Историзм и его критики

Вопросы философии. 2018. № 12. С. 24–36.

Rutkevich A. M.

Historism (historicism) in a most general sense is a principle of historical science, which

demands to see the phenomena in their development and connection with concrete circumstances

of the past. In a more narrow sense it is a trend in the European historical thought,

emerging under the influence of German Romanticism and Hegelianism. Specific features of

it were the romantic thesis about uniqueness and singularity of individuals, cultures and

epochs, the opposition of methods of natural and human sciences, view of history as a history

of spirit (Geist). The overcoming of this program in historical science occurred during the first

decades of the XX century, the philosophical critics had to do mostly with its relativism. K.

Popper’s critics of “historicism” had nothing to do with these debates or with German Historismus

itself. Indeterminism of Popper and F.A. Hayek is close to this Historismus; their

direct precursor and mentor L. von Mises himself developed the ideas of German historical

school in “national economy”. In the debates on positivism in sociology, transformed then

into debates on hermeneutics took part Popper’s disciple H. Albert, but he negated the methodological

dualism of “emancipative” hermeneutics of J. Habermas and K.-O. Apel, without

any reduction of Historismus to economical determinism. Among the opponents of historicism

in political philosophy important were the arguments of L. Strauss. In polemics with A. Kojève

he turns against not only of the Hegelianism or Romanticism; Historismus with its radical

relativism begins with Machiavelli and Hobbes, from the outset of the Modernity.

Keywords: философия истории, romanticism, романтизм, историзм, марксизм, Marxism, philosophy of spirit, философия духа, историцизм, гегельянство, philosophy of history, Hegelianism, historicism