Dictionary of the History of Ideas Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas |
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
The cyclical Theory of History is a doctrine that
all
events occur in cycles that are more or less alike. It
has two
main forms, one that posits cosmic cycles and
one that posits cycles only
in human affairs. Though
the second of these concepts is logically
independent
of the first, it is sometimes found in company with it.
One must also distinguish those thinkers, like Plato and
Aristotle, who
believed in periodic cataclysms and
beginnings, from those, like the
Stoics, who believed
in the return of identical events. The doctrine in
some
of its forms is found in ancient India, in Babylonia,
and in
Greece.
Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||