Social Theory speculations, metaphysical
speculations![]() human existence, society, human nature |
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| Our Spirituality & the wider world page showed that
numerous World Faith, Philosophical, and Literary Authorities ALL
share profound insights into human nature as a complex
"Tripartite Soul" combination of elements. This profound recognition provides material upon which to base social theory speculations about society and human existence. As someone once said:-
It is better to light a candle than |
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It may well be that the Tripartite Soul approach to insights
into human nature can even be extended to a "Societal Level" of
speculations about society and human existence. This view would suggest that Societies themselves!!! have a Tripartite character. It may be that an acceptance and appreciation of this Existential Tripartism to Human Nature provides important foundations for the developments of further Key Wisdoms about ourselves as complex "Human" Beings, about the "Human" Societies we have developed and which we inhabit and about why "Human" History has featured certain - sometimes turbulently "Human" - episodes. "Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event, are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment." Immanuel Kant Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
"There is one mind common to all individual men. Of the works of this mind history is the record. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. All the facts of history pre-exist as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of this manifold spirit to the manifold world". Towards the end of the essay Emerson asserts that :- " every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is". Emerson suggests that it is by looking at facts as symbolic of the application of human affinities that people may hope for a broader and deeper writing of history that would more truly express, and constructively demonstrate, Humanity's central and wide-related nature.
R. G. Collingwood The study of history is the beginning of political wisdom. Jean Bodin There are several pages on our site that investigate the variously persuasive approaches to the study of History that have been adopted by a number of Famous Historians That being said none of these Historians have really attempted to approach their studies from a Transcendentalist perspective!!! Given this fact we have attempted to briefly set out an approach to Historical studies which hints at the operation of human affinities in the providing of the facts which Historians tend to take as their subjects of study. We particularly recommend our series of pages that consider The Revolution of 1848 as tending to display the action of Human Affinities in the shaping of events. |
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