And that’s OK.” We may zig and zag but, ultimately, we are moving forward. We zig and zag and sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back. There is an almost intuitive acceptance of the idea in modern culture.Īs a social philosophy, it served as a driving force in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, expressed most eloquently in a 1968 speech at the Washington National Cathedral by Martin Luther King, Jr., where he said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” More recently, former President Barack Obama alluded to this sentiment after the 2016 election, saying, “You know, the path this country has taken has never been a straight line. Other Enlightenment thinkers, like David Hume, criticized the approach, and it lost some favor in the aftermath of the horrors of World War I and II, but the Whig view of history is still held by many people today, even if they may not be aware of its history or what to call it. This idea gained popularity during the 18th century Enlightenment and was epitomized in the writings of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and in works such as The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by English historian Edward Gibbon, published in six volumes between 17. In this view of the past, society is on a continuous path from savagery to civility, constantly improving, becoming freer, always taking two steps forward for any regrettable step back. It’s a view that sees the historical record as an inexorable push toward greater progress and civilization. There is something in the philosophy of history variously called the Whig interpretation of history, Whig historiography, or just Whig history. A mosaic depicting Alexander the Great in battle, discovered in the city of Pompeii, superimposed with the face of Mark Zuckerberg.
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