Editing Historicism (section)

===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.