PROLEGOMENA TOT EEN FILOSOFIE DER GESCHIEDENIS

SUMMARY This article deals with the Prolegomena to a Philosophy of History and contains two chapters of a book on this subject which will be published in Dutch in the spring of the next year and in English probably in the autumn of 1962. Most historians object to philosophy of history, because most philosophers do not take history, i.e. historical science, into account. Thus the starting-point of a real philosophy of history should be the practice of historical science, in order to discover in that history a metahistorical apriori. In this way history itself proves the presence of an implicit philosophy which has to be made explicit. This philosophy in its turn must be properly distinguished from a “theoretical history” as e.g. J. Romein in the Netherlands proposed in order to escape from the dead end which the actual practice of historical science seems to be making for. Theoretical history is a very useful science, but it will not be able to answer metascientifical questions, e.g. sense of history, the object of history, historical objectivity etc. Here one enters into the realm of a concrete philosophy of history. In a phenomenological approach to history one may discover two aspects of history: history as an event and history as a science. They mutually include each other, but may be dealt with separately. In elaborating the prolegomena the author stresses in his book the necessity of an autonomous philosophy of history together with a theology of history. The philosophical meaning of history is the self-realization of man which will be reached in the greatest possible attainment of God. Revelation tells us about the actual fulfilment in the Incarnation of the Word of God. History as a science is the other theme. Here philosophy of history must admit and justify the existence of historical science, to explain its peculiar objectivity according to its peculiar object: man in his self-realization.