Unique historical facts can still support a theory of history and politics
Evidence
But a theory of history and politics can be made, for even if the facts are always unique and changeable in the flux of movement of history, the concepts can be theorised. Otherwise one would not even be able to tell what movement is, or the dialectic, and one would fall back into a new form of nominalism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1526
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: Grounds the theory-vs-empiricism distinction that later Islamophobia scholarship (Orientalism’s critique of pure description) will lean on.
Related
- Theory of history is possible despite the uniqueness of historical facts (similarity 0.91)
- A theory’s universality is shown by its capacity to illuminate new concrete situations. (similarity 0.80)
- Philosophical truths are historically conditioned yet avoid relativism. (similarity 0.80)
- Facts only become meaningful through pre-existing conceptual criteria of choice (similarity 0.80)
- The dialectic only functions when philosophy of praxis stands as an integral philosophy. (similarity 0.80)
- History’s unity is a developing process, not a presupposition. (similarity 0.79)
- Philosophy’s history must include mass worldviews and ruling groups, not just philosophers (similarity 0.79)
- The dialectic is the marrow of historiography and political science, not formal logic. (similarity 0.79)
- Gramsci’s political divergence from Bordiga centered on the theory-practice relation. (similarity 0.78)
- Philosophy becomes historically true by diffusing into the popular mentality. (similarity 0.78)