TTEASK027U Valgfag: Memory, Truth, Ideology, and the Past: Theories of History in European Philosophy

In the course of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, historical events seemed to accelerate and occur at a pace unprecedented in the recorded collective human memory. This perception led a number of leading thinkers from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reflect on the nature and meaning of history. Never before had history played such a central role in philosophical studies, and, indeed, it was at this time that the philosophy of history established itself as a genuine field of philosophical research. In this course we will examine the major theories of this tradition, including the works of Voltaire, Kant, Herder, Hegel, Marx, Ortega y Gasset and others. Our goal will be to study these theories with a critical eye and to evaluate them in terms of our modern perceptions of the meaning of history.