The Politics of Historical Vision – Marx, Foucault, Habermas

Human beings have never been without history. In the paradoxical formulation of phenomenology, the only unchanging structure of human existence is its capacity to change and evolve—its “historicity.” According to philosophical anthropology, human beings differ from “merely” natural beings because their existence is not limited only to instinct and passive adaptation to the natural environment. Rather, human existence is socially and linguistically mediated, consciously created and defined, and changes throughout time. For existentialists, human beings have a history but  o nature; they constitute not an essence but an open-ended existence  efined by their choices and actions.

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