Questions tagged [philosophy-of-history]
'Philosophy of History' shouldn't be confused with 'History of Philosophy'
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Is there any evidence that culture has gotten more “sensitive” or “politically correct”? [closed]
This question might be more suitable for History SE, I’m not sure.
I have heard people pretty regularly claim that “nowadays” “political correctness” is more of a big thing - even that people are more ...
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Non sequitur claims when deducing meaning from historical artifacts or texts (problem of presentism)
So my question arises from an argument that I have seen regarding some people debating over some ancient inscriptions.
My question is as follows, "Wouldn't any possible explanation for the ...
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What role does political science play in philosophical understanding? [closed]
If Hegel's Absolute Spirit drives the history of humanity to a certain ends, the historical political circumstances and decisions would be the most vivid representation of the Absolute Idea in action?
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What's the name of a fallacy when a debater selectively picks facts and ignores others?
In many debates in various fields of political science, it happens that historical events are called upon to make a case or support an argument. However, it also happens quite often that a debater, in ...
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Is reason under challenge? [closed]
I find the resurgence in the new century of pseudoscience, religious extremism, and irrationalism disturbing. Reason was pre-eminent throughout the previous two centuries. Is reason being seriously ...
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Can an extraordinary hypothesis ever be the best explanation for a set of historical facts?
As a motivating example, I have in mind the minimal facts argument for the resurrection of Jesus, espoused by Christian apologists such as Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig. The ...
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Can Kuhn's theory outlined in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions be applied to sociology? If not, what are the implications of this for sociology
Can Kuhn's theory outlined in 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' be applied to sociology? If not, what are the implications of this for sociology?
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If history was not the history of class struggle, before Marx, was Marx wrong?
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles.
Can this be the case only after The Communist Manifesto?
Could - in principle - Marx have changed "history" - ...
user66697
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Sociological-philosophical theories of society’s tendencies to react against itself, inescapably biased in some way
Basically, in case it comes up, I mean something more than Hegelian (?) “dialectic”, an idea of society or knowledge moving forward through refutation, synthesis, progress.
I am thinking about how ...
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Can you explain clearly the difference between race and ethnicity?
I have tried to look it up but most definitions usually don't make the difference crystal-clear. Many results on Google give overlapping definitions.
What my understanding is is that race is rooted in ...
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How does methodological naturalism deal with appeals to abstract objects like logical truths, mathematical truths, or natural kinds?
A core component of the modern scientific worldview and the beliefs of people and governments in western liberal democracies is that methodological naturalism is true. It is essential to scientific ...
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Recent developments in philosophy of history
We have all heard of Hegel's or Marx's ideas about what drives human history. Likewise, during the 19th century, other ideas on the same subject were formulated by authors such as Thomas Carlyle or ...
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What is the post-modernist response to Francis Fukuyama's theory that technological developments give history a specific direction?
Since post-modernists reject unity points and Foucault's work shows one episteme to the other evolves completely randomly without any pattern, Fukuyama's theory here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
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Anthropocentrism, aboriginal stuff and materialism
"Thinking like a mountain : toward a council of all beings" book is an introduction to deep ecology by Joanna Macy, John Seed, Pat Flemming and Arne Naess. "Beyond anthropocentrism"...
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How can we classify and differentiate sources of information for humans?
I was always taught in elementary about the primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of information. However, as I ponder about it I thought in a scenario of the game "pass the message" ...
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Has the word Ancient.....become Ancient?
As a former History Instructor, as well as one who earned a Graduate Degree in History-("many moons ago"), words, such as, Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary, were commonplace and ...
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What is meant by dialectic materialism?
When looking up "dialectic materialism in the Oxford dictionary one can read:
the Marxist theory (adopted as the official philosophy of the Soviet communists) that political and historical ...
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Should History Educators reemphasize chronological aptitude?
As a former History Instructor I was absolutely stunned by the widespread chronological ignorance displayed by many of my students. I was told by most of my students that they rarely learned about ...
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Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?
Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?
Isn't it possible that historical interpretations could be utilized for rationalizing e.g. war?
Presumably there's also "...
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What are some arguments for judging historical figures by contemporary standards?
I've seen quite a lot of arguments against judging historical figures by modern standards, most representatively by the principle of moral relativism. Is there any argument for it though? The only ...
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Has there been systematic studies of how historical contexts and social factors influenced various philosophers?
While I learn a lot from philosophers, I can't help but think that their minds (just like mine) are somewhat tied to the exact times they were born into. The historical context and social factors ...
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Does Edward Said offer a solution to Orientalism and could a possible solution relate to Charles Taylors term "Politics of Recognition?
I've recently read Edward Said's book Orientalism but throughout reading, I didn't really find an explicit solution to Orientalism. Though the thing I could see take form as a solution would be his ...
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philosophers of the egoism
some time ago I heard about a sentence that struck my mind.
It was a philosopher quote, like...
the world would be a better place if everybody used to be more egoist
I am looking for the ...
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Is there a connection between modern colonialism and secularism? [closed]
An aunt of mine, when she arrived in Britain, once jeered at me, calling me a Christian, mostly because she thought of Britain as being Christian. These were the only categories of thought she had. I, ...
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Did Hegel provide any example of history repeating itself?
Did Hegel or Marx give any examples? Can anyone give a couple of instances?
I can find no event repeating itself twice, just one drive, lust of power
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What's a name for the fallacy of concluding something must be based on truth because it is successful?
I have noticed a type of fallacious reasoning that conflates truth and success. For example, a company might assume their predictive models are correct because these models make the company more money....
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Is Foucault's analysis of history opposed to absurdism?
Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus claims that
when Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty
of his fate, he is freed to realize the absurdity of his ...
user35983
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What did Kuhn specifically say about "history for philosophical purposes"?
Kuhn had little formal philosophical training but was nonetheless fully conscious of the significance of his innovation for philosophy, and indeed he called his work ‘history for philosophical ...
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What did R.G. Collingwood intend to say by 'nothing capable of being learnt by heart, nothing capable of being memorized, is history'?
Source: An Autobiography by R. G. Collingwood. I don't know the page number.
I first chanced on this quote in The Well-Educated Mind (2 edn 2016), p. 189 Top.
But, of course, it was no longer a '...
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How does philosophy "progress" in history?
[Note: If there was a tag for that, I'd tag this question as philosophy-of-history-of-philosophy (as convoluted as this term is, I think it fits the question the most).]
This might be a bit too ...
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Are principles a good thing?
I've been reading a lot about history and some of the philosophical forces behind major events. It seems to be that the more fanatical a ruler / figure is, the more they justified their beliefs with ...
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Can Hegel's dialectical history be interpreted as a way to look positively at life?
Hegel's dialectic method of interpreting history says that events occur in the following steps: a) an event happens b) an opposing event comes to contradict the original event c) a third event takes ...
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Is there more to Whitehead’s “Age-Spirit” than metaphor?
While reading Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World, I found the following sentence (page 51):
It is only in a period, fortunate both in its opportunities for
disengagement from the immediate ...
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How come nihilism is so popular today?
I've been trying to attack this question (or more precisely, come up with an answer to that fact) for some time now, but after a while of research I'm suddenly not so sure of the reason the situation ...
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Does the Evolution Theory contradict Kant's Metaphysics?
I recently asked a series of questions about ET, and this is one of them :)
Intuitively, it seems to me that ET is supposed to contradict Kant's (or more generally, the German Idealism's) Metaphysics ...
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How and where did Homer state a necessity to report historical occurences "unbiased" or "while mentioning the defeated equally"?
I'm coming from a talk by Hannah Arendt, where she mentions Homer as being the first to entertain the notion of "we must not forget those who fought equally as valiant as our enemies" and unbiased ...
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Different theistic religions contradict each other [closed]
Most religions mandate sets of religious rules. In theistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism, these are often presented as divinely ordained. But different religions have ...
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Has anyone compared the senses of "para" at depth?
I meant this more as a grasp of what the word is saying, to our natural consciousness or reason, rather than an etymological inquiry into texts, but only more so, and primarily, I'm not ruling out ...
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What is Benjamin saying in thesis VI in On the Concept of History?
What is Benjamin saying in thesis VI in On the Concept of History?
I quote it in full from here, having annotated the key points I'm struggling with in bold
To articulate what is past does not ...
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Can one conceive history as "one body"? Are there "fixed" concepts or ideas that define cultural relativity?
Ideologies can be thought to be sometimes perceived as being an "unified" body of historical information. A sort of body that reflects how an individual or a group will come to perceive the current ...
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What was post modernism before Lyotard?
What was post modernism before Lyotard?
I'm leaning heavily toward the idea that modernism, in the literary arts, was kaput by world war 2. I believe that's Miller's thesis here (about to read):
I ...
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If mankind is a bridge then why would the anti-christ need to rewill history prior to themselves?
If mankind is a bridge then why would the anti-christ need to rewill history prior to themselves? Has anyone discussed that issue?
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what ...
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What is or was modernity, the sociological phenomena?
What is or was modernity, the sociological phenomena?
I'm asking cos I want to know what aestrhetic modernism was, and would like to build up my understanding from the ground up.
What book length (...
user6917
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Is this quote from Aristotle's Poetics?
Stackexchange,
I remember reading someone quoting Aristotle's Poetics in saying 'Poetry (i.e. epic and drama) is what must be true, while history is what might have been true.'
I don't have ...
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According to Kant, What is the Purpose of Human Existence?
After reading Kant's Idea For a Universal History, I've become intrigued by Kant's notion of Nature guiding the dealings of men towards a "perfectly rightful civil constitution." Although the ...
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Can we learn anything from history?
I'm wondering whether there are knowledge that can be learned from history other than the fact that "event X happened". Can we infer general knowledge from those specific events? This seems to be the ...
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Surely Nietzsche would say that history is the judge of greatness?
Would Nietzsche would say that history is the judge of greatness, in the sense that his "higher types" have power over its course, and narrative considered as a whole?
That should be clear and ...
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Is there a form of euhemerism which claims myths can have historical events derived from them like a poetic?
Is there a form of euhemerism which claims myths can have historical events derived from them like a poetic?
I gather that the theory states that myth is a way of ordering chaotic human history. ...
user6917
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Why does A.R.C. Duncan opine that compared with science or history, only philosophy obliges students to philosophise for themselves?
Source: p 393 Bottom-394 Top, Introducing Philosophy for Canadians: A Text with Integrated Readings (2011 1 ed).
Primary Source: Moral Philosophy, by A.R.C. Duncan
An important consequence of ...
user8572
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Why do we have to study history as an independent discipline rather than as a sub-field of other subjects?
Would it not be better if a historical event were to be analyzed under the lens of a discipline that is most to related to it? Take, for example, the splitting of the atom. Surely, a physicist would ...
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