Is history going anywhere?

Modernity, conventionally if arbitrarily dated from 1789, is a break in time, including a change in the prevailing conception of time: cyclical gives way to forward-moving, progressive time.

Put simply Shore: modernity, by convention (somewhat arbitrarily) dated from 1789, is a break in time. Even the idea of time changes: time that goes round in cycles gives way to time that moves forward and progresses.

Berlin's image for the Enlightenment picture of progress: the world is a vast jigsaw, each piece fitted brings the whole nearer, and makes the next piece easier.

Hegel makes history part of philosophy's own substance, reversing a tradition since the Greeks that sought timeless, universal truth and treated the changing and contingent as noise to purge.

Put simply Hegel: since the ancient Greeks, philosophers had looked for truths that never change, and treated whatever changes or happens by chance as noise to get rid of. Hegel reverses this and makes history part of philosophy itself.

Dialectics is Hegel's name for what contradictions do when they meet: a position turns out unstable, its negation displaces it, and such clashes drive history forward in jolts.

Put simply Hegel's "dialectics": when opposing positions clash, one turns out to be unstable and its opposite pushes it aside. Clashes like these drive history forward, in sudden jolts rather than smoothly.

History's end, for Hegel, is a mystical point where all oppositions (freedom and necessity, is and ought, subject and object) dissolve into synthesis; nobody has ever witnessed it.

Put simply Hegel: history ends at a mystical point where all opposites (freedom and necessity, what is and what ought to be, the mind and the world) merge into one. Nobody has ever seen this happen.

All history so far is class struggle, and each order carries the seeds of its own destruction: feudalism yielded to capitalism, whose bourgeoisie produces "its own grave diggers."

Put simply Marx: all history so far has been a struggle between classes, and every social order breeds its own downfall. Feudalism gave way to capitalism, and the capitalist class produces "its own grave diggers."

In Hegelian fashion, the Manifesto makes no distinction between forecast and prescription: the proletariat's triumph is predicted, predestined, and right, all at once.

Put simply Marx, like Hegel: the Communist Manifesto does not separate what will happen from what should happen. The workers' victory is predicted, fated and right, all at once.

Sooner or later everyone concludes that the harmonious world where contradictions resolve, Hegel's end of history, is never coming. Unity cannot be found: life is nothing but difference.

Put simply Nietzsche: sooner or later we all realize that a harmonious world where every conflict is resolved, the end of history Hegel promised, is never coming. There is no unity to be found; life is all difference.

Hegel's philosophy, by crowning the belated present as the goal of all history, deifies history and sets it, as "the sole sovereign power," in place of art and religion.

Put simply Nietzsche on Hegel: by treating our own late age as the goal all history was heading for, Hegel turns history into a god. It becomes "the sole sovereign power", taking the place of art and religion.

Nietzsche blames Hegelian philosophy's huge, persisting influence for making every crisis of German culture in his century more dangerous; believing oneself a latecomer is "paralyzing and depressing."

Put simply Nietzsche: Hegel's huge, lasting influence made every crisis in German culture in his century more dangerous. Believing you have arrived late, at the tail end of history, is "paralyzing and depressing."

Finalism (teleology) holds that life moves toward an end planned from the start; Bergson rejects it: more determinism means less contingency and free will, which he wants room for.

Put simply Bergson rejects "finalism", the idea that life heads toward a goal fixed from the start, as an apple seed already "aims" at its apple. The more is fixed in advance, the less room for chance and free will.

Leninism is a method for speeding history up, not steering it elsewhere: workers are slow to reach class consciousness unaided, so it must be carried to them from outside.

Put simply Lenin: history's destination is fixed, but it can be sped up. Workers are slow to grasp their situation as a class on their own, so that understanding must be brought to them from outside.

Other readings Lars Lih (Lenin Rediscovered, 2006) reads What Is to Be Done? as an expression of the orthodoxy of Karl Kautsky's German Social Democracy, resting on confidence in workers' revolutionary inclinations.

Dialectics survives without its destination: the contradictions inside things still push history forward, but nothing promises that history ends or resolves.

Put simply Horkheimer keeps Hegel's "dialectics," the idea that tensions inside things drive history forward, but drops the promised destination: nothing guarantees that history ends or resolves.

If iron laws drive history inexorably toward a goal, how can that be squared with human striving, or with human activity meaning anything? Kosík holds this antinomy still unresolved.

Put simply Kosík: if fixed laws drive history unstoppably toward a goal, how can human effort matter or mean anything? He thinks no one has yet resolved this contradiction.

At the 1967 Writers' Congress, addressing Party leaders as persons, not officials, Vaculík admits, in Shore's rendering, that if asked whether that beautiful Marxist dream can be realized, he honestly does not know.

Discourse must be treated as discontinuous: the historian excavates layers of talk and marks the moments where the way something is spoken about shifts.

Put simply Foucault: a history of how people talk must look for breaks. The historian digs through layers of talk and marks the moments when the way something is spoken about changes.

Nobody really escapes Hegel. Even Foucault and Derrida, who reject any sure direction in history, keep some form of dialectic, because ideas once loose are recombined and inverted, never erased.

Put simply Shore: no one really escapes Hegel's idea that history moves through clashing opposites. Even Foucault and Derrida, who deny history has a sure direction, keep some version of it, because ideas once released get remixed and reversed, never erased.

Shore offers a simplified schema: once Marxism and the grand narratives die, Eastern and Western Europe answer that death in two distinct ways, which sometimes overlap or interact.

Put simply Shore's simplified picture: once Marxism and the other all-explaining stories died, Eastern and Western Europe responded in two different ways, which sometimes overlapped or influenced each other.

For Shore, making sense of the twentieth century requires history, and Heidegger supplies it: an account of historicity built on different lines from Hegel's.

Put simply Shore: to make sense of the twentieth century we need a way of thinking about history, and Heidegger offers one: an account of how humans exist within history ("historicity"), built differently from Hegel's.

Derrida labels the undertaking a hauntology: the many spirits of Marx, and with them Hegel's teleological conception of time, will go on haunting us indefinitely.

Put simply Derrida calls this project "hauntology," from ghosts: Marx's many spirits, and Hegel's idea that time moves toward a goal, will go on haunting us indefinitely.

Patočka and Michalski shared a conviction: in the 1970s communist bloc Heidegger could counteract Hegel, showing meaning need not require wholeness, nor some kind of truth an inevitable destination.

Put simply Patočka and Michalski shared the conviction that, in the 1970s communist bloc, Heidegger could counter Hegel by showing that meaning can exist without wholeness, and truth without history marching to a fixed end.