The Terror of History (Part 1)

We must confront the "historical man" (modern man), who is the conscious and intentional creator of history, with the man of traditional civilizations, who relates to it in a negative way. One type is the archaic, which must be considered ahistorical, while the other is the modern, post-Hegelian concept that seeks to become historical.

The man of traditional civilizations does not ascribe any inherent value to historical events; he finds models beyond history for them or gives them a meaning that transcends history (cyclical theory, eschatological meaning). He defended himself against history by occasionally abolishing it through the repetition of cosmogony and the periodic renewal of time. This conception has remained dominant until today, and is still prevalent in agricultural societies. These societies stubbornly cling to anti-historical views. Historical catastrophes were justified by divine will and fate, read from the stars.

The cyclical theory and the idea of the stars' influence on historical events were accepted by church fathers (Clement of Alexandria). It was dominant at the height of the Middle Ages. As early as the 12th century, these ideas became popular, and by the 13th century, they were systematized following Arab authors. In the Middle Ages, the eschatological view dominated (creation – end of the world), supplemented by the theory of cyclical waves.

For Christianity, time is a reality because it has meaning: Redemption. Christ died once for our sins, and this cannot be repeated. Humanity's fate unfolds once in a specific time, which is the time of history and life. This linear conception of time and history was outlined as early as the second century but was definitively developed by St. Augustine. The opposition of these two fundamentally contrasting conceptions of time and history lasted until the 17th century.

From the 17th century, the idea of linear progress in history (Pascal) began to take more defined form, articulating the belief in infinite development, which became the dominant idea of the Enlightenment. With the victory of the evolutionists' system of thought, this became the most popular view of the 19th century.

It was not until the 20th century that new approaches emerged, which rekindled interest in cyclical theories. In political economy, the concepts of cycles and wave motion were rehabilitated; in philosophy, the myth of eternal return (Nietzsche); and in history, the problem of periods (Spengler, Toynbee). Regarding the rehabilitation of the cyclical view, today's theories do not exclude the hypothesis of the creation of a new universe. The significance of the myth of eternal recurrence is only fully expressed in the modern era's cyclical theories. The medieval representatives of the theory merely sought to justify the periodic repetition of events by ensuring them a rightful place in the movement of the cosmos and the alignment of the stars. In doing so, they reinforced the thesis of the cyclical repetition of history, even if they did not consider the repetition to last infinitely. If events depend on cycles and the position of the stars, they become understandable and predictable because they form a transcendental model. In this way, wars, famines, and the misfortunes caused by history are at best only repetitions of an archetype, determined by the alignment of stars and heavenly signs, often not independent of divine will.

M. Eliade "The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History", Princeton University Press 1974, (ford. Nagy Zsolt)