(The impossibility of) acting upon a story that we can believe

Abstract

The historical sensibility of Western modernity is best captured by the phrase "acting upon a story that we can believe." Whereas the most famous stories of historians facilitated nationbuilding processes, philosophers of history told the largest possible story to act upon: history itself. When the rise of an overwhelming postwar skepticism about the modern idea of history discredited the entire enterprise, the historical sensibility of "acting upon a story that we can believe" fell apart to its constituents: action, story form, and belief in a feasible future outcome. Its constituent parts are nevertheless still hold, either separately or in paired arrangements. First, believable stories are still told, but without an equally believable future outcome to facilitate. Second, in the shape of what I call the prospect of unprecedented change, there still is a feasible vision of a future (in prospects of technology and the Anthropocene), but it defies story form. And third, it is even possible to upon that feasible future, but such action aims at avoiding worst case scenarios instead of facilitating best outcomes. These are, I believe, features of an emerging postwar historical sensibility that the theory and philosophy of history is yet to understand.

The limits of Anthropocene narratives

“…Although potential human extinction scenarios entailed by radical Anthropocene scenarios – together with technological dystopias of singularity reached by designing greater-than-human intelligence and with visions of a nuclear holocaust – are often denounced as instances of unjustified catastrophism, they represent a novel societal expectation of the future in which humanity authors its own disaster. As I have argued elsewhere (Simon, 2015; 2018), these prospects of anthropogenic human extinction are constitutive of an emerging sense of historicity. Unlike the historical understanding of the modern period which conceives of change over time both in nature and society in terms of developmental processes, postwar Western societies configure change over time in these prospects as unprecedented change .…”

Transformação do Tempo Histórico

“…UM NOVO SENTIDO DE HISTORICIDADE Em minhas pesquisas prévias (Simon 2015;2018a;2018b), eu já me arrisquei a responder alguns dos aspectos dessa questão. Aqui, eu gostaria de recapitular dois pontos que discuti nesses trabalhos e elaborar um terceiro ponto, mais geral, que resultará, na sessão conclusiva desse texto, em um breve esboço da transformação do tempo histórico.…”