Does history have a direction?
Providence, progress, cycles or chance
Does history have a direction? Philosophers give 4 main answers: a divine plan, progress, cycles and no direction. AskPhilosophy presents 16 arguments, from Polybe to Francis Fukuyama, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 4 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
History follows God's design, even when we cannot see it.
Augustin, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Despite setbacks, humanity moves forward: toward more reason, freedom or justice.
Marx, Kant, Hegel, Nicolas de Condorcet…
Civilisations are born, grow and die: history repeats itself.
Ibn Khaldoun, Polybe, Giambattista Vico, Oswald Spengler
History has no law and no goal: it is made of chance, choices and conflicts.
Schopenhauer, Karl Popper, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
A divine plan
History follows God's design, even when we cannot see it.
3 argumentsHistory is the story of two cities, born of two loves
Two loves build two cities mixed together here below; God rules the course of kingdoms by an order only he knows.
Providence guides the empires: the Discourse on Universal History
Rulers do more or less than they think: each empire serves a design beyond it, and God alone brings all to his will.
The Omega point: evolution rises toward consciousness, and a personal center draws it
Evolution rises toward more consciousness and converges; to avoid collapsing, it needs a personal center that draws it.
Progress
Despite setbacks, humanity moves forward: toward more reason, freedom or justice.
5 argumentsHistory is the history of class struggles
In every society classes oppose one another and their struggle transforms it; capitalism creates the class that will overthrow it.
Conflict between people drives history forward: unsocial sociability
People want to live together yet clash; this conflict forces them to develop their talents and give themselves laws.
Reason governs history: the cunning of reason
History's goal is freedom, and it is achieved through people's passions and interests, which serve reason without their knowing.
Humanity improves with no fixed limit: Condorcet's Sketch
The laws of the human mind's development are constant and the past shows no limit to it: progress can go on.
Liberal democracy, end point of the history of ideas
Fascism and communism failed, and no rival ideology beats liberal democracy: the evolution of ideas seems to have ended.
Cycles
Civilisations are born, grow and die: history repeats itself.
4 argumentsAsabiyya: solidarity makes power, luxury and harshness unmake it
Power rests on the solidarity of a tight-knit group; luxury and harshness destroy it, and a more united group takes over.
Constitutions turn in a cycle: Polybius's anacyclosis
Each pure regime degenerates into its evil twin, and generations that forget the evil make regimes turn in a cycle.
All nations follow the same course, then return: corsi e ricorsi
All nations pass through the same ages, gods, heroes, men; once corrupt, they fall back into barbarism and the course restarts.
Cultures are born, ripen and die: the decline of the West
Each culture lives like an organism from childhood to old age and ends as a rigid civilisation; the West is entering that phase.
No direction
History has no law and no goal: it is made of chance, choices and conflicts.
4 argumentsHistory repeats the same thing in other forms: "eadem, sed aliter"
History deals only with unique cases, and under changing costumes the same human nature recurs: no plan, no progress.
The course of history cannot be predicted: the poverty of historicism
History depends on future knowledge, which cannot be foreseen: so no scientific law can announce its course.
The angel of history: progress seen as a storm
The angel of history sees one catastrophe piling up wreckage; what we call progress is the storm driving him on.
Every birth is a new beginning: history is not written in advance
Every human born can begin something new: what they will do cannot be deduced from the past, so no law can predict history.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.