The Historical Process and Its Features

Historical Necessity and Historical Contingency

Necessity is a category of dialectics denoting a clearly determined relationship between phenomena, wherein the occurrence of a cause inevitably leads to a specific effect. In contrast, contingency represents a polar category to necessity, designating a causal relationship that allows for the realization of any number of possible, alternative effects. A contingent event arises as a result of various, undoubtedly numerous, and precisely unknown causes.

Historical necessity and historical contingency emerge as categories within social philosophy and the philosophy of history, representing specific manifestations of these relationships in the historical process. In approaching the examination of their interrelations, it is important to bear in mind that this question is among those most hotly debated in global social and historical philosophical literature. Two opposing perspectives are clearly discernible: one completely excludes contingency from the historical process, while the other views it as a realm of randomness.

An example of the former perspective is providentialism—the religious understanding of history as a manifestation of divine will, the realization of a preordained divine plan. Propounded by Augustine in his treatise "The City of God," written in response to the sacking of Rome by Alaric's hordes in 410 AD, this providentialist interpretation of the historical process as a path to the eschatological "Kingdom of God" forms the foundation of medieval Christian historiography. In the 19th and 20th centuries, providentialism serves as the basis for interpretations of the historical process by thinkers such as Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich Schlegel, and R. Rancière, who represent the philosophy of history in neo-Thomism. The role of contingency in the historical process is virtually dismissed by Hegelian and positivist thinkers.

Conversely, an example of the opposing viewpoint can be found in the philosophical-historical beliefs of the French Enlightenment, particularly Voltaire, who, rejecting providentialism, regarded history not as a manifestation of divine will but as the product of human creativity, believing it unfolds more as a play of contingencies. It is not difficult to observe that both perspectives, by absolutizing one of the opposites, are metaphysical and cannot be considered scientific. As previously emphasized, the historical process consists of a succession of historical events and states that objectively change one another. They necessarily determine the change of essential properties and relations within the social organism, guiding the direction of these changes. However, this does not imply that the historical process, its flow, and the character of historical events and states should be viewed as predetermined by any particular cause, whether it be a divine plan, the absolute spirit, or the development of society's productive forces. Alongside historical necessity lies the companion of contingency.

"History," wrote Karl Marx, drawing attention to this circumstance, "would possess a very mystical character if 'contingencies' played no role."

From this, a truly scientific approach to understanding both historical necessity and historical contingency can only be founded on the recognition of their dialectical interconnection and interdependence. Complementing and mutually determining one another, historical necessity and historical contingency demonstrate the vast array of possibilities within the historical process. In studying it, one must systematically categorize events and states, characterizing both the necessity of the historical process and its contingency. In making this conclusion, we align ourselves with authors who assert that "the peculiar linearity often encountered in the portrayal of events—where everything 'secondary' and 'contingent' is discarded, and the general trajectory of unfolding events is presented pale and dry, devoid of the complex fabric of difficulties through which necessity carves its path—is hardly justified."

We recently encountered such linearity in the assessment of the Soviet period in our history by those who wished to see it solely as the action of necessity, ignoring the accidental convergence of circumstances such as the devastating droughts that struck agriculture three times, the rise of Joseph Stalin to leadership, the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, and others, which had a significantly negative impact on the course of the historical process in Soviet society, distorting the essence of the nascent social organism.

Ignoring accidental convergences of circumstances persists even today in the assessment of the current contradictory phase of the formation of Ukrainian society, which struggles toward renewal, from both leftist and rightist forces. Meanwhile, these contingencies objectively exist and demand thorough scientific analysis. Researchers undertaking this analysis reasonably pose the question of the existence of at least several types of contingencies present within the historical process. For instance, B.H. Mohylnytsky writes: "First, phenomena that are mysterious or 'strange,' which cannot be satisfactorily or rationally explained, are termed contingent. This category also includes natural disasters that disrupt the 'normal' course of history. Second, any significant historical regularity is a composite product of the interplay of various causal chains. Moreover, the more significant a given regularity, the more diverse and distantly related the causal chains intersecting at its emergence. As a result, a phenomenon that is necessary in one causal chain may appear contingent at the intersection of such chains, as perceived in another causal chain..."

However, the most prevalent and significant type of contingency for historians is associated with human activity. The acknowledgment of the inadmissibility of ignoring contingencies in the comprehension of the historical process has nothing in common with their absolutization. Nor can we agree with the view expressed by some social scientists that "the concrete regularity we refer to as contingencies arises from the entirety of the tendencies of development, countless in number, and thus never fully established by science, of the 'contingent' will, actions, events, and deeds."

The nature and essence of historical regularities fundamentally differ from such interpretations, which we shall attempt to demonstrate in the following subsection.