Hegel's Time: Between Tragic Action and Modern History

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-483
Author(s):  
Berta M. Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Spiritual Movement ◽  
Tragic Conflict

AbstractThis paper offers an alternative perspective to the traditional interpretation of Hegel's philosophical reflection on history, departing from a reinterpretation of Hegel's reading of the tragic action of Antigone in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The customary interpretation of this text affirms that Hegel shows how the conflict of tragic action finds its truth and its end in the identity of spirit. Tragic conflict is left behind to the same extent that (modern historical) spirit sublates the Greek ethical substance. This way, spirit can guarantee that our historical time is released from the past of the substance, or the spiritual movement of mediation from the immediacy of an ‘in-itself’. My reading, by contrast, finds under the tragic conflict of this text of Hegel's nothing but the ‘no’ of death that negates itself, or a principle that has the form of an original and irreducible conflict. Under this interpretation of Hegelian spirit, it becomes clear that it can neither fail to posit some form of ‘in-itself’ nor sublate its own tragic nature. This way it is shown that Hegel's reflection on the past does not reassure the superiority of the identity of the (modern) present (as the end of history), but rather illuminates its ‘broken’ nature. I thus offer an alternative view on Hegel's comprehension of the relation between present and past and between philosophy and time.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

Hegel and the End of History

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Bubner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
List Type ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The End Of History

In what follows Hegel's philosophy of history as the zenith in historical thinking will be considered from three perspectives.II will begin by discussing the two major reactions among Hegel's nineteenth century successors to the problem of historical finality.IIThen I will go back to Hegel himself in order the analyze the speculative claims of his system with regard to historical time.IIIAnd finally, I will clarify the role played by those formal structures in historical reflexion which continue to fuel the controversy over what Hegel meant by the end of history.

Recognition, Deference, and Respect: Generalizing the Lessons of an Asymmetric Asian Order

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brantly Womack
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAs many distinguished academics and officials have pointed out, the current rise of China is not a completely new phenomenon, but rather the return of China to a position of regional centrality and world economic share that were considered normal less than two hundred years ago.1 This fact underlines the importance of history in putting the present into perspective, and at the same time, to the extent that all history is history of the present, it requires a reevaluation of the structure of China's traditional relationships. Hitherto, China's place in modern social science has been in an exotic corner, a failed oriental despotism. To be sure, traditional China did collapse, and today's China is a different China rising in a different world. We might assume that China is rising now precisely because of its differences from traditional China, that it is the last step toward the end of history rather than a resonance with the past. However, the convenience of such an assumption makes it suspect. If China is simply the latest avatar of Western modernity, then it requires of the West some readjustment, but not rethinking. However, the only certainty about China's rise is that it is a complex phenomenon, and the convenience of constructions such as China-as-Prussia or China-as-Meiji Japan derives from their preemption of open-ended study rather than from their insight into complexity. To the extent that China is China, both past and present require reconsideration.

The enduring stuff of narrative

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Toon Staes
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Postindustrial Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Individual

The reevaluation of the past in Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Cosmopolis can be seen as a valuable counterargument to Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalistic claim that contemporary society heralds the end of history. The sublime multiplicity of history in both novels illustrates how time eventually collapses in the eternal present of capital and technology. Consequently, it appears that postindustrial society draws in the individual to create a system with no outside. DeLillo’s historiographic metafiction nonetheless shows how rewriting the past can prevent history from being conclusive and teleological. Narrative therefore provides an alternative to established History — in which all events connect in light of the inevitable — but it also resists the solipsistic void of speculation and hearsay.

HISTORY AND ITS ENDS IN CHARTIST EPIC

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela K. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Long Poems

In the mid-1800s, two significant and widelyread Chartist poems appeared, both written in prison by Chartist organizers, and both using the epic form to interrogate the present, body forth a utopian future, and rewrite a history conceived both as broadly human and specifically national. These long poems, Thomas Cooper'sPurgatory of Suicides(1845) and Ernest Jones'sThe New World, first published in 1851 and then republished after 1857 as theRevolt of Hindostan, have much to tell us about how radicals envisioned the history of Britain, its relationship with empire, and the fulfillment of the ends of history. Cooper's poem proceeds in ten books, written in Spenserian stanzas, in which he dreams of visiting a purgatory of suicides: mythical and historical personages who have committed suicide debate the reasons for their condition and the condition of the world. Jones's poem was written in couplets, supposedly on the torn pages of a prayer book, in his own blood. The poem surveys the rise and fall of multiple empires, and also surveys recent political history closer to home. The two poems look to the past and the future, to universal history and its end. They thus participate in utopian political discourse, with its emphasis on the end of history, as well as the epic tradition. Both utopian and epic discourse in this period were affiliated with specifically national narratives, and the internationalist and universal elements of the poems sometimes inhabit these genres uneasily. Additionally, both poets attend to the religious tradition of eschatological discourse that underlies the secular notion of the end of history, and work to reconcile it with the political vision they are promoting. These writers use unique combinations of spatial and temporal frames to achieve the reconciliation of their diverse goals with the genres and discourses that they claim and transform.

Generation fables and the ‘end of history’

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Jennie Bristow
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Outside The Box

This chapter examines ‘generationalism’ — using the language of generations to narrate the social and political. It argues that generationalism means that we are in danger of taking historical stories way too personally. The chapter shows that the generationalism of the Sixties was as much about the failure of established institutions and ideologies to grasp what was happening as it was about the experience of the kids and the counterculture. Moving on half a century, the generationalism of the early twenty-first century tells us as much about our present anxieties as it does about the Sixties as a historical period. Whereas the Sixties Boomer was, until fairly recently, a source of wistful fascination, often bringing with it a romanticised nostalgia for a time when people felt they could think and live outside the box, the Boomer-blaming of the present day mobilises the stereotype as an example of everything that is seen to be wrong with the past.

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