Exhibit Hegel, Hegel and Marx approaches towards history

INTRODUCTION:
History has had different approaches by different personalities who have tried to give their own contribution based on its nature either as a discipline or a past as well as what it contributes to the human life as a whole. Hegel and Marx have had their approaches which holds divergent views stressing much on political and economic aspects as discussed below;

HEGELS APPROACH
Georg Wilheim Fredrich Hegel was a German philosopher and an important figure of German idealism. He achieved wide renown in his day. He refuses to approach history by its way of nature since nature and history are perceived to be two different things. Hegel distinguishes the non-historical process of nature from historical process of human life as he asserts that ,there is no history of human life and that not merely as life but as rational life ,the life of thinking beings.

He also conceives all history as history of thought where he argues that human acts are only knowable to the historian as the outward expression of thoughts. He says that knowing what people did is not important but understanding their thoughts is the essence of an historian’s task.

He further stresses much on reason where Hegel reasons out that everything which happens in history happens by the will of man since the historical process consists of human actions and that the will is man’s thought expressing itself outwardly in action. Hegel asserts thinking is never done in vaccum ; every historical character in every historical situation thinks and acts as rationally as that person in that situation can think and act and nobody can do more. He maintains that the fact human history exhibits itself as a display of passions does not prove that it is not controlled by reason. He thinks of passion as what history is made out of which is the display of reason.

He also asserts that historical process is at bottom a logical process since all history is of thought and exhibits the self-development of reason. For him, historical transitions are logical transitions set out on a time of scale. This developments in history are very necessary but not accidental. He argues that history consists of empirical events which are the outward expressions of thought which forms a chain of logical connected concepts. You need to consider both the events and thoughts behind them for necessary connection. The whole philosophy of Hegel turns on the principle that every historical process is dialectical process in which one form of life like the one from Greece to Rome then to Christian world.

Another point argued out by Hegel is that history ends not in the future but in the present. From his idea, history itself philosophically considered that it is seen from inside. History must end with the present because nothing else has happened. Hegel by this means recognizing the present as a fact and realizing that we do not know what future progress will be. Hegel put it that the future is an object not of knowledge but of hopes and fears; and hopes and fears are not history.

HEGEL AND MARXS APPROACH
Marx takes economical approach on perception on history. In his approach, history has both the strength and the weakness from Hegels approach. The strengths are seen in penetrating behind the facts to the logical nexus of underlying concepts and the weakness in selecting one aspect of human life as in this sense fully rational by itself. Like Hegel, Marx insisted that human history is not a number of different parallel histories, political, artistic, religious but one single history.

He also conceives this unity as a unity in which there was only one continuous thread, just like Hegel but for him, at every point of development mere reflections of the basic economic fact. Marx maintains that all this was economic reasons but not philosophical reasons. Hegel’s dialectic begins with the thought, then to nature and ends with mind but Marx only referred to the nature and then to thought in his dialectic.

History as the actions in which man expressed his thoughts had the general outlines of its structure laid down for it in advance by the conditions under which the thinking activity, mind alone can exist. These conditions are;
That mind should arise within and continue to inhabit a world of nature.
That it should work by apprehending those necessities which lie behind nature.
Marx merely reasserted the fundamental principle of 18th century historical naturalism, the principle that historical events have natural causes. Materialism n which he so strongly insisted dialectical materials which he considered that it was still materialism.
The Marx’s reversal of Hegelian dialectic was a preliminary to an advance since it was based on the realities of the situation which Hegel bequeathed to his pupils, and in particular led a great advance in handling of that particular kind of history, economic history in which Hegel was weak and Marx was exceptionally strong in their approach of history.

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ELVIS123 answered the question on November 15, 2017 at 03:39