Theories of History

The second view is often called the eschatological, that history has a beginning and an end, and therefore teleology. There is a lot of scholarship on the idea that Western historiography comes from Christian (actually Jewish) eschatological rewriting of the classical instinct for cyclical nothing-new-under-the-sun-ism. Good writing on that sort of thing is Reinhardt Koselleck, Futures Past. Also trendy these days. His theory of history is that "history" is Dasein's sense of history, sense of the relationship between past (space of experience) and future (horizon of expectation). You might also like Hayden White's Metahistory which is sort of the classic in this genre of applying the linguistic turn to historiography. Also very important is Time and Narrative by Paul Ricoeur, in the same tradition as Koselleck. Another book out more recently on applying Koselleck's thesis to postmodern presentism is Francois Hartog's Regimes of Historicity. Also of interest might be Posthistoire by Lutz Niethammer, which collates all modern/postmodern theories that we have reached the end of history with postmodern self-awareness. Also worth checking out Pippin's Modernity as a Philosophical Problem on that note.

The chaos to order view is the most appealing to me personally. Noosphere and all that. Some version of Hegel, also Schelling's later lectures. Spenglerianism as good Goethean morphology, but jettisoning the kitschier parts of the cyclical model. Goethean morphology with Christian eschatology I guess. Toynbee on the sociology of history.

I wouldn't say any of it in a professional context, but the professional historiographers who purport to study the cultural relativity of their own discipline are bizarrely blind to how contingent it is and how rooted in presentism it is. The atavistic jobber-historians are one thing, but even the supposedly methodologically and philosophically reflexive ones are oddly blind of the swelling bubble their pseudo-objectivity rests upon. The "eunuchs" of Nietzsche's Use and Abuse of History. The discipline will collapse soon as academia implodes and hopefully we'll have some interesting historians for the first time in a century. The last hundred years of philosophy of history, almost exactly 100 years since it died, have been worthless and excruciating bearing out of a paradigm that was already clear and visible in 1910.

10/10 post. Excellent. Thank you for all the reccs.

Sorry for being pretentious.

I was recently reading Reign of Quantity by Rene Guenon and he said one of the few things that has seemed genuinely new and unusual to me in philosophy of history a really long time, which was that the symbolic & metaphysical character of an age are actually linked together, and it's a mistake to assume that when sources of a past age use flowery over-the-top allegory it's just some kind of quaint literary technique of excess, but that we should actually take seriously that history itself, the metaphysics of an age itself, might have been different. I still don't know really what I think about that but it genuinely was the first thing that made me think instead of just being another fucking "that makes sense I guess" bearing-out of Heidegger or Hegel or romanticism or some boring anthropological rehash version of all this shit like Taussig.

Ortega y Gasset is also really interesting. And Benjamin, once you get past the commonplace way everybody reads Benjamin's canonical three things you're supposed to read and just assimilates him into the same dead historicist tradition.

Seriously sorry for being pretentious.

Lol bro I broke that down simply

Into my own idea here

It's called philosophy of history. You don't have Foucault, OP.

You weren't being pretentious, and the Reign Of Quantity is an excellent book. I've read it twice and plan on reading it again. One can really gain from multiple readings of that book. However, he doesn't claim that metaphysics changes through the ages (metaphysics itself never changes―only perhaps the way people express it). What he says is FAR more fascinating, and quite subtle to grasp its full significance. He says that time, which moderns relate to purely quantitatively (theory of relativity is perhaps an intimation of something different from the usual view?), is actually qualitative. Time has qualities, and so the different ages of history are qualitatively different from one another. He has very interesting things to say in this regard. Space, by the way, is also qualitative according to Guenon. One could draw very interesting conclusions from these considerations if one were so inclined, but I won't spell it out ;). I suggest you take a look at that book again. It's a work of real genius.

What does he believe? Summary of his theory?

Yes, Ragnarok, the myths would all have this fascinating idea where they describe why a particular event will prove disastrous in the end times. So you have this really tragic sense of an inevitable climax that can’t be won but must be thought.

It’s in his biography of Aquinas. He’s talking about oriental versus western ideals. He basically thought 19th century German thought was anti-European and orientalist, that notions like an eternal universe with repeating cycles desanctify life and make religious activity about “escaping” a life that’s beneath you. He felt orthodox Catholicism relied on the idea god had become man and so life itself was sacred, and that you shouldn’t shun the senses and so on. He compared it to a mountain of Christ and a Valley of Buddha (which he thought Neitszche was in). I suppose the progressive view of history is an offshoot of this (although Chesterton detested the idea of progress).

What I’m trying to say (badly, I apologise); is that the views of history with multiple cycles which can never truly be understood, only escaped, or an endless arbitrary universe with no meaning are similar in that they reject faith based assertions. The starting point of a Christian or Progressive view of history is that there are absolute truths which exist and govern the path of history. You don’t have this in the “wheel” ideas. It’s no coincidence most western atheists have a lot of time for Eastern philosophy; they are reacting against the assertive nature of faith.

I’m not necessarily saying that progressives are the rightful heirs of Christianity though, most Christians (Augustine) insisted that you should not try and build heaven on earth, which is of course the core of all progressive based thought. But it’s no coincidence that “progress” came out of Christian nations.

Personally I think they both have weaknesses, the Christian / Progress view inspires monstrous behaviour and can descend into a kind of dumb future worship if you aren’t careful, and yet there is something despairing about the core of the eastern religions (and certainly modern atheism). They seem to be philosophies about coming to terms with life, rather than overcoming it.

Which is why the Germanic view is so interesting, it has a linear universe with a beginning and end but doesn’t promise the triumph of good over evil.

It's all just cycles and circles bro

If you believe in any of these so-called "theories" you are a bad historian

Would recommend you the “sacred and profane” by Eliade. Interesting perspective of tradition (from an ex iron guard man turned anthropologist).

For what it’s worth, I agree with your statement. Carlyle talks in a lecture about Martin Luther being attacked by a demon in his study and he threw an ink pot at it. I’m no prod but there is no way a man who was able to argue his case in front the greatest authorities of the age and reshape world history was also secretly psychotic and having hallucinations to that degree. We can’t understand what life was like in non profane societies, it was different in every level.

>They seem to be philosophies about coming to terms with life, rather than overcoming it.
I would disagree with you on that. Because Easterners believe in cyclical history their attitude is one of overcoming history. They seek to eacape from the cycle, to rise above it. Western "progressive" views of history, however, make man dependant on a historical process. Salvation came with Christ, and before that no one could be saved. Man is dependant on an unfolding historical process. In the East, man is only temporarily the "victim" of history―fundamentally and essentially he is superior to history.

Everyone believes in a theory of history, if not explicitly than as an implicit assumption in their way of thinking. Every historian and evey historical writing has basic assumptions underlying it.

Not only history is a battlefield, but historiography, the telling and writing of history itself is, it's a fight over who gets to be the hero of the story, the "historical subject" who has a particular antagonist and reduces what is in fact a complex plural interaction of multiple agents and contingencies to this fragile rationality of A vs B, and marketed as "universal history" or "world history" when it's anything but. What you get from historiographers are discourses, systems of thoughts composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and the worlds of which they speak. Read Society must be Defended for more, keep in mind that when Foucault says "race struggle" it doesn't refer to biology but has the older meaning of people of a nation.

But that's a theory of historical writing, of history as an academic discipline. That's not a theory of history.

This is the theory of history:
>a complex plural interaction of multiple agents and contingencies
it doesn't fit in the "it's all random" model at all, and yes, to say that the real thing is not reducible to what gets written is itself a theory of history and not one of historiography alone.

Fair enough. Could you elaborate on the difference between that and the random theory?

Because if it was really that random there wouldn't be agents consistently getting their histories written to influence people to their advantages as a historically recurring phenomenon.

Apologies, overcome was a poor choice of words. But the Western idea (or at least Chesterton’s, I’m dubious about this) is that life itself is sanctified by God being made man. So history and generally human activity is blessed and shouldn’t be fled from. I think it’s more about this than the book of revelation or linear history.

You can oversimplify the random theory, the heuristics idea is that people act according to a small number of rules, (eg attack people weaker than you, defer to the stronger) and from this complex patterns emerge which behave like living things themselves

The universe is a fractal history of chaos and order emerging from each other.

So basically, you're a Zoroastrian?

>statistically there's only a 20% chance to be born during Kali Yuga
>Born during Kali Yuga anyway
Fuck this gay Earth.

People are reborn again and again. Statistically you probably lived a bunch of lifetimes in the Krita Yuga and had supernatural sex with forest nymphs. You may not remember any of it, but if it's any consolation, the sex was really really good.

Ya, I hope my next incarnation is really dope. This one's absolute fucking shit. What happens to my karmic cycle/ongoing soul if I kill myself? Asking for a friend...

I don't know. Reincarnation is the reason I'm afraid of suicide. If I knew for certain that there would be absolute nothingness upon death I would probably run off and do it now. I'm afraid that I'll just come back into this meaningless existence, and that next time it'll just be worse in every way. Well, fuck, that just got depressing real quick.

Entropic Arbitrary Chaos with the hope of, albeit temporary, Progressive Order.
There's no stopping final Oblivion.

Do you think of the universe as entropic in the sense that it begins in an orderly way and gradually degenerates, or that the rule is chaos and the oder that we see in our universe is a fluke that in tine will return to its natural state of chaotic flux?

Ya, I'm afraid it's like a Dantean thing, where you turned away from all the gifts and responsibilities of life, and as a 'punishment' you represent that through the afterlife. If I died right this second, whatever judgement/reincarnation is awaiting me would be a fucking nightmare, so I'm also scared of that. If I were an atheist I would also kill myself, but atheism is total nonsense. Sadly, I think I probably have responsibilities and reasons to exist, even if thinking about getting out of bed in the morning is very unpleasant.

If it helps at all, Seneca believes the Gods place the men they esteem most in the most difficult situations, like a soldier sent on a dangerous mission. It gives the Gods great pleasure to see us struggle and overcome difficulties. From poin of view you can kind of see yourself as an elite paratrooper dropped far behind enemy lines. There's a great deal of responsibility in your position, as you say. You've been entrusted with a lot. We weren't born into this dark age for nothing. Perhaps it's really a privelage, after all. You don't send someone on a mission if critical importance if you don't highly esteem that person.

man, sorry about all the typos guys

I'm not in a difficult situation, I'm just a huge loser. I dunno what I'd do in a truly difficult situation.

>Absolute order and absolute chaos are technically the same: In the beginning, all of everything was the same (a white page, any place like any other, everything moving, "absolute hot"). Then entropy causes cooling and stability (temporary "order", consciousness becomes manifest), but, eventually; entropy will make everything the same everywhere "again" (a black page/Oblivion/Absolute Zero).
Not cyclical.
You can extend oblivion, perhaps indefinitely, that's the hope; the potential power of will is infinitely unknown.

You were born in an age without the support of tradition, without religion, without order. That's a difficult situation. But if you prefer we'll call it an unnatural situation. Whatever you want to call it, you have been put there for a reason.

Thanks for the kind words hombre.

This is very Spenglarian and I like it v much

THESIS
ANTITHESIS
SYNTHESIS

Whoa, these words hit home. Why are you a loser, friend?

All the normal reasons. I have no accomplishments, and I'm depressed and just sit around all day resenting myself.

History is cyclical, meaning creatures are bound by it. And for this reason, "rising above" time requires a spontaneous effort, one not determined by a cause.

Yeah this is how you break the pattern

I honestly don't know

Time is a nightmare, like all Phenomena.

I've never studied Zoroastrianism.
I do research in this area and it's always seemed to me that the mathematics of the world brings emergent order from chaos which in turn generates chaos from which a higher degree of order is born and the cycle repeats ad infinitum

Be careful Veeky Forums is triggered by Spengler

We had a golden age and contact with extraterrestrial beings in ancient times and this explains global pyramid building. Our "universe" was sucked into a black hole and we have been cut off from the true universe ever since. All of our science post black hole event has been based on warped physical fabrics.

So entropy I guess

My basic view of history is not really cyclical, but not quite progressive either. Basically I subscribe to something similar to Spengler's ideas about Cultures. I don't see one Culture naturally giving rise to another Culture, and I don't necessarily see Cultures as unique in the way Spengler sees them (i.e. it's possible another "Classical" Culture could rise up, but not in the Mediterranean).

On top of this "nothing new under the sun" mentality, I'm of the opinion that most things on this Earth sustain themselves fairly well unless an outside force interrupts them. For me, this is God. So in this theory of things, the world of humanity would continue on almost indefinitely (save for the heat death of the universe or something) until God came along and wrecked us.

So I think there's an end, I think there's a repetitiveness, but it's not quite determined in the way a Cyclical theory is. You can have some predictive capacity within a Spenglerian framework of analyzing particular Cultures.

12 rules for life

why? not op but I think Spengler's great. Him, Tonybee, and Yockey had great ideas.

Meaningless/Arbitrary...though I don't agree with your definition. Things are not meaningless or arbitrary just because they don't have some underlying fiction attached to them, they certainly aren't random either.

To me, everything else is bullshit appropriation of history for ideological purposes. Essentially: delusion. There is no baser system or imperative. Again, this has nothing to do with meaning and randomness. It has both meaning and strict reason for something occurring, it's just more complex than some simple prescription of say, 'this happened because of the progressive force innate to existence', for example. That is just projection, a viewpoint divorced from reality. Not necessarily a bad thing, just no where near the truth.

I believe history is an amalgamation of cyclical and progressive, because while we evolve and learn from experiences humans are creatures of patterns and sooner or later we are bound to repeat same patterns albeit a little different

example: the political climate at the start of the XX century was volatile as fuck. you had great leaps in technological advancement, you had great ideological revolutions (China, Russia and Mexico to a lesser degree), you had a booming economy that came crashing down, you got a world wide war and so on, now compare it to the turn of the XXI century:
-Great economy that came crashing down (2008 till today and still ongoing)
-Great revolutions and social uprisings (The Arab spring, the return of ardent nationalism, the SJW movement, The greater push of universal human rights that's now in vogue)
-Worldwide war (war on terror)
-Volatile political climate (EU legitimacy crisis, USA having an inner fight withing the government, Turkey turning it's back on Europe and Nato, Russia allegedly funding dissention groups worldwide, Japan's fertility and mental health crisis, China's economy desacelerating, Latin America being a shitshow, Africa on the verge of total meltdown)
-Great leaps in technological advancement

also there's another phenomena regarding history, the good old "Life imitates art" which can be exemplified with Jules Verne and the machines we came up right over the past hundred years

I'm pretty sure anyone who actually studies history full-time / professionally would choose meaningless / arbitrary. Everything else is a religious or quasi-religious worldview using history as a tool.

...which isn't to say you can't find patterns in history, of course. But anyone using those patterns to make any certain claims about what will happen in the future is (a) probably not a historian and (b) trying to sell you something.

Historical materialism desu

historians are fucking worthless, they think the liberal gestell they inhabit is objectivity and they go around calling everyone else out as metanarrative and ideology

protip: gestell is metanarrative, liberal noncommittalism is ideology

True, it is of course an ideology too. Not sure why you call it 'liberal' though. I'd think scepticism or empiricism would describe it.

But anyway, it's definitely troublesome for alternative philosophies of history. Hard to argue that History is the gradual unfolding of the Spirit or the inevitable process of class warfare when people who actually study it keep pointing out that it's actually just a bunch of shit that happened.

Any non-shoah-centric theory of history is tantamount to laying the foundation for another Auschwitz.

I'm getting a PhD at a top 5 History program according to usnews bullshit and it's just terrible dude, historians are antiquarians who think they are still the same edgy interesting rebels as the cultural and linguistic turns were

It's liberal because it's bourgeois garbage. Leftists who aren't really leftists, pseudoprogressive ivory tower rich people who want to be activists but still have social prestige and six figure salaries while doing it. There is a reason Marxist historians disliked the meliorist reformist liberals in the 60s. It's also liberal because of the assimilationism of the liberal worldview, the historic bloc of liberalism that is as much an ontological as an ideological worldview, that lets it assimilate all crisis and development into itself so that it never has to change or address its fundamental problems. Academic history is an organic outcropping of the bourgeois state.

I don't know if you study it professionally but get yourself out of the echo chamber, don't fall for the smugness circlejerk that makes you want to be a part of it so you can be in the country club too. You are doing that 'heh, that's not real history' thing that has caused their discipline to become stagnant, that's part of the boundary policing my man, you are being inducted into the clubhouse as a lowly because you desire its approval.

Not sure if that's the only reason why it's hard to argue for a conceptualization of history as a gradual unfolding of the Spirit.

Nah, I took it to postgrad but don't do it professionally. Here's the thing, though: your argument against the prevailing worldview of historians, as far as I understand it, is about its -consequences-. That's never going to be enough. If you want to successfully argue against it, you need to show that it's incorrect.

>You are doing that 'heh, that's not real history' thing
Perhaps. Which scholars would you recommend as carrying out detailed, critical historical research while also putting forward an overarching philosophy of history (other than the 'shit happens' philosophy)? I honestly can't think of any. From what I've seen even the Marxist historians tend to lose the sense of inevitability that I feel is essential to a good meta-narrative, although I could be wrong.

Punching with no power, running in place, wrestling with nets, apathy in the face of abomination. I don't mean it's like a nightmare, it IS one.

Thanks for this post, thinking like this actually helps a lot.

Fuck History. Meme discipline. Stay as far away from it as possible.

>no poetry after Auchwitz
>all his mates were poets

I think "atrocity morality" is the worst philosophy of all time. Its not a political side thing either, its the exact same thing against the Russians in the New Nationalists in the East as the liberal guilt trip in the West. The idea that you must avoid moral judgements or in some cases any action at all because "its the first step to x pile of bodies" is ludicrous.

>organic outcropping of the bourgeois state
I think the trouble here, and I largely agree with you, is best summed up by Wyndham-Lewis in a book he wrote called "against the demon of progress in art" or something similar. Its not in print but cheap on amazon and a quick read.

Basically his argument is that an artist (and I believe we can stand in a historian here and make the same point), shouldn't be motivated primarily by their ideology. They should want to create art, or in a historians case discover truth about the past. Marxist history forced everything threw a meat-wrangler where it had to become about economic struggle between classes or it wasn't a valid explanation. I've heard some moronic explanations of WWI along these lines. The liberal "revision" was a reaction against this, but really all they tend to do is take a proposition (either Marxist or Traditional) and just turn it upside down and engage in sophistry so people think they are clever. WL calls it "the great 0". It can be dazzling when done well, but is ultimately meaningless. Marxism is wrong as theory, but at least it attempts to say Something.

I also believe this