The notion that history conforms to a “dialectical” pattern, according to which contradictions generated at one level are overcome or transcended at the next, was incorporated—though in a radically new form—in the theory of social change propounded by Karl Marx. Like Hegel, Marx adopted a “directional” view of history; but, whereas Hegel had tended to exhibit it as representing the unfolding in time of an inner spiritual principle, Marx looked elsewhere for the ultimate determinants of its course and character. Humans, according to Marx, are creative beings, situated in a material world that stands before them as an objective reality and provided this field for their activities. This primitive truth, which had been obscured by Hegel’s mystifying abstractions, afforded the key to a proper understanding of history as a process finally governed by the changing methods whereby humans sought to derive from the natural environment the means of their subsistence and the satisfaction of their evolving wants and needs. The productive relations in which people stand to one another, resulting in such phenomena as the division of labour and the appearance of economically determined classes, were the factors fundamental to historical movement. What he termed the superstructure of society—which covered such things as political institutions and systems of law, ethics, and religion—was in the last analysis dependent upon the shape taken by the “material production” and the “material intercourse” of human beings in their struggle to master nature: “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” Hence, the inner dynamic of history was held to lie in conflicts arising from changes in the means of production and occurring when modes of social organization and control, adapted to the development of the productive forces at one stage, became impediments to it at another; they were to be resolved, furthermore, not by abstract thought but by concrete action. Thus, the Hegelian conception of spirit as involved in a relentless struggle with itself and with what it had created underwent a revolutionary transformation, explosive in its implications.
Karl Marx.Photos.com/Thinkstock
Marx’s interpretation of the historical process, with its stress upon necessity and the operation of ineluctable laws, was often portrayed by its proponents as being scientific in character. It has, however, more than one aspect, and it would be an error to identify its underlying methodology with that associated with Comtean positivism. Generally speaking, the basic categories within which it was framed derived from a theory of human nature that had more in common with the postulates of German Romantic thought than with those of British and French empiricism: to this extent, the logical structure Marx sought to impose upon the data of history belonged to a tradition that stressed the differences rather than the resemblances between the human and the natural world. Later systems
The tendency to detect in history the presence of large-scale patterns and comprehensive uniformities continued into the 20th century in the work of a number of writers, most notably Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918–22; The Decline of the West), wherein the history of humankind is presented in terms of biologically conceived cultures whose careers conformed to a predetermined course of growth and decay, was widely acclaimed during the years of disillusionment that followed World War I; and a somewhat similar reception was given to Toynbee’s massive A Study of History (1934–61) immediately after World War II. Toynbee, like Spengler, undertook a comparative study of civilizations, thereby repudiating attempts to treat the past as if it exhibited a single linear progression: at the same time, he diverged from Spengler in suggesting that current Western society might not after all be necessarily doomed to extinction and in tempering a predominantly deterministic mode of thought with reservations that allowed a place for human free will and the possibility of divine intervention. Yet, as some of his critics were quick to point out, such qualifications were not easy to reconcile with his original insistence upon the need to adopt “a scientific approach to human affairs”; nor was it clear that his own use of inductive methods to establish the laws governing the development of civilizations was above logical suspicion or reproach. Toynbee’s experiment might have been impressive as an individual achievement; nevertheless, with the multiplication of objections and in a theoretical climate that had become skeptical of speculative system-building of any kind, the very feasibility of engaging upon a project of the type he had undertaken came to be seriously questioned. It was felt increasingly that philosophy of history in the traditional sense—resting largely upon uncriticized assumptions concerning the nature of historical inquiry and its relations with other disciplines—had reached something of an impasse; if history was still to be treated as a proper subject for philosophical examination, it must be along lines quite different from those previously pursued.
Oswald Spengler, c. 1930–36.German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv), Bild 183-R06610; photograph, o.Ang.
Analytical problems
The concept of history
The task of trying to delineate the specific character of historical knowledge and understanding, rather than of seeking to construct vast speculative schemes in the earlier manner, first began to attract the attention of philosophers toward the end of the 19th century. To such thinkers as Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce, the claim that, in the absence of some all-embracing system of a teleological or quasi-scientific kind, the course of history could be regarded as constituting nothing better than a meaningless chaos appeared to be totally unacceptable. History is intelligible, they believed, in the sense that historians make it so; moreover, this was the only type of intelligibility it was either necessary or legitimate to demand. What could reasonably be looked for was a clearer and deeper insight into the conditions that render historical knowledge possible, an elucidation of the presuppositions upon which historical enquiry is founded and of the principles according to which it proceeds. It was with such an investigation in mind that R.G. Collingwood, a British philosopher who owed much to Crocean ideas, wrote in his Autobiography (1939) that “the chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.” By contending that the philosopher should eschew the grandiose ambition of providing a synoptic vision of the entire historical process and concern himself, instead, with the articulation and justification of existing historical procedures, Collingwood and his continental precursors made, in effect, a crucial contribution toward setting philosophy of history on a new path. Their proposals were, moreover, given additional impetus by the widespread acceptance of analytical approaches in other branches of philosophy. In consequence, subsequent thinkers tended to focus attention upon the explication of concepts and terms that perform a key role in historical thought and description as these are actually carried on: among other things, they were led into discussing the ways in which historians typically divide up and classify the past, the manner in which they argue for and substantiate their interpretations, and the logical structure of the explanations they are accustomed to offer.