The Absolute Present
Agnes Heller’s philosophy of history is divided between A Theory of History (1982) and A Philosophy of History in Fragments (1993). The one is a reflection on the stages of historical consciousness, the other is a manifestation of postmodern historical consciousness, situated between the crisi...
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| Главный автор: | |
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| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Français |
| Опубликовано: |
2015
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| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Итог: | Agnes Heller’s philosophy of history is divided between A Theory of History
(1982) and A Philosophy of History in Fragments (1993). The one is a reflection
on the stages of historical consciousness, the other is a manifestation of
postmodern historical consciousness, situated between the crisis of European
philosophy of history and a dawning world-historical consciousness. The crisis
of European philosophy of history is defined by the irresolvable contradiction
between the absolute present of Hegel’s self-knowing subject of History and
the consciousness of the sheer contingency of the historical present. From
Hegel to Benjamin philosophy of history sought the absolute redemption of the
contingent moment. It is against this philosophical legacy that Heller sets out in
A Philosophy of History in Fragments to rethink the meaning of the present as
absolute, not in itself but in relationship to the past and future of our present.
Our absolute present is thereby revealed as inescapably paradoxical. Just as we
live from the afterlife of a departed absolute spirit so the self-consciousness of
our post-modernity resides in the self-consciousness with which we endow the
past. Beyond this limit we must return to A Theory of History. Its reconstruction
of the evolution of historical consciousness points to the emergence of a truly
planetary consciousness and hence to the possibility of the end of history in a
philosophy of World History.
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