historicism and hegel and marx and oxford english dictionary

Sometimes, after reading a lot and thinking about the way that important terms are used so imprecisely in writing and scholarship, I simply want to carve through all the confusion and come up with a definition of one term, one term alone, that I can hold onto and caress and to which I can say, "Though the entire world is on shaky foundations, though all knowledge seemingly is as insubstantial as a wisp of wind, I at least have you, this one word. Then at least I will know one piece of knowledge that I can rest upon, that I can look at and say, 'yes, I truly know you.'" Let's see if I can do that with the wispy word "historicism" today.

Dictionary Confusion

I confess that I have wanted to understand this word ever since I picked up Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism while a college student, read it, and didn't understand a word of what it said. Then, as I was reading White's charming biography of OW Holmes, he also used the word in his fuzzy first chapter in a way that made me want to see if I could isolate a determinate meaning for it. So, I went to the OED, the beginning place of many journeys in life for me. It is there that I encountered the problem.

Instead of beginning with the definition (and the OED lists 4, but one has a special meaning in architecture I will ignore here), I will give a few quotations regarding how the term has been used in English. Its first appearance in English was in Lord Acton's works only as recently as 1895. He called it a "depressing" word and seemed to equate it with "historical-mindedness," but gave no further explanation. As 20th century usage unfolded, historicism has seemed to be used in three ways.

1. It could describe the events of a past epoch as seen only from the perspective of that period. From 1938: "Historicism ...acknowledges truth only as valid in a special epoch." A better quotation to illustrate this first sense of historicism comes from 1949: "We must..enter into the mind and attitudes of past period and accept their standards, deliberately excluding the intrustions of our own preconceptions. This view, called historicism, was elaborated consistently in Germany during the nineteenth century." Of course, you can endlessly debate to what extent it is possible to enter into another period at all; the viscous present seems to stick to us and with us as we try to lose ourselves in the past. Nevertheless, for the sake of definition, let's state this as the first definition--to accept the past on its own terms.

2. Perhaps derived from 1 is the sense that historicism is to be equated with historical relativism. From 1946: "Marxism..brings us up against the question of historical relativism, or historicism." I also recall reading, as early as my freshman year in college, the now largely forgotten German philosopher-theologian Ernst Troeltsch-- who seemed to explore the notion of historicism, as I recall, from the angle of historical relativism. I read his book The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religion and, again, didn't really know what he was getting at, but I think I now understand the problem. Christianity is supposed to be true, absolutely so, unqualifiedly so. Its truth transcends time. But, on the other hand, the study of the history of religions (Religionswissenschaft) shows that each religion can be almost fully explained as a product of historical circumstances and forces. How are the two to be reconciled? This was the problem of historicism as I understood it in 1970.*

[*1970, my freshman year, was an interesting year in the history of Brown University. The University was experimenting with a series of "modes of thought" courses which were interdisciplinary and were intended to explore big "ideas." These courses came out of the "Magaziner Report," actually the senior thesis of an ambitious undergraduate, Ira Magaziner '69, whose name actually rose to national attention in the first Clinton administration during the abortive effort at health care reform. The concept behind "modes of thought" courses has been almost universally accepted now in most quality higher education, and first-year students are often given choices on a variety of interdisciplinary seminars to take during their first year. In Fall 1970 I took a course, taught by Michael Lukens of the religious studies department, called "The Idea of Reform." I remember his characterization of Troeltsch as dying "a broken man" because he couldn't solve the problem I mention briefly above. I also remember Troeltsch for another reason, and this a particularly dumb one. I was utterly amazed at his name--that a nine-letter word could be only one syllable. I think that one of my secret quests in life since then has been to see if I can find any other nine-letter words that can be said in one syllable. Your suggestions?]

3. Then, from 1972 is the following quotation: "I was surprised, however, to find an eminent scientist embracing historicism (the theory championed by Hegel and Marx holding that history is determined by immutable forces rather than by human agency)..." Again, from 1939: "Against the scientific empiricism of the French and English, the Germans put forward the metaphysical historicism of Herder and of Hegel." And, to conclude, from CS Lewis, the darling of so many people today: "On this view the differentia of Christian historiography ought to be what I call Historicism; the belief that by studying the past we can learn not only historical but meta-historical or transcendental truth." [Oops, there is that word transcendental, which I will have to deal with later]. Here the words suggests the notion of history being determined by immutable forces or laws that are not controlled by human activity.

I think I could probably tease out more definitions, but let's see if we can bring any order to this in the next essay.

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