Historicism

The English term historicism came into use at the beginning of the twentieth century as a translation, on one hand, of the German term Historismus (as used by Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Troeltsch, Friedrich Meinecke, and others), and of the Italian term storicismo (Benedetto Croce), on the other. The term historism is also frequently used in English, and in German the term Historizismus is sometimes found. In both languages, the meaning of the term is often identical, sometimes different, and quite frequently completely opposing. In other words, here one can find an ambiguity and confusion of concepts remarkable even in the cultural sciences.

Originally, the German term Historismus denoted the view that ideal (geistige), cultural, and social realities cannot be described and explained by means of general theories and therefore cannot be assessed by universal norms either. From their historical nature derives the necessity, it was argued, to understand and judge them in their particularity and individuality. Therein the specific privilege and the essential dignity of these realities can be seen (as in Leopold von Ranke's famous aphorism according to which each epoch was “immediate to god” [unmittelbar zu Gott]). If in contrast to this it is referred to the “problems of historicism,” as especially in Ernst Troeltsch, the central point is that historicism does imply or must lead to relativism, cognitive or explanatory as well as ethical.

Obviously, negatively connoted is the English term historicism in the sense in which Karl Raimund Popper brought it into the discussion. Popper uses it to describe a position that is diametrically opposed to historicism in the sense of a historical relativism. He means the view—represented by Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, and then by Karl Marx and the Marxist theorists of history—that the process of history is throughout determined by general laws and that any science of history must therefore rely on these laws in its explanations and predictions. Popper's criticism of this view (in Miller 1985:298) is that the evolution of human society is a “unique historical process,” and that it is logically impossible to account for unique processes by going back to universal laws. There may be observable and even explainable “trends,” but trends, according to Popper, are no laws.

More recently, in certain circles a use of the term historicism has become common and dominant that comes close to the meaning of historicism (as relativism) but that is meant in a thoroughly programmatic and affirmative way by its protagonists. Initially, this view arose in literary studies, namely in the United States, before it gained a more widespread influence in the cultural and social sciences, where it provoked vehement controversies. Its credo is closely related to that of postmodernism, and it essentially consists in a radical rejection of an “objective” historical knowledge. This is explained by the peculiarity of historical facts as well as by the historicity of the historical cognition itself.

As far as the new historicism aims at the historical constructedness of ideas and beliefs in general, and the relationship between structures of domination and modes of cultural production in particular, there exists an obvious affinity to what is called ideological analysis in historical cultural sociology, which on its part has been influenced and/or challenged particularly by Marxist thinking. The theoretical and methodological problems posed by the historicity (or historical “reflexivity”) and the critical intention of such analyses have led to very fundamental and almost endless discussions in sociology. New historicism seems to have been rather insensitive or uninterested with regard to these problems. This may account for the fact, that, at least in the social sciences, it has not established itself as a really new and durable “paradigm.”

...