Robert D'Amico

At the intersection of philosophy of science, epistemology, and historiography—

Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism drew attention to the implications of and objections to a particular form of historicism—the belief that history obeys a lawful order or logic, or the idea that history has meaning. Popper rejected teleological and predictive history in favor of a situational logic that he spelled out in a subsequent work (The Open Society):

"Since each generation has its own troubles and problems, and therefore its own interests and its own point of view, it follows that each generation has a right to look upon and re-interpret history in its own way."

The work of the historian, then, is situational analysis. According to Popper, situational analysis aims at historical understanding (rather than prediction) and pluralism in historical reconstruction (rather than historical laws).

In Historicism and Knowledge, Robert D’Amico points out that Popper’s situational analysis is in accord with a second, modern sense of historicism, which holds that we must look at each person, event, nation or era as unique, developing over a period of time through its own internal means, rooted in its own time and place in the course of history and growing out of the specific circumstances of its time. Popper’s argument against there being historical laws (the older sense of historicism) is tantamount to a defense of the second sense of historicism, which emphasizes the limits of knowledge and how human understanding is always ‘captive’ to its historical situation.

D’Amico reviews the arguments of philosophers who have rejected the relativism and skepticism implicit in the second historicist approach, including the surprise pairing of anti-subjectivists Popper and Michel Foucault (long taken as a radical skeptic and relativist). Lakatos and Habermas square off against Kuhn and Feyerabend, with lesser-known names also represented. D’Amico’s treatment of all is even-handed; important insights are recognized and credited, inconsistencies noted, concluding assertions drawn clearly and convincingly.

The themes under discussion in Historicism and Knowledge have ramifications beyond the work of historians and philosophers. As D’Amico notes, conservative political and social analysis holds that skeptical, relativist, or critical doctrines of philosophy weaken a society’s traditions, but “human history is just as likely to tell the story of how uncertainty and tolerance benefited society, as it is to show how indeterminacy produced moral or theoretical weakness before the complex task of understanding.” The defenders of objective knowledge inevitably run up against the pluralism of interests and perspectives that make historical understanding always contingent, always interpretive.

D’Amico ends by reminding us that philosophical debate, like historical understanding, is always provisional, never completed once and for all. And in the end, "the inscrutability of the world cannot be removed by the philosopher’s pen." May the slogan of the next revolution be Liberté! Impénétrabilité! Ambiguité!… (més)