Tradition
Historism
Overview
Historism (German: Historismus) is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanistic or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought (cf. comparative historical linguistics etc.). 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 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Socrates and Plato had no more pleasure in the life of the State in Athens, which was in the course of its decline; Plato tried to bring about something better with Dionysius. Thus in Athens, with the ruin of the Athenian people, the period was reached when Philosophy appeared. In Rome, Philosophy first expanded in the decline of the Republic and of Roman life proper, under the despotism of the Roman Emperors: a…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
The author is tied to Historism in the knowledge graph.
What is called the 'pragmatic' writing of history has in modern times frequently sinned in its treatment of great historical characters, and defaced and tarnished the true conception of them by this fallacious separation of the outward from the inward. Not content with telling the unvarnished tale of the great acts which have been wrought by the heroes of the world's history, and with acknowledging that their inward…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Historism is; the author is tied to Historism in the knowledge graph.
Up to the present time all history has been written from the standpoint of success, and, indeed, with the assumption of a certain reason in this success. This remark applies also to Greek history: so far we do not possess any. It is the same all round, however: where are the historians who can survey things and events without being humbugged by stupid theories?
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, We Philologists
The author is tied to Historism in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Historism
Related ideas
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- History
- Stanford University Press
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Historiography
- Historian
- Philosophy
- Verstehen
- Karl Popper
- Friedrich Carl von Savigny
- Logical positivism
- Sociology
- Law
- Moscow
- Marxism
- Religion
- Social science
- Quantitative research
- Progress Publishers
- R. G. Collingwood
- Wilhelm Dilthey
- José Ortega y Gasset
- Human
- Hermeneutics
Place in the tradition
Part of Conservatism.