1. Antiquity and Christianity

The term “philosophy of history,” which goes back to Voltaire (1756), coincides with the development of the philosophy of history in the true sense. The question of the nature of history is much older, but the concept had not been fully developed earlier. In antiquity Plato regarded Athens as the copy of an original lost Athens, which represented the cyclic view of history, with history being incorporated into nature.

In contrast, the Judeo-Christi…