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Volledige samenvatting rethinking History 2
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Summary Philosophy of the Humanities 1 Lectures
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Week 1William von Humboldt - ‘Bildung’ – tradition of self-cultivation, that a nation state has a shared
culture that is worth passing on to new generations and should therefore be researched/taught
University reforms: ‘unity of teaching and research’, ‘academic freedom’
Paul - The twofold meaning of ‘history’
o historia res gestae: the course of past events (i.e. human deeds/development over time)
o historia rerum gestarum: the narrative accounts of/about the course of events, what people
assert about the past
Philosophy of history defined along the lines of two different ‘objects of reflection’: historical reality
(historia res gestae) vs historical thought (historia rerum gestarum)
Substantive/Speculative Philosophy of History
o Subfield: Metaphysics
o Material – object of study is the course of the past/history itself (historia res gestae).
o Interpretation of history based on a certain driving force/process/engine through which
historical events are given meaning
o History having a fundamental ‘goal’ or ‘destination’
o E.g. Marxist perspective on communism as the ultimate end of history, Toynbee’s ‘A Study of
History’, Hegel’s speculative philosophy of history
Analytical/Critical Philosophy of History
o Subfield: Epistemology
o Object of study is instead historical thought (historia rerum gestarum)
o Focuses not only on epistemological questions, but also methodological, ethical, aesthetic,
and political questions that concern historical practice
o Arose in opposition to speculative philosophies. ‘Rather than reflect on the course or
meaning of the historical process, ‘critical’ philosophers of history preferred to devote
themselves to conceptual analysis of ‘facts’, ‘inferences’ and ‘explanations’ (Paul p. 9)
o Many perspectives will be covered in this course: positivism, post-modernism, post-
colonialism, etc.
Criticisms
Speculative’ Philosophy of History
o Disregards human agency?
o Totalitarian regimes making use of these ideas, atrocities committed in the name of
‘speculative’ philosophies?
However:
o Speculative philosophies of history cannot be generalised – they are varied and diverse
o ‘nobody can think about the historia rerum gestarum without reflecting on the historia res
gestae’ (Paul p. 10)
o ‘metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the historia res gestae are inevitable for
anyone reflecting on historical thought’ because ‘history’, ‘event’, ‘fact’ are ‘loaded with
assumptions about the nature of historical reality and human beings’ role in it.’ (Paul p. 11)
Paul’s solution?
Historical theory = moving beyond dichotomies
A conceptual analysis of how human beings relate to the past
Comes down to:
Historical reality (speculative) vs historical thought (critical)
Historia res gestae (speculative) vs historia rerum gestarum (critical)
, Questions of goals, destinations, rhythms, patterns, driving forces (speculative) vs questions
of reliability, truth, fact, objectivity, etc (critical)
Week 2
Kant
Subject vs Object Scheme
o The idea that knowledge consists in a relation of depiction or representation between a
knowing subject (observer) and a known object (observed)
o Kant: Knowledge must not conform to the known object – instead, objects must conform to
our (a priori) knowledge
Kant's Copernican Turn
o Man cannot be unproblematically described as only subject or only object: the subject both
constitutes and structures experience. Knowledge comes about through active intervention
of the knowing subject, through our faculty of judgement.
o The human self (the ‘transcendental ego’) constructs knowledge out of both sense
impressions (observations) and from universal concepts (reason)
o The transcendental subject only knows the phenomenal world through a priori knowledge
Kant's categories
For Kant, the basic ways in which thought works, and the basic structures of consciousness,
are a priori – that is, they exist prior to experience
A priori concepts are independent not only of what we are thinking about/are conscious of
but are independent of any historical influence or development: therefore, they are
universal.
Idealist in the sense that reason is universal and timeless, reality can only be constructed
through ideas and concepts
Kant calls these structures of thought ‘categories’: namely ‘cause’, ‘substance’, ‘existence’
and ‘reality’
Knowledge of the basic structure of the outside world is a priori knowledge, and is only
possible because we are all born with categories that supply us with a framework of
experience
This a priori framework means that the world as it appears is dependent on the nature of
the human mind.
It thus does not represent the world as it really is, i.e. the world ‘in itself’
This world ‘in itself’ is the noumenal world.
All that we can know is the world that appears to us through the framework of Kant’s
categories, the phenomenal world, the world of everyday experience.
Hegel
Hegel's absolute idealism
o Central idea: all phenomena – from consciousness to political/social institutions to
morality to the law – are aspects of a single ‘Spirit’ (Geist) - by which is meant
‘mind’, ‘idea’ and ‘soul’, human self-realization.
o An extension of Kant’s transcendental idealism – however, unlike Kantian reason,
Hegel’s notion of Geist is the soul reality: not just limited to knowledge/our faculty
of judgement/framework of experience
Hegel's critique of Kant
o According to Hegel, Kant’s transcendental idealism fails in at least two respects:
He regards Kant’s notion of the ‘world in itself’ as an empty abstraction that
means nothing. To Hegel, what exists is whatever comes to be manifested in
consciousness (something sensed or thought)
, According to Hegel, Kant also makes too many assumptions about the
nature and origin of his ‘categories.’ Kant assumes that the categories are
original, distinct and separate, but for Hegel they are ‘dialectical’ meaning
that they are always subject to change.
o Essentially, Hegel believes that the world we experience, and the framework of
experience itself, is subject to change.
o Kant = timelessness of framework of experience, Hegel = evolution of framework of
experience
Hegel's dialectics
o The core of Hegel’s logic is that every notion, or ‘thesis’ contains within itself a
contradiction, or ‘antithesis’, which is only resolved by the emergence of a new
notion, a ‘synthesis’
o It is a process of insight formation and the self-realisation of the ‘Geist’
o When we become aware of the synthesis. We realise that what we saw as the earlier
contradiction in the thesis was only an apparent contradiction, caused by some
limitation in our understanding of the original notion.
o Essentially, this dialectic shows how opposites can find resolution.
o It is a process of negation and sublation (the ‘motor’ of self-realisation)
The resolution of a thesis with its antithesis in a synthesis is just the beginning of a
dialectical process, which repeats itself:
o In this way, the ‘Spirit’ (mind, idea, soul) comes to ever more accurate
understandings of itself and the world, culminating in complete understanding
‘Geist’/’Spirit’ and dialectics
o Three-fold conception of ‘Spirit’
Subjective spirit: the concept of spirit as individual subjectivity, the
‘self’/‘mind’ - force
Objective spirit: the human spirit expresses itself in the world (without the
world subjectivity is only an abstraction) - force in action
Absolute spirit: the future stage of consciousness which no longer belongs to
individuals, but which instead belongs to reality as a whole – the goal, aim or
target of the force, as well as the realization of this force
Follows the pattern of thesis – antithesis - synthesis
Hegel's philosophy of history
Hegel’s dialectics reflect a method of philosophy – starting with assumptions and allowing
for ever richer concepts to reveal themselves through a dialectical process.
, However, Hegel also clearly argues that these developments are not merely facts of logic,
but are real developments that can be seen at work in history: a historical praxis
Types of consciousness (of ‘Spirit’) are to be found externalised in particular periods or
events
Historicity: self-realisation as progressive historical development towards Freedom. In this
way, all reality is a historical process.
Hegel also argues for ‘zeitgeists’: spirit’s stage of development at a particular moment in
world history, e.g. the French Revolution
Certain individuals as the embodiment of ‘Spirit.’ As an individual consciousness, they are
completely aware of their role in the history of ‘Spirit.’ Characterised by the freeing of
aspects of Spirit from recurring states of oppression (as a driving force). E.g. Napoleon
Essentially, Hegel proposed that the nature of consciousness has changed and self-mediated
through time, in accordance with a pattern that is visible in history.
This means that there is nothing about human beings that is not historical in character.
Moreover, this historical development did not happen at random, since it is a dialectical
process. It contains both a sense of direction and an end point.
This end point is ‘Absolute Spirit’: at this point in the development of spirit that knowledge is
complete.
‘Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it
truly is.’
‘History is a conscious, self-mediating process – [it is] Spirit emptied out into time.’
Week 3
Beiser
Threefold definition of historicism (LECTURE!!)
The Historical School pioneered by Ranke that promoted a critical historical methodology
based on historical facts
A 19th century scholarly and intellectual movement that recognized that the quality of
historical scholarship did not consist of the recognition of general laws or principles, but in
the recognition of an infinite variety of particular historical forms: historical forms should be
understood in its own context
Historicism as a broader ‘worldview’ that sees the entire world as the product of historical
change and recognizes that the essence of things can be found in its history
Besier History of Historicism
Historicism was a programme against metaphysics/idealism (before 1840) and later
positivism (after 1840)
Demand for autonomy of history as a discipline: it should be self-governing and follow its
own rules and standards.
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