Philosophy of history

The philosophy of history asks at least these questions:

Patterns in the past

The "Whig interpretation of history," one associated with scholars of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in England, such as Henry Maine or Thomas Macaulay, looks at much of 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.

Related Topics:
Victorian - Edwardian - England - Henry Maine - Thomas Macaulay

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After the first world war, and even before Herbert Butterfield (1900 – 1979) harshly criticized the Whig interpretation, it had gone out of style — the bloodletting of that conflict had indicted the whole notion of linear progress. However, The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama proposed a very similar notion of progress.

Related Topics:
First world war - Herbert Butterfield - 1900 - 1979 - The End of History and the Last Man - Francis Fukuyama

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Schools of thought influenced by Hegel and Marx see history as progressive, too — but they saw, and see progress as the outcome of a dialectic in which factors working in opposite directions are over time reconciled. Hegel argued that history is a constant process of dialectic clash, where one idea or event will form the thesis, an opposing idea or event will be its antithesis, and the clash of the two will result in a synthesis. In synthesis, neither the thesis nor the antithesis is destroyed, but the prevailing moment will reflect a conjunction of the two. History was best seen as directed by a zeitgeist, and traces of the zeitgest could be seen by looking backward. He believed that history was moving man toward "civilization." Marx adapted Hegel's dialectic to develop the materialist dialectic. He saw the struggle of thesis, antithesis, and resultant synthesis as always taking place in economic and material terms. Ideas and political organizations were the result of material production and conditions of material provision and consumption. For Marx, the continual battle between opposing forces within modes of production led inevitably to revolutionary changes in economics and eventually communism, which would be the eventual recreation of an early, literally pre-historic state. Hegel and Marx are both teleological in their histories: they both believe that history is progressive and directed toward a particular end.

Related Topics:
Hegel - Marx - Dialectic - Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis - Zeitgeist - Materialist dialectic - Communism

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Other scholars, such as Oswald Spengler and Nikolay Danilevsky, have seen in the human past a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler, who like Butterfield was writing in reaction to the carnage of the first world war, believed that a civilization enters upon an era of Caesarism after its soul dies. He thought that the soul of the West was dead and Caesarism was about to begin.

Related Topics:
Oswald Spengler - Nikolay Danilevsky - Caesarism

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