, scholars, artists and politicians have accused each other of "historicism." But what exactly did this mean? Judging by existing scholarship, the answers varied enormously. Like many other "isms," historicism could mean nearly everything, to the point of becoming meaningless. Yet the questions remain: What made generations of scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences worry about historicism? Why did even musicians and members of parliament warn against historicism? And what explains this remarkable (...) career of the term across generations, fields, regions, and languages? Focusing on the "travels" that historicism made, this volume uses historicism as a prism for exploring connections between disciplines and intellectual traditions usually studied in isolation from each other. It shows how generations of sociologists, theologians, and historians tried to avoid pitfalls associated with historicism and explains why the term was heavily charged with emotions like anxiety, anger, and worry. While offering fresh interpretations of classic authors such as Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Löwith, and Leo Strauss, this volume highlights how historicism took on new meanings, connotations, and emotional baggage in the course of its travels through time and place. (shrink)

Hidden in Historicism considers how the nineteenth-century philosophy of historicism depicts three "forgotten time regimes": a time of rise and fall, an ambiguous time of synchronicity of the non-synchronous, and a time in which decisive moments dominate. Before the eighteenth century, time was past-oriented. This inversed in the Enlightenment, when the future became dominating. Today, this time of progress continues to be embraced as a "time of the modern". Yet, inequality, increasing violence and climate change lead to doubts (...) over a bright future. In this book, Harry Jansen moves away from the heritage of Reinhart Koselleck and his single time of the modern towards a historicist, threefold temporal approach to history writing. In the time regime of the twenty-first century past, present and future coexist. It is a heterogeneous time that takeson the three forms of historicism. Jansen's study shows how all three times exist together in current historiography and contribute to a better understanding of the world today. Based on the idea that an incarnated time rules everything that happens it reality, the book offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing discussion about time and time regimes in contemporary philosophy and theory of history for students and scholars, both time specialists and the non-specialist. (shrink)

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Abstract: Pragmatism involves simultaneous commitments to modes of inquiry that are philosophical and historical. This article begins by demonstrating this point as it is evidenced in the historicist pragmatisms of William James and John Dewey. Having shown that pragmatism focuses philosophical attention on concrete historical processes, the article turns to a discussion of the specific historiographical commitments consistent with this focus. This focus here is on a pragmatist version of historical inquiry in terms of the central historiographical categories of the (...) object of historical inquiry and mode of historical periodization. After describing the basic historiographical consequences of pragmatism's historicism, the article moves to a discussion of the philosophical results of this historicism. The focus here is on the role that historical inquiry can play in the general philosophical perspective of pragmatism as well as on some recent texts that exemplify the dual pragmatist commitment to philosophy and history. (shrink)

According to German theorists historicism was the result of a dynamization of the static world-view of the Enlightenment. According to contemporary Anglo-Saxon theorists historicism resulted from a de-rhetoricization of Enlightenment historical writing. It is argued that, contrary to appearances, these two views do not exclude but support each other. This can be explained if the account of change implicit in Enlightenment historical writing is compared to that suggested by historicism and, more specifically, by the historicist notion of (...) the "historical idea." Aspects of the contemporary debate about the nature and the task of historical writing can be clarified from the perspective of the differences between Enlightenment and historicist historical writing. (shrink)

This brief survey of Professor Karl LOwith's analysis of the modem histori cal consciousness is the outgrowth of a year's study at the University of Heidelberg while Professor L6with was still an active member of the faculty. An early version, in the form of a dissertation, was submitted to the History Department of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. Numerous friends and colleagues have helped me at various stages of this work and I am indebted to them even though (...) I cannot name them all indi vidually. However special thanks must be accorded to Professor W. J. Bos senbrook of Wayne State University for introducing me to the entire prob lem of anti-historicism and to Professor LOwith's work. I am also greatly indebted to Professor John Barlow of Indiana University for his patient assistance with the translations, however the final responsibility for all renditions rests, of course, solely with the author. (shrink)

According to German theorists historicism was the result of a dynamization of the static world-view of the Enlightenment. According to contemporary Anglo-Saxon theorists historicism resulted from a de-rhetoricization of Enlightenment historical writing. It is argued that, contrary to appearances, these two views do not exclude but support each other. This can be explained if the account of change implicit in Enlightenment historical writing is compared to that suggested by historicism and, more specifically, by the historicist notion of (...) the "historical idea." Aspects of the contemporary debate about the nature and the task of historical writing can be clarified from the perspective of the differences between Enlightenment and historicist historical writing. (shrink)

This article treats the conflict between historicism and neo-Kantianism in the late nineteenth century by a careful examination of the writings of Wilhelm Windelband, the leader of the Southwestern neo-Kantians. Historicism was a profound challenge to the fundamental principles of Kant’s philosophy because it seemed to imply that there are no universal and necessary principles of science, ethics or aesthetics. Since all such principles are determined by their social and historical context, they differ with each culture and epoch. (...) Windelband attempted to respond to the challenge of this relativism by either broadening Kantian principles, so that they could accommodate the results of historicism, or by reformulating Kantian principles, so that they were impregnable to historical change. The article examines both aspects of Windelband’s strategy in some detail, noting the many changes and different formulations in his views. A final section considers some of the difficulties of Windelband’s strategy and concludes that, despite its heroic efforts, it was a failure.Keywords: Historicism; Normativity; Weltanschauung; Hegelianism; Relativism; Wilhelm Windelband; Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

The collapse of historicism was not merely the demise of an academic tradition but signified a shift in the understanding of hermeneutics and metaphysics. Whereas earlier books have explored the rise and dominance of historicism within academic history, this is the first to trace its collapse and to show how it was shaped by larger philosophical and scientific concerns. Charles R. Bambach's lucid account of the demise of historicism within the context of German metaphysics provides a (...) rich new perspective on the development of the young Heidegger's concept of "historicity" and on the origins of postmodern thought. Bambach reconstructs the methodological debates arising from a pervasive sense of crisis among German philosophers in the late nineteenth century. He details the divergent attempts by the Neo-Kantians, Nietzsche, and Dilthey to overcome the limitations of historical relativism. Heidegger's view of "historicity," Bambach shows, radically transforms the problematic of historicism into a discourse concerning the crisis of philosophical modernity. (shrink)

Many writers who have discussed the Singularity have treated it not only as the inevitable outcome of advancements in cybernetic technology, but also as natural consequence of broader patterns in the development of human knowledge, or of human history itself. In this paper I examine these claims in light of Karl Popper’s famous philosophical critique of historicism. I argue that, because the Singularity is regarded as both a product of human ingenuity and a reflection of the permanent limitations (...) of our rational capacities, speculation about its likelihood occupies an interesting border zone between what Popper referred to as “technological prediction” and what he lambasted as “prophecy.” I go on to examine representations of a post-singularity world in the novels of Iain M. Banks, as well as in Bruce Sterling’s short story “The Beautiful and the Sublime.” These narratives demonstrate how trying to imagine what human life might be like in the presence of intellectually superior AIs requires a more aggressively skeptical attitude toward the human capacity to understand our own history than even Popper was prepared to allow for. (shrink)

A seemingly unitary appeal to history might evoke today two incompatible operations of historicization that yield contradictory results. This article attempts to understand two co-existing senses of historicity as conflicting ideas of historical change and rival practices of temporal comparison: historicism and constructionism. At their respective births, both claimed to make sense of the world and ourselves as changing over time. Historicism, dominating nineteenth-century Western thought and overseeing the professionalization of historical studies, advocated an understanding of the (...) present condition of the human world as developing out of past conditions. Constructionism, dominating the second half of the twentieth century, understood the present condition as the recent invention of certain ‘historical’ environments, without prior existence. As competing ideas of historical change, they both entail a comparison between past and present conditions of their investigated subjects, but their practices of temporal comparison are irreconcilable and represent two distinct ways of historicization. (shrink)

Did people in early modern Europe have a concept of an inner self? Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor have brought together an outstanding group of literary, cultural, and history scholars to answer this intriguing question. Through a synthesis of historicism and psychoanalytic criticism, the contributors explore the complicated, nuanced, and often surprising union of history and subjectivity in Europe centuries before psychoanalytic theory. Addressing such topics as "fetishes and Renaissances," "the cartographic unconscious," and "the topographic imaginary," these (...) essays move beyond the strict boundaries of historicism and psychoanalysis to carve out new histories of interiority in early modern Europe. Contributors: Ann Rosalind Jones, Peter Stallybrass, James R. Siemon, John Guillory, Eric Wilson, Karen Newman, Tom Conley, Jeffrey Masten, Carla Mazzio, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Jonathan Goldberg, Douglas Trevor, Kathryn Schwarz, David Hillman, Marjorie Garber. (shrink)