Talk:Philosophy of history

This article needs a section on Leopold von Ranke. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.90.179.67 (talk) 14:34, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for a major overhaul of the page

Requesting feedback and/or silence as permission before I start throwing myself at this page. I’ll wait a few weeks before I come in guns blazing to see if I hear any reasoned or informed objections or (more optimistically) helpful suggestions.

Plan of action:

1.Move up start date to Vico

Vico is the first starts talking about the Philosophy of History. The phrase as a term of art begins with him. The presentation should really begin there after the intro but this section should be short. Vico’s contribution moves the start date of what should be considered here forward by nearly 2000 years. Herodotus, Plutarch etc. may or may not receive mentions as exemplars picked up and considered as subjects by authors writing in the vein of the philosophy of history but the page shouldn’t start at the beginning of written history.

2. Slim down page to include material belonging specially to the subject domain of the philosophy of history as distinct from historiography and historicism.

Vico’s work is important background for a number of pages/subject domains including historiography and historicism. However the philosophy of history as it develops over the centuries following Vico begins to distinguish itself from these territories. Some overlap with discussion of historiography is unavoidable but by the twentieth century the philosophy of history is precisely the domain of historical thought whose distinction is that it’s *not* historicism. It’s not exactly antithetical to historicism but it’s polemically inclined towards historicism.

The philosophy of history is not identical to metaphysics, theology, or phenomenology but it has at least as much overlap with these domains as it does with historiography or historicism. It’s concerned with how human perception and thus action is determined by systems of representation and by media over time among other things. It’s concerned either fidelity of representation more than absolute truth after the fallout from Hegel who is really the next major figure that has to be covered after Vico.

3. Section on Hegel

4. Section on the Hegelians Primarily this will probably be devoted to mostly Marx’s revision of Hegel in his philosophy of history. The romantic writers of philosophy of history like Hamann and Herder and maybe even Molitor (whose not a romanticist but neither is he a left-Hegelian are worth noting here as precursors because they have continuuing influence at least in the twentieth century practice. The right Hegelians themselves don’t refer to themselves as right Hegelians they’re conservatives and none of them really leave a legacy until the following…

5.Section on Nietzsche

Nietzsche would not consider himself a Hegelian but he is distinctly a major thinker on the philosophy of history. He has this effect on the terrain: Marx is still rationalizing,and humans are extremely imperfectly adapted for absolutely rationalized systems (as if there were such a thing). Therefore he’s influential even for the left writers of the philosophy of history. His heirs in the philosophy of history (he has heirs in other fields as well) and the heirs of Herder and Hamann the romantic anti-rationalists snd conservatives above mentioned are people Oswald Spengler who will have to be briefly mentioned, and Heidegger mentioned below.

5. 20th century

Both progress and decline are superstitions, Arendt tells us in her Origins of Totalitarianism. And here she echoes Benjamin who has many ways of stating the same: Overcoming the concept of progress and overcoming the concept of the period of decline are two sides of the same coin, he writes in one of his convolutes to the Arcades Project.(p. 460 Harvard Press 2002). This notion is a keynote to the philosophy of history in the twentieth century.

When we come to the 20th century important figures include Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt. The Warburg institute and its descendants in the department of the History and Philosophy of Science. The power relations historian and heir of Heidegger on the side of nihilism will be represented by Foucault. Etc.

For the 21st century…maybe David Graeber? I’ll probably think of a few others.

This more or less what I’m thinking of for the page. Objections or suggestions are welcome. Fustel de Coulange, Thomas Carlyle and I heard somebody say Ranke…that’s really historiography and historicism although perhaps they can still receive brief mentions here.

ThomasMikael (talk) 01:02, 30 June 2025 (UTC)