Why Do We Need the Ethics of History?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the intellectual prerequisites for the formation of the discourse of the ethics of history in the modern philosophy of history and the ethics of science. An analysis of the transformation of the ethics of responsibility, the value attitude to the past in philosophy and the theory of history, as well as the axiological component of historical didactics in the 20th century testifies to the growth of theoretical interest in ethical reflection on past events. It is substantiated that the further development of the ethics of history as an independent discipline requires a unified conceptual approach in understanding its subject, theoretical and methodological foundations, and basic values. It is concluded that the ethics of history as a branch of applied ethics is wider than the “ethos” of historical science. A position is put forward on the consequential and socially oriented specifics of the ethics of history. Its subject is the ethical problems of referring to the past in the historical culture of society.The externalist interpretation of the ethics of history allows us to consider the latter as an important factor in the circulation of ideas about the past in historical culture. An analysis of the project of transcendental history by H.M.Baumgartner points to an important trend of overcoming descriptivism by the ethics of history, a movement towards its normative definition, and also emphasizes its interdisciplinary nature.