Quotes About Historicism

Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether men are really equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice.

The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.

la mayor miseria del historicismo es que no es capaz de pensar el cambio en las condiciones de novedad que impone el mismo cambio; de ahí su idea de que hay un destino histórico de acuerdo con el cual las entidades cambian desarrollando su esencia latente (cultural o económica). Cualquier

If historicism were consistent, it would have to concede the right of history to every historical being, and therefore it must not stick anywhere, precisely because it should stick everywhere. As a world view, it makes the lack of principles a principle....

Comte's positivism and "stages of development" theory and the Hegel-Marx historicism are kindred and lay the foundation for modern progressivism. They all presume to know and establish the final stage of human development (even if the final stage is in a state of constant remaking), denounce organized religion and timeless truths, and worship the narcissism of their own moral nihilism

if everything is historically relative, then so is the idea of historicism itself.