Philosophy of History: Culture and Civilization

Fundamental Approaches to Understanding the Philosophy of History

An engagement with the philosophical contemplation of history arises when individuals first begin to experience and perceive time within themselves, typically occurring around the midpoint of their earthly existence, at which point they become more intrigued by the past than by the future. This sense of time and our relation to it forms a unique fabric for the philosophy of history.

History is that which emerges from the obscure past and endeavors toward the future. Existing in the present, it (the present) always serves as the midpoint of history, coupled with an impetus directed by life rather than by thought. Thus, history is merely a perspective, irrespective of where it is aimed. The historian always comprehends the past not impartially but through the prism of contemporary questions and values, revealing the universal within the particular. Hence, history is inseparable from philosophy, which is why philosophy should be viewed as the philosophy of history.

Today, at the dawn of the third millennium since the birth of Christ, the philosophy of history assumes significant importance, as it allows us to examine the course of world history through the lens of the meaning of human existence, the genesis, and the prospects for societal development. Consequently, the problem of understanding the fundamental laws of the historical process and its periodization arises; the philosophy of history also seeks to grasp the essence of power and legal institutions. It cannot evade pressing issues such as technological progress and human rights, the right of nations to self-determination, the common good (which remains relevant beyond the era of Socrates), justice, and the new world order, questioning whether equality or freedom holds greater importance.

This constellation of problems encompasses the philosophy of history as a field of scholarly endeavor and a discipline of study. From this array of concerns, we should delineate the central, or overarching, idea of the entire philosophy of history. Such an idea ought to encompass the full spectrum of the aforementioned issues and traverse all elements of socio-philosophical thought. What could be the Ariadne's thread guiding us through the labyrinth of historical events and the actions of notable individuals?

Our thinking cannot be confined solely to a logical construct of the philosophy of spirit; it will invariably be compelled to construct a philosophy of history within the dimensions of time and space. In short, philosophical inquiry in this instance is an attempt to pose the question of the interpenetration of time and eternity.

In Soviet scholarly literature, the attitude toward the philosophy of history as a science and a sphere of philosophical knowledge was negatively predetermined many years prior by Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin in his "Philosophical Notebooks." To quote him: “In general, philosophy of history yields very little—that is clear—since in this domain, in this work, Marx and Engels made the greatest strides forward. Here, Hegel has aged the most and appears antiquated.” But is this truly the case?

The notion we refer to as the idea of history was neither known nor possessed by antiquity; thus, history in its own right did not exist there. In regard to antiquity, we should speak only of prehistory, the primary form of which was myth (word, narrative) infused with the idea of a self-sufficient cosmos. The ancient cosmos is ahistorical; it neither arises nor disappears, being inseparable from the world of the eternal cycle of nature, possessing only certain cycles. Mythology does not serve as an answer to questions nor is it the result of scientific inquiry; rather, it is always a declaration of the known, its subject consisting of stories about the origins of the world, the genealogy of gods, and the feats of heroes. Gods guide the actions of kings, leaders, and communities, while heroes serve as exemplars for them (Achilles was an example for Alexander, the great commander who seemed to compete with the mythical hero). Their deeds are not events that transpired in the past, but rather in a very indeterminate past, so distant that no one remembers, and moreover, no one cares when it was or if it truly occurred. Hence, myth exists outside the framework of temporal reference, its foundational principle being the “beginning of things.”

Most importantly, the absolute distinction between the ancient and Indian worldviews compared to the Chinese or Arab, and even more so the European, lies in their narrow horizon. Their historical representation concluded with events that could only be recounted by living witnesses. The boundary of history, even for the most enlightened Greek minds, reached only to the Trojan War, beyond which there existed no historical life.

Today, it is difficult to conceive of existence outside of history. There was a time when philosophy existed without a philosophy of history. Philosophy engages with absolute, eternal essences—those that have always been, are, and will be—namely, that which lacks history, whereas history pertains to the realm of the relative, the fleeting, that which emerges and fades away.

Eventually, the idea of the eternal cycle is replaced by the concept of vectoral development from the "creation of the world" (creationism) to the "end of the world" (apocalypse). This became the foundation for dividing human history into two vast eras: the pre-Christian (as prehistory) and the Christian (proper history).

The Judeo-Christian tradition played a decisive role in shaping modern European philosophy of history. It is here that the preconditions for the intellectual grasp of the historical process in its unity and wholeness, in its universality and necessity, with its inherent sequence, logic, and immanent purpose, first took shape. Christianity introduced into the history of humanity three entirely unique and irreplaceable events:

1. the Fall as the beginning of history;
2. the coming of Christ as a pivotal moment in human history;
3. the anticipated Second Coming and the Last Judgment as its inevitable conclusion.

At its core, the Christian conception of history is a transcendent theological one, compelling history to realize externally dictated goals. The Fall, Redemption, and the Second Coming are three points where the history of heaven and earth converge, with celestial history serving as the source of meaning for earthly historical events. Thus, the past, present, and future coalesce into a singular chain of the historical process. Therefore, Egyptian culture was the first; subsequently, the historical thought of the Jews, followed by the Persians in the time of Cyrus, interlinked the legend of the world's creation with contemporary reality through the chronology. The Persians even included a chronological date for the Last Judgment and the coming of the Messiah.

It became evident that the task of historical science is to analyze historical facts, while the endeavor of historiography is to uncover meanings within them. “The philosophy of history, in a certain sense, is the theology of history and always possesses a conscious or unconscious religious foundation. Religious historiography, inescapably, bears an apocalyptic hue.”

The process of forming a philosophical representation of history is accompanied by a substantive transformation of the term "history." Initially, "history" was understood in its primordial sense as a narrative, a report, a collection of accounts (Herodotus and Thucydides). This constitutes purely empirical knowledge, derived from the words or hands of others, significantly distinct from theoretical knowledge, which is derived from other sources. Consequently, alongside “civil history” (concerning human life), “natural history” (pertaining to natural facts) emerged.

Subsequently, the notion of history as a process occurring in time and space solidified. “The past,” as it is conceived, felt, and experienced, shapes our relation to heritage. Historical thought informs our value orientations, indicating what we hold in the highest esteem, what we regard with indifference, and what we seek to avoid.

Traditionally, the beginning of the philosophy of history is associated with Saint Augustine. There exists a well-established notion that the philosophy of history is embedded within the Great and Little Chronology of the Old Testament, which served as a model for Augustine in his reflections on the fate of the world and humanity.

The “Great Chronology,” “from” and “to”—it is always cosmic, mythological, eschatological, embodying a spatial dimension or a spatiotemporal continuum. The “Little Chronology” is always historical; it is either centered around the Holy Land, Eurocentric (as in Hegel), or polycentric (as in Spengler or Toynbee). The Old Testament not only narrates but also, in a certain sense, elucidates the destiny of the Jewish people. This represents the origins or sources of the philosophy of history, with the vector of freedom being one of the central historiological lessons of the Old Testament, a key to understanding history and that which is comprehended through history. Thus, it renders history a bearer of specific meaning and simultaneously an object of knowledge.

What transpired with this people carries profound significance, and the Holy Scriptures seek to elucidate it. If the fate of the Jewish people is understood within the Old Testament, then, Augustine posited, one can discern the destinies of other nations and humanity as a whole. Augustine maintained that if the history of the Jewish people could be elucidated through their unique calling, then every nation and every individual must possess their particular purpose in this world. The texts of the Old Testament, as an archetype, convey the true human meaning of history— the quest for self-discovery and the attainment of one's essence under any external or internal circumstances.

Following Augustine, biblical interpretations of universal human history are also found in Isidore of Seville’s "Etymologies" (570-636), where he depicts human history as comprised of six epochs (God created for six days, and on the seventh, He rested), which sequentially succeeded one another:

1. from Adam to Noah;
2. from Noah to Abraham;
3. from Abraham to David;
4. from David to the Babylonian Captivity;
5. from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Christ;
6. from the birth of Christ to the end of the world.

Thus, the Faustian image of world history, prepared by the Christian calendar, represents nothing less than a significant expansion and deepening of the magical vision inherited from the Church, beginning with Joachim of Fiore around 1200. The foundation for interpreting all world events here rests upon the sequential change of three temporal intervals, namely the actions of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

What, then, gave rise to this worldview and what were its implications? Primarily: a) the expansion of geographical horizons (the Vikings and the Crusaders); b) from 1500 onwards, the arena of world history, in contrast to all other cultures, became the entire surface of the planet, rather than a single continent (the caravels of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama); c) thanks to the compass and the telescope, the spherical shape of the Earth transitioned from a purely theoretical hypothesis to a tangible sensation that we live on a globe adrift in cosmic space; d) due to the dual infinitude of the calendar extending in both directions from the birth of Christ, the Gothic division of world history into the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age gradually faded and lost significance; e) in all other cultures, aspects of world history and human history converge: the beginning of the world is equivalent to the emergence of humanity, and the end of humanity signifies the end of the world. The Faustian drive for infinity provides grounds to separate these two concepts and present human history merely as an episode in world history, relegating the Earth, once regarded as the "world" in its entirety, to a mere small planet among millions of other celestial bodies.

Thus, the concept of history, unknown to antiquity, belongs to the Modern Era and aligns with its foundational principles: a) it is scientific, meaning it investigates and seeks answers to problems, whereas the creator of legends begins with certain knowledge and recounts what he has heard; b) the idea of history is humanistic, focusing on the actions of people in the past rather than recounting the lineage of gods and the exploits of heroes; c) it is rationalistic— grounded in the interpretation of sources and factual data, seeking to obtain answers to the problems it raises; d) it serves the self-understanding of humanity, existing to reveal to individuals their past actions, showing who they are and prompting reflection on what they desire.

The term "philosophy of history" was first introduced into scholarly discourse in the 18th century by Voltaire, who understood it to mean a critical or scientific history, a mode of historical thinking wherein the historian independently judges their subject rather than merely recounting tales drawn from books. This term also encompassed a collection of philosophical reflections on universal history without a specific philosophical-theoretical justification for their necessity and validity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau took it further. He was the first to argue the distinction between descriptive history, as knowledge of facts, and theoretical reconstruction of the historical process in its necessity. Thus, the process of distinguishing the philosophy of history as a theoretical domain becomes clearly traceable in a representative of French Enlightenment like Rousseau. Even earlier, independently of Rousseau, Giovanni Vico made a similar move by separating the "eternal ideal history" as the essence of history, which the "new science" interprets, from the empirical history of various peoples. The primary objective of the Enlightenment thinkers pondering history was to judge it from the perspective of reason, that is, to critique the irrationality and unnaturalness of what has been and what is, but should not be. Here, a tendency to combine "reason" and "history" first emerged among the Enlightenment thinkers.

The Age of Enlightenment persistently posed three problems to philosophical thought:

1. the problem of the connection between human consciousness and the sociocultural environment that nourishes it;
2. the problem of the participation of human consciousness ("reason," "progress," etc.) in qualitative changes within the historical process;
3. the problem of "empirical universality," namely the universality that may be present rather than merely intelligible.

As is well known, the Enlightenment possessed an anti-religious inclination and an anti-church ethos, hence philosophy of history and history itself are presented as immanent processes, that is, ones that explain the cause.

Causal explanation addresses the question: why does something happen? It does not involve invoking an external notion of "meaning." The need to seek the "meaning" of history arose within the context of teleological inquiries (the realization of a predetermined goal): for what purpose and with what aim does something occur? Surprisingly, the Enlightenment thought on history not only raised the question of its meaning but also produced responses, and not just one. The first Enlightenment version of the "meaning of history" was rather superficial. Even Francis Bacon recognized that history is the conscious activity of individuals with a grand purpose. Therefore, the historian's task is to understand and reconstruct their aims.

Thus, we can delineate several primary approaches to the understanding of the philosophy of history:

1. The Voltairians perceived it as a critical or scientific history, a mode of historical thought where the historian reflects independently on the subject rather than merely recounting events;
2. In Hegel's view, the philosophy of history is a universal or world history, where its subject is the awareness of the realization of freedom in the existing state of knowledge by the spirit of its freedom—namely, the idea of freedom itself;
3. The positivist interpretation of the philosophy of history signifies the discovery of general laws that govern the course of history;
4. Oswald Spengler's philosophy of history serves as a metaphysical response to what is happening in history "here and now," where truths no longer exist for life, only facts do. His concept attempts to broaden the horizons of traditional historical science, which emerges from the notion of organic life that tends toward limitless expansion. The primary aim here is to envision a world in which one can live, rather than a system of the world that can be analyzed by reason. If history exists, it is the history of something. When it comes to the history of great cultures, the moving subject here is the nation. The condition or Latin status in which it exists is referred to as the state. Thus, the state is an immobile history (in this case, the state is conceived as halted or frozen), while history is a mobile state, thought of here as fluid (mutable) and dynamic. The real state is always a physiognomic image of a unit of historical existence. Only the state imagined by theorists constitutes a system, as seen in Plato's work.

In any case, the understanding of philosophy as such defines the understanding of the philosophy of history; for instance, in Voltaire, philosophy is independent and critical thought; in Hegel, philosophy concerns the world in its entirety; for positivists, it is about discovering universal laws; for Spengler, it is more a philosophy of becoming, where Reason engages with what emerges and lives, thus actualizing itself in time and space.

Among the concepts of the philosophy of history, special attention is afforded to those of G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and Oswald Spengler (1880-1936). Both are representatives of German philosophy, embodying the German spirit, and both left a significant mark on European culture.

The starting point of Hegel's philosophy of history is the assertion that history is the history of ideas, for the idea, as the guide of souls Mercury, is the guide of peoples and the world. According to Hegel, it is the spirit—its rational and necessary will—that has governed and continues to govern the course of world events. To know this spirit is our fundamental goal, says Hegel. Hence, philosophical world history, or history conceived in concepts, is not mere general reflections on world history but the world history itself, which constitutes the primary subject of his famous lectures. In Hegel's view, history must encompass what is and what has been, the events and actions. The singular insight that philosophy brings forth is that reason reigns in the world; thus, Hegel contends that the world-historical process has unfolded rationally, for in his philosophical system, reason appears both as substance and as infinite power. This idea is succinctly encapsulated in the well-known formula: "All that is real is rational, and all that is rational is real." In his philosophy, Hegel believed it proven that the idea is the actual, eternal, and unconditionally powerful beginning that unfolds in time and space, and that nothing unfolds in the world except it, its glory, and its magnificence.