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Historical Theory

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While most other thinkers did not dispute that divine providence ultimately shaped the course of events, they were far more concerned with the mundane ways and means through which history operated. History was the gradual advance of the 'spirit of liberty' or the growth of nationalism or democracy, rationality and law. The Great Mind Theory easily slides into the notion that some set of brilliant intellects, or even one mental genius, supplies the mainspring of human advancement.

One big barrier to the deepening of social science was their tacit assumption that bourgeois society and its main institutions embodied the highest attainable form of social organisation. Insofar as Marx and Engels regarded historical processes as law-governed processes, the possible future directions of historical development were to a great extent limited and conditioned by what happened before. Where they go wrong is in claiming decisive importance for them in the total process of historical determination. He wrote: “History is the record of human society, or world civilisation; of the changes that take place in the nature of that society, such as savagery, sociability, and group solidarity; of revolutions and uprisings by one set of people against another with the resulting kingdoms and states, with their various ranks; of the different activities and occupations of men, whether for gaining their livelihood or in the various sciences and crafts; and, in general, of all the transformations that society undergoes by its very nature. Socio-economic formations have grown out of the productive forces at hand; its members have fashioned their relations, customs, institutions and ideas in accordance with their organisation of labour.As envisaged by Hegel, this freedom was not realised through the emancipation of mankind from oppressive and servile social conditions but from the overcoming of false, inadequate ideas. The most primitive attempts to explain the origin and development of the world and man are the creation myths to be found among preliterate peoples. This position combines idealism with elitism, the spirit using geniuses, or the creative minority, as the agency which redeems the masses. Classical economists presented a model of civil society based on a universal and unchanging human nature.

The votaries of “the personality cult” sought to fuse the traditions and views of Marxism, the most modern and scientific philosophy, with the archaic Great Man version of the contemporary historical process. This method of interpreting history was far more correct, all-encompassing and profound than any of its predecessors. A. Cohen, author of Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, the level of development of society's productive forces (i. In describing his philosophy, the Italian thinker Croce wrote: “History is the record of the creations of the human spirit in every field, theoretical as well as practical.

The first explicit and systematic summary of the materialist interpretation of history to be published was Engels's book Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, written with Marx's approval and guidance, and often referred to as the Anti-Dühring. For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, historical materialism is the "view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.

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