Footnote to the post titled “Avant-garde”

Everything tends towards a theory of history, as Mills argued. In turn, a theory of history has at the heart of it an idea or a thesis about historical and social change. What is at the heart of a theory of history is an idea about the main agents, causes, and drivers behind historical and social change. Theories of history are perhaps “inferences” made from the integration that occurs within the structure we are examining and studying, as Mills argued. It follows that our theory of history can either be anthropocentric, whereby man is the main agent and cause and driver behind historical and social change, or it can be theocentric, whereby God is the main agent and cause and driver behind historical and social change. Technological and institutional changes, after all, occur within the structure, and the structure is inseparable from our theory of history. Our theory of history sits atop our inferences made from structure. Hegel, for instance, contended that world history is all about the actualization of the “universal mind” or “universal consciousness,” which then renders Hegel’s theory of history as theocentric. For Hegel, only the actualization of universal consciousness or the universal mind can be civilized and objective. Anything short of the goal and objective and purpose or telos of world history, namely, the actualization of the universal consciousness or universal mind, is barbaric and futile.