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Giovanni Mari, The Postmodern, Democracy, History
Contemporary
European Cultural Studies
Series editors,
Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
Professor Mari's concerns are with what is sometimes called
“substantive philosophy of history.” The book is primarily a
discussion of the complicated interpretations of, among
others, Jean-François Lyotard, Gianni Vattimo, and Richard
Rorty on the status and future of philosophy of history.
From the Introduction:
The Postmodern, Democracy, History is composed of
four chapters. Each of these parts has a relative autonomy
of its own, even if they explicitly and variously refer to
each other and constitute aspects of a single reasoning. The
presuppositions of this reasoning may be formulated in the
following way:
1. If it is true that man “makes” history, the results of
this action do not belong to him in the same way and to the
same degree that they could do so while he was thinking and
“doing” them, and they belong to him ever [even] less the
more they prove to be important and lasting; or — and here
we are dealing with the same idea formulated in different
terms — there exists a problem of the meaning of history
that it is necessary to formulate continually and ever anew,
all the more so after important and lasting events, that is,
the more events appear most cruelly to hang over us and
evade our control.
2. the paradigm of the meaning of history developed by
the modern or classical philosophy of history is today
difficult both to propose and to forget; it is no longer
possible to continue to think of a construction of
“humanity” according to the canons of such a paradigm, but
what we are today is also the way we have constructed
ourselves, sometimes through tragic and historically
indelible events, according to that mode, and not to
remember it would mean to perpetuate it unconsciously and to
remember it means first of all changing its value and
redescribing it.
3. this re-description, the main task of philosophy,
must start from the decisive element of the classical
paradigm and from asking ourselves first of all: what has
happened to our experience of the future today?
In the first chapter, Democracy and History, I discuss
the relationship between politics and history starting from
those theses, exemplified in the text by the positions of A.
Touraine, that deny the possibility of a positive
relationship between democracy and history, due both to the
crisis in the classical philosophy of history and the idea
of progress embodied by it, and to the antidemocratic and
totalitarian outcomes arrived at in the last century by
those movements and states that based the legitimization of
their actions upon some or other philosophy or conception of
history. In this chapter, after attempting to illustrate
briefly how the origins of democracy are indissolubly
interwoven with the establishing and developing of
philosophies of history, I propose a definition of the
paradigm of the classical philosophy of history, and I
assert the idea that its decline does not coincide at all
with the end of the elements that compose it and with the
possibility of their re-composition. I then go on to analyze
two re-descriptions of this paradigm (those of Karl Popper
and of W B. Gallie), which, in my opinion — although they
are very significant, for opposite reasons — are both
equally unsatisfactory, even if they do contribute to
highlighting the need for a consideration of democracy that
is different from that envisaged by the classical paradigm.
In the second chapter, Postmodernity and History, I
consider the theses on the “end of history” developed by
postmodern thought, particularly those proposed by Gianni
Vattimo and Jean-François Lyotard, and their potential for
re-description of the classical paradigm, particularly of
its central element, the view of history. In this context I
have also analyzed the postmetaphysical proposals of Richard
Rorty, with particular reference to the most recent results
of Vattimo’s thought, which in my view present a full-blown
philosophy of history. The main result of this part (taken
up again and specified in the following chapter) is the
interpretation of postmodern thought as of a “historicism
without purpose”.
In the third chapter, Meaning and Sense of History,
beginning with certain considerations by Karl Löwith, I look
in depth at a series of theses asserted in recent years by
Remo Bodei and I employ other very well known earlier ones
by Reinhart Koselleck in order to attempt to delineate a
theoretical formulation that enables us to think of a sense
of history starting from the current experience of the
present; this proves to be rather poor, but also free from
the restrictions of the classical paradigm of the philosophy
of history. To this end, to a certain extent using
Koselleck’s categories, I propose the notion of “space of
experience” consisting of obsolete “horizons of
expectation”.
In chapter four, Right to the Future, I relate the
problem of the sense of history back to questions of
politics, democracy and equality — but not directly, rather
through the notions of “personal future” and “right to the
future” — exploring the possibilities of managing the
spaces opened up by the crisis of the classical and
theological paradigm, and the social obstacles that are
placed in their way.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter One Democracy and history
1. Democracy without history?
2. Origins of democracy and the philosophy of history
3. Liberty and necessity
4. Dissolution and redescriptions of the paradigm of the
classical philosophy of history
5. Democracy and crisis of the classical philosophy of
history
Chapter Two Postmodernity and history
1. The “end of history”
2. Archipelagos and transparent societies
3. Conversation and progress
4. The universal history of weakness
5. The postmodern as the new historicism
Chapter Three Meaning and sense of history
1. Globalization and history of the world
2. The history of being as historicism without purpose
3. For a new nexus between future and past
Chapter Four Right to the future
1. Historical equality
2. The inequalities of eternity
3. The affirmation of a personal future
4. The privilege of the future
5. The alternative of philosophy
Notes
Author
Giovanni Mari
holds the chair of the History of Philosophy at the Faculty
of Education of the University of Florence. He founded and
is editor-in-chief of the journal
Iride. Filosofia e
discussione pubblica. He has authored some ten books,
the most well-known of which is
Eternità e tempo
nell’opera storica [Eternity and Time in
Historical Work] [1997].
The
translation of The Postmodern, Democracy, History was
funded by the
Segretariato Europeo per le
Pubblicazioni Scientifiche (SEP)
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