(OPE-L) RE: logical order and historical order

["Gerald A. Levy" <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: (OPE-L) logical order and historical order

Hello again Jairus:

 

>>> A possible way forward is to see how Hegel defines the relationship between the history of philosophy and the 'system' of philosophy in the introduction to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. He provides a solution of sorts but one which involves writing 'essential histories'... <<<

 

What is the exact reference?  I looked again through the

"Introduction" (116 pages in the Haldane and Simson translation), 

along with my marginal notes, and couldn't find the section

you are alluding to.

 

In solidarity, Jerry

 

 

*PS on Hegel, Marx and History*:

 

For Hegel, the concept of history, in particular 'Universal History':

 

     "is founded on the essential and actual aim, which actually is

      and will be realized in it -- the plan of Providence; that, in short,

      there is Reason in history, must be decided on strictly philosophic

     ground, and thus shown to be essentially and in fact necessary"

     (_Hegel's Philosophy of Mind_, Wallace translation,  Oxford: 1971:

     p. 277).  

 

Clearly, Marx's conception of historical reason and necessity had

no place for Spirit and "the plan of Providence."   An appeal to necessity 

from a materialist perspective  was reconstituted by Marx without an

appeal to Providence.  Yet, aren't there problematic  *teleological*

presuppositions in a vision which suggests that when the relations

of production block the further development of the forces of

production a revolution ensues and a historically more advanced mode

of production is ushered in?    In both the  "Introduction" to the

_Contribution_ and in other writings including  _Capital_ there is an 

assertion of historical *inevitability*.  In what sense are the trajectories

and outcomes of social processes inevitable?  In positing inevitability

Marx may have been influenced by Darwin,  but one can not presume that

if there are necessary and inevitable outcomes in the theory of natural

selection and evolution (and, in any event, even Darwinian theory

allows for historically contingent events, like climatic change,  to alter

the evolutionary process) then social history also has necessary and

inevitable outcomes.