Historism
philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany
Historism (German: Historismus) is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanistic or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought (cf. comparative historical linguistics etc.). It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.
Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding for the events, acting persons, and historical periods. The historist approach takes to its extreme limits the common observation that human institutions (language, Art, religion, law, State) are subject to perpetual change.
Core Principles and Concepts
This approach argues that human reality is entirely historical, and that human beings can only be properly understood as historical entities.
Particularity (Uniqueness): According to historism, historical events are unique and cannot be repeated like natural phenomena, nor can they be explained through general laws. Each period should be understood within its own values and conditions. As Leopold von Ranke famously stated, history should be described “as it actually happened” (wie es eigentlich gewesen).
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q780814. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Historism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.