THE HISTORICAL CHANGE IN CARLOS ASTRADA‘S THOUGHTS

Abstract

Nowadays, where we see historical innovations that are masked or distorted while, at the same time, we are presented as new that which has already been instituted, it is urgent and necessary a reflection relating the historical change. The Argentine thinker Carlos Astrada has dealt, in several books, with this problem wich is really important to human existence and and is present in our daily life. This work tries to recapture his thoughts making an interpretative reading of his writings belonging to different periods of his production, which are considered according to present time arguments, regarding: i) history‘s conception ii) history‘s aim iii) history‘s term. The author’s dialectic cosmovision is considered, because its due to his position that he can to criticize but, at the same time, he doesn‘t fall in the final progressivism nor in fatalism. Astrada doesn‘t consider a constant advance toward an ultimate goal of history nor a necessary direction regulated by a mechanical determinism. The way in which history moves implies breaking and connecting, differentiation and identity, advance and setback and its course breaks the homogeneous progress of the line. In his writings we can also find an “avant la lettre” criticism to the post-modern thesis of the “end of history”. The opposition follows a theoretical road which tries to clear up the distortions introduced by followers of Hegel´s thoughts, and an empirical road that helps showing the unquestionable presence of economical, political and social movements that are against a supposed shut down of history.