The so-called "philosophy of history" is simply "philosophy about history". But whether as a concept or as a discipline, "philosophy of history" has always been flourishing, complex and multidimensional. This is largely due to the ambiguity of the words "history" and "philosophy". In different languages and cultures, "history" not only refers to all kinds of events that happened to human beings, but also refers to the narration or knowledge about these events. From the perspective of ideological history, as far as the word "philosophy" in "historical philosophy" is concerned, its connotation has also experienced a historical evolution process. In the book The Concept of History, R.G. Collingwood once gave different definitions of the concept of "philosophy" in several historical philosophies. Among them, for georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, "historical philosophy" refers to "universal history or world history", in which "philosophy" refers to "thinking about the world as a whole". In the view of positivists in the19th century, "historical philosophy" means "discovering the general laws governing the processes of various events (narrated by history)", and the "philosophy" here is equivalent to "discovering the unified laws". ②

Collingwood himself endowed "philosophy" with a different meaning, that is "reflection". As a reflective "philosophy", it is not only thinking about an object, but also thinking about an idea without an ideological object, but thinking about the idea of a "related" object, that is, the relationship between an idea and its object or between subject and object. Strictly speaking, "the thought related to the object is not pure thought but knowledge" is the subject's understanding of the object. The task of historians is to think, understand and describe the past itself, which belongs to the first-class thought; The responsibility of historical philosophers is to think about how historians think, know and describe past events, so it is a second-level thought. ③

It can be seen that Collingwood's "philosophy of history" focuses on how historical knowledge is possible, and it is a theory of historical knowledge. He sometimes called this philosophy of history "the philosophical science of historical thoughts" and studied "history is partly subjective", that is, "thoughts that run in the minds of historians and are reflected in their historical writing". Of course, historical epistemology also points to a set of historical methods based on this. Therefore, historical philosophy is also a historical methodology and a kind of "logic about historical methods". ④ The core question here is: "What is the fundamental nature, significance, purpose and value of history?" ⑤ It involves the authenticity and effectiveness of historical knowledge as a discipline, its position in the knowledge map, and the relationship between history and other disciplines. The fundamental nature of history is the premise and condition to solve other methodological problems. Later, W.H.Walsh called this reflective historical epistemology "critical or analytical historical philosophy". ⑥

In short, due to the changes of the times and context, and the fuzziness of the word "philosophy", "historical philosophy" often has multiple aspects or connotations. However, according to the two basic meanings of the word "history", "historical philosophy" usually points to two different directions: one is an overview of the historical event process, and the other is a reflection on the historical thinking process.