Existential-Personalist Understanding of the Philosophy of History

The article is devoted to the analyses of theoretical models of historical development, evaluation of them and coming to the best one. Thus the authors generalize, summarize and mark out six of them: 1) Cyclical (the old one: Herodotus, Aristotle, etc.), 2) Eschatological (A. Augustine), 3) Progressive (Hegel, K. Marks), 4) Theory of historical-cultural types (N. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, etc.), 5) postmodernist (J. Lyotard, J. Derrida) and 6) “Axial age” (K. Jaspers). Through analyses, we can conclude that the only last one is completely free from any kind of determinism, anarchism and impersonalism and has universal and personal sense. At the end, it analyzes the latest ideas of socio-political development (F. Fukuyama. S. Huntington, etc.). The idea of an alternative post-industrial path of development and the need to build a personalistic society is also expressed (N. Berdyaev, E. Fromm and A. Panarin). Based on the concept of the “Axial Age” the authors suggest existential-personal understanding philosophy of history, which was supported by humanism of the Kyrgyz and Russian writer Chingiz Aitmatov (1928–2008) and “philosophy of existential event” Merab Mamardashvili (1930–1990), that depends on moral decision of each person, — only in this way can we obtain social progress.