Hegel, Historicism, and the End of History
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one of the most influential and prominent philosophers of the 19th century. He’s also regarded as controversial, his works considered hard to read, and his inquiries challenging to understand.
The obscure philosopher
Hegel belongs to the philosophical tradition of German idealism, while his philosophical argument method is dialectics. Hegelianism is another name for his philosophy, and the political interpretation has influenced both left- and right-wing ideologies across the political spectrum.
But the biggest influence Hegel has had on the world is through Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founding fathers of dialectical materialism, and the official ideologues of socialist governments worldwide. Marx and Engels adopted Hegelian dialectics as a central pillar while constructing their political ideology, even though the ontology of their philosophy is materialism.
Historicism
According to Hegel’s interpretation, history is a teleological or goal-directed process, consisting of gradual progress involving conflicts, their resolution, and continual improvement. Historicism projects a linear timeline, where progress and improvement are guaranteed. The perspective that history is a determined process of continual improvement leads to what’s known as the end of history.
At the core lies the idea that history has fixed laws that inevitably lead to specific social outcomes. This particular view of history enabled the founding of Marxism and the idealistic branch of liberalism (Fukuyama’s liberalism, which we’ll get to below).
The end of history
The end of history is a concept, or a hypothesis, created by Hegel and further adopted and updated by Karl Marx, Aleksandre Kojève, and Francis Fukuyama. The concept comes from the historicist interpretation of history as a process of constant improvement and the momentum of reaching a final stage.
Hegel identified the end of history with the creation of the first modern state (France at the beginning of the 19th century). He viewed the state as an embodiment of the spirit (the Geist) and a realization of human freedom. Furthermore, Hegel attached the meaning of the state to an organic entity, seen not as a necessary evil but as a harmonious community that brings genuine freedom to the socio-political scene.
Meanwhile, Marx’s concept of the end of history is identified with the achievement of the final stage of communism, or a stateless and classless society. In this stage, the state is expected to wither away, since there will be no further need for its existence.
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Francis Fukuyama is a contemporary proponent of the concept; he made it famous in the intellectual discourse around the end of the 20th century. Contrary to Marx, Fukuyama saw the end of history as a final point in the battle of ideas. This battle resulted in the victory of liberalism and the bringing of the liberal-democratic state onto the global socio-political stage.
Fukuyama regarded liberalism as a superior ideology and a formula for a peaceful and progressive world order. According to his interpretation, the end was self-evident in the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as any other political systems not based on the values of liberalism and democracy.
Critique of historicism and the end of history
Even though historicism and the thesis for the end of history sound appealing to philosophers and political scientists, both have inconsistencies and empirical disapproval.
Austrian philosopher Karl Popper gave a profound critique of historicism and the arbitrary view of history. Popper suggests that historicism’s main problem is identifying two terms: trends and laws. That misidentification leads to a confirmation bias problem: Historical trends cannot be regarded as laws because human history is a unique process that cannot be predicted. The reason history cannot be predicted is that human actions determine it, and they cannot be predicted or taken for granted.
Marxist philosophers have preached the evolution of human society in a historical sense. But the Marxist prediction of reaching the end of history, involving the stages of socialist revolution and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, has not resulted in a stateless and classless society — and it never will. On the contrary, it has introduced a new kind of totalitarian state based on fear, violence, and repression.
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Additionally, there are strong critiques of Fukuyama’s view. One of the most serious comes from Robert Kagan, who suggests the end is far from near, and the new authoritarian tendencies in the contemporary world are challenging the final victory of liberalism. Another empirical example is the relative peacefulness of the 19th century compared to the 20th century, the latter of which was marked by the horrors of two world wars and the rise of totalitarian regimes.
Conclusion
History and the future cannot be taken for granted. Our actions — themselves unpredictable — are the generators of history. However, as long as they are conscious, virtuous, and rational, there remains a good chance for a progressive line of history … though never “the end of it.”
The director of Fargo, Season 4 said it well through 16-year-old character Ethelrida Pearl Smutny: “History is made of the actions of individuals. And yet, none of us can know at the time we act that we are making history.”
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