Historicism

Category: Theoretical approaches

German term Historismus and the approach of historicism are based on the idea that denoted the view that society and culture cannot be understood, described, and explained by general deterministic theories that are used in natural sciences. The historical nature of any society and culture necessitates the use of a historical approach to understand them in their individuality and particularity. Historicism uses relativism, both in understanding and ethical judgment of cultures and societies. Some of the most influential proponents of historicism were Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, Heinrich Rickert, Ernst Troeltsch, and Windelband Wilhelm.

German philosopher, historian, sociologist, and psychologist Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) was an opponent of positivism in science, so he developed his epistemological approach based on hermeneutics. He believed that society could not be viewed in the same way as natural phenomena. It is not possible to document society as a social fact, nor is it possible to apply causal logic to social events. Therefore, it is impossible to create general causal and deterministic laws that would explain society. Instead of an objective study of society, Dilthey introduces the principle of a subjective approach to society. It is not possible to study society with the help of causal logic, it can be achieved only through interpretations, that is, the interpretation of phenomena. The key to his approach is the ability of the researcher to understand the inner mental states of others. To achieve scientific knowledge, it is necessary to use a combination of intuition and systematic application of interpretive methods. The experience of the researcher enables him to achieve a union of the subject and the object of research.

For Dilthey, understanding (Verstehen) means using our own mental life to connect with other people's minds. Meaning can be given to ideas, activities, or experiences. The socio-historical world represents the world of our shared experience. The meaning depends on the assumption that we all share, in essence, the same human nature. Meaning is always contextual, it represents the relationship of the whole with the parts. The process of interpretation begins with a principled understanding of the subject of study as a whole, which leads us to understand the meaning of the parts, which, in turn, allows us to see the whole more clearly. This closes the hermeneutic circle. Mentally placing ourselves in the situation of another person allows us to understand the thoughts and actions of that other person (his or her experience), but also to understand the socio-historical world. Dilthey's teachings influenced the division of sciences into nomothetic and ideographic; to the historical and interpretive approaches in sociology, which is best seen in the works of Max Weber; as well as in many other interpretive and micro-sociological directions in sociology.

(1964-1920) German sociologist and economist Max Weber created his sociological approach that combines the epistemological and theoretical foundations of two directions that were very widespread in the German social sciences at the end of the nineteenth century - formal sociology, on the one hand, and historicism and hermeneutics, on the other. Historicism and hermeneutics both start from the assumption that there is an essential difference between the social and natural sciences, both in subject matter and in the methods that can be applied to the study of the subject.

The social sciences study values and meanings, and they should be used to understand and interpret subjective human behavior, while the natural sciences aspire to establish general deterministic relations. Thus, the social sciences study what is unique and unrepeatable in a culture at a certain historical moment. Weber takes the view from formalism that it is necessary to develop and systematize generalized social forms, which he did by developing an "ideal-type approach" and creating many classifications. On the other hand, Weber partially takes over the premise of historicism, about the essential difference between the social and natural sciences. Weber also believes that it is necessary to understand individual psychological motives, goals, and values, but also to interpret and document culturally and historically unique phenomena.

Weber believes that the goal of social science is to build a network of abstract concepts and to investigate objectively existing causal relationships in individual events. Through the study of causal relationships in individual events, we can determine general social rules. The starting point for studying individual events is human "social action". Social action is any behavior that has meaning for a person who performs a social action and includes failing to perform an activity, as well as suffering from an external situation. Another condition for a behavior to be viewed as social action is that the actor must take into account the behavior of others and coordinate his social actions with it. Human social action is the only thing we can really understand because it has its objective, external side, which we can directly observe, but also because it has an internal, subjective side, which we can understand and interpret. That is why social action is the basic unit of sociological analysis.

Human social action is voluntary in character, however, it can be a product of conscious and intentional desire, just as it can be a product of unconscious motives. Unconscious motives are influenced by culture and tradition, as external factors, but also personal emotional states, as internal factors. Weber believes that fully conscious and intentional social action is just a borderline case and that people are much more likely to act instinctively or routinely. In that sense, every social action can be directed by several different factors: values, goals, emotions, and rationality. These factors are expressed in different proportions in any particular social action of an individual, but they are also shaped in different ways by the broader cultural and historical context of social action.

The scientific study of social action requires the application of the cognitive method of „understanding“ (verstehen). Understanding is made possible by the fact that there is an identity between the subject (researcher) and the object (individual that is studied) of cognition, and therefore understanding has a higher degree of clarity and certainty compared to other forms and methods of cognition. The identity of the subject and the object of knowledge, in essence, means that scientists, as well as people whose work is the object of the study, have similar psychology. This is what enables scientists to understand the subjective meaning that social action has for the person who performs the social action. Understanding has both an intellectual and an emotional component. This means that we can understand the rational aspect of one's social actions, while at the same time understanding the emotional motives of that social action. Understanding social action, as a sociological method, allows us to create causal explanations of individual events.

On the other hand, creating causal explanations of complex processes requires the application of a comparative-historical method, while a thought experiment, also, serves as a research aid. A special type of sociological concepts, in Weber's approach, are "ideal types". Ideal types represent abstract sociological concepts that allow us to classify the subjective side of human social action (both conscious and unconscious; both rational and emotional) according to their type into different categories. Ideal types can serve hypothetical-analytical understanding, or serve descriptive and historical explanations.

Authors: Dilthey, Wilhelm; Weber, Max. Hegel, Wilhelm Friedrich Georg; Meinecke, Friedrich; Rickert, Heinrich; Troeltsch, Ernst; Windelband, Wilhelm.

Books:

Dilthey. Selected Works, Volume I: Introduction to the Human Sciences (1989);

- Selected Works, Volume V: Poetry and Experience (1996);

- Selected Works, Volume II: Understanding the Human World (2010);

- Selected Works, Volume IV: Hermeneutics and the Study of History (2010);

- Selected Works, Volume VI: Ethical and World-View Philosophy (2019);

- The Essence of Philosophy (2021);

- Philosophy of Existence: Introduction to Weltanschauungslehre; Translation of an Essay With Introduction (2021);

- Selected Works, Volume III: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (2021);

Iggers, G. The German Conception of History (1997);

Kelley, D. Faces of History (1998);

Makkreel, R. Dilthey, Philosopher of the Human Sciences (1975);