Philosophy of History (or Historiosophy) is an area of

philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any,

of human history, and asks if there is
any design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in
the processes of human history.
It asks questions such as: "Are there any broad patterns or
cycles in the progress in human history?", "If history can
indeed be said to progress, what is its ultimate direction?",
"What is the driving force of progress in human history?",
"What purpose does the recording of history serve?"
Back to Top
Ancient Era
In Ancient Greece, historiography (the processes by which
historical knowledge is obtained and transmitted) was
considered more for good examples to follow than
for factual accuracy (i.e. it was supposed to morally
improvethe reader), and any bad examples may just have
been conveniently ignored. Revered historians
like Herodotus and Plutarch freely invented speeches for
their historical figures and selectively chose their subjects.
History (as contemporarily understood by Western thought),
tends to follow an assumption of linear progression,
although many ancient cultures believed that history
was cyclical with alternating Dark and Golden Ages. In the
14th century, the Arab Muslim Ibn Khaldun(1332 - 1406),
considered one of the fathers of the Philosophy of History,
discussed his philosophy of history and society in detail in
his "Muqaddimah", propounding a cyclical theory of
history. During the Enlightenment, history began to be seen
as both linear and irreversible, although as empires came
and went with great regularity in Europe, the idea of history
following cycles also recurred regularly.
Those who created theodicies(attempts to reconcile the co-
existence of evil and God), including St Augustine, St Thomas
Aquinas and Gottfried Leibniz, claimed that history had
a progressive direction leading to an eschatological end
(the end of the world or of humankind) such as
the Apocalypse.
Back to Top
Modern Era
It was really not until the 19th Century that the idea of
presenting objective historical facts became
prevalent. Hegel, through his theory
of dialectics (thesisfollowed by opposing antithesis),
conceived of the negative historical events, such as wars, etc,
as the motor of history. The positivistconception of history
of Auguste Comte, (that knowledge can only come from
positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific
method), was one of the most influential doctrines of
progress in the 19th Century.
Darwinism, and the Social Darwinism it gave rise to,
claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and
gradually become more civilized over time, thus equating the
culture and technology of Western civilization with
progress. Ernst Haeckel (1884 -1919), who formulated
his Recapitulation Theory in 1867, stated that the
evolution of each individual (from embryo to child to adult)
reproduces the species' evolution (from primitive to modern
society).
The 19th Century historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881),
echoing Hegel before him, argued that history was the
biography of a few central individuals or heroes. Hegelalso
championed the idea of Historicism (that there is an organic
succession of developments, and that local conditions and
peculiarities influence the results in a decisive way).
It was not until the late 19th Century that Marx's conception of
a materialisthistory (see the sections
on Materialism and Marxism) based on the class
struggleraised attention to the importance of social
factorssuch as economics in the unfolding of history.
More recently, Michel Foucault has posited that the victors of
a social struggle use their political dominance to suppress a
defeated adversary's version of historical events in favor of
their own propaganda, which may go so far as historical
revisionism, as in the cases of Nazism and Stalinism.