Philosophy of history

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches the philosophy of history through Hegel and through Hegel's commentator Jacques D'Hondt. He recalls that Hegel distinguishes three ways of writing history: original history, reflective and critical history, and philosophical history. In his view, the third does not make the first two obsolete, and in D'Hondt's work "philosophising" history remains alive1. He defines it as a philosophical re-interiorisation of the past that stops at the present. It prophesies nothing and leaves history open, as a collective adventure without end2. He sets it against the condemnation of "grand narratives", which rejects any philosophy of history and any idea that the past is fulfilled3. To those who hold that giving history a meaning leads to totalitarianism, he replies that if that meaning is freedom, it tends towards the greatest possible number of free individuals4. In 2018 he takes up this argument again: making freedom the meaning of history sets aside both the thesis of the absurd and the charge of totalitarianism5.

1. 1Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (1)2 Aug 2016 · 29:13
2. 2Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (2)2 Aug 2016 · 1:57
3. 3Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (3)2 Aug 2016 · 2:12
4. 4Is history a subject?9 Mar 2017 · 1:21:06
5. 5In conversation with Bernard Friot (1 June 2018)12 Jun 2018 · 1:58:55

Summary produced automatically from 5 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.