HISTORICISM: HISTORY, CHARACTERISTICS AND REPRESENTATIVES - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

The historicism is a school of thought that is based on the study of history to understand all human affairs, without exception. This doctrine maintains that it is impossible to have a perspective that does not take into account the facts and events that occurred, and that the reality in which the human being lives is only the product of the history that precedes it.

For historicism, being is nothing more than a temporary and mutable process, which is why reason and the intellect cannot really understand it. Therefore, it is based on history to explain reality, with philosophy that delves into this historical development in order to explain and systematize knowledge.

Leopold von Ranke, representative of historicism

For historicists, the truth of things is not innate or independent of the subject who observes them, but rather is the result of the relative values, culture and beliefs of each age.

In this way, historicism proposes an understanding of man through a study of his place in history and for history, and of human existence with all its structures, ideologies and entities.

History

Historicism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Germany as the response of a certain group of thinkers to scientific institutions and the positivist ideal, which were so popular at the time.

The first book considered historicist is History of the Roman and Germanic Peoples (1494-1514) published in 1824 and written by Leopold Von Rake, who studies and examines these historical facts with a method that is explained in the appendix. This method would later be transmuted to the historicist method of analysis.

These figures that start the historicist movement were based on the fact that history should not be seen as different actions carried out during isolated events, but rather as a whole, a totality that should be studied as such.

The development of historicism took place in all the years that elapsed from its first conception until the beginning of World War II. The pioneer in this field was Wilhelm Dilthey, who dared for the first time to differentiate the natural sciences from the spiritual sciences.

Historicism begins to gain strength in the hands of various thinkers, such as Karl Popper, Georg Friedrich Puchta and Benedetto Croce. They are convinced to apply the method of analysis of this current not only to the understanding of being, but also to political theory, law and, of course, philosophy.

Historicism holds that philosophy should be part of it and not vice versa, and that philosophers then have to focus on carrying out in-depth philosophical explorations and investigations that are useful for the knowledge and understanding of the human being and his life in the world.

Characteristics of historicism

Due to the fact that each thinker creates his own rules and limits, all historicism changes according to the author being studied.

However, certain peculiarities are present in almost all approaches to historicism, and these characteristics are the following:

- It is based on establishing a theory of history.

- The appropriate and fairer procedure to study the problems concerning the human being and his existence is historical research.

- Differentiates the natural sciences from the spiritual sciences and proposes to put aside the search for natural laws in the field of human sciences.

- All historical episodes are connected, and it is through these that knowledge is reached. The story is one and affects the present and the human past.

- It is inherently contextual.

- It maintains that each individual is affected by the time in which they live and the history that precedes it.

- Historical research results in the creation of general laws through induction.

- He conceives of being as the product of a historical evolution.

- It considers that every scientific, artistic, political and even religious fact is part of the history of a specific time of the existence of the human being

Main representatives

The large number of historicists there have been throughout time is evidence of how much of a boom this school once had.

Despite being highly criticized by other trends, historicism remained strong for more than a century, before being criticized by new generations of more contemporary philosophers.

Historicism is supported by great German and Italian names, among which are the following:

Wilhelm Dilthey

German thinker who sought to understand life from a more mundane and less metaphysical perspective of the world. He was a great psychologist and historian of the spiritual sciences, and he dedicated himself to establishing differences between these sciences and the natural ones.

He created the historicist method, with which he tried to eliminate the use of the scientific method when it came to sciences of the spirit.

He opposed the idea that truth was the product or manifestation of the absolute or a higher being, since he firmly held the idea that all interpretation is relative and is intrinsically linked to the history of the interpreter.

Leopold von Ranke

German historian who published the first historicist history book. It is considered by some as the one that started this current of thought and the historical method, which would be established as the necessary one to acquire all human knowledge.

For Ranke, the historian must remain silent and let history speak, always turning to the most original documents that recount the events to be studied.

Benedetto Croce

Italian philosopher, politician and historian. While historicism took shape in Germany, Croce approaches the same ideas from the Italian territory. For Croce, history is not a matter of the past but of the present, since it is so alive when it occurs and when it is remembered.

He held that history is the best medium through which true knowledge can be achieved. Similarly, with the help of historiography, man can come to understand his most unfathomable spiritual processes and the reason behind them.

References

1. Nielse, Kai (2004) Historicism. Robert AUDI, Dictionary of Philosophy. Akal, Madrid
2. Popper, Karl. The misery of historicism. Alliance, Madrid, 2002
3. Croce, Benedetto (1938) History as thought and action
4. Bevir, Mark (2017) Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain. Cambridge University Press
5. Bambach, Charles R. (1993) Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism. Cornell University Press, Ithaca