MODES OF PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
In a descriptive manner, according to Daniel Little, an active philosopher of history, the following are the modes of philosophy of history:
i. Speculative or substantive philosophy of history
When various philosophers write about “history”, they often have different and even incompatible goals in mind. One particular tradition of philosophers, generally existed before the twentieth century and were from continental Europe. These philosophers intended to contribute their answers to existing large questions, about the nature of history as it presented itself over time as a compound of individuals, actions, nations, and civilizations. Does history have a direction? Does history have meaning? Is there a plan to history? Do civilizations rise and fall? Is materialism or idealism the better framework for understanding the movement of history? One of such philosophers was G. W. F. Hegel, for example, who wanted to discover the underlying rationality within history. This approach to the study of history is often referred to as “speculative” or “substantive.”
ii. Hermeneutic philosophy of history
A second group of philosophers, also largely continental, were around at some point. They were inspired by the strong connections that exist between individual human life and expression, and large collective events and processes. Their theory of hermeneutics attempts to provide an intellectual framework for analysing and interpreting meaningful human expressions like poetry, actions, thoughts, and motives. Hermeneutic philosophy of history seeks to understand events, movements, and processes in terms of the meanings that they embody and the meaningful relations they bear to other historical events. Hermeneutic philosophers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries extended this approach to their efforts to understand large historical events and processes in similar terms. Wilhelm Dilthey was one of the early exponents of the hermeneutic approach to human affairs.
iii. Analytical philosophy of history
Another group of philosophers, often in the twentieth century and often English-speaking, have focused their attention on the nature of historical knowledge rather than the concrete events of history. Analytic philosophers have wanted to clarify the grounds of historical knowledge and explanation. Issues such as the nature of narratives, the role of the general laws in historical explanations, and the objectivity or subjectivity of historical judgment have been taken up by Arthur Danto, Patrick Gardner, Carl Hempel, and others. This approach is sometimes referred to as “analytical”; more generally, we might say that it is epistemological and methodological.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AS A CRITIQUE OF HISTORY
What is it that a philosopher of history would want to discuss about history? Basically, philosophers want to know how good the supposed claims are for "knowledge" in various fields. So we have philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, and so on. This is clearly one reason why we have a philosophy of history. The following give more credence as to why philosophy of history, is a critique of history.
Firstly, as the infrastructure of history, it shows philosophy as making a critical enquiry into the general theories, character, problems, methods and pre-suppositions of history. For example, what is the status of historians' knowledge of the past? What methods exist for arriving at knowledge about the past? How broad or narrow is the range of uncertainty about different kinds of historical claims?
Secondly, in a similar vein, philosophers are interested in exploring and resolving some of the difficult conceptual problems and assumptions that arise in various areas of thought. Similarly, there are many of such puzzles in historical claims to knowledge; what are "contingency" and "necessity"? Are historical beliefs "objective" or "biased"? What is the relation between history and memory? Are there "periods" and "epochs" in history? Are there civilizations and peoples?
Thirdly, some philosophers have also pursued questions about the content of history itself. Does history have direction or meaning? Does history shape a people? Is history an integration of similar events and processes, or is it an amalgamation of distinct and unrelated events? Is there really such a thing as "the Russian Revolution" or "the Great Wall of China"?
Fourthly, philosophy of history utilizes the best theories in the core areas of philosophy like metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics to address questions about the nature of the past and how we come to know it. Whether the past proceeds in a random way or is guided by some principle of order, how best to explain or describe the events and objects of the past, how historical events can be considered to be causal of one another, and how to verify testimony and evidence.
Lastly, as is the case with the other infrastructure of disciplines, philosophy of history investigates problems that are unique to its subject matter (history). History does not really examine what things are, but more of how they came to be. History focuses on the particular rather than the general. Its movers are most often people who act for a variety of personal inner motives rather than external physical forces. The facts of history are no longer observable directly, but must be perceived by evidence. Hence, these problems and many more that are specific to the past have been studied and debated by philosophers for as long as philosophy itself has existed.
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