Philosophy of history

The philosophy of history asks at least these questions:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• what is the proper unit for the study of the human past? the individual, the city or sovereign territory, the civilization, or nothing less than the whole of the species?;
• what broad patterns can we discern through the study of the human past? Are there, for example, patterns of progress? or cycles? or, in the words of William Shakespeare's character Macbeth is it "life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?";
• if human history has been a progress toward some end, what is the driving force -- what is the engine of that progress? (The difference between Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx in their respective philosophies of history is a difference in the answers they give to this question -- attributing a spiritual and a material engine to progress, respectively.)
 
Philosophy of history: Unit of study ►