ABSTRACT
It is appropriate that this ‘guide’ should conclude by exploring the cutting edges of present debates within ‘philosophy of history’, both as speculative and analytic. But it also means concluding on a note of supreme irony. It so happens that in both manifestations we are confronted with something like the notion that ‘history’ has come to an end – i.e., from the speculative approach, ‘history’ as the huge story of changing eras, and from the analytic approach, ‘history’ as a viable discipline able to deliver concrete knowledge of the past. I say ‘it so happens’ because the two viewpoints are not obviously connected. On the contrary, we shall see how it could be argued that, coming from markedly different perspectives, they are in flat contradiction to each other. But, despite this, we shall also see how it may be no coincidence that both announcements of ‘the end of history’ appeared roughly contemporaneously – i.e., in the last two decades.
