Original scientific paper

History versus Historicism: The Case of the Enlightenment

Predrag Krstić orcid.org/0000-0002-2966-7082 ; University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade, Serbia

Abstract

This paper seeks to relativize the proverbial remark that historicism addressed to the Enlightenment for its unhistoricity. The first part finds the effort to rehabilitate the Enlightenment philosophy of history before the attacks of Romanticism and fair assessment of its achievements within the very school of philosophical historical hermeneutics, to be followed by opposing the entire Historicism a counter-philosophical tradition of the science of history. In the examples of Kant’s and Herder’s understanding of the history of mankind, the second part of the paper exhibits their rival concepts, in order to test the validity of criticism for the lack of historical consciousness of the Enlightenment and indicate the corrective that “cultural history” suggests to “universal history”. It is concluded that ingrained refrain about ahistorical Enlightenment is rather convenient academic buzzword for its inclusion in neat columns of historico-philosophical orientations than it can be textually documented and reasonably defended.

Keywords

Enlightenment; Romanticism; historicism; historical science; progress; Humanität; universal history; cultural history

Hrčak ID:

142585

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/142585

Publication date:

25.5.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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