Editing Philosophy of history (section)

== Concepts ==
=== Philosophy of chronology ===

Many ancient cultures held [[mythical]] and [[theological]] concepts of history and of [[time]] that were not [[linear]]. Such societies saw history as cyclical, with alternating Dark and Golden Ages. [[Plato]] taught the concept of the [[Great Year]], and other Greeks spoke of [[aeon]]s. Similar examples include the ancient doctrine of [[eternal return]], which existed in [[Ancient Egypt]], in the [[Indian religions]], among the [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] [[Pythagoreans]]' and in the [[Stoics]]' conceptions. In his ''[[Works and Days]]'', [[Hesiod]] described five [[Ages of Man]]: the [[Golden Age]], the [[Silver Age]], the [[Bronze Age]], the [[Greek Heroic Age|Heroic Age]], and the [[Iron Age]], which began with the [[Dorian invasion]]. Some scholars{{which|date=July 2018}} identify just four ages, corresponding to the four metals, with the Heroic age as a description of the Bronze Age. A four-age count would match the [[Vedic time keeping|Vedic]] or Hindu ages known as [[Satya Yuga]], [[Treta Yuga]], [[Dvapara Yuga]] and [[Kali Yuga]], which together make one [[Yuga Cycle]] that repeats. According to [[Jainism]], this world has no beginning or end but goes through cycles of upturns (utsarpini) and downturns (avasarpini) constantly. Many Greeks believed that just as mankind went through four stages of character during each rise and fall of history so did [[government]]. They considered [[democracy]] and [[monarchy]] as the healthy régimes of the higher ages; and [[oligarchy]] and [[tyranny]] as corrupted régimes common to the lower ages.{{citation needed|date= February 2016}}

In the East, [[Social cycle theory|cyclical theories of history]] developed in China (as a theory of [[dynastic cycle]]) and in the Islamic world in the Muqaddimah of [[Ibn Khaldun]] (1332–1406).

During the [[Renaissance]], cyclical conceptions of history would become common, with proponents illustrating decay and rebirth by pointing to the [[decline of the Roman Empire]]. [[Machiavelli]]'s ''[[Discourses on Livy]]'' (1513–1517) provide an example. The notion of [[Empire]] contained in itself ascendance and [[decadence]],{{citation needed|date=July 2018}} as in [[Edward Gibbon]]'s ''[[The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'' (1776), which the Roman Catholic Church placed on the ''[[Index Librorum Prohibitorum]]'' (List of Prohibited Books).

During the [[Age of Enlightenment]], history began to be seen as both linear and irreversible. [[Condorcet]]'s interpretations of the various "stages of humanity" and [[Auguste Comte]]'s [[positivism]] were among the most important formulations of such conceptions of history, which trusted [[social progress]]. As in [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]'s ''[[Emile: Or, On Education|Emile]]'' (1762) treatise on education (or the "art of training men"), the Enlightenment conceived the human species as perfectible: [[human nature]] could be infinitely developed through a well-thought [[pedagogy]].

[[Social cycle theory|Cyclical conceptions]] continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the works of authors such as [[Oswald Spengler]] (1880–1936), [[Correa Moylan Walsh]] (1862–1936), [[Nikolay Danilevsky]] (1822–1885), [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] (1908–2009),<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Lévi-Strauss |first1=Claude |title=Wild thought: a new translation of "La pensée sauvage" |last2=Leavitt |first2=John Harold |date=2021 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-20801-5 |location=Chicago London |pages=264 |translator-last=Mehlman |translator-first=Jeffrey}}</ref> and [[Paul Kennedy]] (1945– ), who conceived the human past as a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler, like [[Herbert Butterfield|Butterfield]], when writing in reaction to the carnage of the [[First World War]] of 1914–1918, believed that a civilization enters upon an era of [[Caesarism]]<ref>
Compare [https://books.google.com/books?id=XDWcLHxfthMC Oswald Spengler and History as Destiny], page 93: "[...] the closing years of the First World War, when Spengler was completing his work, had witnessed the passing of the feudal rule of landed aristocracy in Germany and its merging into budding forms of parliamentary plutocracy - soon to be followed by the rise of 'mobocracy' and then Caesarism."
</ref>
after its soul dies.{{citation needed|date= February 2016}} Spengler thought that the soul of the West was dead and that Caesarism was about to begin.

=== Philosophy of causality ===

Narrative and causal approaches to history have often been contrasted or even opposed to one another, yet they can also be viewed as complementary.<ref>Hewitson, M. (2014) ''History and Causality'', 127-48.</ref> Some philosophers of history such as Arthur Danto have claimed that "explanations in history and elsewhere" describe "not simply an event—something that happens—but a change".<ref>Danto, A. (1968) ''Analytical Philosophy of History'', 233.</ref> Like many practicing historians, they treat causes as intersecting actions and sets of actions which bring about "larger changes", in Danto's words: to decide "what are the elements which persist through a change" is "rather simple" when treating an individual's "shift in attitude", but "it is considerably more complex and metaphysically challenging when we are interested in such a change as, say, the break-up of feudalism or the emergence of nationalism".<ref>Danto, A. (1968) ''Analytical Philosophy of History'', 249.</ref>

Much of the historical debate about causes has focused on the relationship between communicative and other actions, between singular and repeated ones, and between actions, structures of action or group and institutional contexts and wider sets of conditions.<ref>Hewitson, M. (2014) ''History and Causality'', 86-116.</ref> John Gaddis has distinguished between exceptional and general causes (following Marc Bloch) and between "routine" and "distinctive links" in causal relationships: "in accounting for what happened at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, we attach greater importance to the fact that President Truman ordered the dropping of an atomic bomb than to the decision of the Army Air Force to carry out his orders."<ref>Gaddis, J. L. (2002) ''The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past'', 64.</ref> He has also pointed to the difference between immediate, intermediate and distant causes. For his part, Christopher Lloyd puts forward four "general concepts of causation" used in history: the "metaphysical idealist concept, which asserts that the phenomena of the universe are products of or emanations from an omnipotent being or such final cause"; "the empiricist (or [[Humeanism#Causality and necessity|Humean]]) regularity concept, which is based on the idea of causation being a matter of constant conjunctions of events"; "the functional/teleological/consequential concept", which is "goal-directed, so that goals are causes"; and the "realist, structurist and dispositional approach, which sees relational structures and internal dispositions as the causes of phenomena".<ref>Lloyd, C. (1993) ''Structures of History'', 159.</ref>

There is disagreement about the extent to which history is ultimately [[historical determinism|deterministic]]. Some argue that geography, economic systems, or culture prescribe laws that determine the events of history. Others see history as a sequence of consequential processes that act upon each other. Even determinists do not rule out that, from time to time, certain cataclysmic events occur to change the course of history. Their main point is, however, that such events are rare and that even apparently large shocks like wars and revolutions often have no more than temporary effects on the evolution of the society.

=== Philosophy of neutrality ===

The question of neutrality concerns itself foremost with analysis of historiography and the biases of historical sources. One prominent manifestation of this analysis is the idea that "history is written by the victors".

[[G. W. F. Hegel]] adopts the expression "''Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht''" ("World history is a tribunal that judges the world", a quote from [[Friedrich Schiller]]'s poem ''Resignation'', published in 1786) and asserts that history is what judges men and women, their actions, and their opinions.<ref>Janez Juhant, Bojan Žalec (eds.), ''Reconciliation: The Way of Healing and Growth'', LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 98.</ref> Since the twentieth century, Western historians have disavowed the aspiration to provide a judgement of history.<ref name="Curran2000p413">Curran, Vivian Grosswald (2000) ''Herder and the Holocaust: A Debate About Difference and Determinism in the Context of Comparative Law'' in F. C. DeCoste, Bernard Schwartz (eds.) ''Holocaust's Ghost: Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=lLnBSq7YP0gC&pg=PA413 pp.413-5]</ref><ref name="Parkinson1988p800"/> The goals of historical judgements or interpretations are separate from those of [[legal judgement]]s, which need to be formulated quickly after the events and be final.<ref name="Curran2000p415">Curran, Vivian Grosswald (2000) ''Herder and the Holocaust: A Debate About Difference and Determinism in the Context of Comparative Law'' in F. C. DeCoste, Bernard Schwartz (eds.) ''Holocaust's Ghost: Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=lLnBSq7YP0gC&pg=PA415 p.415]</ref>

In his ''[[Collège de France]]'' lectures published as ''Society Must Be Defended'', [[Michel Foucault]] posits 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 negationism]]. [[Wolfgang Schivelbusch]]'s ''Culture of Defeat'' takes an opposing approach that defeat is a major driver for the defeated to reinvent himself, while the victor, confirmed in his attitudes and methods, dissatisfied by the high losses and paltry gains made, may be less creative and fall back.

Related to the issues of historical judgement are those of the pretension to neutrality and objectivity.<ref>Rubinoff, Lionel ''History, Philosophy and Historiography: Philosophy and the Critique of Historical Thinking'', in William Sweet ''The Philosophy of History: A Re-Examination'', Chapter 9 [https://books.google.com/books?id=vjtv_AOBJ4MC&pg=PA171 p.171]</ref><ref>Andrew Holland [https://books.google.com/books?id=cdsvVatrQ_AC&pg=RA3-PA7-IA5 Access to History: Russia and its Rulers 1855-1964 (OCR): Historical Themes] p.7</ref> Analytic and critical philosophers of history have debated whether historians should express judgements on historical figures, or if this would infringe on their supposed role.<ref name="Parkinson1988p800">Parkinson, G.H.R ''An Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=IqbJnEYKpW4C&pg=PA807 pp.800, 807, 820]</ref> In general, [[positivist]]s and neopositivists oppose any value-judgement as unscientific.<ref name="Parkinson1988p800"/>