“Speculative Philosophies of History” in a World “Without History”: Their Relationship to Contemporary Political Practices and Their Importance in the Training of Historians

Abstract

In our time, the “disappearance” of the so-called “Speculative Philosophies of History” seems to be a fait accompli—at least within political and academic spheres of discussion—together with the consequent emergence, in the academic field, of a “new philosophy of history”. Abandoning the metaphysical pretensions and contaminations of speculative philosophers, this new philosophy recovers as its object of study issues proper to the philosophy of science and the analysis of language, while also showing interest in the epistemological status of historical narratives and in the ways in which they are constructed.

We live in times politically affected by different kinds of conflicts: economic and military invasions, religious and political fundamentalisms, economic, cultural, and military imperialisms, and millenarianisms. These phenomena only show us that, ironically, geopolitics seems not to have taken notice of the so-called “end of the metaphysical world”. Everything happens as if metaphysics had reached its end only in discourses and narratives, but not in political practices and their foundations.

In this paper, we will attempt to discuss the role of the Speculative Philosophy of History and its possible contributions to historians and historiography, in a world traversed by new forms of “historical narratives” that are apparently “empty” of metaphysical assumptions.

The importance of this study is not merely anecdotal. It may help researchers concerned with history to discover that, even today—in the so-called “world of the end of metaphysics”—there persist assumptions underlying human actions, which directly influence social praxis, transforming, mutating, and traversing it. These assumptions must be read and interpreted according to their function and origin.