The main thesis is: Ontological and historical responsibility refers to the choice of reality. Thus one should suppose many realities, each of which its own and unique histories, and correspondingly as many histories as realities. However, history as science recognise only a single history and a single reality, which can be well-defined only to the past, but not to future and even not to the present

1. Ontological and historical
responsibility
The condition of possibility

2. Vasil Penchev
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: Institute for the Study of
Societies of Knowledge
vasildinev@gmail.com
“The Historical responsibility: from the myths of the past
to the strategies of future”
September 22-23, 2016 (22 Sep, 12:20 – 14:00)
Yekaterinburg, Russia (Lenin av. 51,Ural Federal University, Room 314)

3. Reality as chosen
• The main thesis is:
Ontological and historical responsibility refers to the choice
of reality
• Thus one should suppose many realities, each of which its
own and unique histories, and correspondingly as many
histories as realities
However, history as science recognise only a single history
and a single reality, which can be well-defined only to the
past, but not to future and even not to the present

4. Many worlds, many histories,
many realities …
• It presupposes the concept of many realities or many worlds,
one of which is chosen by the conscious or unconscious
choice of human beings
However, the science of history does not discuss any choices
as far as any choice would imply an alternative reality
together with its alternative and different history, to which
objective cognition seems to be impossible
The only thinkable way out of the contradictory between
historical responsibility and historical objectivity implies
redefinition and thus the “perestroika” of historical science
and knowledge

5. The reality as a result of decision
• Thus, reality, in which people turn out to be, is their
responsibility as far as it is a result of decision
Their decisions or at least some of them, properly “historical
choices”, presuppose ontological responsibility
• One can speak of both historical and ontological
responsibility as counterparts, each of which implies the
other
Historical responsibility is properly temporal aspect of
ontological responsibility or in other words, ontological
decision (figuratively speaking, God’s decision) as a series of
people’s historical choices

6. Realism versus historical responsibility
• If on the contrary, reality, e.g. in the framework of “realism”,
is granted as constant and given in advance, the problem of
ontological and historical responsibility cannot arise in
principle
Indeed realism needs a single reality to serve as the criterion
of truth as far as many realities would imply many truths and
alleged relativism or even nihilism
• So, the problem of historical responsibility implies a new
kind of ontology, that of many realities, many histories and
human choice between them, to be able to be questioned

7. Reality, history and objectivity
• If the case is other, reality is one single and necessary
That case of a single reality can be considered as a particular
and degenerate case of the generalized ontology of many
realities and many histories
• It can be described also as the identity of history and
ontology where the single reality and history implies
necessity such as experimental sciences mean as to nature
Then history (as physics, for example) abstracts its
objectivity from the certain external necessity due to the
single reality and history

8. History in “conditional mood”
• In the same framework, that of the single reality, history
“does not cognise the conditional mood” for it studies only
the past as single as reality
That dogma seems to be justifiable as to the past, but
absolutely inapplicable to future and even to the past
• If one accepts it as an axiom (as the mainstream of all
historical sciences) the cognition of future and even that of
the present turns out to be forbidden in principle
The application of history needs it to be applicable
to the present at least, though

9. History, reality, and historical reality
• The past in singular seems to be the only possible subject of
that kind of realistic history being a positive science
However, the amount of facts referring to the past is so great
that any historical investigation is forced to limit itself only to a
very, very small part of all facts therefore choosing anyway
that tiny part of facts as relevant to the investigation at issue
• Thus, even the classical historical research implies an implicit
choice and interpretation of historical reality
That choice and interpretation is meant speaking that history
is written by the victors rather than by vanquished

10. The forbidden “history of future”
• Therefore and particularly, the reference or cognition of
historical science to future is forbidden in principle
However, future though being too uncertain for the
contemporary scientific and historical objectivity is an
inherent aspect, part and modus of any historical process
• Even more, many other sciences, for example those studying
nature, are much more related to future for they are able to
make absolutely exact forecasts successful for practice
On the contrary, history meaning changes in the course of
time as its subject does not possess any reliable methods for
foreseeing future events

11. Objectivity for historical sciences
• The mainstream in historical sciences prefers the objectivity of
historical descriptions of the past excluding any forms of
counterfactual, alternative, many-pathways as non- and even
antiscientific speculations in the domain of sci-fi at the best
Indeed, there are no reliable methods or criteria for estimation or
comparison for any alternative histories or realities: all of them are
considered as equally possible or equally impossible results of
imagination
• One needs certain new objectivity for historical sciences, able to
mean, describe, and eventually forecast precisely future historical
events and processes even they do no take place in our reality and
history

12. The other histories
• Counterfactual or alternative history are rather marginal
according to the absence of reliable methods and criteria for
distinguishing the different pathways of history and ways of
choice for those of them, which are true in a generalized
sense applicable to alternative histories
The philosophical and methodological problem about that
truth both conserving free will (and free choice) featuring all
historical process and objectivity is not yet resolved and
even clearly articulated
• Those difficulties hint that a fundamental and therefore
philosophical change is needed for incorporating future and
free will in historical sciences

13. Responsibility and choice
• One the contrary, responsibility needs choice and alternatives in
definition
Indeed, the problem of choice and historical responsibility might
be anyway investigated even in the too restricted framework of the
contemporary positive historical science in the special modus of
“past perfect tense” and “future tense in the past”
• Certain actions being in past perfect tense to their historical
intentions and results can be compared with those real historical
events being in future tense in the past to the made choices
However then, historical responsibility is a subject of judgement
or estimation of the past eventually punishing without direct
influence to the present historical choices and prognoses

14. The problem of historical responsibility versus
science of history
• Thus, the problem of historical responsibility cannot be
asked as to the present and future within the standard
approach of history
One should wait for decades and even centuries to be
estimated or judged a certain historical choice remaining
those people really made the choice irresponsible for their
choice for remoteness and prescription
• For example, the Nuremberg trials are an exception
confirming the above statement just for their exceptionality
and limitedness

15. History of time vs history of the past
• One needs that science of history which refers to the present
and future not less that to the past therefore unifying them in
an invariant approach
If that scientific kind of history existed, the problem of historical
responsibility would be able to be resolved in its wholeness
rather than partly as until now
• The essence of the necessary history of time consists in the
invention of how future and the past being clearly
distinguished by the “arrow of time” to be anyway described
uniformly by means of corresponding conception and notions

16. History … and quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics resolves similar problems
• It is forced to study the genesis of reality among a spectrum of
possible realities, one of which turns out to be chosen after
measurement
It might can serve as a methodological paradigm for history
• Quantum mechanics describes uniformly the past and future being
immediately forced to resolve its main problem: the unification of
discrete (quantum) motion and smooth motion in classical
mechanics
That solution implies furthermore the solution of the described
above main problem of historical science: how to be described
uniformly future (being only possible and probable) and the past
(being properly actual)

17. Part 2

29. One can guess at least a few directions of historical time for its “end” is
nonsense: to space, to children, to higher mammals extensively or to
“super-humans” intensively

33. Part 3

34. Still one additional thesis:
• The establishment of universal history requires to be
understood what time is
Time is the transformation of the future into past by
the choices in the present
• History should be grounded on that understanding of
historical time, which would include the present and
future rather than only the past

35. History in tradition and universal history
• History refers to the past in tradition,
i.e. to a limited and finite part of time, which is past
Thus history refers immediately both to time and more
exactly to the past
• What is past can be even neglected speaking of the history of
anything as some genus
Universal history can be understood as that genus

36. The well-distinguished entities of the past
• In the past, there are a variety of well-distinguished entities such
as states, peoples, civilizations and anything else
Each of them can possesses a proper history often inconsistent
or partly consistent to all the rest
• So, the past seems to be irrelevant as the medium of universality
for it is particular as to any item therefore suggesting that its
history is particular and different from that of anything else

37. A set of histories instead a single one
• So the cherished universal history turns out to be a set of
histories
That set of histories can be defined both by some common
property and by the description of all unique histories one by
one
• History in tradition describes a set of unique histories of states
or nations slightly linked to each other
One interpretation of universal history is it to understood as the
set of all those descriptions

38. The universal laws of history as
the common property of all histories
• One can research that set for universal or general laws
instead of some collection of descriptions hardly linked to
each other
Those laws can be in turn understood as the property
featuring all members of the family implicitly meant as
participants in universal history
• Consequently, universal history can be understood as some
theoretical research of history finding a few fundamental
laws or principles

39. Logic of history and Reason in history
• Thus history can be represented more or less
as some logic of history or even as
Reason in history after Hegel
Indeed all histories referring only to the past can be seen as a
collection of well-orderings and thus as some general logic of
historical processes
• Hegel introduced the term of Reason in history to designate
that logical and rational form of universal history suggesting
action of some Reason in history

40. The common future of all historical entities
• In fact, all entities such as states, nations,
civilizations and all the rest is unified by their
common present and future and distinguished
by unique and single past
All this does not allow of other universal
viewpoint than the logical one as above if
history refers only to the past
• The viewpoint to time as an unlimitedly
extendable past supports the understanding of
universal history or even of history as logic

41. Time at all instead of only the past
• Furthermore history can be seen as underlain by
another understanding of time
It allows of generalizing the history from only the
past to all time including the present and future
• Then universal history can be naturally defined as
the history referring to the present and future not
less than to the past
Its core is the present, only in which any choice
can take place
• The past is the result of those choices: One can say
that the present is the cause of the past

42. What is time?
• History as the ontology of time requires to be
understood what time is
In turn time should be understand as a way
relevant to history
• In fact history happens only now,
in the present, but it is always described as a past
Then time should be understand as a collision of
two quite different media, future and past
• That collision is the present, which manages to
agree both different media to each other

43. What time is
• Time is the transformation of the future into past
by the choices in the present
In fact, the future is absolute unorderable and
unforecastable both in principle and in general
• On the contrary, the past is absolute ordered,
more exactly well-ordered as well as absolute and
even trivially forecastable as being unchangeable
and known
• The one, which is able to agree them to each
other is the choices of the present

44. Historical time
• History should be grounded on that understanding
of historical time, which would include the present
and future rather than only the past
Indeed historical time should be understood as
way of making history rather that historiographic
time ascribing simply a certain date to any
historical event
• Consequently, historical time is agrees and thus
generalizes future and the past in the present
Thus it essence is choice, i.e. the choices in the
present

45. Historical time vs. physical time
• One can distinguish historical time from physical
time in the base of their relation to each other
and to the time itself
Historical time agrees future and the past by the
mediation of the choices made in the present
• Instead of that, the past is what grounds physical
time
Physical time extrapolates the modus of the past
time as all time including furthermore the present
and future

46. Opposed features of the two times
• Historical time unlike physical time is not
continuous, homogenous, even, or uniform
Even more, it does not include all choices, but a
very, very small part of them, only crucial
historical choice
• However the criterion for a choice to be defined
as a crucial historical one needs some
clarification
It should support the unity of future and the
past linking them in continuous way

47. The points of historical choice
• Historical time consists of the separate points of
crucial historical choice
Consequently that “ crucial historical choice”
should represents the wholeness of the historical
process embodied in a single point
• In fact the alternatives of the choice claiming to be
both crucial and historical do not link the
wholeness of the historical process in one and the
same degree
One of them, maybe different from the chosen
one can support the “continuity of times”

48. The wholeness of historical process and
historical choice
• Any single choice of those concentrates the
wholeness of the historical process in order to
be able to be chosen just that historical
pathway, which conserves that wholeness
Nevertheless, this does not limit the made
choice:
• It can be historically wrong “tearing the times”
and thus breaking this thread of history
whether early or late

49. Paul Tillich’s Kairos and Chronos
• Paul Tillich has coined the term of Kairos for that
ontological and historical time being opposed to
“chronos” associated with physical time
Kairos is also the wholeness of theological time:
• Thus Kairos means initially a fundamental choice,
which is able to ground both the wholeness of being
and any crucial historical choice of peoples
On the contrary, chronos means the “automatic
continuity” of time independent of human choices
and thus implied immediately on that single and
fundamental choice of Kairos

50. Between two choices ...
• The discrete points of crucial choice are connected
to each other by longer or shorter periods of
continuous historical motion
The historical and physical time can be identified
as coinciding in those periods:
• Then both continuity and wholeness of the times
are supported in an almost or rather automatic
way not including crucial historical choices
History is identifiable as historiography, but this is
not ontology

51. Longue durée
• The discreteness of historical time generates
“waves” of long runs (Charles Pierce) or “longue
durées” (Fernand Braudel and the Analles school)
The period of each of them is different, but much
longer than the duration of human life
• That “longue durée” should be categorically
distinguished from the long periods between two
historical choices
The “longue durée” originates from the
discontinuity of historical choice
• The long periods between two historical choices
mean only their absence

52. Conclusions about Part 3:
• History as the ontology of time: History as the
ontology of the past time turns out to be a set of
histories
In fact, all entities such as states, nations,
civilizations and all the rest is unified by their
common present and future and distinguished by
unique and single past
• The Hegel logical viewpoint to history: All this
does not allow of other universal viewpoint than
the logical one as in Hegel

53. Conclusions about part 3:
• History of choice versus history of fact:
History can be underlain by that
understanding of time, which allows of
generalizing the history from only the past to
all time including the present and future
• Then history as the ontology of time can be
naturally defined as the history referring to the
present and future not less than to the past
That kind of history can be defined both as
history of choice as the ontology of time

54. References:
• Braudel, F (1969) “Histoire et sciences socials. La longue
durée (1),” in: Braudel, F. Ecrits sur l’histoire. Paris:
Flamarion, 41—82.
• Hegel, G. W. F. (1837) Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Weltgeschichte. Hamburg:
F. Meiner, 1968.
• Tillich, P. (1948) “Kairos,” in Hauptwerke,
Bd. 4, Berlin – New York: De Gruyter, 1987, 327-341.

56. Спасибо за внимание!