Moreover, historicism was by no means the dominant intellectual attitude in Germany in the late eighteenth century; nor was it the sole challenger of the Enlightenment faith in human rationality. We have already cited the strong currents of pietism and traditionalism. Important in the transition from natural law doctrine to historicism were two trends of thought which in many ways were still committed to Enlightenment ideals, but nevertheless contributed to the modification and completion of historicist doctrine. These were the Humanitätsideal which further defined the idea of the individual, and German idealistic philosophy which elaborated upon the idea of identity, a central element in historicist faith. The Humanitätsideal is difficult to define because it is so intimately interwoven with the personalities of the small group of eminent, creative thinkers who gave it expression: Goethe, Herder, Winckelmann, Schiller, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, each of whom left a different and personal imprint.30 It derives a good deal of its original inspiration from Winckelmann’s studies of classical Greek art and from Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity, written in his more mature years.
These writers agree with the Enlightenment that there is a common humanity, a certain nobility and dignity present in seed form in all men. “The purpose of our existence,” Herder comments, “is to develop this incipient element of humanity (Humanität) fully within us.… Our ability to reason is to be developed to reason; our finer senses are to be cultivated for art; our instincts are to achieve genuine freedom and beauty; our energies are to be turned to the love of man.”31 Still, if the Enlightenment stresses the common characteristics of man and his rationality, the Humanitätsideal stresses the diversity of man and the interrelation of all aspects of his personality, of rationality and irrationality, into a harmonious whole. Every individual is different, and the task incumbent upon each one is to develop his own unique personality to the fullest.32 Hence the idealization of the Greeks. “Mankind as a whole,” writes Wilhelm von Humboldt, “exists only in the never attainable totality of all individualities that come into existence one after another.”33 Peculiarly absent from the group’s admiration of the Greeks, however, is an appreciation of the great value which the Greeks had placed on politics. Freedom for these German thinkers was, first of all, an inner, spiritual matter rather than a political concept, as it was for much of Enlightenment thought. For Goethe and Humboldt the individual person constitutes the prime unit of which humanity is composed; for Herder the nations, too, possess the characteristics of individuality to a greater extent than individual persons. Nevertheless, Herder’s concept of nationality assumes a basic equality of worth among all nations as contributors to the richness of the human spirit. In this sense, he is cosmopolitan in spirit no less than Goethe.
The concept of individuality contained within the Humanitätsideal differs from Enlightenment theories of the individual in still another important way, particularly from those ideas which had been developed by associationist psychology (e.g., Locke, Condillac, Hume, and others) or utilitarianism (Bentham, James Mill). For Wilhelm von Humboldt the individual is not found in the empirical person we perceive, but in the higher idea he represents. The purpose of man’s life is thus emphatically not “happiness,” but rather the fulfillment of this idea. Wilhelm von Humboldt argues against state action in behalf of the welfare of the citizens since such action misunderstands the “dignity of man.”34 Kant similarly had written in his Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Viewpoint that Nature is not concerned with man’s “living well,” but only with his “living in dignity.”35 The rejection of “happiness” as an end of life was common to the whole tradition of historicist thought from Humboldt and Ranke to Meinecke. “Eudaemonism” became a pejorative term by which German historians tried to dissociate their own idealistic position from most of English and French historical thought.36 In the concept of the individual as the expression of an idea lies the link between the theory that every individual possesses “individuality” and that each collective group, too, is an “individuality.” Groups and individuals share in the expression of ideas. It was therefore not very difficult for Humboldt, who at first had recognized that only individual persons possess the characteristics of individuality, to admit this applies to states and nations as well.
The Enlightenment concept of natural law underwent further revision in German philosophic discussion after Kant. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all accepted the theory of the basic uniqueness of individuals and nations in history. At the same time, they also accepted the Enlightenment faith in a rational universe. They attempted to solve this dilemma by seeing in reason not an abstract norm divorced from abstract reality, but rather something immanent within reality. Kant had already suggested in the Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Viewpoint that reason was operative in history. He had assumed that “all the natural potentialities of any creature are destined to develop once fully and to the end for which they are intended,”37 and that the history of the world similarly saw the steady growth of rationality. Hegel had described history as the development by which the rational idea immanent in the world takes on concrete form.38 But the actors in this process are the individuals whom Hegel terms “the Peoples.”39 Each people, in developing its own unique character, simultaneously plays its role in the world process. Although Hegel’s conception of progress thus brings individuality into harmony with the overall process, it nevertheless significantly violates the historicist theory of the radical autonomy of the individual. In the Hegelian system, the individual becomes a means within a larger process. Historicism, however, stresses that the spontaneity of the individual must be preserved. His growth cannot be forced into a scheme.
Nevertheless, an important aspect of the German Idealist view of history as a rational process is incorporated into historicist thought. Humboldt acknowledges that collective groups, too, possess the characteristics of individuality, as he steadily moves from the position of the Humanitätsideal to that of historicism. He believes that although every individuality and its idea are radically unique, they directly form part of a divine design in a “mysterious” way which we cannot perceive.40 “World history,” he wrote in 1825, “is unthinkable without a cosmic plan governing it.”41 Similarly, Ranke sees in the state an entity “real-and-spiritual-at-once (real-geistig).” With Hegel he is convinced that, in pursuing its own power-political interests, the state acts in accordance with a higher order that governs the world. As he has Friedrich say in the Political Dialogue: “But seriously, you will be able to name few significant wars for which it could not be proved that genuine moral energy achieved the final victory.”42
However, the most important factor in the transition from an Enlightenment to an historicist outlook was doubtless the impact of political events upon the German intellect between 1792 and 1815. The educated German public, with few exceptions, had hailed the French Revolution. The tremendous disappointment which had set in in Germany after the revolution reached its terroristic phase, led to a widespread re-examination of natural law doctrine. The reaction against the ideology of the revolution was intensified by the Napoleonic domination of Germany. This strengthened national feeling, and in the public mind identified Enlightenment values with a hated French culture. German opinion, for the most part, did not want a restoration of prerevolutionary political and social conditions. The defeat of Prussia in 1806 initiated a period of extensive reforms in that kingdom. But reformers, such as Baron von Stein, Hardenberg, and Humboldt, searched for liberal institutions peculiarly suited to German traditions.
In three important ways the German attitude toward history changed in these years:
1. The Enlightenment faith in universally applicable ethical and political values, which had been already challenged before the Revolution, was now completely shattered. Except for a few isolated thinkers who like the Freiburg historian Carl Rotteck remained faithful to the principles of 1789, German educated opinion now agreed