Week 7: Thinking about history Flashcards
(20 cards)
How does Hegel see nature? How does he see history?
Hegel sees nature as cyclical: it repeats patterns endlessly, like the seasons. There’s no real development, just repetition.
In contrast, history is not repetitive. It moves forward in a spiral. Things might look similar at times, but they are never exactly the same. History has progress and change over time.
Understanding history according to Hegel
Hegel argues that historians shouldn’t just record events (e.g., wars, revolutions, reigns of kings). Instead, they should ask why those events happened:
→ What were the motivations of the people involved?
→ What ideas or reasons were driving their actions?
Acts vs. events
An event is something that happened. An act involves intention and meaning. History is made up of acts, not just events.
The cunning of reason (Hegel)
Reason (the driving force of history) achieves its ends through human passions and ambitions, even if people don’t realise it.
Example: A general might wage war for glory or power—but in doing so, he unintentionally helps to bring about a greater historical change, like national unification.
This is “cunning” because reason manipulates human motives to accomplish its goals.
Necessity in history
For Hegel, history is not random or accidental. Every development is necessary in the grand scheme.
That doesn’t mean everything is planned or predetermined in a strict sense, but each stage in history logically follows from the previous one.
What does Collingwood say about history?
History doesn’t exist, because the past does not exist anymore, and the future does not exist yet. Only the present is real. Therefore, the historian is really studying the present, not the past; e.g. when he is studying sources like manuscripts and artifacts, he is studying the present, something that still exists. The historian constructs history based on traces left in the present. They study sources and try to explain how they came to be the way they are.
In what way does Collingwood agree with Hegel?
Collingwood agrees with hegel that the historian has to show the logic that underlies history. While Hegel focuses on larger concepts (e.g. freedom), Collingwood is more interested in individual human behavior.
How does Collingwood distinguish events and actions?
An event is something that we can explain by giving its causes. An action can be explained by reasons. A cause is either there or not, but it can’t be a good or a bad cause, while reasons can be good or bad. Causes are subject to laws, while reasons are subject to decisions. This distinction is important because according to Collingwood, historians are always interested in human actions, not in events.
Causal explanation
I hit someone because my brain and nerves triggered my movements.
Re-anactment (Collingwood)
To place yourself in the shoes of a historical person so that you can recreate their thought processes in your own mind. So, then you can understand why they acted the way they did.
Hayden White
Develops a theory of history; no way of writing history is more realistic than any other.
White’s genres
Romance: good over evil
Comedy: opposing forces are reconciliated
Tragedy: high ideals fail, but we learn to accept our limitations
Satire: nothing has a deeper meaning, all of the above are examples of wishful thinking
Narrative structure
Historical writing is not just a neutral recounting of facts, but is shaped like a story (with a beginning, middle, end). He argued that historians impose narrative forms (tragedy, satire, etc)
An example of “comedy”
Hegel’s theory of thesis and antithesis.
An example of “tragedy”
Hempel’s view.
It is much harder to find laws in history than it is in the natural sciences, and therefore Hempel’s theory doesn’t really work:
- You cannot do experiments.
- Human beings are too complex to fit these kinds of laws.
- Human beings are unpredictable due to free will.
- When we start to predict human behaviour, that behaviour will start to change as a result of the prediction, resulting in a paradox.
- Individual differences between human beings are important.
- Human beings change over time.
- Humanitarian scientists are largely interested in individual cases, while natural scientists are only interested in general phenomena (e.g. a scientist investigating a piece of metal is interested in that metal in general, not in that specific piece).
Why are the natural sciences not holistic?
Because they don’t depend on context.
History of politics
- Lawlessness without states
Everyone can do what they want provided they are strong/smart enough to get away with it. It looks like freedom but is also unfreedom; it has contradictions. - Strict hierarchical states
States with one or few persons at the top and a strict hierarchy that structure society. - Democracy/rechtsstaat
We are currently here; state in a way everyone’s powers are strictly limited by the law and people have a say in what those laws are.
What do contradictions do according to Hegel?
Contradictions push history forward; if we solve the contradictions of one stage, we go to the next stage, which is its opposite. But the opposite of a contradiction is still a contradiction.
Difference between Marx and later Marxist thinkers
Marx himself emphasises freedom, but later Marxist thinkers suggest the inevitability of communism. This is dangerous, because it removes human freedom, criticism, democracy.
