Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (1): 33-60.

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Historical Individual and Universal History: Social Changes in the Context of Historicism

LI Rongshan   

  1. Institution for Social Policy, Jiangsu Provincial Acadimy of Social Sciences
  • Online:2017-01-20 Published:2017-01-20
  • Supported by:

    This article was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (16CSH005)

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Abstract:

Historicism, originated in Germany in the 18th century, holds a view that universal history can be interpreted as a course from historical individuals to historical individuals, therefore, the main task of historical social research is to reveal changes from historical individuals to historical individuals, especially during the transitional shifts of great ages, to uncover the meaning of our universal cultural history. This unique view of history was developed by criticizing the French Enlightenment thinkers. Viewing individuals from the viewpoint of an atomic entity, the French Enlightenment saw history both linear and progressive. In contrast, German historicists, with the view of individuals as a monadic entity, articulated a set of progressive development theory of history. German historicism at first gave an impression of a providential view of history but gradually it shed off such an appearance and evolved into a distinctive social change theory under the tradition of interpretive sociology. The uniqueness of historicism has two aspects:on one hand, it rejected theology-a major feature of the early philosophies of history; and on the other hand, as empirical science, unlike the natural science based positivism that focused on uniform changes, it stressed the unique diversity of historical changes. Since the de-historization of Max Weber in social theory, this type of social change theory in interpretive sociology has disappeared. One of the crises facing the field of contemporary social theory is the gradual loss of its ability to confront "big issues", an endeavor that can only be accomplished by embracing historical perspectives. It is in awareness of this crisis, this paper offers a study of the history of historicism since Herder and its unique social change theory.

Key words: Social Changes, Historical Individual, Historicism, Universal History