The Philosophy of History

Dr. Benedict Beckeld discusses why the philosophy of history is still an important sub-discipline.
www.benedictbeckeld.com
/ benedictbeckeld
@BenedictBeckeld
Link to the "Charlottesville and American Tribalism and Reason" video:
• Charlottesville and Am...

[@turtuy1138]

Found your channel by accident, and really impressed how informative and good your videos are. Keep doing great work!

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thanks, I appreciate the encouragement!

[@solomontruthlover5308]

Agreed!

[@fatherduck2635]

He is stuck in the library of babel and is recording a youtube video to share his unending knowledge thanks mate!

[@CanRep]

Great video. Thank you the info. I find Leo Tolstoy's understanding of history to be quite interesting. He seemed to appreciate the multiplicity of forces at play (personal initiative, historical spirit, and cycles).

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you. I read Tolstoy's essay on history as a teenager, and remember not liking it (too Christianity-based), but perhaps that was also because I had just read through "War and Peace" and had had enough of him for the moment. Your comment now makes me think it's time for me to revisit it!

[@bretjay2593]

Thanks

[@brianoneil6659]

This is terrific!

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you!

[@jessicainnocent2519]

Please do more lessons on the various views on philosophy of history. And also, videos on the types of philosophy of history. Thanks for this background knowledge

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you for the suggestion. My next video is already mostly made and will come out early January, but maybe I can make a Philosophy of History Part 2, with more detail along the lines you mention. I'll think seriously about it.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

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[@hirakjyotiborah133]

Thanks bro

[@solomontruthlover5308]

Very interesting!

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thanks!

[@lordstronghold5802]

Great video. Would love to hear your discussion of the internal contradictions of Foucault as I know nothing about that. Sounds fascinating!

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you! What I called Foucault's internal contradictions is something I touched a bit upon in my last reply to another comment to this video, by one Simeon Simeonov. In addition to what I say there, I would add that Foucault breaks up larger historical narratives by focusing on "piecemeal" history, which is very interesting, and he strives to show how things "really were" by boiling them down to their bare essentials, which in turn ends up revealing a lot of nasty power relationships that had too often been glossed over by other historians. This was all a very worthwhile effort on Foucault's part, but it led him to develop a new historical metaphysic of "good and evil" on his own (this is a bit similar to Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche), where all of history is read as a very Christian-esque dichotomy between oppressor and oppressed, where other facets of historical relationships are ignored or glossed over. And so this is the main internal contradiction of his work: that trying to get away from a certain way of looking at history actually leads him deeper into it. In fairness, Foucault in certain passages does appear to be aware of the problem, but he makes no effort at all to solve it. If you'd like a much more detailed discussion of the issue, I'd recommend Habermas' critique of Foucault in essays 9 and 10 of his "Philosophical Discourse of Modernity".

[@BenedictBeckeld]

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[@davidlawson3400]

I’m not a philosopher but I did study history and political science. Now maybe I’m misunderstanding but I was under the impression that Hegel didn’t think there would be an end to history. He thought there would be an ongoing cycle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

It depends on how charitably or uncharitably one reads him. There are some passages in which he does appear to recognize that history will continue onward, and other passages that are rather striking in their celebration of Hegel's own time and place as the summit of things.

[@daber2000]

Very interesting. Thank you. I deal a lot with local government boards that claim to preserve history in the built environment. Can you suggest any readings or videos that can help me evaluate the tenets of conserving physical objects as part of preserving history?

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you. The importance of preserving historical artifacts has always been obvious to me, because a people that loses its history will become untethered to its traditions, which will have deleterious effects (as we see all around us), although it's also true that a people that is too caught up in its own history will become paralyzed. The sticking point is probably more about which artifacts or buildings may qualify as historical. But I'm afraid that off the top of my head I don't know videos or books that discuss that question, though surely they exist.

[@simeonsimeonov3745]

Insightful and informative as always! Keep up the great work, Dr. Beckeld. On another note, I would like to know more about your opinion on Marxian teleology. While you don't seem to be a great fan of it, I think it is obvious that it has had (and continues to have) a great impact on Western thought (and by this I mean both philosophy and history). So I am curious as to what you, as a philosopher, make of the place--or importance, if you will--of truth in the philosophy of history. That's certainly a question many of the philosophers you mention in your video have had to grapple with; and it is also a question of equal, if not greater, purchase to historians. Here is my own perspective as a historian. Dialectically speaking, it may be that some of the most erroneous/misguided/speculative philosophies of history have yielded some of the most important breakthroughs in the history of philosophy. (And here we may be thinking not only of Marx but also Kant and St. Augustine.) So, therefore, I believe that as long as we make the stakes of the way we practice any philosophy of history clear, we (qua philosophers) should be fine with speculation. This can perhaps rehabilitate this important branch of philosophy, which, as you point out, has not really kept up with developments in other branches of the field.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words! Your question is one on which I have a lot to say. I spend quite a few pages on it in my upcoming book "Oikophobia", so I'd refer you to that once it's out. But to say at least something here, you are indeed right that I'm not a fan of Marxian teleology. His influence is enormous, of course, yes. But I basically consider his teleology (along with such teleologies as Herder's, Hegel's, etc., even Fukuyama's) to be - like Augustine's - basically Christian, by dint of their quasi-messianic goals; thus, the teleological would be Christian almost by definition, which is why I call them, somewhat tongue in cheek, eschatological at the same time. (Dilthey says something similar in his "Introduction to the Geisteswissenschaften", although I disagree with him on most other things.) This is why the only philosophers of history I like are those for whom teleology is a non-starter (Thucydides, to a lesser extent Foucault). I agree with you that speculation is fine - I defend it in the aforementioned book. But I'm less sure when you say that "some of the most erroneous/misguided/speculative philosophies of history have yielded some of the most important breakthroughs in the history of philosophy". Since you refer to dialectics, I suppose you're right: for instance, I agree with bits of Hegel (an unfolding process, the constraints of actions within historical parameters, self-interest rather than altruism as a driving force), but reject others (the inexorable teleology, history as its own judge, state worship, etc.); similarly I think the Marx-Engels economic determinism has some truth to it, even if they took it much too far and drew absurd conclusions from it. So if you mean that we later thinkers can distill what is useful from those systems to create something better, I agree with you. But my concern is that teleology, also by definition, tends toward totalitarianism - everything must conform to the end goal - so this is why I'm cautious in embracing speculation that has teleology as its foundation. But maybe this is what you mean when you say "as long as we make the stakes of the way we practice any philosophy of history clear" - that is, as I understand it, as long as we can forswear manipulative purposes. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you?

[@chernorizec]

@@BenedictBeckeld Thank you for the response. You got it, that's what I meant. I for one think that we are giving "teleology" a hard time. One thing is clear: teleology has had (and continues to have) a very generative impact on western thought. I for one am against any type of totalitarianism--especially in the humanities, where it tends to produce a barren wasteland--but it seems to me that today's onslaught against teleology is precisely that: totalitarian. I would be curious if you know of any philosopher who has gotten a job in the U.S. after describing themselves as a teleological thinker. What I find amusing is that much of that anti-teleological thought, especially on the side of post-structuralism, comes with its own agendas and meta-narratives about fractures, fragmentation, subjectivities etc. whose incoherence is equally problematic. So, purely historically speaking, I say that as long as we make the stakes of a teleology clear, we can really reap enormous advantages from engaging with it philosophically. To put it bluntly, I am pretty confident that decades from now, people will still be engaging with the teleological approaches advanced by St. Augustine, Hegel, or Marx, regardless of whether they live in democratic societies or not. Not so sure about the future of post-structuralism, though.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you for this. We're mostly in agreement. I do actually give teleology a very hard time, but you're absolutely right that the opposing side has turned totalitarian as well (a fact which has caused academics like me no small grief). I know some people who agree with us, but they are either quiet about it - to my chagrin, since they thereby making it even harder for the rest of us - or they speak up only after having gained tenure. Your statement that "much of that anti-teleological thought, especially on the side of post-structuralism, comes with its own agendas and meta-narratives about fractures, fragmentation, subjectivities etc." echoes my sentiments precisely. When I wrote that I like those for whom teleology is a non-starter, like Thucydides and to a lesser extent Foucault, this was indeed not meant to excuse the latter from the fact that he, contrary to his own apparent desires, has an agenda that is ultimately just as fierce as that of people he criticizes, with the additional problem that he is less honest (probably to the point of self-deception) about that own agenda than they are. I once wrote elsewhere: "...the postmodernists had tried to question old definitions by pointing to repressive elements that people did not want to talk about. But they replaced such older definitions with others, focused purely on power and oppression, that were just as static and simplistic: by 'discovering' and insisting - correctly - that a lot of power relationships and manipulation underlay historical practices, the Frankfurters and postmodernists became exuberant and thought that these alone underlay historical practices." This goes in the same direction as what you're saying, I think. I must confess I really despise Marx (though he's a better writer than Hegel, at least), but I also believe that their work will be read farther into the future than that of the post-structuralists.

[@monkeymox2544]

You're making a basic mistake by seeing Marx's philosophy of history as teleological. He rejected Hegelian teleology. He doesn't see history as having a _telos,_ rather he sees certain classes as having historical roles. Those roles are in no sense pre-defined, nor is the outcome of any given class conflict inevitable. Rosa Luxemburg's phrase 'communism or barbarism' reflects this - she (and Marx) saw patterns of historical development as leading towards communism, but they both understood that this could be thwarted. In Luxemburg's case, the most likely alternative outcome would be barbarism. History for Marx isn't moving towards something in the sense of history itself having some ultimate purpose, it's more analogous to the way in which, if you push a ball down a hill, it will roll to the bottom. There is no _telos_ at work here, the ball has no objective, it's simply the case that certain material facts mean that, if nothing changes, the ball will reach the bottom. Marx was a materialist, he was interested in the outcomes of material relations. History is a result of material relations, not moving towards some specific end _as an objective of the process itself,_ but rather that you can attempt to predict that end if you have a full understanding of the material facts. Whether this is a reasonable thing to attempt is a different question, but there is no teleology here. In fairness, I think the problem is Marx's tendency to use rhetorical flourishes. He does sometimes write as if history is aiming towards something, but in his more analytical moments that's clearly not what he thinks is going on. It is also hard to not retroactively impose a teleological understanding on history when looked at from a materialist perspective - think of how may people misunderstand Darwinian evolution as some kind of ladder which began with single-celled organisms and led, with some kind of inevitability, to us. This is of course to misunderstand evolutionary theory entirely. You're making precisely the same kind of error if you think of historical materialism in these terms.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

​@@monkeymox2544 Sorry, I somehow didn't notice this comment until now; I'm just now preparing a second video on the philosophy of history, and so I went back to this one and noticed your comment. In any case, I agree with your description of historical materialism and how this can easily be misunderstood as a teleological view. In fact, I make a very similar point in my book "Western Self-Contempt". (Even more, the sort of misunderstanding you describe is similar to one to which I was myself subjected by some who misunderstood that book.) I just don't think that this is a fully accurate description of what Marx writes. You do acknowledge his rhetorical flourishes, but there is an entire normative aspect of his work that goes along with his materialism and that would have to be ignored in order to draw the conclusion that he's not being teleological. What you're describing is really more akin to an early Stoic view (especially with your example of pushing a ball down a hill).

[@elijahnixey-paton925]

In regards to your statement about there being no end of history, I would consider this to be something endorsed by Christianity and Judaism. In Exodus 4 ( where God is a burning bush ), God says to Moses to convey that His name is "I will be what I will be" - that He will be now, and he will also Be later. This seems to encompass both the idea that one will require God now, but also that one will require God into the future. Aside from other pitfalls you may see in belief in God, do you think this story could work to convey this idea?

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Not really, if I'll be perfectly frank. I find that it savors too much of sophistry (to which, admittedly, quite a lot of Biblical exegesis is prone, which however I don't mean as an argument against Biblical exegesis per se). The end of history doesn't mean that things will stop happen - one of the more unfair critiques against Fukuyama, for instance - or that, in a religious context, the need for God will be obviated, but it does mean that there is a faith, as in religion, that all will turn out well in the end.

[@polemeros]

What about Vico?

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Sure, Vico is very important. I was only naming a few examples, not trying to give an exhaustive account of past philosophers of history, which would have made it into a much longer video.

[@naorifred3121]

That very useful for leader

[@oliverd.shields2708]

I think you're making a category error in this video! XD Namely that you oppose Popper's rejection of teleology in history with what you describe as the "cyclical" view. Popper calls Heraclitus' view "cyclical" and thus differentiates himself from it. But it would be wrong to call your view Heraclitean, since you don't actually hold that "the Golden Age" is going to return every ten thousand years or any such sort of thing. You merely take a kind of (nuanced) evolutionary psychology view of the recurrence of certain behaviours in certain circumstances: and that's why we can learn from history at all (which Popper advocates!), e.g. we can reject a command economy on the basis of what kind of social structures it has when implemented in practice, thus, also, the history of communism discredits communism as a philosophy and so on. The error is: you have this notion of a development of human society spiralling in time, being both a continuous (deterministic) line and a cycle of recurring "structures" (if that's vague enough); whereas there is no reason to believe in the prior part, i.e. that history is deterministic (that's actually what Popper rejects, while he fully embraces the second part, i.e. learning from history, cp. Popper's theory of totalitarianism, which Popper believes happened both in Plato's days and Hitler's!). Two further remarks: the "spiral" view is also, in a sense, that of Marx and his dialectical materialism, that posits the return of certain patterns in the history of civilisations, e.g. class struggle; + I disagree with your assessment "our democracy has pushed further ahead than the Greeks' did" (this is too vague and false if you consider what democracy in ancient Greece actually was like. Thanks for considering my comment as criticism.

[@oliverd.shields2708]

I just read the Beginning two paragraphs of your "Obacht, Oikophibie", and I must say we have a lot in common. Two years ago I wrote my Matura Paper on moral cultural relativism.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Thank you, as long as I have time I'm happy to reply to any criticism that is stated politely. In this case, I don't see what the category error is that you claim I committed. If you disagree with the deterministic view of history, that's fine, but why is that a category error on my part? Teleology as I use it implies a "telos" (a goal or purpose), and if history is cyclical in some respects, this precludes a goal or purpose, because we are ultimately not getting anywhere. There is nothing mutually exclusive about determinism and cyclicality.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Just saw your second comment: Thank you! (Your name didn't betray any Germanic persuasion.) Hopefully my book on the subject will be out before too long.

[@oliverd.shields2708]

@@BenedictBeckeld I guess my question would now be: do you think that these repetitions in history are predetermined (i.e. that it's "the universe"'s telos, and not that of any person or class or God in particular, though the universe does resemble a God if you admit it its own telos)? Because I (with Popper) would say that under certain preconditions humans tend to behave a certain way; however, these preconditions, e.g. society under a dictatorship, are created or perpetuated by humans in a (somewhat) arbitrary manner, by political decisions and innovations. And our own role is what the philosopher questions: "what kind of person do I want to be?" (Edit: You're interpretation of Popper seems to me off: Popper sees the science of history and sociology like the natural sciences. To the extent to which there are explanations which are falsifiable, speculation is fine. And so what Popper opposes is not structure so broadly defined, but meaning in history. You have to impose your own meaning onto history.)

[@BenedictBeckeld]

I do take a deterministic and I might say Thucydidean view of history, yes, the view that human nature renders development inevitable. This is what Thucydides believes, and is also reasonably close to Hegel, whom of course Popper hates. Popper as you say stresses the scientific nature of his analysis, and this in my view is self-deceptive: for example, he dismisses "human nature" as a "naive" and "romantic" notion, but doesn't really bother to explain why this is so; he simply makes fun of it, which is not scientific. He rejects metaphysical categories qua metaphysical categories, but this is not acceptable; if he wants to reject them, he would actually have to explain why a particular category is not useful. He can have his views like everyone else, but he plunges into error when he lays claim to being on the side of science. He himself actually warns against this attitude in "The Poverty of Historicism", but in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" he commits this error frequently.

[@PSIR_Kumud]

@5:30 democratization

[@PSIR_Kumud]

@greek democratization, USA democratization -- helical movement

[@danksamosa3952]

Ok how is marx totalitarian?

[@BenedictBeckeld]

He is totalitarian in that 1. his philosophy of history is guided by a univariable, and in that 2. his philosophy of history has an overarching goal that trumps all else. (One can also say that the practical result of his philosophy is a totalitarian state, but that's not necessarily as directly bound to his philosophy of history.)

[@danksamosa3952]

@@BenedictBeckeld lol Marxism isnt deterministic

[@BenedictBeckeld]

I'm not sure what the "lol" is for, but in any case, Marxism is actually quite deterministic within the area of the philosophy of history. Not only the Communist Manifesto but also Das Kapital show this - if you haven't already, read through the 3000 pages of the latter work and see, for example, how many times he uses the word "law" (Gesetz) to describe the historical rules that he attempts to lay down.

[@danksamosa3952]

@@BenedictBeckeld Marx does not illustrate laws but tendencies, and a base upon which it works. Marxism is a method of analysis not a prophecy.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

Marx frequently writes "Gesetz", not "Tendenz". Marxism - as espoused by Marx himself - is both a method of analysis and a prophecy. With all due respect to you, there is prophecy everywhere in his work; it's there in the plain text itself, as I mentioned, and one only needs to read it. He's a pretty good writer, though, so whether one agrees with him or not, I think a reading of the full work is worthwhile. In any case I've answered your question and cannot engage in a long series of contradictions, but I thank you for commenting.

[@musicaccount3340]

I think the cyclical or spiral pattern of history is mostly a human cognitive mistake - trying to look for patterns, finding the facts that suit them and ignoring the facts that don't. There is no reason for event to occur in similar ways or with similar timelines throughout human existence. That is if I correctly understand the idea of cyclicity.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

This is indeed a common critique, and in some cases it's true that it's well-deserved, because there are some philosophers who try to explain too much. In my forthcoming book on the subject I explain that one must distinguish between different aspects of history: some aspects can appear and reappear cyclically, while others do not.

[@BenedictBeckeld]

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[@tobehonest7541]

u dont look like a professor