ABSTRACT
When the famously ‘enlightened’ Frenchman, Voltaire, coined the term ‘philosophy of history’, he meant something akin to what we might now call ‘critical cultural history’. In his 1769 Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of Nations he surveyed ancient and classical cultures (primarily in terms of their customs and religions), including China and India, as well as feudal times in Europe up to the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715). Rather than present this huge historical vista as some kind of inherently meaningful pattern or story, his intention was to extract morally useful lessons from such ‘history’ (for example, to downplay sentimental or overawed respect for tradition and authority, and to highlight moral shortcomings and absurdities in his own society, thereby raising not only the present but also the future, ‘in the light of history’). In short, he was interested in this approach to ‘history’ because of the new perspective it offered regarding human progress. His own views on the latter could be pretty gloomy, and how much hope his ‘philosophical history’ gave him for the better future he desired is a doubtful matter. But one thing is clear – he meant his readers to think about history, not simply to read and research it ‘for its own sake’ as a residue of interesting facts and events.
