Major Themes in Speculative Philosophy of History

Philosophy of History, which is also called Macro or Meta-history, is a distinct and an important branch of the discipline of history, which attempts at philosophizing the human past in its entirety. It involves a philosophical reflection on the whole human past and sometimes future, and tries to give a philosophical explanation and interpretation of the past. Philosophy of history has two branches: (i) Speculative philosophy of history, which attempts at philosophizing the human past (ii) Critical or analytical philosophy of history, which explores the specific nature of historical knowledge, and critically examines the methods of historians and their writings. The course is intended to apprise the learners of the regularities, continuities, or regular and recurrent patterns in history, which could help them search for some principles, which could explain all human history. Unlike most of the other courses in the discipline of history, the primary focus of this course is ideas, and not events.