By: Muhammad Azzam Rakan Noor

History is an innate aspect of human evolution, always approximating it as a social being. Besides its purpose to understand the past better, it also functions as an approach to the upcoming event, as a “guideline” for foreseeing or even constructing the upcoming civilization. But of course, no such thing as “guideline” is reliable enough for visioning a civilization (nation, state, ideology etc.) because in the process of approaching the past, the interpretations often come from different philosophies and the subjectivity of historians themselves. Often, their approaches contradict one another, which creates many ambiguities, confusion, misdirection or even misconception. To give an example, Hegel views that human position in history (combined with philosophical approach) have been determined by the spirit of human themselves, or know as Geist, which somehow sounded stiff, creating speculations, and not flexible to be intercorrelated with various corpus, and most definitely, will only produce or result just one simple conclusion. It is strongly being clashed by Marx with his writings, that it is not the individual consciousness that drives history, but rather the material conditions and economic activities in which people are engaged. With much discordance with eachothers’ interdisciplinary approach, historians began to evaluate their task. Within a century, Humboldt came with revolutionary ‘historicism’ foundated on an old statement, that historian’s task is to present what actually happened, excluding human judgement and excluding the profound intervention of philosophy. Therefore, could we say that historicism is a “modernized” way to comprehensive history?

The early existence of historicism was quite rough due to its consideration as a radical approach as it invalidates the values of common Western historical approach, which is inseparable with philosophy (religious philosophy, mostly). Many newly-implied historicism-historicists, such as Ernst Troeltsch and Leopold Ranke, some of the influential historians during the 19th century, criticised that philosophy sought to reduce reality to a system which sacrificed the unique qualities of the historical world, especially due to the fact that it combines the total otherness of God with pessimistic regard of human nature and the course of history. Historicism has taken a realization that history should not be deeply correlated or assimilated with philosophy. David Carr, American phenomenology, mentioned in his book, Experience and History (2014), that it is crucial to differentiate history and philosophy to prevent the confuseness of a term philosophy of history per se. One of many points that we can take further insight is how different the basic manner of both scope of studies is. Contrary to history which has to be empirical and objective, philosophy is related to Platonism, which is closely tied to metaphysical and abstract reasoning about reality, history, as well as the nature of existence. Furthermore, this distinction is aimed at the historian, who can allow themselves to do the critical or analytical philosophical thinking thus get under way and gain acceptance as a legitimate inquiry, which is by collecting empirical evidence or scientific proofs. Carr mentioned that the philosophy of history had been regarded as “speculative” due to the mislead that Hegel had done, since he did an approach involving large, overarching metaphysical claims about the nature of reality, and about history being a manifestation of reason. Leopold Ranke also declared that historical approach should be distinguished from a philosophical approach, as philosophy sought to reduce reality to a system which sacrificed the unique qualities of the historical world, whereas history chose to acquire an understanding of the general through immersion in the particular.

Apart from that, historicism also creates a more trusted and empirical background. Horst-Walter Blanke’s massive Historiographiegeschichte als Historik (1991) shares that historicism occupied the central role in the establishment of what they consider to be a “paradigm” for modern historical science. Historical thinking becomes “scientific” when it follows definite rules which guarantee the possibility of testing its statements about the past, thus its objectivity, and assure a continuous growth in knowledge about the past, or could be said as a progress of knowledge. Historicism represented a scientific advance over Enlightenment—based on the three paradigms that Blanke believed would succeed one another—because it introduced a more radically historical view of human reality and in the process of professionalization developed more rigorous methods of historical inquiry. 

Thereby, historicism emerged as a response to speculative approaches like Hegel’s, emphasizing the need for history to be studied based on empirical evidence rather than abstract metaphysical concepts. Thinkers like Humboldt critiqued the philosophical interpretation of history, arguing for a more objective and scientific approach. Historicism, as advanced by figures like Leopold Ranke and Blanke, positioned itself at the core of modern historical science, promoting rigorous methods and a focus on factuality. While acknowledging the influence of philosophy and theology, historicism strives to study history independently, focusing on what actually happened without speculative interpretation.

References

Carr, David. 2014. Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World. Vol. 4. N.p.: Oxford University Press.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von. “On the Historian’s Task.” History and Theory 6, no. 1 (1967): 57–71. https://doi.org/10.2307/2504484.

Iggers, Georg G. “Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term.” Journal of the History of Ideas 56, no. 1 (1995): 129–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/2710011.