Historical determinism is the stance in explaining history or advocating a political position that events are historically predetermined (and/or currently constrained) by various forces. Since such explanation is the norm, it may be better understood in contrast to its negation, i.e. the rejection of historical determinism.
The italicized alternation (and/or) is significant because some political philosophies (e.g. Marxism) assert a form of the one and reject the other. Used as a pejorative, it is normally meant to designate an overdetermination of present possibilities by historical conditions.
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or determinism:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”
—William James (1842–1910)