The Era of Global Changes and Z.B. Simon's Project of a New Vision of History

• Published in: Vestnik Rossiĭskogo universiteta druzhby narodov. Serii͡a︡ Filosofii͡a Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 137 - 152
• Main Authors: Gubman, Boris L., Anufrieva, Karina V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; German
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 29.03.2022
• Subjects: "quasi-substantial" ontology of history; epistemology of history; historical experience; narrative; the challenge of the future; z.b. simon
• ISSN: 2313-2302; 2408-8900
• DOI: 10.22363/2313-2302-2022-26-1-137-152

The article is focused on the project of a new vision of history by Z.B. Simon, who proposed his own strategy for creating a "critical ontology" of the historical process and the epistemology of comprehending the past associated with it in the light of the radical challenges of the scientific-technological development. It reveals that the works of this author can be considered as a response to the crisis of substantialist theories of historical development and the situation of the overwhelming dominance of the narrativist attitude in the approach to the study of the past today. Reflecting in a meta-critical way on the importance of the emergence of a new type of "quasi-substantial" ontology of history that should reject the "evolutionist" paradigm and the idea of the movement of humanity as a single subject towards a teleologically predetermined goal of social development, Simon outlines the contours of this kind of "radical break" with the past and its pluralistic understanding in the light of the future. Unprecedented breakthroughs of scientific knowledge can, in his understanding, give rise to many new subjects of history, who, in their aspiration to the future, should also offer radically different horizons of the past interpretation. In this perspective, Simon considers it possible to revive the role of the universalist vision of the past on the basis of its various critically justified reconstructions. In the works of this author, an attempt to justify the importance of creating a "critical ontology" of history within the boundaries of the analysis of knowing the past, characteristic of the contemporary stage of the evolution of Western thought, is clearly revealed. His new epistemology of history, emphasizing the role of "insight" inspired by individual and collective "sublime" historical experience, can be interpreted as an attempt to synthesize the views of A. Badiou with a narrativist platform combining the strategies of hermeneutics and analytical philosophy of history.