From Chladenius to Droysen
Escudier, Alexandre
From Chladenius to Droysen - 2003.
31
The last thirty years have witnessed a renaissance of interest in Enlightenment-era German historiography ( Aufklärungshistorie), previously condemned to obscurity by the nineteenth-century refounders of historical studies wishing to justify their own project. This article provides an overview of the context and the main issues of this historiographical revival, emphasizing the importance of the theorization of history—as a process as well as a discipline—at that time. It then retraces the major epistemological themes that developed between 1750 and 1820, followed by those of the era of “historism.” A clear theoretical distinction can be made between Rankean epistemology, known as classical historism, and the crucial turning point marked by Droysen’s Historik (1857). Finally, the article emphasizes the distinction between the standard definition of historism as a specific theoretical constellation (with its declared empiricism, theoretical objectivism, and theologized idealism) and the question of what Ernst Troeltsch called the “crisis of historism” in the modern era. In doing so, it argues for an integrated history of historiography, with the theoretical horizon of a combined socio-cultural history of modern sensitivity to historical relativism. This “history of history” would therefore go beyond the traditional history of science and eventually evolve into a historical anthropology of historicity.
From Chladenius to Droysen - 2003.
31
The last thirty years have witnessed a renaissance of interest in Enlightenment-era German historiography ( Aufklärungshistorie), previously condemned to obscurity by the nineteenth-century refounders of historical studies wishing to justify their own project. This article provides an overview of the context and the main issues of this historiographical revival, emphasizing the importance of the theorization of history—as a process as well as a discipline—at that time. It then retraces the major epistemological themes that developed between 1750 and 1820, followed by those of the era of “historism.” A clear theoretical distinction can be made between Rankean epistemology, known as classical historism, and the crucial turning point marked by Droysen’s Historik (1857). Finally, the article emphasizes the distinction between the standard definition of historism as a specific theoretical constellation (with its declared empiricism, theoretical objectivism, and theologized idealism) and the question of what Ernst Troeltsch called the “crisis of historism” in the modern era. In doing so, it argues for an integrated history of historiography, with the theoretical horizon of a combined socio-cultural history of modern sensitivity to historical relativism. This “history of history” would therefore go beyond the traditional history of science and eventually evolve into a historical anthropology of historicity.
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