Significance and Limit of the Progressive View of History and Possibility of an Alternative View: Reviewing the Controversy between the Ancients and the Moderns

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1. As results of our collaborative study, we have found that the European contrast between the Ancient and the Modern was similar to that between the South and the North, or between totality and subjectivity, and that the characters of Modern Pictures can be discovered already in the Flemmish School in the 15th century, before Descartes. These themes were discussed in the articles by .KURIHARA, ISAKA and OTABE in Study of Hegelian Philosophy, vol. 12 and 13.2. The progressive view of history was not an thought that simply honored the modern progress, but that was motivated by the hopes of overcoming the modern. Another expression of such hopes was the romanticism. These were themes of OTABE, KURIHARA and ISAKA in Studies on the German Romantic School (edited by ISAKA).3. In the Hegelian thesis of the End of Art, a contrast between the Ancient and the Modern means that between art and philosophy. Hegel argued that in the modern atomic society, in which art was just an hobby, philosophy should get back the self-cognition of spirit and overcome the modern. These themes were discussed by KURIHARA (Article "When art becomes interesting"), YAMAUCHI, SATO, KATO, OTABE, MORIMOTO, KIDO, ISAKA and ZAKOTA in When art begins, and when art ends (edited by KURIHARA).4. According to our research (KURIHARA, ISAKA, KATO), transcendental idealism was projected as another view of history as "development of self-consciousness", against the progressive view of history as quantitative accumulation.