History of Philosophy: Philosophy of History
While it may seem a flipping of words for no purpose, the philosophy of history is the study of how we record, think about, and teach history, and how we view causality for events, as well as the purpose behind recording history. Whether or not gods hold a place in history, whether history is seen as cyclical, and how the past is viewed also fall under the philosophy of history as well.
Early recorded histories often contain mythological concepts within their histories as well as concepts of time that are cyclical. Plato, for example, taught about the Great Year, when the stars would return to the same point in the sky at the same time of year, what we now know as axial procession, a period of about 25,800 years, which relates to a concept known as the 'eternal return', where 'time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again', in a series of 'golden ages' and 'dark ages', which was a concept held by ancient Egyptians, Vedic works, and in China. These also might serve as theodicies, or 'vindication of god' or an attempt to give an answer to the 'problem of evil' within the framework of a benevolent god, which also gives a direction of time, from a state far from god to one that is brought close to god again.
Aristotle held that poetry was superior to history as 'poetry speaks of what ought or must be true rather than merely what is true'. Early histories were recorded as poetry, perhaps to allow it to be more easily memorized and recited as histories were passed on before writing. Herodotus, living during the 5th century BCE at about the same time as Socrates, broke from this tradition as he wrote his Investigations, also known as Histories, as he systematically sought out to record events of the rise of the Persian Empire and the Greco-Persian Wars. He stated that his 'purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between the Greeks and the non-Greeks', and he breaks from the previous history by not involving the gods within his recording of events, as well as focusing on mundane reasons for things to have happened.
Plato's Republic, with its requirement of civic education, helped place this education as part of the central part of a common identity. History is part of this education and part of creating a core identity for a state, leading to distortions in how history is recorded and taught, overlapping with the philosophy of education.
