Abstract:

The effort to construct “universal history” in a metaphysical way, as a kind of ideological planning and thought experiment, is based on the ideological framework of Christian redemption history and eschatology. It responds to the impermanence experience in historical existence with transcendental universality. However, it inevitably leads to the following problems. First, the rupture of historical purpose and historical subject makes history itself divorced from the survival of specific individuals. Second, though the existence in history shall be involved, specific individuals become bystanders in the conception of universal history. Third, when the feeling of impermanence in historical experience is equal to the experience of meaninglessness, the historical meaning is conceived as the implantation of transcendental historical purpose so that the existence in history is degraded as a kind of station that overcomes history itself and directs towards the transcendental end. What is hidden in the conception of modern Western universal history is precisely a non-historical consciousness of escaping from history, which indicates the inherent crisis of the planning of universal history as a thought experiment.

Key words: universal history, Hegel, meaning, spirit