Philosophy of history is the philosophical
study of history and the past. The term was
coined by Voltaire.
== Types ==
In contemporary philosophy a distinction is
made between critical philosophy of history
(also known as analytic) and speculative philosophy
of history. The names of these types are derived
from C. D. Broad's distinction between critical
philosophy and speculative philosophy.The
former studies the past itself whereas the
latter is the equivalent of what the philosophy
of science is for nature.Though there is some
overlap between the two aspects, they can
usually be distinguished; modern professional
historians tend to be skeptical about speculative
philosophy of history.
Sometimes critical philosophy of history is
included under historiography. Philosophy
of history should not be confused with the
history of philosophy, which is the study
of the development of philosophical ideas
in their historical context.
== Pre-modern history ==
In his Poetics, Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
maintained the superiority of poetry over
history because poetry speaks of what must
or should be true rather than merely what
is true.
Herodotus, a fifth-century BCE contemporary
of Socrates, broke from the Homeric tradition
of passing narrative from generation to generation
in his work "Investigations" (Ancient Greek:
Ἱστορίαι; Istoríai), also known
as Histories. Herodotus, regarded by some
as the first systematic historian, and, later,
Plutarch (46–120 CE) freely invented speeches
for their historical figures and chose their
historical subjects with an eye toward morally
improving the reader. History was supposed
to teach good examples for one to follow.
The assumption that history "should teach
good examples" influenced how writers produced
history. Events of the past are just as likely
to show bad examples that one should not follow,
but classical historians would either not
record such examples or would re-interpret
them to support their assumption of history's
purpose.From the Classical period to the Renaissance,
historians alternated between focusing on
subjects designed to improve mankind and on
a devotion to fact. History was composed mainly
of hagiographies of monarchs or of epic poetry
describing heroic gestures (such as The Song
of Roland—about the Battle of Roncevaux
Pass (778) during Charlemagne's first campaign
to conquer the Iberian peninsula).
In the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun, who
is considered one of the fathers of the philosophy
of history, discussed his philosophy of history
and society in detail in his Muqaddimah (1377).
His work represents a culmination of earlier
works by medieval Islamic sociologists in
the spheres of Islamic ethics, political science,
and historiography, such as those of al-Farabi
(c. 872 – c. 950), Ibn Miskawayh, al-Dawani,
and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201–1274). Ibn
Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition
and uncritical acceptance of historical data".
He introduced a scientific method to the philosophy
of history (which Dawood considers something
"totally new to his age") and he often referred
to it as his "new science",
which is now associated with historiography.
His historical method also laid the groundwork
for the observation of the role of the state,
communication, propaganda, and systematic
bias in history.By the eighteenth century
historians had turned toward a more positivist
approach—focusing on fact as much as possible,
but still with an eye on telling histories
that could instruct and improve. Starting
with Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889) and
Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903), historical
studies began to move towards a more modern
scientific form. In the Victorian era, historiographers
debated less whether history was intended
to improve the reader, and more on what causes
turned history and how one could understand
historical change.
== Cyclical and linear history ==
Narrative history tends to follow an assumption
of linear progression: "this happened, and
then that happened; that happened because
this happened first".
Many ancient cultures held mythical concepts
of history and of time that were not linear.
Such societies saw history as cyclical, with
alternating Dark and Golden Ages. Plato taught
the concept of the Great Year, and other Greeks
spoke of aeons (eons). Similar examples include
the ancient doctrine of eternal return, which
existed in Ancient Egypt, in the Indian religions,
among the Greek Pythagoreans' and in the Stoics'
conceptions. In his Works and Days, Hesiod
described five Ages of Man: the Golden Age,
the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Heroic
Age, and the Iron Age, which began with the
Dorian invasion. Some scholars identify just
four ages, corresponding to the four metals,
with the Heroic age as a description of the
Bronze Age. A four-age count would match the
Vedic or Hindu ages known as the Kali, Dwapara,
Treta and Satya yugas. According to Jainism,
this world has no beginning or end but goes
through cycles of upturns (utsarpini) and
downturns (avasarpini) constantly. Many Greeks
believed that just as mankind went through
four stages of character during each rise
and fall of history so did government. They
considered democracy and monarchy as the healthy
régimes of the higher ages; and oligarchy
and tyranny as corrupted régimes common to
the lower ages.In the East, cyclical theories
of history developed in China (as a theory
of dynastic cycle) and in the Islamic world
in the work of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406).
The story of the Fall of Man from the Garden
of Eden, as recounted and elaborated in Judaism
and Christianity, preserves traces of a moral
cycle; this would give the basis for theodicies
which attempt to reconcile the existence of
evil in the world with the existence of a
God, providing a global explanation of history
with belief in a coming Messianic Age. Some
theodicies claimed that history had a progressive
direction leading to an eschatological end,
such as the Apocalypse, organized by a superior
power. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274) and Bossuet (in his Discourse
On Universal History of 1679) formulated such
theodicies, but Leibniz (1646-1716), who coined
the term Théodicée, developed the most famous
philosophical theodicy. Leibniz based his
explanation on the principle of sufficient
reason, which states that anything that happens,
does happen for a specific reason. Thus, while
man might see certain events as evil (such
as wars, epidemics and natural disasters),
such a judgement in fact only reflected human
perception; if one adopted God's view, "evil"
events in fact only took place in the larger
divine plan. In this way theodicies explained
the necessity of evil as a relative element
that forms part of a larger plan of history.
Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason was
not, however, a gesture of fatalism. Confronted
with the antique problem of future contingents,
Leibniz invented the theory of "compossible
worlds", distinguishing two types of necessity,
to cope with the problem of determinism.
During the Renaissance, cyclical conceptions
of history would become common, with proponents
illustrating decay and rebirth by pointing
to the decline of the Roman Empire. Machiavelli's
Discourses on Livy (1513–1517) provide an
example. The notion of Empire contained in
itself ascendance and decadence, as in Edward
Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire (1776) (which the Roman
Catholic Church placed on the Index Librorum
Prohibitorum).
Cyclical conceptions continued in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries in the works of authors
such as Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), Nikolay
Danilevsky (1822–1885), and Paul Kennedy
(1945– ), who conceived the human past as
a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler,
like Butterfield, when writing in reaction
to the carnage of the First World War of 1914–1918,
believed that a civilization enters upon an
era of Caesarism
after its soul dies. Spengler thought that
the soul of the West was dead and that Caesarism
was about to begin.
The development of mathematical models of
long-term secular sociodemographic cycles
revived interest in cyclical theories of history
(see, for example, Historical Dynamics (2003)
by Peter Turchin, or Introduction to Social
Macrodynamics
by Andrey Korotayev et al.).
== Sustainable history ==
"Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man"
is a philosophy of history proposed by Nayef
Al-Rodhan, where history is defined as a durable
progressive trajectory in which the quality
of life on this planet or all other planets
is premised on the guarantee of human dignity
for all at all times under all circumstances.
This theory views history as a linear progression
propelled by good governance, which is, in
turn, to be achieved through balancing the
emotional, amoral, and egoistic elements of
human nature with the human dignity needs
of reason, security, human rights, accountability,
transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation,
and inclusiveness.Human dignity lies at the
heart of this theory and is paramount for
ensuring the sustainable history of humankind.
Among other things, human dignity means having
a positive sense of self and instilling individuals
with respect for the communities to which
they belong. Thus, reconciling humans' predisposition
for emotionally self-interested behavior with
the imperatives of human dignity appears as
the one of the most important challenges to
global policymakers. At national level, they
have to protect their citizens against violence
and provide them with access to food, housing,
clothes, health care, and education. Basic
welfare provision and security are fundamental
to ensuring human dignity. Environment and
ecological considerations need to be addressed
as well. Finally, cultural diversity, inclusiveness
and participation at all levels, of all communities
are key imperatives of human dignity.
In this respect, the sustainable history philosophy
challenges existing concepts of civilisations,
such as Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations.
Instead, it argues that human civilisation
should not be thought of as consisting of
numerous separate and competing civilisations,
but rather it should be thought of collectively
as only one human civilisation. Within this
civilisation are many geo-cultural domains
that comprise sub-cultures. Nayef Al-Rodhan
envisions human civilisation as an ocean into
which the different geo-cultural domains flow
like rivers, "The Ocean Model of one Human
Civilization". At points where geo-cultural
domains first enter the ocean of human civilisation,
there is likely to be a concentration or dominance
of that culture. However, over time, all the
rivers of geo-cultural domains become one.
There is fluidity at the ocean's centre and
cultures have the opportunity to borrow between
them. Under such historical conditions the
most advanced forms of human enterprise can
thrive and lead us to a 'civilisational triumph'.
Nevertheless, there are cases where geographical
proximity of various cultures can also lead
to friction and conflict.
Nayef Al-Rodhan concludes that within an increasingly
globalised, interconnected and interdependent
world, human dignity cannot be ensured globally
and in a sustainable way through sole national
means. A genuine global effort is required
to meet the minimum criteria of human dignity
globally. Areas such as conflict prevention,
socio-economic justice, gender equality, protection
of human rights, environmental protection
require a holistic approach and a common action.
== The Enlightenment's ideal of progress ==
During the Aufklärung, or Enlightenment,
history began to be seen as both linear and
irreversible. Condorcet's interpretations
of the various "stages of humanity" or Auguste
Comte's positivism were one of the most important
formulations of such conceptions of history,
which trusted social progress. As in Jean-Jacques
Rousseau's Emile (1762) treatise on education
(or the "art of training men"), the Aufklärung
conceived the human species as perfectible:
human nature could be infinitely developed
through a well-thought pedagogy. In What is
Enlightenment? (1784), Immanuel Kant defined
the Aufklärung as the capacity to think by
oneself, without referring to an exterior
authority, be it a prince or tradition:
Enlightenment is when a person leaves behind
a state of immaturity and dependence (Unmündigkeit)
for which they themselves were responsible.
Immaturity and dependence are the inability
to use one's own intellect without the direction
of another. One is responsible for this immaturity
and dependence, if its cause is not a lack
of intelligence or education, but a lack of
determination and courage to think without
the direction of another. Sapere aude! Dare
to know! is therefore the slogan of the Enlightenment.
In a paradoxical way, Kant supported in the
same time enlightened despotism as a way of
leading humanity towards its autonomy. He
had conceived the process of history in his
short treaty Idea for a Universal History
with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (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, G. W. F. Hegel developed a complex
theodicy in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807),
which based its conception of history on dialectics:
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 thesis encountering an opposing
idea or event antithesis. The clash of both
was "superated" in the synthesis, a conjunction
that conserved the contradiction between thesis
and its antithesis while sublating it. As
Marx famously explained afterwards, concretely
that meant that if Louis XVI's monarchic rule
in France was seen as the thesis, the French
Revolution could be seen as its antithesis.
However, both were sublated in Napoleon, who
reconciled the revolution with the Ancien
Régime; he conserved the change. Hegel thought
that reason accomplished itself, through this
dialectical scheme, in History. Through labour,
man transformed nature so he could 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 dialectic
of the lord and the bondsman.
According to Hegel,
One more word about giving instruction as
to what the world ought to be. Philosophy
in any case always comes on the scene too
late to give it... When philosophy paints
its gray in gray, then has a shape of life
grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it
cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only
with the falling of the dusk.
Thus, philosophy was to explain Geschichte
(history) afterward. Philosophy is always
late, it is only an interpretation of 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 Karl Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach (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 nineteenth century. Auguste Comte's
(1798–1857) positivist conception of history,
which he divided into the theological stage,
the metaphysical stage and the positivist
stage, brought upon by modern science, was
one of the most influential doctrines of progress.
The Whig interpretation of history, as it
was later called, associated with scholars
of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in Britain,
such as Henry Maine or Thomas Macaulay, 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 Darwin's The Origin of
Species in 1859 introduced human evolution.
However, it was quickly transposed from its
original biological field to the social field,
in "social Darwinism" theories. Herbert Spencer,
who coined the term "survival of the fittest",
or Lewis Henry Morgan in Ancient Society (1877)
developed evolutionist theories independent
from Darwin's works, which would be later
interpreted as social Darwinism. These nineteenth-century
unilineal evolution theories claimed that
societies start out in a primitive state and
gradually become more civilised over time,
and equated the culture and technology of
Western civilisation with progress.
Ernst Haeckel formulated his recapitulation
theory in 1867, which stated that "ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny": the evolution of
each individual reproduces the species' evolution,
such as in the development of embryos. Hence,
a child goes through all the steps from primitive
society to modern society. This was later
discredited. Haeckel did not support Darwin's
theory of natural selection introduced in
The Origin of Species (1859), rather believing
in a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Progress was not necessarily, however, positive.
Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality
of the Human Races (1853–55) was a decadent
description of the evolution of the "Aryan
race" which was disappearing through miscegenation.
Gobineau's works had a large popularity in
the so-called scientific racism theories that
developed during the New Imperialism period.
After the first world war, and even before
Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) harshly
criticized it, the Whig interpretation had
gone out of style. The bloodletting of that
conflict had indicted the whole notion of
linear progress. Paul Valéry famously said:
"We civilizations now know ourselves mortal."
However, the notion itself didn't completely
disappear. The End of History and the Last
Man (1992) by Francis Fukuyama proposed a
similar notion of progress, positing that
the worldwide adoption of liberal democracies
as the single accredited political system
and even modality of human consciousness would
represent the "End of History". Fukuyama's
work stems from an Kojevian reading of Hegel's
Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
Unlike Maurice Godelier who interprets history
as a process of transformation, Tim Ingold
suggests that history is a movement of autopoiesisA
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.
In 2011 Steven Pinker wrote a history of violence
and humanity from an evolutionary perspective
in which he shows that violence has declined
statistically over time.
=== The validity of the "great man theory"
in historical studies ===
After Hegel, who insisted on the role of "great
men" in history, with his famous statement
about Napoleon, "I saw the Spirit on his horse",
Thomas Carlyle argued that history was the
biography of a few central individuals, heroes,
such as Oliver Cromwell or Frederick the Great,
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 twentieth 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 nineteenth
century; a popular work of this school is
the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition
(1911), which contains lengthy and detailed
biographies about the great men of history.
For example, to read about (what is known
today as) the "Migrations Period," consult
the biography of Attila the Hun.
After Marx's conception of a materialist history
based on the class struggle, which raised
attention for the first time to the importance
of social factors such as economics in the
unfolding of history, Herbert Spencer 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 Annales School, founded by Lucien Febvre
and Marc Bloch, were a major landmark on the
shift from a history centered on individual
subjects to studies concentrating in geography,
economics, demography, and other social forces.
Fernand Braudel's studies on the Mediterranean
Sea as "hero" of history, Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie's history of climate, etc., were inspired
by this School.
== Is history predetermined? ==
There is disagreement about the extent to
which history is ultimately deterministic
(see historical determinism). Some argue that
geography (see geographic determinism), economic
systems (see economic determinism), or culture
(see cultural determinism) prescribe "the
iron laws of history" that decide what is
to happen. Others see history as a long line
of acts and accidents, big and small, each
playing out its consequences until that process
gets interrupted by the next.
It should be noted that even determinists
do not rule that, from time to time, certain
cataclysmic events occur to change course
of history. Their main point is, however,
that such events are rare and that even apparently
large shocks like wars and revolutions often
have no more than temporary effects on the
evolution of the society.
Karl Marx is, perhaps, the most famous of
the exponents of economic determinism. For
him social institutions like political system,
religion and culture were merely by-products
of the basic economic system (see Base and
superstructure).However, even he did not see
history as completely deterministic. His essay
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
contains the most famous formulation of Marx's
view of the role of the individual in history:
Men make their own history, but they do not
make it just as they please; they do not make
it under circumstances chosen by themselves,
but under given circumstances directly encountered
and inherited from the past.
== Does history have a teleological sense?
==
Theodicy claimed that history had a progressive
direction leading to an eschatological end,
given by a superior power. However, this transcendent
teleological sense can be thought as immanent
to human history itself. Hegel probably represents
the epitome of teleological philosophy of
history. Hegel's teleology was taken up by
Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History
and the Last Man (see Social evolutionism
above). Thinkers such as Nietzsche, Michel
Foucault, Althusser, or Deleuze deny any teleological
sense to history, claiming that it is best
characterized by discontinuities, ruptures,
and various time-scales, which the Annales
School had demonstrated.
Schools of thought influenced by Hegel also
see history as progressive, but they saw,
and see, progress as the outcome of a dialectic
in which factors working in opposite directions
are over time reconciled (see above). History
was best seen as directed by a Zeitgeist,
and traces of the Zeitgeist could be seen
by looking backward. Hegel believed that history
was moving man toward "civilization", and
some also claim he thought that the Prussian
state incarnated the "End of History". 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—or more precisely, by the
survivors—would be the scarcity of unbiased
information that has survived to the present
about the Carthaginians. Roman historians
left tales of cruelty and human sacrifice
practiced by their longtime enemies; however
no Carthaginian was left alive to give their
side of the story.
Similarly, we only have the Christian side
of how Christianity came to be the dominant
religion of Europe. However, we know very
little about other European religions, such
as Paganism. We have the European version
of the conquest of the Americas, with an interpretation
of the native version of events only emerging
to popular consciousness since the early 1980s.
We have Herodotus's Greek history of the Persian
Wars, 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.
However, "losers" in certain time periods
often have more of an impetus than the "winners"
to write histories that comfort themselves
and justify their own behavior. Examples include
the historiography of the American Civil War,
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 Lee and Jackson are generally
held in higher esteem than their Union counterparts.
Popular films such as Cold Mountain, Gone
with the Wind, and The Birth of a Nation have
told the story from the Southern viewpoint.
Also, despite "losing" the Vietnam War, the
United States produces more scholarship on
the war than any other country, including
Vietnam. Popular history abounds with condemnations
of the cruelty of African slave traders and
colonists, despite the "winning" status of
those people in their heyday.As is true of
pre-Columbian populations of America, the
historical record of America being "discovered"
by Europeans is now sometimes presented as
a history of invasion, exploitation and dominance
of a people who had been there before the
Europeans. This reinterpretation of the historical
record is called historical revisionism, which
can take the form of negationism, which is
the denial of genocides and crimes against
humanity. The revision of previously accepted
historical accounts is a constant process
in which "today's winners are tomorrow's losers",
and the rise and fall of present institutions
and movements influence the way historians
see the past. In the same sense, the teaching,
in French secondary schools, of the Algerian
War of Independence and of colonialism, has
been criticized by several historians, and
is the subject of frequent debates. Thus,
in contradiction with the February 23, 2005
law on colonialism, voted by the UMP conservative
party, historian Benjamin Stora notes that:
As Algerians do not appear in their "indigenous"
conditions and their sub-citizens status,
as the history of nationalist movement is
never evoqued, as none of the great figures
of the resistance — Messali Hadj, Ferhat
Abbas — 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.
=== Michel Foucault's analysis of historical
and political discourse ===
The historico-political discourse analyzed
by Michel Foucault in Society Must Be Defended
(1975–76) considered truth as the fragile
product of a historical struggle, first conceptualized
under the name of "race struggle"—however,
the meaning of "race" was different from today's
biological notion, being closer to the sense
of "nation" (distinct from nation-states;
its signification is here closer to "people").
Boulainvilliers, 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—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. Edward Coke or
John Lilburne. In France, Boulainvilliers,
Nicolas Fréret, and then Sieyès, Augustin
Thierry, and Cournot reappropriated this form
of discourse. Finally, at the end of the nineteenth
century, this discourse was incorporated by
racialist biologists and eugenicists, who
gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even
more, transformed this popular discourse into
a "state racism" (Nazism). According to Foucault,
Marxists also seized this discourse and took
it in a different direction, transforming
the essentialist notion of "race" into the
historical notion of "class struggle", defined
by socially structured position: capitalist
or proletarian. This displacement of discourse
constitutes one of the bases of Foucault's
thought: discourse is not tied to the subject,
rather the "subject" is a construction of
discourse. Moreover, discourse is not the
simple ideological and mirror reflexion of
an economical infrastructure, but is a product
and the battlefield of multiples forces—which
may not be reduced to the simple dualist contradiction
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
sovereign's science, the legend of his glorious
feats and monument building,he(the sovereign)
built monuments,fought in wars and claims
victory on behalf of himself which ultimately
became the discourse of the people (modern
population), a political stake. The subject
is not any more a neutral arbitrator, judge,
or legislator, as in Solon's or Kant's conceptions.
Therefore, what became the "historical subject"
must search in history's furor, under the
"juridical code's dried blood", the multiple
contingencies from which a fragile rationality
temporarily finally emerged. This may be,
perhaps, compared to the sophist discourse
in Ancient Greece. Foucault warns that it
has nothing to do with Machiavelli's or Hobbes's
discourse on war, for to this popular discourse,
the Sovereign 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 Plato's Republic, civic education and
instruction has had a central role in politics
and the constitution of a common identity.
History has thus sometimes become the target
of propaganda, for example in historical revisionist
attempts. Plato's insistence on the importance
of education was relayed by Rousseau's Emile:
Or, On Education (1762), a necessary counterpart
of The Social Contract (also 1762). Public
education has been seen by republican regimes
and the Enlightenment as a prerequisite of
the masses' progressive emancipation, as conceived
by Kant in Was Ist Aufklärung? (What Is Enlightenment?,
1784).
The creation of modern education systems,
instrumental in the construction of nation-states,
also passed by the elaboration of a common,
national history. History textbooks are one
of the many ways through which this common
history was transmitted. Le Tour de France
par deux enfants, for example, was the Third
Republic's classic textbook for elementary
school: it described the story of two French
children who, following the German annexation
of the Alsace-Lorraine region in 1870, go
on a tour de France during which they become
aware of France's diversity and the existence
of the various patois.
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
hate speech, 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. A recent example of the fragility
of government involvement with history textbooks
was the Japanese history textbook controversies.
=== Narrative and history ===
A current popular conception considers the
value of narrative in the writing and experience
of history. Important thinkers in this area
include Paul Ricœur, Louis Mink, W.B. Gallie,
and Hayden White. 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 Barbara Tuchman or David
McCullough, 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). Marxist theorist
Fredric Jameson 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 and causality ===
Narrative and causal approaches to history
have often been contrasted or, even, opposed
to one another, yet they can also be viewed
as complementary. Some philosophers of history
such as Arthur Danto have claimed that "explanations
in history and elsewhere" describe "not simply
an event—something that happens—but a
change". Like many practicing historians,
they treat causes as intersecting actions
and sets of actions which bring about "larger
changes", in Danto's words: to decide "what
are the elements which persist through a change"
is "rather simple" when treating an individual's
"shift in attitude", but "it is considerably
more complex and metaphysically challenging
when we are interested in such a change as,
say, the break-up of feudalism or the emergence
of nationalism".Much of the historical debate
about causes has focused on the relationship
between communicative and other actions, between
singular and repeated ones, and between actions,
structures of action or group and institutional
contexts and wider sets of conditions. John
Gaddis has distinguished between exceptional
and general causes (following Marc Bloch)
and between "routine" and "distinctive links"
in causal relationships: "in accounting for
what happened at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945,
we attach greater importance to the fact that
President Truman ordered the dropping of an
atomic bomb than to the decision of the Army
Air Force to carry out his orders." He has
also pointed to the difference between immediate,
intermediate and distant causes. For his part,
Christopher Lloyd puts forward four "general
concepts of causation" used in history: the
"metaphysical idealist concept, which asserts
that the phenomena of the universe are products
of or emanations from an omnipotent being
or such final cause"; "the empiricist (or
Humean) regularity concept, which is based
on the idea of causation being a matter of
constant conjunctions of events"; "the functional/teleological/consequential
concept", which is "goal-directed, so that
goals are causes"; and the "realist, structurist
and dispositional approach, which sees relational
structures and internal dispositions as the
causes of phenomena".
=== History as propaganda: Is history always
written by the victors? ===
In his "Society must be Defended", Michel
Foucault 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 propaganda,
which may go so far as historical revisionism.
(See Michel Foucault's analysis of historical
and political discourse above.) Nations adopting
such an approach would likely fashion a "universal"
theory of history, a manifest destiny in the
US, to support their aims, with a teleological
and deterministic philosophy of history used
to justify the inevitableness and rightness
of their victories.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Culture of Defeat
took a completely different view—according
to him, defeat is a major driver for the defeated
to reinvent himself, while the victor—confirmed
in his attitudes and methods, dissatisfied
by the high losses and paltry gains made,
may be less creative and fall back. The concept
evokes Hegel's Master–slave dialectics—the
master is dependent of the work of the slave,
the slave has to take his master's and his
own interests into account, gets more knowledge
and more insight as the master; and in realising
that the world around him was created by his
own hands he may gain self-consciousness and
emancipation. Schivelbusch worked on three
basic examples, the South and its Lost cause
after the Civil War, France after the Franco-Prussian
War 1870/71, and Germany following World War
I. Wolfgang Schivelbusch view includes complex
psychological and cultural responses of vanquished
nations, from every level of society and sees
a need and rise of creativity and various
narratives for the defeated.Within a society
Walter Benjamin believed that Marxist historians
must take a radically different view point
from the bourgeois and idealist points of
view, in an attempt to create a sort of history
from below, 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 sovereignty—an approach that would invariably
adhere to major states (the victors') points
of view. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur asked instead
for a plurality in history writing. "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). George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four is a fictional account of the
manipulation of the historical record for
nationalist aims and manipulation of power.
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.
With regard to the history of science, the
introduction of new paradigms is depicted
by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Innovation in science or technology
is not based on single experiments or ideas
per se, but needs a supportive environment
and technical achievements to allow for a
change of perspective. In all sorts of science
(for e.g. mathematics see Bair et al. 2013)
innovative concepts are often being made in
parallel (compare Zeitgeist), and the "winning"
concept or individual contribution depends
not on the idea per se, but other aspects
as supportive circumstances, personal networks,
usability or simple wording. The process may
lead to format wars, which leaves losers and
winners behind.
The Semmelweis reflex is a metaphor for the
reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence
or new knowledge because it contradicts established
norms, beliefs or paradigms, Semmelweis himself
being driven into insanity, but his concept
prevailing after his death grew in a strong
narrative of the history of medicine.
== Judgement of history ==
For Hegel, the history of the world is also
the Last Judgement. Hegel adopted the expression
"Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht" ("world
history is a tribunal that judges the world";
a quote from Friedrich Schiller's poem "Resignation"
(published in 1786) and used to assert the
view that History is what judges men, their
actions and their opinions.Since the twentieth
century, Western historians have disavowed
the aspiration to provide the judgement of
history. The goals of historical judgements
or interpretations are separate to those of
legal judgements, that need to be formulated
quickly after the events and be final. The
issue of collective memory is related to the
issue of the "judgement of history".
Related to the issue of historical judgement
are those of the pretension to neutrality
and objectivity. Analytical and critical philosophers
of history have debated whether historians
should express judgements on historical figures,
or if this would infringe on their supposed
role. In general, positivists and neopositivists
oppose any value-judgement as unscientific.
== See also ==
Cliometrics
Cratology
Global policeman
Historic recurrence
Historiosophy
Political midlife crisis
State collapse
Societal collapseBooksThe Great Wave
The Anatomy of Power
The Anatomy of Revolution
