The thought and action of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are governed by an Idea (in the Kantian sense): the Idea of emancipation. It is, of course, framed in quite different ways, depending on what we call the philosophies of history, the grand narratives that attempt to organize this mass of events: the Christian narrative of the redemption of original sin trough love; the Aufklärer narrative of emancipation from ignorance and servitude trough knowledge and egalitarianism, the speculative narrative of the realiazation of the universal Idea trough the dialectic of the concrete; the Marxist narrative of emancipation from exploitation and alienation trough the socialization of work; and the capitalist narrative of emancipation from poverty trough technoindustrial development.