Editing Historicism (section)

==Variants==
===Hegelian===
[[File:G.W.F. Hegel (by Sichling, after Sebbers).jpg|right|thumb|G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)]]

Hegel viewed the realization of human freedom as the ultimate purpose of history, which could be achieved only through the creation of the perfect state. Historical progress toward this state would occur through a dialectical process: the tension between the purpose of humankind (freedom) and humankind's current condition would produce the attempt by humankind to change its condition to one more in accord with its nature. However, because humans are often not aware of the goal of humanity and history, the process of achieving freedom is necessarily one of self-discovery.

Hegel saw progress toward freedom as conducted by the "spirit" ([[Geist]]), a seemingly supernatural force that directs all human actions and interactions. Yet Hegel makes clear that the spirit is a mere abstraction that comes into existence "through the activity of finite agents". Thus, Hegel's determining forces of history may not have a metaphysical nature, though many of his opponents and interpreters have understood him as holding metaphysical and determinist views.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Cambridge Companion to Hegel|url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00beis_847|url-access=limited|last=Beiser|first=Frederick C.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1993|location=Cambridge|pages=[https://archive.org/details/cambridgecompani00beis_847/page/n298 289]–91}}</ref>

Hegel's historicism also suggests that any human [[society]] and all human activities such as [[science]], [[art]], or [[philosophy]], are defined by their history. Consequently, their essence can be sought only by understanding said history. The history of any such human endeavor, moreover, not only continues but also reacts against what has gone before; this is the source of Hegel's famous dialectic teaching usually summarized by the slogan "[[Thesis, antithesis, synthesis|thesis, antithesis, and synthesis]]".  (Hegel did not use these terms, although [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte|Johann Fichte]] did.) Hegel's famous [[aphorism]], "Philosophy is the history of philosophy", describes it bluntly.

Hegel's position is perhaps best illuminated when contrasted against the atomistic and reductionist opinion of human societies and social activities self-defining on an ''ad hoc'' basis through the sum of dozens of interactions. Yet another contrasting model is the persistent metaphor of a [[social contract]].  Hegel considers the relationship between individuals and societies as organic, not atomic: even their social discourse is mediated by [[philosophy of language|language]], and language is based on [[etymology]] and unique character. It thus preserves the culture of the past in thousands of half-forgotten [[metaphor]]s.  To understand why a person is the way he is, you must examine that person in his society: and to understand that society, you must understand its history, and the forces that influenced it.  The ''[[Zeitgeist]]'', the "Spirit of the Age", is the concrete embodiment of the most important factors that are acting in human history at any given time. This contrasts with teleological theories of activity, which suppose that the end is the determining factor of activity, as well as those who believe in a [[tabula rasa]], or blank slate, opinion, such that individuals are defined by their interactions.

These ideas can be interpreted variously.  The [[Right Hegelians]], working from Hegel's opinions about the organicism and historically determined nature of human societies, interpreted Hegel's historicism as a justification of the unique destiny of national groups and the importance of stability and institutions.  Hegel's conception of human societies as entities greater than the individuals who constitute them influenced nineteenth-century [[romantic nationalism]] and its twentieth-century excesses.  The [[Young Hegelians]], by contrast, interpreted Hegel's thoughts on societies influenced by social conflict for a doctrine of [[social progress]], and attempted to manipulate these forces to cause various results.  Karl Marx's doctrine of "historical inevitabilities" and [[historical materialism]] is one of the more influential reactions to this part of Hegel's thought.  Significantly, Karl Marx's [[Marx's theory of alienation|theory of alienation]] argues that [[capitalism]] disrupts traditional relationships between workers and their work.

Hegelian historicism is related to his ideas on the means by which human societies progress, specifically the [[Hegelian dialectic|dialectic]] and his conception of logic as representing the inner essential nature of reality. Hegel attributes the change to the "modern" need to interact with the world, whereas ancient philosophers were self-contained, and medieval philosophers were monks. In his History of Philosophy Hegel writes:

<blockquote>
In modern times things are very different; now we no longer see philosophic individuals who constitute a class by themselves. With the present day all difference has disappeared; philosophers are not monks, for we find them generally in connection with the world, participating with others in some common work or calling. They live, not independently, but in the relation of citizens, or they occupy public offices and take part in the life of the state. Certainly they may be private persons, but if so, their position as such does not in any way isolate them from their other relationship. They are involved in present conditions, in the world and its work and progress. Thus their philosophy is only by the way, a sort of luxury and superfluity. This difference is really to be found in the manner in which outward conditions have taken shape after the building up of the inward world of religion. In modern times, namely, on account of the reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself, the external world is at rest, is brought into order — worldly relationships, conditions, modes of life, have become constituted and organized in a manner which is conformable to nature and rational. We see a universal, comprehensible connection, and with that individuality likewise attains another character and nature, for it is no longer the plastic individuality of the ancients. This connection is of such power that every individuality is under its dominion, and yet at the same time can construct for itself an inward world.<ref name=LecturesOnTheHistoryOfPhilosophyVolume3>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ik05WhN4ga0C&pg=PA167 "Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume 3"], By Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Translated by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, M. A., ''University of Nebraska Press'', 1995</ref>
</blockquote>

This opinion that entanglement in society creates an indissoluble bond with expression, would become an influential question in philosophy, namely, the requirements for individuality.  It would be considered by [[Nietzsche]], [[John Dewey]] and [[Michel Foucault]] directly, as well as in the work of numerous artists and authors. There have been various responses to Hegel's challenge. The Romantic period emphasized the ability of individual genius to transcend time and place, and use the materials from their heritage to fashion works which were beyond determination. The modern would advance versions of John Locke's infinite malleability of the human animal. Post-structuralism would argue that since history is not present, but only the image of history, that while an individual era or power structure might emphasize a particular history, that the contradictions within the story would hinder the very purposes that the history was constructed to advance.

===Anthropological<!--'Anthropological historicism' - maybe this deserves its own article since it is distinct from the philosophical notion of historicism?-->===
In the context of [[anthropology]] and other sciences which study the past, historicism has a different meaning. [[Historical particularism|Historical Particularism]] is associated with the work of [[Franz Boas]].<ref name=":0" /> His theory used the [[Diffusion (anthropology)|diffusionist]] concept that there were a few "cradles of civilization" which grew outwards, and merged it with the idea that societies would adapt to their circumstances. The school of historicism grew in response to [[Classical social evolutionism|unilinear theories]] that social development represented adaptive fitness, and therefore existed on a continuum. While these theories were espoused by [[Charles Darwin]] and many of his students, their application as applied in [[social Darwinism]] and general evolution characterized in the theories of [[Herbert Spencer]] and [[Leslie White]], historicism was neither anti-selection, nor anti-evolution, as Darwin never attempted nor offered an explanation for cultural evolution. However, it attacked the notion that there was one normative spectrum of development, instead emphasizing how local conditions would create adaptations to the local environment. [[Julian Steward]] refuted the viability of globally and universally applicable adaptive standards proposing that culture was honed adaptively in response to the idiosyncrasies of the local environment, the [[cultural ecology]], by specific evolution. What was adaptive for one region might not be so for another. This conclusion has likewise been adopted by modern forms of biological evolutionary theory.

The primary method of historicism was empirical, namely that there were so many requisite inputs into a society or event, that only by emphasizing the data available could a theory of the source be determined. In this opinion, grand theories are unprovable, and instead intensive field work would determine the most likely explanation and history of a culture, and hence it is named "historicism".

This opinion would produce a wide range of definition of what, exactly, constituted culture and history, but in each case the only means of explaining it was in terms of the historical particulars of the culture itself.

===New Historicism===
{{main|New Historicism}}

Since the 1950s, when [[Jacques Lacan]] and [[Michel Foucault]] argued that each epoch has its own knowledge system, within which individuals are inexorably entangled, many [[post-structuralist]]s have used ''historicism'' to describe the opinion that all questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised. Answers cannot be found by appeal to an external truth, but only within the confines of the norms and forms that phrase the question. This version of historicism holds that there are only the raw texts, markings and artifacts that exist in the present, and the conventions used to decode them. This school of thought is sometimes given the name of ''New Historicism''. The same term, ''new historicism'' is also used for a school of literary scholarship which interprets a [[poem]], [[drama]], etc. as an expression of or reaction to the power-structures of its society. [[Stephen Greenblatt]] is an example of this school.

===Modern Historicism===
Within the context of 20th-century philosophy, debates continue as to whether ahistorical and immanent methods were sufficient to understand the meaning (that is to say, "what you see is what you get" positivism) or whether context, background and culture are important beyond the mere need to decode words, phrases and references. While post-structural historicism is relativist in its orientation—that is, it sees each culture as its own frame of reference—a large number of thinkers have embraced the need for historical context, not because culture is self-referential, but because there is no more compressed means of conveying all of the relevant information except through history. This opinion is often seen as deriving from the work of [[Benedetto Croce]]. Recent historians using this tradition include [[Thomas Kuhn]].

[[Talcott Parsons]] criticized historicism as a case of idealistic fallacy in ''[[The Structure of Social Action]]'' (1937). [[Post-structuralism]] uses the term ''[[new historicism]]'', which has some associations with both anthropology and Hegelianism.

===Christian Historicism===

====Eschatological====
{{main|Historicism (Christian eschatology)}}
{{further|Historicist interpretations of the Book of Revelation}}
In [[Christianity]], the term ''historicism'' refers to the confessional [[Protestantism|Protestant]] form of prophetical interpretation which holds that the fulfillment of [[Bible|biblical]] [[prophecy]] has occurred throughout history and continues to occur; as opposed to other methods which limit the time-frame of prophecy-fulfillment to the past or to the future.

====Dogmatic and ecclesiastic====
There is also a particular opinion in [[ecclesiastical history]] and in the [[History of Catholic dogmatic theology|history of dogmas]] which has been described as historicist by Pope [[Pius XII]] in the encyclical ''[[Humani generis]]''. "They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries." "There is also a certain historicism, which attributing value only to the events of man's life, overthrows the foundation of all truth and absolute law, both on the level of philosophical speculations and especially to Christian dogmas."<ref name=":0">{{cite web|author=Pius XII |url=https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html |title=Humani generis, 15 |publisher=[[Vatican.va]] |access-date=2012-05-21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120419021937/https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html |archive-date=2012-04-19 }}</ref>