Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History

by Karl Löwith

Modern man sees with one eye of faith and one eye of reason. Consequently, his view of history is confused. For centuries, the history of the Western world has been viewed from the Christian or classical standpoint—from a deep faith in the Kingdom of God or a belief in recurrent and eternal life-cycles. The modern mind, however, is neither Christian nor pagan—and its interpretations of history are Christian in derivation and anti-Christian in result. To develop this theory, Karl Löwith—beginning with the more accessible philosophies of history in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries and working back to the Bible—analyzes the writings of outstanding historians both in antiquity and in Christian times. "A book of distinction and great importance. . . . The author is a master of philosophical interpretation, and each of his terse and substantial chapters has the balance of a work of art."—Helmut Kuhn, Journal of Philosophy

Genres: Philosophy, History, Religion, Nonfiction, Politics, Theology, World History

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Karl Löwith was a German philosopher, a student of Heidegger. Löwith was one of the most prolific German philosophers of the twentieth century; the bibliography of his works comprising more than 300 titles.
Löwith was born in Munich. Though he was himself Protestant, his family was of Jewish descent and he therefore had to emigrate Germany in 1934 because of the National Socialist regime. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan. But because of the alliance between the Third Reich and Japan he had to leave Japan in 1941 and went to the USA. From 1941 to 1952, he taught at the Hartford Theological Seminary and the New School for Social Research. In 1952 he returned to Germany to teach as Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he died.

He is probably most known for his two books From Hegel to Nietzsche, which describes the decline of German classical philosophy, and Meaning in History, which discusses the problematic relationship between theology and history. Löwith's argument in Meaning in History is that the western view of history is confused by the relationship between Christian faith and the modern view, which is neither Christian nor pagan. Löwith describes this relationship through famous western philosophers and historians, including Burckhardt, Marx, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Voltaire, Vico, Bossuet, Augustine and Orosius. The modern historical consciousness is, according to Löwith, derived from Christianity. But, Christians are not a historical people, as their view of the world is based on faith. This explains the tendency in history (and philosophy) to an eschatological view of human progress.