Hegel's philosophy of history is very much a product of its times, especially for the core context of "Reason" in which he interprets history. His work “Philosophy of History” is not a work that Hegel lived to see published. The massive text we have today is a reconstruction of a series of lectures Hegel gave at the University of Berlin in the 1820s. His students, colleagues, and friends were shocked at his sudden death in a cholera epidemic in 1831, and, feeling that he still had many contributions to make, set about organizing and publishing his lectures. This project resulted in the posthumous (after-death) publication not only of the Philosophy of History, but also of the Philosophy of Art, the Philosophy of Religion, and the History of Philosophy.
Born in 1770, Hegel lived through a number of major socio-political upheavals: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the aftermath of those wars (in which Europe began to be re-structured according to early nationalist principles). Hegel followed all these events with great interest and in great detail, from his days as a seminary student in the late 1780s through his various appointments in high school philosophy departments, and on to his days as the foremost intellectual of his time. The Philosophy of History, like his first major work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, strives to show how these major historical upheavals, with their apparent chaos and widespread human suffering, fit together in a rational progression toward true human freedom. However, the Introduction to the Philosophy of History does not go into much specific historical detail. Hegel was simply laying the groundwork for history; insisting on hard-core basics like the idea that Reason rules history.
A concise evaluation of Hegel’s philosophy of history
Hegel opens his lectures on the philosophy of history by giving brief accounts of three distinct types of written history. These are Original history, Reflective history and Philosophic history;
i. Original history
Original history consists of an account of actions, events, and situations lived through and witnessed (for the most part) by the historian himself. Other primary sources (apart from the historian himself) could be used, but as "ingredients only"; the account depends fundamentally on the historian's own witnessing of the times. Hegel also describes this type of recorded history as "history, whose spirit the historian shared in," and notes that the primary task of "original history" is to create an internal, "mental representation" of external events.
Hegel then notes some qualifications or limits to the category of original history. It excludes "legends, folksongs, and traditions," because these are "obscure modes of memory that are characteristic of the mentality of pre-literate people." Original history must deal instead with the "observed and observable reality" of a people who are self-aware and unique (who knew what they were doing and what they wanted).
We can distinguish three very rough stages of original history. In antiquity, it was primarily statesmen who wrote history. In the middle ages, monks were the historians (Hegel calls their works "naive chronicles"). In Hegel's own time, "all this has changed; our culture has made all events to become reports for intellectual representation." These contemporary original histories aim for breadth and accuracy, seeking to portray things precisely and simply. Hegel writes that only people "of high social standing" can execute this kind of history.
ii. Reflective history
The second method for writing history, reflective history, is "history whose presentation goes beyond the spirit of the present and does not refer to the historian's own time." Unlike the original historian, the reflective historian is not a participant in the events and spirit of the times of which he gives an account. Now, Reflective history is divided by Hegel into four sub-types; Universal history, Pragmatic history, Critical history and Specialized (fragmentary) history.
- Universal reflective history aims to give an account of the whole history of
a people, race or even of the world. But, since this is reflective history, the
spirit that brings together all these events in a written history is foreign to
the time of the events: i.e. it is rather the spirit of the historian's own
time that determines how it is to be written. Thus, in the case of broad world
histories, particular events must be condensed into very brief statements, and
it is almost as though the author's own thought is the main feature (the
"mightiest determinant") of the text.
-
Pragmatic reflective history has a theory or ideology behind it. The events
recounted are "connected into one pattern in their fundamental and inner
meaning" by the historian. The account actually consists more of the reflections
on history rather than simply of the history itself. Here, one primary idea is that
history should provide us with moral lessons. However, Hegel thinks this idea
is wrong, and that if history can be said to have "taught" us
anything, it is that "nations and
governments have never learned anything from history”.
-
Critical reflective history is a kind of research into other historical
accounts; it is a history of history that tests the accuracy of their given
accounts and perhaps poses alternative accounts. Hegel dislikes this kind of
history, because it "extorts" new things to say from existing historical
accounts. He points out that this is a cheap way to achieve "reality"
in history, because it puts individual subjective notions in place of facts.
Hegel calls this biased notions reality.
-
Specialized reflective history focuses on one arm in history, such as
"the history of art, of law, or of religion." At the same time, it
represents a transitional stage to philosophic history because it treats
particular histories from a "universal viewpoint." The particular arm
in history taken (e.g. the history of law) represents a choice and an effort on
the part of the historian to present fragments of a particular history in such
a manner that it harmonizes with its universal concept.
As long as it is “ideas” that guides the history of nations as they pursue law, art, or religion, it is then the case that the "Spirit" (idealism) is what guides history as a whole. It is this larger process that is the focus of the third category of history, philosophic history. As humans (historians) we think constantly, Hegel notes, but most of history (even reflective history) would seem to emphasize events over thought in the end. Philosophic history, however, prioritizes thought before history, bringing pure philosophical ideas to bear on events. Hence, the thoughts that organize the "raw material" of historical events into philosophic history is taken as priority and can stand alone; for they are a-priori.
Hegel sets out these three main divisions of recorded history in order to clear the way for his own method of "philosophic" history. But, what is said about his method depends heavily on the notion of Spirit that Hegel has already begun to build. Now, Spirit is Hegel's best-known and probably most difficult concept. The basic idea of Hegel’s concept of spirit is that all of human history is guided by a rational process of self-recognition, in which human participants are guided to greater and greater self-awareness and freedom by a rational force that transcends them. (Hegel also emphasizes that we need not think of Spirit as God). According to Hegel, the only interest of this force, Spirit, is to realize its own principle of true freedom.
Philosophic history thus taps directly into the Spirit that guides world history, because this Spirit is essentially a force of Reason. Philosophy (particularly in pure logic) comes to know the characteristics of Spirit first, and then looks for them in the events of history. The characteristic of Spirit which it comes to know is roughly, that Spirit seeks only to realize its own nature, which is freedom. Thus, Hegel is already marking the rough outlines of what he means by Spirit, and is setting up his historical method (philosophic history) as the best one for understanding this guiding force in history (because philosophy knows it beforehand).
Focusing on his own method (philosophic history), Hegel gives a brief defence of the idea that “Reason rules history”. Reason is infinitely free because it is self-sufficient, depending on nothing outside of its own laws and conclusions. It is also infinitely powerful, because by nature it seeks to actualize its own laws in the world. Hegel argues that, in a very real sense, the "substance" or content of world history is nothing but Reason, since all of history is caused and guided by a rational process. The idea that Reason rules the world, he says, is both an assumption we must make before we practice philosophic history and a conclusion drawn from that practice. Therefore, the function of philosophical history for Hegel is to provide a comprehensive, all-inclusive, and totalizing account of history which should explain why history has rationally followed a deterministic course and why persons in history behave the way they do.
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