Abstract

In rejecting the traditional religious interpretation of history and postulating an universal progress of civilization the Enlightenment provided the prerequisites for the position of Historism in relation to teleology. The experience of the French Revolution contributed towards differentiating the Enlightenment conceptions by revealing inconsistencies and unforeseeability of this universal progress as well as the importance of specific national developments. This complex relationship with teleology is here demonstrated on the chief texts on developed Historism by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ranke, Droysen and Meinecke. All of them reprehensively assess the philosophies of history of the Enlightenment and Hegel for their attempted construction of a predeterminated historical development in which temporal and spiritual progress are identical. Historism does not deny progress; but progress is confined to the material world and the quantitative spread of culture and civilization; superior attention is, however, accorded to the necessary, yet free, not foreseeable, timeless, spiritual forces, or ideas. „Objective”︁ Historism, pre‐eminently represented by Ranke, ist thereby distinguished from Droysen's „actionsguiding”︁ Historism which, from the historical world of goals, selects those which are of importance for present moral, responsible human conduct. Both kinds of Historism reject predestination, are therefore „teleology without telos”︁, assert an onward movement without beginning or end, a composition of innumerable single developments. In the „positivistic”︁ Historism of the latter half of the 19th century, causalities take the place of „ideas”︁; the „subjective”︁ Historism (Meinecke) attempts to retain these ideas as „values”︁ and chief objects for historical contemplation.