Philosophy of history

The idea of an order or design in history

The belief that it is possible to discern in the course of human history some general scheme or design, some all-encompassing purpose or pattern, is very old and has found expression in various forms at different times and places. The reasons for its persistence and vitality are numerous, but two very general considerations may be identified as having exercised a fairly continuous influence. First, it has often been supposed that, if the belief in an overall pattern is abandoned, one is obliged to acquiesce in the view that the historical process consists of no more than an arbitrary succession of occurrences, a mere agglomeration or patchwork of random incidents and episodes. But such a view (it has been contended) cannot be seriously entertained, if only because it conflicts with the basic demand for system and order that underlies and governs all rational enquiry, all meaningful thought about the world. Second, it has frequently been felt that to refuse to allow that history is finally intelligible in the required manner implies a skepticism concerning the value of human life and existence that constitutes an affront to the dignity of human nature. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, spoke of the “repugnance” that is inevitably experienced if the past is viewed

as if the whole web of human history were woven out of folly and childish vanity and the frenzy of destruction, so that one hardly knows in the end what idea to form of our race, for all that it is so proud of its prerogatives.

In more recent times, a comparable attitude was discernible beneath Arnold Toynbee’s uncompromising repudiation of the idea that history is “a chaotic, disorderly, fortuitous flux, in which there is no pattern or rhythm of any kind to be discerned.” Thus, it has been the object of a long line of theorists, representative of widely divergent outlooks, to demonstrate that such pessimism is unjustified and that the historical process can, when appropriately viewed, be seen to be both rationally and morally acceptable.

Theological origins

Western speculation concerning the meaning of history derived in the first instance chiefly from theological sources. The belief that history conforms to a linear development in which the influence of providential wisdom can be discerned, rather than to a recurrent cyclical movement of the kind implicit in much Greco-Roman thought, was already becoming prevalent early in the Common Era. Traces of this approach are to be found in the conception of the past developed in the 4th century by St. Augustine in his De civitate Dei (City of God) and elsewhere; it is, for example, compared on one occasion to “the great melody of some ineffable composer,” its parts being “the dispensations suitable to each different period.” Yet the cautious subtlety of Augustine’s suggestions and the crucial distinction he drew between sacred and secular history make it important not to confuse his carefully qualified doctrines with the cruder positions advanced by some of his self-proclaimed successors. This applies, par excellence, to the work of the most renowned and thorough of these, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. Written 1,250 years after Augustine’s death, Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681; Discourse on Universal History) is imbued throughout with a naïve confidence that the entire course of history owes its pervasive character to the contrivance of a “higher wisdom.” In the eyes of Bossuet, to grasp and understand the great procession of empires and religions was “to comprehend in one’s mind all that is great in human affairs and have the key to the history of the universe.” For the rise and fall of states and creeds depended in the end upon the secret orders of Providence, the latter being the source of that manifest historical justice and retribution to which, on nearly every page, the annals of the past bore clear and unmistakable witness. Bossuet’s vast survey was, in fact, the last major contribution to its genre. Although it made a considerable impression when it was first published, it appeared just before the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton effected a massive transformation of the European outlook, and the book’s impact was short-lived. Thus, the development of historical speculation in the 18th century was generally marked by a tendency to reject theological and providential interpretations in favour of an approach more closely aligned, in method and aim, to that adopted by natural scientists in their investigations of the physical world.

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