HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY OF

the study either of the historical process and its development or of the methods used by historians to understand their material. The term history may be employed in two quite different senses: it may mean (1) the events and actions that together make up the human past, or (2) the accounts given of that past and the modes of investigation whereby they are arrived at or constructed. When used in the first sense, the word refers to what as a matter of fact happened, while when used in the second sense it refers to the study and description of those happenings. The notion of philosophical reflection upon history and its nature is consequently open to more than one interpretation, and contemporary writers have found it convenient to regard it as covering two main types of undertaking. On the one hand, they have distinguished philosophy of history in the traditional or classical sense; this is conceived to be a first-order enquiry, its subject matter being the historical process as a whole and its aim being, broadly speaking, one of providing an overall elucidation or explanation of the course and direction taken by that process. On the other hand, they have distinguished philosophy of history considered as a second-order enquiry; here attention is not focussed upon the actual sequence of events themselves but, instead, upon the procedures and categories used by practicing historians in approaching and comprehending their material. The former, often alluded to as speculative philosophy of history, has had a long and varied career; the latter, which is generally known as critical or analytical philosophy of history, has only risen to prominence during the 20th century. Additional reading Robin G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1946), a classical contribution to the critical theory of history; Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (1957), an influential critique of types of historical speculation; William H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History (1951), a lucid, general account; Patrick L. Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation, 3rd ed. (1967); William H. Dray, Laws and Explanation in History (1957); Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (1958); and Morton G. White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (1965), four analytical discussions relating to historical knowledge and understanding; Frank E. Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History (1965), a brief but reliable survey of the development of speculative theories. William Dray, Perspectives in History (1980), is an explorative collection of essays on particular theorists of history by a prominent contemporary philosopher; Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism: Power, Property, and the State (1982), is a work by a leading British sociologist in which he offers an alternative interpretation of history based upon contemporary anthropological research; Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (1981), is a discussion of the nature of truth, knowledge, and order, especially the dichotomy between objective and subjective views of truth; Lawrence Stone, The Past and the Present (1981), is an examination of historiographic methodology; John W. Miller, The Philosophy of History with Reflections and Aphorisms (1981), is an original personal reflection on history as a human science; see also discussions of special issues in Mark Blitz, Heidegger's Being and Time and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (1981); Alfred Schmidt, History and Structure: An Essay on Hegelian-Marxist and Structuralist Theories of History (1982; originally published in German, 1971); Edmund E. Jacobitti, Revolutionary Humanism and Historicism in Modern Italy (1981); Eugene Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (1981).