Editing Historicism (section)

==Critics==

===Marxism===
[[Western Marxism|Western Marxists]] such as [[Karl Korsch]], [[Antonio Gramsci]] and the early [[Georg Lukacs]] emphasise the roots of Marx's thought in Hegel. They interpret Marxism as a historically relativist philosophy, which views ideas (including Marxist theory) as products of the historical epochs that create them.<ref name="McLellan1">{{cite encyclopedia |last=McLellan |first=David| author-link=David McLellan (political scientist) |editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G. | editor3-link=V. G. Kiernan | editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Historicism | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=239}}</ref> In this view, Marxism is not an objective social science, but rather a theoretical expression of the [[class consciousness]] of the [[proletariat|working class]] within a historical process. This understanding of Marxism is strongly criticised by the [[structural Marxist]] [[Louis Althusser]],<ref name="McLellan1" /><ref name="Althusser">{{cite book |last1=Althusser |first1=Louis |last2=Balibar |first2=Etienne |date=1970 |title=Lire le Capital |trans-title=Reading Capital |language=fr |publisher=New Left Books |isbn=0-902308-56-4 | pages=119–45}}</ref> who affirms that Marxism is an objective science, autonomous from interests of society and class. Marxism is, therefore, often associated with deterministic claims of future historical development, but these are not structural parts of Marxism as a style of critique which requires distinction between various critical registers, which at once develops an understanding of broad historical-geographical tensions without prophesying a specific outcome.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wacquant |first=Loic J. D. |date=1985 |title=Heuristic Models in Marxian Theory |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2578970 |journal=Social Forces |volume=64 |issue=1 |pages=17–45 |doi=10.2307/2578970 |jstor=2578970 |issn=0037-7732}}</ref>

===Karl Popper===

[[Karl Popper]] used the term ''historicism'' in his influential books ''[[The Poverty of Historicism]]'' and ''[[The Open Society and Its Enemies]]'', to mean: "an approach to the social sciences which assumes that ''historical prediction'' is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history".<ref name = "Poverty 3">Popper, Karl, p. 3 of ''The Poverty of Historicism'', italics in original</ref> Popper condemned historicism along with the [[determinism]] and [[holism]] which he argued formed its basis, claiming that historicism had the potential to inform dogmatic, ideological beliefs not predicated upon facts that were [[Falsifiability|falsifiable]]. In ''The Poverty of Historicism'', he identified historicism with the opinion that there are "inexorable laws of historical destiny", an opinion he warned against. If this seems to contrast with what proponents of historicism argue for, in terms of contextually relative interpretation, this happens, according to Popper, only because such proponents are unaware of the type of causality they ascribe to history. Popper wrote with reference to [[Hegel]]'s theory of [[history]], which he criticized extensively.

In ''The Open Society and Its Enemies'', Popper attacks "historicism" and its proponents, among whom  he identifies and singles out Hegel, [[Plato]] and [[Marx]]—calling them all "enemies of the open society".  The objection he makes is that historicist positions, by claiming that there is an inevitable and deterministic pattern to history, evade the responsibility of the individual to make free contributions to the evolution of society, hence leading to [[totalitarianism]]. Throughout this work, he defines his conception of historicism as: "The central historicist doctrine—the doctrine that history is controlled by specific historical or evolutionary laws whose discovery would enable us to prophesy the destiny of man."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Popper |first=Karl |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15r5748.10 |title=The Open Society and its Enemies |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=2020 |volume=119 |pages=161–89 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv15r5748.10 |s2cid=243169961 |url-access=registration}}</ref> As mentioned above, such characterizations of Marx in particular are not entirely accurate to Marx in his own right, and have drawn criticism from philosophers such as [[Imre Lakatos|Lakatos]] for mischaracterizing the defense of induction in [[historical materialism]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Burawoy |first=Michael |date=1990 |title=Marxism As Science: Historical Challenges and Theoretical Growth |journal=American Sociological Review |volume=55 |pages=775–93}}</ref> Other philosophers such as [[Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)|Walter Kaufmann]] have also been critical of Popper, calling his reading of Hegel a “myth,”  “known largely through secondary sources…”<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Hegel Myth and Its Method by Walter Kaufmann |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/kaufmann.htm |access-date=2024-10-30 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Another of his targets is what he terms "moral historicism", the attempt to infer moral values from the course of history; in Hegel's words, that "history is the world's court of justice". Popper says that he does not believe "that success proves anything or that history is our judge".<ref>''The Open Society and its Enemies'', vol. 2 p. 29.</ref> Futurism must be distinguished from prophecies that the right will prevail: these attempt to infer history from ethics, rather than ethics from history, and are therefore historicism in the normal sense rather than moral historicism.

He also attacks what he calls "[[Historism]]", which he regards as distinct from historicism.  By historism, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits.

===Leo Strauss===
[[Leo Strauss]] used the term ''historicism'' and reportedly termed it the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom insofar as it denies any attempt to address injustice-pure-and-simple (such is the significance of historicism's rejection of "natural right" or "right by nature").  Strauss argued that historicism "rejects political philosophy" (insofar as this stands or falls by questions of permanent, trans-historical significance) and is based on the belief that "all human thought, including scientific thought, rests on premises which cannot be validated by human reason and which came from historical epoch to historical epoch." Strauss further identified [[R. G. Collingwood]] as the most coherent advocate of historicism in the English language.  Countering Collingwood's arguments, Strauss warned against historicist social scientists' failure to address real-life problems—most notably that of tyranny—to the extent that they relativize (or "subjectivize") all ethical problems by placing their significance strictly in function of particular or ever-changing socio-material conditions devoid of inherent or "objective" "value". Similarly, Strauss criticized [[Eric Voegelin]]'s abandonment of ancient political thought as guide or vehicle in interpreting modern political problems.

In his books, ''Natural Right and History'' and ''On Tyranny'', Strauss offers a complete critique of historicism as it emerges in the works of Hegel, Marx, and [[Heidegger]]. Many believe that Strauss also found historicism in [[Edmund Burke]], [[Tocqueville]], [[Augustine]], and [[John Stuart Mill]]. Although it is largely disputed whether Strauss himself was a historicist, he often indicated that historicism grew out of and against Christianity and was a threat to civic participation, belief in human agency, religious pluralism, and, most controversially, an accurate understanding of the classical philosophers and religious prophets themselves. Throughout his work, he warns that historicism, and the understanding of [[Progress (history)|progress]] that results from it, expose us to [[tyranny]], totalitarianism, and [[Ochlocracy|democratic extremism]]. In a collection of his works by Kenneth Hart entitled ''Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity'', he argues that [[Islam]], traditional [[Judaism]], and ancient Greece, share a concern for sacred law that makes them especially susceptible to historicism, and therefore to tyranny.