THE IDEA OF DEEP HISTORY: KANT AND HEGEL ON WAR AND NATURAL HISTORY

Abstract

Recent research in the historical sciences, dubbed ‘deep history’, seeks to undermine the division between human culture and nature, and to present hu- manity’s evolution as part of natural history. That goal brings in some conceptual difficulties regarding the relation of nature to history, which in the German phil- osophical tradition tend to be conceptualized as opposites. This paper looks to sketch the conceptual frame of deep history, relying on Kant and Hegel’s understanding of war. Kant’s thinking about human history – especially the notion and guaran- tee of a perpetual peace – is predicated on the purposiveness of nature, as developed in the third Critique. And so, there is a sense in which war is a particularly im- portant manifestation of the natural in the human. Turning to Hegel, we argue that his criticism of the idea of a natural history in the Philosophy of Nature, may be overcome if we take war into consideration as a structuring notion of his- tory. It is argued that death and conflict provide common conceptual ground in the formation of a natural history of the human bring.