Abstract

The paper starts by stating that the concept of progress, which is a key factor in the Enlightenment programme on the philosophy of history, has vanished from our society of risk, and posits whether it is possible today to rethink the philosophy of history. The second part refers to the negation of this philosophy by Badiou and Lyotard, due to the disappearance of the “modern subject”, which lay at its heart. There are many “histories”, but there is no single “History”. The third part of the paper seeks to counteract that negation through the Sartrean concept of “alienation”, which involves a change in human relationships (“reification”), resulting from the “subject matter worked by praxis”. This is a concept that allows us to speak today of a universal history, whose “no-subject” would be that “worked subject matter”. The paper concludes by affirming that the aim of philosophy today is not to “contemplate the world” or “change the world” but rather to “take care of the world”.