Most, if not all, readers of this journal will be familiar with Hegel's notion of “the Cunning of Reason,” which refers to the idea that the unintended consequences of human action should bring about the self-realization of the Mind or the Spirit. What Hegel left to his reader's imagination was the question of how order could arise from the chaos of unintended consequences. Nevertheless, Hegel's notion of the unintended consequences of human action is a most fruitful one. In this article, I argue that unintended consequences are “the stuff” from which history is made and that a speculative philosophy of history can be built from them too. This argument infers a speculative philosophy of history from historical writing and not a variant of historical writing from a speculative philosophy of history, as is normally the case. Finally, I discuss how global warming and the impending climate catastrophe can be said to be the prototypical unintended consequences of human action, or to speak with Saddam Hussein, “the mother of all” unintended consequences. This article ends, therefore, with a discussion of how the notion of unintended consequences may contribute to a better understanding of what the Anthropocene must mean for our historical consciousness and for how we locate ourselves in the evolution of history since the dawn of humanity down to the present, in which dark clouds gather over our collective future.

中文翻译：

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历史的荆棘：意想不到的后果和历史的投机哲学

大多数（如果不是全部）本期刊的读者都会熟悉黑格尔的“理性的狡猾”概念，该概念指的是人类行为的意外后果应该带来心灵或精神的自我实现。黑格尔留给读者想象的问题是，如何从意外后果的混乱中产生秩序。尽管如此，黑格尔关于人类行为的非预期后果的观念是最富有成效的。在这篇文章中，我认为意外的后果是创造历史的“材料”，也可以从中建立一种思辨的历史哲学。这个论点从历史写作中推断出一种思辨的历史哲学，而不是从思辨的历史哲学中推断出一种历史写作的变体，这是通常的情况。最后，我讨论了如何将全球变暖和即将到来的气候灾难称为人类行为的典型意外后果，或者与萨达姆侯赛因交谈，“所有”意外后果之母。因此，本文最后讨论了意外后果的概念如何有助于更好地理解人类世对我们的历史意识意味着什么，以及我们如何在自人类诞生以来的历史演变中定位自己现在，乌云笼罩着我们共同的未来。