The Concept of History

The Concept of History reflects on the presuppositions behind the contemporary understanding of history that often remain implicit and not spelled out. It is a critique of the modern understanding of history that presents it as universal and teleological, progressively moving forward to an end. Although few contemporary philosophers and historians maintain the view that there is strict universality and teleology in history, the remnants of these positions still affect our understanding of history. But if history is not universal and singular, evolving toward an objective universal end, it should be possible to admit of multiple histories, some of which we appropriate as our own.

An another important aspect of this book is that if provides an account of history that is itself both historical and rooted in attempts to narrate and explain history from its inception in antiquity. The book seeks to establish features or constituents of history that might be found in any historical account and might themselves be considered historical invariants in history.

Dmitri Nikulin is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York, USA. His interests range from ancient and early modern philosophy to the philosophy of dialogue and of literature. He is the author of a number of books including Matter, Imagination and Geometry (2002), On Dialogue (2006), Dialectic and Dialogue (2010), and Comedy, Seriously (2014). He is also the editor of and contributor to The Other Plato (2012) and Memory: A Philosophical History ( 2015).