Editing Historicism (section)

== History of the term ==
The term ''historicism'' (''Historismus'') was coined by German philosopher [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel]].<ref>Brian Leiter, Michael Rosen (eds.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 175: "[The word 'historicism'] appears as early as the late eighteenth century in the writings of the German romantics, who used it in a neutral sense. In 1797 Friedrich Schlegel used 'historicism' to refer to a philosophy that stresses the importance of history..."; [[Katherine Harloe]], Neville Morley (eds.), ''Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present'', Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 81: "Already in Friedrich Schlegel's ''Fragments about Poetry and Literature'' (a collection of notes attributed to 1797), the word ''Historismus'' occurs five times."</ref> Over time, what historicism is and how it is practiced have developed different and divergent meanings.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Reynolds|first=Andrew|date=1999-10-01|title=What is historicism?|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/02698599908573626|journal=International Studies in the Philosophy of Science|volume=13|issue=3|pages=275–287|doi=10.1080/02698599908573626|issn=0269-8595}}</ref> Elements of historicism appear in the writings of French essayist [[Michel de Montaigne]] (1533–1592) and Italian philosopher [[G. B. Vico]] (1668–1744), and became more fully developed with the [[dialectic]] of [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] (1770–1831), influential in 19th-century Europe. The writings of [[Karl Marx]], influenced by Hegel, also occasionally include historicism. The term is also associated with the empirical social sciences and with the work of [[Franz Boas]]. Historicism tends to be [[hermeneutics|hermeneutic]] because it values cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of information; or [[relativism|relativist]], because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations.<ref>Kahan, Jeffrey. "Historicism." ''Renaissance Quarterly'', vol. 50, no. 4 December 22, 1997, p. 1202</ref>