What is historicism?

‘Historicism’ is a term with roots in philosophy. It designates the tendency to perceive all realities as historically conditioned phenomena. It concerns the inclination to think everything in historical terms and to regard historical context as the key to understanding structures of all kind. Historicism held cultural and intellectual sway especially in the nineteenth century. Historical modes of understanding seized a host of endeavours and altered the Western worldview. While the world had always seemed a few thousand years of age, the new historical sciences of archaeology, geology, and palaeontology now made the world unfathomably ancient.

The roundtable confronts Rome’s position in historicism. Has Rome been denied its fundamental place in the historiography and theory of historicism? If so, why? And how could we expand our canon? Giovanna Capitelli and Richard Wittman respectively introduce the methods of a 19th-century painter and an architect. Jasper Van Parys will thereafter mediate a discussion around an aspect of his research at the Swiss Institute, evoking the perspective of a priest who directed the restoration of one of Rome’s basilicas.

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08.04.2022 H18:00

Istituto Svizzero, via Liguria 20, Rome

In English

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