All of these developments, so much at odds with the terrible
history of the first half of the century when totalitarian governments
of the Right and Left were on the march, suggest the need
to look again at the question of whether there is some deeper
connecting thread underlying them, or whether they are merely
accidental instances of good luck. By raising once again the question
of whether there is such a thing as a Universal History of
mankind, I am resuming a discussion that was begun in the early
nineteenth century, but more or less abandoned in our time because
of the enormity of events that mankind has experienced
since then. While drawing on the ideas of philosophers like Kant
and Hegel who have addressed this question before, I hope that
the arguments presented here will stand on their own.