ALEXANDRE CHOULGUINE’S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. ARTICLE 2: "HISTORY AND LIFE"

Abstract

The article is the second part of a study devoted to the philosophy of history of Alexandre Choulguine (1889–1960), a Ukrainian statesman, diplomat, and scholar. The article focuses on his “major work” on the philosophy of history, L’Histoire et la vie. Les lois. Le hasard. La volonté humaine (1957), written within the French academic context as a kind of sum total of the author’s political and scholarly activity. The article demonstrates that A. Choulguine’s reflections on the laws of history and the role of human will in history cannot be separated from the context of the Ukrainian national liberation movement: in his view, it is the laws of history that determine the limits and possibilities of human action, whereas human will determines the direction of history, in particular, the achievement of the ideals of this movement. In his book, A. Choulguine employs the approaches of historical synthesis and comparative history to determine the scientific status of the laws of history and to substantiate his central conviction: human existence and activity are impossible without the operation of certain historical laws, while the latter are impossible without the participation of human will; consequently, an understanding of the mechanisms of history and social life gives people the opportunity to make history consciously. Choulguine presents his book as a contribution to a scientific philosophy of history, which, following Henri Berr, he contrasts with a “speculative” philosophy of history; at the same time, he maintains that the philosophy of history should not merely describe historical processes but also judge them. Distinguishing himself from social quietism, he introduces the distinction between “will-as-duty” and “will-as-desire” and emphasizes that, in the modern era, the principal subjects and makers of history are not individual outstanding personalities but peoples and nations, whose collective will — both will-as-duty, that is, the will to self-preservation, and will-as-desire, that is, the aspiration toward certain ideals —becomes the most important of all historical factors at critical moments in history.