Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Selection History
History is a treasure trove of our deeds, a witness of the past, an example and a lesson for the present, a warning for the future. M. Saavedra
What associations come to mind with the word “choice”? And what about the word history? There can be many answers and, perhaps, within the individual view of each person, all will be fair. But still, to analyze the history of choice, let’s turn to the definition. What is history in general?
History is a science that explores the past, real facts and patterns of changing historical events, the evolution of society and the relations within it caused by human activity over many generations. Otherwise, the definition sounds like a science that studies all kinds of sources about the past in order to establish the sequence of events, the objectivity of the facts described and draw conclusions about the causes of events.
The story is clear, but what about the choice? Choice is the preference of some options over many others or the rejection of some options in favor of others.
It turns out that the history of choice is a study of the trend and evolution of preferences. This definition creates the ideological basis for early choism. Without studying the question and the problem of choice, it is not possible to imagine choism as such.
What can you see in this story of choice? Perhaps, from primitive times to the present day, in one or another manifestation, the main dilemma of choice was the preference for opposites (if we break away from completely everyday issues, although with proper analysis and research, one can find such a pattern in almost any subject or phenomenon).
In folklore, it can be a conflict of good with evil (this phenomenon can be clearly seen in modern cinema), in politics – the opposition of ideas, methods or parties, in creativity – views, styles, techniques, in the philosophy of ideas and matter.
But what is especially interesting, although in different epochs certain points of view could be unshakable and unambiguous, with the advent of some time, people’s attitude towards them could change to the exact opposite, and after that the reverse process was possible. An example can be comic book heroes – the same Joker from the Batman saga, in the 90s was perceived as an exceptionally negative character, but after the release of the film of the same name, we can say that the attitude of the viewer, and the directors, has changed.
Since this series of articles is intended, first of all, to consider the philosophy of choice, let’s take a closer look at the history of philosophy. Let us briefly and consistently list the main schools: Eastern Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Pre-Socratics, Ancient Philosophical Classics, Hellenistic Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Patristics, Eastern Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, Renaissance Philosophy, New European Philosophy, German Classical Philosophy, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Modern Philosophy, Positivism and Analytical Philosophy, Marxism and Neo-Marxism, Philosophy of Life, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism.
After reviewing this list and relying on the most general content of their teachings, it is not difficult to notice that there are fluctuations of views along the time axis in the range of opposites: idea-matter.
It turns out that at some point in time, one or another school, contrasting itself with another, brought the mass of its influence to critical and became dominant (fashionable). However, hardly even one of them tried to look at the world order from the perspective of the other, at least according to such a well-known and popular Harvard method of negotiations in the world now.
Have school activists and their supporters faced the problem of choice in this case? Of course, only methodically, time after time, they chose themselves, not allowing the possible rightness of opponents or consideration of a new thought (direction). And in this state, most of these communities simply continued to exist until they lost popularity. By the way, you can see a good example of another area – business. Thus, companies that could not or did not want to overcome the recent era of global digitalization were forced to give up their position or even leave the market altogether.
It turns out that there seemed to be a choice, but in motion, he behaved against those who chose him. Now we can return to the definition that we formulated earlier: the history of choice is the study of the trend and evolution of preferences. That is, the choice is meaningless without time, but since we are not able to look into the future (predict), it remains to rely on science investigating the facts of the past and their lawfulness – history.
In conclusion, we can say that choism is characterized by a dynamic, time-bound (as speed) choice, and not static (as a path). And the key role in the philosophy of choice is played by the possibility of “time travel” – to look back at the past to see the future. But mentioning time, speed, there is a question about the body, in our case about the living, because we, people, are interested in the philosophy of living objects, not stones or mathematical models. And as a result, there is a question of choice and life, but we will already consider this topic in the next article.
