PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
The need for the philosophical investigation on history emerges from our philosophical consideration of culture. Philosophy of Culture leads us naturally to Philosophy of History.
Cultures are not static but dynamic. They constitute the unity/systems/configurations of life and of the human environment, in the broader sense of the term. They operate under the influences and conditions partly by the natural external reality. They change and transform themselves. On this account, they solicit a study not only the synchronic but also the diachronic, the historical.
In fact, we already know that some human groups propagate themselves continually through the biological process of successive generation generated on by the other. This offers us the picture of cultures notably dissimilar. However, they derive one from the other. This is not through a radical emergence only from one to the other, but through a series of emergence partially distributed in time, as that of the Ancient Greece, the classics, Hellenistic… or of barbaric Europe, medieval, renaissance, baroque … until the present. Or in our Philippine historical context, that of the early "baranganic society", the Spanish, the American, etc. up to our times.[1]
This requires, as we have already seen, a deeper study, because every culture is a human achievement or an opus. And there is quantitative modification, and to a certain point qualitative modification - through the achievement of human beings who participate in it, thus realizing themselves towards their perfection.
With regards to the rest, we have spoken of the values of cultures. We have sketched the choices that are offered to us. And this implies possible changes, in fact, in some measure inevitable, but at least partially not totally predetermined.
Now such changes constitute history, because historical events are external as a battle. And even in the natural order such as a death, a catastrophe or geological change, they happen in the context of a culture.
And in the measure, in which man becomes aware of the history and of his cultural incidence, there emerge the questions regarding nature, causes, sense, end and value of history.
However, first, on reflecting on the answer by giving similar questions, we must consider the nature and the legitimacy of a problematic of this kind, first of all in the ambit of systematic philosophy and then in the limits, structures and finality of the present course.
CHAPTER XI
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMATIC REGARDING HISTORY
With the word “history”, these are two things understood as distinct although related with each other. One part is the course of events regarding humans or the concrete human existence in space-time, and the other part is the knowledge of this course of events or flux, which struggles to be ordered. We call the first “history-as-succession of events” and the second “history-as-knowledge” (respectively: history and historiography, knowable history and known history, Geschichte and Geschichtesschreibung, history that is written about and history that is written).
Immediately, we note that “history-succession” does not only refer to the past, but at times also the present (as when we say: history moves on) or even the future (as the expression: the surprises that history keeps us in laps, the unforseability of history). It is in this broad sense that the term “history-as-succession-of-events” will serve us. In parallel – also if “history-as-knowledge” comes as the more preserved knowledge of the past – it renders itself without the other a knowledge of the present and also, at least as pretext or as probability, that of the future, and this would be in future scenarios and political anticipations, economic, demographic… which as specific discipline compares recently under the name of futurology.
While we indicate the distinction of “History-as-succession of events” and “history-as-knowledge”, we also affirm their interconnectedness. They reciprocally, in some measure, condition each other. Without “history-as-knowledge" we understand nothing of the “history-as-succession of events” and the limits of its same existence, while without “history-as-succession of events” it would be impossible – except in extreme idealism – to have “history-as-knowledge”.
But, admitting the above-mentioned, it does not give us very clearly neither the meaning nor the task of any philosophy of history. Here comes the difficulty in defining history of philosophy. In fact, “history-as-succession of events” constitutes – at least as past – the object of “history-as-knowledge” and this ultimately evolves in time a complex discipline with technique and appropriate methods. It tries to know the future with extrapolations of the past, by the human sciences as sociology and economy, from the sciences of nature as biology as the evolution of the human specie, and the environment, which is indispensable, physics, geology, astronomy… It seems ridiculous that philosophy goes to substitute – incompetent – in this immense and specialized task of historians and futurologists. As to the “history-as-knowledge”, it criticizes itself, corrects itself and develops itself through the works of the historians themselves of specialists of various sciences.
Philosophy of History existed and exists in the two sense of the word history. In other words, philosophical thought has taken for the object of the study the “history-as-succession of events” than “history-as-knowledge”. For the philosophy of the “history-as-succession of events” – which is speculative, synthetic, material … Here, we mention such names as that of Aristotle (the succession of political regimes), Augustine, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), Voltaire (who use the term for the first time: philosophy of history), Marie Jean Antoine Nicholas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794),
Herder, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Spencer, Marx… and the same historians more implicitly, as Spengler and Toynbee. Also the theology of history implies always a certain philosophy of history, at least devaluing it or distinguishing itself from it. Philosophy of “history-as-knowledge” – which at times became critical, analytical, formal … it is practiced in a large scale by historians legitimating their work than by philosophers in the field of philosophy of sciences.
And such is inevitable. “History-as-knowledge” requires a legitimization as a specific type of knowledge or rather as a knowledge, which carries its specific object: legitimization as to the same possibility, methods, nature, value and limits of attainable results. It is not substituting itself the historical but reflecting on what it does, explicating it and valuing it. This is reflecting within the ambit of logic, critic, epistemology… Such thing is more necessary, in as much as “history-as-knowledge” seems to depart itself from other sciences into the peculiarity of its most complex object, the individual, the past, not subject to experimentation, and nor the concepts and reasonings which seem more apparent to common sense and to everyday knowledge which is not to that of natural and human sciences. Now the same historians feel the necessity of such legitimization, and if they consecrate themselves, they recur towards a philosophical epistemology pre-existent or they constitute a purpose.
From the perspective of the philosophy of “history-as-succession of events”, there are suspicions and mistrusts of historians and of anthropologists being provoked. This is because often times it is based on insufficient or partial knowledge of history, and on the ignorance of primitive people (it is always true of tentative pasts, given the fast development of historical sciences and of cultural anthropology in the later times). Another reason is because it would seem to simplify that which is extremely complex which the historians of the trade are acutely aware. It tends to preview the future historical flux while historians perceive the non-succession of the past previsions. Another reason is because every philosophy of history implies a broader philosophical system and such systems are strange to scientists. However, the philosophical interest regarding “history-as-succession of events” appears legitimate and inevitable for one who reflects on what implies human activity. “History-as-succession of events”, as a reality sui generis, offers a specific intelligibility by determining and situating in the ensemble of the real. And as a changing reality it requires the analysis of the process and historical change in those which the Aristotelian would call material cause, formal, efficient, and final; The meaning and positive and negative values of the historical realization would be itself that in relation to the precedent and successive stage – meaning and value present more or less implicitly in judgements of the same historical (cfr. Terms as: development, decadence) - they question a philosophical arrangement in relation to the single man, to humanity, to the whole reality. Finally, they emerge from the problems around the direction of the ensemble, the term and the finality of the historical course which are of philosophical nature and carried existential for the human individual. It is interesting that it can bring some fruit only if arrange in the ensemble of systematic philosophical thought inspiring the problematic and the proper solutions. There is, then, a condition of respect, and taking into account the historical course as the history-as-knowledge reveals the incompleteness of this ultimate.
With all these we do not want minimally to affirm that the limits between philosophy of history and historical science would be clean: hardly the historian broadens his assertions. There philosophical presuppositions are easily insinuated much more dangerous in as much as more implicit and unconscious, while the philosopher selects the historical evidence. Moreover we want to say that the task of philosophy there would be easy or very prominent, touching the heart of the mystery of human existence and of the sense of ensemble or wholeness of the reality. More than what it offers, it risks of deluding the ultimate solutions very rich and determined by the theology of history, also if this ultimate – derived as they are from revelation – have no foundation than for whom shares the faith in that same revelation. But from the said result which is the space for the philosophy of “history-as-succession of events” and in a systematic exposition of the philosophical thought such space must become at least inchoately explored.
As the “history-as-succession of events” and the “history-as-knowledge” are in a certain relation of reciprocal conditioning, so they are pure philosophy of the one and that of the other. Briefly, in one part, the philosophy of the “history-as-knowledge” ascertains the value and the capacity of such knowledge in discovering the existence and in some measure the nature and intelligibility of the “history-as-succession of events”. It renders possible and at the same time delimits the philosophy of the “history-as-succession of events”. On the other part, this ultimate, conclusively, affects the first: for example it joins in affirming the total diversity of cultures the one from the other. It does not see itself as it could sustain the knowledge of cultures departing from one of them. While if it joins to determine the final and definitive stage of history in the manner of Marx or Hegel, it holds in hand an absolute and total criterion of the valuation of all the precedent stages, and thus of the following.
With this sketch of the terminological order as the premise, the big question is what is this to us? In the ambit of philosophy of history, what do we intend to make of ourselves, considering the nature, the order of involvement, the limits and the finality of this wisdom of the philosophy of culture?
We do not intend to present a panorama or a review of the various philosophies of history in both sense of the word. It would be a bigger task to accomplish. It would presuppose the knowledge of systematic presuppositions and general gnoseologies of the most varied origin and nature. Besides, that would belong to history of philosophy more than systematic philosophy.
Moreover, we do not intend to treat philosophy of history-knowledge if not of passage and in the measure strictly indispensable to the proposition of the nature of the causes and of the future of history-succession. In the field of systematic philosophy in fact, the philosophy of the history-knowledge belongs rather to gnoseology, epistemology and critic.
As philosophy of “history-as-succession of events”, we will treat it with the following three characteristics: presupposing the cognitive value of historical knowledge according to the line of thomistic epistemology; framing the problematic in the ensemble of systematic philosophy and in the special way with regard to man, the natural world, the causes, the relations between God and the finite being; especially taking the movements from culture and from that which we have asserted in this course.
The two first characteristics go by itself, given that systematic philosophy is one and it requires coherence; the third will allow us – we believe – it would be a privilege approach to our theme, given the articulated amplitude of the reality which we call culture and given that the diachronic stage of a reality in transformation requires and partially presupposes the synchronic knowledge of the results which such transformation join hand. It would be pure an involvement more rapid because in the level of enjoying the results already obtained in the second part of this course and in the strictest relation with the problematic which we gird ourselves to confront.
Such problematic will articulate itself in the initial consideration of what would be history, in the analysis of its causes, in the determination of its sense, for concluding itself- with a return to the last chapter regarding culture – in an abused of its value and of choices which it presently offers us.
Such program sounds somehow ambitious, however, its execution will be very modest. The philosophy of history has a limited possibility considering the complexity and incompleteness of history itself. It is also limited considering the state of historical sciences that inevitably presupposes it. Such possibility becomes at great length more restricted due to our most modest knowledge and of the nature of wisdom. Together it will rather be sketched than developed, rather suggested than affirmed. But we believe that we are in the stage of completing some problematic of culture and at least opening a field of questions that we believe belong to any philosophical thought and it would not be more than in actuality at the present moment of our history.