历史个体与普遍历史:历史主义脉络中的社会变迁

发端于18世纪的德国历史主义思想脉络中,包含着一种从历史个体到历史个体的普遍历史解释模式。这种独特的社会变迁思想是在同启蒙思想的对话中确立起来的。起先包裹在天意历史论的目的论外衣中,后来历史主义的发展逐步脱去了这层外衣,在解释社会学传统中演变成了一种经验科学意义上的独特社会变迁思想。随着社会理论对韦伯的去历史化,蕴含在解释社会学中的这种社会变迁思想逐渐被淹没了。有鉴于此,本文将在赫尔德以来的历史主义脉络节点中梳理这种社会变迁思想的形成。

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

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.