Abstract
Schopenhauer's position on the nature of history did not change to be accommodated by his attacks on Hegel. Analysis of Volumes I and II of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung shows that Schopenhauer's view of history was held before the charges of Hegel's "fraud." In Volume I he does not claim that history is strictly a science, like mathematics, and then go on in Volume 11 (to degrade it. Throughout, he understood history as having positive aspects. Schopenhauer did reject Hegelianism, particularly for its metaphysical justification of the idea of progress, but he saw value in the study of history for preserving rational self-consciousness and understanding the significance of human actions and motivations