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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
The apparent implication of Hegel's conception of philosophical history, that the future must be foreclosed or that history must come to an end, has long been a source of difficulty both for Hegelians themselves and for commentators on Hegel's philosophy. The suggestion that the truth of history can be understood only when reason has actualised itself in the state seems to carry an implication, that there is no further work either for reason or philosophy to do, which is hard to accept given the obvious fact that the present world hardly seems beyond the possibility of rational improvement. It is not my intention in this paper to engage in any direct discussion of previous interpretations. Instead I shall address the substantial problem itself by trying to explain certain requirements of Hegel's philosophy of history and then to develop and examine their consequences for the concept of an end of history.
I shall begin by examining some initial reasons why it might be thought that Hegel is committed to the notion of an end of history. A convenient way of doing this is by noting very briefly some features of the philosophical route which leads him to the idea of philosophical history in the Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. As is well known, he begins by identifying a number of different kinds of history, the distinguishing feature of each of which is the historian's viewpoint. Thus the first, original history, is history as written by those who are involved in it and who share the spirit of its time. It is really a kind of contemporary history in which, since the historian shares the spirit of his time, he writes from that viewpoint. But because he writes from within it, he cannot be conscious of his viewpoint and cannot, therefore, transcend it in the sense of understanding it as part of a larger whole. Next come the four forms of reflective history, ie. universal history, pragmatic history, critical history and specialised history, in which each kind of historian tries to transcend the viewpoint of his time in an attempt to view history reflectively. But, for a series of different reasons, each is unsuccessful.
1 Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, Hegel, G W F, trans by H B Nisbet. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975, p 35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All further quotations and references to the Lecturesare from this translation.
2 Op cit, p 201.
3 “The sole aim of philosophical enquiry is to eliminate the contingent. Contingency is the same as external necessity, that is, a necessity which originates in causes which are themselves no more than external circumstances.” Op cit, p 28.
4 Referring to critical history, Hegel writes: “This higher criticism has been the pretext for introducing all the unhistorical monstrosities a vain imagination could suggest. It too is a method of bringing a present into the past, namely by substituting subjective fancies for historical data…” Op cit, p 22.
5 Op cit, p 170.
6 Op cit, p 190.
7 Ibid.
8 Op cit, p 42.
9 Hegel's Philosophy of Right, translated by Knox, T M, Oxford University Press Paperback, Oxford, 1967, reprinted 1973, p 15.Google Scholar