Ideas of History; Volume 1, Speculative Approaches to History

Ronald H. Nash

Language: English

Published: Jul 15, 1969

Description:

There are two divisions of the philosophy of history—speculative and critical. The writings of most of the classical philosophers of history (e.g., St. Augustine, Vico, Kant, Herder, Hegel) exemplify the speculative approach. Their work was an attempt to discover if there is any pattern or meaning to history as a whole. Thus three major questions have been the chief concern of these speculative philosophers: What is the pattern of history? What is the mechanism of history? What is the purpose or value of history?

Volume One of this two-volume anthology— the finest survey of the subject to be published in recent years—contains selections from most of the important speculative philosophers, including the following: St. Augustine, Giambattista Vico, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Kenneth Scott Latourette, Reinhold Niebuhr, Maurice Mandelbaum, and M. C. D’Arcy, S.J.