ABSTRACT
Especially in 19th Century German philosophy, the phrase “philosophy of history” was considered almost synonymous with the systematic attempt to discern the meaning of history in terms of its purpose or telos. The present chapter provides an overview of the arguments advanced by the main advocates as well as the major critics of teleological historical theory. Accordingly, it will present the teleological arguments of Kant, Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and Eduard von Hartmann, with special acknowledgement of their forerunners in St. Augustine, Vico, and Herder. As teleological thinking was diverse in philosophical approach, this paper will organize these several thinkers according to how they identify teleology either ontologically or epistemologically on the one hand, and, on the other, according to whether their telos is intrinsic or extrinsic to the process of history they identify. In the final part of the paper, I elucidate the arguments of the two most prominent critics of teleological history, namely, Nietzsche and Popper.
