Abstract
Popper is wrong in regarding historicism as a unified idea. On the contrary, later historicism was associated with a variety of ideologies. Meinecke's historicism is closely associated with the development of the German state. Croce emphasizes the development of liberty, looking to the French Orleans monarchy as a model. Meinecke's argument is directed against the idea of natural law, Croce's against the Enlightenment. These were united in the conservative, anti-democratic rejection of the principles of 1789. Weber's system gives rise to a multiplicity of ideological positions. Unlike the retrospective philosophical attitudes of Meinecke and Croce, which use the past to justify the present, Weber's emphasis on understanding the present as a product of the complexities of the past and as a factor in the creation of the future leads away from conservative politics.