
Historicism
A Travelling Concept
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
Published on 21. April 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
218 pages
978-1-350-21618-1 (ISBN)
Description
Throughout the twentieth century, scholars, artists and politicians have accused each other of "historicism." But what exactly did this mean? Judging by existing scholarship, the answers varied enormously. Like many other "isms," historicism could mean nearly everything, to the point of becoming meaningless.
Yet the questions remain: What made generations of scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences worry about historicism? Why did even musicians and members of parliament warn against historicism? And what explains this remarkable career of the term across generations, fields, regions, and languages?
Focusing on the "travels" that historicism made, this volume uses historicism as a prism for exploring connections between disciplines and intellectual traditions usually studied in isolation from each other. It shows how generations of sociologists, theologians, and historians tried to avoid pitfalls associated with historicism and explains why the term was heavily charged with emotions like anxiety, anger, and worry.
While offering fresh interpretations of classic authors such as Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Loewith, and Leo Strauss, this volume highlights how historicism took on new meanings, connotations, and emotional baggage in the course of its travels through time and place.
Yet the questions remain: What made generations of scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences worry about historicism? Why did even musicians and members of parliament warn against historicism? And what explains this remarkable career of the term across generations, fields, regions, and languages?
Focusing on the "travels" that historicism made, this volume uses historicism as a prism for exploring connections between disciplines and intellectual traditions usually studied in isolation from each other. It shows how generations of sociologists, theologians, and historians tried to avoid pitfalls associated with historicism and explains why the term was heavily charged with emotions like anxiety, anger, and worry.
While offering fresh interpretations of classic authors such as Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Loewith, and Leo Strauss, this volume highlights how historicism took on new meanings, connotations, and emotional baggage in the course of its travels through time and place.
Reviews / Votes
In perpetual crisis, the polysemic concept of "historicism" has relentlessly moved from discipline to discipline, culture to culture, unsettling all efforts to wrest absolute values from the flux of relativism. The remarkable essays collected by Paul and van Veldhuizen follow its fortunes in historical, social scientific, philosophical and theological-both Christian and Jewish-contexts, as well as across national boundaries in Germany, America, France and Holland. * Martin Jay, Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, USA *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-21618-1 (9781350216181)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2020
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€35.49
Available for download

E-Book
10/2020
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€35.49
Available for download
Persons
Herman Paul is Professor of the History of the Humanities at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is the author of Key Issues in Historical Theory (2015) and Hayden White: The Historical Imagination (2011).
Adriaan van Veldhuizen is Assistant Professor in Historical Theory at Leiden University, The Netherlands, where he coordinates the PhD program in history and plays a leading role in the research project, "The Demands of our Time: Epochal Thinking from 1800 to the Present." He published a Dutch-language book on the history of socialism and several articles on historical theory, most recently in History and Theory.
Adriaan van Veldhuizen is Assistant Professor in Historical Theory at Leiden University, The Netherlands, where he coordinates the PhD program in history and plays a leading role in the research project, "The Demands of our Time: Epochal Thinking from 1800 to the Present." He published a Dutch-language book on the history of socialism and several articles on historical theory, most recently in History and Theory.
Editor
Leiden University, the Netherlands
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Content
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Biographical Notes
Introduction: Historicism as a Travelling Concept
Herman Paul and Adriaan van Veldhuizen
I: Travels through Time
1 Historicism through the Lens of Anti-Historicism: The Case of Modern Jewish History
David N. Myers
2 Historicism as a Modern Theological Problem
Gary Dorrien
II Travels Through Space
3 Historicism and Positivism in Sociology: Weimar Germany to the Contemporary United States
George Steinmetz
4 Historicism's Arrival in the United States: Two Routes from Germany
Adriaan van Veldhuizen
III Travel Companions
5 The Specter of Historicism: A Discourse of Fear
Herman Paul
6 Thinking in Uncertain Times: Raymond Aron and the Politics of Historicism
Sophie Marcotte-Chenard
IV Travels Beyond Historicism
7 Friedrich Meinecke's Historism or the Defeat of German Historicism
Audrey Borowski
8 Karl Loewith's Historicization of Historicism
Bruno Godefroy
Acknowledgments
Biographical Notes
Introduction: Historicism as a Travelling Concept
Herman Paul and Adriaan van Veldhuizen
I: Travels through Time
1 Historicism through the Lens of Anti-Historicism: The Case of Modern Jewish History
David N. Myers
2 Historicism as a Modern Theological Problem
Gary Dorrien
II Travels Through Space
3 Historicism and Positivism in Sociology: Weimar Germany to the Contemporary United States
George Steinmetz
4 Historicism's Arrival in the United States: Two Routes from Germany
Adriaan van Veldhuizen
III Travel Companions
5 The Specter of Historicism: A Discourse of Fear
Herman Paul
6 Thinking in Uncertain Times: Raymond Aron and the Politics of Historicism
Sophie Marcotte-Chenard
IV Travels Beyond Historicism
7 Friedrich Meinecke's Historism or the Defeat of German Historicism
Audrey Borowski
8 Karl Loewith's Historicization of Historicism
Bruno Godefroy