In History And Historic

In the understanding of problems like the general nature of Marxist Philosophy, the essence of philosophy revolution realized by Marx, our philosophy had experienced a conversion from material ontology to epistemology, and then to practice materialism. In recent years, it seems to enter into the fourth phase. Since 2001, more and more scholar agrees that the nature of Marx's new materialism is historical materialism, but they still have many different understanding on the general character of historical materialism. The author thinks the key for the understanding of this problem is to figure out in what meaning that historical materialism is a kind of"worldview", how to unify this new worldview and"historical view", and what is the basis and intermediary of this unification. To strictly distinguish my new understanding of historical materialism proposed by myself from the previous views, I would use terms"historical"materialism for all of my positively expressed views, and use"historical materialism"for the previous views or general talking."Contemporary society"ideology opposes the teleology association of itself with past on the one side, and opposes the teleology link of itself to the future on the other side. It opposes any grand teleology structure. However, the concept"era"is just established based on this teleology structure. Therefore, the historical materialism theory based on the traditional historical philosophy and rational historical view is facing an unprecedented challenge. If the historical sense is the contemporary truth, then would the historical materialism lose its validity of existence in the present age? If the historical sense becomes a eternally effective sense, then would the historical materialism becomes the historical relics? Is the historical sense beaten down historical materialism thoroughly? Or the historical materialism can abandon historical sense in higher level? Thus, can the historical materialism get a new life? All these problems are forcing us to reinterpret and reflects historical materialism in the present age. To give well-founded answers to these problems, we think the following two reference frame is indispensable: one is the tradition of western history philosophy; the other is contemporary historical sense. Only after putting the historical materialism into the two reference frame and making comparative study accordingly, and letting them form an effective conversation and communication, can we demonstrate the contemporary value of historical materialism academically and ideologically. And our reinterpretation can become the contemporary interpretation in its true sense.Marx's"historical"materialism is also a kind of historical ontology. Therefore, when we talk about the relationship between"historical"materialism and western history philosophy tradition, we mainly discuss its relationship with speculative history philosophy, but not its relationship with analytical and critical history philosophy. Since"historical"materialism is not only a kind of"historical view", not just a"methodology", but a kind of"worldview", a historical ontology. In the way of unitarity, continuity and expansibility, it tries hard to reveal the teleology structure of human development and what's more important is that it reveals the birth of the world for the world in the way of teleology and reveals the relationship evolution of nature and human. Its orientation belongs to the category of speculative history philosophy, and has no relationship with analytical and critical history philosophy."Historical"materialism includes following six basic premises: (1) History is a course of continuity and unitarity; (2) History has teleology structure; (3) History is evolving and developing continuously; (4) The cunning of history; (5) History development is the unification of the quantity change and quality change; (6) History is the history of human, but not the history of Spirit or other mysterious entity. Human is the major entity of history. For all these premises, premise (1) and (2) appears in Vico's history philosophy; premise (3) got its highlights in France enlightenment historical view, especially in Voltaire and Condorcet; premise (4) and (5) was strengthened in Hegel's history philosophy; premise (6) appears in a mysterious way in Hegel's history philosophy, and was highlighted and eye-catching in Young Hegelians, especially in the criticism of Hegel history philosophy from Feuerbach, Shidina and Hess in each ground. Carried on the criticism of Feuerbach, Shidina and Hess to Hegel's history philosophy, Marx abandoned the reasonable core of Hegel history philosophy and strengthened the sixth premise, and reintegrated these thoughts on the new earth of practical principles. He created a materialistic and speculative history philosophy. Therefore, we can say that Marx's"historical"materialism is based on the heritage of many factors of modern speculative history philosophy, and the highly integrated product in a new earth of theory. Of cause, we cannot say these six premises can generate"history"materialism with no doubt. The reasons is that, on the one side,"historical"materialism is not the simple assembly of these six premise, but a higher level integration; on the other side, since"historical"materialism found a new principle (which is the practical principle) to integrate these premises, so itself owns a lot of contents that previous speculative history philosophy doesn't.We don't think"historical"materialism is a thorough speculative history philosophy as the postmodernists do, but if to compare it with speculative history philosophy and contemporary historical sense respectively, then we can be sure that it is more close to speculative history philosophy and more drifted apart from the contemporary historical sense. At least, it is grounded in premise of rational linear historical view as the speculative historical philosophy. However, rational linear historical view is not born in nature, but actually a late product of western. The understanding of the historical development process of rational linear historical view in the west helps us better understand speculative historical philosophy and"historical"materialism.The historical view of ancient Greeks might be the most strange to our modern people, as it doesn't has any similarity with our habitual rational linear historical view. The Romans historical view does have many differences with that of Greeks. It mainly includes several points as below:一,The Romans had clear time concept. They had relatively clear division of chronological records and decades, and descried the history in specific year in some works, so the relationship of historical events has definiteness. In the works of old Cato, it even has the rudiment of chronological form. 二,The Romans began to have concept of historical continuity. Although they had not found the spiritual principle to unify the different phase of history, they did try to find the inner relationship of different historical events (although this continuity might be accidental and subjective, and did not have necessity and spirituality). In other words, although they do not have the concept of history unitarity, they have the concept of history continuity三,Different from the realistic pursuit of Greek historical works, the historian of Roma has stronger pragmatism and national character. Their reflection of history is to summarize moral and political lesson from history for the better development of Roma.四,Greeks only cared about the contemporary events. Roman were interested in the remote ancient. Their history was usually described from the ancient to contemporary, so it had the significance of general history, and which makes the Romans have stronger grand view of history research, and raise awareness of weakening rule idea from the grand view. In these four features, we are more concerned about the first and the second, as they are more close to historical unitarity thought and have prepared enough conditions for the existence of historical unitarity thought. Even so, there are still big heterogeneity between the Romans'historical view and the rational linear historical view since modern times. We cannot take them as the direct source of contemporary rational linear historical view.In the historical view of Christian, it not only has clear historical unitarity principle, it also has the clear concept of historical stage evolution, clear objective standard of historical stage division, and clear concept of historical development. In a word, in the historical view of Christian in middle ages, modern rational linear historical view already has the four basic elements. So we think the historical view of Christian in middle ages laid the foundation for the modern rational linear historical view. And the two of them has obvious isotonicity. However, we should also see that there are big differences between them, which can be found in the below two points: (1) The historical view of Christian took the personified God as starting point, guarantee and standard, so it cannot neglect the effect of imagery like sign, myth and parable. However, the rational linear historical view did not need to take the personified God as starting point, guarantee and standard, it directly resort to human rationality, so it did not need sign, myth and parable as the carrier of description, but resort to rational concept and category; (2) In the division course of history phase, the standard of historical view of Christian is religious, so the major features in each phase was described with religious and spiritual property. However, the standard for rational linear historical view, it is not religious, but secular political, economic and cultural mode, so the major features of each phase was also divided by the secular contents. Therefore, rationality and secularity are the basic features of modern rational linear historical view relative to historical view of Christian. And the one who completed the transition from personified God to rationality, from religious to secularity is the Vico, the founder of modern speculative historical philosophy.However, Vico's historical view was the product of the Enlightenment. His criticism to Christian Theology is still obscure and secretive. We could found"God Made the World"and"Devine"everywhere in his works. Only after deeply understanding of his inner theory, can we reinterpret his rational features in the historical view. We can say that the rational features of Vico's historical view were hided in the religious mysticism. Because of this, his historical view still contains rich cycle theory, and which suffocates his development and his evolution concept, which is also the reason why his development and evolution theory does not leave clear impression for later generations. It is French historian and enlightenment philosophers who implement more thoroughly the development and evolution theory. Represented by Voltaire and Condorcet, French historian and enlightenment philosophers left deep impression in the description of historical evolution theory, but mostly they only gave experience description of history, but not logical reflection of philosophy. How to integrate the history evolution concept and history philosophy paradigm organically is the new subject for western historical philosophers after the Enlightenment. Hegel solved the subject most thoroughly, so he became the integrator of western speculative history philosophy, and also the most direct and important source of Marx's"historical"materialism.Hegel philosophy did realize the logicalization and systematism of modern rational linear historical view, and it is the summit of platonic and speculative history philosophy. It realized the merge of logic theory and metaphysics, carried through the unified principle of history and logic, and plays to the best in the platonic meaning. It raised the meridian and parallel interweave of history and rational and guile concept, raised concepts like"rational concept","human enthusiasm","world history nationality","world history individual", and"moral freedom in country", all of which had deeply influenced the intellectual development of Marx. However, it was still a theological and platonic system. If we don't reverse it thoroughly and break its mysterious shell, we cannot really come back to a practical and actual person, cannot really release a person from the constraint of theology and abstract rationality, and cannot give human perception an active character surpass. Therefore, there's long way to go from Hegel's history philosophy to Marx's"historical"materialism. If Marx did not have understanding of the new development of Germany ideology after Hegel, but only stayed on the Hegel thoughts, he would not able to develop"historical"materialism independently no matter how smart he was. In our opinion, after Hegel, three people had made effective criticism to Hegel's lexicalized and theologized rational historical view and had important influence on Marx's ideology. They are Feuerbach, Stirnen and Hess. They made criticism of humanism, individualism and economics to Hegel's history philosophy. And these criticisms became the theory horizon of Marx's exploration of"historical"materialism.The understanding of these external ideological bases is not enough. We must get deep understanding of the course on how Marx abandoned these thoughts. Only this way,"historical"materialism would not be an unchangeable dogma to us, but a live and continuously self generating system. We can deepen our understanding of the basic elements and its correlations of"historical"materialism after understanding the generation process of"historical"materialism and the long way around Marx had gone through. The chapter 2 of this paper specifically analyzes how Marx went out Hegel's speculative philosophy and his hard exploration experiences in the gradual formation of"historical"materialism. With the revelation of the hard exploration experiences, we found the basic structure of"historical"materialism. From author's point of view,"historical"materialism, as world view, firstly is a mode of thinking of anti-ontology. This ontology is a mode of thinking used presupposed essence to explain predicted empiricism of existing world and deduced reductionism of existing things from initial origin, and a mode of absolutism thinking pursued single nature from two extreme points. This anti-ontology mode of thinking caused Marx to change his understanding of human and world. Body became his important perspective of human and world. Under this new perspective, historic and time dimensionality got its highlight. Although Marx did not directly raise the"time"concept, he had his own time ideology. Marx's time ideology is mainly several aspects as below: (1) time for real specific people would come to end; (2) time for real specific people is unfolded in a certain live event, and time is the arrival of this live event; (3) the arrival of this time shows the instant happening of designed and run activity; (4) this operated activity is specifically an objectivity activity, so it contained each factors of objectivity activity; (5) since the different combination of each factor generated the difference between alienation labor and free labor, thus generated time basis of communist movement. Even so, there is obvious difference between Marx's historical and time ideology and that of Heidegger. The fundamental difference is that Marx's time and historical ideology based on emotional and dynamic practical activity. Marx could realize the jumping from historical to history due to its practical betweenness and dialectics. Heidegger's time and historic ideology based on an emotional survival understanding. And this emotional survival understanding lacked of betweenness and dialectics, so it could not realized the jumping from historical to history, but only stay in the abstract historic principles.It was the point that was seriously misunderstood in contemporary philosophy. The contemporary philosophy made a new interpretation of Marx's"historical"materialism standing at the base point of historical sense. And there are two typical interpretations as below: one interpretation thinks Marx's historical materialism is only a macro history and the macro history is over, so this theory should be abandoned; the other interpretation thinks although Marx's historical materialism includes macro history and historical dimensionality, these two do not have suitable intermediary to get organic relationship, so these two has cracks hard to make up. The existence of the crack is not good for historical materialism to play its role in the present age of historical conciseness. So we should find a suitable intermediary to rebuild the basis of historical materialism. The representative of the former is postmodernism, and the representative of the later is Habermas. The first important reason for Postmodernism's criticism of historical materialism was that the historical materialism formed the transcendence of individual, especially raised the macro social concept and macro history concept that surpass individual, and raised the so-called grand historic development rule and historic development trend based on this. They thought it was a arrogatearrogation. The second reason is that historical materialism for the jumping of historical to history, and which is not understandable to the, as they have strict either/or contrary concept between historical and history. The third reason is historical materialism takes individual as the tools to realize the overall social development and takes historical as the means to realize historic development. To them, individual and historical itself should be the highest value and itself should be the objective, but not belong to other values and tied to other objective. These three reasons are not fit for common sense of life, or as a result of abstract thinking, or as the reflection of bourgeois ideology. It does not have the view surpassing"historical"materialism, and does not really grab the theoretical difficulty of"historical"materialism. It is just an external criticism and this not only could not crush"historical"materialism, but just prove the perfectness and rationality of"historical"materialism.Habermas'"rebuild"can be described in four aspects as below: (1) raised the differentiation of two category"social labor"and"interaction"or"communicative action"; (2) distinguished the rationalization process of"production activity"as objective rational behavior, and the rationalization process of"Morality-Practical activity"as"communicative action"; (3) raised the view of social integration and explain the inner mechanism of social reform with it; (4) suggested using the different level of moral practical conciseness as the new standard to divide history phase. With the above four"improvements"and"rebuild", Habermas found his own designed intermediary between historical and history. This is the conversation of language, and people's mutual learning and mutual recognition in the normative sense based on it. Through the intermediate link, it forms a series of new social organism and social structure, and thus reform production relationship and promotes the development of productivity. People who are familiar with Marx's"historical"materialism, can tell immediately that Habermas is rather than"rebuild"historical materialism, but upside down historical materialism, as it actually takes the reform in ideological sphere as the basis of social development eventually and thinks the development of production relationship and productivity is the result of the reform. Although Habermas did raise something that Marx didn't concern or explicate, these things comply with some new features of new era and Habermas has its own unique theoretical values in this aspect. However, his so-called"rebuild"disobeys Marx's basic spirit. So we can say Habermas is a innovative thinker, but we are hard to take him as a real Marxist. Comparatively speaking, Marx's theory is more thoroughly and more pervasive, and Marx's theory has more historical perspective. On the contrary, the communicative intermediary Habermas found for historical and history is not historic, so it is easy to head for essentialism and absolutism, and head for the revise historicism. The author thinks Habermas had not gone further than Marx in getting rid of metaphysical ontological thinking mode.In short, under the background of contemporary historical consciousness, we should oppose the polarized reinterpretation of"historical"materialism. No matter the historic and dimensional mode of scientific interpretation which only strengthens"historical"materialism, or the historical dimensional mode of humanities interpretation which only strengthens"history", is the misunderstanding of"historical"materialism. We could really understand the revolutionary meaning and contemporary meaning of"historical"materialism only after we walk deep into this"between". In contemporary,"historical"materialism is still a kind of irreplaceable theory with important theoretical value and practical value.