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References
Cf. for example Dwight E. Lee and Robert N. Beck, The Meaning of Historicism, in “American Historical Review”, LIX (1954), pp. 568–77; K. Heussi, Die Krisis des Historismus, Tübingen, 1932, p. 102 ff. Arthur C. Danto remarks aptly, “that word is either too vaguely bestowed or else it is too precisely associated with the use given it by professor Karl Popper”. Analytical Philosophy of History, Cambridge, 1968, p. 308.
Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, Paris, 1960.
An exception to this rule is provided by the rather secondary figure of Hans Freyer, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitwissenschaft logische Grundlegung der Systems der Soziologie, Lcipzig, 1930.
Henri Lefebvre, Réflections sur le structuralisme et l'histoire, in “Cahiers internationaux de sociologie”, XXXV (1963), p. 23.
Karl Mannheim, Historicism. Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, London, 1959, pp. 84–85.
Lee and Beck, op. cit., p. 569.
Cf. Edward Shils, The Calling of Sociology in Talcott Parsons et al. (eds.), Theories of Society. Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, New York, 1961, p. 1426 ff.
Jerzy Giedymin, review of the book by B. A. Grushin, Ocherki logiki istoricheskovo issiedovania, in “Ruch Filozoficzny” XXI, (1963), p. 405.
Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History, New Haven, 1957, p. 189.
Von Mises's extreme vicw that it is a mistake to confuse historicism with history, which in fact have nothing in common, is not far from the truth. (op. cit., p. 210). What is more, it does not appear in many specialized dictionaries or encyclopaedias, or appears only in the meaning of “relativism”.
Cf. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London, 1967, p. 7.
Popper, op. cit., p. 3. Let us also quote a description of historicism from his The Open Society: “...the historicist does not recognize that it is we who select and order the facts of history, but he believes that ‘history’ itself, or ‘the history of mankind’ determines by its inherent laws, ourselves, our problems, our future, and even our point of view. Instead of recognizing that historical interpretation should answer a need arising out of the practical problems and decisions which face us, the historicist believes that in our desire for historical interpretation there expresses itself the profound intuition that by contemplating history we may discover the secret, the essence of human destiny. Historicism is out to find the Path on which mankind is destined to walk [...]” London, 1945, Vol. II, pp. 255–56. A critical discussion of Popper's views on historicism is provided by J. Giedymin in “Studia Filozoficzne”, No. 3-6, 1956, p. 209 ff.
Which is what Fricdrich von Hayek managed to do, recognizing “historicism” as a form of “scientism”. Cf. Scientisme et sciences sociales, Paris, 1953, p. 71 ff.
Cf. F. Meineke, Die Enstebung des Historismus, in Werke, Münich, 1959, vol. III, p. 2. Cf. M. Žywczyński, Narodziny i dzieje projecia historyzmu [The Origin and the History of the Notion of Historicism], in “Historyka”, vol. I, Warszawa, 1967, p. 51 ff.
Quoted after E. A. Kosminski, Istoriografia srednikh vekov, Moscow, 1963, p. 341. Meinecke said that “those words expressed all that we wanted toestablish, contraty to views widely accepted by our profession”.
Ludwig von Mises, op. cit., p. 200.
However, the supporters of the two versions of historicism reject one another's right to use it. Igor Kon describes the individualizing tendency as “historicism”, in quotation marks. Cf. Idealizm filozoficzny i kryzys burzuazyjnej myśli historycznej [Philosophical Idealism and the Crisis of the Bourgeois Historical Thought], Warszawa, 1967: D. Rosenberg introduces the concept of “vulgar historicism” in Historia ekonomii politycznej, [A History of Political Economy], Warszawa, 1955, p. 276.
J. Stuart Mill, System of Logic, Book IV, Chapter VII, § 1.
With regard to historical materialism, this matter is discussed by Stanisław Kozyr Kowalski, Materializm naturalistyczny a historyzm marksistowski [Naturalistic Materialism and the Marxist Historicism], in “Humanizm socjalistyczny” [Socialist Humanism], a special issue of “Studia Filozoficzne”, on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Polish People's Republic, Warszawa, 1969, p. 152 ff.
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, New York, 1957, pp. 163 and 150.
Z. Barbu, Problems of Historical Psychology, London, 1960.
Cf. a critique of this tendency in Stanislaw Ossowski, Struktura klasowa w społecznej swiadomości [Class Structure in Social Consciousness], in Dzieła [Works], vol. 5, Warszawa, 1968, pp. 250–53.
Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, 1969, p. 177.
L. Althusser, E. Balibar and R. Establet, Lire Le Capital, Vol. II, Paris, 1967, p. 39 ff.
K. Mannheim, op. cit., pp. 86–87.
J. Giedymin, a review ot Grushin's book, op. cit., p. 405.
F. Engel-Janosi, The Growth of German Historicism, Baltimore, 1944, p. 13.
Quoted after Lee and Beck, op. cit., p. 569.
L. Althusser, op cit., p. 38.
Let us mention by way of example Jerzy Topolski, Metodologia Historii [A Methodology of History], Warszawa, 1968, and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., A Behavioural Approach to Historical Analysis, New York, 1969.
A highly characteristic example of this is provided by the American sociology, which seemed to represent a strongly ahistorical orientation for whole decades. The past few years have seen in the United States the publication of such books as: Werner J. Cahnman and Alvin Boskoff (eds.), American History and the Social Sciences, 1964; Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter (eds.), History and Sociology: Methods, 1968.
In a paper Sociologists vis-à-vis History, delivered at the Sociological Congress in Poznań, December 1969.
Cf. for example Stefan Nowak, Methodological Dilemmas, in “The Polish Sociological Bulletin”, XX (1969), p. 10 ff.
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Szacki, J. On the so-called historicism in the social sciences. Qual Quant 5, 281–295 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00218984
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00218984