Practice question · Multiple choice
Hegel, Marx and Fukuyama each name a different endpoint for history. What structural problem do all three share, whichever endpoint is chosen?
Hints
- Ask what evidence would refute each of the three schemes.
- The problem is shared, so it cannot be about which endpoint is the right one.
Show the answer
C. A teleology can absorb any evidence as a stage along the way
Why
The defect is the shape, not the content. If a setback is a necessary phase and a success is confirmation, nothing counts against the theory, and a theory that forbids nothing predicts nothing.
Practise Hegel and Historical Teleology
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Hegel and Historical Teleology
- Complete the account of Hegel’s engine.
- Put Hegel’s stages of world history in his order, from earliest to latest.
- Match each Hegelian term to its meaning.
- For Hegel a synthesis preserves what was true in both thesis and antithesis rather than splitting the…
- Teleological history makes the winning path look inevitable. What does that do to the losers of the story?
- Which are standing objections to Hegel’s philosophy of history?
- Sort each statement: does it speak Hegel’s teleological grammar, or is it a non-teleological historical claim?