Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy of History

Epistemology

The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of historical knowledge and the meaning and structure of the past, drawing on continental European thought, Anglo-American analytic philosophy, and historiographical practice alike. It asks what history is even made of, individual actions, social structures, periods and civilizations, or large causal processes, and how, if at all, historians can know the past objectively rather than merely construct a narrative about it.

Facts

Central Question

What does history consist of, individual actions, social structures, periods and regions, civilizations, large causal processes, or divine intervention, and how can it be known? 1

Key Debate

Narrativism against historical objectivism: whether every account of a major historical event is one narrative among several apparently incompatible ones with no rational basis for judging one truer or better supported than another, as narrativists suggest, or whether historians can in principle establish which of two competing accounts is closer to what actually happened. 1

Disputed

Key Debate

Whether history exhibits any overall pattern or direction: philosophers of history from Hegel and Marx to Fukuyama have proposed universal historical patterns, while critics from Karl Popper onward hold that no law-governed pattern of historical development can be established and that such historicism mistakes a narrative for a law. 2

Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism named and attacked the very idea of a law-governed pattern of history that Hegel, Marx and later Fukuyama each proposed in different forms.

Connections

Associated With

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Source History, Philosophy of (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Karl Marx

Source History, Philosophy of (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Philosophy of Archaeology

Archaeology's core questions of evidence and historical inference are treated as a branch of, or immediate neighbor to, philosophy of history in the live literature (Collingwood himself worked in both).

Includes

A. Monem Mahjoub

Source A. Monem Mahjoub (Wikipedia)

Arthur Danto

Source Arthur Danto (Wikipedia)

Benedetto Croce

Source Benedetto Croce (Wikipedia)

Dezső Csejtei

Source Wikipedia: Dezső Csejtei

G.A. Cohen

Source G.A. Cohen (Wikipedia)

George Herbert Mead

Source Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: George Herbert Mead

Gershom Scholem

Source Gershom Scholem, Wikipedia

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Source Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Wikipedia

Ibn Khaldun

Source Ibn Khaldun (Wikipedia)

Immanuel Kant

Source History, Philosophy of (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Isaiah Berlin

Source Isaiah Berlin (Wikipedia)

Karl Jaspers

Source Karl Jaspers (Wikipedia)

Kiyoshi Miki

Source Wikipedia: Kiyoshi Miki

Maria Bezobrazova

Source Wikipedia: Maria Bezobrazova

Pico della Mirandola

Source Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Wikipedia

R.G. Collingwood

Source R.G. Collingwood (Wikipedia)

Walter Benjamin

Source Walter Benjamin (Wikipedia)

Sources

1. History, Philosophy of (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Introduction
What does history consist of - individual actions, social structures, periods and regions, civilizations, large causal processes, divine intervention?
Section 3.4
Does narrativism force the reader to adopt the view that there are alternative and apparently incompatible narratives about the same major events in history, and there is no rational basis for judging that one account is more true, or better supported by the available evidence, than another?
Associated With: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Associated With: Karl Marx
Includes: Immanuel Kant, entry: History, Philosophy of, Section 2.2
Rousseau (1762a; 1762b) and Kant (1784-5; 1784-6) brought some of these assumptions about rationality and progress into their political philosophies