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Historicism Quotes

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Historicism Quotes

“I'd be willing to bet that the notion of the end of time is more common today in the secular world than in the Christian. The Christian world makes it the object of meditation, but acts as if it may be projected into a dimension not measured by calendars. The secular world pretends to ignore the end of time, but is fundamentally obsessed by it. This is not a paradox, but a repetition of what transpired in the first thousand years of history. ... I will remind readers that the idea of the end of time comes out of one of the most ambiguous passages of John's text, chapter 20... This approach, which isn't only Augustine's but also the Church Fathers' as a whole, casts History as a journey forward—a notion alien to the pagan world. Even Hegel and Marx are indebted to this fundamental idea, which Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pursued. Christianity invented History, and it is in fact a modern incarnation of the Antichrist that denounces History as a disease. It's possible that secular historicism has understood history as infinitely perfectible—so that tomorrow we improve upon today, always and without reservation... But the entire secular world is not of the ideological view that through history we understand how to look at the regression and folly of history itself. There is, nonetheless, an originally Christian view of history whenever the signpost of Hope on this road is followed. The simple knowledge of how to judge history and its horrors is fundamentally Christian, whether the speaker is Emmanuel Mounier on tragic optimism or Gramsci on pessimism of reason and optimism of will.”

ChristianTimeReligionHopeChristianityHistoryBibleCatholicScriptureCatholicismSecularApocalypseEnd Of The WorldSecularismRevelationHegelAugustineMarxChurch FathersHistoricismEnd Of The Time
Book:Belief or Nonbelief?
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“The unification of the planet's history, that humanist dream which God has spitefully allowed to come true, has been accompanied by a process of dizzying reduction. True, the termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories. But the character of modern society hideously exacerbates this curse: it reduces man's life to its social function; the history of a people to a small set of events that are themselves reduced to a tendentious interpretation; social life is reduced to political struggle, and that in turn to the confrontation of just two great global powers.”

HumanismEssayHistoricismCultural HegemonyWorld CultureFunctionalism
Book:The Art of the Novel
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“In the present chapter, the doctrine of the chosen people serves only as an illustration. Its value as such can be seen from the fact that its chief characteristics are shared by the two most important modern versions of historicism, whose analysis will form the major part of this book—the historical philosophy of racialism or fascism on the one (the right) hand and the Marxian historical philosophy on the other (the left). For the chosen people racialism substitutes the chosen race (of Gobineau’s choice), selected as the instrument of destiny, ultimately to inherit the earth. Marx’s historical philosophy substitutes for it the chosen class, the instrument for the creation of the classless society, and at the same time, the class destined to inherit the earth. Both theories base their historical forecasts on an interpretation of history which leads to the discovery of a law of its development. In the case of racialism, this is thought of as a kind of natural law; the biological superiority of the blood of the chosen race explains the course of history, past, present, and future; it is nothing but the struggle of races for mastery. In the case of Marx’s philosophy of history, the law is economic; all history has to be interpreted as a struggle of classes for economic supremacy.”

FascismMarxismClass WarfareFar RightFar LeftHistoricismRacialism
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“Ever increasing human knowledge is the ultimate cause of the development of human societies from hunter gathering to agrarian to industrial societies. However as human societies change from one form to another, there are substantial changes in the social and cultural institutions of those societies. The different types of societies tend to develop with different population structures, class systems, belief systems, government and legal systems, and different types of economies. The changes to these social and cultural systems are dependent on the prior changes to technological systems and so occur in a particular order as the technological changes occur in a particular order.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociologyMetahistory
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“1. Human beings meet their needs by using the resources in their environment. 2. Human beings have a limited knowledge of their environment. 3. Human beings have the ability to learn and remember so their knowledge of their environment increases over time. 4. As human knowledge of the environment increases, new ways of meeting human needs become available. 5. If the news ways of meeting human needs are better than the old ways of meeting human needs they will be adopted and the old ways discarded. 6. The adoption of new ways of meeting human needs constitutes social and cultural change in itself, but also leads to further social and cultural change. 7. The order of discovery of new means of meeting human needs follows a particular path from that which is most easily discovered to that which is more difficult to discover. Many discoveries require prior discoveries before the discovery can take place. This means there is a necessary order in the discoveries that constitute and cause social and cultural change. 8. The particular order in the discoveries, means social and cultural change occurs in a particular order, so that the sequence of social and cultural change is inevitable and is rationally understandable. All of the above statements appear to be obviously correct. If they are then the study of social and cultural history can be considered to be a science in the same way as biological evolution is considered to be a science. Social and cultural change derived from increasing human knowledge is not random and so can be scientifically understood. We can not predict the future of social and cultural change as we do not know what future discoveries we will make. This is analogous to biological evolution where changes in living species are unpredictable as we do not know what changes will occur in the environment of those species. However biological evolution does make changes in living species rationally understandable, just as an analysis of the order of discovery of the human environment makes social and cultural change rationally understandable.”

Karl MarxCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“Changes in human knowledge causes changes in technology and through the effect that technology has on the social and cultural systems of a society, the change in human knowledge will affect all elements in that society. Changes in human knowledge may also directly affect the social and cultural systems in human society. Ideas such as biological evolution and cultural relativity have affected human society, without producing any technological innovations. Human history in all its elements will be effected by the increase in knowledge that gradually accumulates in human culture.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismHistorical ChangeBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of human knowledge of the environment. Human beings use the materials in their environment to meet their needs and increased human knowledge of the environment enables human needs to be met in a more efficient manner. The human environment has a particular structure so that human knowledge of the environment is acquired in a particular order. The simplest knowledge is acquired first and more complex knowledge is acquired later. The order of discovery determines the course of human social and cultural history as knowledge of new and more efficient means of meeting human needs, results in new technology, which results in the development of new social and ideological systems. This means human social and cultural history, has to follow a particular course, a course that is determined by the structure of the human environment.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionHistoricismMacrohistoryMacrosociologyTheories Of History
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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“all societies have certain needs or desires and they meet these needs by utilizing the resources in their environments. The ability to utilize those resources changes as their knowledge of their environment changes. In particular they develop knowledge of the properties of the resources in their environment and how the resources in their environment can be used to meet human needs and desires. Human knowledge of the resources is dynamic; it changes over time. Greater knowledge of the properties of the resources in the environment allows new ways in which human needs can be meet by exploiting resources in the environment. Our knowledge of our environment grows in a particular order; certain knowledge will inevitably be discovered before other knowledge. The order of our discoveries about nature determines the order of technological change and scientific discoveries in human society. The order of our discoveries of both the properties and structure of nature depend upon the relationship between nature and us. We discover these things in an order from that which is closest to us, to that which is further away, or perhaps in an order from the simplest to the more complex. It is the structure of the universe and our place in it, which determines the order in which our knowledge of nature will grow and this determines what technological and scientific options are available to meet our needs and desires.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionHistoricismHistorical ChangeBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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“The art academies had offered a story of art as the conquest, loss, and finally reconquest of nature through the mastery of illusionistic technology, improved by a grasp of ideal beauty. Romanticism replaced this with the story of art as an acquisition and then loss of wisdom, warning us not to mistake naturalism or technical skill for such wisdom. Historicism proposed that each period expresses its view of the world through its own forms; no art form can be preferred for they are all true registrations of the evolving mind. Materialism, finally, a version of historicism, told the story of art as a series of local responses to conditions, materials, tools, and functions. The immediate purpose of Riegl's teleology was to counter the crass reductionism of the materialist version. He did this by insinuating that there was something animating the history of form, a ghost in the machine, a will to form that overrode pragmatic needs. There is a tension in Riegl's art history between the anthropomorphic concept of Kunstwollen, which locates the motor of history in the individual, and the teleological shape of history, the inexorable dematerialization and intellectualization of art, a schema inherited from Hegel and never justified philosophically by Riegl. For Riegl, all art is naturalistic; it is simply that each epoch sees nature differently. What they see is the true object of art. This transforms art history into a history of seeing, and therefore of thinking.”

MaterialismRomanticismHistoricismRiegl
Book:A History of Art History
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“The key to understanding the course of history is to divide history into two parts. One part follows a predetermined direction and the other part is random and unpredictable. The part that follows a predetermined direction is the part that results from ever increasing human knowledge of the world we live in. The world we live in is structured and understandable and is explained by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology and the known properties of the particles, elements and compounds that make up our world. Our ever increasing knowledge of these laws and properties of matter comes to us in a predetermined and rational order from the easiest discoveries being made first to the more difficult discoveries being made later.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural ChangeHistoricismBig HistoryMacro SociologyMacro HistoryMeta History
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“The order of discovery concerning the materials in the human environment and of the technology that resulted from such discoveries was not haphazard or accidental. The order of discovery followed a logical order and an order that it had to follow. The easier discoveries were made before the harder discoveries; discoveries that were dependent upon prior discoveries being made, were only made after those discoveries; and inventions that were not economic or did not meet human needs were not made until they made economic sense or until a need arose. The course of human social and cultural history is written into the structure of the universe.”

Technological ProgressKarl MarxCultural ChangeHistoricismHistorical ChangeMacrohistoryMetahistoryMacro Sociology
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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