One possible point of departure for a Philosophy of History is human nature. Among the many traits belonging to humans are a set of needs and wants, a set of flaws and imperfections, and a set of strengths and virtues.
Human needs and wants include food, clothing, water, and shelter; humans also want someone to care for them and care about them; they have a desire to know and be known, a desire for a sense of meaning in their lives, and a desire for some form of happiness and joy.
Sadly but realistically, human nature is inherently flawed. Thomas Hobbes famously wrote that in the state of nature, meaning if humans lived out their innate qualities, their lives would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." As evidence, one might mention that nobody needs to be taught how to lie, how to be selfish, or how to be overly aggressive in a moment of anger. It comes quite naturally.
By contrast, there are also some constructive elements in human nature. Humans naturally love - nobody needs to be taught to feel affection for someone else. Humans are creative and inventive. Humans are sometimes even noble.
Human nature is, in short, a mixed picture. The result of this is, however, that human flaws prevent people from getting those things which they need or want.
To this end, society attempts, sometimes successfully, to develop correctives for the imperfections found in human nature. There are many such ventured remedies, but most of them may be grouped under three headings: art, philosophy, and religion. (G.W.F. Hegel wrote something vaguely related about those three.)
In art, society attempts to bring the individual into contact with beauty. (In this context, many writers will capitalize the word Beauty.) True beauty can inspire humans and can bring joy to them. If a society can successfully connect the individual with art, it might be a partial corrective to the intrinsic flaws in human nature. But a society's attempts can also fail in this regard, either by failing to bring the individual into contact, or by bringing him into contact with something which is not true beauty.
Philosophy attempts to bring the individual into contact with truth. (Again, many will capitalize the 'T' here.) Using the powers of human thought and reasoning, philosophy attempts to find realities which are in some sense foundational or deep. Because there are many different schools of philosophy, some of which would reject the use of the words 'foundational' or 'truth', it is a complex and murky enterprise. If successful, however, philosophy can give the individual some grasp of reality and his position in it. But philosophy can also fail, yielding nothing fruitful, and perhaps something harmful.
Religion attempts to bring the individual into contact with God, who cares for and about the individual, and who offers a sense of meaning and joy to the individual - all this despite the realities of living in a flawed world. Successful religion, which allows the individual to receive a sense of unconditional positive regard writ on a cosmically large scale, can indeed be a corrective to the innate corruptions found in human nature. But unsuccessful religion can bring harm rather than benefit, instilling in the individual a sense of needing to somehow accumulate enough merit to earn God's favor. Successful religion yields peace which instills qualities like helpfulness, cooperativeness, and contribution into the individual. Unsuccessful religion instills selfishness and aggressiveness, and yields war.
History, then, is the concrete playing out of the above. History is the specific unfolding of the better parts and the worse parts of human nature - the imago dei and the original sin - in particular times, places, and people. History would end, or rather would go on infinitely, in a cosmic stalemate between good and evil thus described, were it not for an intervention. History contains one more, one new, element.
Society's efforts - by means of art, philosophy, and religion - , however noble, remain limited because they are, finally, human products, and subject to the flaws and limits of their human creators. History reveals intervention by a force beyond, or above, humans. Art, philosophy, and religion attempt to bring humans into contact with something better. But as human products, art, philosophy, and religion are as flawed as the humans who created them. The intervention occurs when beauty, truth, and God bring themselves into contact with humans.
As the old proverb says, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill." Francis Bacon, who probably coined this phrase, was indicating that it is important to identify the agency in an action - who's actually doing something? The proverb is often quoted as "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad will go to the mountain."
History records an intervention - ab alio - which finally tips the scale in the grand stalemate. In this intervention, agency is not with the humans. It is for this reason that History is temporally finite. The correctives, ultimately powered and empowered ab alio, change the course of History. When truth, beauty, and God are agents - and not objects of study - the course of History takes a decisive turn toward its eventual end. Which then gives meaning to the phrases "the end of History" and "after History" - phrases on which philosophers have long meditated.
