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It seems to me that the historical study of human beliefs," the British philosopher Henry Sidgwick wrote in 1886,
does tend to be connected with a general skepticism as to the validity of the doctrines studied. … [Skepticism] partly tends to result from the historical study, because of the vast and bewildering variety of conflicting beliefs … which this study marshals before us. The student's own most fundamental and cherished convictions seemed forced, as it were, to step down from their secure pedestals, and take their places in the endless line that is marching past. … Thus to the historian … the whole defiling train of beliefs tends to become something from which he sits apart, every portion of which has lost power to hold his own reason in the grip of true conviction.
Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought by David N. Myers Princeton Univ. Press, 2003 280 pp., $29.95 |
Sidgwick summed up a sentiment felt by many in the late 19th and early 20th century: the realization that historical study had a corrosive effect on the plausibility of religious belief, that history or, more properly, modern "historicism" introduced a vertiginous relativism into human affairs, toppling with gale-like force religious verities, natural laws, moral absolutesanything that sought to don the mantle of universalism and rise above the caprice of time, place, and social location. The theologian Ernst Troeltsch would famously define this as "the crisis of historicism."1
The 19th century, particularly in Germany, was the age of historicism par excellence. From the historical writings of Leopold von Ranke, to Hegel's philosophy of history, to the historical biblical criticism of Ferdinand Christian Baur and David Friedrich Strauss, modern thought appeared to make a fundamental break from the Christian insistence on timeless creedal truths and from the Enlightenment belief in transhistorical human reason. The effects of this break live on todayin aspects of Western jurisprudence, in postmodern theories of interpretation, and in historical study itself. One will find it in the pages of Thomas Kuhn and his disciples, from the lips of Richard Rorty, and from countless, obeisant graduate students in the humanities who have learned that exposing something to be a "historical construct" often pleases instructors and opens career paths. Historicism and its problemsalthough themselves products of distinct historical circumstancesappear as durable fixtures in the contemporary intellectual landscape.
But powerful countervailing and reactionary tendencies are also afoot. The Enlightenment tradition of universal human rights seems alive and well; today it's arguably the only viable global currency of moral discourse. In the academy, in fact, one often finds that the most thoroughgoing historicists can also be the most zealous defenders of universal human rights. (Emerson's lesson on hobgoblins has apparently been well heeded.2)
In modern Christian thought, several strategies of resistance to historicism have proven salient. One strategy might be dubbed that of subtle co-option. The archetypal case here is John Henry Newman, especially in his famous book, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), in which Newman sought to tame the historicizing forces of the 19th century by conceptualizing Christian doctrine as always in a state of providential "development." This line of thinking, many have argued, eventually paved the way for rapprochement between Catholicism and modernity at the Second Vatican Council. Another tactic against historicism comes closer to root-and-branch rejection: the position that the sacred truths of revelation can be known by faith alone, immune from profane historical knowledge. One sees this most prominently in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and, later, in Karl Barth and many of his "neo-orthodox" associates. One recent scholar has even suggested that 20th-century neo-orthodoxy and its extensive influence in modern Christian theology are best understood as an "anti-historical revolution," an attempt to rescue dogma and creedal commitment from the excesses of 19th-century historical criticism and historical theology.3
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