What, if anything, underlies the course of history
as a whole? What are the
fundamental or real deter-
minants of
historical change? Can any one factor be
picked out as being of preeminent
importance? Is it
possible to formulate causal laws that hold universally
throughout the domain of historical experience? What
is the
role of human thought and decision in history,
and how far is it
justifiable to impute moral respon-
sibility for their actions to individual historical figures?
Is it
legitimate to regard accident or chance as playing
a significant part in
deciding the direction taken by
historical events? Is historical
determinism true, and
if so what are its implications? These constitute
some
of the questions that have been asked by theorists
preoccupied by
the problem of giving an account of
causality as it manifests itself within
the field of the
human past. Not only have they generated a host of
diverse and often conflicting answers; they have also
been raised at
different levels of enquiry and with
distinguishable considerations in
mind.
