Metaphysics and History:
The Individual and the General Reconciled
Gabriel R. Ricci*
[From HUMANITAS, Volume X, No. 1, 1997. ©
National
Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA]
Introduction: Perennial Philosophy Historicized
The mainstay of perennial philosophy is the problem of "the one and the
many." In the hands of Plato this problem was resolved by an economical
philosophy, the consequence of which was a bifurcated and hierarchical
world which degraded the poetical and productive expressions of history.
Aristotle first exposed the redundancy in Plato’s philosophy, and this
ruling has marked philosophical discussion since. In extolling the virtue
of matter’s inherent teleological impulse, Aristotle presaged the value
of historical development which was to occupy nineteenth-century intellectual
history. The core of developmental thinking in the nineteenth century expressed
the ontological verity of the emergent, as witnessed in Darwinism, but
as with Darwinism a final telos is abandoned in favor of spontaneously
generated life forms that are at once continuous with and a conversion
of the store of the historical past. Having thus displaced the convention
of a transcendent paradigm, historicism’s inaugural incarnation was occupied
with discovering an Archimedean point from which values and standards could
obtain moral leverage in the face of the flux of history.
The historicization of thinking to follow in the wake of Hegel’s historical
treatment of the Logos can be credited with a unique assault on foundationalism.
The rise of historicist conceptualization that marked the methodological
innovations of the historical sciences, especially, is the source of a
morally charged relativism that is exemplified in the historiographical
work of Benedetto Croce. Croce’s insights into how the appropriation of
the past provides material for future transformation paralleled currents
in German philosophy that were predicated on the methodological demarcation
between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften.
Croce’s rendering of historicism as the creation of appropriate actions
out of the historical past is perhaps the most concise way to capture the
ethical impetus of historicist thinking that thrived in the first half
of this century. Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), who adapted his reading of
Hegel to this historicist dimension in thinking, agreed with Croce that
a methodological approach to the transitory does not deny an ethical dimension.
The hammering out of the moral dimension from the transitory was an abiding
concern for both Troeltsch and Croce. Croce declared Friedrich Meinecke’s
Die
Entstehung des Historismus (1936) a moving force of this brand of historicism,
but, before Troeltsch’s untimely death in 1923, Meinecke had been introduced
to Troeltsch’s historical logic during the pair’s casual walks through
the Berlin woods.
Historicism’s recasting of the proverbial problem of the individual
and the general has been communicated to contemporary philosophy through
the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer’s aesthetic and hermeneutic framework
in Truth and Method and the ontological dimension of understanding
that he inherited from Heidegger, however, did not illumine the ethical
underpinnings of the historicism of earlier thinkers. On the other hand,
Gadamer’s declaration that the proper focus of hermeneutics is not the
development of a method or process, but the insertion of one’s subjectivity
into a unifying historical process buoyed by tradition did successfully
convey the essence of earlier historicism. The earlier manifestations of
this concept of effective-history (Wirkungsgeschichte) had already
challenged the primacy of the historical past by emphasizing individual
historical enmeshment and the productive and futural aspect of being in
history. This essay focuses on a slice of the methodological controversy
that percolated at the turn of the century and whose main characters have
been obscured by later historicist trends which have not been sufficiently
sensitive to the original historicist affirmation that history’s assimilation
to thought is at once the source of writing history and of human liberation.
Methodology and Worldview
The debate in the nineteenth century over methodology and the proper theoretical
framework for historical thinking was informed by the delineation between
the natural sciences and the human studies, the status of value-relations
imposed by historicity, and the claims imposed on interpretation by the
influence of worldview.1 Most historians
agreed that historical conceptualization should be differentiated from
scientific thinking, but not all agreed that the object of inquiry in the
respective fields should likewise be separated. Various historical genres
emerged, each claiming a certain aspect of historical reality as the engine
of historical movement. This proliferation of styles can be traced to both
Herder’s original sensitivity to the "spirit" of an age with his emphasis
on "Folk-Study" and Hegel’s overarching concept of Geist guiding the course
of universal history. But, whether the historian looked to the "spirit"
of an age, or group, or to individual personality, investigation and interpretation
involved probing the psychological strata of historical phenomena.2
By the end of the nineteenth century Kulturgeschichte, emphasizing
a unifying soul-substance, was established among the historical genres.3
This historical style reached a critical pitch in Karl Lamprecht’s application
of the concept of Massenpsychologie. Lamprecht’s rendering of this
genre attempted to reconcile the individual and general forces in history.
More importantly, he intended that narrative description and sequential
representation of history should be supplanted by a more causal reading
of history predicated on sociopsychological forces. Lamprecht’s methodology
met strong opposition from the Rankean School which championed the individual-psychological
form of historical narration. While Ranke asked the question how things
actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen ist), emphasizing the
individualistic character of history, Lamprecht sought a more comprehensive
analysis, asking the question how things came to be (wie es eigentlich
geworden). In asking the latter question, Lamprecht aimed at explanation
rather than reconstruction.4 These
two approaches signify the difference between a formalist analysis and
the sensitivity to contextualism that informs the recent incarnation of
historicism in literary criticism. The former position argues that texts
are autonomous aesthetic phenomena while most new historicists assert that
culture and history are themselves texts within which literary efforts
are nested. Whatever form new historicism takes it is allied with critical
theory and always offends formalists like Harold Bloom, who, for all intents
and purposes, claims a transcendent quality to literary texts that have
achieved the degree of linguistic exuberance that qualifies them for admission
to the canon. Bloom’s ex cathedra pronouncements deny that all the
world is a text, the essential "new" historicist thesis.
In 1913 G. P. Gooch remarked that Lamprecht’s dismissal of individual
personality was reprehensible, no matter what other claims could be made
in favor of Lamprecht’s brand of Kulturgeschichte. Lamprecht also
was assailed for the inaccuracy of his recording, a fault that some thought
naturally followed from the emphasis on the overall character of an era.
Lamprecht’s most aggressive apologetic came in his American lecture series
What
is History?, in which he defied Ranke’s dictum wie es eigentlich
gewesen ist and defended wie es eigentlich geworden as the proper
call of historical inquiry.
Ernst Troeltsch responded deeply to the spectrum of historical speculation
in the nineteenth century. He also directed his attention to historical
causality, rather than to mere narration of past events. Unlike Lamprecht,
though, Troeltsch’s efforts to reconcile the individual and the general
in history argued that historical consciousness was autonomous and should
not be reduced to psychological mechanisms or external laws of any kind.
Troeltsch’s critique of Lamprecht’s psychological interpretation of history,
in his major work Der Historismus und seine Probleme (1922), reduces
Lamprecht’s analysis to positivistic psychology and the tendency to impose
alien, uniform laws onto historical development.5
Troeltsch insisted that history must be liberated from positivism which
disregards the holistic or totalizing tendencies of historical development.
That is, the materialistic reductionism which informed positivism could
not address the vitalistic underpinnings of the historical world.
Troeltsch’s critique of Lamprecht’s application of psychological laws
to history must be seen against his more aggressive critique of Hegel,
who more than any other person, according to Troeltsch, violently reduced
history to a lawfully regulated historical monism. Nevertheless, he shared
Lamprecht’s ambition to mix the individual and the general in grasping
historical reality. When the smoke cleared, historical methodology had
been forever linked to the larger concern of philosophical worldview. This
vitalistic connection signified that historical interpretation comprised
a dialectic that could no longer deny the preeminence of the subjective
and the idiographic habit of historical reality.
Mixing the Individual and the General
Ranke’s methods promoted a romantic hermeneutics recommending a sympathetic
reconstruction of an original situation through the understanding of principal
historical figures.6 In contrast,
Lamprecht adapted Otto Hintze’s expression Massenpsychologie to
express what he regarded as a retrievable dominant psychological spirit
of an epoch. Ranke had faced severe criticism from even his students, but
Lamprecht’s challenge was an unprecedented attack upon the master Ranke.
Friedrich Meinecke tried to relieve the tension, suggesting that it was
merely a matter of where one placed emphasis. Otto Hintze shed some understanding
in his essay on Lamprecht’s method in the Historische Zeitschrift
(LXXVII, 1897). Hintze, along with Meinecke and others, though, reproached
Lamprecht for the emphasis on the influence of general trends and the imposition
of collective forces onto historical development. The controversy denied
Lamprecht the editorship of the Historische Zeitschrift; Meinecke
was handed the prestigious task instead.
Lamprecht’s work on German history—like that of Troeltsch, who distinguished
the German spirit from the cold rationalism of Western Europe7—intensified
the controversy over the application of the concept of totality to history.
It goes without saying that Lamprecht’s holistic category Massenpsychologie
did not have the pejorative connotation it has in contemporary jargon,
but referred to the dominant spirit of an age through which historical
events and epochs meaningfully coalesce. The negative consequences of this
imposition of law-like regularity onto history are witnessed in Karl Popper’s
scathing argument against historicism, especially in its German expression.8
Though Popper was motivated to uncover the totalitarian undercurrent of
the German historical imagination, he did not restrict his critique to
German thinkers; Plato was at the top of his list.
Lamprecht relied on the work of the cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt
to make his point about the usefulness of a social-psychological approach
to history, but this did not make his thinking less controversial.9
In any event, the Lamprechtstreit intensified the debate concerning
which was more influential: the creative individual or general trends in
history. Favoring the latter thesis promised to raise the historical sciences
to the status of the natural sciences. Efforts of this kind had certainly
been made before, and, in fact, parity between the Geisteswissenschaften
and the Naturwissenschaften had been promoted by Dilthey, Rickert
and Windelband.10 In an attempt
to raise the epistemological credibility of the historical sciences, Lamprecht
sought to identify the historical with the generalizing tendencies of the
natural sciences. His attempt did not represent a total annihilation of
the singular quality of historical events; he sought a melding of the individual
with the collective drama of development. The question whether such an
underlying spirit can be identified before an epoch has defined itself
totally was not logically pursued by Lamprecht. Troeltsch addressed this
dilemma in his formal logic of history and resolved the issue by endowing
what one might call the "critical moment" of inquiry with the power of
delineating totalities. Although Troeltsch, in his sweeping critique of
historical thinking, dismisses Lamprecht as an example of positivism’s
inability to penetrate the truly historical, he shares the distinction
with Lamprecht of compounding the historical individual with the totality
of an era. According to Troeltsch, however, history is always distorted
when it is subsumed under the rubric of the natural sciences. Troeltsch
defined such efforts as "bad historicism" and identified Hegel, Comte and
Spencer as the primary culprits of this tendency.
Troeltsch’s critique of historical thinking, comprising the majority
of Der Historismus und seine Probleme, focused on the rationalistic
schemes of history, as represented in Hegel’s historical monism. Troeltsch
had earlier pitted himself against Hegel in Die Absolutheit des Christentums,
but at that time (1901) he chiefly argued against the evolutionary apologetic
for Christianity implied in Hegel’s scheme. Troeltsch had also begun to
speculate on the special compounding of the particular and the universal
in his critical essay on William James’s philosophy of religion.11
Troeltsch’s logic of history, what he referred to as the "irrational
logic of the new and creative," was not only a deep attack against Hegelianism
but a challenge to all forms of classical metaphysics. Troeltsch was equally
critical of some neo-Kantians’ efforts to subsume the historical world
under the rubric of the natural sciences. Hermann Cohen was his main target
in this regard; Troeltsch dismissed Cohen’s concept of historical development
as mathematical Messianism (DH, 546).
Troeltsch’s formulation of the historical world was original in his
adaptation of Leibniz’s monadology and Bergson’s metaphysics. His appeal
to a modified Leibnizian monadology—i.e., the monads were not windowless—marked
his effort to blend the individual with the whole. Troeltsch placed primary
emphasis on the monad’s ability (as historical individuality) to possess
its own genetic laws of development and, consequently, insight into its
own totality. In distinguishing the historical unit from the atomistic
units of natural science, Troeltsch wished to point out that, unlike the
non-composite units in science, historical totality contains within itself
the relations and energy of which it is itself the source. This phenomenon
of the self-contributing complexity of history devolves into coherent totalities,
according to Troeltsch, but they are never anterior to historical interpretation
and the spontaneity of historical perception. Historical totality is realized
when the past is perceived as meaningfully continuous with the historical
observer. Troeltsch’s position was obviously informed by Heinrich Rickert’s
emphasis on the value-relatedness (Wertbeziehung) intrinsic to the
idiographic sciences. Historical understanding, following Gadamer, does
not require the development of special techniques but an awareness that
all understanding derives from effective-historical consciousness. The
dichotomy between self and other, individual and general, is spontaneously
dissolved in the unity of historical apperception which was metaphorically
depicted in the concept of the fusion of horizons, an idea canonized in
Gadamer’s work but which appeared earlier in Troeltsch’s historiographical
writings.
The growth or advance characteristic of history that was proposed by
Troeltsch, and others before him, is analogous to Bergson’s creative evolution
in which "continuous phases penetrate one another by a kind of internalgrowth."
12
Arguing against the platform of universal science with its tendency to
explain everything under general, uniform principles, Bergson proposed
a philosophical method resembling the historical methods of nineteenth-century
German historiography. "Intuition" was required as a philosophical method
in order to penetrate the internal duration of life’s processes. This proposal
came as a challenge to associationist theories that did not perceive succession
as "a prolongation of the past into the present which is already blending
into the future," but understood succession as a juxtaposition of contiguous states.13
Correspondingly, this unity of the heterogeneous can never be adequately
represented by the juxtaposition of words to words. By identifying the
emergent quality of life both Bergson and Troeltsch suggested that thinking
must be prepared to go beyond the mere concatenation of words.14
During this era James Joyce brought this form of "historical seeing" to
literary life, but Troeltsch intended this unity of apperception to be
the crux of the ethical sciences, since history conceived as going beyond
the simple coupling of words implied praxis. On these terms history could
not be limited to an aesthetic retrieval of the past. The historical continuity,
expressed in the reconciliation of the individual and the whole, guarantees
the contemporaneity of the past and a foothold in the future.
The Ambiguity of Ranke
Troeltsch was deeply moved by the independence of the historical realm
and sensed that it, more than any other concern, promised the autonomy
of the human studies. This conclusion rests on the special nature of historical
energy, or movement, as Troeltsch saw it. As he defined his logic of history,
in contrast to Hegel’s and the neo-Kantians’ effort to subsume history
under a formal deductive schema, the historical realm was the province
of the spontaneous and the new, in much the same way that Whitehead has
defined the creative core of reality and that Bergson has promoted in his
notion of creative evolution.15
As the realm of the production of the new, (philosophy of) history meant,
for Troeltsch, the opportunity for responsible action and creativity. In
this regard Troeltsch, though generally an admirer of Ranke, did argue
against Ranke’s position that one should primarily strive to reconstruct
the past and not instruct the future. Troeltsch’s ambivalence toward Ranke
may be understandable in light of the dual reputation the latter enjoyed,
but this was also typical of his reaction to the imposing figure of Hegel.16
Ranke enjoyed an attentive audience in academia for many years, and
in spite of early, harsh criticism for his sponsoring a contemplative philosophy
of history, he succeeded in inspiring generations of historical thinkers.
Although Troeltsch’s appeal to the formation of the future in his mature
philosophy of history agrees with some of the contemporary criticisms of
Ranke, it is Ranke whom Troeltsch praises, above all, for the awakening
of the new historical perspective of the nineteenth century. Ranke’s major
critics came from the didactic school, whose chief figures were Rottleck,
Schlosser and Gervinus.17 Schlosser
was the most influential of the group, and, in G. P. Gooch’s opinion, was
more of a moralist and publicist than an actual historian. He disparaged
Ranke’s dependence on archival material and declared his intention to "wean
his contemporaries from evil tendencies by the teachings of history."
18
Denying the possibility of objective history, Schlosser publicly "despised
the research of Ranke and spoke with contempt of the dust of the archives."
19
The didactic school bitterly refuted Ranke’s position as mere instruction
and aspired to teach men how to live.20
Gervinus, shortly after the action of the "Goettingen Seven," a protest
by professors (including the Grimm brothers) in response to the tearing
up of the constitution by Ernest August in 1837, declared that: "The active
life is the focus of all history. All the forces of mankind concentrate
on action." 21 The so-called
didactic school, like Troeltsch, extolled the virtue of the critical drive
originating in the individual forces of all historical seeing.
While Ranke was active as an historian and teacher, the social world
was fraught with revolutions and constant political upheaval. His students
were sensitive to this climate, and in the case of Heinrich von Sybel politics
was indeed a natural part of study. On the occasion of Sybel’s first break
with Ranke, in 1856, he warned that Ranke’s "all-round receptivity sometimes
ran the risk of weakening the ethical severity which the perfect historian needed."
22
In spite of such critics, however, Ranke enjoyed an unprecedented influence
upon academic history, establishing the standards and format of the Seminar.
His influence was widespread through the German university system. Meinecke,
who along with Troeltsch shared an interest in the relationship of personality
to history, fell within the Rankean circle through the influence of Droysen.
Troeltsch’s involvement with history culminated in the typical Rankean
concern for the creative development of personality, and Meinecke’s essay
of 1918 "Pers"nlichkeit und geschichtliche Welt" asks the very question:
What is the meaning of the historical world for the formation of personality?23
Troeltsch’s Der Historismus und seine Probleme represents an
ambivalent reaction to Ranke’s thinking. In many respects Troeltsch’s logic
of history parallels early criticisms of Ranke, in that his logic condemns
all forms of contemplative philosophy of history. According to Troeltsch,
however, Ranke’s understanding of how things happen exemplifies the idea
of individuality. Ranke’s famous saying: "All epochs are immediate to God,"
embodies a concept of individuality as once-ness, in contrast to abstract
and universal laws comprehensively integrating a plurality of events. Events
and persons are not merely means for a passage to something else or grist
for the "cunning of Reason" (DH, 151). Furthermore, where Ranke’s critics
condemned his pursuit of so much dust (in archives), and lambasted him
for avoiding critical issues and valuations, Troeltsch includes Ranke’s
contributions as part of the natural questioning of former values in order
to establish judgments for the future. Not "of" the future, which would
make Troeltsch’s historicism susceptible to Popper’s main argument against
prescriptive historicism, but "for" thefuture.24 Troeltsch
proposed a value-related historicism which prefigures critical theory’s
admonition that the historical world is of our making, even though we inherit
the material of previous generations.
Ranke avoided pure contemplative history, or, as Troeltsch characterized
it, the gathering of the historical under the point of view of the ideal
(DH, 114). The consequence of this rationalist procedure is a quietism
that eliminates the practical will (DH, 114). Troeltsch was not unaware
that Ranke had often been reproached for coming so close to pure contemplative
history, but he considered Ranke’s approach to be more deliberately active,
as it emphasized the empirical, stressing both context and the meaning
of an historical undertaking: "Here is naturally seen the connections of
his [Ranke’s] valuations with his own standpoint and his own ideals of
future formation" (DH, 114).
In citing Ranke’s lasting legacy, Troeltsch emphasized his two most
famous teachings, i.e., the methodological canon of wie es eigentlich
gewesen ist and the metaphysical premise that "all epochs are immediate
to God." The latter doctrine, Troeltsch thought, defines the central premise
of historicism which states that values arise from individual contexts
and are not subject to an ultimate transcendental or otherwise timeless
criterion. This phrase has consistently been taken out of context and,
in context, clearly emphasizes the aspect of "ownness" and uniqueness with
which historical happenings are inherently endowed: "Every epoch is immediate
to God and its worth is not at all based on what derives from it but rests
on its own existence, in its own self."
25
This statement encouraged the "discovery" of historicity in the nineteenth
century; it signifies that events are not hierarchically set in a progressive
process of history.
Troeltsch’s idea of development, discernible in his critique of developmental
theories in the third chapter of Der Historismus, is derived from
organology and consequently entails decline. The rational and progressive
model of history implies a purposefully directed movement towards a climactic
ending, and hence an ultimate value is projected from which all previous
movement is measured. No such ultimate value arises from Troeltsch’s concept
of development, for values radiate from historical individuality, that
which in every case is "immediate to God" in Ranke’s sense.
In the preface to his work Histories of the Romance and Teutonic
Peoples Ranke dismissed equating history with either judgment of the
past or instruction of the present. His work, he claimed, did not aspire
to such a lofty task. This clearly places him in opposition to Troeltsch,
who, in the spirit of Nietzsche, valued history in so far as it instructed
and served action. Nietzsche’s The Use and the Abuse of History
fueled both Troeltsch and Heidegger and in some sections anticipated Troeltsch’s
Der
Historismus: "Historical study is only fruitful for the future if it
follows a powerful life giving influence, for example, a new system of culture.
. . ." 26 Nietzsche has certainly influenced the criteria
that Troeltsch struggled to formulate. And, as so often in German scholarship,
all roads lead to Goethe. Nietzsche begins The Use and Abuse of History
in the following manner: " ‘I hate everything that merely instructs without
quickening my activity’. These words of Goethe, like a sincere ceterum
censeo, may well stand at the head of my thoughts on the worth and
worthlessness of history."
In light of the activism represented by Goethe and Nietzsche, Ranke’s
ambition for the study and use of history misses the point of history altogether.
Once again, in the words of Nietzsche, "The knowledge of the past is only
desired for the service of the future and the present, not to weaken the
present or undermine a living future." 27
Ranke’s history does not come to grips with the distinction that Troeltsch
and others would insist upon between the natural sciences and the Geisteswissenschaften,
what Troeltsch interpreted as the historical-ethical sciences. Ranke’s
theory courts the static realm of the natural sciences and does not properly
acknowledge the lively connection between interpretation and critique.
Ranke’s articulation of the proper task of history and his emphasis
on certain key terms are to be found in a manuscript from the 1840s. The
views expressed in this lecture countered the rational, universal history
popularized by Hegel. More importantly, Ranke set forth the main theme
that raises the subject (Sache) of history to a science.28
Ranke’s method was guided by recognizing Geschichte as the noun
counterpart for geschehen or "what happened." The key to the historical
sciences, for Ranke, is to have Geschichte coincide with Historie,
which on his account is derived from the Greek word
historia which
originally meant knowledge—Wissen. The task of history, then, is
to have the object of history coincide with its subjective counterpart.
Therefore, the expression wie es eigentlich gewesen ist only makes
sense if we understand eigentlich to be the call for the union of
Geschichte
and Historie. Although Heidegger agreed with the assessment of Ranke
as a mere "ocularist" and antiquarian in Being and Time, he formulated
an historical ontology on the basis of the etymological kinship between
Geschichte
and
geschehen (BT, 400).
Ranke meets Troeltsch’s favor in so far as he argues against Hegel’s
rationally designed history. In the same essay from the 1840s, Ranke appears
gripped by the same passion that inspired Kierkegaard’s diatribe against
Hegelianism. In Ranke’s view, philosophies which assert that reason rules
the world "run counter to the truth of individual consciousness."
29
"If this view were correct," Ranke continued, "the world spirit alone would
truly be alive. It would be the sole actor; even the greatest men would
be instruments in its hands and would carry out what they themselves neither
understand nor wanted."
30 Ranke
was perhaps most offended by the kind of God that resulted from the Hegelian position.31
Critiques of Troeltsch and Lamprecht
Contemporary assessments of Lamprecht and Troeltsch were not consistent.
Otto Hintze, who also contributed to historical methodology and wrote history
himself, commented on both Lamprecht and Troeltsch. His main criticism
of Troeltsch’s historicism was that Troeltsch had not adequately distinguished
methodology from the more speculative aspects of history.32
In contrasting Troeltsch’s Der Historismus und seine Probleme to
Spengler’s pessimistic view of the disintegration of the West, Hintze reduced
Troeltsch’s insights to a reassertion of the optimistic historical interpretation
emanating from Hegel and German Idealism. Troeltsch’s concerted effort
to undermine Hegel’s program is undeniable. While many felt compelled to
choose between the individualist position of Ranke or the collectivist
approach advocated by Lamprecht, Hintze made it clear that both methods
were necessary, since the collective forces in history are organically
connected to individual action. This, he thought, was aptly demonstrated
in Lamprecht’s sensitivity to the tension between individual ego assertion
and the larger cultural framework.
Paul Tillich’s review of Troeltsch’s Der Historismus und seine Probleme
was more sympathetic to Troeltsch’s innovations, especially in respect
to his unique understanding of historical totality. Tillich was also sensitive
to the shortcomings of this concept. Although Troeltsch was aware of a
special category to identify and understand historical consciousness, i.e.,
something "between the individual and the general," he did not fully articulate
how this special category should function in historicalinterpretation.33
Tillich suggested, in spite of Troeltsch’s special category, that historical
interpretation is confused by Troeltsch’s equal assertion that historicism
entails the interconnection of all times (and events), thus making historical
totality a mere abstraction. Although Troeltsch did define historical time
as a living fusion (Verschmolzenheit), in contrast to positivistic
accounts of time (DH, 58) he resolved this issue by appealing to the tact
and discretion that were required of the historian to demarcate qualitatively
different eras.
The fact that historical situations are open on all sides, so to speak,
weakened Troeltsch’s concept of historical totality for Tillich. In defense
of Troeltsch, though, historical totality is better understood as a process
than as an object of some kind. Troeltsch’s concept referred to an inner
continuity entailing the merging of the past with the "own standpoint"
of the historical observer. This connectedness, as it stretches to the
individual, is an articulation of a living experience or Erlebnis.
Historical totality, in Troeltsch’s logic, was not an already constructed
totality, since it is primarily mediated through the powers of what Troeltsch
labeled momentane Vernunft. History, then, is the stage for the
presentation and the creation of the concrete-universal. Here Troeltsch
was in accord with Benedetto Croce. Indeed, Croce viewed historicism as
the preeminent category of logic, the logicality of the concrete-universal.34
Tillich compared Troeltsch’s sense of these historical totalities—classed
between the individual and the general—to the notion of Gestalten and missed
Troeltsch’s major emphasis on the underlying creative and evaluative structure
of one’s "own reality." This represents Troeltsch’s major insight into
historical consciousness, since it is through the creative and intuitive
powers of individual interpretation that history is made whole and creatively
united at every moment (DH, 58).
In the expanse of Troeltsch’s Der Historismus und seine Probleme,
Tillich recognized Troeltsch’s ambition to go beyond the implications of
methodological innovations in the historical sciences; Troeltsch, according
to Tillich, wanted to indicate what it meant to "stand in history."
35
Consciousness situated in history is a much more profound concern than
arguing for a particular sense of history. Troeltsch promoted the foundational
and constitutive character of historical consciousness and saw the implications
for a morality predicated on such principles. Troeltsch’s rendering of
the Geisteswissenschaften as the historical-ethical sciences speaks
to the life implications of historical study, but his understanding of
history as constitutive of consciousness is a precursor to the metaphysical
perspective of Heidegger and Gadamer, both of whom ironically resurrect
Hegel. Troeltsch’s critical review of the historical theories of the nineteenth
century, then, stands as a bridge between the historiographical discussions
of Droysen, Humboldt and Ranke and the metaphysics of interpretation in
Heidegger and Gadamer.
Troeltsch’s Assessment of Lamprecht’s Positivistic Model
Historical totality, the fundamental unity that history creates, is not
an amalgamation that can be deduced from psychological principles nor produced
by an underlying mechanism other than the interpretative efforts of individuality.
Historical totalities are united intuitively (DH, 32), and as wholes they
are defined by what Troeltsch refers to as the "own reality" and the indissolubility
of individuality (DH, 37). The demarcation of stretches of time as identifiable
periods, then, is purely subjective (DH, 32). This position is diametrically
opposed to Lamprecht’s approach to history, which receives its orientation
from putatively larger and more collective forces.
Since individuelle Totalitätsbegriffe
was the only way into history for Troeltsch, the real task of history must
be to show the "concrete-individual in its historical connections of becoming"
(DH, 36). In this way, individual totality, i.e., the emergence of an historical
whole through the intuitive feeling of one’s own self, implies the notion
of originality. Troeltsch, in his analysis of historical becoming, turned
from mere explanation and deduction to a sympathetic feeling into the fact
of becoming (DH, 38). Naturally, the embedded originality of historical
seeing amounts to the creation of new forms of life. In a sense, the originality
that Troeltsch defined as the real energy of historical development liberates
history from the deterministic grip of antecedent influences. History,
that is, cannot be construed in a strictly causal way, since it is always
being assimilated from the "own reality" possessed by the historical observer.
Herein lies the strongest tension of the particular and the general in
Troeltsch’s scheme (DH, 44). This tension is hermeneutically cast in a
to-and-fro motion that mutually restricts the particular and the general
and unites all individuals into a "super-individual connection" (DH, 48).
This super-connection is continually fed by tradition, but there still
remains a germ of individual interpretation which cannot be dissolved.
"This personal originality possesses the strength of transforming the whole."
This was not just an assumption for Troeltsch, for its real effects could
be observed in its productivity (DH, 48).
Troeltsch strove to liberate history from scientistic interpretation.
Comte was perceived as the model for this movement, since his theory of
historical development was seen as the gradual purification of a static
principle (DH, 48). In his own defense, Lamprecht, in his lecture "Epochs
of Culture," denied any influence from Comte and insisted that any attempt
to prove such influence should be based on the application of Lamprecht’s
own social-psychological interpretation of history. He argued that any
connection between his view and Comte’s must be established on the basis
of similar overriding social conditions.36
This defense clearly revealed Lamprecht’s appeal to general and collective
forces in determining historical outcome. The forces of similar collective
psyches can only account for similar individual and subjective profiles.
The subjection of the singular to the general means that a certain form
of necessity prevails in history which is analogous to the deterministic
model of the natural sciences. It was on the basis of this thesis, in particular,
that some critics were led to dismiss Lamprecht’s theory. Lamprecht was
remiss in not articulating the organic relationship between the individual
and the general. Not totally ignorant of this relationship between the
individual and the general forces in history, Lamprecht summed up his position
in a lecture on the structure of psychic change: "we might say that individuality
becomes suggestive in a very high degree to the externalworld."
37
It seems that Lamprecht’s most obvious intellectual connection was to
the psychology of Wundt. The reduction of historical movement to psychical
processes was viewed by Troeltsch as the mathematical quantification of
entities and their causal relations. This reductionism was nothing less
for Troeltsch than the elimination of the soul (DH, 443). Though Troeltsch
charges Wundt with responsibility for the psychologization of positivism
(DH, 446) and notes that his positivistic psychology cannot penetrate the
soul of the historical, Troeltsch still saw Wundt’s theory as representing
progress over Hegel’s "gnostic-spiritualistic monism"(DH, 458). Wundt’s
idea of development was based on Comte’s universal history (where there
is a real lack of exchange between the individual and the general), but
still Troeltsch recognized in Wundt’s thought the real stirrings of history
(DH, 464). This can only mean that Wundt’s psychology does not eliminate
the possibility of the emergence of the new, and this influence was carried
over to Lamprecht.
Faith, Imagination and the Object of History
In Lamprecht’s view the tension between the individual and the general
is heightened at times of transition from one dominant (collective spirit)
to another. His analysis of the assimilation of a new dominant or standard
is suggestive of Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shifts. While Kuhn identifies
the transition from one paradigm to another as a conversion experience,
requiring faith,38 Lamprecht
was far more subtle in his psychological account of the effects of a new
dominant on identity. Lamprecht’s analysis, titled "Structure of Psychic
Change," imagines that at the tensest moments of transition from one dominant
to another, volition recedes and general psychological laws assimilate
the "ego" into another frame of reference.39
This process of assimilation is governed by the dominant and the "soul
of individuality is almost choked out." 40
In the contest between identifying with a current dominant and one that
is forthcoming, an either-or vacillation presses upon the individual and
eventually a new center of personality is created. Only then does the psyche
regain its former mastery over itself.41
In both Lamprecht’s assessment of the transition of dominants and Kuhn’s
conception of paradigm shifts an imaginative leap is required of the individual
or group that will soon be re-formed. These aims and ideals that are projected
through the imagination or faith are not mere phantasms, since they do
not exist only in the mind but in the action of scientists, in the case
of Kuhn, and in the collective drama of history, according to Lamprecht.
John Dewey has offered a similar account of the unifying process of
faith and its object in A Common Faith. Dewey argues for a reversal
of the traditional conception of the "ideal": that is, it is not an embodiment
of an antecedent reality, but only a reality by virtue of a process generated
by the imagination. The ideal is connected to existence, not through the
privilege of a Being outside nature, but through the activity of cooperative
human effort. The new vision accompanying paradigm shifts and the introduction
of new dominants in the drama of history, Dewey would agree, arise not
out of nothing but emerge "through seeing, in terms of possibilities, that
is, of imagination, old things in new relations serving a new end which
the new end aids in creating."
42
There is a power of growth underlying paradigm shifts and the transition
of dominants which Dewey would classify as the union of imaginative ideal
ends and actual conditions.
In light of Troeltsch’s historical category of individual totality any
thought of a uniform law comprehending history completely, be it naturalistic
or dialectic, becomes impossible. This is the basis for the marked praxical
determination in his thought. This activism of the individual human spirit,
or the self-production of personality out of the pressing forces of history,
means that historical development can never devolve into a causally linked
series of facts. Troeltsch emphasized that it is a "unity of becoming"
that cannot be described or circumscribed logically. Striking the antirational
position so characteristic of Romanticism’s response to the Enlightenment
prejudice of reason, feeling and seeing became the essence of historical
meaning for Troeltsch. History, on these terms, cannot be summed up in
mere narration, nor can it be grasped sequentially. The unity of becoming
of which Troeltsch spoke, and the union of the actual and the ideal comprising
Dewey’s understanding of the religious frame of mind, are both dependent
on deliberate, spontaneous action. These generative forces do not arise
simply from antecedent reality, since the unity of becoming only emerges
through the project of future formation.
In this regard Troeltsch enunciated a form of causality that was germane
to the historical world. In contrast to the causality of equivalence in
the natural sciences, he promoted the idea of non-equivalent causality.
The strict causal connections in the natural sciences, based on the formula
of an equivalent exchange of forces, could not account for the creative
core of reality which always generates the new and is simultaneously guided
by the kind of imaginative end or ideal that affects the perception of
the past. The structure of historical accounts must take this facet of
historical happening into view, if historical writing is to reflect the
historical process.
Troeltsch, for all his vacillation, viewed Hegel’s philosophy of history
as the embodiment of the causality he argued against. The abstract chain
of necessities implied in Hegel’s imposition of logic onto the course of
history denied the vital, creative call for responsibility of the moment
and of personal decision (DH, 66). In emphasizing the vital role one’s
own reality plays in forming connections between past and future, Troeltsch
brings to the fore the practical and reflective importance of the observed.
Historical interpretation must always take the form of agreement or contrast
with one’s own existence. Human endeavor can never surrender to the passivity
imposed by Hegel’s logic. On these terms there is no purely contemplative
philosophy of history, and the view of the future, to be formed by us,
can never be lost (DH, 70). Troeltsch’s logic of history, demonstrating
the constructive historical process from the standpoint of the observer
(von Standpunkt des Betrachters) necessarily implies the creation
of the material of history. If the meaning of continuous development can
only be construed from the standpoint of the observer, then we can understand
Troeltsch’s perception of Hegel’s history as a "running ahead of the facts"
(DH, 73). In accord with Dewey, Troeltsch recognized the tendency for dogma
to supplant ideals under these conditions. This destinal reading of history,
Troeltsch advised, is conquered by the individual will to form ideals [der
Wille zu eigener verantwortlicher Idealbildung] (DH, 189), a practice
he not only recommended to historians and philosophers but which he viewed
as the fate that marks human historicity.
Notes
* Gabriel R. Ricci teaches in the Department
of Philosophy at Elizabethtown College. [Back]
1 See, for example, Otto Hintze’s review of Troeltsch’s
Der
Historismus und seine Probleme, originally published in Historische
Zeitschrift, volume 135 (1927), 188-232. It appears in The Historical
Essays of Otto Hintze, edited with an introduction by Felix Gilbert
(New York, 1975), 368-421. Hintze, among other things, argued that Troeltsch
confused methodological and philosophical issues in historicism. Though
Troeltsch’s analysis in Der Historismus und seine Probleme is heavily
methodological, he was deeply concerned with the metaphysical import of
historicism and its relation to a worldview. Indeed the material philosophy
of history that Troeltsch linked to his logic of history demonstrates that
he was conscious of the ethical implications of historicist principles.
In this respect Troeltsch’s methodological concerns can be traced to Droysen
who also explicated the moral strata of historical practice. [Back]
2 The historical theorists mentioned here can all be
considered as having been actively involved in explicating the relationship
of psychology to history. From this perspective their approaches differ
in the range the psychological dimension assumes. [Back]
3 This method is most notably associated with Jacob
Burckhardt, but also had leading proponents in Germany with Riehl and Freytag.
For an account of the rise of Kulturgeschichte, see G. P. Gooch,
History
and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (Boston, 1965, first published
in 1913), especially the final chapter, 523-542. [Back]
4 There has been some ambiguity surrounding Ranke’s
position concerning methodological and philosophical issues in history.
Georg Iggers discusses Ranke’s reputation in The German Conception of
History (Middletown, Conn., 1968), 63-89, and in an article titled
"The Image of Ranke in America and Europe," History and Theory,
Volume XIV, Number 4, Beiheft 14, 17-40. There seems to be clarity regarding
his position with Hegel, however. He was vehemently opposed to Hegel’s
conception of God as a developing God and Hegel’s alleged ability to grasp
the total universal historical process. [Back]
5 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme
(Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1977), 459-463. Hereafter this work will be cited
in the text as "DH." [Back]
6 See Maurice Mandlebaum’s discussion of the Romantic
backlash to the Enlightenment in History, Man and Reason, "The Scope
of Historicism," (Baltimore, 1977), 41-55. His discussion is framed within
the context of the developmental view in history. [Back]
7 Ernst Troeltsch, "The Idea of Natural Law and Humanity
in World Politics." This article appeared as an appendix to Otto Gierke,
Natural
Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800, translated by Ernest Barker,
Volume I (Cambridge, 1934) 201-222. This essay was originally delivered
as a lecture before the Hoechschule fuer Politik in Berlin, 1922.
[Back]
8 Karl Popper’s argument against historicism was perhaps
the strongest voice against this tendency in some forms of historicism.
See the Preface to The Poverty of Historicism (New York, 1964) for
Popper’s formal, logical argument against historicism. A summary of this
argument is included in note 24 below. [Back]
9 Throughout What is History? (London, 1905)
Lamprecht applied the concept of the dominant and believed it most applicable
to the German people. See e.g. p. 184. [Back]
10 Meinecke’s chapter on Goethe in Die Entstehung
des Historismus (München, 1936)
begins: We would not be where we are today without Goethe. Meinecke connects
events in Goethe’s life with Eureka experiences reflecting the historicist
outlook. Dilthey had eloquently argued that the distinction between the
two scientific realms lay in the objects of inquiry that each pursued,
and similarly Rickert argued that the two sciences differed only in the
methods to be employed in research. Operating within the Kantian framework,
Rickert made no effort to radically differentiate the natural world from
the historical world, a distinction that was profoundly made by Giambattista
Vico in the eighteenth century and evidenced in the thought of Herder and
Goethe. Dilthey, having recognized the peculiarity of the historical object,
that it was in fact continuous with the historical observer or subject,
invoked Alexander Pope’s sentiment that the proper study of mankind was
man. See H. A. Hodges’s Wilhelm Dilthey: An Introduction (London,
1944), 58. Dilthey’s dictum that historical understanding was the rediscovery
of the "I" in the "Thou" signifies that he who makes history is he who
interprets history, thus making historical inquiry simultaneously an act
of self-inquiry. [Back]
11 Ernst Troeltsch, "Empiricism and Platonism in the
Philosophy of Religion," Harvard Theological Review, Volume V, Number
4, October 1912, 402-422. In this essay Troeltsch distinguished between
James’s psychological and relative approach to religion and the European
tradition that was founded on the unitary essence of religion. James was
radically empirical in his view, while at the time Troeltsch was still
captured by the Platonic framework. Troeltsch, who was tempted by James’s
view in 1912, acknowledged that his position came "unintentionally" close
to James’s without violating transcendental philosophy. The "mixed universe,"
i.e., the mixture of irrational and rational forces, proclaimed by James
to be the nature of the world, calculated the worth of religion in regard
to its affective force, not in its derivation from an original source.
By the time he wrote Der Historismus Troeltsch had become radically
historical and his philosophy rested on a profound respect for historical
individuality in its developmental totality. [Back]
12 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind (New Jersey,
1975), Introduction I, 20. [Back]
13 Ibid., Introduction II, 32. [Back]
14 Alfred North Whitehead’s analysis of experience,
in Adventures of Ideas, offers a similar account of the need to
go beyond the traditional philosophical framework in capturing the essence
of reality. Whitehead is known for his own interpretation of monadology,
and his suggestion that the basis of all experience is emotional echoes
Bergson’s intuitive philosophy. Whitehead demonstrated that the fundamental
subject/object relationship was not an epistemological one, i.e., the relationship
of knower to known. Instead he defined the occasion of experience as "an
affective tone originating from things whose relevance is given." In a
word, this fundamental structure is designated by "concern." "Concern"
situates an object as an ingredient in the experience of the subject "with
an affective tone drawn from this object and directed towards it." According
to Whitehead, the Quaker word "concern" "divested of any suggestion of
knowledge" is more suited to express the fundamental structure of experience.
The connection between the temporal analysis of Bergson and Troeltsch can
be seen in Heidegger’s philosophy wherein the fundamental structure of
Dasein
is designated as Sorge or Care. Among other things, this structure
indicates that human reality is always ahead of itself. In so being, reality
can never be reduced to mere words or representations, since the future,
which arises with Dasein, is always replete with possibilities.
However, Heidegger’s link with the activist form of history and the praxis
advocated by Troeltsch and others is muffled in his design for a fundamental
ontology. See Alfred North Whitehead,
Adventures of Ideas (New York,
1933), 226. It should be noted that James Joyce at the time was actively
experimenting with a literary style to accommodate historical consciousness.
His early essay from 1904 outlines the need for us to overcome our conception
of the past as the ossified memorial of what once was and to acknowledge
the past as the source of "the development of an entity of which our present
is a phase only." Like Troeltsch and Croce, Joyce sensed that from within
the historical process that generates the superficial self, there lies
a more direct manner of acquaintance with an "individuating rhythm" that
formally links what would otherwise be a mindless succession of events.
(See the essay "A Portrait of the Artist,"
A Portrait of the Artist
As a Young Man, edited by Chester G. Anderson [New York, 1968], 257-258.)
[Back]
15 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, translated
by Arthur Miller (London, 1928). The opening lines to the first chapter,
on page 1, read like a basic tenet of historicism: "The existence of which
we are most assured and which we know best is unquestionably our own, for
of every other object we have notions which may be considered external
and superficial, whereas, of ourselves, our perception is internal and
profound." [Back]
16 See Iggers’s accounts of Ranke in the article and
book mentioned above. Iggers partially explains the ambiguity surrounding
the master historian as the direct result of detaching Ranke from his philosophical
heritage of idealism. Iggers’s account of Ranke in The German Conception
of History also reports on his ambiguous status. Ranke apparently did
not make a strict demarcation between methodology and philosophy as some
have argued. There is much in Ranke’s critical writings that evidences
the historicist methodological framework. Iggers cites Ranke’s interpretation
of Machiavelli, which insisted that his politics be understood within his
original situation. Equally, Ranke did not conceal his metaphysical leanings
when he argued for an underlying objective spirit generating historical
totalities. Ranke was neither a strict empiricist nor a flagrant idealist.
It is certain, however, that he never imagined that history could be pursued
from the vantage point of the completion of humanity; that was strictly
the province of God, and herein lies his main dispute with Hegel. [Back]
17 G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth
Century, 98. [Back]
18 Ibid., 100. [Back]
19 Ibid., 102. [Back]
20 Ibid. [Back]
21 Ibid., 103. [Back]
22 Ibid., 131. [Back]
23 Friedrich Meinecke, Zur Theorie und Philosophie
der Geschichte, G. S. Band IV, 30. Troeltsch’s final lectures were
called Christian Thought: Its History and Application in English
and titled Der Historismus und seine Ueberwindung in German. The
German title indicates Troeltsch’s ambition to philosophically overcome
historicism that was tentatively worked out in Der Historismus und seine
Probleme. The lectures most relevant to the earlier volume on historicism
are "The Place of Christianity Among World Religions" and "The Morality
of the Personality and the Conscience." [Back]
24 Chapters I and III of The Poverty of Historicism
are dedicated to the contention that historicism is anti-naturalistic.
Popper outlines his formal argument against historicism in the preface
to The Poverty of Historicism written July 1957. He sums up his
argument in the following five statements: 1) The course of human history
is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge. (The truth of
this premise must be admitted by even those who see in our ideas, including
in our scientific ideas, merely the by-products of material developments
of some kind or other). 2) We cannot predict, by rational or scientific
methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge. (This assertion
can be logically proved, by reasons which are sketched below). 3) We cannot,
therefore, predict the future course of human history. 4) This means that
we must reject the possibility of a theoretical history; that is to say,
of a historical social science that would correspond to theoretical physics.
There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as
a basis for historical prediction. 5) The fundamental aim of historicist
methods is therefore misconceived; and historicism collapses.The crux of
Popper’s argument is in step number 2. It implies that the course of human
history cannot be predicted. Popper, then, wishes to establish that there
can be no theoretical history that corresponds to a theoretical physics.
Historicist theory, according to Popper, seeks an affiliation with the
methods of the natural sciences. Historicism, according to Troeltsch for
one, rests on the contention that there should be a science of the human
studies to parallel the natural sciences, but it should not embrace the
scientific model of reasoning. Consequently, the prediction of the future
is neither desirable nor possible; the future, in some ways, is as obscure
as the past. However, taking responsibility for the future is a distinct
precept of historicism. Troeltsch defined the historicism with which Popper
was concerned as "bad historicism" (e.g., Comte’s). Troeltsch was convinced
of the difference between the natural sciences and the human studies, and
in no wise did he seek to establish methods for predicting the future.
Popper’s reading of historicism appears, at best, to be impoverished. It
is obvious that Popper was not sympathetic to the distinction between the
natural sciences and the human studies on any grounds. Many historians
had already outlined theoretical approaches to history which, though not
constructed to read like the natural sciences, certainly sought the status
of sciences within the limitations of the historical process. [Back]
25 Georg Iggers, editor, The Theory And Practice
of History by Ranke (New York, 1973). See the section titled "On Progress
in History." [Back]
26 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History,
edited by Levy (London, 1909), Volume 5, 16. [Back]
27 Ibid., 1. [Back]
28 Iggers, The Theory and Practice of History by
Ranke, 50. [Back]
29 Ibid., 49. [Back]
30 Ibid. [Back]
31 Ibid., 50. Hegel’s thought leads to the conclusion
that history is the "history of a developing God." Ranke was emphatic in
his declaration of belief in the God "who was and is and will be." [Back]
32 See note 1 above. [Back]
33 Paul Tillich, "Ernst Troeltsch: Historismus und
seine Probleme," Theologische Literaturzeitung, XLIX, 1924, 25-30.
[Back]
34 Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty
(London, 1941), 78. [Back]
35 Tillich makes these remarks in the opening lines
of his review of Troeltsch’s book. [Back]
36 See footnote on page 15 of What is History?
for Lamprecht’s specific defense. [Back]
37 Lamprecht, "Structure of Psychic Change," in What
is History?, 126. [Back]
38 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(Chicago, 1970), 158. [Back]
39 Lamprecht, What is History?, 117-134. [Back]
40 Ibid., 121. [Back]
41 Ibid., 133. [Back]
42 John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven, 1967),
49. [Back]
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