Aesthetic Theory and Historical Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The distinction between a mainstream tradition in the historical thought of the eighteenth century, which eighteenth-century usage allows us to designate as philosophical history, and a counterpoint tradition, which recent convention allows us to designate as historism, has become an accepted feature in the interpretation of eighteenth-century historical thought. ' I take this distinction to be a valid one. Admittedly, there are some aspects of eighteenth-century historical thought to which the distinction does not do justice, such as the work carried out by members of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in France, or the flowering of history in the German universities and academies late in the century.2 But the exclusions are systematic rather than arbitrary, and can be readily explained; for it is clear that the distinction is concerned with historical thought in a general intellectual sense rather than with historical thought in the more limited