" There is no history where the course of events is a series of episodes without unity, or where it is a struggle already decided in the heaven of ideas. History is there where there is a logic within contingence, a reason within unreason, where there
is a historical perception which, like perception in
general, leaves in the background what cannot enter
the foreground but seizes the lines of force as they
are generated and actively leads their traces to a
conclusion. This analogy should not be interpreted
as a shameful organicism or finalism, but as a reference to the fact that all symbolic systems--perception, language, history--only become what they were although in order to do so they need to be
taken up into human initiative. "

― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Eloge De La Philosophie Et Autres Essais