Historical atomism (essay for freedom): synopsis of the work of the same title by Ceferino Sampedro

Abstract

Historic Atomism is an answer to the question «What is History?». Perhaps the most objective answer provided by philosophy to date and perhaps also the limit of objectivity regarding History. Historic Atomism is a philosophy of History without a sense of narration or holistic views. It contemplates History as consisting of independent and mutually irreducible events, historic atoms, an ontological answer that reduces History to a mere cluster of events in time. It does not reflect on what man is, but on what man has done. It deals with man’s work as a whole resulting from the manipulative activity of reality, which is referred to as Structure. History is nothing but the colossal accumulation of historic events as a product of freedom, freedom being the big corollary of this doctrine, of the subjects that carried them out and implied an influential novelty in the Structure. Historic Atomism is a formal philosophy of History. The task of concretely describing historic facts and the Structure clusters that conform each historical era is left to the historians. And as a pure form, it does not only lack a narration, but also makes a holistic narrative impossible.