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This paper discusses attempts to think historicity in the work of the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. It then draws on the work of the Jesuit theologian Robert Doran in order to suggest how an historical pragmatics without historicism might be relevant to a future theology with social import.

Nassim Taleb's dismissal of history as based on the 'narrative fallacy'--which reads our present knowledge of past events into our reconstruction of the past--is based on a fundamental misconception of what historians actually do. Historians do not, as Taleb presumes, try to infer general, predictive laws from 'hard' facts, as do natural scientists; instead their aim is to discover the causes of unique historical facts among antecedent facts. This is no different, in principle, from 'narrating' the cause of a supernova by referring to physical causes. The construction of universal historical laws would admittedly be a fool's errand, but that is not the task historians -- as opposed to historicists -- actually set for themselves. Adapted from the source document.

This article responds to Stephen Turner's discussion of my article, "Historicism and Critique." I emphasize that radical historicism consists of substantive philosophical commitments. One commitment is to a historicized epistemology that presents objective knowledge as a product of a comparison between rival webs of belief. Another commitment is to a historical ontology that presents aggregate concepts in the social sciences as inherently pragmatic. These substantive commitments provide a plausible basis for various forms of critique. They lead to analyses of genealogical and ideological critique that differ from appeals to genealogy as a kind of groundless skepticism toward, and problematization of, all substantive commitments.

On its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.'A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this g