Theories of History

While a History narrates the past events of a people or peoples, a Theory of History finds a general pattern in any such narration. Notions of a Fall or a Cycle are among the most panculturally ancient historical patterns, while slightly more recent Messianism offers a teleological vision of the course of events. While these are highly abstract themes, possibly the first fleshed-out Philosophy of History came from Vico in the early 1700s. Vico saw human History constituted by three main eras--the age of Gods, the age of Heroes, and the age of Men, and then back to that of Gods, etc. Perhaps in response to Vico, a further elaboration of his general idea is the interpretation of it as either an ascent or descent. For, notably, Hegel and Marx, the process of democratization entailed in Vico's third age is an ascent, the internal motor of which is Dialectics. And, today's Progressive Liberalism subscribes to a tempered version of such an ascent, promoting universal justice, but rejecting the Hegelian/Marxist thesis of historical inevitability. In contrast, Nietzsche conceived of the same course of events as a degeneration, into conformism, that, in his time, he diagnosed as being on the verge of Nihilism. One significant variation on Nietzsche's themes came from Heidegger, who saw, as a concomitant to the leveling-out process, the rise of Subjectivism. The conflict between the ascending and descending theories of human history has been a significant ingredient in recent American politics. For, just as current Liberalism is an expression of the former attitude, neo-Conservativism, even if not always explicitly, adheres to the latter: one of its main influences, Leo Strauss, was a student of Heidegger's who applied the scheme of the latter to the history of Political Science, specifically, with results that have frequently found expression in neo-Con rhetoric. Also finding expression there, even if not deliberately so, are echoes of Vico--nostalgia for an age of Gods, and self-designated Heroism.