Historicism and Its Problems

This is a translation of Ernst Troeltsch's last (1923) major work. It is an exhaustive study of the methods of historiography and of German, French, English, and Italian philosophies of history during the nineteenth century. It is motivated by the purpose of developing the proper concept of historical development, for overcoming "bad" historicism (i.e., unlimited relativism) with "good" historicism (with relativity, not relativism), and determining how values drawn from history can be used to shape the future. It concludes with a sketch of the unwritten second volume on the material philosophy of history.