Time, History and Philosophy of History

MUDROVCIC, MARÍA INÉS

Guent

Conferencia; Inernational Networkt for Theory of History Conference; 2013

Guent University

Time, History and Philosophy of History María Inés Mudrovcic University of Comahue-Conicet Argentina The ways of describing, thinking or talking about human affairs constitute a world. For example, disciplines such as ?philosophy of history? or concepts such as ?historical time? were unthinkable in the world in which Aristotle lived. Underlying this concept of the philosophy of history is the assumption that certain thoughts, representations and artifacts are only possible under certain conditions in which societies articulate the past, present and future. Different ways of describing, representing or thinking about human affairs (i.e., from different worlds) presuppose different types of consciousness of temporality. This proposal is embedded in the fruitful concept ?régimes d´historicités?, which was coined by F. Hartog. Within this context and in regard to historiography and the philosophy of history, I will try to show that these disciplines and concepts, coined by these fields of study, are only possible in a temporal order governed by the future. This temporal order was called ?modern order of time? or ?modern régime d´historicité?, in which the future commands and the past is viewed as ?a great sort of container, a bin in which are located, in the order of their occurrence, all the events which have ever happened? as A. Danto described it in a well-known statement. On the basis of the discussion above, I will examine historiography, understood as the scientific study of past human events and other disciplines, including the speculative, analytical or narrativist philosophies of history, which have yielded concepts such as the ?historical past ?, ?historical consciousnesses? and ?historical time?. In recent years, new sub-fields of history have emerged, such as the history of the present (which sounds like a contradiction in terms). Within this context, concepts such as trauma, mourning, repetition, presence, testimony, among others, become the new arena for discussions within history, philosophy of history, cultural studies, and media studies, among other disciplines. The emergence of this sub-field, history of the present, has challenged the role of the past in two centuries of work within historiography and philosophy of history. I will show that this sub-field is a symptom of a new way of articulating the past, present and future. Following F. Hartog, this sub-field represents an order of temporality in which the present commands. Within this order of temporality, the presence of the past challenges the modern distinction between past and present. Finally, I hope to show how a philosophical analysis that considers how different human worlds result from the different manners in which societies understand the past, present and future can clarify our understanding of, among other things, why currently some forms of ?reading? the world are questioned.