America’s Place. The Process Of Universalisat Ion Of History Revisited

Abstract

It has been a fairly long time since accusations aimed at Hegel’s philosophy of History have become topical, with the aim of charging it with every evil of late modernity (colonialism, nationalism, totalitarianism, etc.). Nevertheless, such a philosophy must be construed as a “result” rather than as a “proposal”; in other words, it is merely the philosophical formalization of ideas already present, albeit in a scattered fashion, in a range that spans from the Christian thought of St. Augustine to the naturalism of the 18th century. This paper proposes a re-reading of the formation process of this worldview, taking as its starting point a present phenomenon: though post-modern criticism has demoted strong discourses concerning history, they are still resorted to by the discourse of power, whereas it has been the defeated (or forced to abdicate) sectors that have pleaded guilty, giving rise to politically sterile–or even functional–discourses. Thus, a critique of criticism becomes urgent.

Keywords: History, America, Hegel, decolonial option.