ABSTRACT
Historicism could refer to both the idea that there is a law of history and the notion which refutes the possibility of such generalization. I make a case for categorically differentiating between two images of historicism: civilizational and cultural, differentiating the two by historicizing the term “historicism/historical development” in late nineteenth-century Germany and showing the tension between the Enlightenment vision of progressive history on the one hand, and the Romantic rebellion against such Enlightenment concept of historical progress on the other.
