Abstract
A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could ehindxist. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at moment of danger. "In relation to the history of organic life on earth," writes a modern biologist, "the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at close of a twenty-four-hour day. The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe. Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history.
Keywords
NothingMaterialismPhilosophyRelation (database)Philosophy of historyEpistemologyLiteratureHistoryArt historyArt
Related Publications
The Order of Things
When one defines order as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex hist...
Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action
John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relatio...
3.2. MARXISM AND LITERATURE
This book extends the theme of Raymond Williams's earlier work in literary and cultural analysis. He analyses previous contributions to a Marxist theory of literature from Marx ...
On the Ontological Status of the State
In which sense can we say that a state `exists'? According to the realist school, the state is an a priori given; according to the pluralist school, it is nothing but a collecti...
The End of History and the Last Man
Fukuyama considers whether or not there is a direction to the history of mankind. He identifies two powerful forces guiding our actions: the logic of desire (the rational econom...
Publication Info
- Year
- 2020
- Type
- book-chapter
- Pages
- 255-263
- Citations
- 1289
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1289
OpenAlex
Cite This
Walter Benjamín
(2020).
Theses on the Philosophy of History.
, 255-263.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003059509-26
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003059509-26