Philosophy of the history

The philosophy of the history is the branch of the Philosophie which attempts to reflect on the direction and the finalities of becoming historical. One can schematically distinguish two schools of thought, one which denies any idea of Finalité by affirming the layer nonsense of the history, fruit of the Hasard and the Imprévu, and the other which affirms on the contrary that she obeys a intention, whose realization Téléologique characterizes the significance of it.

History, fruit of the chance and the unforeseen one

The first school of thought affirms history what Macbeth said of the human existence in the tragedy éponyme of William Shakespeare (act V, scene 4): it is a “ history told by an idiot, full with noise and fury and which does not mean anything ”.

This position would be, more or less, that of Schopenhauer which denied, not only the scientificity of the history as a discipline (it is satisfied to coordinate facts when the characteristic of the Science is to subordinate them to principles or to deduce them from those), but the principle of even becoming historical. The Homme does not evolve/move, obeying permanently constant motivations which are generally morally bad as interested parties.

“ the general currency of the history should be: Eadem, sed to confine to bed (same things, but in another manner). That which read Hérodote studied the history enough to make the Philosophie of it; because it finds there already all that constitutes the posterior history of the world: agitations, actions, sufferings and intended human race, such as they arise from qualities in question and the fate of any life on ground ”.

The history is a teleological realization of a intention

The second school of thought rests on the postulate of the finality of the Histoire. Without any pun, the Sens (significance) of the history results from its direction (direction).

Antecedents: antiquity with the Rebirth

Aristote, in the ethical in Nicomaque , had conceptualized the direction in the form of the Telos (which gave teleological) or of the final Cause.

Saint Augustin assigned for finality with the history the realization of the City of God, i.e. reign of God.

As of the end of the Antiquity, the Christian authors considered that it was necessary to interpret the Écritures according to the Théorie of the four directions, the history being the first of these directions.

This theory was confirmed with the XII {{E}} and 13th century with the reconciliation by Thomas d' Aquin between Greek philosophy (Aristote) and the Christian thought.

The idea of Augustin saint was taken up at the 17th century by Bossuet, which interpreted to become it of humanity to the ell of the Bible .

Lights

The emergence of new scientific theories to the XVI {{E}} and 17th centuries deeply called into question these bases, on a plan Métaphysique.

If one reasons a priori, only three directions are possible:

the Decline (“perpetual regression”),
the Progress (“constant progression”)
or regression from a moral point of view and Intellectual (“stagnation”),

that Kant defines respectively, in the conflict of faculties, like the “Terrorisme”, “the Eudémonisme” and “the Abdéritisme”. Terrorism is contradictory: “ Retomber in the worst cannot constantly last for the mankind: because gone down to a certain degree, it would vanish itself ”. One cannot conceive decline without end: the history testifies to the life and the survival of humanity. The eudemonism is not less inadmissible: it is not automatic progress, i.e. without an active investment of our Liberté S. the Histoire is not done without the man! As for the abderitism, it is connected with the myth of Sisyphus, claiming with the vanity of the efforts of the Humanité: isn't this to reduce it to the Animalité only to dispute the capacity to him to be improved (perfectibility)?

The philosophies of the history generally concern what Kant named the eudemonism: they regard the Progrès as the law constitutive of becoming historical. In their origin, they take as a starting point the Christianisme.

The 19th century

After the Revolution and the Empire appeared the need for a regeneration of the thought: it was considered that the Catholic church had failed by putting in place a company of Privilège S and while being long in admitting the new theories of Copernic and of Galileo.

In the Années 1820, at the time when the great systems Ideological S and Utopique S were set up, one generally interpreted the Histoire according to the grid of reading of Saint-Simon (Claude Henri de Rouvroy), which had described in industry the passage of the feudal age at the industrial age. In a new company called to dedicate a worship with the scientists, through the figure of Newton - that which discovered the Force of gravitation - the transition towards the industrial age was to be done using a matrix of social transformation, which was founded on the concept of network. A revealing episode of the debates which took place during this time was the dispute between Frederic Ozanam and a Saint-simonien, following which Frederic Ozanam decided to give up his conferences of history to devote itself to the social security.

Through the Saint-Simonian S, this design deeply influenced the Idéologie S of the 19th century, Positivisme and Marxisme, during the Industrial revolution. The philosophy of the history knew a certain upheaval then, with Friedrich Hegel, Auguste Count and Karl Marx.

For Hegel, the direction of the history is the realization of the absolute Spirit, i.e. of a spirit of the world become conscious of itself by philosophy, the construction of the Prussian State and the Science.

For Auguste Count, which was the secretary of Saint-Simon between 1816 and 1823, the direction of the history is the blossoming of the positive age, comprehension scientific of reality succeeding the age Théologique (mythological explanation according to Count) and the metaphysical age (abstractions), under the terms of the Loi of the “three states”. The current positivist would have generated the methodical school (Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos), which developed the criticism of the sources with a preoccupation with an exactitude. However this idea was recently called into question, because positivism includes working of laws a priori, which rejects categorically the historians methodists. The common point the most tangible remainder the empirical preoccupation with a checking of the facts.

For Karl Marx, the direction of the history is the advent of a “classless society”, the abolition of the private property by the revolution Communiste making possible the abolition of the State, which forever have for another finality only to guarantee the property of the dominant classes: when the economic equality is established, the State will not take place any more to exist.

Questioning of philosophies of the history

Criticisms

These philosophies of the history as descriptions of an objective and inescapable process were suspected as of the 19th century (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) of carrying reached at the same time to human freedom and the finitude of our knowledge: how to judge “end” (the extinction or completion) of a history which extinct nor is never completed, but always being done?

Maurice Genevoix showed that the selection of testimonys of the First World War was made on criteria Positiviste S. the research of historical exactitude resulted in being unaware of a great number of testimonys of soldiers who could not give an account of their experiment with exactitude because of the living conditions in the trenches.

The theologist Henri de Lubac showed that the Loi of the three states of Auguste Count actually corresponds to three aspects of the thought.

New approaches

On the traces of these objections, a large work of revaluation of the bases of the philosophies of the history was initiated at the same time by Heidegger in its course of 1921 on Nietzsche and to its continuation by Löwith and Voegelin. Without entering now in detail, it is the process of Sécularisation of religious sets of themes (to take again the thesis of Carl Schmitt) which was the object of these revaluations. The work of Löwith ( De Hegel with Nietzsche , then History and Salut ) relates to the modern inventory and the genealogy of the representations which result in seeing in the History the objectivation of rationality, while those of Voegelin ( the New Science of the Policy and Order and History ), then that very synthetic of Blumenberg, the Legitimacy of Modern times , are interested more in the modernity like crisis and, being Blumenberg, in a vigorous handing-over in prospect for the stakes for the Destin for the Reason in the context initially hellénico-Christian, then medieval, with like tries to include/understand intrications of the Révélation and the Raison in the processes of release of the human Sujet.

In order to release itself from an event-driven description of the history, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre founded at the end of the Années 1920 the Annales of economic and social history , which will become the École of Annals. They privileged the study of the social and human phenomena in the long life. Thereafter, this movement took into account the cultural prospects, under the angle of the history of the Civilization S, and the mental Représentations and social. Fernand Braudel, Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff, Philippe Ariès are, among others, representatives of this current.

Consequences

The stakes which drain the prospects and problems inaugurated by the philosophies of the history will have an important repercussion in the discussions of political Philosophie, in particular acting to include/understand the bond between perceptions suitable for the modernity (democratic liberalisms associated with the autonomisation of the subject) and perceptions of Antiquity and the medieval Christian world. It is in the tension between Jerusalem and Athens, but also Rome and Mecque, and especially in the destiny of modernity like Latin process then Western , which the philosophy of Leo Strauss will be registered, burning criticizes Historicisme.

Shortly after the collapse of the communist bloc, Francis Fukuyama forecast, in 1992 and in the line of Hegel and Alexandre Kojève, “the Fin of the history”. The history being, essentially, the confrontation of the models of social organization, the extinction of the Communisme would ring the knell of them: the Nation S of the world of another horizon only of the democracy and the liberal economy did not incarnate the development by the model states-unien. Samuel Huntington was opposed in 1993 to the point of view of Fukuyama by affirming that the 21e century would not see any more the confrontation of the ideological systems of the 20th century (Communisme against Capitalisme), but that of the blocks Civilization nels inherited the Passé (Christianisme, Hindouisme, Islam, etc). The September 11th, 2001 seems to have given him reason: the history is not finished.

Samuel does Huntington have for as much reason? The challenges Futur S of the Avenir (which it is about the division of the richnesses, the ecological crises or any other factor that we are impotent to provide, the only law of the unforeseeable history being its innovation) won't inflect to date become it of humanity in an unforeseen direction?

Kantian prospect

One can then consider possible a return to the critical design of the history initiated by Kant. Against dogmatisms of Hegel, Count or Marx, Kant conceive the history according to a “reflective” model. If the history of the humanity is not written (which could be prided to guess which will be its result?), it belongs to us - better, it is our duty - to give him direction: it has significance only that which we will print to him under the terms of our Liberté, which supposes an active engagement in the field of the Droit. We must act like if we had the capacity to direct it in direction of progress. This critical design does not make progress a Fatalité: it is always possible for us to act as spite of the good sense -, but a moral ideal assigned with our freedom, ideal which the development of the Justice incarnates, of the International law, the Paix (and, let us add it behind Hans Jonas, late disciple of Kant, the safeguarding of the Environnement, condition of the survival of the future generations).

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