philosophy of history

philosophy of history

1. critical and methodological reflection on the nature of HISTORY and HISTORIOGRAPHY.
2. large-scale speculative historical theories, claiming general laws or asserting general tendencies seen as operating throughout history. The philosophy of history in this second sense, influential especially in the 18th- and 19th-centuries (e.g. HEGEL), has on the whole gone out of fashion in the 20th-century See also HISTORICISM, GRAND NARRATIVE AND METANARRATIVE.