Ontology and Schematism of the Philosophy of History

Abstract

The subject of the article is the ontology of the philosophy of history. The study begins with the genealogy of ontology, which makes it possible to thematize two well-established understandings of ontology in the philosophical discourse. The first one, which is called classical and associated with the name of Jacob Lorhard, calls the doctrine of being an onthology. The second one is transcen­dentalistic, which is going back to the philosophy of Kant and by ontology it un­derstands the system of a priori principles and forms of thinking, as well as the image of the reality revealed to man determined by them. Such an under­standing of ontology allows us to raise the question of the fundamental structures of the historical narrative, i.e. to explicate the axiomatic levels of the philosophy of history. An analysis of the philosophy of history's ontology shows that the phi­losophy of history cannot be recognized as a cultural invariant, and its origin cannot be associated with antiquity. At the same time, it is not difficult to dis­cover a genealogical connection between Christian historiosophy and the secular philosophy of history. The philosophical and historical systems of the Enlighten­ment and the XIXth century (Kant, Herder, Comte, Hegel, Marx) largely inher­ited the schematism of Christian historiosophy. An analysis of their ontological structures allows us to say that: 1) the emergence of the transcendental meaning of ontology symbolizes the “ontological revolution”, as a result of which the phi­losophizing mind has lost the possibility of appealing to transcendental scopes of reality; 2) the connection between the secular philosophy of history and Chris­tian historiosophy is found at the level of fundamental ontological structures. The philosophy of history is a secularized twin of Christian historiosophy, in which the scope of the transcendent is “intervened”; 3) the philosophy of his­tory comes to replace the religious ways of interpreting the world and society, that is, it becomes the theory of Modernity’s society.