On the paradoxes of the time of history

Abstract

The article is an attempt to comprehend the radical changes in the historical self-con­sciousness of the modern era and their impact on modern political practices. The position of the author is that our attitude to the time of history crystallizes deep transformations of the political sphere. It is shown that the historicity regime at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries is characterized by an orientation towards today’s needs and interests (so-called presentism) and at the same time increased attention to the past (“memorial revolution”), which, in the absence of major socio-political projects of the future, plays the role of a consolidating social factor. These changes required, on the one hand, significant efforts by historians to revise the methodological foundations of their science and, on the other hand, philosophical reflection on key historiosophical concepts and mean­ings. The most significant discussions concern, first of all, the concept of the past in its relation to the present, “modernity”. Understanding the ontological and epistemological foundations of these concepts has become today a “bone of contention” in building mod­ern political strategies and practices. The article demonstrates how the past from the con­cept of clear and self-evident, as it appeared within the framework of the historicist con­cepts of the Modern era, has become a philosophical and political problem in our days. There are two approaches to solving this problem. These are, firstly, those philosophers and historians who defend the modernist idea of the past as different in relation to the present, although they significantly modify it with the help of the idea of a “living past”. And secondly, those philosophers who defend the thesis about the “non-past” of the past and the continuation of its existence in the present. It is concluded that, with all the differ­ences, both types of concepts proceed from the concept of “living past”, which implies a non-linear and “multi-layered” understanding of historical time.