Philosophy of history

Philosophy of history or historiosophy is an area of concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human. Furthermore, it speculates as to a possible end to its development—that is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history.

Philosophy of history asks at least three basic questions:


 * What is the proper unit for the study of the human past — the ? The  ("city") or  ? The  or ? Or the whole of the human species?


 * Are there any broad patterns that we can discern through the study of the human past? Are there, for example, patterns of ? Or cycles?  Or are there no patterns or cycles, and is human history therefore random and devoid of any meaning?


 * If history can indeed be said to progress, what is its ultimate direction? Is it a positive or negative direction? And what (if any) is the driving force of that progress?

Philosophy of history should not be confused with, which is the study of history as an academic discipline, and thus concerns its methods and practices, and its development as a discipline over time. Nor should philosophy of history be confused with the, which is the study of the development of philosophical ideas through time.

Pre-modern history
In the , argued that poetry is superior to history, because poetry speaks of what must or should be, rather than merely what is true. This reflects early axial concerns (good/bad, right/wrong) over metaphysical concerns for what "is". Accordingly, classical historians felt a duty to ennoble the world. In keeping with philosophy of history, it is clear that their philosophy of value imposed upon their process of writing history—philosophy influenced method and hence product.

, considered by some as the first systematic, and, later, freely invented  for their historical figures and chose their historical subjects with an eye toward ly improving the reader. History was supposed to teach you good examples to follow. The assumption that history "should teach good examples" influenced how history was written. Events of the past are just as likely to show bad examples that are not to be followed, but these historians would either not record them or re-interpret them to support their assumption of history's purpose.

From the Classical period to the, historians alternated between focusing on subjects designed to improve mankind and on a devotion to fact. History was composed mainly of of  or  describing ic gestures such as the  about the, during 's first campaign to conquer the.

In the, , who is considered one of the fathers of the philosophy of history, discussed his philosophy of history and society in detail in his . His work was a culmination of earlier works by in the spheres of, , and , such as those of , , al-Dawwani, and.

By the, historians had turned toward a more approach focusing on  as much as possible, but still with an eye on telling histories that could instruct and improve. Starting with and, historical studies began to progress towards a more modern scientific form. In the, the debate in thus was not so much whether history was intended to improve the , but what causes turned history and how historical change could be understood.

Cyclical and linear history
Given that human beings are currently understood by humans to be the single Earthly creatures capable of abstract thought, a perception of time, and a manipulation of thought concerning the past, the future and the present, an inquiry into the nature of history is based in part on some working understanding of time in the human experience.

History (as contemporarily understood by Western thought), tends to follow an assumption of linear progression: "this happened, and then that happened; that happened because this happened first." This is in part a reflection of Western Thought's foundation of. But this linear assumption is not universally biologically inherent in the human species. There are other cultures with other assumptions about the nature of time and, as such, the philosophy of historical inquiry would be affected. If time is cyclical, then can "the past" also be "the future"? (as remarked by "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", which suggests the past will not forever remain in the past but may happen again in the future. If time is a line, we are both moving away from the past and towards the past as future, as would occur if the line were a circle).

Most ancient cultures held a conception of history and  that was not. They believed that history was cyclical with alternating Dark and Golden Ages. called this the Great Year, and other Greeks called it an aeon or eon. In researching this topic, Giorgio de Santillana, the former professor of the history of science at MIT, and author of Hamlet's Mill, documented over 200 myths from over 30 ancient cultures that generally tied the rise and fall of history to one precession of the equinox. Examples are the ancient doctrine of, which existed in , the , or the ' and the ' conceptions. In The Works and Days, described five : the, the , the , the  and the , which began with the. Other scholars suggest there were just four ages, corresponding to the four metals, and the Heroic age was a description of the Bronze Age. A four age count would be in line with the Vedic or Hindu ages known as the Kali, Dwapara, Treta and Satya yugas. The Greeks believed that just as mankind went through four stages of character during each rise and fall of history so did government. They considered and  as the healthy regimes of the higher ages; and  and  as corrupted regimes common to the lower ages.

In the East were developed in China (as a theory of ) and in the Islamic world by.

and substituted the myth of  from the  to it, which would give the basis for, which attempts to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the existence of God creating a global explanation of history with the belief in a. Theodicies claimed that history had a progressive direction leading to an end, such as the, given by a superior power. , or  in his Discourse On  (1679) formulated such theodicies, but, who coined the term, was the most famous philosopher who created a theodicy. Leibniz based his explanation on the, which states that anything that happens, does happen for a specific reason. Thus, what man saw as evil, such as wars, epidemia and natural disasters, was in fact only an effect of his perception; if one adopted, this evil event in fact only took place in the larger divine plan. Hence, theodicies explained the necessity of evil as a relative element which forms part of a larger plan of history. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason was not, however, a gesture of. Confronted with the Antique, Leibniz invented the theory of "", distinguishing two types of necessity, to cope with the problem of determinism.

During the, cyclical conceptions of history would become common, illustrated by the. 's  (1513-1517) are an example. The notion of contained in itself its ascendance and its, as in 's ' , which was placed on the '.

were maintained in the and  by authors such as, , and , who conceived the human past as a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler, like Butterfield was writing in reaction to the carnage of the first World War, believed that a civilization enters upon an era of after its soul dies. He thought that the soul of the West was dead and Caesarism was about to begin.

The recent development of mathematical models of long-term secular sociodemographic cycles has revived interest in cyclical theories of history (see, for example, Historical Dynamics by, or Introduction to Social Macrodynamics by et al.).

The Enlightenment's ideal of progress
During the Aufklärung, or Enlightenment, history began to be seen as both linear and irreversible. 's interpretations of the various "stages of humanity" or 's were one of the most important formulations of such conceptions of history, which trusted. As in 's Emile (1762) treatise on education (or the "art of training men"), the Aufklärung conceived the human species as perfectible: could be infinitely developed through a well-thought. In  (1784), defined the Aufklärung as the capacity to think by oneself, without referring to an exterior authority, be it a  or :

In a paradoxical way, Kant supported in the same time as a way of leading humanity towards its. He had conceived the process of history in his short treaty  (1784). On one hand, enlightened despotism was to lead nations toward their liberation, and progress was thus inscribed in the scheme of history; on the other hand, liberation could only be acquired by a singular gesture, Sapere Aude! Thus, autonomy ultimately relied on the individual's "determination and courage to think without the direction of another."

After Kant, developed a complex theodicy in the  (1807), which based its conception of history on : the negative (wars, etc.) was conceived by Hegel as the motor of history. Hegel argued that history is a constant process of dialectic clash, with each encountering an opposing idea or event. The clash of both was "superated" in the, a conjunction which conserved the contradiction between thesis and its antithesis while it. As would famously explain afterwards, concretely that meant that if 's monarchic rule in France was seen as the thesis, the  could be seen as its antithesis. However, both were sublated in, who reconciled the revolution with the ; he conserved the change. Hegel thought that accomplished itself, through this dialectical scheme, in History. Through, man transformed nature in order to be able to recognize himself in it; he made it his "home". Thus, reason spiritualized nature. Roads, fields, fences, and all the modern infrastructure in which we live is the result of this spiritualization of nature. Hegel thus explained social progress as the result of the labour of reason in history. However, this dialectical reading of history involved, of course, contradiction, so history was also conceived of as constantly conflicting: Hegel theorized this in his famous.

According to Hegel,

Thus, philosophy was to explain Geschichte (history) afterwards; philosophy is always late, it is only an interpretation which is to recognize what is rational in the real. And, according to Hegel, only what is recognized as rational is real. This idealist understanding of philosophy as interpretation was famously challenged by 's  (1845): "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

Social evolutionism
Inspired by the Enlightenment's ideal of progress, social evolutionism became a popular conception in the 19th century. 's (1798–1857) conception of history, which he divided into the theological stage, the metaphysical stage and the positivist stage, brought upon by modern, was one of the most influential doctrine of progress. The, as it was later called, associated with scholars of the and  eras in , such as  or , gives an example of such influence, by looking at human history as progress from savagery and ignorance toward peace, prosperity, and science. Maine described the direction of progress as "from status to contract," from a world in which a child's whole life is pre-determined by the circumstances of his birth, toward one of mobility and choice.

The publication of 's  in demonstrated. However, it was quickly transposed from its original biological field to the social field, in "" theories. , who coined the term "", or in  (1877) developed evolutionist theories independent from Darwin's works, which would be later interpreted as social Darwinism. These 19th-century theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more  over time, and equated the culture and technology of Western civilisation with progress.

formulated his in, which stated that " recapitulates ": the individual evolution of each individual reproduces the species' evolution. Hence, a child goes through all the steps from primitive society to modern society. This was later proved false. Haeckel did not support Darwin's theory of introduced in  (1859), rather believing in a.

Progress was not necessarily, however, positive. 's  (1853-55) was a description of the evolution of the "" which was disappearing through. Gobineau's works had a large popularity in the so-called theories which developed during the  period.

After the, and even before (–) harshly criticized it, the Whig interpretation had gone out of style. The bloodletting of that conflict had indicted the whole notion of linear progress. famously said: "We civilizations now know ourselves mortal."

However, the notion itself didn't completely disappear.  by  proposed a similar notion of progress, positing that the worldwide adoption of  as the single accredited political system and even modality of human consciousness would represent the "End of History." Fukuyama's work stems from an reading of 's .

A key component to making sense of all of this is to simply recognize that all these issues in social evolution merely serve to support the suggestion that how one considers the nature of history will impact the interpretation and conclusions drawn about history. The critical under-explored question is less about history as content and more about history as process.

The validity of the "hero" in historical studies
Further information: and 

After, who insisted on the role of "great men" in history, with his famous statement about , "I saw the Spirit on his horse", argued that history was the  of a few central individuals, es, such as  or , writing that "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." His heroes were political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states. His history of great men, of geniuses good and evil, sought to organize change in the advent of greatness. Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position have been rare in the late 20th century. Most philosophers of history contend that the motive forces in history can best be described only with a wider lens than the one he used for his portraits. A.C. Danto, for example, wrote of the importance of the individual in history, but extended his definition to include social individuals, defined as "individuals we may provisionally characterize as containing individual human beings amongst their parts. Examples of social individuals might be social classes [...], national groups [...], religious organizations [...], large-scale events [...], large-scale social movements [...], etc." (Danto, "The Historical Individual", 266, in Philosophical Analysis and History, edited by Williman H. Dray, Rainbow-Bridge Book Co., 1966). The Great Man approach to history was most popular with professional historians in the 19th century; a popular work of this school is the  (1911) which contains lengthy and detailed biographies about the great men of history. For example to read about (what is known today as) the "", one would consult the biography of.

After 's based on the, which raised attention for the first time to the importance of social factors such as  in the unfolding of history,  wrote "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown....Before he can remake his society, his society must make him."

The, founded by and , were a major landmark on the shift from a history centered on  to studies concentrating in , , , and other social forces. 's studies on the as "hero" of history, 's history of, etc., were inspired by this School.

Regardless, it is clear that how one thinks about history will to a large degree determine how one will record history - in other words, the philosophy of history will forge the direction for the method of history, which in turn affect the conclusions - history itself.

Does history have a teleological sense?
For further information: and 

claimed that history had a progressive direction leading to an end, given by a superior power. However, this transcendent teleological sense can be thought as to human history itself. Hegel probably represents the epitome of teleological philosophy of history. Hegel's teleology was taken up by in his  (see Social evolutionism above). Thinkers such as, , Althusser or deny any teleological sense to history, claiming that it is best characterized by discontinuities, ruptures, and various time-scales, which the  had demonstrated.

Schools of thought influenced by see history as progressive, too &mdash; but they saw, and see progress as the outcome of a  in which factors working in opposite directions are over time reconciled (see above). History was best seen as directed by a, and traces of the Zeitgeist could be seen by looking backward. Hegel believed that history was moving man toward ".", and some also claim he thought that the n state incarnated the "". In his Lessons on the History of Philosophy, he explains that each epochal philosophy is in a way the whole of philosophy; it is not a subdivision of the Whole but this Whole itself apprehended in a specific modality.

Historical accounts of writing history
A classic example of history being written by the victors would be the scarcity of unbiased information that has come down to us about the. Roman historians left tales of cruelty and practiced by their longtime enemies; however no Carthaginian was left alive to give their side of the story.

Similarly, we only have the side of how Christianity came to be the dominant religion of Europe. However, we know very little about other European religions, such as. We have the European version of the, with an interpretation of the native version of events only emerging to popular consciousness since the early 1980s. We have Greek history of the, but the Persian recall of the events is little known in Western Culture.

In many respects, the head of state may be guilty of cruelties or even simply a different way of doing things. In some societies, however, to speak of or write critically of rulers can amount to conviction of treason and death. As such, in many ways, what is left as the "official record" of events is oft influenced by one's desire to avoid exile or execution.

The incident in 1989 is an example of a society in which freedom to speak out is not tolerated. How can an historical account from such a regime be accepted as "truth" when there is no voice to alternatives?

A possible counterexample could be the, where it can be argued that the losers (Southerners) have written more history books on the subject than the winners and, until recently, dominated the national perception of history. Confederate generals such as and  are generally held in higher esteem than their Union counterparts. Popular films such as ', ' and  have told the story from the Southern viewpoint.

As is true of, the historical record of America being is now sometimes presented as a history of invasion, exploitation and dominance of a people who had been there before the Europeans. This correction of the historical record is called (not to be confused with, which is the denial of s and , including ). The revision of previously accepted historical accounts which tended to give only the European perspective on events has proven to be not only stable, but consistent with other historical events as seen in the in the whole world by European nations. In the same sense, the teaching, in, of the , has been criticized by several historians, and is the subject of frequent debates. Thus, in contradiction with the February 23, 2005, voted by the conservative party, historian Benjamin Stora notes that: "'As Algerians do not appear in their 'indigenous' conditions and their sub-citizens status, as the is never evoqued, as none of the great figures of the resistance &mdash;, &mdash; emerge nor retain attention, in one word, as no one explains to students what has been colonisation, we make them unable to understand why the decolonisation took place.'"

Obviously the victors do have advantages in promoting their version of events, even if they don't erase their enemies completely from existence. The victors may have control over the churches, the courts and schools. This may give the ruling elites nearly total control over the molding of consciousness and discourse over those they rule. In s, ruthless allows only the state-approved version of events to be made public, and much that happened remains secret if it proved hurtful to the ruling elite. are not immune however. In the West for example, the into ever fewer hands has given the captains of major media and the  industry increased control over the parameters of public discourse which form the boundaries of debate we all have in classrooms, and even with friends and co-workers on matters such as war and politics.

The changes to how history is written, whether in the guise of "victory" or "political correctness" simply reflects the shifting nature of power within society and the ability of different voices in a democracy to contribute their own unique viewpoint to what eventually becomes our overall historical fabric.

Democracy has gone a long way towards a "truing" of the historical process. ,, all contribute to the promulgation of a viewpoint. Not that views agreed upon by a group are necessarily truth, but that such democratic concepts provide more opportunity for an historical account to be allowed to be truer.

Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse
The historico-political analyzed by  in Society Must Be Defended (1975-76) considered  as the fragile product of a historical struggle, first conceptualized under the name of "race struggle" &mdash; however, "race"'s meaning was different from today's biological notion, being closer to the sense of "nation" (distinct from ; its signification is here closer to ""). , for example, was an exponent of nobility rights. He claimed that the French nobility were the racial descendants of the Franks who invaded France (while the Third Estate was descended from the conquered Gauls), and had right to power by virtue of right of conquest. He used this approach to formulate a historical thesis of the course of French political history which was a critique of both the monarchy and the Third Estate. Foucault regarded him as the founder of the historico-political discourse as political weapon.

In Great Britain, this historico-political discourse was used by the bourgeoisie, the people and the aristocracy as a means of struggle against the monarchy - cf. or. In France,, , and then , and  reappropriated this form of discourse. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, this discourse was incorporated by racist biologists and, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "" (Nazism). According to Foucault, Marxists also seized this discourse and took it in a different direction, transforming the notion of "race" into the historical notion of "", defined by socially structured position: capitalist or proletarian. This displacement of discourse constitutes one of the basis of Foucault's thought: discourse is not tied to the, rather the "subject" is a construction of discourse. Moreover, discourse is not the simple and mirror reflexion of an economical, but is a product and the battlefield of multiples forces - which may not be reduced to the simple   of two energies.

Foucault shows that what specifies this discourse from the juridical and philosophical discourse is its conception of truth: truth is no longer absolute, it is the product of "race struggle". History itself, which was traditionally the 's science, the of his glorious feats, became the discourse of the people, a political stake. The subject is not any more a neutral, or , as in 's or 's conceptions. Therefore, - what became - the "" must search in history's furor, under the "juridical code's dried blood", the multiples from which a fragile  temporarily finally emerged. This may be, perhaps, compared to the discourse in Ancient Greece. Foucault warns that it has nothing to do with 's or 's discourse on war, for to this popular discourse, the is nothing more than "an illusion, an instrument, or, at the best, an enemy. It is {the historico-political discourse} a discourse that beheads the king, anyway that dispenses itself from the sovereign and that denounces it".

History and education
Since 's , civic education and instruction has had a central role in and the constitution of a common identity. History has thus sometimes became the target of, for example in attempts. Plato's insistence on the importance of education was relayed by Rousseau's Emile: Or, On Education (1762), a necessary counterpart of The  (also 1762). has been seen by an regimes and the Enlightenment as a prerequisite of the masses' progressive emancipation, as conceived by in  (What Is Enlightenment?, 1784).

The creation of modern education systems, instrumental in the construction of, also passed by the elaboration of a common, national history. are one of the many ways through which this common history was transmitted. ', for example, was the 's classic textbook for elementary school: it described the story of two French children who, following the German annexation of the region in 1870, go on a tour de France during which they become aware of France's diversity and the existence of the various '.

In most societies, schools and curricula are controlled by governments. As such, there is always an opportunity for governments to impose. Granted, often governments in free societies serve to protect freedoms, check and breaches of constitutional rights; but the power itself to impose is available to use the education system to influence thought of malleable minds, positively or negatively, towards truth or towards a version of truth.

Narrative and history
A current popular conception considers the value of narrative in the writing and experience of history. Important analysts in this area include, Louis Mink and. Some have doubted this approach because it draws fictional and historical narrative closer together, and there remains a perceived “fundamental bifurcation between historical and fictional narrative” (Ricœur, vol. 1, 52). In spite of this, most modern historians, such as or, would consider narrative writing important to their approaches. The theory of narrated history (or historicized narrative) holds that the structure of lived experience, and such experience narrated in both fictional and non-fictional works (literature and historiography) have in common the figuration of ‘’temporal experience." In this way, narrative has a generously encompassing ability to “‘grasp together’ and integrate[] into one whole and complete story” the “composite representations” of historical experience (Ricœur x, 173). Louis Mink writes that, “the significance of past occurrences is understandable only as they are locatable in the ensemble of interrelationships that can be grasped only in the construction of narrative form” (148). Noted postmodern theorist also analyzes historical understanding this way, and writes that “history is inaccessible to us except in textual form […] it can be approached only by way of prior (re)textualization” (82).

History as Propaganda: Is history always written by the victors?
In his "Society must be Defended", posited that the victors of a social struggle use their political dominance to suppress a defeated adversary's version of historical events in favor of their own, which may go so far as  (see Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse above). Nations adopting such an approach would likely fashion a "universal" theory of history to support their aims, with a teleological and deterministic philosophy of history used to justify the inevitableness and rightness of their victories (see The Enlightenment's ideal of progress above). Philosopher Paul Ricoeur has written of the use of this approach by totalitarian and Nazi regimes, with such regimes "exercis[ing] a virtual violence upon the diverging tendencies of history" (History and Truth 183), and with fanaticism the result. For Ricoeur, rather than a unified, teleological philosophy of history, "We carry on several histories simultaneously, in times whose periods, crises, and pauses do not coincide. We enchain, abandon, and resume several histories, much as a chess player who plays several games at once, renewing now this one, now the another" (History and Truth 186). For Ricoeur, 's unified view of history may be suspect, but is nevertheless seen as:

"the philosophy of history par excellence: not only does it provide a formula for the dialectics of social forces&mdash;under the name of historical materialism&mdash;but it also sees in the proletarian class the reality which is at once universal and concrete and which, although it be oppressed today, will constitute the unity of history in the future. From this standpoint, the proletarian perspective furnishes both a theoretical meaning of history and a practical goal for history, a principle of explication and a line of action. (History and Truth 183)"

believed that historians must take a radically different view point from the  and  points of view, in an attempt to create a sort of, which would be able to conceive an alternative conception of history, not based, as in classical historical studies, on the philosophical and juridical discourse of --an approach that would invariably adhere to major states (the victors') points of view.

's  is a fictional account of the manipulation of the historical record for nationalist aims and manipulation of power. In the book, he wrote, "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." The creation of a "national story" by way of management of the historical record is at the heart of the debate about history as propaganda. To some degree, all nations are active in the promotion of such "national stories," with ethnicity, nationalism, gender, power, heroic figures, class considerations and important national events and trends all clashing and competing within the narrative.