Another reason for the absence of a philosophy of history among Greeks is their for the absence of a philosophy of history among Greeks is their （括弧内重复）idea that “becoming is inferior to being”. The perpetual being is without genesis, the perpetual becoming, on the other hand, is without being. But in Christianity, the motif of becoming is of great importance.
There will he no perfection in man’s earthly life. Even the Christian doctrine itself does not undergo any development. Truth can not be discovered again. It is only propagated. It is not changeable with time. Truth is fixed and stable.
Augustinian view had its great rival——Chiliasm and Messianism
Jewish people were a suffering nation. They were nomads. For them, God reveals himself through history and in history. God himself is history. “At the beginning, God creates the world.” There always exists “God-Greate-World”
Philosophy of History and Its Origin（历史哲学及其起源）
An Xi meng（安希孟，山西大学哲学系教授）
（Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China）
Philosophy is the love for wisdom. What is wisdom? It is different from knowledge. All philosophical systems can be divided into two baskets; philosophy of knowledge and philosophy of wisdom. Wisdom comes from suffering, pain, passion, emotion, imagination and conjecture. Wisdom is the sensibility to pain or suffering. Wisdom is an insight and intuition into the authentic life. It is illogical and irrational. It is the sense of pain. Philosophy of wisdom holds that absolute intellectual priority must be given to our life and its problems, to the perplexity of life, to the mystery of value, to the question of how to realize the valuable. The task of inquiry is to help us take action, not only acquire knowledge. It helps us to realize what is of value; friendship, understanding between each other, love for God, love for others, psychological health, mental sanity, individual freedom, democracy, universal human rights, social justice and cooperation between nations. Wisdom is the desire for value, the active attempt and capacity to discover the value, to strive for value. Values can not he known. It is not the object of knowledge. It can only be experienced. Philosophy of wisdom maintains that academic inquiry is concerned with religious ideas and problems. Religion is the concern for value in our existence. So, the academic inquiry is essentially a religious enterprise. Wisdom is closely related to religion. Whoever loves wisdom must have been painful. He must have suffered much. The wise men are frustrated and painful.
Philosophy of history is historical wisdom, not historical knowledge; philosophers of history are not historians. The real essence of history is the suffering of mankind. It is full of evils. Wise men can see purpose and meaning of life in sufferings and evils. The greatest suffering is death. So, philosophy is the exercise to die. The motives of philosophy of history are the experiences and sensation of death. Through the sense of suffering, men can achieve consciousness of history.
Philosophy of history resulted from the consciousness of the finite life ——life is short——and from the mortality of man. Philosophy of history resulted from the consciousness that our groups to which we belong have their past, present, and future.
The tragedy which befalls the mankind is the cause for developing philosophy of history. The care for human destiny, the dread and the anxiety about human life resulted in philosophy of history. Religious people are usually the men who have the experiences of existential care, anxiety and dread.
Philosophy of history is different from historical knowledge. Historical knowledge depends on positive data and empirical facts. But the grasp of historical reality can only be achieved by intuitional wisdom. The truth of historical knowledge is objective；the truth of philosophy of history is subjective. The former is concrete, the latter is abstract, therefore, is speculative. Historical knowledge begins with curiosity and surprise. Philosophy of history begins with pain and suffering. The knowledge of history is about the past. The history referred to by philosophy of history discovers the meaning behind the phenomenon of history. Knowledge of history found the meaning only in the history.
What is the origin of philosophy of history? Ernest Renan insisted that it has a Jewish origin. Jewish people were concerned with a general theory of the progress of our human species. Renan considered that the book of Danial was the beginning of philosophy of history.
Jewish people were a suffering nation. They were nomads. For them, God reveals himself through history and in history. God himself is history. “At the beginning, God creates the world.” There always exists “God-Create-World”. It doesn’t mean that there was God first, then he created the world, after that he took a rest, No, God continues his creating action now. The creation has not finished yet. So, the world is as eternal as God himself. Time has no beginning, for God has no beginning. God is history. God himself is suffering. God became man and was crucified on the cross. So, history is full of pain. The sense of suffering of Jewish people made them have the sense of history, the sense of change and the sense of future.
Although the Greeks developed western philosophy and historiography, they did not create a philosophy of history. The reason for this is that the idea of the cycle dominated Greek thought. There is a regulation in the changes of time. The idea of an eternal return deprives history of its significance and changes history into a mechanical repetition of the same events.
Another reason for the absence of a philosophy of history among Greeks is theirdea that “becoming is inferior to being”. The perpetual being is without genesis, the perpetual becoming, on the other hand, is without being. But in Christianity, the motif of becoming is of great importance.
Generally speaking, philosophy of history is considered to be created by Christianity. Especially by Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine sketched the image of a unilinear evolution of history towards an end. History has a finite character. This idea has never disappeared in western thought. Meanwhile, since history is the gradual realization of a divine plan to assure the final salvation of mankind, human history can be interpreted and understood by a unitary idea. This is the decisive impulsion to the western philosophy of history. The westerners are convinced that the whole history is interpretable. Our modern philosophy of history sprang from this conviction, for philosophy of history is basically a series of attempts to interpreter the whole human history.
The ancients saw the world as eternal, without beginning or end. For the Christian religion, the world is finite. Only God is eternal God has absolute power and is self-sufficient. Man is in need of redemption. He can and will be redeemed. Consequently, there appeared a basic orientation towards the future and concern with the future. The attitude of looking-forward in hope and expectation became a virtue and a religious demand. The Christian forward-looking and future-directed attitude suggests an idea of time which is opposed to the cyclical view of time. The Old Testament tells a story which has a beginning in the past and has a definite end in the future. The whole temporal existence of man is moving in a single process towards the Messiah or a redeemer’s coming. In the New Testament, there was beginning, middle point （Christ）and the end, i.e., the second coming and the Last Judgment. This doctrine is irreconcilable with the cyclical conception of time. There is only one creation, one fall, one redemption, one last Judgment. But there are still differences between the sacred history and the profane history in St. Augustine’s philosophy. To him, the linear unidirectional process stretching from the beginning to the end of time is a spiritual process, not mundane process. In the human kingdom, there is no linear movement. The turning point in Christ does not exist in the profane history. There is no change in earthly history. The hope for the future is not the hope for any change in human affairs, in the interval between Christ’s death and the world’s end, the profane history doesn’t undergo any linear development. There will be no perfection in man’s earthly life. Even the Christian doctrine itself does not undergo any development. Truth can not be discovered again. It is only propagated. It is not changeable with time. Truth is fixed and stable.
Augustinian view had its great rival——Chiliasm and Messianism, or as we call it, Joachimism, after the name of Joachim, Joachim marks the transition from Christian philosophy of history to typically modern philosophy of history. He held that the process of salvation is closely related to the secular process. The distinction between sacred history and profane history no longer existed in the Third Age. Men will be morally perfect and free from all miseries. The profane history also has a linear structure; we may expect the perfection of man’s condition in this world. More importantly, the Divine revelation has not been completed with Christ. The New Testament is not God’s last word, but will be succeeded by a final gospel so far unwritten. The movement from one age to another constitutes a process of improvement. Man will be a new man, entirely different from what he was before. Life in the world is a long process of ascent towards goodness and absolute love. “Life should be changed, because the state of the world will be changed.” We shall not be what we have been, but we shall begin to be others. Augustine holds that truth is revealed once and for all. It can not augment or perfected. But now, according to Joachim it “grows”, develops changes.
Joachimism is underestimated by some scholars. His philosophy of history should occupy an important place in the discussion of philosophy of history.
I appreciate Joachim’s view very much, for some people around me; there is only one eternal truth, that is, their own opinion. Truth can be only discovered by themselves and is discovered once and for all. Other people have no rights to discover truth. Truth needs not to grow, to develop, to change, to renew and to revise. Truth is not changeable. Revisionism is not good. In my view, truth is changeable with time and historical situation. Truth is relative. Historical sense (consciousness) is contrasted to sense of tradition. People of tradition turn back to traditional ideas and customs. They surrender to the past. People of historical senses, however, seek for innovation. Our historical sense is full of confidence in the future. We believe that everything in the world will be better and will be changed. The social system must be changed. Messianism, Joachimism, chiliasm, Apocalyptic can revolutionize the world. The lack of an attitude of looking-forward is the vital short-coming in Chinese churches. We are in need of millenarianism movement for social evolution. Our church is too conservative. It overestimates the political power and is subordinated to the power. It seeks to reconcile with the society, adapt itself to social systems, not to remedy the abuse of society to establish a new heaven on earth.
The followers of Joachim used his teaching to rebel against the official church, believing that authority on religious matters was no longer required. In addition, they also revolted against political power and prevailing social arrangements. From the sixteenth century onwards, Joachim’s works became effective in intellectual history. Karl Marx was influenced by Joachim (through Saint Simon). We should “discover” Joachim again in our church today.
【This paper was a lecture by author on the Second Symposium of West and East Philosophy and Religion in Beijing, 1995.10.3-6. Its Chinese original was published in Social Sciences Weekly (1995.11) 】
作者简介：安希孟：1945年生于山西翼城，北京师范大学外语系1969年毕
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