Historicism and its types

4. Contents
 Introduction
 Historicism
 Types of Historicism
 Difference between new and old historicism
 The importance of historicism and context in literature
 Conclusion

5. Introduction:
 By the middle of the 19th Century, the
term "historismus" (from which Historicism comes) was well
established in Germany
 Historicism recognizes the historical character of all human
existence, but views history not as an integrated system but as a
scene in which a diversity of human wills express them. It
holds that all historical knowledge is relative to the standpoint
of the historian.
 Friedrich Schlegel mentions Historicism as a “kind of
philosophy” which places the main stress on history. However,
it was mainly used as a pejorative term until the 20th Century.

6. Historicism:
 Noun
 A theory that social and cultural events are determined by
history
 The tendency to regard historical development as the most
basic aspect of human existence

7. Types of Historicism:
Hegelian Historicism
Biblical Historicism
Anthropological Historicis
New Historicism

8. Hegelian Historicism
 Is the position, adopted by G. W. F. Hegel, that all human
societies (and all human activities such as science, art or
philosophy) are defined by their history, and that their
essence can be sought only through understanding that. He
further argued that the history of any such human
Endeavour not only builds upon, but also reacts against,
what has gone before (a position he developed from his
famous dialectic teachings
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis).

9. Biblical Historicism
Is a Protestant theological belief that the
fulfillment of biblical prophecy has taken
place throughout history and continues to
take place today (as opposed to other
beliefs which limit the time-frame of
prophecy fulfillment to the past, or to
the future).

10. Anthropological Historicism:
 Is associated with the empirical social sciences and
particularly with the work of the German-American
anthropologist Franz Boas (1858 - 1942). It
combines diffusions (the idea that all of culture and
civilization was developed only once in ancient Egypt and
then diffused throughout the rest of the world
through migration and colonization)

11. New Historicism:
 Is the name given to a movement which holds
that each epoch has its own knowledge system,
with which individuals are inexorably
entangled. Given that, s then argue that all
questions must be settled within the cultural
and social context in which they are raised, and
that answers cannot be found by appeal to
some external truth.

13. The importance of historicism
and context in literature: