The Historical Change in Carlos Astrada’s Thought

Abstract

In times such as those in which we live, when historical innovations are masked or distorted while, at the same time, what has already been instituted is presented to us as new, reflection on historical change becomes urgent and necessary. Carlos Astrada, an Argentine thinker, addressed this problem in numerous texts, a problem of great significance for human existence and of strong presence in our everyday life.

This paper seeks to take up his thought again through an interpretive reading of writings belonging to different periods of his production, which are placed in relation to contemporary debates concerning: i) the conception of history, ii) the objective of history, and iii) the end of history.

The author’s dialectical worldview is emphasized, a position that enables him to criticize and, at the same time, prevents him from falling into either teleological progressivism or fatalism. For Astrada, there is neither a constant advance toward an ultimate goal of history nor a necessary direction regulated by mechanical determinism. The form of historical movement implies rupture and connection, differentiation and identity, advance and retreat, and its course breaks with the homogeneous progression of linearity.

In his writings, we can also find an avant la lettre critique of the postmodernist thesis of the “end of history”. This challenge follows a theoretical path, seeking to unmask the distortions introduced by interpreters of Hegelian thought, and an empirical path, contributing by showing the undeniable presence of economic, political, and social movements that contradict a supposed closure of history.