ABSTRACT

Historicism has had a remarkably bad press. This is due partly to its associations in the nineteenth century with metaphysical attempts to discern the purpose and direction of history, but largely to a small, highly influential group of intellectual propagandists in the mid-twentieth century. These propagandists included four remarkable men – Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper, and Isaiah Berlin – all of whom were influenced by Cartesian rationalism and were refugees from European totalitarianism. Well known for their very considerable scholarly contributions, this tight circle of colleagues and friends attempted, quite successfully, to convince all liberal-minded intellectuals not only that historicism was intellectually bankrupt but that it was a threat both to individual liberty and to the survival of democracy.