The Crisis of Historicism and the Correlation Between Nationalism and Neo-Kantian Philosophy of History in the Interwar Period

Recent historiographic studies of cultural exchanges between Germany and Greece in the 19th and 20th centuries have tended to neglect the mutual influence of the two countries＇ intellectuals; as a result, there is insufficient appreciation of the extent to which historiography and philosophy were appropriated by the politics of the Interwar period. This article focuses on attempts by neo-Kantian philosophers to overcome the crisis of historicism, and on the impact of this crisis on Greek intellectuals＇ perceptions of historicism. The study shows that at the time historicism invoked the past to solve the problems of the present. My purpose is to show that in a time of crisis, Germany＇s pursuit of its Greekness in conformity with the Bildung tradition, and Greece＇s cultural dependence on Germany in the meaning-making of its own Greekness, shared common ground in the ideological uses of philosophy and history in the service of politics and the politics of culture. In the aftermath of WWI, German scholars raised the issue of the crisis of historicism. Neo-Kantian philosophers such as Heinrich Rickert, whose theory had a major impact on Greek intellectuals, became involved in this debate, posing the question of historical objectivity. Yet Rickert＇s philosophy of history soon fell into an impasse, leading to the rise of an idealist philosophy of history in the 1930s that committed itself anew to the dominant politics. In the 1930s, under the guise of idealism, Greek neo-Kantian intellectuals were claiming an objective historical narrative of the traumatic experience from 1922 onwards, which fit into the structure of an idealized ahistorical and mythic past, and which, as a hegemonic discourse, excluded its political enemies and propagandized the political struggle towards the fulfillment of the nation＇s historical and spiritual mission.

The Study of Western Postmodern Philosophy of History in China in the Four Decades of Reform and Opening Up

In the 1960s and 1970s-as strncturalism, post-structuralism, and literary criticism seeped into history--the ＂linguistic turn＂ or ＂narrative turn,＂ leading to what is known as postmodem philosophy of history, took place in Western philosophy of history. In the past forty years of reform and opening up to the outside world, and especially in the most recent two or three decades, Chinese research on Western postmodem philosophy of history has proceeded from overall review to in-depth research, and then on to reflection, criticism, and even transcendence. Neither the rethinking of historical objectivity and rationality nor the reconstruction of convictions about historical reason can work without the profound insights or theoretical tensions of postmodern philosophy of history.

Walter Benjamin： A New Positive Concept of Destruction

The author＇s proposal is to show how an apparently marginal text by Walter Benjamin, ＂The Destructive Character＂, can be taken as a hermeneutic model for understanding the connection of Benjamin＇s with history and tradition and for characterizing his thought as philosophy of threshold. It is the author＇s intention to show how the destructive character, on the threshold between destruction and construction, succeeds in remaining in that transition area that announces a change, showing its creative and conservative features; thus it appears as a figure of coexistence between stillness and movement, passage and interruption, and past and future. What the author wants to point out is that, in the description of this figure, Benjamin is driven by a cognitive demand, which tends to focalize the process of destruction itself rather than the result of the destruction process. The space in which the destructive character is acting is the space of the possibility of change and emancipation, and the space where it is possible to keep together past and future, and memory and redemption. Starting from these reflections, an important question arises about the problem of the relation between history and tradition, and culture and its memory： Neither the destruction of memory by a culture nor its canonization is meaningful. The concept of destructive character then represents a preferential point of observation for analyzing the articulations of Benjamin＇s thought. From this perspective, a decisive point of Benjamin＇s reflection seems to emerge on one side, strengthened in the permeation of Hebraic ancestors between destruction and salvation; on the other side, some of the concepts and images of the Berliner philosopher seem to show up in a new light.

Marx＇s Four Expositions of His Theory of Social Formation and Their Historico-philosophic Significance

An examination of Marx＇s exposition of the evolution of social formations on four occasions shows that the core content of his social formation theory consists in its affirmation of both the universality of the law of the development of social formations from lower to higher stages in different nations and the diversity of their developmental paths. The theoretical assumptions he put forward in the late 19th century about the possibility of late- developing modernizers being able to establish a socialist society without passing through the stage of capitalism represent a major development of his theory of social formations. The theory of the primary stage of socialism and the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics advanced by the Chinese Communists are the latest development of Marx＇s theory of social formations.