PHILOSOPHY OF H1STOR Y AND ACTION

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES

IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WI L F RID S ELL A R S, University
KEITH LEHRER,

ofPittsburgh

University ofArizona

Board of Consulting Editors:

JONATHAN BENNETT, University
A LAN G I B BAR 0,

of British Columbia

University of Pittsburgh

ROBER T STALN AKER, Cornell

ROBER T G. TURNBULL,

University

Ohio State Universi(v

VOLUME 11

PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY AND ACTION
Papers Presented at the
First Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter
December 1974

Edited by
YIRMIAHU YO VEL
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Israel

D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY

DORDRECHT : HOLLAND / BOSTON: U.S.A.
LONDON:ENGLAND

THE MAGNES PRESS, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

JERUSALEM

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter. 1st. 1974.
Philosophy of history and action.
(Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v.11)
I.

History - Philosophy - Congresses. I. Yovel. Yirmiahu.

016.8.143

1974

901

II.

Title.

78-14886

ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9367-9

e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-9365-5

001: 10.1007/978-94-009-9365-5

Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,

P. O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland
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All Rights Reserved

Copyright '9 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
and copyright holders as specified on appropriate pages within.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
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for The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

by Sivan Press Ltd. Jerusalem

To N alhan Rolenslreich at Sixty

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREF ACE

ix

ACK NOWLEDGMENTS

xi

PART ONE: HISTORY, INTERPRETATION AND

ACTION
PAU L RIC 0 EUR / History and Hermeneutics
Comments by Charles Taylor

3
21

ABRA HAM KAPLAN / Historical Interpretation

Comments by Isaiah Berlin

27
38

DONALD DAVIDSON/lntending
Comments by Stuart Hampshire

41
61

NAT HAN ROT ENS TREI CH/ Historical Actions or Historical Events

69

EDDY M, ZEMACH / Events

85

ELAZ AR WEI NRYB / Descri ptions of Actions and their Place in

History

97

PART TWO: THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

FROM KANT TO SARTRE
YIRMIAHU YOVEL / Kant and the History of Reason

115

CHARLES TAYLOR/Hegel's Sittlichkeit and the Crisis of

Representative Institutions
Comments by Shlomo Avineri

133
155

J ACQ UES

159

D'H 0 N DT / Marx et les

le~ons

de I'histoire

WE RNER BEC KER / Demokratie und die dialektische Theorie der

Geschichte

177

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Transhistoricity and the Impossibility of

Aufhebung: Remarks on J.-P. Sartre's Philosophy of History

MEN A C HEM B R INK E R /

191

PART THREE: FAREWELL TO THE

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY?
RA YMOND POLIN /

Farewell to the Philosophy of History

PANEL DISCUSSION /
INDEX

Is a Philosophy of History Possible?

201
219
241

PREFACE

This volume contains the proceedings of the First Jerusalem Philosophical

Encounter - started by the Hebrew University Institute of Philosophy
(now the S.H. Bergman Centre for Philosophical Studies), which took place
on December 28-31, 1974.
In recent years the culture-gap that separates philosophers seems
slowly - indeed much too slowly - to be narrowing. Although shortcircuits in communication still do happen and mutual disrespect has not
vanished, it is becoming unfashionable to demonstrate ignorance of another
philosophical tradition or to shrug it off with a supercilious smile. Perhaps
dialectically, the insufficiency of any self-centred view that tries to immunize
itself to challenges from without starts to disturb it from within. Moreover,
as the culture- (and language-) bound nature of many philosophical
divergencies is sinking more deeply into consciousness, the irony of an
attitude of intolerance to them becomes more apparent.
Our aim was to make a modest contribution to this development. We did
not, however, mean to confuse genuine differences and problems in
communication. Consequently, the more realistic term "encounter" was
preferred to the idealizing "dialogue." The Israeli hosts, themselves trained
in a variety of philosophical traditions, felt that there is something inbetween real dialogue on the one hand and mutual estrangement on the
other, and wished to provide a meeting place for it. As this volume appears
two more Jerusalem Philosophical Encounters have taken place: one in
1976 on the philosophy of language (Meaning and Use, also published by
D. Reidel Publishing Company and the Magnes Press, the Hebrew
University) and the other in 1977 on Spinoza (in collaboration with the
Institut International de Philosophie, to be published in their Entretiens by
Martinus Nijhofl).
This volume is divided into three parts. Part One discusses systematic issues
in the philosophy of history and action, representing a number of
contemporary viewpoints, such as the hermeneutical, the analytical, and the
ix

PREFACE

phenomenological. Part Two represents the subject in historical perspective

from Kant to Hegel, Marx, contemporary Marxism and Sartre. Part Three
discusses what is living and what is dead in the philosophy of history,
starting with Raymond Polin's challenging address and continuing with a
panel discussion. I wish to thank all the distinguished colleagues and guests
who have delivered papers and participated in the discussion.

It gives me particular pleasure to dedicate this volume to Professor Nathan

Rotenstreich - teacher, friend, and colleague. Professor Rotenstreich's
impressive work - writing, teaching, and translating philosophy - has made
him the foremost figure in Israeli philosophical life. His range, depth, and
variety can hardly be matched. He is also a socially involved scholar, taking
stands on public issues a.,d providing leadership to higher education. in
Israel. The philosophy of history is one of Rotenstreich's direct concerns; he
has written on it numerous articles and a systematic book (Between Past
and Present) and has also dealt specifically with problems in Jewish history.
It was, therefore, only natural to insist that his own contribution be included
in the meeting.
As always, I am deeply indebted to Ms. Eva Shorr (of the S.H. Bergman
Centre for Philosophical Studies, the Hebrew University) for her meticulous
work and invaluable help in all stages of preparing this work for publication.
Thanks are also due to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
and the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation that helped make the Encounter
possible.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Yirmiahu Yovel

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgment is gratefully made to the following publishers who have

granted permission to use selections from their publications:
Glencoe Press for: Abraham Kaplan, In Pursuit of Wisdom, Los Angeles
1977, 68, which is a former version of his "Historical Interpretation."
Cambridge University Press for: Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge 1976,
pp. 380-386, reprinted here.

xi

PART ONE

HISTORY , INTERPRETATION,
AND ACTION

PAUL RICOEUR

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS

In this paper, I shall attempt to promote a reciprocity of arguments between

philosophical hermeneutics and the method of historical inquiry. In the case
of philosophical hermeneutics - on which I am focusing the discussion
here - this concern for hearing arguments presented by the other side is not
a frequent occurrence. Hermeneutics is better prepared to take the "way
upward," the path of the Riiclifrage which carries it from the historical
inquiry of historians towards the consideration of the historicity of human
experience in general. The "way downward" towards historical inquiry is a
path less known to it. Yet it is on this path that we encounter the most
significant questions for hermeneutics itself. The dialectic of the "way
upward," Plato has taught us, is arduous. But how much more so is this
"second navigation!"
I. FROM HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY TO HERMENEUTICS

Following the path outlined above, the contribution of philosophical

hermeneutics is not intended to improve the methodology of history, still
less to elaborate an alternative methodology. Indeed, it is not a methodology
at, all. Its purpose is quite different. It is to expose the dependence of
historical inquiry (Historie) on the historical condition (Geschichte) of
human existence. If this consideration has any bearing on methodology, this
will appear only later, by a sort of rebound effect, when hermeneutics has
shed light on some paradoxes nurtured within the historical methodology.
But before this, hermeneutics must come to terms with (~n the sense of the
Ausseinandersetzung) history at a level more profound than that of its
method, at the level of the interest which could be termed its soul. I am using
the word "interest" as Kant uses it when he considers the interest of reason
in this or that undertaking, whether theoretical or practical. It is by
reflecting directly on the interest that animates historical knowledge that
hermeneutics indirectly designates its object and its method.

3
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 3 -20. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

PAUL

RICOEUR

1. The Interest for "Knowledge" in Historical Inquiry

The interest of reason in historical inquiry is to constitute a truly scientific
and objective body of knowledge, i.e., a body of knowledge which satisfies
Kant's criteria of objectivity in the Second Analogy of Experience. In
essence, the analytical argument in the analogies runs as follows: it must be
possible to distinguish between an "objective" succession in the phenomenon and a merely "subjective" succession in my representation.
That is, it must be possible to oppose two kinds of temporal relation, one
subjected to order, the other indifferent to order. The recourse to the
criterion of objectivity established in the Analogies has a direct bearing on
our discussion. This criterion applies directly to the temporality of human
experience. It distinguishes and delineates two modes of temporality,
unordered succession on the one hand and ordered succession on the other.
Objectivity consists in the ability to apply this distinction to every sort of
experience. It is of little importance to know whether the three Kantian
analogies - permanence, causality, and reciprocal action - do indeed
identify a truly permanent trait in the conceptual structure of experience. It
is not in fact certain that in elaborating these we designate a condition to
which we are unavoidably committed if we wish to employ the notions of
experience and object in a manner intelligible to ourselves and to others. In
regard to what it states, however, the theory of the Principles - as extracted
from the complicated argument of the Analogies - does seem to be able to
serve as the ground for any analysis of the conceptual schema of our
experience, as P.F. Strawson suggests in The Bounds of Sense.
This, however, is not all there is to the argument. Our notion of
experience and of objectivity, in the strict sense of the word, does not only
presuppose a series, an order, a connectedness (causal or not); this
connectedness must also be such that experience is one in order therefore to
be mine. This is the meaning of the Transcendental Deduction: there is no
connectedness without unity, no unity without self-consciousness. In other
words: an ordered experience is an experience which can be ascribed to a
consciousness which is one in such a- way as to allow eJch person to
call that experience his. Here again, it is of slight importance that Kant
was led to a risky hypostasis - or rather, encouraged this hypostasis - by
calling upon a subsisting and permanent 1 accompanying all our
representations. What is central to the argument is that the connectedness
of experience requires a principle higher than the concepual network

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS

governing this connectedness, that this connectedness is subordinate to

the condition of the self-ascription of experience, the ascription not merely
of an order:.ed but of a unified experience.
How, we might ask, does this ground of the notion of expenence and of
objects concern the interest of the historian? The historian is concerned
insofar as he is motivated as a man of science by the desire for his object
and his science to meet the requirements of an experience which is not only
ordered but unified as well. By the same token, his interest lies in reducing
the gap between the social sciences and the natural sciences as much as
possible. This requirement is inaccurately described when it is presented as a
prejudice supported by the domination of natural science, namely as an
improper extension of the methodology of natural science to the field of
social sciences. Of course, at the level of the history of ideas, one can
observe the fascination exerted by the experimental method on social
scientists. They find in it a ready-made model serving to link together facts,
hypotheses, laws" and theories. But when reflection addresses itself to the
roots of the interests at stake, this sort of transfer from one field to the other
stems from a profound need which can be expressed as follows: if it is true
that experience, in the strict sense of the word, must be at once connected
and unified, then the difference between natural science and social science is
inessential. For if it were essential, the idea of the connectedness of
experience would be threatened and along with it, the singular character of
the conceptual network underlying this connectedness. The same argument
which excludes a plurality of worlds excludes an ultimate pluralism of
methods and of objective domains.
Of course, the analytical argument drawn from an explanatil)n of the
notions of experience and object does not prevent us from retaining
something of the Aristotelian thesis that "one must not expect the same
rigorousness in every sort of discussion, any more than one requires it in
works of art ... , for a cui tured man is one who seeks rigorousness in each
kind of thing only to the extent to which the nature of the subject permits"
(Nichomachean Ethics, 1094 b 11). This thesis cannot, however, be placed
on the same level as the requirement of connectedness and unity. At best it
forms a secondary rule, appropriate for regional differences but subordinate
to the idea of ordered and unified experience.

PAUL RICOEUR

2. Hermeneutical Reflection
I should like to introduce hermeneutical reflection here, not at the level of
the "quarrel of methods" - of the Methodenstreit between Natur- and
GeisteswissenschaJt - but at that of the conflict of interests.
If the interest which demands that the difference between natural science
and social science be made entirely relative is based upon the requirement of
constituting an ordered and unified experience, and if this requirement is
ultimately based upon the possibility that "the I think accompanies all my
representations," then it is this very possibility that must be examined. This
can, in fact, signify nothing other than the condition that I can, potentially,
ascribe experience to myself as ordered and as unified. Henceforth, the
entire project to construct a foundation is focused on the possibility of the
self-ascription of experience.
It is here that the conflict of interest arises. Are we to hold along with
Kant that the conflict opposes some "ethical" principle to the "theoretical"
interest for objective knowledge? It seems to me that the hermeneutical
perspective can initially be described - in a negative fashion - as an
attempt to dig deeper than the opposition between "theoretical" and
~'practical." This opposition can, in fact, only lead to subtracting "belief'
from "knowledge" without thereby increasing knowledge and so without
transgressing the principle of meanirtg which governs our use of the notions
of experience and object. Hermeneutics claims instead to generate a crisis
within the very concept of the theoretical as expressed by the principle of the
connectedness and unity of experience. This crisis results from a reflection
upon the conditions of self-ascription. It is only after a long journey
backwards, following prolonged questioning of the Kantian I think, master
of the unity and the connectedness of experience, that the interest governing
this very question can be identified.
Let us attempt to follow this questioning, as it moves from Historie back
to Geschichte, from historical inquiry back to the historical condition. The
first step back consists in recognizing that the self-ascription of experience is
not a primary, sovereign, self-constitutive act. Instead it ha,s always been
preceded by the experience of belonging-to . .. what knowledge attempts to
posit in front of the subject as its object.
This belonging-to can be ignored with no apparent harm to the
constitution of physical objects. Galilean and Newtonian science, in fact,
arose from the decisive split between the physical world and the world of

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS

perception, which had determined the constitution of Ancient and Medieval

cosmologies. In thus breaking the ties between the physical object and the
perceptive field, the new mathematical science of nature actually constituted
the physical object as such. The object then became what I can oppose to
myself, what I can distinguish and place in front of the subjective flow of my
experience. And yet, even at the level of natural science, it should not be
forgotten that it is because I first find myself thrown into situations I have
not chosen, because I am affected by things I receive but have not created,
that I can assign myself the task of orienting myself, of projecting my own
possibilities into these situations. The most primordial sort of understanding
is nothing other than this project of determining what affects me as this or
as that; namely the project of thinking what I receive. Underlying the
conceptual network developed by an analytical argument, there is thus a
much more primordial relation between receiving and determining which is
properly the domain of an ontology of finitude. The analytical argument is
situated at the level of the principle of meaning without which we could
make no intelligible use of the notions of' experience and object.
Hermeneutical reflection digs under this principle and exposes it as merely
the rule to which the users of ordinary language are committed. Behind this
rule, hermeneutics aims at the finite and transcendent condition of a being
who is qffected in his receptive capacity before he is able to determine his
situation conceptually. It is this primordial belonging-to, that cannot be
destroyed by the opposition between subjective and objective succession,
which constitutes experience.
This antecedence of the experience of belonging-to, which cannot be
cancelled by physical experience, is even less in danger of being contradicted
by historical experience. The historical object can never' really be placed
before me as the other of my temporal representations. It presents a
temporality which is not foreign to my own. My temporality is primordially
related, by means of what Husserl tenns Paarung - a sort of pairing - to
the temporality of others whom I apprehend as other subjects, other selves,
subjects analogous to myself. According to this pairing, one temporal flux
accompanies another temporal flux; yet this accompanying does not
correspond to the way in which the I think accompanies all my
representations, even when this is understood as an "I can ascribe to
myself' all my representations. Instead, an I can accompanies another I
can, analogous in its capacity to ascribe its experiences to itself. But this is

PAUL RICOEUR

not all. The foreignness of historical reality cannot even be included in the
otherness of intersubjectivity. The temporality belonging to historical reality
consists in the following: the pairing of one temporal flux to another appears
as a relation of simultaneity which, in turn, is only a cross-section of an allencompassing flux which, in addition to coexistence, also includes
succession. What is encompassed by historical temporality is a threefold
relation; my personal history relates at once to contemporaries,
predecessors, and successors (to use the language of Alfred Schutz in his
phenomenology of the social world).
My temporality belongs to this higher-order temporality. And this
belonging-to no longer seems capable of objectification in the sense required
by the Kantian analytical argument, i.e., an opposition between objective
and subjective succession. If the physical object can still be constituted by
this distinction and by this opposition between the subjective modality of
unordered succession and the objective modality of ordered succession, the
historical object calls for a different sort of constitution which includes a
multitude of temporal fields themselves related as contemporaneous,
anterior and posterior within an all-encompassing temporal field that is
history itself. As a result of this enigma, history eludes the limiting
conceptual framework by which we make intelligible to ourselves what we
call experience and the objects of experience. This enigma does not involve
severing ethics from physics but rather removing the historical from the
sway of the natural.
This belonging-to, however, is not unintelligible. It is the condition for
what we understand, even in ordinary language, when we speak of the past
as what is transmitted to us through traditions. It is within the framework of
this transmission that we can speak - as we have just done above - of our
predecessors and our successors. The intelligibility belonging to the
historical field cannot be reduced to the course of things, to the governing
order which in Kant's example in The Second Analogy limits us to seeing
the boat floating down the river. There is no doubt that human events are
interwoven with the course of things. The boat sails down the river and we
along with it Nevertheless, even if we have a perfect right to speak of the
ordered and objective sequence, which is properly referred to as the course
of things, in terms of the law of causality alone, understood as ordered
succession - we are also justified in seeking to express the transmission of
tradition, which binds us to our predecessors and to our contemporaries, in.

HISTORY

AND

HERMENEUTICS

absolutely specific categories. In this regard, we speak of human agents who

initiate events of which they are the authors; who interpret their actions in
terms of motives; who take into account the actions, motives and goals of
other agents; who submit their goals to norms and their norms to
institutions; who may consider these institutions as mutable or as
immutable, and so on. In Short, historical transmission demands to be
thought otherwise than as ordered succession. The basic reason is that the
higher-order temporality of history is made up of temporal fields, of
temporal fluxes similar to my own. If analogy is invoked here as the
transcendental principle of the relation of one temporal flux to another, this
is not done in order to introduce a kind of reasoning by analogy - in a
falsely empirical sense - by which we could infer the existence of our
contemporaries, our predecessors and our successors. Reasoning by
analogy is an illusion and has no verifiable status in the empirical acquisition
of human experience. The analogy at issue here is a transcendental principle
and not empirical reasoning. This principle signifies that others, all others
before, with and after me, exert the ego function, that each of us is able to
ascribe to himself his own experience like others. The function of analogy as
a transcendental principle is to preserve the equality of the signification
I - equality in the sense that others are equally egos - throughout all
dimensions forming the domain of this higher-order temporality. My
predecessors, my contemporaries and my successors were able, are able and
will be able to designate themselves as I and to ascribe their experience to
themselves. This is why the transmission of tradition can - under certain
conditions which we shall put forth later - simulate the ordered succession
of things. Under these conditions, it can lend itself to a kind of causal
explanation. However, .the conditions for this simulation are themselves to
be understood as resulting from the reification through -which historical
reality has lost its original status. If, in fact, human relations throughout
history have for the most part been reified to the point where the course of
history is no longer distinguished from the course of things, this represents
history's misfortune not its primordial constitution. Utopia bears witness to
this by untiringly directing the imagination toward an historical situation
freed from reification. The imagination would have a mere de-reifying
function did it not point to possibilities really implied by the primordial
constitution of the historical bond, to the possibilities that the actual course
of history has in some sense frozen or petrified.

10

PAUL

RICOEUR

This remark on utopia permits us to glimpse the answer to a question

raised earlier. We asked what interest carries us back from history as
science to our belonging to a lived history which precedes any relation to an
objective history. This interest, it seems to me, can be termed the interest for
communication. The term "communication" must, however, be taken here
in a broad enough sense to enable us, at least for the moment, not to take
sides with Gadamer or Habermas in the disagreement between them on this
subject. The interest for communication is not an interest for simply
renewing traditions received from the past, which would call for the
counterweight of another interest, turned toward the future - the interest for
liberation. The interest for communication is not backward-looking nor does
it call for a futurist complement. On the one hand, it is hard to see from
where the interest for liberation would draw its force if the voice of human
freedom did not echo from the furthest reaches of our most ancient
traditions - Hebrew and Greek - if this voice were not both that of the
Exodus and that of the Greek city and of the Stoics. On the other hand, it is
difficult to see what end the recapitulation of our heritage wuuld serve if the
resistance to reification did not lie at the very heart of our memory. Utopia
and recollection cannot be separated; each would perish without the other. I
shall therefore not return to the quarrel mentioned earlier. It is not to the
ethical and political questions of communication that I wish to address
myself here, but to the properly epistemological issues involved in
communication. That is, I should like to consider communication as a
transcendental principle apt to conflict with the principle 'of meaning which
directs us to unify our experience and to hold the regional difference
between history and nature to be of secondary importance.
The interest for communication can be termed practical, in contrast to
the interest for knowledge, that is, for the connectedness and unity of
experience. Practical, however, is not the same as ethical. We must be
careful not to fall back into the old neo-Kantian dichotomy between value
judgments and judgments of fact. What we have here is a practical interest,
an interest for a "competence" - in the sense in which Chomsky
distinguishes between competence and performance. This competence is
precisely what can be reified, what simulates the simple objective
connectedness which we call the course of things under the conditions of
reification. The sense of this competence can be expressed in terms that are
less negative in the two following ways. First, in terms of the notion of a

HISTORY AND

HERMENEUTICS

11

higher-order temporality - the all-encompassing historical temporality

mentioned above - we can say that this competence consists in preserving
our "openness" to our contemporaries, to our predecessors and even to our
successors, in spite of the reification of our projects, norms and institutions.
Preserving our openness in this way means allowing ourselves to be affected
by the effects of history, keeping ourselves open to history's efficacity. This
is, in fact, Gadamer's concept of wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein
reinterpreted in terms of competence. A consciousness open to history is at
once the consciousness of being affected, the project of allowing oneself to
be affected, and the competence to remain affected. A second way of
expressing the sense of this competence is suggested here: if the analogy of
the ego is the transcendental principle by which we distinguish historical
connectedness from the connectedness of things, the competence which
concerns us historically is the unfailing ability to discern the difference
between the two kinds of connectedness. It allows us to identify, despite all
evidence to the contrary, the analogy of the ego not only in the short term
relationships of friendship and love but in long term relationships with
contemporaries, predecessors and successors.
By the same token, this discriminatory competence - meaning this
competence to discern history as such - places the interest for
communication in conflict with the interest for knowledge. The latter
appears in contrast to the former as a competence not to discern history as
such, not to take into account the difference between the historical and the
natural, by virtue of the principle of meaning which forbids our conceiving a
plurality of experiences as well as a plurality of worlds.
II. FROM HISTORICITY TO HISTORY

The way back from philosophical hermeneutics towards the methodology of

the historical sciences is the most arduous. Yet, it is along here that
hermeneutics has to test its ability to contribute to an authentic critique of
the historical method. Its task does not end with the "return to the
essential"; it ends only when hermeneutics enters into a renewed dialogue
with the historical sciences. Now, the return to the essential can itself
constitute an obstacle to the second part of the hermeneutic task. Indeed,
there is a danger that hermeneutics will cast itself in the role of simply
opposing methodology. This occurs when the objectification implied by this

12

PAUL RICOEUR

methodology is held to be identical with the alienation which represents the

perversion of our belonging-to history. The way back towards science is
possible only if hermeneutics can account for a principle of the
externalization of experience which is not as such already a form of
alienation but which is later perverted and, consequently, presupposed by
alienation. This principle of externalization must be implied in the very
mediation which constitutes the bond of our belonging-to history and must
be the basis of the movement towards objectification in general. In other
words, this must be a feature of the mediation described above as the
transmission of a tradition, a mediation which appeared to us to be the very
first characteristic of historical reality.

1. Temporal Distance and "Methodological" Distantiation

We become concretely aware of this principle of externalization in the case
of temporal distance. The consequence of the separation in time between us
and our predecessors is that we have access to the past only through traces,
marks, inscriptions, documents, archives, monuments of all kinds which are
the "facts" of history. To the extent that these "facts" may be said to be
.. observable," history may participate in observation and explanation along
the lines of a model of intelligibility resembling that of natural science. Marc
Bloch's plea in behalf of history attests strongly to this relation between
observation and explanation in the science of history.
But temporal distance is not in itself a principle. For the objection
remains that the perversion of the historical bond begins with the reference
to exterior marks. The first misfortune is held to be the externalization of
memory in physical marks. Plato's celebrated argument against writing in
the Phaedrus applies equally well to historical objectification insofar as this
argument opposes two sorts of memory, one "interior" - that of true
reminiscence - the other "exterior," compelled to rely upon marks and
imprints. Besides, the argument drawn from the distinction between interior
reminiscence and exterior means of recollection concerns both history and
wri ting to the extent that history is a particularly explicit case of recollection
by means of marks and traces. Plato's sharp attack on externalization in
marks and his impassioned plea for reminiscence free of external mediation
prevent us from simply hiding behind the fact of temporal distance. This is
why I am introducing a principle of distantiation which involves setting at a
distance rather than distance alone.

HISTORY

AND HERMENEUTICS

13

Distantiation is invoked as a principle in an effort to show that the

experience of belonging-to, on which historicity is based, itself stands in
need of something like externalization in order to be apprehended,
articulated and understood.
FOI: different reasons, Fran~ois Dagognet attempted to demonstrate this
in his work, Ecriture et iconographie. Taking his argument from Plato's
comparison between "letters" and "icons," he has developed a general
theory of inscription under the concept of iconicity which is in direct
oppOsition to the Platonic theory of images as mere shadows, diminished
reality. Dagognet shows that the effect of icons - in writing as well as in
painting and in all the graphic forms by means of which thought represents
and describes the universe - is to augment reality and not to diminish it.
This is accomplished in various ways which are linked by the common
feature of summing up experience, encompassing it by means of a small
number of clearly distinct signs, and thereby amplifying it by means of the
combinatory power of a concise system of signs. Dagognet opposes this
augmentary effect to the erosion of differences and dissimilarities to which
ordinary vision is prone due to the effacement and weakening of contrasts.
Graphic images thus work to combat the entropy that affects ordinary
perception. Now, externalization into marks is the sole cause of this
intensification of our experience. Similarly, it would appear to me that our
perception of history is likewise intensified and augmented by this process of
externaliza...tion which consists in the deposit of traces and inscriptions.
Temporal distance, then, which is simply given, is of little importance beside
the distantiation resulting from inscription. Once again, the objectification of
historical experience and that of writing share the same fate, both are hopes
for rehabilitation as they were objects of reprobation. It is as writing that
historical experience is set at a distance. If the science of history is a science
that proceeds by means ci traces, if it begins with an "external" critique
which employs documents from archives, this is because historical
experience is -itself a continual process of externalization, which permits of
inscription and perpetuation in archives.
This conjunction ci historical objectification and externalization through
writing is of tremendous importance for hermeneutics. Even if we say with
Dilthey that historical understanding ultimately relies on our power to
transport ourselves into a foreign psychic life, understanding becomes a
hermeneutical task only when it is mediated by written signs and, in general,-

14

PAUL RICOEUR

by an inscription. Understanding can then justly be called interpretation,

that is, textual exegesis. History is given as a text offered not only to our
understanding but to our interpretation. Understanding between our
contemporaries and ourselves is mediated by something nke a text. This
mediation confers upon temporal distance its full meaning. The issue here is
not the measurable distance which separates us from the past. This distance
can be thought of as the place and the instance of a textual or quasi-textual
mediation. The size of this gap is of little importance since the same sort of
mediation can arise between our contemporaries and ourselves, as witnessed
by the role played in human communication by written messages from living
authors in letters, newspapers and in all the mass media.
It is therefore necessary to move back from the simple fact of distance to
the distance formed by the externalization in inscription in an effort to grasp
and to circumscribe the principle of distantiation.
But we must move beyond inscription in order to discover the extent to
which distantiation is implied by the relation of ~longing-to. Before any
actual inscription, experience contains a fundamental capacity for
inscription which makes writing possible. Inquiring into the conditions for
understanding, before any interpretation of written signs, Dilthey noted that
externalization in signs is the first condition for understanding others.
Moreover, it is because these signs and the experience they express have a
certain inner connection - a Zusammenhang - an inner form, that they can
be present to the understanding. Thus objectification is absolutely primitive
and radical. It begins when life is not simply lived but understands itself and
offers itself for understanding by others through its inner connection. It is
because of this characteristic that life can be said and described.
Dilthey's analysis is confirmed by a similar reflection on the conditions of
the possibility of writing in the form of discourse, that is, in a structure
which precedes the split into spoken and written discourse. If writing is
possible, it is because discourse already possesses its own form of
externalization which can be inscribed on a material base, in an external
medium, in marks and in archives. Saying is an act externanzed in a
proposition, which - to use Frege's expression - can be written on the wall.
Saying moves beyond itself in the "said." The "said" is what signifies and
what will continue to signify when saying disappears. Hegel described this in
his chapter on the dialectic of experience and language in the
Phenomenology of Mind. I say: day is dawning. But when the day is no

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS

15

longer dawning, what was aimed at, spoken of, meant in my saying remains
as what was said. This is why it can be written. The expressible character of
experience, therefore, comes before the power of inscription. This verbal
articulation is the element of language which forms the ground for what,
following Dilthey, we have termed the inn~r connection of experience.
Experience is expressible insofar as it is discursive, and its discursiveness is
also what makes it capable of being inscribed.
Historical science takes up this spontaneous distancing in a deliberate and
methodical act of distantiation.
This is a methodological act in the same sense as the Cartesian doubt.
Returning to our earlier reflection on the transmission of traditions, we can
say that a tradition is capable of transmission when we do not confine
ourselves to living in it but begin to set it at a distance like an object. This is
the case even if this distantiation should one day disappear into mere
repetition which, itself, would in any case constitute something different
from the initial naive state. This methodical doubt at times prolongs a
sceptical, non deliberate doubt which may be experienced as a violent
discord within consciousness. Hegel calls this crisis of tradition "alienation"
in the celebrated chapter of the Phenomenology entitled "Geist."
Culture - Bildung - proceeds, to a large extent, from the pain of becoming
a stranger to one's own past as. fashioned by tradition at the level of mere
custom. This is the price paid in order that the "ethical substance" - die
Sittlichkeit - may become "subject."
Methodical doubt is the same sort of doubt but it is deliberate. II} fact,
history as a distinct discipline was born of such negative activity of this pain
of alienation. Then the relation to the past becomes a question: Why war?
asks the Greek historian. In particular, why this war between Hellenes,
destroying the pan hellenic dream? It is not difficult to see that the will to
know which takes hold of the person who raises the question cannot help
but place the entire inquiry within the perspective of the physical
explanation of nature. To look for the aition of war is to question as one
questions in physics where what is sought is the "cause" - or causes - of
motion.
A bridge is thus built between the truth of our belonging-to history and
the method of historical science. The former requires the latter insofar as
sceptJcal doubt is taken up in methodical doubt and insofar as objective
answers are sought to a question conceived in anguish.

16

PAUL

RICOEUR

The methodical mind can thus take possession of everything in our

historical bond which can lend itself to objectification and inscription.
History then truly becomes the text of human action.

2. The Moment of "Critical" Distantiation

A further step brings us closer not only to the method but also to the interest
which rules the historical method. We said above that this interest requires
that the objectivity of historical science be joined to that of the natural
sciences in such a way that the network of experience becomes a single
network and that experience as a whole can in every instance be ascribed to
an individual consciousness. Does the interest for communication, which makes us seek a distinct epistemological status for
history, require as its dialectical counterpart the interest for objectivity?
My thesis is that this implication of one interest by another can be
demonstrated if the "methodical" moment of distantiation is reduced to a
"critical" moment and if we find what is required by this critical moment in
the human experience of belonging-to.
The critical reduction no longer concerns the method of history but more
precisely the reflective consciousness of the method and, consequently, the
consciousness of the historian himself. As the term "critical" already
suggests, this consciousness judges, raises the quaestio juris, evaluates
claims and sets a limit on them. It is, to borrow the expression Eric Weil
employs in his interpretation of Kant, the "judiciary." This consciousness of
method is itself, at least implicitly, philosophical consciousness. It proclaims
the primacy of judgment in our comportment in the world. Accordingly, it
rules out the prejudices considered as the primary evil which have crept into
historical judgment through the weight of tradition. Today this critical
consciousness is more directly involved in the critical social sciences such as
the critique of ideologies and psychoanalysis. The critical consciousness
rebounds onto history itself, giving it an explicit awareness of its method
through the multiple and varied contacts between historical science and the
social sciences.
The social sciences are critical in the sense that they do not take their
starting point in historical consciousness itself in order to broaden and
elucidate this consciousness. Instead, they treat it from the outset as "false
consciousness" and apply to it the various techniques of suspicion. The level
of reference is thus displaced to unconscious structures and deep-rooted

HISTORY

AND

HERMENEUTICS

17

conflicts linked either to individual repression or to collective repression. In

both cases, the systematic distortion of communication requires an indirect
explanation which is no longer in line with the direct understanding of the
historical condition. This explanation by unconscious structures and
conflicts may not be self-sufficient. An explanation in terms of the
unconscious or in terms of social structures not recognized by consciousness when it acts intentionally loses its meaning if no way is offered of
reintegrating the contents thus revealed in the process of self-understanding.
What good would it do an agent acting intentionally to know that all his
intentions are slanted by forces unknown to him, if this discovery cannot
finally be transposed into increased lucidity? It would thus appear that,
ultimately, explanation in terms of unconscious structures is only a phase in
the process of understanding, for otherwise understanding itself would have
no meaning. Reconverting explanation into understanding in this way is not,
however, what is at issue here. What we are interested in is why this detour
by the most extreme sort of objectification is necessary; we want to know
the meaning of this indirect phase for historical understanding.
History as science cannot remain untouched by this development of the
critical sciences, even though these sciences, as we said earlier, are not
themselves historical and even though history, for its part, cannot be
absorbed by these sciences without losing its status as a science of past
events based on traces, marks, and inscriptions. This concerns history less,
jt seems to me, at the level of its method than at that of its own reflective
consciousness. This is not to say that historical explanation is in no way
affected as to its method by the lessons of psychoanalysis and
ideology-critique, for as a result of its contact with them it does arrive at a
more precise sense of the structures constituting its object. Nevertheless,
complex as a historical method enriched by psychoanalysis and
ideology-critique may become, history does not lose its identity and simply
allow itself to be absorbed by the critical sciences. The historical as such
resists this dissolution. It is the historian who, in the reflective consciousness
of his method, is profoundly affected and changed. The suspicion of the
critical sciences causes his methodical doubt to become ever more radical.
In spite of the influence of the critical sciences this doubt has always been
part of his field of study for it directly constitutes the methodology of this
pursuit. It is in this sense that the critical moment is incorporated into the
historian's interest for his object at the level of the reflective consciousness
of his method.

18

PAUL RICOEUR

What kind of connection can be found between our experience of

belonging-to history and this critical moment of distantiation?
As we stated above, the final step hermeneutics takes in the direction of
historical science involves the interests in which their respective attitudes are
grounded. It seems to me that this step is required by the very structure of
understanding, its structure of anticipation. This structure contains the seeds
both of a certain rehabilitation of prejudice as pre-judgment and of a critical
requirement in regard to prejudices insofar as they create an obstacle for an
authentic relationship with the thing itself. In other words, the critical
moment is required by the work of partitioning into authentic and
inauthentic experience; this work takes place at the level of the structure of
anticipation, at the level of pre-understanding.
Let us then take this as our starting point.
The very term "fore-structure of understanding" (Vor-struktur des
Verstehens) comes, as we know, from Heidegger. Paragraph 32 of Sein und
Zeit lists a series of expressions possessing the prefix vor- (Vor-habe, VQrsiehl, Vor-grifJ). All these expressions point to a fundamental characteristic
of understanding, namely that no one - not the historian, the literary critic,
the art critic, or the exegete - can approach his object without some
previous notion of that object. What is called the hermeneutic circle on the
purely philological level is only a "derived form" of this originary forestructure of understanding. H.G. Gadamer is not mistaken in taking the
argument even further and in seeking in the history of jurisprudence a level
of prae-judicium which would no longer include the pejorative connotation
of the pre,-judged but which would still carry the traces of its relation to the
fore-structure of understanding. This relative rehabilitation of pre-judgment
leads to the recognition (Anerkennung) of authority, insofar as authority
offers us a cultural heritage. Tradition is therefore what precedes historical
investigation in that it assures the "preservation" (Bewahrung) of the
heritage of the past in a manner which cannot be reduced to the mere
"perseverance" of natural forces.
This concept of fore-structure, and the manner in which it is developed by
Heidegger and by Gadamer, does not consider the return path of this forestructure which constitutes our historical being. It is, however, on this way
back that hermeneutics confronts the critical moment in its most distinctive
form, namely in ideology-critique. And yet this confrontation is implied by
the very notion of fore-structure:

HISTORY AND HERMENEUTICS

19

Un) this circle of understanding ... is hidden a positive possibility of the most primitive kind
of knowing. To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our
interpretation [Ausiegung), we have understood that our first, last, and constant task is never
to allow our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and
popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these
fore-structures in terms of the things themselves (Being and Time, Oxford, 1967, p. 195).

A critical partitioning into pre-understanding and pre-judice is therefore

required by the hermeneutics of understanding itself.I This partitioning, in
turn, requires that the critical moment be included in the movement directed
from the ontology of understanding towards the methodology of
interpretation. But for structural reasons, the former cannot return to the
region of dialogue with the social sciences.
H.G Gadamer indicates the direction to be taken here; If tradition
"preserves" the heritage of the past, and if we reply to this voice of the past
with an anticipation of its meaning, this reciprocal relation must undergo the
rigors of criticism if the past is to keep some "signification" for us. Indeed,

only the test of criticism can enable us to discern what is worth questioning.
It alone can enable us to decide between what in pre-understanding is mere
"fancy" and "popular conceptions" and what is authentically a "forestructure in terms of the things themselves." In this respect, historical
experience does not escape Socrates' warning: a life which is not
"examined" is not worthy of the name.
CONCLUSION

Has the argument of the "way downward" from hermeneutics to historical

science abolished the argument of the "way upward" from the methodology
of history to the ontology of historicity?
Not at all.
The first argument states that historical transmission requires categories
different from those which rule physical succession. The second concerns
the relation between historical ana social sciences. Both paradoxes are set
against the paradox of history's two-fold foundation in a two-fold interest.
The difference between historical science and natural science is
unessential to the extent that history also relies on "facts" and proceeds
from "observation" to "explanation" and "theory." But this same difference
is essential to the extent that history cannot rid itself of the categories of

20

PAUL RICOEUR

meaningful action, such as project, motive, evaluation, norm, institution,

and ultimately the category of the historical agent acting intentionally. The
objectivity of history therefore remains merely analogous to that of natural
science, and history can never be a sub-section of natural science.
In the same way, history tends to become one of the critical social
sciences to the extent that it takes into account not only the motives of
which historical agents are aware, but also concealed motives. History
would thus appear to enjoy the status of strict objectivity accorded to these
sciences. Yet history remains tied, in spite of all its efforts to the contrary, to
the nature of events which characterize men's action on the course of things,
and to the nature of succession between generations, founded on the
primordial relation between contemporaries and predecessors.
Finally, the ambiguous nature of the historical method betrays the
allegiance of history to two different systems of interest: an interest for
objective knowledge and an interest for communication. We have shown
that these interests neither altogether exclude nor altogether include one
another; they act instead as the two foci of an ellipse. The dialectical relation
between these two interests is what ultimately justifies the paradoxes of
methodology. The objectivity of history moves tangentially towards the
objectivity of the natural sciences and towards that of the social sciences,
but it cannot be completely absorbed by either. The ,parallelism between
their methods cannot erase the difference in their foundations.
The two arguments presented in this essay come together and form a
single argument which I should like to call a "deduction" (in the Kantian
sense of the word) of the process of history.

Universite de Paris
and the University of Chicago

CHARLES TAYLOR

COMMENTS

There is a great deal in Professor Ricoeur's paper. Perhaps we can regard it,
however, as composed of a base and a superstructure, in the sense that it
relies upon there being a fundamental distinction between the situation in
which we find ourselves in relation to historical inquiry on the one hand, and
that in relation to the natural sciences on the other. The entire development
of the argument, and the formulation of our current dilemmas in the latter
part of the paper, are based on this distinction. Let me therefore focus on the
distinction itself, because it is an extremely difficult one to get clear. Once it
has become clear, one can go on to what depends on it. But I shall confine
my own remarks to this distinction alone.
The distinction comes out in a number of ways in the paper, but above all
in what Ricoeur says about ourselves as subjects engaged in historical
inquiry - that we have to take account of the way in which we, as subjects',
belong to a certain historical epoch, or a historical belt of transmissions, of
tradition. In order to bring out what this means, let me introduce a term of
art: self-understanding, in a specific sense of self-understanding which need
not outlive the present discussion (as I do not think it is widely usable, but it
will help today). By this I shall mean the understanding we have of ourselves
through our classification of different kinds of human motivation, or
different kinds of human possibilities, as we see them, ones which are
essential to our achieving certain fundamental modes of human life as we
understand it.
For instance, in a given civilization like ours, there is a conception of
what it is to be an individual, that is, an autonomous human being, a fullyrealized individual as against one who is, in some way, not autonomous. Or
there is a conception of what it is to be a rational human being, or a
productive human being. These are cases of what I mean by concepts which
characterize a certain type of human motivation, or a certain type of human
possibility.
Now, all of these concepts are only comprehensible contrastively.That is,
21
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 21-25. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

22

CHARLES

TAYLOR

we understand what rationality is by means of a certain set of notions of

what can breach it, ones constituting irrationality; we understand autonomy
as contrasted with heteronomy. And because of the necessity of contrast
here, our understanding of what the life forms are - what it is to be an
autonomous or a rational man - goes along with, and is intimately related
to, an understanding of the life form of a heteronomous or an irrational
human being, and so on.
This means that we understand ourselves only by understanding certain
other kinds of human beings, other kinds of life possibilities. Sometimes, of
course. these are realized, as far as we are concerned, by other people in our
close milieu. In other cases one of the alternatives may seem to characterize
our civilization virtually as a whole. In particular, ours is a historical
civilization, in the sense that we have defined ourselves by certain notions of
progress, or development, or maturation relative to earlier civilizations. It is
a central feature of our civilization that an important part of the contrasts in
terms of which we define ourselves is histor.ical. That is, we consider
ourselves to be moderns who are rational, who have a certain ideal of
autonomy, and we define this partly by the contrast with earlier
civilizations, which we believe to have lacked those notions in important
ways. And we won through to those notions of autonomy and rationality
and so on-notably, for instance, in the seventeenth century revolution-by a
negation of certain earlier life ideals or notions of human possibility.
This aspect of our self-understanding is still very much alive today. If you
ask someone today who believes in those ideals to tell you what they mean,
he will sooner or later be forced into talking about the seventeenth century
revolution, Galileo, Newton and so on. And he will talk.about it as an act of
historical negation of what went on before. The same goes for other
traditions; to Marxists, for instance, it is even more relevant.
In our civilization, consequently, the universal human necessity of
defining one set of possibilities by contrast with others, is to an important
degree a matter of historical understanding, because an important category
of the "others" with whom we contrast ourselves are those from whom we
sprang.
This does not mean, of course, that we never employ purely contemporary contrasts as part of our self-definition. It may be, for instance, that many people in the Western world, to a considerable degree,
define their notion of autonomy also by how they see the Soviet world. Or it

COMMENTS

23

may be tha~ in twenty years time, we shall all be defining ourselves in

considerable measure by contrast with contemporary Chinese civilization.
But even if ours is not an exclusively historical consciousness, it involves
attitudes to history in a very important way.
We can sum up what I have been saying so far in the statement that, in
our civilization, there can be no self-understanding without historical
understanding, without some understanding of what the people who
preceded us were like. The important point that Ricoeur makes will come
out if it is also possible to convert that proposition as I think it is. That is, I
want to claim that there is also no historical understanding without, in the
sense I explained, self-understanding. Let me try to outline, in the brief time
available, my justification for this claim.
I think this claim follows if we accept one basic assumption: that we
cannot have something describable as historical understanding, without
having a set of notions of history which fulfil the criteria of what Weber
called "meaning adequacy" as opposed to mere "causal adequacy." That is,
we would be dissatisfied with a historical account of what brought about the
French Revolution. or of what went on in the Roman Empire. ifit did not give
us an idea of how people acted, thereby being "meaning adequate" in
Weber's sense.
The only way you could deny this bold assumption I am making, is if you
could imagine a historical account which gave us an explanation in terms of
generalizations about or correlations of human behaviour, one which was
purely, in Weber's sense, "causally adequate." That is, founded purely on
the fact that we discover these generalizations to hold by counting over
instances. And although many people have issued promissory notes about
the possibility of doing this, I defy anyone to give me one historical account
of any event, any time, which anyone will take as adequate, but which is
based purely on this foundation.
So in default of an argument in principle for making that assumption, I
shall simply issue this challenge and take it as granted that we make it a
condition of adequacy of historical explanations that such explanations be
"meaning adequate." If this is so, then I think one could show that the
background of any conception of "meaning adequacy" in Weber's sense is
precisely one or more of those classifications of different kinds of human
possibility that I mentioned before. If this is so in turn, then the particular
human possibilities we see ourselves as realizing are always there as a

24

CHARLES TAYLOR

perhaps unspoken part of the contrast. Thus, there is always some element
of contrasting "them" with "us" which is involved in our understanding of
another epoch. If that is so, then one can indeed convert the proposition I
advanced earlier - that there is no self-understanding without historical
understanding - and claim also that there is no historical understanding
without self-understanding. From which it follows that there is quite a
different predicament here in historical inquiry than in inquiry in natural
science. And this is precisely the distinction underlying Ricoeur's paper.
That is, natural scientists attempt to abstract totally from the predicament
of the subject who is doing the inquiry, and to discover a language such as
the language of mathematics, or the language of mathematics plus reference
to certain physical events, and so on, which should be ideally
understandable in a way which involves no reference at all to the historical
or life situation of any of those engaging in the inquiry. Ideally, if we met
some intelligent beings with a completely different physical base than
ourselves - say intelligent gaseous clouds in Alpha Centauri in the year
2025 - we should be able to communicate with them about particle physics,
to exchange equations in some way. So in this sense there is an ideal of those
sciences which involves complete abstraction. But if what Ricoeur is saying,
and what I am trying to say, about history is true, this is completely
impossible in historical inquiry.
It follows from this that an important element of self-criticism is required
in any historical inquiry. In other words, the inquiry is always going awry,
because we are always distorting it, because we have this other very
important interest which we do not have in the inquiry into nature. Since the
way we understand ourselves. and therefore our entire practice, is bound
up with a certain projective interpretation of others.
If you start interpreting the Middle Ages differently than as being dark
ages in which all human learning and light disappeared, you threaten the
whole life project of a Macaulay, of the Whig historians and their successors
in modern civilization. And they naturally have an interest in defending this
interpretation. which is. one might say. our life interest. Therefore. the only
way the discussion can proceed is by uncovering these distortions that we
project in virtue of the fact that the whole way we put our own lives together
is bound up with them.
Another example: we are engaged now in trying to discover how to
understand the process of political development in the world, particularly in

COMMENTS

25

connection with those countries which now call themselves "developing

countries," in the modern jargon. As a matter of fact, there are a number of
theories put forward in contemporary American political science, called
theories of development, which I think are all guilty of the most horrendous
distortion in this process.
The way in which this distortion comes about is intimately bound up
with, or dependent on, the way Americans, and Westerners in general, see
themselves, understand themselves, as occupying one among the many
human possibilities. And one does not get to the real discussion of how this
is distorting our understanding of what development is in Kenya or Uganda
or India, without bringing into the discussion the whole set of conceptions of
what man is which underlie it, and underlie the presupposed conception of
Western civilization, autonomy and so on. One really does not begin to raise
the issues without doing that.
Thus in historical inquiry, there is a necessity - particularly by using the
routes that Ricoeur mentioned at the end, such as the critical sciences or
psychoanalysis - to try to get to an understanding of how one is projecting
wrongly onto the historical epoch. One does not begin to get a revision of
historical understanding without this. In this sense there is no historical
understanding without self-understanding. We cannot detach it from our
predicament as an agent, from where we are, from the historical period we
belong to, as we rightly try to do in physics.
All Souls College
Oxford

ABRAHAM KAPLAN

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION

The philosophy of history differs from many other fields of philosophy in

this respect, that while its general questions are relatively easy to deal with,
specific problems are much more difficult. By contrast, in the philosophy of
science, for instance, general questions like the nature and basis of scientific
knowledge are still unsettling, while specific problems like the logic of
measurement or the relation between physical and mathematical geometry
have been dealt with rather well.
Here I present some of the specific problems in the philosophy of history,
especially the problems of historical interpretation. I distinguish various
types of history, and corresponding types of historical interpretation. In a
particular body of historical writing several types can be simultaneously
present and intertwined, as they are in the work of such writers as James
Bryce and Alexis de Tocqueville. The types must be distinguished
nevertheless, because each poses distinct methodological problems.
There is need in the philosophy of history for more than an understanding
of what is true "in principle" about the writing of history. We need to
understand what in fact historians do. In principle, the description,
interpretation and explanation of what happened in history may be no
different from what applies to any other sort of happenings; in practice,
there are many special problems. It is absurd to proclaim conclusions about
what is true "in the last analysis," while we are still. floundering in the first
analysis.
What historians actually do confronts us at once with the problem of
what is to be identified as a historical/act. The materials of the historian do
not themselves constitute his subject-matter. The materials are traces or
remains of certain processes and events: documents, inscriptions, coins,
ruins, perhaps memories. The subject-matter is not these remains but the
events themselves, "what actually happened," as von Ranke has it.
The problem is that we cannot, as he supposed, "let history speak for
itself." It is historians who speak, not history, and what they say is not

27
Yirmiahu Yovel (edJ. Philosophy of History and Action. 27-37. Dordrecht. Reidel. 1978.
Revised from In Pursuit of Wisdom!. Los Angeles. Glencoe. 1977. 168.

28

ABRAHAM

KAPLAN

determined solely by what actually happened - as is amply illustrated, fo~

example, by the periodic Soviet rewriting of history. If history is more than a
fable agreed upon (Voltaire), a shallow village tale (Emerson), a distillation
of rumor (Carlyle), or simply a huge Mississippi of falsehood (Matthew
Arnold), this can only be if it rests on an objective basis of historical fact.
Though the historian may aspire to let the facts speak for themselves, he has
still the task of determining what the facts are.
Historians constantly face such questions as whether Kennedy's assassin
had co-conspirators, where in America Norsemen landed before Columbus,
when the Dead Sea scrolls were inscribed, or who authored a certain one of
the Federalist Papers. A comprehensive answer to such questions about a
particular domain of events is a historical chronicle. Examples are the facts
about church history recorded by Eusebius in the fourth century, or the
facts about land-ownership recorded in the Domesday Book in the eleventh
century. A historical chronicle is the outcome of a set of decisions by which
the materials of history are interpreted as providing the historian with a
certain subject-matter.
That the statements of chronicle are specific rather than general is not in
itself problematic, as used to be thought by those who attached great
importance to the difference between ideographic and nomothetic
disciplines. Establishing facts may be quite as difficult, and have quite as
much scientific significance, as formulating valid generalizations. For the
practising historian there is little to recommend the Baconian notion that
science begins with an assemblage of facts, from which it then extracts
universal laws. Such a "beginning" is in practice a point at which the
historian would quite often be content to leave off. A historical chronicle has
the same logical structure and function as an ephemeris, an almanac or an
atlas, and may occupy the historian just as these others occupy the
geographer or astronomer.
The sameness of the logic is a matter of principle; in practice the historian
faces a distinctive difficulty. It is that his materials lie in the present while his
subject-matter is the past. (This is a difficulty for the astronomer as well,
who interprets the image on his photographic plate as the trace of a light-ray
emitted long ago.) In the most fundamental terms the problem here is the
relation between meaning and verification. The evidence is present, but what
it is evidence for is something past. What the statements of chronicle mean
is something quite other than what verifies them.

HISTORICAL

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The question is how we move from evidence to meaning, from present to

past. That there is an intimate connection between meaning and verification
is by now a truism, but just what the connection is remains obscure,
especially in the case of history. As time goes on we not only uncover new
historical evidence but also new meanings in the evidence we already have.
Both processes affect what we accept as historical fact. But it is not our
acceptance which makes it factual.
The possibility of construing reference to the past as a logical
construction out of present evidence was explored by G.H. Mead in his
Philosophy of the Present. While sharing the underlying pragmatism of his
theory of meaning, I am not persuaded that it i~ literally the past, rather
than our view of the past, which changes with the changing present. It is true
not only that the past illuminates the present, but also that the present
throws new light on the past. The question is whether we then see the past
differently or whether there is something different to be seen. If the realist
insists that we only see it differently, the pragmatist asks how the reality can
be distinguished from what we see as real, without an outright begging of the
question. Yet how otherwise are we to distinguish between an objective
history and a fable agreed upon? Perhaps Orwell's slogan in 1984, "Who
controls the past controls the future" is not the whole story; are we to add,
"Who controls the present controls the past"?
The first sense of historical interpretation, then, is that historical remains
are taken to be traces of certain happenings; a subject-matter is inferred or
construed from materials. Interpretation is involved in the sheer
determination of historical fact.
The historian not only determines what happened; he reconstructs what
happened, presenting it as the effect of certain causes and as the cause of
certain effects. In such a reconstruction, discrete historical facts are
interpreted to constitute inter-connected historical events. The task is to
establish linkages, as particular in themselves as are the facts being linked.
What part was played by Trotsky in the Bolshevik Revolution, or by the
.\1unich Pact in the outbreak of World War II? Whether Caesar crossed the
Rubicon is a question of historical fact; an answer to the question what
difference it maol: presents It as a historical event.
The outcome of thiS second type of historical interpretation is not a
chronicle but a narrative, the presentation of a sequence of events bound
together in a causal network, as in the histories written by Herodotus and

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KAPLAN

Gibbon. The difference between chronicle and narrative is like that between
an anamnesis, the background data about a patient, and a case history,
which details the onset and course of a disease. When the astronomer asks
whether quasars are relatively near or very distant he is, as it were, on the
level of chronicle; when he asks about the source of their astonishingly great
energies, he is preparing a narrative. If the quasars are very distant they
have much higher energies, which are presumably produced by quite
different processes, than those to be expected if the quasars are nearby. We
cannot think fruitfully about causal relations in ignorance of their relata;
narrative depends on chronicle, events on facts. Yet we can decide what are
the facts only on the basis of the causal connections between what happened
and their traces. One chronicle may be better than another just because it
aIlows for a better narrative.
The basic problem here was prefigured by Kant, in his insistence that an
objective world can be conceptualized only as existing in a causal order - or
rather. in a unified causal system, not in isolated causal streaks, as
Reichenbach called them. Every event enters into an unlimited network of
causal relations with all other events. The difficulty is that the causal
relations by which we come to know it as an objective event are not
necessarily those which make it significant. The knowledge of causes and
effects which allows the historian to interpret his findings as traces of certain
historical facts does not automatically provide a basis for interpreting the
facts as the elements of a certain narrative.
To know not only that something happened, but just what it was that
happened, requires consideration of a much larger network of causal
relations, perhaps also one which is much more finely reticulated. What
constituted the "fall" of Rome is a matter which hinges less on the
determination of facts, like the capture of the city by Alaric, than on their
interpretation as having certain causes and consequences. Which causes and
consequences is as much a matter of the historian's choice as of objective
necessities. He makes not only the inductive leap from traces to facts which
produces a chronicle, but also the inductive leap from established facts to
events having a certain significance which produces a narrative. Writing
history is a risky business.
Yet it is not as demanding as doctrinaire philosophies of science
sometimes make out. Narrative gives significance to events by presenting
their connections with other events; it does not necessarily display events as

HISTORICAL

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governed by general laws. Such a display might very well endow the events
with a more profound significance, but the generalizations are
correspondingly harder to come by. We may have far better reason to assert
a particular causal connection than to proclaim a general law governing
connections of that kind. The historian may know what started a particular
war without knowing how wars in general start. What he does know is
knowledge for aU that, and it may be quite significant. Geology is a science
just as is geophysics. and the Descent of Man is as much a scientific treatise
as is the Origin of Species.
Presenting particular events as instances of general laws is another type
of historical interpretation, whose outcome may be called a historical
analysis, notably illustrated in Marxist-Leninist historical writing. Such an
analysis embodies or presupposes a narrative, and purports also to tell us
why events had to happen as they did. Methodological problems of the
discovery and formulation of general laws present themselves in historical
research as they do everywhere in science. In history, the difficulties are
multiplied by certain distinctive features of its subject-matter.
One of these is the central role played in history by chance - the problem
of Cleopatra's nose (had it been shorter, said Pascal, the whole aspect of the
world would have been altered). Lenin was fond of the expression, "It is no
accident that ...," but accidents do happen, and they may have profound
consequences. The familiar reply is that, first, laws may formulate only
statistical regularities, and second, a specific event may be accidental while
the occurrence of some event of that kind may be necessary. (the assassin's
bullet at Sarajevo might have missed, but in any case World War I would
soon have been triggered in one way or another).
The trouble IS that in practice the statistical data are not forthcoming.
Moreover, what would have happened, as recent analyses of counterfactual
conditionals have made us aware, is impossible to say without appeal to
general laws, and whether we can appeal to them is just the point at issue.
The interpretations characteristic of sweeping philosophies of history often
beg the question, invoking "laws" which owe their plausibility to their being
tautologies. Pendulum theories of history, for example, are empty unless
they specify how much reverse movement is to be expected and within what
time interval, for there are random fluctuations in every process, and
nothing lasts forever.
The existence of laws of history, presupposed by historical analyses, is

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KAPLAN

sometimes mistakenly supposed to entail a doctrine of historical

inevitability, which Isaiah Berlin has convincingly criticized. In the
eighteenth century Vico aimed at formulating an "eternal, ideal history,
invariably followed by all nations." By the time of Marx, historical
inevitability took on a connotation of compulsion: we can only delay or ease
the birth-pangs of the new society which will inevitably come to be. Here the
problem of self-fulfilling predictions confronts us, as well as the
methodological considerations which differentiate conditional predictions
from flat forecasts. That there are laws of history does not mean that the
future is fore-ordained, but only that real possibilities for the future are no
more chaotic than are present actualities, and the past conditions by which
they were produced.
Ideologues of the Right also purport to represent the wave of the future.
Interpretation of events by reference to general features of the historical
process may be associated with a doctrine of historicism, that the inexorable
laws of history, in disclosing what must happen, show what should happen.
The laws are taken to define a moral order as well as an order of nature.
Karl Popper has focussed attention on the resulting espousal of a closed
society, blueprinted in Plato's world of Ideas and in Hegel's dialectic of
world Reason. So far as concerns the logic of the laws invoked, rather than
their content, interpretation which produces historical analysis does not
entail any specific ideological commitment, any more than do the
interpretations which produce historical narratives or chronicles.
A fourth type of interpretation presents events in the light of the purposes
of the actions constituting the events, or by which the events are produced.
The result may be called a historical account, like those given by
Thucydides and Macaulay. This is one of the familiar senses in which we
speak of understanding an action, and derivatively, understanding a
historical event or process. It is only one of the senses, however: we also
speak of understanding an event when we know its causes, or the laws by
which it is governed. Historical narrative (in terms of causes) and historical
analyses (in terms of laws) also provide understanding.
Some philosophers of history, like Croce and Collingwood, seem to think
that only historical accounts are acceptable, for they see historical events
only as expressions of human purposes. But the fact that the historian
himself has purposes in his writing of history may lead him to exaggerate the!
role of purposes in the events he is writing about. Such mechanisms of

HISTORICAL

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33

projection are well-known in other disciplines dealing with human subjectmatter. The problem for a historical account is not only that accidental
outcomes must be acknowledged. Purposiveness is also limited by
nomological processes. There may be as much significance for the historian
in the disappearance of herring from the Baltic Sea in a certain period as in
the policies of the Hanseatic League at that time; the movement of the
herring, even if not accidental, was certainly not purposive (in human terms,
that is to say).
The exaggeration of the element of purposiveness in history is illustrated
by the nineteenth century myth of the role of the hero. Hegel, Carlyle,
Emerson, Nietzsche and others conceived of the hero as the embodiment of
historically significant purposes - his own, or those of some social or
metaphysical entity. Sidney Hook's distinction between an eventful man and
an event-making man conveys the relevant criticism: individuals singled out
as historically significant may only happen to have been at a certain place
and time, and enter into history only because of that circumstance. They
may be involved in important events, but their purposes may have
contributed nothing to the significance of these events.
There are historically important events which undeniably do call for
purposive interpretation. How is the ascription of particular purposes to be
warranted? Comparatively direct knowledge of purposes, as from letters
and diaries, is both rare and unreliable. In general, the indirect and
hazardous inferences that must be made are validated by the coherence of
the interpretation (how well it fits with all we already know of that kind of
behaviour), and the comprehensiveness of the interpretation (its capacity to
make sense of all the specific data we have).
A common pattern of inference by which we ascribe purposes might be
called the circle of interpretation. We interpret given actions as manifesting
certain purposes, then invoke these purposes to justify that understanding of
the actions. The circle is not necessarily a vicious one; its usefulness depends
on the diameter of the circle, as it were. Certain actions of a historical figure
may lead the historian to perceive him as having been engaged in an
unremitting struggle for power; that the perception is sustained when
additional actions are examined is taken to validate the initial interpretation.
If we can continue to understand things in a certain way we become more
confident that we have understood them rightly all along.
A more serious difficulty arises from the circumstance that purposes need

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KAPLAN

not be deliberate, conscious, and intended. Purposes with anticipation might

be called motivational, distinguished from functional purposes which are
embodied in goal-directed behaviour without implied awareness, as in
cybernetic and other telic mechanisms. This distinction between functions
and motivations corresponds to Dewey's distinction between ends and endsin-view. Even when events can be interpreted as purposive, the historian
might err in ascribing motives when outcomes are in fact unanticipated
consequences of decisions made on the basis of quite other considerations.
The conspiratorial view of history, for instance, sees everything that
happens as having been deliberately brought about; the paranoid projects
on to others the omnipotence which figures in his own delusions. A war
might have definitely resulted from certain policies, which will form the
substance of the historical account, yet it may be that nobody intended war.
The mistake of resorting to a motivational rather than a functional
account is often defended - and compounded - by invoking fictitious
entities to serve as the locus of the alleged intentions. These are usually
personified abstract or collective agencies of action: social classes, society,
the State, the People, universal Reason, or History itself. Invoking such
entities in historical accounts is sometimes called historical holism. There is
no objection to holistic concepts if their causal workings are sufficiently
specified empirically to identify the telic pattern of the mechanisms
involved - as is often done, say, in ecology. If social classes, for example,
are said to act so as to satisfy class interests, what is asserted is no more a
matter of motivations than when we state that the early amphibians evolved
a kidney so as to provide a stable saline environment for body cells. Both
are meaningful purposive interpretations when they are construed
functionally rather than motivationally.
Historical accounts characteristically make use of purposive units.
Corresponding to functions and motivations, respectively, are concepts of
historical policies (the Drang nach Osten, the Cold War). (Periods may also
playa part in historical narrative, being specified chiefly in terms of causes
and effects. as with the concepts of the Bronze Age, or the Age of
Discovery.) All concepts presuppose judgments of relevance: such
judgments are especially hard to make in connection with purposive units.
We can find almost any purpose we choose if we are free to decide which
outcomes we will call "side-effects" or "by-products" and which we will
identify as the "major" or "significant" .consequences. Everything all

HISTORICAL

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35

together does not fit any empirically recognizable purpose; some selection
must be made. There cannot be any such thing as universal history, and
neither does history consist only of past politics. What history "really" is
about is an inescapable choice of the historian, shaping his subsequent
interpretations. History does not speak for itself even to announce its
identity.
Historic purposes are often specified on some mythological basis,
exmplified by the familiar religious philosophies of history. Events are then
taken as symbols; the task of the historian is essentially to read and expound
the symbolism. Thereby historical interpretation becomes a type of
hermeneutic. The operative norms are not continuous with those governing
inquiry, but have their own sources which, w my mind, lie somewhere
between the subject-matters of metaphysics and of psychoanalysis.
Historical explanation comprises all the types of historical interpretation
save the determination of fact, and so is provided by all types of history save
chronicle. We explain events by uncovering their causes, by presenting them
as instances of general laws, or by disclosing the purposes they serve.
Prevailing philosophies of science take as paradigmatic nomological
explanation, so that only historical analysis would qualify as a scientific
approach to the writing of history. In these philosophies, historical
narratives and accounts are construed as preparations for historical
analyses to which they must lead or be reduced. What is invoked here is
known as the deductive model of scientific explanation: explanation in terms
of general laws from which, together with appropriate antecedents, the
events to be explained are deducible. Whatever the merits of this model in
principle, in practice it has little application to what most historians do. Our
knowledge of general historical laws is sketchy at best.
Ironically, it is the most speculative historians who come closest to the
logical form demanded by these stringent philosophies of science. Vico,
Hegel, Marx, Spengler and Toynbee all formulated generalizations
purportedly providing a basis for historical analyses. Many of the
formulations are so vague, however, that it is hard to know what can be
strictly deduced from them, and the circle of interpretation so all-embracing
that the analyses must be swallowed whole or not at all. The weakness of
these histories is that they claim such universality. It is all very well to aim at
the widest possible generalization, but hardly reasonable to suppose that we
can attain it without induction from intermediate generalizations of more

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KAPLAN

limited scope. Historians who want to be Newtons would be well-advised to

be sure they have identified their Galileos and Keplers.
Historical narratives and accounts exemplify what might be called the
pattern model of explanation, as distinguished from the deductive model.
Here events are explained by exhibiting their place in a pattern of either
causes or purposes. (Fitting into the pattern might be construed in terms of
appropriate deductions, but this would be at best an artificial post-hoc
reconstruction, far from the historian's actual methodology.) The usefulness
of such explanations depends on their capacity to provide both for the
continuing flow of new historical data and the continuing growth in our
understanding of human behaviour. For this reason the writing of history is
intimately involved with all the other disciplines engaged in the study of man
(as well as with the natural sciences basic to the interpretation of historical
traces, as in the case of carbon-dating). In its own nature history is one of
the social sciences, whatever place it be assigned in the academic division of
labour.
Yet it belongs to the humanities as well. The historian may attempt to
recreate the events he deals with, in an imaginative evocation which may
have as much in common with art as with science. The interpretation of
historical events, like the critic's interpretation of a work of art, may call for
its own artistic skills. Aristotle held poetry to be more philosophical than
history, but there is much to recommend Macaulay's description of history
as a compound of both poetry and philosophy. The historian needs
imagination as all scientists do, for it is imagination which is the source of
the conceptual schemes with which we interpret experience. But the
historian's need for imagination may be especially great, to otTset the
deadening effect of contemplating only what is already over and done with.
The truth is, we never are done with the past; the historian's re-creation of
the past helps convey this truth.
In our day, this may be the most important service that history can
provide. Santayana's aphorism that the penalty for ignoring history is that
we are condemned to repeat it is, if anything, too indulgent. We may stand
condemned even if we know history, but know it only as something pale and
bloodless, remote from the springs of our own action and passion. Historical
interpretation at its best unites science and art so as to link the past to the
emerging future. In Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra Theodotus pleads with
Caesar to put out the fire in the library of Alexandria: "What is burning

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION

37

there is the memory of mankind." To which Caesar rejoins, "A shameful

memory, let it burn." The more shame if we do let the memory die; for how,
then, can we hope for a less shameful world to come?

University of Haifa

ISAIAH BERLIN

COMMENTS

I want to address myself briefly to one of the points made by Prof. Kaplan,
not by way of criticism but by way of elucidation; it also partly bears on the
discussion this morrung by Professor Ricoeur and Professor Taylor.
I wish to tell a story. If history is ever philosophy teaching by examples,
this story about the beginnings of cultural histQry might perhaps be an
illustration of this function. It began, as far as I know, some time in the
fifteenth century, earlier than is usually supposed. As everyone knows,
during the Renaissance there was a tremendous rise of interest in the
classical world. So far as we can tell - and, of course, evidence for these
impressions is seldom decisive and we do not always know exactly how to
interpret it - the interest of the Renaissance in the classical world was not
primarily historical. It was supposed that the Romans or the Greeks knew
the answers to some of the perennial questions of men - about how life
should be lived, or what made works of art beautiful, or how buildings and
cities should be built, or what legal or political systems would ensure order
and justice. It was believed that these great truths had been distorted in the
Middle Ages by the Church, by monkish superstitions, by clerical interests
and the like, with which they were all too familiar and which they deeply
disliked and, indeed, despised. They therefore wished to rescue classical
texts, and the truths they contained, from the corrupt versions which they
thought came into being partly by accident, partly as a result of deliberate
distortion by fanatical or unscrupulous editors.
To this end they began to restore and emend classical texts. They
proceeded by the best scientific methods that were open to them, by
comparing words and usages and structures, and so working out certain
rules of grammar and style in the best Baconian manner. This led to an
inductive discipline by which they established the etymology, syntax, use
and meaning of certain key words and expressions, a method still in use.
The lawyers were particularly concerned with this, since they thought that
Justinian's seventy-five editors had turned the entire corpus of Roman law
38
Yirmiahu Yo vel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 38-40. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

COMMENTS

39

into a vast chronological chaos: jurisprudence of different periods had been

confused, jumbled together, and needed sorting out. They set to work to
achieve this.
In the course of these labours they appear to have discovered that the
classical world, so far from a world which all wise men could recognize as
being the repository of timeless values, was a far stranger world than they
expected, not at all like their own. This produced a sense of the possibility,
indeed, the reality of alternative cultures, rather the sort of thing that Prof.
Taylor talked about this morning, namely, that there existed a whole world,
with social and personal relationships, moral, intellectual and political
values, significantly different from their own, but which, nevertheless,
formed a coherent whole: a world which needed interpretation, but could
not be interpreted fully within the concepts or ideals of their own
civilization.
This story has been told by others, particularly well by Prof. J.G.A.
Pocock who has written an excellent chapter on it. The sense of sharp
contrast between their own culture and that of the classical world emerges in
the new tone to be found in the writings of prominent French jurists,
especially the Reformers among them, in the late sixteenth century, who
tend to say that they are not concerned with the rules of Roman law, that it
is not authoritative for them; that Rome was Rome, while they were what
they were; and what was Rome to them? This was a revolutionary thing to
declare, since Rome hitherto had been close to being regarded as an almost
ideal civilization; the best social structure yet established by men. If Rome
were simply a different and alien order of being. not relevant to the lives
of Frenchmen, Germans, Flemings, the appeals to Roman law, whether they
were made by the champions of the Papacy or the Empire, no longer carried
decisive weight.
Yet it aU began with the wish merely to reconstruct the meanings of
words. I am addressing this to Prof. Kaplan because this is the locus at
which purely technical research to establish facts about, let us say,
Norsemen in Minnesota, which he mentioned, or to restore a particular
word in the fourth lire of a particular chapter of an ancient text - which
began as a pure piece of detective work, quite unconnected with large
cultural considerations - can by degrees become part of a general attempt
to interpret a complete culture: the line he drew between these enterprises
does not always hold.

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ISAIAH BERLIN

When Renaissance scholars began to reconstruct legal texts, and came to

concepts like manumission, for example, they began to ask themselves what
exactly manumission was, and therefore what slavery was, and therefore
what ownership and property relations were, and therefore what kind of
structure of society it was in which slaves occurred, for what reason and in
what circumstances slaves were manumitted, and how and why, and what
kind of social structure it was that emerged from the differences of status
between various classes in Roman society.
Thus what appeared to be mere textual reconstruction, sheer work of
grammatical emendation, ended by revealing vast new horizons. TIns is
how, for example, the Donation of Constantine was shown to be a forgery.
The Donation of Constantine was, of course, very important in the great
Medieval conflict of authority, the struggle for supremacy between the
Emperor and the Pope. But its exposure as a forgery by Valla or Dumoulin
rests o.n mainly grammatical considerations, which in their turn rest upon
the interpretation of the meanings of words, which in their turn rest upon the
consideration of the meanings of these words within the specific context of
what had begun to be a gradual reconstruction of the social history of
Constantine's Rome, not indeed, by narrative historians, but by
Renaissance lawyers and antiquaries in search of something quite different.
That is why I do not think the two activities, pace Professor Kaplan, can be
clearly distinguished from one another.
In a sense, of course, these lawyers were politically motivated. They
wished to abolish the relics of the Middle Ages, to reform their own
societies, to resist the centralizing ambitions of the Pope, or the Emperor, or
even, at times, the King of France. But the actual work which they
performed was the reconstruction .of another civilization which, by the end
of the sixteenth century, was conceived as somewhat alien to their own. The
very notion that there was more than one human civilization, that there
could exist cultures equally complete and developed yet different, that
human nature was therefore not, in some sense, unchanging; that words did
not mean the same at different times in differe:1t circumstances; that cultural
conditions could be different, and could be understood only in terms of the
contrast with, or differences from, one another, began in Renaissance
scholarship. This is the true beginning of the revolution promoted by Herder
and Hegel. of which Charles Taylor spoke so eloquently in his paper.
Odd, but, I think, true.
A /I Souls College, Oxford

DONALD

DAVIDSON

INTENDING

Someone may intend to build a squirrel house without having decided to do

it, deliberated about it, fonned an intention to do it, or reasoned about it.
And despite his intention, he may never build a squirrel house, try to build
one, or do anything whatever with the intention of getting a squirrel house
built. Pure intending of this kind, intending that may occur without practical
reasoning, action, or consequence, poses a problem if we want to give an
account of the concept of intention that does not invoke unanalysed
episodes or attitudes like willing, mysterious acts of the will, or kinds of
causation foreign to science.
When action is added to intention, for example when someone nails two
boards together with the intention of building a squirrel house, t\len it may
at first seem that the same problem does not necessarily arise. We are able
to explain what goes on in such a case without assuming or postulating any
odd or special events, episodes, attitudes or acts. Here is how we may
explain it. Someone who acts with a certain intention acts for a reason; he
has something in mind that he wants to promote or accomplish. A man who
nails boards together with the intention of building a squirrel house must
want to build a squirrel house, or think that he ought to (no doubt for
further reasons), and he must believe that by nailing the boards together he
will advance his project. Reference to other attitudes besides wanting, or
thinking he ought, may help specify the agent's reasons, but it seems that
some positive, or pro-, attitude must be involved. When we talk of reasons in
this way, we do not require that the reasons be good ones. We learn
something about a man's reasons for starting a war when we learn that he
did it with the intention of ending all wars, even if we know that his belief
that starting a war would end all wars was false. Similarly; a desire to
humiliate an acquaintance may be someone's reason for cutting him at a
party though an observer might, in a more normative vein, think that that
was no reason. The falsity of a belief, or the patent wrongness of a value or
desire, does not disqualify the belief or desire from providing an explanatory
41
lil'lniuhll )'Ol'ei ,ed.I, Philusophy of History and Action, 41-60. Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 1978.

This Article Copyright 1978 by Donald Davidson.

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DONALD DAVIDSON

reason. On the other hand, beliefs and desires tell us an agent's reasons for
acting only if those attitudes are appropriately related to the action as
viewed by the actor. To serve as reasons for an action, beliefs and desires
need not be reasonable, but a normative element nevertheless enters, since
the action must be reasonable in the light of the beliefs and desires
(naturally it may not be reasonable in the light of further considerations).
What does it mean to say that an action, as viewed by the agent, is
reasonable in the light of his beliefs and desires? Suppose that a man boards
an airplane marked "London" with the intention of boarding an airplane
headed for London, England. His reasons for boarding the plane marked
"London" are given by his desire to board a plane headed for London,
England, and his belief that the plane marked "London" is headed for
London, England. His reasons explain why he intentionally boarded the
plane marked "London." As it happens. the plane marked "London" was'
headed for London, Ontario, not London, England, and so his reasons
cannot explain why he boarded a plane headed for London, England. They
can explain why he boarded a plane headed for London, Ontario, but
only when the reasons are conjoined to the fact that the plane marked
"London" was headed fot London, Ontario; and of course his reasons
cannot explain why he intentionally boarded a plane headed for London,
Ontario, since he had no such intention.!
The relation between reasons and intentions may be appreciated by
comparing these statements:
( 1)

(2)

His reason for boarding the plane marked "London '7 was that
he wanted to board a plane headed for London, England, and
he believed the plane marked "London" was headed for
London, England.
His intention in boarding the plane marked "London" was to
board a plane headed for London, England.

The first of these sentences entails the second, but not conversely. The
failure of the converse is due to two differences between (1) and (2). First,
from (2) it is not possible to reconstruct the specific pro-attitude mentioned
in (1). Given (2), there must be some appropriate pro-attitude, but it does
not have to be wanting. And second, the description of the action
("boarding the plane marked 'London''') occupies an opaque context in (1),
but a transparent context in (2). Thus "boarding the plane headed for

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London, Ontario" describes the same action as "boarding the plane marked
'London,'" since the plane marked "London" was the plane headed for
London, Ontario. But substitution of "boarding the plane headed for
London, Ontario" for "boarding the plane marked 'London'" will turn (1)
false, while leaving (2) true. Of course the description of the intention in (2),
like the description of the contents of the belief and pro-attitude in (1),
occupies an opaque context.
Finally, there is this relation between statements with the forms of (1) and
(2): although (2) does not entail (1), if (2) is true, some statement with the
form of (1) is true (with perhaps another description of the action, and with
an appropriate pro-attitude and belief filled in). Statement (1), unlike (2),
must describe the agent's action in a way that makes clear a sense in which
the action was reasonable in the light of the agent's reasons. So we can say,
if an agent does A with the intention of doing B, there is some description of
A which reveals the action as reasonable in the light of reasons the agent
had in performing it.
When is an action (described in a particular way) reasonable in the light
of specific beliefs and pro-attitudes? One way to approach the matter is
through a rather abstract account of practical reasoning. We cannot
suppose that whenever an agent acts intentionally he goes through a process
of deliberation or reasoning, marshalls evidence and principles, and draws
conclusions. Nevertheless, if someone acts with an intention, he must have
attitudes and beliefs from which, had he been aware of them and had the
time, he could have reasoned that his action was desirable (or had some
other positive attribute). If we can characterize the reasoning that would
serve, we will in effect have described the logical relations between
descriptions of beliefs and desires, and the description of an action whell the
former give the reasons with which the latter was performed. We are to
imagine, then, that the agent's beliefs and desires provide him with the
premises of an argument. In the case of belief, it is clear at once what the
premise is. Take an example: someone adds sage to the stew with the
intention of improving the taste. We may describe his belief: He believes that
adding sage to the stew will improve its taste. So his corresponding premise
is: Adding sage to the stew will improve its taste.
The agent's pro-attitude is perhaps a desire or want; let us suppose he
wants to improve the taste of the stew. But wh~t is the corresponding
premise? If we were to look for the proposition toward which his desire is

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DONALD DAVIDSON

directed, the proposition he wants true, it would be something like: He does

something that improves the taste of the stew (more briefly: He improves the
taste of the stew). This cannot be his premise, however, for nothing
interesting follows from the two premises: Adding sage to the stew will
improve its taste, and the agent improves the taste of the stew. The trouble is
that the attitude of approval which the agent has toward the second
proposition has been left out. It cannot be put back in by making the
premise "The agent wants to improve the taste of the stew": we do not want
a description of his desire, but an expression of it in a form in which he
might use it to arrive at an action. The natural expression of his desire is, it
seems to me, evaluative in form; for example, "It is desirable to improve the
taste of the stew," or "I ought to improve the taste of the stew." We may
suppose different pro-attitudes are expressed with other evaluative words in
place of "desirable."
There is no short proof that evaluative sentences express desires and
other pro-attitudes in the same way that the sentence "Snow is white"
expresses the belief that snow is white. But the following consideration will
perhaps help show what is involved. If someone who knows English says
honestly "Snow is white," then he believes snow is white. If my thesis is
correct, someone who says honestly "It is desirable that I stop smoking"
has some pro-attitude towards his stopping smoking. He feels some
inclination to do it: in fact he will do it if nothing stands in the way. he knows
how, and he has no contrary values or desires. Given this assumption, it is
reasonable to generalize: if explicit value judgments represent pro-attitudes,
all pro-attitudes may be expressed by value judgments that are at least
implicit.
This last stipulation allows us to give a uniform account of acting with an
intention. If someone performs an action of type A with the intention of
performing an action of type B, then he must have a pro-attitude toward
actions of type B (which may be expressed in the form: an action of type B
is good (or has some other positive attribute and a belief that in
performing an action of type A he will be (or probably will be) performing
an action of type B (the belief may be expressed in the obvious way). The
expressions of the belief and desire entail that actions of type A are, or
probably will be, good (or desirable, just, dutiful, etc.). The description of the
action provided by the phrase substituted for "A" gives the description
under which the desire and the belief rationalize the action. So to bring

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things back to our example, the desire to improve the taste of the stew and
the belief that adding sage to the stew will improve its taste serve to
rationalize an action described as "adding sage to the stew". (This more or
less standard account of practical reasoning will be radically modified
presently.)
There must be such rationalizing beliefs and desires if an action is done
for a reason, but of course the presence of such beliefs and desires when the
action is done does not suffice to insure that what is done is done with the
appropriate intention, or even with any intention at all. Someone might want
tasty stew and believe sage would do the trick and put in sage thinking it
was parsley; or put in sage because his hand was joggled. So we must add
that the agent put in the sage because of his reasons. This "because" is a
source of trouble; it implies, so I believe, and have argued at length, the
notion of cause. But not any causal relation will do, since an agent might
have attitudes and beliefs that would rationalize an action, and they might
cause him to perform it, and yet because of some anomaly in the causal
chain, the action would not be intentional in the expected sense, or perhaps
in .any sense. 2
We end up, then, with this incomplete and unsatisfactory account of
acting with an intention: an action is performed with a certain intention if it
is caused in the right way by attitudes and beliefs that rationalize it. 3
If this account is correct, then acting with an intention does not require
that there be any mysterious act of the will or special attitude or episode of
willing. For the account needs only desires (or other pro-attitudes), beliefs.
and the actions themselves. There is indeed the relation between these,
causal or otherwise, to be analysed, but that is not an embarrassing entity
that has to be added to the world's furniture. We would not, it is true, have
shown how to define the concept of acting with an intention; the reduction is
not definitional but ontological. But the ontological reduction, if it succeeds,
is enough to answer many puzzles about the relation between the mind and
the body, and to explain the possibility of autoromous action in a world of
causality.
This brings me back to the problem I mentioned at the start, for the
strategy that appears to work for acting with an intention has no obvious
application to pure intending, that is, intending that is not necessarily
accompanied by action. If someone digs a pit with the intention of trapping
a tiger, it is perhaps plausible that no entity at all, act, event or disposition,

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DONALD DAVIDSON

corresponds to the noun phrase "the intention of trapping a tiger" - this is

what our survey has led us to hope. But it is not likely that if a man has the
intention of trapping a tiger, his intention is not a state, disposition or
attitude of some sort. Yet if this is so, it is quite incredible that this state or
attitude (and the connected event or act of/orming an intention) should play
no role in acting with an intention. Our inability to give a satisfactory
account of pure intending on the basis of our account of intentional action
thus reflects back on the account of intentional action itself. And I believe
the account I have outlined will be seen to be incomplete when we have an
adequate analysis of pure intending.
Of course, we perform many intentional actions without forming an
intention to perform them, and often intentional action is not preceded by an
intention. So it would not be surprising if something were present in pure
intending that is not always present in intentional action. But it would be
astonishing if that extra element were foreign to our understanding of
intentional action. For consider some simple action, like writing the word
"action." Some temporal segments of this action are themselves actions: for
example, first I write the letter" a." This I do with the intention of initiating
an action that will not be complete until I have written the rest of the word.
It is hard to see how the attitude towards the complete act which I have as I
write the letter "a" differs from the pure intention I may have had a moment
before. To be sure, my intention has now begun to be realized, but why
should that necessarily change my attitude? It seems that in any intentional
action that takes much time, or involves preparatory steps, something like
pure intending must be present.
We began with pure intending - intending without conscious deliberation
or overt consequence - because it left no room for doubt that intending is a
state or event separate from the intended action or the reasons that
prompted the action. Once the existence of pure intending is recognized,
there is no reason not to allow that intention of exactly the same kind is also
present when the intended action eventuates. So though I may, in what
follows, seem sometimes to concentrate on the rather special case of
unfulfilled intentions, the subject in fact is all intending - intending
abstracted from a context which may include any degree of deliberation,
and any degree of success in execution. Pure intending merely shows that
there is something there to be abstracted.
What success we had in coping with the concept of intentional action

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came from treating talk of the intention with which an action is done as talk
of beliefs, desires, and actions. This suggests that we try treating pure
intentions - intendings abstracted from normal outcomes - as actions,
beliefs or pro-attitudes of some sort. The rest of this paper is concerned with
these possibilities.

Is pure intending an action? It may be objected that intending to do

something is not a change or event of any kind, and so cannot be something
the agent does. But this objection is met by an adjustment in the thesis; we
should say that the action is forming an intention, while pure intending is the
state of an agent who has formed an intention (and has not changed his
mind). Thus all the weight is put on the idea of forming an intention. It will
be said that most intentions are not formed, at least if forming an intention
requires conscious deliberation or decision. What we need then is the
broader and more neutral concept of coming to have an intention - a
change that may take place so slowly or unnoticed that the agent cannot say
when it happens. Still, it is an event, and we could decide to call it an action,
or at least something the agent does.
I see no reason to reject this proposal; the worst that can be said of it is
that it provides so little illumination. The state of intention just is what
results from coming to have an intention - but what sort of a state is it? The
coming to have an intention we might try connecting with desires and beliefs
as we did other intentional actions (again with a causal chain that works "in
the right way"). But the story does not have the substantial quality of the
account of intentional action because the purported action is not familiar or
observable, even to the agent himself.
Another approach focuses on overt speech acts. Saying that one intends
to do something, or that one will do it, is undeniably an action, and it has
some of the characteristics of forming an intention. Saying, under
appropriate circumstances, that one intends to do something, or that one
will do it, can commit one to doing it; if the deed does not follow, it is
appropriate to ask for an explanation. Actually to identify saying one
intends to do something with forming an intention would be to endorse a
sort of performative theory of intention; just as saying one promises to do
something may be promising to do it, so saying one intends to do it may be
intending (or forming the intention) to do it. Of course one may form an
intention without saying anything aloud, but this gap may be filled with the

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DONALD DAVIDSON

notion of speaking to oneself, "saying in one's heart."4 A variant theory

would make forming an intention like (or identical with) addressing a
command to oneself.
I think it is easy to see that forming an intention is quite different from
saying something, even to oneself, and that intending to do something is
quite different from having said something. For one thing, the performative
character of commands and promises which makes certain speech acts
surprisingly momentous depends on highly specific conventions, and there
are no such conventions governing the formation of intentions. Promising
involves assuming an obligation, but even if there are obligations to oneself,
intending does not normally create one. If an agent does not do what he
intended to do, he does not normally owe himself an explanation or apology,
especially if he simply changed his mind; yet this is just the case that calls
for explanation or apology when a promise has been made to another and
broken. A command may be disobeyed, but only while it is in force. But if
an agent does not do what he intended because he has changed his mind, the
original intention is no longer in force. Perhaps it is enough to discredit these
theories to point out that promising and commanding, as we usually
understand them, are necessarily public performances, while forming an
intention is not. Forming an intention may be an action, but it is not a
performance, and having an intention is not generally the aftermath of one.
None of this is to deny that saying "I intend to do it" or "I will do it" is
much like, or .on occasion identical with, promising to do it. If 1 say any of
these things in the right context, I entitle a hearer to believe 1 will do it, and
since I know 1 entitle him to believe it, I entitle him to believe 1 believe 1 will
do it. Perhaps a simpler way to put it is this: if 1 say "I intend to do it" or "I
will do it" or "I promise to do it" under certain conditions, then 1 represent
myself as believing that 1 will. 1 may not believe 1 will, 1 may not intend that
my hearer believe 1 will, but 1 have given him ground for complaint if 1 do
not. These facts suggest that if 1 not only say "I intend" or "I will" in such a
way as to represent myself as believing I will, but 1 am sincere as well, then
my sincerity guarantees both that I intend to do it and that I believe I will.
Some such line of argument has led many philosophers to hold that
intending to do something entails believing one will, and has led a few
philosophers to the more extreme view that to intend to do something. is
identical with a sort of belief that one will.

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Is intending to act a belief that one will? The argument just sketched does
not even show that intending implies belief. The argument proves that a man
who sincerely says "I intend to do it" or "I will do it" under certain
conditions must believe he will do it. But it may be the saying, not the
intention, that implies the belief. And I think we can see this is the case. The
trouble is that we have asked the notion of sincerity to do two different
pieces of work. We began by considering cases where, by saying "I intend
to" or "I will," I entitle a hearer to believe I will. And here it is obvious that
if I am sincere, if things are as I represent them, then I must believe I will.
But it is an assumption unsupported by the argument that any time I
sincerely say I intend to do something I must believe I will do it, for sincerity
in this case merely requires that I know I intend to do it. We are agreed that
there are cases where sincerity in the utterer of "I intend to" requires him to
believe he will, but the argument requires that these cases include all those in
which the speaker knows or believes he intends to do it.
Once we have distinguished the question how belief is involved in avowals
of intention from the question how belief is involved in intention, we ought
to be struck with how dubious the latter connection is.
It is a mistake to suppose that if an agent is doing something intentionally, he must know that he is doing it. For suppose a man is writing
his will with the intention of providing for the welfare of his children. He
may be in doubt about his success, and remain so to his death; yet in writing
his wiIl he may in fact be providing for the welfare of his children, and if. so,
he is certainly doing it intentionally. Some sceptics may think this example
fails because they refuse to allow that a man may now be providing for the
welfare of his children if that welfare includes events yet to happen. So here
is another example: in writing heavily on this page I may be intending to
produce ten legible carbon copies. I do not know, or believe with any
confidence, that I am succeeding. But if I am producing ten legible carbon
copies, I am certainly doing it intentionally. These examples do not prove
that pure intending may not imply belief, for the examples involve acting
with an intention. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine that the point does not
carryover to pure intending. As he writes his will, the man not only is acting
with the intention of securing the welfare of his children, he also intends to
secure the welfare of his children. If he can be in doubt whether he is now
doing what he intends, surely he can be in doubt whether he will do what he
intends.

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DONALD DAVIDSON

The thesis that intending implies believing is sometimes defended by

claiming that expressions of intention are generally incomplete or elliptical.
Thus the man writing his will should be described as intending to try to
secure the welfare of his children, not as intending to secure it, and the man
with the carbon paper is merely intending to try to produce his copies. The
phrases sound wrong: we should be much more apt to say he is trying, and
intends to do it. But where the action is entirely in the future, we do
sometimes allow that we intend to try, and we see this as more accurate than
the bald statement of intention when the outcome is sufficiently in doubt.
Nevertheless, I do not think the claim of ellipsis can be used to defend the
general thesis.
Without doubt many intentions are conditional in form - one intends to
do something only if certain conditions are satisfied - and without doubt we
often suppress mention of the conditions for one reason or another. So
elliptical statements of intention are common. Grice gives us this exchange:
X.
Y.

X.
Y.
X.
Y.

1 intend to go to that concert on Tuesday.

You will enjoy that.
1 may not be there.
1 am afraid 1 don't understand.
The police are going to ask me some awkward questions on Tuesday
afternoon, and 1 may be in prison by Tuesday evening.
Then you should have said to begin with, "I intend to go to the concert if 1 am
not in prison," or, if you wished to be more reticent, something like, "I should
probably be going," or "I hope to go," or, "I aim to go," or, "I intend to go ifI
can."~

Grice does not speak of ellipsis here, but he does think that this example,
and others like it, make a strong case for the view that "X intends to do A"
is true, when "intends" is used in the strict sense, only if X is sure that he
will do A. The man in the example must intend something, and so if we
knew what it was, we could say that his remark "I intend to go to the
concert" was elliptical for what he would have said if he had used "intend"
in the strict sense. What would he have said? "I hope to go" is not more
accurate about the intention, since it declares no intention at all; similarly
for "I aim to go" and "I should probably be going." "I intend to go if I can"
is vague and general given the particularity of X's doubts, but there seems
something worse wrong with it. For if an agent cannot intend what he
believes to be impossible, then he asserts neither more nor less by saying "I

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intend to do it if I can" than he would by saying "I intend to do it." How

about "I intend to go to the concert if I am not in prison"? Intuitively, this
comes closest to conveyilll the truth about the situation as X sees it. But is
it literally more accurate? It is hard to see how. On the view Grice is
arguing for, if X said in the strict sense, and honestly, "I intend to be at the
concert," he would imply that he believed he would be there. If X said in the
strict sense, and honestly, "I intend to be at the concert if I am not in jail,"
he would imply that he believed he would be at the concert if he were not in
jail. Now obviously the tirst belief implies the second, but is not implied by
it, and so an expression of the second belief makes a lesser claim, and may
be thought to be more accurate. Of course, the stronger claim cannot, by its
contents, lead Y into error about what X will do, for whether X says he will
be at the concert, or only that he will be there if he i~ not in jail, both X and
Y know X will not be at the concert if he is injail. Where Y might be misled
is with respect to what X believes he will do, and hence intends, if the thesis
we are examining is true. For on the thesis, "I intend to be at the concert if I
am not in jail" implies a weaker belief than "I intend to be at the concert." If
this is right, then greater accuracy still would result from further provisos,
since X also does not believe he will be at the concert if he changes his mind;
or if somethilll besides imprisonment prevents him. We are thus led further
and further toward the nearly empty "I intend to do it if nothing prevents
me, if I don't change my mind, if nothing untoward happens." This tells us
almost nothing about what the agent believes about the future, or what he
will in fact do.
I think X spoke correctly and accurately, but misleadingly, when he said
"I intend to go to the concert." He could have corrected the impression
while still being accurate by saying "I now intend to go to the concert, but
since I may be put in jail, I may not be there." A man who says "I intend to
be there, but I may not be" does not contradict himself, he is at worst
inscrutable until he says more. We should realize there is something wrong
with the idea that most statements of intention are elliptical until tempered
by our doubts about what we shall in fact do when it is noticed that there is
no satisfactory general method for supplying the more accurate statement
for which the original statement went proxy. And the reason is clear: there
can be no tiniw Jist of things we think might prevent us from doing what we
intend, or of circumstances that might cause us to stay our hand. If we are
reasonably sure something will prevent us from acting, this does, perhaps,

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baffle intention, but if we are simply uncertain, as is often the case, intention
is not necessarily dulled. We can be clear what it is we intend to do while
being in the dark as to the details, and therefore the pitfalls. If this is so,
being more accurate about what we intend cannot be a matter of being more
accurate about what we believe we will bring off.
There are genuine conditional intentions, but 1 do not think they come in
the form "I intend to do it if 1 can" or "if 1 don't change my mind." Genuine
conditional intentions are appropriate when we explicitly consider what to
do in various contingencies; for example, someone may intend to go home
early from a party if the music is too loud. If we ask for the difference
between conditions that really do make the statement of an intention more
accurate, and bogus conditions like "if I can" or "if nothing comes up" or
"if I don't change my mind," it seems to me clear that the difference is this:
bona fide conditions are ones that are reasons for acting that are
contemporary with the intention. Someone may not like loud music now,
and that may be why he now intends to go home early from the party if the
music is too loud. His not being able to go home early is not a reason for or
against his going home early, and so it is not a relevant condition for an
intention, though if he believes he cannot do it, that may prevent his having
the intention. Changing his mind is a tricky case, but in general someone is
not apt to view a possible future change of intention as a reason to modify
his present intention unless he thinks the future change will itself be brought
about by something he would now consider a reason.
The contrast that has emerged between the circumstances we do
sometimes allow to condition our intentions and the circumstances we
would allow if intentions implied the belief that we will do what we intend
seems to me to indicate pretty conclusively that we do not necessarily
believe we will do what we intend to do, and that we do not state our
intentions more accurately by making them conditional on all the
circumstances in whose presence we think we would act.
These last considerations point to the strongest argument against
identifying pure intending with the belief one will do what one intends. This
is that reasons for intending to do something are in general quite different
from reasons for believing one will do it. Here is why 1 intend to reef the
main: I see a squall coming, I want to prevent the boat from capsizing, and I
believe that reefing the main will prevent the boat from capsizing. I would
put my reasons for intending to reef the main this way: a squall is coming, it

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would be a shame to capsize the boat, and reefing the.main will prevent the
boat from capsizing. But these reasons for intending to reef the main in
themselves give me no reason to believe I will reef the main. Given a lot
more assumptions, that a squal1 is coming may be a reason to believe I
believe a squa\1 is coming, and given some even more fancy assumptions,
that it would be a shame to capsize the boat may be a reason to believe I
want to prevent the boat from capsizing. And given that I have these beliefs
and desires, it may be reasonable to suppose I intend to reef the main. and
will in fact do so. So there may be a loose connection between reasons of the
two kinds, but they are not at al1 identical (individual reasons may be the
same. but a sma\lest natural set of reasons that supports the intention to act
cannot be a set that supports the belief that the act wil1 take place).
It is often maintained that an intention is a belief not arrived at by
reasoning from evidence. or that an intention is a belief about one's future
action that differs in some other way in its origin from an ordinary
prediction. But such claims do not help the thesis. How someone arrived at
a belief, what reasons he would give in support of it. what sustains his faith,
these are matters that are simply irrelevant to the question what constitute
reasons for the belief; the former events are accidents that befall a belief, and
cannot change its logical status without making it a new belief.

Is intending to do something the same as wanting to do it? Clearly reasons

for intending to do something are very much like reasons for action, indeed
one might hold that they are exactly the same except for time. As John
Donne says, "To will implies delay," but we may reduce the delay to a
moment. I am writing the letter "a" of "action," and I intend to write the
letter "c" as soon as I finish the "a." The reason I intend to write the letter
"c" as soon as I finish the "a" is that I want to write the word "action," and
I know that to do this I must, after writing the letter "a;" write the letter "c."
Now I have finished the "a" and have begun "c"! What is my reason for
writing the "c"? It is that I want to write the word "action," and I know that
to do this I must ... So far the reasons sound identical, but if we look closer a
tiny difference will emerge. When I am writing the "a" I intend to write the
"c" in just a moment. and part of my reason is that I believe this moment
looms in the immediate future; when I am writing the "c," my reasons
include the belief that now is the time to write the "c" if I am to write
"action." as I wish to. Aristotle sometimes neglects this difference and as a

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DONALD DAVIDSON

result says things that sound fatuous. He is apt to give as an example of

practical reasoning something of this sort: I want to be warm, I believe a
house will keep me warm, straightway I build a house. It is an important
doctrine that the conclusion of a piece of practical reasoning may be an
action; it is also important that the conclusion may be the formation of an
intention to do something in the future.
Now I would like to draw attention to an aspect of this picture of what it
is like to form an intention that seems to make for a difficulty. Consider
again a case of intentional action. I want to eat something sweet, that is, I
hold that my eating something sweet is desirable. I believe this candy is
sweet, and so my eating this candy will be a case of my eating something
sweet, and I conclude that my eating this candy is desirable. Since nothing
stands in the way, I eat the candy - the conclusion is the action. But this
also means I could express the conclusion by using a demonstrative
reference to the action: "This action of mine, this eating by me of this candy
now, is desirable." What seems so important about the possibility of a
demonstrative reference to the action is that it is a case where it makes sense
to couple a value judgment directly to action. My evaluative reason for
acting was, "My eating something' sweet is desirable." But of course this
cannot mean that any action of mine whatsoever that is an eating of
something sweet is something it makes sense to do - my judgment merely
deals with actions in so far as they are sweet-consuming. Some such actions,
even all of them, may have plenty else wrong with them. It is only when I
come to an actual action that it makes sense to judge it as a whole as
desirable or not; up until that moment there was no object with which I was
acquainted to judge. Of course I can still say of the completed action that it
is desirable in so far as it is this or that, but in choosing to perform it I went
beyond this; my choice represented, or perhaps was, a judgment that the
action itself was desirable.
And now the trouble about pure intending is that ther.e is no action to
judge simply good or desirable. All we can judge at the stage of pure
intending is the desirability of actions of a sort, and actions of a sort are
generally judged on the basis of the aspect that defines the sort. Such
judgments, however, do not always lead to reasonable action, or we would
be eating everything sweet we could lay our hands on (as Anscombe pointed
out in Intention). 6
The major step in clearing up these matters is to make a firm distinction

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between the kind of judgment that corresponds to a desire like wanting to

eat something sweet and the kind of judgment that can be the conclusion of a
piece of practical reasoning - that can correspond to an intentional action. 7
The first sort of judgment is often thought to have the form of a law: any
action that is an eating of something sweet is desirable. If practical
reasoning is deductive, this is what we should expect (and it seems to be how
Aristotle and Hume, for example, thought of practical reasoning). But there
is a fundamental objection to this idea, as can be seen when we consider an
action that has both a desirable and an undesirable aspect. For suppose the
propositional expression of a desire to eat something sweet were a
universally quantified conditional. While holding it desirable to eat
something sweet, we may also hold that it is undesirable to eat something
poisonous. But one and the same object may be sweet and poisonous, and
so one and the same action may be the eating of something sweet and
something poisonous. Our evaluative principles, which seem consistent, can
then lead us to conclude that the same action is both desirable and
undesirable. If undesirable actions are not desirable, we have derived a
contradiction from premises all of which are plausible. The cure is to
recognize that we have assigned the wrong form to evaluative principles. If
they are judgments to the effect that in so far as an action has a certain
characteristic it is good (or desirable,~tc.), then they must not be construed
in such a way that detachment works, or we will find ourselves concluding
directly that the action is simply desirable when all that is warranted is the
conclusion that it is desirable in a certain respect. Let us call judgments that
actions are desirable in so far as they have a certain attribute prima facie
judgments.
Prima facie judgments cannot be directly associated with actions, for it is
not reasonable to perform an action merely because it has a desirable
characteristic. It is a reason for acting that the action is believed to have
some desirable characteristic, but the fact that the action is performed
represents a further judgment that the desirable characteristic was enough to
act on - that other considerations did not outweigh it. The judgment that
corresponds to, or perhaps is identical with, the action cannot, therefore, be
a prima facie judgment; it must be an all-out or unconditional judgment
which, if we were to express it in words, would have a form like "This action
is desirable."
It can now be seen that our earlier account of acting with an intention

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DONALD DAVIDSON

was misleading or at least incomplete in an important respect. The reasons

that determine the description under which an action is intended do not
allow us to deduce that the action is simply worth performing; all we can
deduce is that the action has a feature that argues in its favour. This is
enough, however, to allow us to give the intention with which the action was
performed. What is misleading is that the reasons that enter this account do
not generally constitute all the reasons the agent considered in acting, and so
knowing the intention with which someone acted does not allow us to
reconstruct his actual reasoning. For we may not know how the agent got
from his desires and other attitudes - his prima Jacie reasons - to the
conclusion that a certain action was desirable. 8
In the case of intentional action, at least when the action is of brief
duration, nothing seems to stand in the way of an Aristotelian identification
of the action with a judgment of a certain kind - an all-out, unconditional
judgment that the action is desirable (or has some other positive
characteristic). The identification of the action with the conclusion of a piece
of practical reasoning is not essential to the view I am endorsing, but the
fact that it can be made explains why, in our original account of intentional
action, what was needed to relate it to pure intending remained hidden.
In the case of pure intending, I now suggest that the intention simply is an
all-out judgment. Forming an intention, deciding, choosing and deliberating
are various modes of arriving at the judgment, but it is possible to come to
have such a judgment or attitude without any of these modes applying.
Let me elaborate on this suggestion and try to defend it against some
objections. A few pages ago I remarked that an all-out judgment makes
sense only when there is an action present (or past) that is known by
acquaintance. Otherwise (I argued) the judgment must be general, that is,
cover all actions of a certain sort, and among ,these there are bound to be
actions some of which are desirable and some not. Yet an intention cannot
single out a particular action in an intelligible sense, since it is directed to the
future. The puzzle arises, I think, because we have overlooked an important
distinction. It would be mad to hold that any action of mine in the
immediate future that is the eating of something sweet would be desirable.
But there is nothing absurd in my judging that any action of mine in the
immediate future that is the eating of something sweet would be desirable
given the rest oJ what I believe about the immediateJuture. I do not believe I
will eat a poisonous candy, and so that is not one of the actions of eating

INTENDING

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something sweet that my all-out judgment includes. It would be a mistake to

try to improve the statement of my intention by saying "I intend to eat
something sweet, provided it isn't poisonous." As we saw, this is a mistake
because if this is the road I must travel, I will never get my intentions right.
There are endless circumstances under which I would not eat something
sweet, and I cannot begin to foresee them all. The point is, I do not believe
anything will come up to make my eating undesirable or impossible. That
belief is not part of what I intend, but an assumption without which I would
not have the intention. The intention is not conditional in form; rather, the
existence of the intention is conditioned by my beliefs.
I intend to eat a hearty breakfast tomorrow. You know, and I know, that
I will not eat a hearty breakfast tomorrow if I am not hungry. And I am not
certain I will be hungry, I just think I will be. Under these conditions it is not
only not more accurate to say "I intend to eat a hearty breakfast if I'm
hungry," it is less accurate. I have the second intention as well as the first,
but the first implies the second, and not vice versa, and so the first is a more
complete account of my intentions. If you knew only that I intended to eat a
hearty breakfast if I was hungry, you would not know that I believe I will be
hungry, which is actually the case. But you might figure this out if you knew
I intend to eat a hearty breakfast tomorrow.
I think this view of the matter explains the trouble we had about the
relation between intending to do something and believing one will - why, on
the one hand, it is so strange to say "I intend to do it but perhaps I won't,"
and yet is so impossible to increase the accuracy of statements of intention
by making the content of the intention conditional on how things turn out.
The explanation is that the intention assumes, but does not contain a
reference to, a certain view of the future. A present intention with respect to
the future is in itself like an interim report: given what I now know and
believe, here is my judgment of what kind of action is desirable. Since the
intention is based on one's best estimate of the situation, it merely distorts
matters to say the agent intends to act in the way he does only if his estimate
turns out to be right. A present intention does not need to be anything like a
resolve or a commitment (though saying one intends to do something may
sometimes have this character). My intention is based on my present view of
the situation; there is no reason in general why I should act as I now intend
if my present view turns out to be wrong.
We can now see why adding "if I can" never makes the statement of an

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DONALD DAVIDSON

intention more accurate, although it may serve to cancel an unwanted

natural suggestion of the act of saying one intends to do something. To
intend to perform an action is, on my account, to hold that it is desirable to
perform an action of a certain sort in the light of what one believes is and
will be the case. But if one believes no such action is possible, then there can
be no judgment that such an action consistent with one's beliefs is desirable.
There can be no such intention.
If an intention is just a judgment that an action of a certain sort is
desirable, what is there to distinguish an intention from a mere wish? We
may put aside wishes for things that are not consistent with what one
believes, for these are ruled out by our conception of an intention. And we
may put aside wishes that do not correspond to all-out judgments. ("I wish I
could go to London next week": my going to London next week may be
consistent with all I believe, but not with all I want. This wish is idle because
it is based on some only of my prima facie reasons.) But once we put these
cases aside, there is no need to distinguish intentions from wishes. For a
judgment that something I think I can do - that I think I see my way clear
to doing - a judgment tbat such an action is desirable not only for one or
another reason, but in the light of all my reasons, a judgment like this is not
a mere wish. It is an intention. (This is not to deny that there are borderline
cases.)
How well have we coped with the problem with which we began? That
problem was, in effect, to give an account of intending (and of forming an
intention) that would mesh in a satisfactory way with our account of acting
with an intention, and would not sacrifice the merits of that account. With
respect to the first point, finding an account of intending that would mesh
with our account of intentional action, we devised a satisfactory way of
relating the two concepts, but only by introducing a new element, an all-out
judgment, into the analysis of intentional action. Given this sort of judgment
and the idea of such a judgment made in the light of what is believed about
the future course of affairs, we were able, I think, to arrive at a plausible
view of intending.
There remains the question whether the sort of judgment to which I have
appealed, an all-out judgment, can be understood without appeal to the
notions of intention or will. I asked at the beginning of this last section of my
paper whether intending to do something is wanting to do it; if it were, we
might consider that our aim had been achieved. What we intend to do we

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59

want, in some very broad sense of want, to do. But this does not mean that
intending is a form of wanting. For consider the actions that I want to
perform and that are consistent with what I believe. Among them are the
actions I intend to perform, and many more. I want to go to London next
week, but I do not intend to, not because I think I cannot, but because it
would interfere with other things I want more. This suggests strongly that
wanting and desiring are best viewed as corresponding to, or constituting,
prima facie judgments.
If this is correct, we cannot claim that we have made out a case for
viewing intentions as something familiar, a kind of wanting, where we can
distinguish the kind without having to use the concept of intention or will.
What we can say, however, is that intending and wanting belong to the same
genus of pro-attitudes expressed by value judgments. Wants, desires,
principles, prejudices, felt duties and obligations provide reasons for actions
and intentions, and are expressed by prima facie judgments; intentions and
the judgments that go with intentional actions are distinguished by their allout or unconditional form. Pure intendings constitute a subclass of the allout judgments, those directed to future actions of the agent, and made in the
light of his beliefs.

The University of Chicago

NOTES
Note. I have tried to profit from the generous advice of Max Black, Michael Bratman, Paul
Grice, Stuart Hampshire, Gilbert Harman, David Sachs, and Irving Thalberg.
1 I take the "intentionally" to govern the entire phrase "boarded a plane headed for London,
Ontario." On an alternative reading, only the boarding would be intentional. Similarly, in (I)
below his reason extends to the marking on the plane.
2 See my "Freedom to Act," in Essays on Freedom of Action, ed. T. Honderich, London,
1973.
3 This is where my "Actions, Reasons and Causes," The Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963):
pp. 685-700, left things. At that time I believed it would be possible to characterize "the right
way" in non-circular terms.
4 See P.T. Geach, Mental Acts, London, 1957.
l H.P. Grice, "Intention and Uncertainty," British Academy Lecture, Oxford, 1971, pp. 4, 5.
6 G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention, Oxford, 1957, p. 59.

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DONALD DAVIDSON

7 No weight should be given the word "judgment." I am considering here the form of
propositions that express desires and other attitudes. I do not suppose that someone who
wants to eat something sweet necessarily judges that it would be good to eat something
sweet; perhaps we can just say he holds that his eating something sweet has some positive
characteristic. By distinguishing among the propositional expressions of attitudes I hope to
mark differences among the attitudes.
8 I have said more about the form of prima facie evaluative judgments, and the importance
of distinguishing them from unconditional judgments, in "How is Weakness of the WiD
Possible?" in Moral Concepts, ed. J. Feinberg, Oxford, 1969.

STUART HAMPSHIRE

COMMENTS

This particular topic seems to me to be certainly at the centre of the

philosophy of history. One of the problems that we spoke of in the very first
session here was what was called the categories of meaningful action, and
the concept of intention just is the concept that marks the relation between
thought and meaning and action, and it is by far the most substantial of
these concepts, whether for the historian or for the lawyer. So I think we are
at the centre of our proper concern.
Davidson's paper points to the fact that intentions are concerned,
characteristically, though not exclusively, with the future - that is one
feature of them - and often with a comparatively distant future. For human
beings, unlike (as we believe) other creatures, can form intentions to do
things - which they describe to themselves in certain specific terms - at a
remote future, dated or undated, open or fixed.
Secondly, it is characteristic of intentions that they issue in what he called
declarations of intention. Moreover, the part that they play, particularly in
social life and communication, distinguishes intentions - not only
declarations of intention but intentions themselves - from things closely
related to them, such as purposes and, as I would say, desires - though
Davidson would not say desires.
Thirdly, and arising from that, it is essential to, or necessary to, the
having of intentions, that we should possess the linguistic equipment to
express them. This is sometimes expressed aphoristically by saying that an
animal can pursue a cat with, in a sense, the intention of destroying it, but it
cannot have the intention of destroying it tomorrow.
So these are features that make iRtentions distinct from some other
psychological verbs which take objects closely related to them, and which
are also associated with the explanation of action. I think I would be ready
to argue, following what Davidson says, that an explanation of an action in
terms of intention - what the action was to the agent at the time, how he
thought of it, what description he was acting under - is different from an
explanation either in terms of purpose or in terms of function. That
61
Yirmiahu Yorel (ed.). Philosophy of History and Action. 61-{)8. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dordrecht. Holland.

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STUART HAMPSHIRE

difference is a matter of the utmost importance to historians, because if they

were to confuse these things, they would confuse their history.
All these points emerge quite clearly from Davidson's paper. I bring them
out now simply in order to relate what he said more directly to some other
things that have been said here.
Lastly, he makes the point that statements of intention may be either
categorical or conditional. So also may be intentions themselves. That is, I
may intend to go away if somebody does not arrive at a certain time, or I
may simply intend to go away. That distinction has some importance.
Let us now examine Davidson's account of intention itself. He is
concerned with pure intentions, i.e., intentions distilled, as it were, from the
ordinary mixtures in which they are found, namely, with prior deliberations
about later actions. He is concerned with, as it were, the pure gold of
intention when all the dross of features surrounding intention have been
removed.
I myself have no doubt whatever that there are pure intentions. There are
many philosophers who would say that if you aim, as Davidson has aimed,
at isolating an intention from either its manifestation in action,or its genesis
in a prior deliberation, you are left with a nonentity. This seems to me to be
false. I am inclined to argue on Davidson's side, that hopes, intentions,
wants, may be episodes that occur in isolation from their natural expression
which is in behaviour, and in isolation from the kind of preceding
deliberation which ordinarily goes, or often goes, with that propositional
attitude.
On the other hand, I have a doubt about Davidson's starting point. That
is, he asks what is an intention. He asks this with a kind of reductionist
interest in mind, and he speaks of intending as a mysterious act. I think we
should distinguish between two things that might be meant here: a
mysterious act of the will and a mysterious entity. What he seems to find
mysterious about pure intentions is that if I intend to do something
tomorrow but later change my mind - or the circumstances fail to
arise - so the intention does not issue in an action, then there is a mystery
about there being this particular kind of thought, in the sense that if I want
to do something tomorrow, there is not a mystery, or in the sense that if I
hope to do something tomorrow, there is not a mystery.
I think there is a very good historical reason why he should find a
mystery here, and he hints that this is the reason why he does in fact find the

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63

mystery. It is that the notion of intention is associated with something called

an "act of will." Now, there is a history of suspicion of acts of will, a very
long history of suspicion that there are no such things. Indeed, it is a central
issue in ethics, as everybody knows, whether or not you think you can give
an account of rational action without mentioning acts of will. For instance,
Aristotle, like Davidson, does not mention acts of will. And, of course, it
would be very instructive in any case if you showed that intention is
reducible to belief plus desire, and that therefore we understand its nature, in
the clear sense of understanding what constitutes it or makes it up - if you
showed that it is a something plus something else, and we did not know that
before.
What seems to me challengeable, at least, is that there is something
intrinsically unintelligible about the notion of intending placed alongside its
close conjugates - I mean the verbs that are just like it, such as hoping, or
wanting, or being determined to, and others. There could be a whole string
of such psychological verbs. I admit that Davidson has, I think, a special
reason. The special reason comes from ethics. It does for many people,
perhaps. So that is a question - why?
Let me add one other thing, that the notion of pure hoping, pure
intending, raises all sorts of epistemological problems, familiar to
philosophers in any case. Namely, how do we, as the subjects intending to
give up cigarettes, discriminate between this and wanting or vaguely wishing
to give up cigarettes? Certainly, it might be quite difficult for ourselves to
distinguish between those things, and even more difficult for our friends to
distinguish whether we seriously, as we say, intend to give them up, or
whether we have rather a vague velleity to do so.
So there are epistemological problems in pure intention just because you
isolate it from the natural evidence for an intention which is provided by its
manifestation in behaviour.
That, then, is one question. I should like now to concentrate on one more
question - for in this very rich paper I can only choose from what I take to
be the main points - which comes out especially towards the end of the
paper. Here it is said that to intend to perform an action is to judge that it is
desirable to perform an action of a certain sort in the light of what one
believes is" and will be, the case. That is, Davidson is saying in the
Aristotelian tradition, though with a certain qualification, that an intention,
in the setting which he has given, is a judgement.

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STUART HAMPSHIRE

He proposes, in essence, a reduction of intention to judgement - not to

belief, but to judgement - and this does have striking parallels, of course,
with the Nicomachean Ethics. Indeed, he comes close to identifying
intention with what Aristotle calls proairesis, a word which is often
translated as "choice," but some peot1ie translate it as "intention." Such a
choice, as people will recall, is defined by Aristotle in just this way - as
being made up of two bits. One is orexis, or desire, and the other is
deliberation. Well, about deliberation there are problems. But orexis of those
things that are within our power comes very near to what Davidson says
about things which might prevent us from doing what we intend.
It is notorious, and very much in Davidson's mind - since he has written
on the subject - that anyone who says that an intention is a kind of
judgement, has to be ready to deal with the problem of akrasia, that is, the
so-called weakness of the will. For it is a somewhat notorious fact that
people often do not set themselves to do, or do not intend or choose to
do - even in the cases of intentions for the future - what they believe they
should do. It would be very strange not to acknowledge this fact of human
psychology, that we often fail to do what we think ought to be done, or is to
be done. There arises a gap because of temptation, or because of
impetuosity, even the kind of impetuosity that does not make the action
unintentional.
So akrasia, or weakness of the will, can occur. Davidson has a perfectly
clear answer to the problem, within his setting, which is again very simiiar to
Aristotle's - namely, that we must distinguish between "prima Jacie"
judgements of what is desirable and "all things considered" or "all-in"
judgements of what is desirable. I suppose he would argue - though he does
not here argue in detail, as he has elsewhere, I believe - thilt there is an
account to be given of weakness of the will in terms of a gap between these
two.
We come to the really difficult question, to which I do not know the
answer, but which I think is of the utmost importance for any narrative
writing about persons, i.e., for history. Namely, if you accept this kind of
account you have the problem - which was a problem already for
Aristotle - that if you are thinking of the future, then you are thinking of an
action identified under certain descriptions, that is, you are not thinking of
an action which you can point to in the sense in which you do point to
actions.

COMMENTS

65

For example, if 1 said, "I am going to do this, do this after me," 1 would
have pointed to an action, to what Aristotle calls a tode ti, a "some particular
thing." That is, I can do something and then say "Do the same thing"
without saying what that same thing is. Of course, I can only do that in a
certain setting which suggests the criterion of identity ("the something") for
imitation.
But if I were thinking of, say, crowning the King tomorrow - or whatever
action it is in the remoter future - I have to pick out this action by a set of
descriptions. It is a necessary truth that for any given action alluded to by
Davidson, there are an indefinite range of descriptions that could be given of
that action, though which would be appropriate would be chosen relative to
the purposes for which you were writing the story or giving the account.
Therefore, there is a sense - a puzzling sense - in which intentions are
always concerned with actions identified under a certain description,
and therefore they have - to express it in traditional Aristotelian
terminology - a certain generality attached to them. This'puzzled Aristotle,
because it was clear to him that one of the most important things about
action, first of all, is that it depends upon a practical skill in execution, upon
~ dynamis, which is a capacity for doing things well. Secondly, it depends
upon perception of the particular circumstances in which you are.
Thus, if you act on a certain maxim, then the maxim will never exactly fit
the circumstances - or generally will not exactly fit the circumstances in
which you act, because the circumstances indefinitely ramify in descriptions
that could be given of them. Consequently, future occasions are picked out
by descriptions, and if you ask yourself the question "Is the action that I
actually perform when tomorrow comes the same as the actil:)ll that I
intended to perform?" you get a very difficult question of identity. That is a
question which puzzled Aristotle. As far as I know, no very clear answer
has been given to it, and it is particularly difficult for Aristotle and
Davidson.
The particular action, therefore, is envisaged as being an action of a
certain kind. For Davidson a present intention with respect to the future is in
itself like an interim report. Given what I now know and believe, here is my
judgement of what kind of action will be desirable. At this point he has
stepped away from Aristotle. In fact, Aristotle hesitated over this, and
sometimes speaks of proairesis as issuing in an action immediately, and as
not being a judgement at all, and sometimes as being a judgement. And

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STUART HAMPSHIRE

precisely for this reason Aristotle is confused.

Now I come to my disagreement with Davidson of a radical kind. I see
the attractiveness of reducing "intending," but I think it is wrong. I think
that to form an intention, or to have an intention - neither the one nor the
other is to make a judgement that something is desirable, and specifically
neither is to make a normative judgement of any kind. Here I have several
distinct grounds of objection, even if I leave aside the grave doubts I have
about the notion of judgement as he uses it - it appears to me to be used
rather as Kant used the word "judgement," to mean something like a
thought, though I am not sure.
My grounds of objection. First of all, just to go back to the first part of
the paper - the reduction of intention in terms of want and belief - I do not
think that you can make that reduction, on the somewhat banal grounds, I
am bound to say, that not all the actions that I intend to perform are actions
that I want to perform, in even the broadest possible sense of want, and
however much wanting is qualified, restricted and complicated in the
traditional Thomas Aquinas sort of way.
There are many cases of doing things, and of intending to do things,
which one definitely does not want to do. This is one of the most important
features about one's wants, desires, inclinations - and even about one's
judgement that something ought to be done. The obvious case is fear. I think
that the relations between fear and desire - between the fear of doing
something and the desire to do it - are relations between two things on the
same level. But I do not think that fear itself can be analysed in terms of
desire. If, of course, it could, then you could preserve the traditional
analysis, but I doubt that it can. And I think that otherwise it is true to say
that such conflicts could not be redescribed appropriately in the way that
the ident' f1 cation of intention and judgement would require.
So that kind of akrasia, or weakness of the will, which arises is a severe
problem for the Aristotelian-Davidsonian view. But of course a more
fundamental question is whether a pure intention - and we shall stick to
pure cases - is a judgement. And is it a judgement "that ... "?
I am going to argue that "intending to," like "hoping to" and "wanting
to," is quite other than a judgement "that ... ".
There are two ways of arguing. One is to describe in acceptable terms the
standard cases in which there seems to be a pure intention to act in a
particular way, corresponding to a certain description, in particular

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67

circumstances envisaged. And then to show that there is certainly no all-in

judgement, made by the subject in the light of his beliefs about the future,
that acting in that way is desirable. That is, to describe situations in which it
has been natural to say that there is a conflict between what one's actual
intention is and one's own best judgement; for example, when someone
cannot bring himself to do something.
There are indeed such cases, but this way of arguing seems to me to leave
the question really up in the air, because it is perfectly open to Davidson to
say - that is how we talk, but only because we have the myth of the will
lodged in the centre of our language, and we have this myth for all sorts of
historical reasons, and also for social reasons. For example, it is convenient
to have this notion if we wish to exhort people to do things, or to get them to
do things, or indeed to exhort ourselves to do things. But if we wish to make
true statements, we should realise that this mythical notion is dispensable,
and an argument from what you might call current speech is not significant
and does not carry conviction. For common speech may well - in fact,
certainly does - include, particularly in this sphere of the mind, all sorts of
mythical entities, which have entered there for emotional, ethical and other
reasons.
So that first way of arguing does not seem to me to be the proper one.
The second and correct way of arguing would be - if only I could do it - to
give a demonstration that practical reasoning, which is about what to do,
issues in an intention to do something which is judged as right or wrong, and
this is different from a judgement about something which is judged as true
or false. That is the traditional way of arguing, and traditional ways are
often good ways.
There are two bits of evidence I can give. The first is that it is sometimes
necessary, or desirable, to perform an act which is forming an intention,
rather than to have no intention at all. Just as sometimes it is important to
decide, in the pure case of deciding - when one simply has to decide -like
Eisenhower deciding on D-Day. This was a case of tode ti - press the
button or not. No good Eisenhower saying, "Let's look up the maxims and
find out whether it's a good thing to go today." The point is: there are all
sorts of considerations - the action can be described as going when the
clouds are over and there is no air cover - but he has to press the button
one way or the other. That is pure deciding.
There are occasions when it is either necessary or desirable, I would say,

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not only simply to decide something, but also simply to form an intention.
Yet I cannot find that this can be duplicated with judgement. I do not see
what it means to say if there are equal reasons for course X and course nonX, then come to a judgement about whether X is desirable or not. It seems
to me that in the case of intention there may be an act to be performed,
which is forming the intention, and sometimes it could be important to
perform thRt act even though the reasons are not sufficient for X or non-X,
but the reasons are for performing that act. But there are never reasons for
just believing. To me there are not. That is, again, a moral question. And I
do not see what it means to say that you ought to come to a belief.
The second - and really traditional - bit of evidence is that there are
countless activities in which we have to form intentions. This is the
obsessional Greek figure of the artist-craftsman, the man who does not
match his actions to a prescription. The Themistoclean politician, the man
of flair, the man of taste, the games player, who forms intentions, knows
what he is going to do, but he does not think in words at all. This is where
the tode ti comes in. And if you are going to learn from such a person, you
learn from him by watching him. You learn by imitation. He shows you how
to do it. He knows exactly how to do it, wherever precision or getting things
right are involved, or questions of syle. Take the pianist. "How do you
intend to play it? Show me how you intend to play it. Can you describe
it?" - "No." There exists no means of saying. If you ask a dancer how he
will perform something, he can show you. That is why the question of
particularity is fundamental. I think Aristotle saw that.
So I think there is a real difference between practical reasoning and
theoretical reasoning. The games player, the dancer, indeed, has thought,
but it is not verbal thought, and what it issues in is not a judgement.

Wadham College
Oxford

NATHAN ROTEN STREICH

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

The question we are about to analyse is whether or not the historical domain
should be characterized as one of events or one of actions. We deliberately
disregard, at least at the beginning of our analysis, the particularity of the
historical domain in as much as the relation between dimensions of time
goes: we deal only with the phenomenological features of the datum of
history. We can put the question by employing the traditional distinction
between res gestae and historia rerum gestarum, with a view of asking the
question whether the res gestae are events or actions, or perhaps neither of
the two.
The common feature of both actions and events lies in the fact that they
can be described as belonging to what is called change. Change connotes
shifts or regroupings in the given state of affairs or situations. Events can be
understood as pa~ts of the changes, and hence as particular shifts and
transformations of a given situation; they can be understood also as
outcomes of those shifts. When history as investigation or historia rerum
gestarum is engaged in the deciphering of its subject matter, it encounters
data like documents or institutions or else situations such as wars or
unemployment. The data of historical investigation are in a sense
accomplished events, or events which did find their manifestation in
documents, relics of the past, or in situations, e.g. institutions, or states of
affairs, e.g. unemployment. The accomplished datum can be seen as an
event in the sense of being a finalization of a course of events. Situations or
institutions are themselves continuous events or continuous actions. After
all, parliament is not only the building but the sum total of its procedures
and of the human beings populating the building and acting according to a
constitution, procedures, habits, codes or rules. Hence, parliament is a
continuous chain of events; the existence of the parliament is characterized
by the fact that to some extent events happen in the parliament and thus
changes occur in it. Still in a certain sense they do not change the

69
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 69-84. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright @ 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

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parliament. The question of the line of demarcation between that which goes
by the name of event and that which goes by the name of act or action is
precisely the question which cannot be simply answered by pointing to the
datum approa<;hed by historical investigation.
Let us comment now, in a preliminary way, about actions or deeds in
general, from the point of view of their accomplishment and not from the
point of view of the agent, since precisely the question of the agent is crucial
within the historical context. In so far as every action is meant to posit,
positing may mean placing something in a context or bringing something
about. To move a table is positing it within a context, while to build the table
as an artifact is to effect its existence (bring it into being). In this sense we
have to distinguish, following both the Greek and the medieval distinctions,
between acts referring to the actor himself and acts whose result lies outside
the actor. It is well known that praxis in the Greek sense meant action
bringing about the shaping of the actor, while poiesis brought about effects
in the outside world, such as building bridges or houses. In so far as the selfreferential character of acts goes, knowledge of an object is an act, since it
brings about the awareness of the object or places the object within the
horizon of the knower, and can be identified in Husserl's sense as
Selbsthabe 1. As against the self-referential character of acts, the
accomplishment of objects, shaping their quality, creating conditions - all
these are transitive acts, since they go beyond the scope of self-reference and
thus beyond the scope of the person or actor himself.
We have already used the distinction between the agent or the actor and
the act or the activity: though precisely that distinction is somehow
problematic within the scope of history. While drawing this distinction we
tacitly make several presuppositions: we presuppose the conception that
every act exhibits a power used; and to do is to work and thus handle things.
These descriptions imply an act of exhibiting one's power by setting them or
positing them.
We adhere tacitly to an additional presupposition expressed in the saying:
operari sequitur esse. Or, to put it differently, to do things presupposes
reality or existence or presupposes the doer. The power vested in the
deed - and this is our third presupposition when we take that common
view - is that the energy of the will is the power exhibited or invested, and
behind this energy is the willing person or agent. This is presupposed even
when we do not perceive the energy but its outcome only, let alone the

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

71

distinction between the agent and his will. Since acts or deeds change the
state of affairs, we presuppose the existence of the state of affairs in respect
to which the change occurs: the existence of the doer as distinguished from
his deed is eventually part of the presupposition as to the existence of the
state of affairs which is both the background and the cause of the deeds
accomplished.
Already here the historical domain leads us to pose some questions as to
these presuppositions: it is rather difficult to distinguish in the historical
domain between the background and the cause, between the agent and his
accomplishment, let alone between the deed and the will, finding its
externalization in deeds or accomplishments.
II
There are probably several reasons for the fascination of history and
philosophy of history with the question of the position of the individual and
his role in history, or as the common description goes, with the position of
heroes in history. One of the explanations for that fascination is that the
transplantation of the common sense presuppositions about deeds and acts
of positing vis-a-vis individuals in history seems to be easy or warranted. Let
us refer here as an example to Collingwood's description of human action in
history, focusing on Caesar's invasion of Britain. Every conscious act
according to Collingwood, including acts in history, has two sides: it has a
physical side which refers to the passage of Caesar and his army across the
English channel. It has a second side consisting of thought which is
specifically the intention or the plan entertained by Caesar to conquer
Britain. An event or let us perhaps say here an act of Caesar's is, therefore,
a unity of the physical aspect and the aspect of thought, or what is described
as a unity of the inside and the outside. The outside aspect includes the
agent's body as well as the equipment at his disposal like the ships of his
army. In the aspect of inside, Collingwood distinguished two elements. He
called them causa quod and, causa ut, respectively. The causa quod of an act
or perhaps of an event is the agent's estimate of his situation in which he
acts or as he acts in it. This estimation, performed by the agent who is in this
sense distinct from the act of estimation and all otner acts concomitant with
it, comprises the military estimation or the strategic evaluation of the
situation, for instance, how many men he needs in order to accomplish what
he planned. This aspect of causa quod precedes the subsequent elements of

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NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

planning as well as his actual doing. As eventually the two aspects combine,
one could make a case, which is not the case made by Collingwood, that all
these distinctions are post Jactum constructs, once we presuppose that a
historical event is a combination of the inside and outside aspects. We
attempt to articulate the inside aspects by di~tinguishing within the scope of
the inside either components coexisting, like estimation of the initial strategic
situation and the planning for the men needed to bring about the effect; or
we distinguish between the elements as consecutive elements., namely,
conceiving the plan to conquer Britain as an objective or as an intention,
whereby the directedness of Caesar towards that objective leads to the
subsequent steps he is taking for the sake of his causa ut. In this sense causa
ut is the overriding objective constructed in order to narrate the events or
deeds which lead to the final act or else the narration presupposes that We
know introspectively how we approach plans in our immediate situation and
transpose that introspective knowledge to the historical agent or hero. 2
Be it as it may, this is a simple situation, since we are concerned with
individually delineated agents and many of the presuppositions pertaining to
agents can be transplanted to the realm of history. There is even no need to
question this transplantation because it is obvious that not all events with
which history is concerned are related to biographical individuals. In this
context we have to be reminded of Austin's caution: "All 'actions' are, as
actions (meaning what?), equal, composing a quarrel with striking a match,
winning a war with sneezing: worse still, we assimilate them one and all to
the supposedly most obvious and easy cases, such as posting letters or
moving fingers, just as we assimilate all 'things' to horses or beds." 3 We
shall look now into some of the prevailing descriptions of actions in order to
see whether they are applicable to the domain of history and thus attempt to
clarify the basic issue in what sense history embraces events or actions.
If action is to be subsumed under the generic term "practice," and
practice, to use John Rawls' description, is a form of activity specified by a
system of rules, the system defines offices, rules, moves, penalties, defenses.
etc. It is questionable whether practice in this sense can be applied to the
historical realm and to historical action. In the first place one wonders
whether historical action, like the emergence of Protestantism, or the French
and the Bolshevik revolutions are specified by a system of rules. It is not
precluded that post Jactum somebody could try to decipher the system of
rules which gives structure to the activity like the renaissance of a religion or

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

73

revolution. But it is - to say the least - questionable whether this is so in

the terms of individuals and groups involved in the activity. To some extent
we can even say that it is part and parcel of the situation to overrule the
rules - not to cling to the ecclesiastic hierarchy, let alone to the existing
social order. Somehow that description of practice is too much guided by
the model or paradigm of a certain channel of activity like games, since
games are guided by rules which an individual must learn before he can be a
participant in the specific game and must observe them lest he is excluded
from the activity of the game. When Rawls says that the rules are publicly
known and understood as definitive, we again encounter a paradox: 4 history
is a public realm and the actions and activities taking place within that realm
are public by definition, at least in so far as their outcome goes, since there
might be secret actions leading to historical results. But we may still wonder
whether the position of an action within the public sphere is identical with an
action characterized as being guided by public rules, or rules publicly
known.
To what extent the current descriptions of actions and activities cling
naively to the individual model can be seen from additional features usually
attributed to actions. The first feature to be mentioned in this context is that
of responsibility in the sense that actions, as related to 'agents, raise the
question as to the responsibilities of the agents. Let us take a rather difficult
and invidious example - of the guilt of the German people in the Nazi
period. We know very well that the simple transposition of the notion of the
individual in his personal sphere does not apply to the historical sphere,
unless we refer again specifically to individuals, like Hitler or Eichmann.
Responsibility implying the attributability of an action as well as
accountability takes a different form when applied to groups of people, since
vis-a-vis groups we cannot point to an explicit will or decision as implied in
action and thus serving as the groundwork for responsibility. Attitudes of
consent, even of passive consent, are contributing to the total historical
situation, though will as initiating an action cannot be presupposed, or at
least cannot be pointed to. In the attitude of consent we can discern a kind
of adherence to an action initiated by a person or by a group of persons;
and here, too, we have to distinguish between an expressed consent and a
tacit consent. Moreover, we can and probably have to attribute
responsibility to a group not from the point of view of the agent implied, but
from the point of view of the magnitude of the result - and the Nazi era and

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NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

the question of guilt is a case in point. A consent which does not lead to
events of catastrophic orders of magnitude is an attitude which historically
may not count a great deal. From the event as an outcome we regress to the
activity and to those responsible for the activity. Hence, in the sphere of
history when we disregard individual agents, we cannot pinpoint an
individual agent, and the activity of action springing from the agent. We
reconstruct the agent from the event and point to a sort of continuity from
the event to the agent without describing or delineating the boundaries of the
agent.
An additional feature usually mentioned in the context of the description
of activity is that of mental action, as setting ourselves to do something, that
is to say, to bring something about. It is well known that in this context the
question arises of the distinction between intent and purpose, or the
distinction suggested by Austin between acting intentionally, deliberately
and on purpose. In so far as intention is concerned, let us recall the
distinction between consciousness and goal-directedness. We can probably
say that within the historical context goal-directedness appears e.g. as
the renaissance of a certain religion or a revolution or a victory in a war. But
the outcome of that goal-directedness goes beyond the goal initiated by the
historical action which lacks, and necessarily so, the intention to bring about
all the results of the action; one cannot be aware of all the re,sults, since they
may lie ahead of the individual agent or the group and still be, even when we
call this hindsight. traced to the action. The distinction between intention
and goal is rather significant for the historical sphere: implied in that
distinction is the difference between intention or intentionality, belonging to
the consciousness of individuals, and goals which by the very fact that they
can be defined create a kind of trans-individual focus. Many human beings,
as agents, be their intentions what they may, may share, as we put it, in the
goal, and direct themselves towards the goal. They meet, as it were, in terms
of the goal while their intentions and motivations may differ.
Moreover, within the sphere of history the trans-personal locus of the
goal may initiate directedness, though directedness as such is not necessarily
the initial step. Let us take a simple example: when we start from the
position of the agents by way of intentionality or even goal-directedness,
many human beings might be inspired by attitudes of protest,
dissatisfaction, malaise, crises, expectations, etc. In this sense their attitudes
can be described as goal-directed: their goal might be to express their

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

75

bitterness, or even to undermine the present system which in their eyes is

accountable (whatever this may mean) for their misgivings. The goal of a
new social system, or of utopian communities to be formed parallel to the
existing system, is a goal which as such can initiate a new goal-directedness
or, as it happens ever so often in history, one goal-directedness takes
advantage of another goal-directedness, utilizing its energies and reinforcing
itself. Here, too, we have to distinguish between goals set by individuals,
who can entertain goals in their intentionality, as against certain delineated
conceptual nuclei, like systems or modes of existence and life, whose transindividual status attracts individuals without assuming any kind of
continuity from consciousness, intentionality to goal-directedness. But what
is even more significant: the trans-individual status of goals evokes transindividual actions which can be pointed to. These actions can be listed
neither with psychic events nor with bodily events. They are, to use Max
Scheler's expression, psycho-physically indifferent. Scheler used that
description for the nature of the person, but a fortiori it can be used more
properly for the nature of the historical action and the historical agent, if the
distinction between the two is to be maintained at all. Parallel to that
statement is the distinction, again suggested by Scheler, between functions
and acts. He lists with functions seeing, hearing, testing, etc.; also all sorts of
attention, observation, etc. He lists as acts all these attitudes in which
something is meant (etwas "gemeint" wirc/). S What we do find in the
historical sphere, precisely because of the goal-directedness, is that the
directedness reinforces the entertainment of goals and goals create the
directedness out of their own resources. Thus, an inter-subjective realm is
implied which can be reduced neither to functions nor to actions as mental
activities implying the component of will or willing. The fact that we use the
expression "actions" connotes the occurrences taking place, and because
human beings are involved, we again tend to transpose the descriptions
which mayor may not hold good for actions of individuals onto the intersubjective level of history. But we are probably victims here of what might
be called individumorphism, if we introduce a term parallel to the wellknown anthropomorphism.
We have already referred several times to the component of will in actions
of individuals. About practice Oakeshott says that it is the exercise of the
will; practical thought is volition; practical experience is the world sub specie
voluntatis. Oakeshott is consistent, because the stress he lays on the exercise

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N AT HAN ROTEN S T REI C H

of will leads him to the statement that the self, engaged in practical
experience, is what is separate or else unique and self-contained. This
position can be maintained only when we suggest a far-reaching chasm
between the mode of practice and the mode of history. History is to be listed
within the broad scope of alteration of existence. It is not merely a program
for action but is action itself, to use again Oakeshott's statements. Practice
and history imply and depend upon something "to be" which is "not yet.~'
History is practice and we can speak of historical practice and historical
action. But as long as we confine practice to the exercise of will, we are
somehow at a loss, and because of our individumorph!c description of
action, we are looking for a trans-individual will. Either we find that will in a
sort of Volksseele, or will of the proletariat, and thus maintain a consistent
description of action, or else we do not find the component of will and see
history only from the point of view of praeteritorum in Oakeshott's sense.
Thus, we see history only from the point of view of dependence upon the
past and not from that of occurrences en route and their results. 6 But once
we bring to prominence the distinction between the inter-subjective
character of history which, by definition, cannot contain components like
will or intentionality characteristic of individuals, we have to make a
distinction between the phenomenology of history, including historical
actions, and a certain theory of action which at the best is applicable in the
sphere of individual agents and not in a sphere of trans-individuality. The
characteristics of the trans-individual sphere lead us to define certain foci of
that sphere. If the focus is national self-determination, the agent is a people.
If the focus is the share in the "national cake," the agents are those who are
interested or those whose goal-directedness lies in the national income and
its distribution. It is precisely because of that trans-individuality that the
historical sphere is characterized by the coexistence of different goals and
foci, and consequently by a coexistence of agents defined or delineated from
the point of view of the different foci. 7

III
Our previous reference to goals as factors creating the inter-subjective realm
of history could possibly be interpreted as if we suggested a cause or a prime
mover for the very estl!-blishment or emergence of the historical sphere. But
this is not so, since the inter-subjectivity is not created out of sources outside
itself, be they the goals or, as sociologists tend to emphasize, values, etc.

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

77

Solidarity, to which sociologists refer, characterized by the institutionalization of shared value-orientations, is but one of the expressions
of the infrastructure of inter-subjectivity which as such can be focused or
reinforced by shared values but is not created by them. 8 The historical
sphere originates out of itself, and there is no extra-historical cause creating
history, or the first historical deed, as Marx put it. Inter-subjectivity is
related to as an awareness of those involved in the context and it implies that
reality does not begin with themselves. From the historical point of view, it
does not follow from people's awareness of being placed in the middle of
time that they are aware of the past or their predecessors' existence: The
notion of Vorwelt does not occupy, from the point of view of the awareness
of inter-subjectivity and along with this of the historical realm, a more
primary position than does the notion of what might perhaps be called, for
the sake of symmetry, Folgewelt or Nachwelt, that is to say, the reality of
the future and in the future. 9
The reference to the preceding world as well as to the succeeding one is
essentially a certain interpretation of the openness of reality which, as we
have seen, is the ontological presupposition of any attitude which introduces
changes into reality and brings about events or results. Once that openness
is presupposed it becomes more closely interpreted as an openness in terms
of time; the past and the future indicate the specific vectors of the openendedness. The further interpretation is imposed on the past from the point
of view of the events encountered or interpreted. But were it not for the very
possibility to go beyond the present, the rigidity or closedness of the past
could not be discerned. Once human beings find themselves embraced as it
were by a broader reality, by the openness of reality in general, and by the
transpersonal or trans-individual status of time, the alleged subjectivity has
already been broken through, since individuals reflect upon themselves as
referring or relating to spheres outside themselves. In this sense transpersonality is the ontological precondition for trans-subjectivity or intersUbjectivity. Hence it can be said that even an individual agent cannot be
historically a prime mover, but only an interpreter or an agent for the
focusing and the materialization of conditions, situations, directions, and the
like. The doom of trans-subjectivity looms large even vis-a-vis individual
historical agents, that is to say "great" historical individuals. A historical
action is from this point of view never a new beginning; it is an action in so
far as it brings about a certain course of events, but it is an event in so far as

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NATHAN ROTENSTREICI-t

in the action things come to exist. Thus the concept of events related to
evenio is applicable In this context, because it implies the notion of coming,
coming out, coming along. Hence we may perhaps coin an expression like
activent which combines both the aspect of action and that of event. If we
refer to the notion of action at all, we may take advantage of the distinction
suggested by Arthur C. Danto: "That is, if thete are any actions at all, there
must be two distinct kind of actions: those performed by an individual M
which he may be said to have caused to happen, and those actions, also
performed by M, which he cannot be said to have caused to happen. The
latter I shall designate as basic actions." 10
The lack of a primary historical fountainhead which we tried to explain
by the very dimension of time can be explained correspondingly by looking
also into the aspect of content. Historical actions presuppose the day-to-day
infrastructure of human existence, mainly the infrastructure of the public
realm, even when that realm is not audible or visible. It is often invisible
because by and large it can be said that human existence in the public realm
proceeds without being reflected upon. The day-to-day events are referred to
only in critical situations. It is not only, as Dewey said, that a hitch in
workings occasions emotion and provokes thought. At certain turning
points the infrastructure of reality gains historical meaning and significance
because certain problems become prominent. This is the nature of an
economic crisis in the sense that work, earning, interaction between human
beings-all these are presupposed. But certain problems emerge out of the
context which make the smooth proceeding or course impossible or, to put it
differently, call for a certain deliberate intervention in the course of events.
The infrastructure is not created by the action; it conditions the action,
because an attempt to come to grips with an economic crisis is bound to
differ from an attempt to come to grips with the crisis in the curriculum of a
school. Action in the strict sense of the term is future-directed because it is
meant to bring about changes in the situation, but it is past-directed just as
well, because the infrastructure to be changed has been read carefully and
the programmed action adequately defined and carried out.
Let us take another rather topical example: busing in the American
school system could become a program of action and an initiation of action
only because the existence of buses is presupposed. But this existence is not
confined to the vehicles in the physical sense; it comprises the facts or events
that people ride in buses, that buses are meant to overcome distances in the

HIS TOR I CAL ACT ION S 0 R HIS TOR I CAL EVE N T S

79

geographical sense; buses as instruments for overcoming geographical

distances become eventually instruments for overcoming social distances.
Here, too, the infrastructure is of a social or inter-subjective character. That
character cannot be'limited to the value aspect or to the goal component. It
is a kind of a totality, and historical changes, be they called events or
actions, are essentially extractions of certain components of the
infrastructure by way of making them foci of act~on. In this sense a focus of
action becomes an event because of its involvement in the infrastructure on
the one hand and its impact on the course of events or actions on the other.
The grounding of the focus of action in the infrastructure reinforces the
position that there is no new beginning in history. It also reinforces the fact
that the impact of events transcends the intention. This is so since the event
is by its very essence involved in the course of reality or else in the course of
time. An event or even a cluster of events cannot therefore fully control
either reality or time. If we use the two terms intention and motive in the
sense suggested by G.E.M. Anscombe -" A man's intention is what he aims
at or chooses; his motive is what determines the aim or choice;" 11 - we
realize that from both aspects reality is sweeping the agent along: sometimes
his motives become irrelevant by the very step towards transpersonalization
which is characteristic of historical actions or events, and sometimes his
intentions become obsolete. This is so because what he aims at or chooses
lies within his individual horizon, but a historical event or an outcome of an
action becomes, by its very nature, interwoven with other events or with the
broad reality over which he has no control and cannot have control. Hence,
even when we introduce Max Weber's notion of social action into the
context of our analysis, we shan still have to express some doubts whether
that notion does justice to the complexity of the historical realm.
Max Weber describes social action as action related to the behaviour of
others. As such it includes both action proper as a deed, as wen as failure to
act and passive acquiescence. Since the emphasis is placed on the relation to
the others, social action in that description may be oriented to the past as
well as to the present or to the expected future behaviour of others. 12 One
could easily assume that historical action is a social action in the first place
or even par excellence, since it involves inter-action and is related to or
implied in what goes on between various peoples. To put it differently,
historical action is oriented to the behaviour of the others since it is
embraced by the sphere which is public or common; different peoples are

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NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

placed in that sphere before the action proper begins. Yet Max Weber's
description of social action is too limited to do justice to the complexities of
history and historical action. Let us take as an example one quoted by
Weber himself, who says that religious behaviour is not social if it is simply
a matter of contemplation or of solitary prayer. To cling to that example, we
have to ask in the first place: what sort of prayer is a solifary individual
utterance? Is the individual uttering a prayer which he received from
tradition, e.g. by using the prayer-book? To be sure he uses it within the
confines of his own individual existence. He may use the same prayer as
another individual or as church-goers do who are with others and interact
with them. If social action connotes the present or momentary interaction
with the other, the attitude of the individual or his behaviour in the case
quoted is not social. But if sociality or social action connote an involvement
in a sphere which is a common ground for individuals, even when here and
now they are solitary, the whole shape of the situation changes. Interestingly
enough, when Weber speaks about the orientation to the past, he quotes the
example of an individual who may be motivated by revenge for a past
attack. He thus quotes an example which points rather to the immediate
impact a past situation has or may have on the emotions of the individual
involved. But when we speak of the realm of history, there is no personal
involvement in the sense quoted in the as it were 'existential' impact of the
past act on one's present response; there is more of an anonymous
involvement of many individuals in a past, as well as a sort of deliberate or
non-deliberate selection of events from the past remembered or reinstituted
by those living in the present. The social character of the past serves as a
reservoir, as a background, as a score for individual selections, as principles
of actions or norms, etc. Hence it can be said that the social action as
described by Weber is based on a model of linear relationship between copresent individuals, which can again perhaps be described also as a
horizontal relationship. But precisely the position of the historical realm as
well as the inter-action between the dimensions of time and human beings
involved in those dimensions are of a different character. The inter-action is
not given since the individuals are not co-present; the past is brought back
to the present, the future is anticipated. Thus, individuals extend the network
of their relationship in the directions prescribed by the dimensions of time
which in turn are interpreted by them as containing contents of different
meaning or impact.

HISTORICAL ACTIONS OR HISTORICAL EVENTS

81

In so far as we take Weber's description as a model of social action, we

are bound to arrive at a paradoxical conclusion: the inter-action between
human beings within the historical realm is not a social action proper. To
avoid this paradoxical conclusion, we have to extend the meaning of social
action to include inter-action between human beings, be the context of that
inter-action, both in terms of time and in terms of meaning, lodged in the
present or transcending it. This is rather significant from the point of view of
our attempt to describe the nature of action in history as well as the interrelation between actions and events. Actions occurring in the present, if they
are of a historical character, do occur against the background of given
circumstances which, historically speaking, are events or results of actions
initiated in the past. A historical actor or agent is aware - be the actual,
topical awareness focused or not - that he acts in certain circumstances.
Were it not for the fact that he conceives the circumstances as historical,
that is to say, as results of actions, he would not initiate his own action. He
would take the world or reality as totally closed, and thus as preventing the
intervention in the course of reality. The conscious or unconscious
presupposition of any action, including historical action, is that reality is not
closed. A historical agent, be the agent an individual or a group of
individuals, presupposes history, that is to say, the constant shift from
action to results or events, or the perennial possibility to initiate actions
which will result in events.
The locus of the action is here and now. This applies to the other end as
well, namely, that the historical agent assumes that his action will result in
an event, and become a historical event proper, to be discerned in the future
or by a future observer. We find here, as a matter of fact, a constant shift
from actions to events. What a historical action is can be gauged by the
historical events or by those actions which become events. The evaluation of
an action as an event follows the principle that wirklich ist was wirksam ist
oder war or, to put it differently, we come back from the results to the
actions which initiated them.
If this shift from action to events is characteristic of the historical sphere,
then we reiterate our previous comment, namely, that underlying the
historical realm and the historical action occurring in it is the continuous
awareness that we are in the midst of time, or that reality does not begin
with ourselves. 13 Every historical action, accompanied by that awareness,
may bring about an anti-egocentric evaluation of historical actions and

82

NATHAN ROTEN STREICH

agents. History is an anti-egocentric realm par excellence. Moreover, the

shift from action to events and from events to their becoming the
background for action - this perennial shift characteristic of history may
lead us to a further conclusion related to the well-known distinction
mentioned before of history as res gestae and history as the narration of
rerum gestarum. History as res gestae is a forward-looking action occurring
against the background of given events, that is to say, of results of actions
which occurred previously. History, as a narration of rerum gestarum, is an
attempt to look at events as results of action, or to find the causal or
hermeneutic relationship between events which are the point of departure, of
our interpretation or observation and the actions which resulted in the
events. Historical action proper as an occurrence or as an activity
presupposes events, while historical narration presupposes actions.
Historical occurrences are characterized by actions experienced, in which
historical agents are involved against the background of events; historical
events presuppose actions and they are historical since the presupposed
actions occurred previously and are not and cannot be experienced by the
observer in the present. The present is the locus of action, and the events
which are the starting point of the investigation are lodged in the present as
well. The events do not occur in the present, but they can be traced from the
position of the present to the past as the locus and background. The
distinction lies therefore in the parallel distinction between the locus and the
point of departure, though the two perspectives are correlated.
An additional comment is apposite in the present context. History is
perpetually recreated, and the shift from actions to events and the
reconstruction of actions from events epitomize the character of the
historical realm. It follows from this that history presupposes itself: the
public realm, for instance, institutions or languages, are not created by a
summing-up of individual deeds or voices. The public realm, being reshaped,
is presupposed in the first place as are changes occurring within it, though
they may bring about significant or radical innovations. Whatever applies to
the circularity of the public realm applies also to the circularity of history
and historical action. A historical action presupposes the historical realm.
That presupposition can be terminologically and phenomenologically
pointed to by applying the concept of events. He,nce we may say that
actions presuppose events, and events can lead to action; both components
or correlates are embraced by the common sphere of history on the one

HIS TOR I CAL ACT ION S 0 R HIS TOR I CAL EVE N T S

83

hand and they keep recreating that common sphere on the other.
From the preceding analysis we may draw several conclusions as to the
nature of history in general. In the first place it has to be said that history is
a sphere and not a particular content. What is historical or not can therefore
not be decided from the point of view of the substance of an action or an
event, but from the point of view of the place, position, or impact of the
action or event. Moreover, history in the spheric and not substantive sense,
is a process of incorporation or integration of substanti~e actions and events
into its own motion or continuity. History presupposes substantive contents
like scientific events, political acts or technology as an order, etc. The
substantive contents become historical events within the limited spheres
delineated by the contents, namely events in the history of science or politics
or technology. They may become events in the broader scope of history
maintaining their substantive meaning by having an impact beyond the
boundaries delineated by that meaning. The Theory of Relativity becomes
an event not only in the history of science but in history at large because of
the impact it had on the atomic bomb, and th~ough the atomic bomb on the
course of world history. Since there is no primary substantive aspect to
history, what becomes historical is a post factum assertion.
The second conclusion is this: since historical meanings are meanings
which gain impact, historical events are essentially radiating occurrences
similar to the sense used by William Stern in his theory of values, namely
strahlende Werte. To put it differently, they are events in so far as they have
effects. But once we introduce the metaphor of radiation into the scope of
our analysis, we may say against the present-day experience, and without
being overly sarcastic, that historical events might be radiating in the neutral
sense and might be radiating in the sense attributed to nuclear energy. The
impact might be neutral, benign or malignant. The emphasis placed on the
aftermath of events which in turn is related to the fact that events lack a
substantive meaning, opens the door to the evaluation of historical events.
The primary evaluation is the very assessment of the fact that events equal
impact. That assessment in turn can lead to subsequent assessments and
evaluations as to the nature of the impact - whether it was for the benefit or
harm to subsequent generations, or what sort of substantive meaning the
event contained from the aspect of the particular sphere to which it belongs,
as distinguished from the aspect of the historical process.
Here, too, the distinction between meanings and impacts related to the

84

NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

analysis of action in history leads us, on the one hand, to a reconsideration

of the interplay between action and events and, on the other, to
reservations about a value-free interpretation.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTES
I E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig
Landgrebe, Prag, Academia, 1939, pp. 235 fT.
2 R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. T.M. Knox, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1946, p.
213; also his An Essay on Metaphysics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940, pp. 292 fT; cf. the
discussion in Alan Donagan, The Later Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1962, pp. 192 fT.
1 J.L. Austin, "A Plea for Excuses," in Philosophical Papers, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1961, p. 127. As to the question of non-individual agents, see my "On the Historical
Subject," Studi Internazionali di Filosofia 4 (1972): 15 fT.
4 John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," The Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 3 ff.; see also
Thomas Morawetz, "The Concept of a Practice," Philosophical Studies 24 (1973): 209 fT.
~ Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik; Neuer Versuch
der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus, Bern, Franke Verlag, 1954, p. 398.
6 Michael Oakeshott, Experience and its Modes, Cambridge University Press, 1933, pp.
296-298, 273, 118.
7 Several surveys of the contemporary literature on action are available. See, for instance,
Glenn Langford, Human Action, London, Macmillan, 1971, and the extensive bibliography
at the end of the book.
8 Toward a General Theory of Action, ed. Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, Cambridge,
Mass., Harvard University Press, 1951, p. 193.
9 Alfred Schiitz, Der sinnhafte AI{/bau der sozialen Welt, Eine Einleitung in die verstehende
Soziologie, Wien, Julius Springer, 1932, pp. 236 fT.
10 "Basic Action," in Readings in the Theory of Action, ed. Norman S. Care and Charles
Landesman, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1968, p. 95.
11 "Intention," in The Philosophy of Action, ed. Alan R. White, Oxford University Press,
1968, p. 147.
12 I follow here Max Weber's Wirtschqft und Gesellschaft in its English translation, The
Theory of Social and Economic Organization, by A.R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, rev.
and ed. with introduction by Talcott Parsons, London-Edinburgh-Glasgow, William Hodge,
1947.
1l See my "Ontological Status of History," American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (January
1972): 49 fT.

EDDY M. ZEMACH

EVENTS

In a number of papers published over the last few years Donald Davidson
has advocated an ontology which admits events as full fledged, real
particulars. Events, in his view, are in no sense reducible to, or even
secondary to, individual things. The category of events, he says, is "a
fundamental ontological category" (IOE, p. 232). I "The assumption,
ontological and metaphysical, that there are events is one without which we
cannot make sense of our most common talk ... I do not know of any better,
or further, way of showing what there is" (CR, p. 703).
Davidson's main argument for this view is that his theory otTers a
satisfactory solution to Kenny's problem of the variable poliadicity of
adverbs. The problem is, roughly, this. From a sentence like
(1)

Sebastian strolled in Bologna at 2 AM quietly

one would like to be able to derive

(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Sebastian
Sebastian
Sebastian
Sebastian

strolled
strolled
strolled
strolled

quietly
in Bologna
at 2 AM
quietly in Bologna

etc. In general, we can intuitively see that if a sentence S which includes the

genuine adverbs (excluding 'apparently,' 'allegedly,' and similar non-genuine

modifiers) AI'" An is true, then any S', which is exactly like S except that
some of the adverbs A I' .. An do not appear in it, is also true. However, on
the classical PM analysis no such S' is logically derivable from S.
Davidson's solution to this problem is twofold. First he construes
'Sebastian strolled' as an existentially quantified sentence, saying that there
occurred at least one event of Sebastian strolling. Then the adverbs are
construed as regular (adjectival) modifiers attributing properties to the said
event or events. Thus, the logical form of (1), Davidson's style, is
85
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 85-95. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel PubJishing COmjJany, Dordrecht, Holland.

86

E D D Y M. Z E MAC H

(lD)

(Ex) [Strolled (Sebastian, x) & In (Bologna, x) &

At (2 AM, x) & Quiet (x).

The coveted result of simple, mechanical detachment of adverbs has

certainly been reached: p & q logically implies p.
There are, however, several highly questionable points in this account.
First of all, can adverbs be construed as modifiers of event terms? E.g., if
(6)

Sebastian ate carefully

is analysed as
(6D)

(Ex) [Ate (Sebastian, x) & Careful (x)

we would seem to be saying that the event x was careful, rather than what
we want to say, i.e., that Sebastian was careful. We need, therefore, some
rule to the effect that 'careful' here means 'executed with care.' What this
rule might be is difficult to say since, obviously, we do not want to say that
for every F and every x, if x is an event 'Fx' is to be read as 'x is executed
with F-ness.'
A second problem is mentioned by Davidson, but left unsolved. It has to
do with a feature common to adverbs of manner and to attributives, i.e., that
these terms are relative to the terms they modify. Davidson's own example
(LF A, p. 82) is this: If Sue tells us that she has crossed the channel in fifteen
hours, we would say, 'it was slow.' But.if we are then told that she swam
across, we would say, 'it was fast.' Since the swimming was the crossing the
analysis of the above would be
(70)

(Ex) (Ey) I Swam (Sue, x) & Crossed (Sue, y) &

Fast (x) & Not fast (y) & x=y)

and we have a contradiction. A possible solution is to say that the crossing

is not identical with the swimming (they are two distinct events). But this
cannot be maintained by Davidson who holds, e.g., that writing one's name,
signing a check, and paying one's gambling debts are all one and the same
event. It is clear that this objection can be raised with respect to almost
every event which sustains several descriptions.
A third objection is even more serious than the previous ones.
Supposedly, (10) is to be read as follows: 'Some x was strolled by
Sebastian, and that x was in Bologna, it was at 2 AM, and it was quiet.' We

EVENTS

87

are supposed to understand that the x in question is a certain event, i.e.,

Sebastian's stroll. But this is nowhere said. If 'strolled' has its usual
meaning, the said x could very well be Sebastian's dog. Davidson relies here
on the first conjunct of (1 D) to specify what x is. To do this, however, is to
use a single operator (the term 'strolled') in two irreconcilable roles. It is
supposed to be both (a) a one-place predicate saying which kind of entity x
is (a stroll, rather than, e.g., a swim or a dog), and (b) a two-place predicate
saying what is the relation between Sebastian and x. But this is impossible.
If Davidson is right, and we have a right to expect 'Sebastian strolled' to
be a logical consequence of (1), then we also have every right to expect 'x is
a stroll' to be a logical consequence of (10). But if'S' in 'S(Sebastian, x)' is
an unstructured predicate (reading, say,'- is a stroll by -'), 'x is a: stroll'
does not follow from (1 D). Hence Davidson's reasons for rejecting the
traditional analysis of action sentences also weigh against his own.
In a later paper Davidson has attempted to correct this flaw. His reason
was that Sebastian can stand in more than one relation to the stroll x: "there
are endless things he can do with a stroll besides take it: for one, he can
make sure ... that someone else takes it" (EEE, p. 343). Thus Davidson now
separates the one-place predicate from the relation-word. Instead of the D
form above we are now offered what Davidson has earlier called (lOB, p.
219) the "ornate" form:
(lR)

(Ex) [Stroll (x) & Took (Sebastian, x) & In (Bologna, x)

& At (2 AM, x) & Quiet (x)l.

But this move, however necessary, is quite fatal. The second conjunct of
(1 R) states that there is some x such that Sebastian took that x. However, to
present 'a took b' as having the logical form 'T(a,b)' is to use the classical,
rather than the Davidsonian, method of analysis. If Davidson is right, then
'a took b' has the logical form '(Ex) T(a,b,x),'
The point is that 'T(a,b), is itself an action sentence saying what a did
with respect to b. As such, it is subject to the Davidsonian analysis and
should be presented as '(Ex) T(a,b,x).' This becomes clearer when we
examine the other relations which can exist between a and b. As we have
seen above, Davidson suggests the following example for a relation between
a and b: a made sure that someone else takes b. Let us refer to this relation
as 'P.' Now 'P(a,b), certainly is an action sentence; it says that a certain
person performed a certain action with respect to a certain entity. Therefore

88

ED D Y M. Z EM A C H

it must be construed as having the logical form '(Ex) P(a,b,x).' If P and T are
equally relations between a and b, 'T(a,b)' should also be represented as
'(Ex) T(a,b,x).'
One cannot argue that only 'P(a,b)' and not 'T(a,b)' is an action sentence,
and thus 'a took b' need not be represented as '(Ex) T(a,b,x).' True, if a is the
agent and b the event which is his action it would normally be strange to say
that the agent's performing his action b is itself another action, c. But here
we must remember that on Davidson's view the event b is an entity, an
individual, and what 'a took b' says is that a brought about th~ existence of
b. And while it is plausible to say that a's V-ing does not involve any other
action over and above this V-ing itself, it is not plausible to say that a's
bringing about the existence of b does not involve any other action over and
above the entity b itself. No entity, with the possible exception of God, is
identical with the action of bringing about its own existence. (It seems that if
something is identical with the action of bringing about its own existence, it
would necessarily exist.) Thus a Davidsonian ontologist must say that the
'x' in '(Ex) T(a,b,x), is not any more superfluous than the 'x' in '(Ex)
P(a,b,x).'
In fact, the reasons that made Davidson reject the binary predicate form
for action sentences such as 'Shem kicked Shaun' should count against 'T
(Sebastian, x)' as well. For Sebastian may take his stroll regularly, carefully,
deliberately, reluctantly, intermittently, etc. All these adverbs apply not to
the stroll itself but to the manner in which Sebastian took it. Davidson must,
therefore, by his own lights (if 'Sebastian took a stroll' is to be a logical
consequence of 'Sebastian took a stroll reluctantly'), use a three-place,
rather than a two-place, predicate in order to formulate 'Sebastian took a
stroll.' Therefore, (lR) must be rejected by Davidson and its first two
conjuncts should be replaced by
(1S)

(Ex) (Ey) [Stroll (x) & Took (Sebastian, x, y)J.

But (lS) is inadequate and misleading in exactly the same way that (10)
was inadequate and misleading. The term 'took' as used in (IS) illegitimately
amalgamates a one-place predicate designating the kind of event y is with a
three-place predicate designating the relation between x, y, and Sebastian,
exactly as 'strolled' in (10) illegitimately amalgamated 'is a stroll' and
'took.' Hence (lS) should be rewritten as

EVENTS
(I T)

89

(Ex) (Ey) IStroll (x) & Taking (y) & Performed

(Sebastian, x, y)l.

It cart be seen that the third conjunct of (I T) again uses. only the PM form of
analysis, and ought to be recast, like (IR) before it, in the proper
Davidsonian form. Thus (IT) gives way to
(I U)

(Ex) (Ey) (Ez) IStroll (x) & Taking (y) & Performed
(Sebastian, x, y, z)1.

It is obvious now that (1 U) is also unsatisfactory, for the same reasons that
(lD) and (IS) were unsatisfactory, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The
regress is vicious, since every formulation we may reach will be inadequate.
Davidson's analysis, therefore, fails. But it fails on more than one count.
Davidson's intended solution to the problem of variable poliadicity fails
completely if we try to apply it to adjectives, where exactly the same
problem exists. E.g., it is reasonable to expect that
(8)

Jane is a good secretary

will logically imply (as it cannot under standard formalization)

(9)

Jane is a secretary.

If, however, we use Davidson's method, we shall get

(8D)

(Ex) ISecretary (Jane, x) & Good (x)].

The nearest reading of (80) is probably this: There is a state of affairs of

Jane being a secretary and that state of affairs is good. (8D) does, therefore,
'imply (9). But it demands ar. additional ontological price: we have to
countenance states of affairs in addition to events. Even if we pay this price,
however, this method of analy~is will fail. First of all, Jane may be a talented
secretary, but no state of affairs (e.g., that of Jane being a secretary) can be
talented. Secondly, the state of affairs of Jane being a secretary may be good
(e.g., for some other reason) even though it is false that Jane is a good
secretary.
JI

Before I offer my solution which, I hope, is both frugal and efficacious, I

must argue that (8) implies not only (9) but also
(10)

Jane is good.

90

E D D Y M. Z E MAC H

This result. I know, has traditionally been objected to on the grounds that,
on it. everything turns out to be good, since everything is a good something
(trivially, everything is a good example of itself). There is, however, a long
philosophical tradition of espousing precisely this tenet and, I think, for a
good reason. If 'x is good' is analysed as 'x is good qua f then (provided we
give a clear analysis of 'qua f locutions) it is true that every x has some f
such that x is good qua f. It can be easily seen that the same goes for all the
other attributives as well. Although attributives (e.g., 'good,' 'heavy,' 'big,'
'fast: 'small: 'cheap,' 'deep,' 'wide,' etc.) apply to different kinds of things
on the basis of different criteria, they are still univocal terms and I see no
reason why we should not regard them as expressing properties (attributive
properties, as distinguished from purely predicative properties) and capable
of generating classes. I believe, therefore, that (when 'G' is an attributive
term and 'f a variable ranging over purely predicative properties) 'Ga'
should be construed as '(30 a is G qua f.' Note that 'not (Gar should be
interpreted, not as 'a is not G as an f,' but rather as 'a is G as no f,' i.e.,
'there is no f such that a is G as an f.' A good secretary, a good road, and a
good apple are, all of them, good, although the criteria for something being
good as an apple are not identical with the criteria of being good as a road
or as a secretary. More importantly, saying of something that it is bad does
not imply that it is not good; if a is bad as something then there is something
qua which a is not good; but this does not mean that there is nothing qua
which a is good. Also note that the above analysis does not apply to
attributives which deny, rather than modify, their predicatives. Since there is
no known syntacticai way to distinguish genuine modifiers from spurious
ones (e.g., 'alleged: or 'half way') this distinction ought to be made
semantically.
It seems that the best interpretation of adverbs of manner is to construe
them as attributives. If Sebastian walked quickly at PT then, at PT, he was
quick qua walker. We may still say that, at PT, Sebastian proceeded very
slowly (we expected him to run, not to walk). In the same way, Micky may
be a small animal (small qua animal) but a big mouse (big qua mouse). Let
us say that sentences which include attributives (Le., are of the form 'x is g
qua f) have multiple predicates. (8), e.g., has the binary predicate 'good
secretary' and should be represented as
(8')

GS (Jane, PT)

EVENTS

91

and (2) should be represented as

(2')

QS (Sebastian. PT).

Now in order for a. qua F. to have the attributive property G. it must also
have some purely predicative property H which is sufficient for the
attribution of G-ness to objects considered qua F. I therefore suggest the
following definition of binary predicates:
Der. I:

G F(a. PT)

=:0

(3h) Ip(h) & D(x) (pO I(h(x. pO & F( x. pt) )

::) G(x. pt)1 & h(a, PT) & F(a. PT)f

Read: a is GF at PT itT there is a purely predicative property h (thus, 'h'

cannot be any expression which includes 'G' itself or any attributive
synonymous with 'G') such that, necessarily, whoever has both hand F at a
certain time and place has G at that time and place (the necessity operator
guarantees that even if all GFs are GKs, 'GKa' will not follow from 'ha' and
'Fa') and a has both hand F at PT.
Applying Def. I to (8') yields. as required, both (9) and (10). The same is
true of all adverbs of manner. E.g.,
(11)

Joe ran quickly

would be represented as
(11')

QR(Joe, PT)

which now yields, quite mechanically, that at a certain time and place Joe
ran, that (there and then) he was quick, and that he had, there and then,
some property (e.g., proceeding at a rate of 9 miles per hour) such that,
necessarily, anyone who has it when and where he runs is quick.
The same analysis applies to predicates o(higher multiplicity. Consider,
e.g.,
(12)

Spots is a strong old dog.

( 12) does not merely say that Spots is old and strong, but that, qua dog, he
is old (if x is fourteen years old then if x is a man x is young but if x is a dog
x is old) and qua an old dog, he is strong (any young dog can jump this
fence, but if an old dog does this he is strong). Thus the proper
representation of (12) is

92

E D D Y M. Z E MAC H

(12')

SOD (Spots, PT).

(12') has a trinary predicate. U sing the already defined binary predicates,
trinary predicates can be defined as follows:
Def. II:

HGF(a,PT) == (3i) JP(i) & D(x) (pt) [(i(x, pt) & GF(x, pt

j H(x, pt)] & i(a, PT) & GF(a, PT)1

In the same manner any n-ary predicate can be defined.
I do not claim the above analysis applies to all adverbs and adjectives;
what I claim is that it applies to attributives and adverbs of manner. Now
what about (I) and the adverbs 'in Bologna' and 'at 2 AM' in it? I answer
that these are not attributives and should not be regarded as parts of
multiple predicates; Consider the following test: If Sebastian strolled quietly
then Sebastian was quiet as a stroller, but perhaps not, e.g., as a thief. But if
Sebastian strolled in Bologna then Sebastian was in Bologna regardless qua
what he was there. (1) is not to be represented as
(1')

QIAS (Sebastian, PT).

The analysis offered above applies to it in another way. It is to be

represented as follows:
(I")

QS (Sebastian, PT) & PT = Bologna at 2 AM.

CPT' is used as a marker indicating a spatio-temporal zone).

If the above analysis is satisfactory, I have shown how the problem of
variable poliadicity can be solved without postulating the existence ot
events. Clearly, I have not tried to perform anything as grandiose as
Davidson's semantic project. If he were successful, there is no doubt that his
solution, with its Tarskian underpinnings, would have been much superior to
mine. I think, however. that he did not succeed, and thus there is a place for
more modest undertakings, i.e., logical analyses of ordinary language
sentences showing how the inferences which we consider intuitively right are
logically justified.
III
Our world is a spatia-temporal continuum. Thus if events exist out there
they must take up space. This, indeed, is what Davidson believes. He claims

EVENTS

93

that events have spatial locations, saying that "the location of the event at a
moment is the location of the smallest part of the substance a change in
which is identical with the event" (I0E, p. 228). This definition can be
understood in three ways.
(I) The last clause may be understood as identifying a certain substance.
The definition would then be, "the location of the event x is the location of
the smallest part of y (when y is the substance whose change x is)." But this
is surely nonsense, and Davidson could not have meant it. What part of y is
the smallest part of y? Its tiniest electron?
(2) The last clause may be understood as identifying a certain spatiotemporal part z of the substance y, i.e., that part whose change is the event
x. I take it that Davidson would not identify the event x with z itself, because
this will amount to saying that there are no events (they would be merely
parts of objects). Also, x cannot be identical with z because several distinct
events can occur in z. (Davidson's own example for this, in LFA, pp.
116-117, is that "during exactly the same time interval John catches cold,
swims the Hellespont, and counts his blessings.") Therefore, the definition
intended by Davidson must be, "the location of the event x is the location of
z (when z is the smallest part of y which can host x)." But this is both
baffling and uninformative. The definition is baffling because it requires that
several real entities (the object z, the event x, and possibly other events) have
exactly the same location and yet be nonidentical. Moreover, weare asked
to believe that x and z, which are at the same place, cannot causally interact
according to any known law of physics. This is, to say the least, very
suspicious. Real entities compete for place and physically interact.
Secondly, the definition is hightly uninformative. To say that the location of
x is at the smallest part of y which can host x is to say that x is located
where x is located. But this is a mere tautology. It evades the real difficulty,
i.e., how to identify changes with events. What changes, in which objects,
are identical with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, or with her marriage?
Are the changes in my nervous system part of the event of my raising my
arm? Changes in what objects (air molecules? oceans? the sun?) constitute
the event, A Drop of Two Degrees in the Temperature?
(3) Perhaps the above definition can be made more informative by
substituting 'is necessary for' for 'is identical with.' The definition will then
be, "the location of the event x is the location of the smallest spatio-temporal
part of the world whose change is necessary for x to occur." But this

Y4

E D D Y M. Z EM A C H

definition is useless. If physical necessity is here meant, the event of my

raising my arm is located (inter alia) in the bodies of my parents, certain
changes in which were necessary for my existence and, hence, for my raising
my arm. In fact, it is a law of physics that every change necessarily brings
about changes all over the world. Thus the location of all events is identical,
i.e., the entire universe throughout time. On the other hand, if logical
necessity is here meant, the location of all events is again identical, i.e.,
nowhere, since no actual change is logically necessary for any other (only
types of events can stand in logical relations).
There is one example which Davidson brings in order to elucidate his
view and demonstrate its feasibility. But this example only helps to confuse
the issue even further. Davidson quotes a passage from the Scientific
American in which a seismologist writing about explosions and other
seismic events mentions the location of such events, and of distances
measured from them. However, when the seismologist tells us that "a
seismic event can be located" with great accuracy what he means is that the
starting point of this event can be accurately located. Using this sense of
'location: one may say that John's house was destroyed by an earthquake
located some fifty miles away from it. As long as this peculiar use of words
is clearly understood, there is nothing wrong with it. But Davidson could ill
afford to use it for his ontological purposes. Is the event of raising my hand
located in my brain? Could the event which destroyed John's house be
located fifty miles away from the house? Is it true that a soldier fighting in
Vietnam is not in the war at all, since he is not at the time and place where
this war has originated? The idea is preposterous. I conclude that Davidson
has not given any definite sense to the expression, 'the location of an event:
and has failed to give an argument for regarding events as real constituents
of this world.
Events, I believe, do not exist, and certainly do not exist in space. The
very idea that events occupy space is extremely strange. Let us suppose that
we have succeeded in identifying the location of my raising my arm as the
area of this arm at that ~ime. Does this event contain, then, bones, muscles,
and blood vessels? If events are real constituents of the world, do they have
weight, mass, or atomic structure? We can give the dates of World War II,
but can those philosophers who wish to "identify events with space-time
zones" (E.J. Lemmon in his comment on LFA, p. 99) also specify its size
and volume'? True. very often we say things like, 'the meeting is held in

EVENTS

95

room 204' and thus seem to assign a location to an event. But a close
scrutiny reveals the difference between this statement and genuine spatiotemporal determinations. If there is a table in room 204 we can say which
pal t of the room is filled up by this table. But if there is a meeting taking
place in room 204, it would be ridiculous to ask which part of the room is
completely filled by the meeting. Does it encompass the chairman's shoes,
his nose, or his kidneys? The only way out of this nonsense is to construe
'the meeting is in room 204' as saying that the people participating in the
meeting are in room 204. Events do not exist and do not occupy chunks of
space-time, but individuals which take part in them certainly do.
But how can individuals take part in events, if events do not exist? There
is an easy answer: Statements about events and changes in (threedimensional) individuals can be eliminated in favour of statements about the
properties of four-dimensional individuals. It sounds paradoxical, but it is
literally true that we need not acknowledge the existence of events because
statements about them can be replaced by statements about events.
However, the last occurrence of the term 'event' is, of course, not the
ordinary language term used by Davidson, but the term 'event' as used in
relativity theory contexts, i.e., areas in the four-dimensional continuum.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTE
I Davidson's articles referred to in this paper (using the following abbreviations) are:
(LFA) "The Logical Form of Action Sentences." in The Logic of Decision and Action. ed. N.
Rescher. Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1967. pp. 81-95. 115-120.
(CR) "Causal Relations." Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967): 691-703.
(IOE) "The Individuation of Events." in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. ed. N. Rescher.
Dordrecht. Reidel. 1969. pp. 216-234.
(EEE) "Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events." Nous 5 (1971): 335-349.
(This is not a complete list of Davidson's writings on this subject.)

ELAZAR WEINRYB

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS AND

THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY

I
It is generally accepted that the word "history" has a two-fold meaning. On
the (me hand, it refers to the course of past events which historians study.
On the other hand, we use it to denote the written accounts of these events,
namely, the products of historical inquiry. Philosophy of history which deals
with history in the former sense is sometimes called "speculative," while
philosophy of history in the latter sense is called "analytical" or "critical."
There are some philosophers - it would be convenient to call them
"Collingwoodians"l - who think that the objects of historical study are not
mere events, but rather human actions. Collingwood himself wrote:
He Ithe historianJ is investigating not mere events ( ... ) but actions ... He must always
remember that the event was an action, and that his main task is to think himself into this
action, to discern the thought of its agent. 2

One of the two definitions by which Walsh tried to distinguish the abovementioned meanings of "history," characterizes it as the "totality of past
human actions." 3 Dray is certainly also a Collingwoodian. He says:
ITJhe objects of historical study are fundamentally different from those, for example, of the
natural sciences, because they are actions of beings like ourselves. 4

Now it would only be reasonable to suppose that this nature of the historical
subject-matter would be reflected in what historians do. Granting that they
try to provide descriptions, explanations and, perhaps, interpretations, if the
Collingwoodian standpoint is accepted, it must be admitted that the
historian's main task is to describe, explain and interpret past human
actions. The questions to be posed now are, therefore, whether descriptions
and explanations of actions are essentially different from descriptions and
explanations of events which are not actions, and how the supposed
distinguishing characteristics of descriptions and explanations of actions
affect the writing of history.

97
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 97-111. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. Holland.

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The Collingwoodian view is that history is an inquiry .>lii generis, and its
products are radically different from the products of other kinds of inquiry
just because they -deal with human actions. The Collingwoodians usually
approach the problem of the uniqueness of history via explanation: the
occurrence of action explanations is the characteristic feature 0f history. But
obviously, in order to supply an action explanation the historian always
needs an action description as an explanandum. Collingwood himself even
thought that the adequate action description would certainly serve as its
appropriate explanation. This is what is meant by his famous words:
"Iwlhen he Ithe historian I knows what happened, he already knows why it
happened:' 5 The Collingwoodians acknowledge the fact that what the
historian has as his datum is not always an action description. But their
point becomes especially clear when they argue, that even if the initially
given description does not appear to be an action description, the historian
is expected to re-describe the event in terms of human actions. Dray
remarked that events such as the spread of European civilization are
normally explained in a 'piecemeal' fashion which involves the detailed
examination of the activities of individuals and groupS.6
In this paper some aspects of action descriptions will be examined and
conclusions will be drawn from these findings in respect of the nature of
history (in the analytical sense of the term).
II
It often happens that by doing certain things we bring about other things.
Brutus stabbed Caesar, and by stabbing him he brought about Caesar's
death. If this is true, then both

Brutus stabbed Caesar.

and
Brutus killed Caesar.
are true descriptions of what Brutus did. It seems that Caesar's death was
an effect of Brutus' stabbing of Caesar. In "Brutus killed Caesar" we "puff
out," so to speak, the act of stabbing to include one of its effects, namely,
the death of Caesar. On the other hand, we may "squeeze down" the action
to include only the movement of Brutus' hand. This feature of our language

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99

of action descriptions, whereby a man's action can be described as narrowly

or broadly as we please, has been calIed by Joel Feinberg "the accordion
effect."7 However, my point of departure wilI be the interesting discussion of
this phenomenon in a paper by Donald Davidson. 8
In order to explain what exactly is involved in the accor~ion effect I shall
employ a useful distinction made by von Wright. According. to him, the
thing done is the result of an action, and the thing brought about is the
consequence of the action. 9 If A opens a window, then the window opening
is the result of A's action. The connection between the action and its result is
described by von Wright as intrinsic, logical. That the result occurs or
materializes is a necessary condition for the truth of the action description.
Had the window ultimately not opened, it would not be true to say that A
opened it. At most he tried to open it. His attempt consists of some actions,
but not of that action of which "opening the window by A" is a true
description. On the other hand, a consequence of an action is an effect of its
result. o A change in the indoor temperature is a consequence of the act of
opening the window, when it is caused by the fact that the window opens.
By the same token, Caesar's being stabbed was the result of the action
described by "Brutus stabbed Caesar." The death of Caesar was the effect
of his being stabbed and a consequence of Brutus' act of stabbing Caesar.
Thus, x is an effect ofy is a relation between events: x is the result ofy and x
is a consequence of yare relations between events and actions.
The accordion effect may now be described in the following linguistic rules:
(a)

Given a description D. of action x of which r is the result and s is a

consequence (i.e., r is a cause of s), it is possible to formulate a
description O 2 of action y such that s wilI be the result of y.

(b)

Given a description D. of action x of which r. is the result, it is

possible to formulate a description O 2, of action y, such that r. will
be a consequence of y (the result r 2 of y is a cause of r.).

As far as I can see, this formulation of the accordion effect thesis expresses
Davidson's view in the technical terms of von Wright.. Feinberg spoke of
squeezing down and stretching out the action itself, but this way of speaking
implies that the described action is always one and the same. I think that
this view is mistaken. The term "accordion" will be used here for denoting a
stretch of events and the question whether or not all these events can be

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identified as a single action is for the moment left open. By following rule (a)
a description which covers a larger stretch of events is added to a given set
of descriptions. Rule (b) authorizes the introduction of a description which
covers a smaller stretch of events. Rule (a) is, thus, a rule for puffing or
pulling out the accordion and rule (b) for pressing or squeezing down the
instrument.
A question may now be raised: are there any limits for the puffing out and
squeezing down of accordions? Of course, only action descriptions may be
added to a given action description, and only such descriptions that are true
of what the agent did. It is now widely held that pressing down has such
limit. There are actions whose results are not the consequences of other
actions. These are those actions which we do not perform by doing
something else. They were called "basic actions" by Danto 11 and "primitive
actions" by Davidson. 12 The latter suggests that primitive actions are only
and always bodily movements, those actions which do not involve any
events beyond our skins. Such movements are, according to him, necessary
conditions for attributing agency. Unless there is a primitive action at the
limit of squeezing down the accordion, we will not have the accordion effect
of agency.
However, what Davidson has to say on the limits of the puffing out is
but disappointing. He says, in fact, that "the possibilities for expansion are
without clear limit." 13 Of course, "without clear limit" does not mean
"limitless." But he also says that "once he [the agent] has done one thing
( ... ) each consequence presents us with a deed." 14 (The term "deed" is here
vague; I assume that it means "action.") In other words, all the effects of
our actions are actions; or more accurately: every event (or state of affairs)
which is a consequence of what is an action under one action description, is
a result of what is an action under another action description.
The usual objection to such unqualified expansion of accordions is raised
by pointing to those cases in which A causes x to happen by getting B to do
X.15 And this objection is sometimes rejected as irrelevant, because in these
cases, if B does x intentionallly, then transitivity of causality also breaks
down. To support this view, the legal principle is cited that intentional
action negates, counteracts, causal connexion. Hart and Honore, who state
and explicate this principle, suggest at various places in their book that the
methods of determining questions of causation in history are not unlike the
methods employed in law. 16 The role of the historian thus is similar in

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS

101

important respects to the role of the lawyer and the judge. This has been
taken by Dray to mean that free will cuts causal chains in history, as in
law. 17 However, Hart and Honore made an important distinction which
might not have received due attention from Dray. They distinguished
between attributive and explanatory uses of causal terminology. 18 In legal
contexts the use is primarily attributive. In history, it seems to me, the use is
principally explanatory. The historian does not respect the principle that free
will counteracts causal connexion, and this is so because the explanatory
use of causal terminology does not necessitate adherence to this principle.
So in history, at least, this principle cannot be used as a criterion for limiting
the expansion of accordions.
III
One mark of agency is, according to Davidson, the accordion effect. But he
suggests another mark as well:
A person is an agent of an event if, and only if, there is a description of what he did that
makes true a sentence that says he did it intentionally. 19

He maintains that it is possible to supply different descriptions of the same

action, and that no event is an action unless there is at least one description
under which the action is intentional. Thus
Oedipus killed the 'old man who stood in his way.
is a description of an action which is identical with the action described by
Oedipus killed his father.
but only according to the former description was the act of Oedipus
intentional. The existence of this description is a sign that what is described
by the latter description is also an action.
When this criterion of agency is combined with the criterion of the
accordion effect something very interesting results. Davidson argues that
the different descriptions associated with the same accordion (Le., those
descriptions which are added to a given action description according to rules
(a) and (b) and are true of what the agent does) correspond to a single
action, which is nothing but the bodily movement, that is to say, the
primitive action which is at the limit of squeezing the accordion. These

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descriptions are only different descriptions of the same action. The

differences are between aspects of descriptions, not between aspects of
actions.
When we take this Identiy Thesis 20 into account, the following explication
of the concept of action results:
An event is an action if, and only if. (a) under some descriptions it is a bodily movement, and
(b) under some descriptions it is intentional.

Intentionality of actions does not serve, in this view, as a criterion for the
limits of puffing out the accordion. We may trace the ~onsequences of what
an agent does indefinitely into the future, and all these consequences may be
described as his actions, though not as his intentional actions.

IV
I think that the Identity Thesis of Actions is mistaken, in so far as it means
that different descriptions which pertain to the same accordion are always of
the same action. Davidson's argument for this Thesis presupposes the
following dilemma: any two descriptions which pertain to the same
accordion are either descriptions of the same event or descriptions of wholly
distinct actions. On the first horn of the dilemma the only possibility is that
both descriptions are of the same primitive action, for otherwise they would
be of events which have different space-time zones, and therefore cannot be
identical (according to what seems a plausible necessary condition for eventidentity). From the second horn - that we have here two actions - it
follows that any given accordion consists of a multitude of distinct actions,
the number of which increases with the puffing out of the accordion. This
seems to Davidson to be incompatible with the normal approach to
responsibility. I have some doubts on this point. But I will concentrate my
criticism upon the argument which Davidson adduces in favour of the
Identity Thesis. Using the example of Queen Gertrude who poured poison
into the ear of Hamlet's father, he supplies the following premises:
( I)

(2)

The moving of her hand by the Queen on that occasion was

identical with her doing something that caused the death of the
King.
Doing something that causes a death is identical with causing a
death.

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS

(3)

103

There is no distinction to be made between causing the death of a

person and killing him.

From these he infers:

(4)

The moving of her hand by the Queen is identical with the killing
of the King by the Queen. 21

In premise (I) there is an analysis of the killing in terms of event causality.

The result of the moving of her hand by the Queen is said to be the cause of
the King's death. Premise (2) equates what is described in language of event
causality with something described in terms of agent causality. For the
description "causing a death" is usually obtained from sentences of the form
"A caused the death of B" which is the standard form of attributing
causality to agents. Moreover, only when "causing a death" is thus
obtained, does premise (3) become plausible. It seems to me therefore that
by translating event causality into agent causality, Davidson subtly begs the
question. For formulations in terms of agent causality are obviously not
susceptible to the fine distinctions available by analysis of agency in terms of
event causality.
There is, however, a way of escape from the horns of this dilemma. It is
possible for one event, e, to be part of another event.!; in that case e and!
are neither identical nor wholly distinct. The relation between them is the
part-whole relation. I do not see why we cannot say that
Brutus stabbed Caesar.
described an event which is part of the event described by
Brutus killed Caesar.
The space-time zone of the latter event includes that of the former as its
parts. Understandably, Brutus could not be responsible for two actions, the
stabbing and the killing, but only for one: the killing which included the
stabbing as its part. Had Caesar remained alive after the events of March
15,44 B.C., Brutus would have been responsible only for stabbing Caesar.

v
Davidson himself confesses that his view is surprising. 22 This, of course,

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does not disqualify it. But if it is counterintuitive, and if there is a more

plausible solution, we would rightly prefer the latter.
Von Wright's insight has been that the result of an action is intrinsically
related to the action. The description

A opened the window.

is a description of the window opening as much as it is a description of some
movements of A's body. Descriptions of events are descriptions of what
happens to the objects which are involved in these events. That actions are
events seems to me undeniable. Action descriptions give thus account of
what happens to the objects involved in those actions, and unless the action
in question is primitive, it always involves a change in the state of an object,
be it a window or Caesar. Descriptions which result from puffing out an
accordion do not describe just a primitive action, but also more and more
consequences of that action.
One basic idea about actions is that actions are controllable. An
important difference between what happens to us and what we do is that we
cannot prevent the occurrence of what happens to us, whereas when we act,
when we do x, we can refrain from doing x and instead do something else, y.
If I spill the coffee because you push my hand, I cannot be called the agent
of the spilling. 23 And this is so because in that case I cannot help spilling the
coffee.
How do we control our actions? Let me use another fruitful idea of von
Wright. He says that "the performance of an action is ... the putting in
motion of a system." 24 This means that when we act we presuppose the
existence of an at least partially closed system, the behaviour of which is
changed by our interference. So in order to do something, it is necessary for
us to foresee what will happen to the system if we interfere with its natural
course. When we act successfully, our foresight is justified to a considerable
degree. It seems to me that what happens to the system is under our control,
and thus an. action of ours, only if it has been foreseen by us. It is within our
power to make happen only those stages of the system which we are able to
foresee.
Some philosophers have argued that what an agent does (in contrast to
what happens to him) is what he would say he is doing when asked: "What
are you doing?"2S This awareness of what one does, which appears to these
philosophers to be a necessary condition for acting, may be identified with

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS

lOS

what I call here "foresight." (Awareness is not, of course, a sufficient

condition for acting because one might be aware of what happens to one.)
When an agent is asked what he is doing, his answer will naturally be an
action description, formulated to include a reference to as many
consequences of the action as the agent pleases. First person action
descriptions are governed by the rules for pulling out and pressing down of
accordions, the same as those for third person action descriptions. But the
agent cannot supply an action description which includes a reference to a
conseq'uence of his action unforeseen by him at the time of his acting. The
limit of the agent's ability to expand an accordion is identical with the limit
of his ability to foresee the behaviour of the system he sets in motion.
It seems clear to me that what I am not aware of doing is not my
intentional action. It may therefore be said that actions the results of which
are unforeseen consequences are unintentional actions. A says something to
B, by which B is offended. This is a clear case of the accordion effect, so we
may say that A offended B. We may also realize that A was not aware of the
fact that his words were offensive. It is then true that A's offending B was
unintentional and beyond A's control. Of course A could have been more
careful in his words in the first place. But not realizing that his words would
offend B, A had no reason not to utter what he wanted to say. A could not
have acted otherwise had he wanted to, because he could not have wanted
to do what he was not aware of.
VI
The basic idea that what happens to us is not our action because it is beyond
our control may be extended to cover not only cases when, for in$tance, I
spill the coffee because you push my hand, but even all unintentional
actions. This means that unintentional actions are not really actions at all. It
is true, of course, that whenever we "perform" an unintentional action there
is "another action" which is intentionally done by us. Davidson's view is
that the intentional action and the unintentional one are identical. 26 The
action, e.g., the killing of his father by Oedipus, is unintentional under this
description and intentional under another one that speaks of the killing of
the offensive man. The Oedipus case is not, however, a case of the
accordion effect. In sections IV and V some serious objections to
Davidson's version of the Identity Thesis have been advanced in so far as

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this Thesis is applied to accordions. I argued that it is wrong to suppose that

when a description D2 is added to a given description D, according to the
rule for puffing out accordions (rule (a) of sec. 11), then Dl and D2 are of the
same action. A fortiori Dl and D2 do not describe the same action when
what is described by D2 is unintentional under D 2. While in the Oedipus
example both descriptions are at least of the same event, in accordions we
do not even have identity of events. Unintentional consequences are nothing
but effects of results (in von Wright's terminology) of intentional actions.
But such unintentional consequences cannot be described as results of
actions because according to such descriptions the actions would be
unintentional and, as we have seen, intentionality is a necessary condition
for being an action.
According to Davidson's conception an action may be intentional under
one description and unintentional under another. I suggest the following
terminology: we may say of certain events, that they are actions under some
of their descriptions and mere events under others. What happened to
Oedipus is such an event. It just befell him that he killed his father. The same
mode of speaking is to be applied to accordions. Some descriptions may
describe a series of events as intentional actions, while others, that describe
longer series of ever.ts, describe them as mere processes. My point is not,
however, just terminological. A serious weakness in Davidson's account of
the accordion effect thesis is removed when we take foresight as a criterion
for delimitation of accordion expansion.
When we speak of the accordion effect of agency, we must delimit the
expansion to what is intentionally done; and what is intentional is in turn
determined by what the agent foresees will happen as a consequence of his
acting or, in other words, by what he is aware of doingY We may pull an
accordion out beyond the boundaries of intentionality as long as causation
permits us to do so; but we will not get the accordion effect of agency.
VII

We are now in a position to answer one of the questions raised at the

beginning of this paper, namely: given that historical events are human
actions, to what extent does this fact determine the basic features of written
history? My conclusion has been that events, or series of events, are actions
only under certain descriptions. If this is so, then the mere fact that the

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS

107

subject-matter of historical inquiry consists of actions does not mean that

historians must always supply action descriptions. It might be objected that
I try to decide a philosophical issue by narrowing the meaning of the term
"action," and procedure of this kind is, of course, illegitimate. My answer to
this objection is that the Collingwoodians themselves use this term to denote
only intentional actions. By "action" they mean only an event the
appropriate explanation of which is by reasons.
If what I have said about the necessity of foresight and intentionality is
right, then historical descriptions are action descriptions only if what
happened is described in them as the historical agents saw it. This
immediately rules out any description in terminology unknown to the
agents. Alasdair MacIntyre expressed this idea very clearly by saying that
"an agent can onl5' do what he can describe" and therefore "to analyse the
ideas current in a society is also to discern the limits within which action
necessarily moves in that society." 28
Does the historian always have to ask himself whether the descriptions he
supplies are such that they could have been supplied, at least in principle, by
the historical agents? Must he supply only descriptions which are similar to
what these agents were aware of doing? Is it necessary for all historical
descriptions to be couched only in the terms and concepts of the historical
agents themselves? There are good reasons to believe that the answer to
these questions is negative on the whole.
The accordion effect is extensively at work in history. The historian's
original insight may be shown by saying of a historical hero that by doing
one thing he brought about something else. In this way the importance of
the personality in question can be assessed.
Skinner described many cases of expansions of accordions in the history
of ideas. 2,9 Some historians, for instance, say of Machiavelli and Rousseau,
that by writing what they did, Machiavelli laid the foundation for Marx, and
Rousseau provided the philosophical justification for the totalitarian as well
as the democratic national state. 30 Skinner argues that descriptions such as
"Machiavelli laid the foundation for Marx" cannot be action descriptions,
even though from the grammatical point of view they appear to be so,
because they are not descriptions "which the agent himself could at !tast in
principle have applied to describe and classify what he was doing." 31 Such
expansions of accordions are therefore in Skinner's view meaningless.
However, according to the analysis of the accordion effect sketched here we

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may accept much expansion of an accordion as legitimate in history, as long

as we realize that the resulting descriptions need not be action descriptions.
They are meaningful, but not as action descriptions.
VIII
I will now advance four reasons why I think the view that history should be
an attempt to see the past as it appeared when it was present is mistaken or,
at least, only very partially true; this view means, as we have seen, that the
historian must, whenever it is possible, describe historical events only by
action descriptions.
(I) Perspective is an essential feature of history. Danto's "Narrative
Sentences" are just those written in a perspective, that is to say, in the light
of what happened since the occurrence of the events described. Danto
emphasized that "narrative sentences are so peculiarly related to our
concept of history that analysis of them must indicate what some of the
main features of that concept are." 32 Take one of his examples for a
narrative sentence:
Petrarch opened the Renaissance. 33
A historian might wish to say:
With his ascent of Mount Ventoux Petrarch opened the
Renaissance.
But as Petrarch did not intentionally open the Renaissance, "his ascent of
Mount Ventoux" is an action description while "his opening the
Renaissance" is not. Yet such narrative sentences are typical of history. The
characterization of history as an attempt to see the past as it appeared when
it was present has been taken from the historian Llewellyn Woodward who
observed that as far as history is really such an attempt "the idea of
historical perspective is misleading."34 Woodward seems to think that the
historian is confronted with exclusive alternatives here. But he also thought
that historians must know "what happened next" - in other words, they
need perspective. 35
(2) Hayek and Popper's insight was that almost all social institutions are
unintended and unforeseen products of human actions, and that the function
of social sciences is just to reveal the laws which govern the production of

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109

unintended consequences. 36 In so far as historians are primarily concerned

with past social life, their descriptions will not be action descriptions.
(3) The historian William Langer declared that psycho-history is the
"next assignment." 37 Many historians have since come to the same
conclusion. Descriptions of events in psychoanalytic terminology are, by
definition, such that they would not have been recognized by the historical
agents as descriptions of what they were doing.
(4) Any event description in terms of a theory or a conceptual scheme,
alien to the participants of the described event, cannot be an action
description. For obvious explanatory purposes the historian frequently
wants to use some theoretical vocabulary for his descriptions. As such a
vocabulary was almost never at the disposal of the historical agents,
descriptions in its terms cannot be identified by them as describing what
they. did.
I conclude that the analysis of the concept of action descriptions, together
with some considerations regarding the nature of history and the general
aims of the historical inquiry, yield conclusions very unfavourable to the
Collingwoodian views. Even if it is true that history is the "totality of past
actions," this does not mean that written history contains or must only, or
principally, contain action descriptions. In many cases it is in the historian's
interest to supply a description under which what is done is unintentional. I
argued that such descriptions are not action descriptions at all.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTES
Some of the ideas in this paper were included in my "Causation and Human Action in
History" (unpubl. Ph.D. Thesis, Jerusalem, 1973 [in Hebrew]). I have profited from
discussions with my supervisors, Prof. Y. Arieli and the late Mr. E.U. Poznanski.
I They are so called by William H. Dray, Philosophy of History, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
1964, pp. 12, 14.
1 The Idea of History, Oxford, 1946, p. 213.
J An Introduction to Philosophy of History, London, 1951 (3rd ed. 1967), p. 16. On p. 60
Walsh expresses some reservation, but his general outlook remains Collingwoodian through
the book. There is, however, some evidence that he has changed his mind; cf. his "Colligatory

110

ELAZAR WEINRYB

Concepts in History," in Studies in the Nature and Teaching of History, ed. W.H. Burston
and Thompson, London, 1967.
4 Laws and Explanation in History, Oxford, 1957, p. 118.
, The Idea of History, p. 214.
Laws and Explanation in History, p. 142.
7 "Action and Responsibility," in Philosophy in America, ed. Max Black, Ithaca, N.v..
1965.
"Agency," in Agent, Action and Reason, ed. R. Binkley, R. Bronaugh and A. Marras,
Oxford, 1971.
9 Explanation and Understanding, London, 1971, pp. 66-68, 87-89.
JO Ibid., p. 88.
" "What We Can Do," Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963): 435-445: "Basic Actions,"
American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 141-148.
12 "Agency," p. 1Of.
13 Ibid., p. 22.
14 Ibid .. p. 16.
15 1,E. Atwell, "The Accordion-Effect Thesis," The Philosophical Quarterly 19 (1969):
337-342: see Davidson, ibid., p. 16, note 10.
16 Causation in the Law, Oxford, 1959. The similarity of the lawyer's and the historian's
causal language is indicated on pp. 2, 8, 10, II, 21.
17 Philosophy of History, p. 57f.
18 Causation in the Law, p. 22f. They think, however, that in history as in law, causal
terminology is used for both purposes (p. 59).
19 "Agency," p. 7.
20 It has been called so by Alvin 1. Goldman: see his A Theory of Human Action, Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., 1970, p. 2.
21 "Agency," p. 22.
22 Ibid .. p. 23.
2) Ibid., p. 5.
24 Explanation and Understanding, p. 68.
25 See G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1963, pp. 44, 48: Stuart Hampshire,
Thought and Action, London, 1959: 1.L. Austin, "Three Ways of Spilling Ink," in
Philosophical Papers, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1970, pp. 283f.
26 "Agency," p. 7.
27 See also von Wright, p. 89.
28 "A Mistake about Causality in Social Science," in Philosophy. Politics and Society (2nd
Series), ed. Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, Oxford, 1962, p. 59f.
29 "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas," in History and Theory 8 (1969):
3-53.
)0 Ibid., pp. I I, 23.
31 Ibid .. p. 29.
32 Analytical Philosophy of History, Cambridge, 1965, p. 143.
J3 Ibid .. p. 169.

DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTIONS

III

"The Study of Contemporary History," Journal ojContemporary History I (J 966): 4,

Ibid" p, 5.
3. Friedrich A. von Hayek, "The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design," in
Studies in Philosophy. Politics and Economics, London, 1967, pp. 96-105: Karl R. Popper,
The Poverty oj Historicism, London, 1961. p. 65.
3? "The Next Assignment." American Historical Review 63 (1957-58): 283-304.

)4

35

PART TWO

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

FROM KANT TO SARTRE

YIRMIAHU YOVEL

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

Is rationalism compatible with the modern historical outlook? This is

perhaps the most challenging problem left over by the rationalists of the
Enlightenment to their modern successors. As a fair generalization it may be
said. that the philosophers of the Age of Reason - starting with Descartes
and following Plato - had seen reason as eternal. non-temporal. unbound
by cultural and sociological factors. Even the limits of reason (when
admitted) were to be understood sub specie aeternitatis. This led to viewing
history as a contingent. empirical affair. having no rational import ill itself.
Whatever is Geschichte is thereby mere Historie. It consists in the simple
accumulation (or recounting) of facts that. per se. neither disclose a rational
pattern nor are relevant to the growth of rationality. Indeed. the very notion
of growth in rationality could have. at best. only a quantitative but not a
qualitative sense. Individual men could. indeed. become more rationaL as
they complied with the fixed and eternal norms of rationality which. as such.
were independent of man's actual thinking and practical attitudes. But only
concrete rational beings belonged to the world of becoming. whereas reason
itself was pure being. It was an eternal truth - immovable. all sich. and
without change.
The nascent historicism of the 18th century challenged this classic view.
The problem was not just to admit the rational import of history. but to
supply it with a systematic ground. And this suggested a re-appraisal of the
nature and status of rationality. For history to have a rational significance.
reason itself - so it seemed - should be construed in a way as to allow for
its possible historization.
It was certainly Hegel who offered the most comprehensive (and farreaching) theory in this respect. In essence. Hegel made the historization of
reason a necessary moment of its ascent to the status of eternal truth.
Seeking to explain the possibility of absolute knowledge. Hegel made it
depend upon the process of the becoming of reason. and upon the dialectical
Aufllebullg of this becoming. In this way. the growth of rationality was
presented as constitutive of its rational character.

115
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.) , Philosophy of History and Action, J J5 - J32. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright c 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

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Even before Hege~ the conflict between rationalism and historicism has
arisen within the philosophy of the Enlightenment itself, finding a most
interesting expression in Kant's system. Kant was concerned, on the one
hand, with the pure and transcendental forms of human reason. But, on the
other hand, he did not conceive of them as fixed and ready-made but as
constituted by the rational subject. In that Kant introduced what may be
called his "Copernican revolution of rationality" -a revolution which
affects Kant's view of the nature of reason, no less than his special doctrines
of knowledge and ethics. This revolution rejected the Platonic model of
reason and suggested the systematic ground that, eventually, could account
for the historization of reason. In fact, Hegel's own theory relied on the
same basic revolution. Reason, for Hegel, has a becoming, because it is the
product of the rational subject, who constitutes himself through his
historical development. And thus the anti-Platonic theory of rationality was
logically necessary for Hegel's concept of a history of reason. But, on this
crucial point, Hegel did not put forward an absolutely new principle; he only
developed more coherently (and on a comprehensive scale) an idea that
Kant already expressed implicitly and without a dialectical logic.
Against this background, it should no longer be surprising that Kant did,
in effect, introduce an explicit concept of a "history of reason," a history
which is itself rational (or "transcendental") and not empirical. This concept
is usually overlooked or explained away by Kantian critics, who find it
embarrassing. It seems to be at odds with the "pure" character of reason,
and - I may add - also with Kant's theory of time. And yet the concept of
the "history of reason" is genuinely Kantian. It pervades Kant's philosophy
of ethics and religion; it underlies his theory of scientific revolutions and the
history of philosophy; and it has its systematic roots in his meta-philosophy.
The extent to which this concept is incompatible with Kant's theory of
time - and has a problematic relation to empirical history - is an inner
difficulty of the system which does not justify dismissing the concept
altogether. Systematic difficulties arise also in well-established Kantian
concepts, such as the "thing-in-itseIF' or "schematism," which no serious
Kantian critic would dream of overlooking despite their problematic status.
Therefore, in the following discussion I shall accept the prima facie
legitimacy of the concept of a history of reason and ask about it two
questions, one quid facti and one quid juris. First I shall ask to what extent
this concept actually functions in Kant's critical system and what are its

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

117

major expressions. And, secondly, supposing that it does in fact function in

the system, we must ask how the use of this concept can be justified in terms
of Kant's own theory of reason.
I. THE HISTORY OF REASON: QUID FACTI

Kant's overt statements, including his official essays on history, do not

exhaust the role which rational history actually plays in his philosophy. To
recognize this role one must make recourse to a reconstructive analysis,
reading the texts against the inner logic and necessary commitments of
Kant's position, and putting together the ingredients of a philosophy of
history that emerges from them. Having followed this method in a number
of studies on Kant's practical philosophy, 1 I shall have to be somewhat
dogmatic in this part of my paper, answering the question of quid facti by
listing the main areas on which Kant's concept of a history of reason comes
to bear.
Generally speaking, the history of reason has two main expressions in
Kant: one is the history of reason reshaping the world, and the other is the
history of reason becoming known and explicated to itself. The first aspect
of the history of reason is mainly practical; it is the process whereby human
reason imprints itself upon the actual world, reshaping its empirical
organization in light of its immanent goals and interests. In this practical
sense, rational history is an open-ended process, moving toward an infinitely
remote ideal. The second sense of the history of reason is mainly theoretical
(using "theory" in the broad sense, which includes the theory of morality as
well); it is the process whereby human reason gradually explicates its latent
paradigm, articulating its essential concepts, principles and interests, and
bringing them to light within a coherent system. This aspect of the history of
reason is in principle finite; it culminates in scientific revolutions, which
elevate the various theoretical disciplines (logic, mathematics, physics, and,
eventually, philosophy itself) to the level of valid science, and thus, in fact,
abolish their history and give them a final, immutable form.
Let me elaborate a little on both aspects of the history of reason,
respectively.
(1) The History of Praxis: Reshaping the World

The Highest Good. Kant was interested in history primarily as a moral task
rather than as a cognitive object. History is the domain in which human

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action is supposed to create a progressive synthesis between the moral

demands of reason and the actual world of experience. This synthesis should
not be confined to singular acts and particular results, but should aim at the
whole range of human practical experience. It thus must serve asa principle
of totalization, whereby the basic shapes of the moral, political and cultural
world are gradually transformed.
The highest totality toward which this process is oriented is called by
Kant "the highest good in the world." To make coherent sense, this rational
ideal should be construed as the regulative idea of history and, correspondingly, the special imperative which Kant formulates: "act to
promote the highest good in the world," can properly be called the historical
imperative. On the other hand, the rational goal of the Highest Good (the
total moral end of humanity) also expresses the supreme interest of reason;
and thus rational history is not only integrated into Kant's critical system,
but is even related to its very architectonic.

The Philosophy of Religion. This conclusion is further corroborated by

Kant's philosophy and critique of religion - which is, in fact, a latent
philosophy of history. According to Kant there can be many faiths and
churches but only one religion. This is the religion of reason, which the
many historical faiths express in varying degrees of vagueness and empirical
distortion. The one true religion is basically identical with Kant's moral
theory - especially with that part which sets the goal of establishing a moral
totality. The history of religion is thus a latent mode of the history of reason
in two respects. On the one hand it is the process in which the rational
principle of morality is gradually breaking through the diverse historical
creeds, until it attains clear explication as a pure system of practical reason.
But, on the other hand, even after the true nature of religion is known in
theory, the task of rational religion is not done, but still lies ahead in future
history. This task is to establish the "kingdom of God on earth" - a
metaphor expressing the secular moral ideal contained in the Highest Good.
In this way the history of religion is a moment of rational history in general,
moving to the same moral totality.
The "Cunning of Nature." Alongside this view - in a way as its rival - we
find Kant's well-known theory of the dialectic of political history. According
to this theory, nature itself - even without the rational will - is working

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

119

according to a hidden design, bringing about political progress by means of

violence and passion. It is through wars, exploitation and calculated selfinterest that new political institutions (domestic and international) are
created, which in effect serve the goals of reason and freedom. This is the
main thesis of Kant's explicit essays on history, such as the Idea for a
Unil'ersal History and Perpetual Peace, and it also occurs in Par. 83 of the
Critique of Judgement. Because these texts put forward a principle of blind,
natural teleology - which may be called the "cunning of nature" - they are
usually interpreted as dogmatic and therefore as incompatible with Kant's
critical philosophy. This is a strong claim which, however, calls for three
important modifications. First, the principle of the cunning of nature
undergoes in the Critique of Judgement a radical transformation in its
methodological status. It is now conceived only as a "reflective" teleological
judgement. and thus it becomes compatible with the demands of a critique
of reason. A reflective judgement is distinguished by Kant from a
constitutive one, in that it has no ontological import. Although certain types
of phenomena - like living organisms, or the development of
culture - cannot be fully intelligible unless we subsume their mechanical
explanations under a second-degree order of teleology, this second degree
organization is necessary only subjectively - but cannot count as an
objective feature of the phenomenon itself. In admitting the use of telic
forms in certain types of phenomena, we do not thereby commit ourselves to
the existence of an external intender, who had created these phenomena by
design, nor to the ontic make-up of the object at hand. Indeed, the use of a
reflective teleological judgement is not accompanied by any ontological
commitment whatever, although, on certain grounds explained by the
Critique of Judgement, it should necessarily be used. This topic is well
known with respect to Kant's philosophy of living organisms; but it applies
equally to his principle of natural dialectic - the one we named the Cunning
of Nature.
Secondly, even as a reflective judgement, the cunning of nature applies only
to a narrow aspect of the historical goal. It does not cover the whole range
of historical progress, but only the external field of "legality," i.e., politics and
jurisprudence. The crucial aspect of history, however, is the creation of an
ethical community, defined by the quality of the inner attitudes of its
members to each other; and with respect to this side of the ideal, the cunning
of nature is irrelevant and of no avail.

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Finally, ever since the Enlightenment, the cunning of nature does not
enjoy an exclusive status even with respect to political progress. Once the
requirements of practical reason have been clearly explicated (in Kant's own
critique of reason), the political world, too, must and can be transformed by
the rational will. At this stage of the development, the tWQ apparently rival
principles - the cunning of nature and the rational will - become
complementary rather than mutually exclusive. But the rational will has the
primacy in this relation, because it alone can generate genuine moral
progress, and because morality has precedence over politics in Kant's
theory, serving as the crux of the historical goal, of which rational politics is
only the external embodiment.

(2) The History of Theory: The Self-Explication of Reason

The History of Philosophy. Further evidence of the genuine position
held by the concept of a history of reason in Kant's system refers to the
process in which human reason actualizes its theoretical potential and
becomes known and explicated to itself. This includes the history of the
sciences, and especially of philosophy. At the end of the Critique of Pure
Reason Kant introduced the concept of a transcendental history of
philosophy which'he actually named "the history of reason." This concept is
further developed in his posthumous Lose Bliitter; in the chapter on the
"Architectonic" in the Critique of Pure Reason itself; and in the two
prefaces to this major work. Kant offered there a theory of scientific
revolutions and a model of the history of philosophy which bears a striking
resemblance to that of Hegel.
Kant conceives of reason as an interested or "erotic" activity moving
towards a systematic explication of itself. Underlying this process is a latent
paradigm (or "schema") which all philosophical systems have been
gradually realizing. All the important doctrines in the history of philosophy
are thereby tacit members of one systematic whole, each stressing some
particular "interest of reason" and special aspects of the final pure system.
This one-sidedness produces antinomies between the historical systems,
leading to their subsequent breakdown. The collapse of historical systems
leaves out, however, a multitude of particular concepts, principles and
categories which gradually accumulate until they find a new systematic
organization. According to Kant this process is finite; like the other
theoretical sciences, philosophy is expected to undergo a final revolution,

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

121

creating the ultimate system, which resolves the antinomies among the
historical systems and finally actualizes the latent paradigm of reason in full.
This revolution will for the first time constitute philosophy-as-science and
bring to an end the historical process in which one can only philosophize
and not yet "learn philosophy." (This is similar to Hegel's idea that the final
system abolishes philosophy as the "love of knowledge" and transforms it
into actual knowledge.)
To give a first-hand impression of Kant's idea of the history of reason, I
shall quote a few sentences from the chapter on the "Architectonic."
Systems seem to be formed in the manner of vermin, through generatio aequivoca, from the
mere confluence of assembled concepts, at first imperfect, and only gradually attaining to
completeness. 2

This confl uence is not, however, a mere aggregate but a latent organic
system. All historical doctrines, Kant adds,
have had their schema, as the original germ, in the selfdevelopment of reason alone.
Hence ... they are one and all organically united in a system of human knowledge, as
members of one whole (ibid., italics added).

Hence the historicality of this process:

only after we have spent much time in the collection of materials in somewhat random
fashion, at the suggestion of an idea lying hidden in our mind, and after we have, indeed, over
a long period, assembled the materials in a merely technical manner, does it first become
possible for us to discern the idea in a clearer light and to devise a whole architectonically, in
accordance with the ends of reason (KrV, A 834/B 862. italics added).

Kant says it is "unfortunate" to have to go through this historical process

but, as we shall see, we must also conceive of it as inevitable because of the
finitude of human reason. Recognizing that our reason is finite, includes,
among other things, the recognition that it must have a "becoming" of its
own.
In summary, Kant presents reason as having a development and a
historical goal. It gradually becomes explicated or known to itself in a
progressive movement, and it is also supposed to reshape the actual world
according to its precepts and practical goals, thus promoting the Highest
Good. From these viewpoints, the concept of rational history not only
belongs to the critical philosophy but - as the Highest Good - it is even the
supreme goal around which the system is architectonically organized.

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II. THE HISTORY OF REASON: QUID JURIS

The results we attained are somewhat surprising. They suggest, among other
things, a closer affinity between Kant's philosophy of reason and that of
Hegel, and they raise a question concerning Kant's own view of reason as
"pure" and transcendental. Therefore, having laid down the case for the
history of reason in terms of quid facti, I must now ask the question quid
juris.
Since Kant did not develop his idea sufficiently, it would be too much to
expect to find a fully systematic justification for it. It would be more
plausible to predict that the concept of the history of reason would invoke
inner antinomies in Kant's system - as I shall show later on. But it would
also be an oversimplification just to dismiss the concept at the outset
because of its embarrassing appearance. Instead, we must first try to find as
much systematic grounds for it as we can in Kant's own theory of
reason - even if these grounds are not sufficiently developed to .amount to a
full and coherent theory.
To construe Kant's conception of reason we have to draw on three main
sources. One is Kant's discussion of the, "Architectonic of human
reason" - a major text for understanding his meta-philosophy. The second
source is Kant's principle of the Copernican revolution, not only in it~ bare
formulation but in the way it is actually worked out in Kant's ontology,
ethics, aesthetics (the theory of the sublime), etc. This idea is central to
Kant's critique of reason and includes both his re-interpretation of reason
and his account of its finitude. Finally, the whole range of the Kantian
corpus must count as an additional source, in so far as it is saturated with
allusions to the functions, interests, tasks and even "needs" and
"aspirations" of human reason. The following analysis will draw from all
these sources.
In order to identify the meta-philosophical grounds in which Kant's
concept of a history of reason can be anchored, we have to consider fo.ur
main topics: (1) Kant's Copernican revolution in rationality (his constitution
theory of reason); (2) the finitude of human reason; (3) the conception of
reason as a system of interests; and (4) the "architectonic" unity of reason.
All four subjects are interrelated with respect to our problem, but for the
purpose of analysis I shall focus on each of them separately before bringing
them together again.

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

123

(1) The Copernican Revolution in Rationality

Spontaneity and Subjectivity. Kant conceives of reason mainly as a

spontaneous activity, not as a mere set of forms. Even the objective side of
reason - its concepts, principles, etc. - must be construed as subjective
functions by which the human mind (the Ego) structures itself as well as its
experience. This dynamic conception of reason is radically different from
that of Plato and, indeed, it breaks away from the whole classic view of the
logos as fixed and independent, governing the mind and the world as a Ding
an sich. For Kant, whatever is rational depends on the thinking subject.
Reason cannot be divorced from the actual operation of thinking - or from
the practical attitudes of the mind - but is formed by them while also
forming them. To be sure, Kant does not mean by this the psychological
process of thinking, as an empirical event, but the so-called
"transcendental" functioning of the mind. But, as such, the dynamic feature
of reason belongs to its very definition.
Autonomy and Constitution. This idea is closely connected with Kant's
concept of autonomy and with his constitution theory of rationality. As
autonomous, human reas0':l must abide only by those universal rules which
it sets up by itself, and in which it can recognize the explication of its own
subjective structure. Any other attitude will be "heteronomous" and thereby
non-rational. This view of autonomy is based upon Kant's constitution
theory of rationality, i.e., on his Copernican revolution as it affects his view
of the nature of reason itself and not only of knowledge or ethics. According
to this theory, reason cannot be conceived of as a system of universal norms
that subsist in themselves, but has to be seen as constituted by the human
subject. The objective side of reason, as a set of principles, is thus dependent
on its subjective side, that is, upon the spontaneous activity of the rational
Ego, who explicates his own structure in these principles and recognizes
them as his own. This model of rationality lays down the conditions by
which both our subjective attitudes and the objective norms themselves can
gain rational status. No set of universal norms is rational in itself - only in
so far as it is constituted by the subject and can be recognized by him as
such. And, correspondingly, we become rational not by complying with a
system of pre-established norms, but by setting up the norms with which we
comply.

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In this way, the very status of rationality is not ready-made but

constituted, depending on the spontaneous activity of the Ego, and this
supplies a systematic ground for assigning reason a historical "becoming"
of its own. This becoming must, moreover, assume a specifically historical
character because of the finitude of human reason.

(2) The Finitude of Reason

As a critic of reason, Kant was concerned with the finitude of human reason
side by side with its autonomy. Moreover, an essential aspect of the
autonomy of reason is its recognition of its immanent limitations. As finite,
human reason is necessarily confronted with the problem of its own
historization. It is not an intellectus archetypus in which there is no
difference between the possible and the actual. Since it is finite, reason must
inevitably suffer from a gap between its (limited) potential and its actual
articulations; and it thus faces the problem (or the task) of gradually closing
this gap. Reason does not immediately possess the full, though limited,
scope which it can in principle attain, but must be actualized in a
progressive move of self-explication; and thus, again, human reason is
subject to a history or a becoming of its own.
The finitude of human reason and its autonomy jointly account for the
fact that Kant must admit the concept of an ascent of rationality, not as
compliance with externally fixed rules, but as the self-explication of the
human mind.
The finitude of human reason has also a direct bearing on our next
topic - the interests of reason (although this issue has in Kant also an
independent standing).

(3) Reason as Interest

Kant describes reason primarily as a system of interests. Its basic feature is
teleological activity, pursuing its own "essential ends" (or, immanent tasks).
This goal-oriented activity is what the "architectonic" of reason basically
means. By this Kant does not mean a technical symmetry between the
different parts of the system, but a dynamic harmony of interests. To say
that reason is architectonic is to say that it is a system of rational interests
that complement one another within an organized hierarchy. Rational
activity is thus a goal-setting activity. It is directed to the attainment of ends

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

125

which are not given to it from without, but are set or projected by reason
itself.
This idea is best known from Kant's moral philosophy, but it is equally
present in all the other branches of his system - including his definition of
reason as such. In saying that reason is architectonic or teleological, Kant
puts forward the autonomy of the rational interests, and lays down a
necessary condition for rationality in general. Rationality cannot, by
definition, be only instrumental. It does not consist in the maximization of
certain desired values, whose desirability derived from sources other than
reason - such as utility, passion, happiness, piety, social benefits Qr
technological efficiency. This is for Kant the main difference between reason
and what may be called mere intelligence. Intelligence is basically
instrumental and pragmatic; it uses rational means in order to further ends
which are accidental from the viewpoint of reason itself,' since they are
always taken from the outside. Reason, however, uses its instrumental
means in order to further its essential, not its accidental, ends: and these
essential ends are set or projected by the rational subject.
We may express the above by saying that reason is a self-sufficient
teleological system. It sets forth its immanent tasks while serving as a means
for attaining them. Moreover, reason is supposed to be sufficient onto itself
even in so far as the motivational power is concerned. Again, this idea is
best expressed in Kant's theory of action, but also applies to reason in
general. In saying that reason can be "practical," Kant means, among other
things, that it is endowed with sufficient motivational power to realize its
own prescriptions regardless of any other interests. Since it is fundamentally
an interest, reason can generate the motivating principle needed for its
actualization.

Logos and eros. By defining reason in terms of its interests and immanent
tasks Kant ascribes to reason not only a dynamic nature but, indeed, an
"erotic" aspect. Kantian reason is not mere logos, but a fusion of Plato's
.logos and eros. Plato drew a fundamental distinction between the rational
and the motivational aspect of the mind. Reason in itself is the preestablished goal of the mind to which its erotic principle aspires. Kant
accepts the basis of this theory with two modifications. First, the rational
goal is not prescribed in advance but rather projected, or constituted, by the
activity which pursues it. And consequently, it is reason itself that has the

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erotic side, that is, the aspect of aspiration and becoming. This is why, in
effect, as we look at the Kantian texts, we find that they are studded with
expressions that amount to a real erotic glossary of words which Kant
consistently uses of reason. Reason is not only endowed with "ends,"
"tasks" and "interests"; it also has "needs," "satisfactions," "aspirations,"
"strivings" and "affection"; it has a "vocation," a "destiny," a "calling" and
an "appellation," and needless to say, it has "requirements," "claims" and
"pretenses" - which Kant portrayed as concrete attitudes. Many of these
expressions should certainly be understood as metaphors; but metaphors for
what? The answer, I suggest, is that they are metaphoric expressions of
certain aspects of the interest of reason which, in itself, is no longer a
metaphor in the same sense 3 but rather a systematic concept. It belongs to
Kant's meta-philosophical account of the architectonic of reason and thus
supplies a ground for assigning reason a processuality of its own and,
eventually, a history.
Despite the clear evidence, Kantian scholarship has tended to disregard
the "interested" character of reason - perhaps because of its anti-historical
bias. It is symptomatic that even a serious lexicographer like Rudolf Eisler,
in his well-known Kant-Lexikon, virtually passed over the abundant wealth
of dynamic (or, erotic) predicates which Kant attaches to reason; and even
the crucial concept of Interesse der Vernunft is mentioned by him in
extreme brevity, almost as something to get rid of. (By contrast, the
computarized Kant-Index started by G. Martin renders the number of
occurrences of "interest" in Kant's works as over 700, many of which have
reference to reason.) Eisler was so hasty to do away with the entry on
Interesse der Vernunft that he did not even quote the occurrence of this
term in such central chapters as the "Antinomies" and "The Primacy of
Pure Practical Reason."
The necessary relation between interest and reason is made unmistakably
explicit when Kant says that an interest "can never be attributed to a being
which lacks reason."4 An interest is not a mere impulse but the
consciousness of an impulse and the ability to serve and promote it by
taking one's reflective distance from it. In this sense, an interest is
fundamentally a rational phenomenon pertaining only to rational beings.
But interests can either be autonomous or heteronomous according to the
origin of their goals. A sensuous interest is heteronomous, in that it uses the
mediation of reason to promote ends which are accidental to reason;

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whereas a proper interest of reason is directed towards the promotion of

rationality itself, i.e., to an essential end of reason.
At this point we should relate the interested character of reason to the
foregoing points, i.e., the finitude of reason and its subjective constitution.
These two points give the idea of the architectonic, as a teleology of reason,
a distinctively Kantian sense.
First, we have seen that Kant ascribes interests only to rational beings.
But, equally, he says that only finite beings have interests (KpV, 79/82), thus
restricting the concept of interest to finite rational beings - Kant's typical
characterization of man. It is because we are finite that our rationality
assumes an interested character. Reason sets itself its immanent goals, not
as actually accomplished but in the form of a lack or a privation, and makes
the pursuit of these goals a rational requirement in itself. This point also
introduces a distinction between an "interest" of reason and an "end" of
reason. Until now we have used these concepts interchangeably, but now
their difference has to be stated The concept of end does not necessarily
indicate a lack or a privation. It is a teleological concept, whose function is
retained even after it has been actualized. The teleological form is absorbed
into the final product - say, the system of reason - and preserved in its
subsisting organization. Therefore, had we been infinite creatures, in whom
the archetypal model of rationality is immediately realized in full, we would
still have retained the teleological form of our reason. An interest, on the
other hand, is related to the gap that exists between the abstract goal and its
actuality, between the archetypal model of rationality latent in our minds
and its full explication. In this way, the finitude of reason sheds further light
on what we called the erotic aspect of reason, explaining both its
motivational principle~ and its indispensable historization.
Secondly, as "interest" has to be understood with respect to finitude, so
"essential ends of reason" must be conceived in relation to its autonomy. By
the Copernican revolution it is clear that the immanent goals of reason must
be understood as projected by the rational subject (who explicates his own
structure in them), and not as merely discovered or assumed by him, as
ready-made goals. Earlier philosophers also spoke of inherent ends and
immanent rational goals, but they gave them a "dogmatic" status. An
immanent rational goal by definition indicates that it should be pursued for
its own sake. But who assigns it this value-status, as something to be
pursued per se? According to Kant's theory of rationality, the answer must

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again be: the human subject, as he explicates his own sUbjective structure.
One cannot coherently say that one ought to pursue a goal for its own sake
but that this attitude itself is somehow prescribed to us from without. In this
case we will not pursue the goal for its own sake but for the sake of
satisfying whoever prescribed this attitude to us. In this way, Kant's
constitution theory of rationality affects his interpretation of the old notion
of inherent ends. Strictly speaking, there are no inherent ends if by this we
mean that the end actually inheres in an object as a Ding an sich. There certainly are ends which are teleologically sufficient, but not because they are
such in themselves, but because they are constituted (or projected) as such
by the rational subject who envisages them. If reason itself is subjectively
constituted, so are its values and final ends.

(4) The Architectonic Unity of Reason

What are the specific interests of reason? Kant distinguishes between two
types of rational interests which may be called "regional" and "crossregional." All these interests are modes of pursuing rationality for its own
sake, not for the sake of extraneous values. The regional interests
correspond to the specific uses of reason - in knowledge, moral actions
(and also in aesthetics). The cross-regional interests are at work in all the
regions, laying down further rational requirements. These are, for instance,
the critical interest of reason (cutting through all the regions); the
metaphysical interest of reason (which operates in ethics as well); its interest
in totalization (which operates in the various "Dialectics" of the system);
and, finally, the architectonic interest of reason, which seeks the harmonious
unity of all the others. Kant accepts as a first postulate that reason can
achieve systematic unity by its ideal "schema." All its interests are, in
principle, harmonizable. in subordination to a supreme end which, however,
does not abolish their respective autonomy. 6
In so far as the different interests of reason have not attained full
explication, they may produce conflicts and antinomies - as the history of
philosophy (as well as moral history) had shown. But all are mutually
compatible in principle and, therefore, the supreme architectonic end of
reason is to actualize and bring to light its fundamental unity. It is precisely
in this way that Kant accounts for the birth of his own critical system and
for the philosophical programme which underlies it. Kant found an
unresolved antinomy between the metaphysical and the critical interests of

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129

reason which took the form of the opposition between dogmatic rationalism
and sceptical empiricism: and his major problem in the Critiques is to
resolve this antinomy, creating a critical metaphysics that could. finally.
count as science. In this Kant believes that his system will bring the whole
history of reason to an end - in the theoretical sense - and thus abolish its
historicality. But in so doing it will also have to harmonize the cognitive and
the practical interests of reason - a result attained in Kant's doctrine of the
Primacy of Pure Practical Reason.
Even without elaborating this point to its full scope. we already see that
the historicality of reason becomes inevitable from the viewpoint of the
architectonic unity of reason - even though on the other hand, when the
unity is finally achieved, the history of reason is transcended. This might
seem to be a proto-Hegelian idea, did it not have a typically Kantian
corollary. According to the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason, even after
the history of theory has been consummated, the history of praxis is still
open. The supreme interest of reason - under which the whole system of
reason is subsumed - is the creation of the moral totality, named the
Highest Good; and this is an infinitely remote utopia, defining the
perspective of future history. In this way, the architectonic unity of reason,
when attained, brings the history of theory to a close, while opening an
infinite perspective for the history of praxis.
THE HISTORICAL ANTINOMY

Having shown the role which Kant's concept of the history of reason plays
in both his substantive and his meta-philosophical doctrine, I shall now
indicate its major difficulties. I might call them the "historical antinomy"
and the "problem of historical schematism." respectively.
The historical antinomy is produced in relation to Kant's theory of time.
For reason to be a historical principle it must be embodied in actual time.
Yet time. according to Kant's Transcendental Aesthetics, is merely a "form
of intuition" that cannot apply to reason at all, only to empirical data
categorized by the forms of the understanding. Both theories, however, are
necessary for Kant's philosophy to be what it is. They both stem from
Kantian presuppositions. the denial of which would incur an intolerable
systematic price. For this reason, in showing that the concept of history of
reason is indispensable to Kant's theory, I have not at all shown that it is

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ultimately coherent Quite the contrary, despite its logical roots in one part
of Kant's philosophy, it stands in obvious incompatibility with another
essential part of his philosophy, i.e., the theory of time.
However, asserting the existence of an antinomy implies that both
principes are equally necessary to Kant; and this was all I wished to do (and
all that a reconstructive analysis of the text can yield). There can, to be sure,
be made a distinction between processuality and time - as earlier
philosophers have distinguished between duratio and tempus. Using this
device one might say that Kant must admit of duratio in reason but not
necessarily of tempus. Yet this solution seems to me to be much beyond
what can be attributed to Kant without stretching his theory too far.
The second difficulty does not constitute an antinomy but an
unbridgeable dualism. Although Kant must admit of a non-empirical history
of reason he cannot explain its relation to empirical history. Being finite, and
being related to thinking subjects, reason is operating "in" and "through"
empirical creatures, all of whom participate in the world of experience.
Human reason does not have a history which is independent of Plato,
Descartes or even Robespierre; it is carried out by concrete men and is
supposed - in the field of praxis - to affect the organization of the
empirical world. How can a bridge be built between the history of reason
and empirical history? I think that Kant has no sufficient answer (and
cannot have one). But this, again, is no justification to disregard the genuine
place which rational history has in his system. Had we dismissed as
illegitimate all the concepts that cause Kant trouble - or even only those
related to his dualism - we would, indeed, not have much left.
KANT AND HEGEL

Finally, since my discussion of Kant has brought to light many similarities

between his theory arid Hegel, I wish to conclude by pointing out the main
differences.
11' goes without saying, that Kant's conception is only rudimentary with
respect to Hegel's, and that Kant did not admit of a dialectical logic as a
way to reconcile rationality and empirical history. This latter point
accounts, I think, for the fundamental dualism in Kant's position, which led
most of his critics to opt for pure reason and dismiss its history. In a sense,
if a choice has to be made, I think they have made the right one; but I

KANT AND THE HISTORY OF REASON

131

contest that such a choice is necessary. As long as we deal with

interpretation, a better and more faithful method is, I think, to show the inner
difficulties without resolving them in a one-sided way. These difficulties arise
from the fact that Kant, contrary to Hegel, did not view the history of
reason as necessarily mediated by empirical history. Hegel, indeed, saw
reason as constituted not by the pure Ego in his transcendental history, but
by the concrete subject immersed in the empirical process of his
historization. Therefore, whereas for Kant empirical history is a challenge
and a difficulty vis-a.-vis the history of reason, for Hegel empirical history is
the medium (or, the "moment") in which alone the history of reason can
take place.
This also explains the second major difference. For both philosophers the
history of reason implies it becoming explicated and known to itself. Yet the
self-explication of reason applies in Kant only to the subject, not to the
object; whereas in Hegel it is equally the self-explication of both, including
the object (the world, the absolute) who actualizes his rationality and
becomes self-conscious in history. Kant could not accept this daring view,
among other things, because he rejected the dialectical logic that underlies it.
Therefore, he viewed reason only as belonging to the subject, and the history
of reason was for him the self-explication of the subject alone who,
subsequently, imprints his rational forms upon the object as well rather than
explicating them from the object itself.
It may well be that Hegel presented not only a more comprehensive and
developed theory, but also a more coherent one. Yet Hegel achieved this
result by a number of unacceptable presuppositions, especially that reason
was infinite and had even actualized itself in history. For this reason, his
more coherent theory is attained at the price of being, ultimately, false.
Kant's great achievement seems to me to be his realization of the finitude of
reason, and any further correction of his stand should be made upon the
basis of this recognition, rather than upon its rejection.
Finally, however, there is a crucial presupposition which Hegel and Kant
share. This is the idea that the history of reason can in principle be sublated
by attaining a final, immutable system. In contrast, I think that it should
follow from the "erotic" aspect of reason and its self-structuring activity,
that rationality is an open-ended enterprise, capable df permanently
transcending the forms and structures it assumes. Reason should not be
equated with some latent, pure and final paradigm, that awaits explication

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once and for all. Rather, as the reflective articulation of our actual
experience, it must be conceived, first, as embedded in all the forms of our
knowledge and opinion and, secondly, as an ever self-transcending activity
finding no rest in a "pure" system. The history of reason has no end,
except - one might say - in the end of man himself.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

NOTES
Completed in my Kant and History, Princeton University Press (in press).
Kritik der reinen Vernu'!ft, A 835/B 863 (henceforth: KrV; quoted by the pagination of
the original first (A) and second (B) editions); Critique of Pure Reason, tr. N. Kemp-Smith,
London, i 970.
J It might be a metaphor in a deeper sense in which the substantive "reason" itself is a
mp-taphor, or in which such concepts as "ground" or "basis" are metaphoric. But this is a
different issue altogether.
4 Kritik der praktischen Vernu'!ft, Kants gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1913, 5 :79; Critique
oj Practical Reason, tr. L.W. Beck, New York, 1956, p. 82 (henceforth: KpV).
5 See KpV on "The Incentives of Pure Practical Reason."
6 This harmony is governed by the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason which makes the
practical interest superior to the others. The supreme end round which the system is
organized is the supreme practical end and thus, as we have remarked above, the historical
ideal is placed not just within the system but in fact at its "architectonic" centre.
I

C HARLES TAYLOR

HEGEL'S SITTLICHKEIT
AND THE CRISIS OF
REPRESENT A TIVE INSTITUTIONS

How can we learn from history? We can think of history as a repository of

examples which illustrate the laws and regularities governing human
behaviour, or the rise and fall, survival and destruction of societies. And we
can study it with a view to discovering these laws, or in a less nomologicallyoriented way, we can read it in order to extract maxims of effective action
for ourselves. Something like this was Machiavelli's use of history.
But this way of using history cannot help us very much today. Or
perhaps we might say that we are in a position to see how little help it'has
ever been. For we are very much aware of the unprecedented. The
unprecedented nature and predicament of our civilization has been so
dramatized and banalized, that we are tempted to look on the human past as
lying on the other side of an irreversible mutation.
Of course the very dramatization of our unprecedented predicament,
examplified in a work like Toffieer's Future Shock for instance, may irritate
us to such a degree that we lose sight of the underlying truth. Those who
talk about the flashier, more spectacular aspects of our civilization
today - the tremendous growth in population, the immediate accessibility of
everywhere to everywhere provided by communications technology, the
growing pressure of industry on certain ecological limits - are often
lamentably ignorant of history. But it remains true that these more
spectacular aspects of the unprecedented have come about through more
fundamental cultural mutations which have laid the basis for modern
civilization.
By 'cultural mutation' I mean a change at once in social discipline, social
arrangements and self-understanding which brings about a new human
possibility. Examples relevant to our civilization are, for instance (1) the
"inner-wordly ascesis" of the early Calvinist sects which has been very
133
Yirmiahu Yo vel (ed.) , Philosophy of History and Action, 133-154. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

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CHARLES TAYLOR

important in the development of modern society whether or not it was as

closely and exclusively tied to the development of capitalist production as
Weber thought. This brought with it an unprecedented organization and
discipline of everyday secular life, along with new social forms and a new
conception of the human predicament. In an important way we are still
living with the outgrowth of this discipline of the everyday and secular. The
Puritan sects also produced a new kind of militancy, and this was part
ancestor of (2) another mutation, this one belonging to the twentieth
century, the creation of an organization of dedicated revolutionaries,
capable not only of overthrowing a shaky social or political order, but of
taking over and remaking a society from the top down. In doing this the
Bolsheviks surprised perhaps most of all themselves, and they inaugurated,
without having intended to, a new genus of political system, that of a society
under the tutelage of a vanguard party. This involved new social forms and
disciplines bound up with a new conception of human possibilities and
human aspiration. The few historical parallels which come to mind-such as
the Jesuits in Paraguay-just serve to stress its unprecedented nature.
(3) The bolshevik precedent has then been taken uP.in a number of variants
which can be considered as significant mutations on their own in some
cases. This is particularly evident with the Chinese revolution, but may also
come to light with some new third world regimes.
The fact that modern, industrial civilization is so much the outgrowth of
certain important historical mutations makes the examination of history as a
repository of examples a hazardous and ultimately unrewarding project. I
want to consider in this paper a pattern of developments which is more and
more forced on our attention in the developed North Atlantic world. There
appears to be a loosening of the disciplines and restraints on which liberal,
industrial societies have relied to function in recent decades. This appears to
be an important underlying cause of the present very rapid rate of price
inflation, for instance. It is unlikely that inflation can be explained by such
purely "economic" factors as variation in the money supply (American
deficit and Euro-dollars) or sudden shifts in resource prices (the oil crisis),
important as these undoubtedly are. It has a lot to do as well with an income
scramble, a kind of inter-group economic Hobbesism, often bizarrely and
incongrously dressed up in the most empathic rhetoric of social solidarity,
that of the socialist left.
But this loosening of previously accepted disciplines can be seen in more

HEGEL'S SITTLICHKEIT

135

than the current inflationary crisis; it also emerges in the pattern of

"dropping out" which is becoming more frequent in advanced societies, in
greater "permissiveness" of mores; and it goes along with a change in the
images and aspirations by which people define themselves. The inflationary
spiral may have a special significance only in this, that it threatens to
introduce us into an accelerating and self-heeding process of breakdown;
since the frustrations which exacerbate inter-group Hobbesism are increased
with each disruption of the productive process, and the escalating economic
scramble cannot but produce greater and greater disruptions.
Now historical analogies come readily to mind. In particular, the
Hellenistic period or the Roman Empire have been cited. And it is
undoubtedly instructive to think of our age in the light of these parallels. But
the disciplines of the polis, or of republican Rome, which dissolved in these
periods, are of course so utterly different from those under threat today, that
only the most tentative and general lessons can be drawn. The
Machiavellian use of history will very evidently yield little fruit.
But there is another use of history which becomes very germane once one
has accepted the reality of cultural mutation. For the nature of this mutation
is such that one can only understand what emerges from it by bringing to
light how it came about. A new human possibility involves a new web .of
self-defining images and concepts. Man is a self-interpreting animal, in the
sense that he does not become capable of sustaining a hitherto unattainable
discipline or mode of life -e.g., conforming his work life to the regularities
of industrial production, or maintaining certain institutions of selfgovernment - without altering his conception of human life, of his motives,
aspirations and possibilities. This is not to say, of course, that some change
in "ideas" brings about a change in human possibility; just that this latter
mutation, however it comes about, is accompanied by a change in selfdefinition as its indispensable vehicle.
But a definition of human possibilities can only be made by contrast. So
that new human possibilities are essentially if not exclusively defined by the
negation of what they supersede or have to overcome. The modern identity
of an autonomous subject of knowledge and rational choice, capable of
studying his world and himself with the disciplines of science and planning
his future accordingly, can only be understood by contrast with the
weaknesses and temptations of superstition, animistic thought, the
abdication of responsibility to charismatic authority, which moaerns

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CHARLES TAYLOR

attribute to their opponents and forebears and see as the standing dangers
they must guard against. The revolutionary identity must similarly define
itself against superstition, religion, false consciousness and the sense of
inexorable fate.
In their more widespread formulations, of course, these self-definitions
end up distorting and seriously misidentifying the alternatives and
temptations they must guard against. But they remain defined by polemical
contrast. In order to understand them more deeply, we have to recover a
more faithful and discerning account of the contrast; and this must usually
involve bringing to light again the historical transition in which the contrast
was established. In other words, because a given set of human possibilities is
sustained by a self-definition, and self-definitions essentially involve
polemical contrast, historically new human possibilities carry their histories
within themselves, so to speak, usually in distorted form. In order to
understand them more fully, perhaps in order to resolve some dilemmas
which men have encountered in living them out, we have to recover the
transition which brought them into being.
And this is another use of history than as a repository of examples: the
study of history as the clarification of contemporary human. possibilities
through their genesis. This is the Hegelian use of history one might
say - although hardly in a proprietary sense since Hegel is not alone in this;
not perhaps even in the sense of a paradigm, since it is certainly not a
condition of this kind of learning from history that one accept a necessary
and rationally-defined direction to the chain of historical transitions. But this
use is Hegelian in the sense that Hegel is one of the earliest and greatest of
its practitioners, and that his reflections remain of great importance and
relevance today.

I
I cannot try to make good this thesis in its whole extent. But I would like to
concentrate in this paper on one contemporary phenomenon which we are
trying to understand with the help of history, and certain Hegelian concepts
which most naturally encompass this phenomenon insofar as we can speak
of it in Hegelian terms. I want to look at the fragmentation of social
discipline in advanced Atlantic societies which I mentioned above; and to
see it in relation to the Hegelian concepts of Sittlichkeit and alienation.

HEGEL'S SITTLICHKEIT

137

The notion of Sittlichkeit has been variously translated, as 'social ethics,'

or 'objective ethics,' or just as 'ethics' (in contrast to Moralitiit - 'morality'),
but all these can'mislead, and I prefer to leave the word in the original. The
nub of the idea is familiar enough. Men's ethical obligations are sittlich
when they hold in virtue of a larger social existence in which men find
themselves.
As against the obligations of Moralitiit, which enjoin us to realize
unfulfilled and perhaps even unrealizable ideals, with Sittlichkeit the gap
between Sein and Sollen is made up; what we are enjoined to realize already
is, since we are enjoined to continue the life of a community which is already
in existence.
What underlies the notion that there can be such a thing as a sittlich
ethical obligation, and one that is even higher than the obligations of
Moralitiit, is a conception of men's relation to society in which they are seen
as set in a social life which is essential to their status as subjects of ethical
action in the fullest sense; that outside of this community, men would not be
ethical subjects, or only in the reduced form of Moralita't. This is what
underlies the Hegelian term 'substance' applied to society. This is the
sittfiche Substanz on which individuals depend. It is also what underlies
Hegel's attribution to society of the status of subject, as is conveyed in a
notion like Volksgeist. True, Hegel says that this is a "philosophic
concept";1 and it is mistaken to think of Hegel's Volksgeister as subjects in
the same sense as individuals are subjects. But part of the sense of this term
is that individuals only attain an important dimension of their existence as
subjects-the ethical-by participating in a larger life, that of a community,
and which in this sense can be seen as the locus of the kind of existence as
attribute to subjects.
I would like to look briefly at what is involved in this cycle of i<;leas of
ethical substance, Sittfichkeit, and the corresponding notion of alienation,
turning later on to see what bearing it might have on our attempt to
understand what we are going through today.
First, let us see why Hegel wanted to speak of a spirit which is larger than
the individual. What does it mean to say that the individual is part of,
inheres in, a larger life? and that he is only what he is-e.g., an ethical
subject-in virtue of doing so?
These ideas appear mystenous because of the powerful hold on us of
atomistic prejudices, which have been very important in modern political

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CHARLES TAYLOR

thought and culture. We can think that the individual is what he is in

abstraction from his community only if we are thinking of him qua
organism. But when we think of a human being, we do not simply mean a
living organism, but a being who can think, feel, decide, be moved, respond,
enter into relations with others; and all this implies a language, a related set
of ways of experiencing the world, of interpreting his feelings, understanding
his relation to others, to the past, the future, the absolute, and so on. It is the
particular way he situates himself within this cultural world that we call his
identity.
But now a language, and the related set of distinctions underlying our
experience and interpretation, is something that can only grow in and be
sustained by a community. In that sense, what we are as human beings, we
are only in a cultural community. Perhaps, once we have fully grown up in a
culture, we can leave it and still retain much of it. But this kind of case is
exceptional, and in an important sense marginal. Emigres cannot fully live
their culture, and are always forced to take on something of the ways of the
new society they have entered. The life of a language and culture is one
whose locus is larger than that of the individual. It happens in the
community. The individual possesses this culture, and hence his identity, by
participating in this larger life.
When I say that a language and the related distinctions can only be
sustained by a community, I am not thinking only of language as a medium
of communication; so that our experience could be entirely private, and just
need a public medium to be communicated from one to another. Rather the
fact is that our experience is what it is, is shaped in part, by the way we
interpret it; and this has a lot to do with the terms which are available to us
in our culture. But there is more; many of our most important experiences
would be impossible outside of society, for they relate to objects which are
social. Such are, for instance, the experience of participating in a rite, or of
taking part in the political life of our society, or of rejoicing at the victory of
the home team, or of national mourning for a dead hero, and so on. All
these experiences and emotions have objects which are essentially social,
i.e., would not be outside of (this) society.
So the culture which lives in our society shapes our private experience
and constitutes our public experience, which in turn interacts profoundly
with the private. So that it is no extravagant proposition to say that we are
what we are in virtue of participating in the larger life of our society - or at

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139

least, being immersed in it, if our relationship to it is unconscious and

passive, as is often the case.
But of course Hegel is saying something more than this. For this
inescapable relation to the culture of my society does not rule out the most
extreme alienation. This comes about when the public experience of my
society ceases to have any meaning for me.
Far from wishing to deny this possibility, Hegel was one of the first to
develop a theory of alienation. The point is that the objects of public
experience, rite, festival, election, etc. are not like facts of nature. For they
are not entirely separable from the experience they give rise to. They are
partly constituted by the ideas and interpretations which underlie them. A
given social practice, like voting in the ecc1esia, or in a modern election, is
what it is because of a set of commonly understood ideas and meanings, by
which the depositing of stones in an urn, or the marking of bits of paper,
counts as the making of a social decision. These ideas about what is going
on are essential to define the institution. They are essential if there is to be
voting here, and not some quite other activity which could be carried on by
putting stones in the urns.
Now these ideas are not universally acceptable or even understandable.
They involve a certain view of man, society, and decision, for instance,
which may seem evil or unintelligible to other societies. To take a social
decision by voting implies that it is right, appropriate and intelligible to build
the community decision out of a concatenation of individual decisions. In
some societies, e.g., many traditional village societies throughout the world,
social decisions can (could) only be taken by consensus. An atomistic
decision procedure of this kind is tantamount to dissolving the social bond.
Whatever else it is it could not be a social decision.
Thus a certain view of man and his relation to society is embedded in
some of the practices and institutions of a society, so that we can think of
these as expressing certain ideas. And indeed, they may be the only, or the
most adequate, expression of these ideas, if the society has not developed a
relatively articulate and accurate theory about itself. The ideas which
underlie a certain practice and make it what it is, e.g., those which make the
marking of papers the taking of a social decision, may not be spelled out
adequately in propositions about man, will, society, and so on. Indeed, an
adequate theoretical language may be as yet undeveloped.
In this sense we can think of the institutions and practices of a society as

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a kind of language in which its fundamental ideas are expressed. But what is
"said" in this language is not ideas which could be in the minds of certain
individuals only, they.are rather common to a seciety, because embedded in
its collective life, in practices and institutions which are of the society
indivisibly. In these the spirit of the society is in a sense objectified. They
are, to use Hegel's term, "objective spirit."
These institutiorts and practices make up the public life of a society.
Certain norms are implicit in them, which they demand to be maintained
and properly lived out Because of what voting is as a concatenating
procedure of social decision, certain norms about falsification, the
autonomy of the individual decision, and the like, flow inescapably from it.
The norms of a society's public life are the content of Sittlichkeit.
We can now see better what Hegel means when he speaks of the norms or
ends of society as sustained by our action, and yet as already there, so that
the member of society "brings them about through his activity, but as
something which rather simply is." 2 For these practices and institutions are
maintained only by ongoing human activity in conformity to them; and yet
they are in a sense there already before this activity, and must be there, for it
is only the ongoing practice which defines what the norm is our future action
must seek to sustain. This is especially the case if there is as yet no
theoretical formulation of the norm, as there was not in Hegel's view in the
Greek city-states at their apogee. The Athenian acted "as it were, out of
instinct" (VG 115), his Sittlichkeit was a "second nature." But even if there
is a theory, it cannot substitute for the practice as a criterion, for it is
unlikely that any formulation can entirely render what is involved in a social
practice of this kind.
Societies refer to theoretical "value" formulations as their nm-ms rather
than to practices, when they are trying to make themselves over to meet an
unrealized standard; e.g., they are trying to "build socialism," or become
fully "democratic." But these goals are, of course, of the domain of
Moralitiit. Sittlichkeit presupposes that the living practices are an adequate
"statement" of the basic norms, although in the limit case of the modern
philosophy of the state, Hegel sees the theoretical formulation as catching
up. Hence we see the importance of Hegel's insistence that the end sought
by the highest ethics is already realized. It means that the highe~t norms are
to be discovered in the real, that the real is rational. and that we are to turn
away from chimeric attempts to construct a new society from a blue-print.

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Hegel strongly opposes those who hold

that a philosophy of state ... [has l ... the task of discovering and promulgating still another
theory ... In examining this idea and the activity in conformity with it, we might suppose that
no state or constitution had ever existed in the world at all, but that nowadays ... we had to
start allover again from the beginning, and that the ethical world had just been waiting for
such present-day projects, proofs and investigations. 3

The happiest, unalienated life for man, which the Greeks enjoyed, is where
the norms and ends expressed in the public life of a society are the most
important ones by which its members define their identity as human beings.
For then the institutional matrix in which they cannot help living is not felt
to be foreign. Rather it is the essence, the "substance" of the self.
Thus in universal spirit each man has self-certainty, the certainty that he will find nothing
other in existing reality than himself. 4

And because this substance is sustained by the activity of the citizens, they
see it as their work.
This -substance is also the universal work [Werkl, which creates itself through the action of
each and all as their unity and equality, because it is Being-for-self [Fursichseinl, the self, the
act of doing [das Tunl (PhG 314).

To live in a state of this kind is to be free. The opposition between social

necessity and individual freedom disappears.
The rarional is necessary as what belongs to substance, and we are free insofar as we
recognize it as law and follow it as the substance of our own essence; objective and subjective
will are then reconciled and form one and the same untroubled whole (VG 115).

But alienation arises when the goals, norms or ends which define the
common practices or institutions begin to seem irrelevant or even
monstrous, or when the norms are redefined so that the practices appear a
travesty of them. A number of public religious practices have suffered the
first fate in history; they have "gone dead" on subsequent generations, and
may even be seen as irrational or blasphemous. To the extent that they
remain part of the public ritual there is widespread alienation in
society - we can think of contemporary. societies like Spain, which remains
officially Catholic while a good part of the population is rabidly anticlerical; or communist societies, which have a public religion of atheism,
even thdugh many of their citizens believe in God.

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But the democratic practices of Western society seem to be suffering

something like the second fate in our time. Many people can no longer
accept the legitimacy of voting and the surrounding institutions, elections,
parliaments, etc., as vehicles of social decision. They have redrawn their
conception of the individual's relation to society, so that the mediation and
distance which any large-scale voting system produces between individual
decision and social outcome seems unacceptable. Nothing can claim to be a
real social decision which is not arrived at in a full and intense discussion in
which all participants are fully conscious of what is at stake. Decisions
made by elected representatives are branded as sham, as manipulation
masquerading as consensus. With this redefinition of the norm of collective
decision (that is, of a decision made by people, and not just for them), our
present representative institutions begin to be portrayed as an imposture;
and a substantial proportion of the population is alienated from them.
In either case, norms as expressed in public practices cease to hold our
allegiance. They are either seen as irrelevant or are decried as usurpation.
This is alienation. When this happens men have to turn elsewhere to define
what is centrally important to them. Sometimes they turn to another socieiy,
for instance a smaller, more intense religious community. But another
possibility, which had great historical importance in Hegel's eyes, is that
they strike out on their own and define their identity as individuals.
Individualism comes, as Hegel puts it in VG, when men cease to identify
with the community's life, when they "reflect," that is, turn back on
themselves, and see themselves most importantly as individuals with
individual goals. i This is the moment of dissolution of a Volk and its life.
What happens here is that the individual ceases to define his identity
principally by the public experience of the society. On the contrary, the most
meaningful experience, which seems to him most vital, to touch most the
core of his being, is private. Public experience seems to him secondary,
narrow, and parochial, merely touching a part of himself. Should that
experience try to make good its claim to centrality as before, the individual
enters into conflict with it and has to fight it.
This kind of shift has of course been instantiated many times in history,
but the paradigm event of this kind for Hegel occurs with the break-up of
the Greek city-state. Thus in the Greek polis, men identified themselves with
its public life; its common experiences were for them the paradigm ones.
Their most basic, unchallengeable values were those embodied in this public

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life, and hence their major duty and virtue was to continue and sustain this
life. In other words, they lived fully by their Sittlichkeit. But the public life of
each of these poleis was narrow and parochial. It was not in conformity with
universal reason. With Socrates arises the challenge of a man who cannot
agree to base his life on the parochial, on the merely given, but requires a
foundation in universal reason. Socrates himself expresses a deep
contradiction since he accepts the idea of Sittlichkeit, of laws that one
should hold allegiance to; he derives this from universal reason as well. And
yet because of his allegiance to reason he cannot live with the actual laws of
Athens. Rather he undermines them, he corrupts the youth not to take them
as final, but to question them. He has to be put to death, a death which he
accepts because of his allegiance to the laws.
But now a type of man arises who cannot identify with this public life. He
begins to relate principally not to the public life but to his own grasp of
universal reason. The norms that he now feels compelling are quite
unsubstantiated in any reality; they are ideas that go beyond the real. The
reflecting individual is in the domain of Moralitiit.
Of course, even the self-conscious individual is related to some society.
Men thought of themselves qua moral beings as belonging to some
community, the city of men and Gods of the Stoics, the city of God of the
Christians. But they saw this city as quite other than and beyond the earthly
city. And the actual community of philosophers or believers in which they
worked out and sustained the language by which they identified themselves
was scattered and powerless. The common life on which their identity as
rational or God-fearing individuals was founded was or could be very
attenuated. So what was most important in a man's life was what he did or
thought as an individual, not his participation in the public life of a real
historical community.
The community of the wise, as that of the saints, was without external,
self-subsistent existence in history. Rather, the public realm was given over
to private, unjustified power. This is Hegel's usual description of the ancient
period of universal empires which succeeded the city-state, particularly the
Roman empire. The unity and fulfillment of Sittlichkeit, lost from this
world, was transposed out of it into an ethereal beyond.
What then is Hegel saying with his thesis of the primacy of Sittlichkeit,
and the related notion of the community as "ethical substance," a spiritual
life in which man must take part? We can express it in three propositions,

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put in ascending order of contestability. First, that what is most important

for man can only be attained in relation to the public life of a community,
not in the private self-definition of the alienated individual. Second, this
community must not be a merely partial one, e.g., a conventicle or private
association, whose life is conditioned, controlled and limited by a larger
society. It must be co-terminous with the minimum self-sufficient human
reality, the state. The public life which expresses at least some of our
important norms must be that of a state.
Thirdly, the public life of the state has this crucial importance for men
because the norms and ideas it expresses are not just human inventions. On
the contrary, the state expresses the Idea, the ontological structure of things.
In the final analysis it is of vital importance because it is one of the
indispensable ways in which man recovers his essential relation to this
ontological structure, the other being in the modes of consciousness which
Hegel calls "absolute spirit," and this real relation through the life of the
community is essential to the completion of the return to conscious identity
between man and the Absolute (which means also the Absolute's selfidentity).
Obviously these three propositions are linked. The third gives the
underlying ground of the first and second. If man achieves his true identity
as a vehicle of cosmic spirit, and if one of the indispensable media in which
this identity is expressed is the public life of his political society, then
evidently, it is essential that he come to identify himself in relation to this
public life. He must transcend the alienation of a private or sectarian
identity, since these can never link him fully to the Absolute.
This is the complex of ideas which lies behind the Hegelian use of terms
like "substance," "essence," "Endzweck," "Selbstzweck," in speaking of the
community: First of all, that the set of practices and institutions which make
up the public life of the community express the most important norms, most
central to its members' identity, so that they are only sustained in their
identity by their participation in these practices and institutions, which in
their turn they perpetuate by this participation. Secondly, that the
community concerned is the state, that is, a really self-sufficient community.
And thirdly, that this community has this central role because it expresses
the Idea, the formula of rational necessity underlying man and his world.

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II
In what way do these Hegelian notions of Sittlichkeit and alienation help us
to understand the malaise in contemporary society? Not principally, I
would claim, because they enable us to see a parallel between our age and
that of the Hellenistic or Roman empires. And certainly not because of the
truth of Hegel's third claim, that the law state embodies the Idea, and hence
is grounded ontologically. The very fact that this law state seems to be
suffering break-up would have made this thesis seem implausible even to
Hegel.
Rather what we can extract from Hegel's conceptual web here are two
related notions: (1) that the practices and institutions of a community can be
seen as expressions of certain fundamental common notions about man,
society and their relation to each other, as well as in some cases expressions
of the relations of man to nature, or to the sacred. This "expression" may
exist alongside a "theoretical" mode of expression (or modes of expression)
in some commonly accepted philosophical formulations; but it may also
exist before any philosophical formulation, and may in an important sense
say something more about the common ideas and values of a people than
any philosophical theory, even where one exists.
(2) It is of crucial importance whether or not men define their identity at
least in part by the values and ideas expressed in their common, public
institutions, and by the way they are expressed there. For otherwise
participation in these institutions will not be essential to their identity, and if
it is not, then these institutions, and the polity they define, is likely to be in
peril.
I should try to make a little clearer what is involved in the notion of
"identity" as used here. A human subject is the subject of evaluation in a
strong sense; that is, he not only evaluates different goal objects or potential
outcomes as preferable or undesirable, but also evaluates different desires,
or desired modes of life as in some way higher or lower, more or less
fulfilling, more or less worthy, more or less integrated, or whatever through
a host of evaluative languages which are available. A human agent is the
subject of 'second-order desires' to use Harry Frankfurt's term. 5
But contrary to the view put forward by Sartre and to those of such
Anglo-Saxon philosophers of ethics like Hare, this kind of evaluation cannot
be ex nihilo. Evaluation takes place within a horizon formed by certain

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paradigm actions or modes of life, or by some fundamental evaluative

distinctions, some basic moral language which we think of as unchallengeable, or in some other such way. The ultimate context of such
evaluation cannot be thought of as having chosen itself uncontextually.
On the contrary, it defines for each one of us our identity. Our identity is
thought of as the answer to the question who we are. But it is who we are as
human subjects in the fullest sense, that is, subjects of strong evaluation,
which is relevant. And this is defined by what we experience as the ultimate
context of our strong evaluations, our definitions of the higher and lower,
more or less worthy, and so on. This can be thought of as our identity for
the following reason: that outside of it we would lose our bearings
altogether, and be unable to evaluate, to say any more "where we stood," to
have a firm sense of what for us was a worthier or oetter, or praiseworthy or
contemptible life.
Something is essential to our identity-say, a community, a set of
institutions, loyalty to a given tradition-when we could no longer function
as subjects of evaluation in the full sense if we were separated from the
background of this community, these institutions, this tradition. If I say that
belonging to some national group or cultural community is essential to my
identity, I mean that my adherence to this national or cultural community
forms part of the ultimate horizon of my evaluations; to set this adherence
aside would at least partially cripple me as a subject of evaluation.
Now in this sense of identity men frequently define their identity by their
common public institutions, and by the values and ideas that these express.
When they cease to do so, these institutions are in danger. For the public
institutions of any society require certain disciplines and sometimes
sacrifices to be maintained. If men identify with them, these disciplines are
gladly undertaken. But if not, they easily come to appear irksome and
intolerable. Of course, men may accept certain disciplines because they
judge the underlying goals and values positively, even though these do not
shape their ultimate horizon of evaluation. I may obey the state, or give my
allegiance to a certain polity because I judge it useful for instance, or the
best available form of rough justice in present circumstances.
But this is a very fragile basis of allegiance. Not just because it is
revocable; but also because in the case of certain institutional forms, more
than just contingent acquiescence is required for them to function. In
ancient empire1', it may have been enough for the subject to accord a passive

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allegiance to the ruler. But in modem democratic polities much more than
this is required. Contemporary institutions cannot function with just passive
allegiance. If everybody obeys the law, but does not bother to vote, let alone
participate more actively, a democratic polity rapidly ceases to. be such; it
would mutate into another form. The same would happen if people, faced
with the legal obligation to vote, simply turned out in fulfillment of this
obligation and cast their vote, say, for the party in power as a token of
allegiance. In either case, the balance, tension - and uncertainty - required
for democratic politics would disappear.
And in fact even the minimal allegiance can be threatened when it seems
to go against strongly felt private or group interest; which is what we seem
to be witnessing today.
My suggestion is that the present malaise in Western representative
democracies can most fruitfully be seen in the language of Hegelian
Sittlichkeitand the corresponding notion of alienation. This would mean
that we understand their "stability," in the periods when they have been
"stable" and unchallenged, in terms of widespread identification with the
ideas and values they expressed in the manner in which they express them;
and we understand the present slippage in terms of a change in identity. This
would be a "philosophical" diagnosis in the sense that it involvt;~ our
interpreting the underlying ideas and images of man, society, nature, etc.,
which are central to men's identification with the institutions in question.
Just what did/do these institutions express, in virtue of which men identified
with them? And hence what is threatening this identity now? This opens the
way to a certain use of history to cast light on our present malaise, what we
saw above as the genetic study of a present identity.
A bit of speculative meandering in this field will help illustrate what I am
talking about, even if it falls lamentably short of answering the above
questions. We can distinguish three modes of identity which have helped to
sustain Atlantic democratic politics. One is the modem identity of man as a
producer, that is, a being capable of transforming nature to suit his ends,
and more, to engage in a progressively more and more far-reaching
transformation. Men who see themselves this way tend to see society as a
great collaborative enterprise in which human power becomes multipled
many times through the combination of technology and social
collaboration. There is a Marxist variant of this self-vision, in which the
moving subject is the collective, social labour has society for its fundamental

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subject, and man is defined by his Gattungswesen. But in the "western"

variant, the sense of control over nature which confirms the producer in this
identity is meant to be at the disposal of the individual. This is one of the
reasons why Western producers' societies are so consumer-oriented. Social
labour is seen as a collaborative enterprise of free individuals, whose
relations can be constantly shaped anew through negotiations and common
decisions.
In this perspective, democratic institutions are the guarantors and part
locus of this perpetual shaping of the common productive enterprise by the
preferences and goals of individuals. The main concern of politics is the
economy, questions of production and distribution, managing the economy
fairly and towards growth. What may be eating away at this identity is the
sense of doubt about the value of unlimited production and growth which is
becoming more widespread in contemporary society. Or it may be as well
that this self-understanding of society cannot but produce a set of
continually-rising expectations on the part of individuals and groups which
must encounter increasing frustration and hence engender increasing social
tension and strain on the disciplines of society.
A second mode of identity which has often been intricated with the first is
that defined by the main traditions of democratic thought in the West. It
belongs to the dignity of man to be a fee, self-determining being, and not a
mere subject. But to be such a free being is necessarily to live in a
democratic polity where the citizen can determine who shall govern and on
the basis of what laws through the exercise of the vote. Representative
institutions on this view are essential to freedom in this sense of selfdetermination (not national but personal and group self-determination); and
therefore have been the object of identification for people whose identity has
been defined by this freedom.
Nothing is more evident than that this estimate of the value of
representative institutions is under increasing attack in Western polities. Of
course, this attack is founded itself on certain strands in the Western
democratic tradition; most notoriously, the contributions of Rousseau and
Marx. But whatever its justification, this questioning of representative
institutions is one of the major forms of the contemporary malaise in
Western societies.
F or those who are in the radical succession of Rousseau and Marx, this is
both to be welcomed and relatively easily explained. Representative

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democracy is in fact the fa9ade behind which our societies have been ruled
by a narrow elite, and in the nature of things will always be so. The present
rejection of such institutions, of elections and Parliaments, is the inevitable
product of an awakening, the inevitable maturation of the democratic
movement. through time, education, agitation or prosperity, to the
realization that this is so. But to those for whom these Rousseauian verities
are a little less self-evident, the phenomenon will be harder to explain.
Perhaps it is that representative institutions can only seem responsive to
electors when the scope of government is relatively restricted, when we
expect them to decide a limited number of matters. But when society
engages more and more in remaking the conditions of its own existence, and
when therefore the scope of government begins to seem virtually unlimited,
the number, complexity and interdependence of the issues decided takes
them largely beyond the grasp of most people, and ensures that whatever
the outcome, masses of citizens will feel dissatisfied and neglected. To live in
an underdeveloped region of any Western polity today is to have a
grievance not against God, fate, or climate, but against government and
society.
Perhaps the steady escalation of individual and group expectation,
mentioned in connection with the productive identity, has made it impossible
to accept the relative satisfaction of demands, the relative sensitivity of
representative institutions to their constituents, And this may have been
exacerbated by the images of greater potency which our consciousness of
technological change breeds, and the sense of greater immediacy which the
electronic media generate. Nothing short of immediate and total redress
seems commensurate with the powers of society and the claims of the
protesters.
But perhaps, too, these factors, although present, are insufficient to
explain the change which seems to be taking place in the sense of what
constitutes a free, self-determining man. For the various protest movements
which challenge the legitimacy of representative institutions do so in the
name of another, often quite undefined, notion of more direct
democracy - self-management, "participation," or whatever. Why this
recurrence to the tradition of Rousseau? Is it just a screen whereby a greater
reluctance to subordinate the goals of the group to the common interest
dresses itself up in the "legitimating" language of democracy and freedom?
Some degree of "dressing up" and rationalization there often is, without a

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doubt. But this is not a sufficient explanation; for the question remains why
the reluctance to accept social discipline has grown, and why it needs just
this language to express itself. That there is more than one way of
rationalizing a breach in society's basic yardsticks of justice has been shown
by large corporations which for years have justified special tax concessions,
irresponsible pricing policies, bad labour conditions, etc. precisely on the
basis of the common interest they were violating rather than by some
alternative ideology.
To understand what is afoot in this contemporary challenge to representative institutions we have to get a clearer view of what lies behind
the rhetoric of contemporary protest. Just to set it aside as rationalization
begs all the important questions. We have to come closer to understanding
the self-interpretations, the notions of individual and society, of autonomy
and potency which underlie it.
This way of coming to grips with the present malaise of our society is an
interpretive one. It treats social inquiry as "hermeneutical."
Taking either of the above accounts of the identity underlying democratic
society as our basis, the aim would be to define more precisely the images
and ideas of man and society which were expressed in the institutions of
democratic society and with which men identified, and then to characterize
what new ideas, images and self-definitions are challenging and displacing
these. And the same procedures would apply if we were to examine a third
major basis of collective identity in the contemporary world - nationalism.
(Perhaps I do not need to repeat here the disclaimer I made earlier - but I
shall anyway: this in no sense entails that we are intending to explain the
change in social reality by the "introduction" of new ideas, whatever this
might. mean; rather the claim is that the change cannot be properly
understood (in the sense of the Verstehen thesis) without such a clarification
of ideas and images; and that its being so understood is a necessary
explanation of an adequate explanation, whatever factors this explanation
brings into playas determinative: class conflict, technological change,
population growth, or whatever.)
This naturally leads us to refer to history in the genetic sense defined
above. For just as we cannot fully understand the new self-definitions
underlying, say, a protest movement without understanding the previously
dominant self-definitions which they are challenging, so we cannot grasp
these constitutive self-definitions of democratic society without studying

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their genesis. For without this we will be unable to define adequately the
polemical contrast which essentially characterizes them. The self-image of
man as free and self-determining is defined by contrast to man as mere
subject, the image of man as producer by contrast to a life of submission to
the rhythms of nature, in which human powers remain occluded by
superstition and the thraldom of animistic thought. Self-definitions must be
understood polemically, and that means historically.
But this historical understanding is interpretive in the wide sense. For we
are engaged not just in studying doctrines as laid down in texts - e.g., the
philosophical tradition of democratic theory: Locke, Rousseau, Mill. The
premiss of this kind of inquiry is that practices and institutions are also
"expressions" of ideas and images after their own fashion; and that there
may be no counterpart in philosophical prose for the ideas expressed in any
given institutions or practices. So what is of prime interest for this kind of
hermeneutic study of the present malaise is not so much 'the democratic
tradition in theory, as the growth of the democratic identity (or identities) as
we can trace it in the institutions and practices of democratic society by
which men identified themselves. As a paradigm example of this kind of
historical writing, in which explanation is shaped by genetic understanding
which can also illuminate the present, I could cite E.P. Thompson's Making
of the English Working Classes.
But of course, this kind of hermeneutical study is highly controversial
among students of society. It is widely thought to be arbitrary, without an
adequate method of intersubjective verification, vague, imprecise, in short
unscientific. To answer attack with counter-attack, we might consider what
resources are left to us in studying the present malaise once we set aside any
hermeneutical approach.
Well, if we refuse to see institutions as expressions in any sense, one way
we can look on them is as instruments, and this is the basis of a whole
family of political and social theories, which go back to Hobbes and Locke
(or Thrasymachus and Glaucon, if you will), and which are exemplified
today by the vogue of "conversion" or input-output models in political
science. If we see institutions as instrumental, then we will tend to account
for declining allegiance to them in terms of their failure to satisfy (output
~~

But this is bound to be unsatisfactory. Failure to satisfy is itself what we

want to explain. What we need to understand is why institutions which

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"satisfy" at one moment in time cease to do so later. Of course, there may

sometimes be a quite adequate explanation in terms of the frustration of a
need which we can independently identify, as when a given society is so
organized that many of its members (e.g., Ethiopia) are reduced to
starvation. But in cases like the modern Western polities, the non-satisfaction
itself results from. changes in the definitions and understanding of
satisfaction on the part of the people concerned. This is what theorists
gesture towards with relatively empty phrases like "the revolution of rising
expectations." The adjective "rising" makes it sound here as though the
change were merely quantitative. But on examination this is hardly a
plausible view.
Consequently there is a recognition that people can withdraw allegiance
from institutions because they change their "values" and the institutions no
longer meet their "ideal" expectations. When we analyse the transition in
this way, we are still not looking at institutions as expressions of ideas, but
as realizations which carry out (or fail to carry out) certain ideas. The
institutions are now seen as rejected not because of "output failure" but
because they fail to realize certain norms or values.
But this account too can be distortive, since it requires that the norms be
expressed independently of the institutions. Institutions are placed against
norms to judge whether they conform or not. But this approach neglects
that social norms can themselves only be understood in the context of
institutions. I cannot have the ideal of a representative democracy in my
mind without some however rudimentary notion of representative
institutions. Now it can be of course that men define their norms largely in
independence of existing institutions, and criticize what exists on the basis of
what can be imagined. And much contemporary criticism of society is
expressed as though it arises this way.
But this does not have to be so. Some ideals are not formulated explicitly.
For instance, the notion mentioned above of society as an association of
producers is rarely formulated; certainly it is not formulated in the minds of
most people; it is implicit in certain practices and expectations. Yet it is not
implausible to argue that many people evaluate and criticize society on the
basis of it. Again one may criticize or at least disapprove of society on the
basis of certain norms which are implicit in family life, although
unformulated, or disapprove of one's family life on the basis of norms
implicit in some outside, larger association.

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To restrict ourselves to formulated norms, as the approach must do

which separates norms and institutions (even though one may allow for
unconsciously formulated ideas, rejecting still the truly implicit) cannot but
impoverish our study, and blunt our understanding of what is afoot.
Moreover, it only allows for the cases where the reality fails to meet certain
norms, not for the cases where certain institutions express ideas
incompatible with another view (as representative institutions do, for
instance, for a follower of Rousseau). Nor can it allow for the contradiction
which arises when given practices or institutions express contrary ideals
(e.g., the practices of some contemporary communes of drop-outs, trying
both to embody a way of life in close communion with nature and a closely
integrated society and at the same time one founded on the most extreme
liberty of self-determination).
But most of all, this approach cannot comprehend how institutions and
practices can shape ideas; how certain ideas can receive an interpretation in
the lives of people through the institutions under which they live. But this
interpretation may be crucial to understanding social change. The general
notions of freedom in the Western tradition have been given a certain gloss
by democratic institutions, and. also by the practices of consumer capitalist
society. Just what this gloss is can only be recovered by a hermeneutical
study of society, in which not just what men write and say, but also their
practices and institutions constitute the "text."
A non-interpretive approach is impoverished because it can only see
institutions as instruments or the realizations of certain ideas; but never as
expressions. But in an important transition in which long-standing
allegiances and disciplines are under attack, this kind of restriction is fatally
narrowing. For we are dealing with what we called above "cultural
mutation." To understand these large-scale changes in social discipline,
institutions and self-understanding we have to see how these are linked, and
this we can never do unless we see how institutions can express certain selfdefinitions.
But an interpretive study which tries to clarify the underlying selfdefinitions is necessarily historical. For a self-definition is clarified by what
we have called polemical contrast and this in turn must be studied in
historical transition. In studying society in this way we not only can but
must learn from history, drawing from it not a repository of examples, but a
clarifying account of genesis. This is as we saw a Hegelian use of history,

154

CHARLES TAYLOR

and his work provides us with a web of concepts, including those of

Sittlichkeit and alienation which remain illuminating and invaluable tools of
contemporary self-understanding.

All Souls College

Oxford

NOTES

Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. J. Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1955, p. 61 (henceforth:

VG).
1 Die Philosophie des Geistes, in Slimtfiche Werke, ed. H. Glockner, Stuttgart, 1927-1930,
Vol. 10, 514 (henceforth: EG).
3
Grundfinien der Philosophie des Rechts, ed. J. Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1955; Hegel's
Philosophy of Right, tr. T.M. Knox, Oxford, 1942, Preface, p. 4 (henceforth: PR).
4 Phiinomenologie des Geistes, ed. G. Lasson, Hamburg, 1952, p. 258 (henceforth: PhG).
5 "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," Journal of Philosophy 68
(1971): 5-20.
I

SHLOMO AVINERI

COMMENTS

Since I am very much in agreement with Professor Taylor about his general
understanding of the importance of Hegel, and the importance of Hegel's
conception of Sittlichkeit generally, I have decided to limit my remarks to
the second part of his paper. This part attempts to understand the crisis of
the modern democratic liberal bourgeois world in terms o the break-up of a
traditional Sittlichkeit in Western societies. Here I am not in complete
agreement.
Before raising my main point of dissent, however, I would like to make a
distinctioh which is not by way of disagreement with Taylor, but relates to
the difficulties which those coming from an Anglo-Saxon tradition 'may have
with the concept of Sittlichkeit. Taylor spoke about two forms of
obligations in contrasting Sittlichkeit with Moralitiit. Perhaps he would
agree that we may bring out a distinction between the two concepts by
suggesting that Moralitiit is based on obligations, while Sittlichkeit is based
on duty, in the sense that duty is something that I have prior to my
conscious acceptance of it
The concept of duty is not as clear a concept as obligation, because the
concept of obligation is, especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, connected with the will to accept an obligation freely, while duty appears to
be a much more fuzzy concept. Perhaps, therefore, we should try to
introduce the concept of duty as something pre-existing to one's conscious
acceptance of this particular kind of obligation.
Now for my main point. It is that, although I basically agree with
Taylor's description of the present crisis in Western societies, I am unsure
whether I can go along with him in attributing it to the break-up of a
traditional Sittlichkeit in Western capitalist society. For I wonder whether
Western societies as we have known them since the middle of the nineteenth
century - that is, basically democratic, liberal, consensual, capitalist,
bourgeois societies - really have had anything that could be called
Sittlichkeit in the Hegelian sense. The dominant impression conveyed by
Taylor's paper is that there has been something like an accepted Sittlichkeit
155

Yirmiahu Yovel (edJ. Philo,ophy l( Hutory and Action, 155-158. All Rig,", Reurved.
Copyright 1978 by D. ReltUl Publllhing Company. Dordrecht. Holland.

156

SHLOMO AVINERI

in the West for the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, say since the
French Revolution, or since the stabilization of the Victorian order, and this
is what is breaking up now. But it could be argued that what we see breaking
up - and I am sliding into the political and historical as against the
philosophical, and do it very consciously - is not something which has been
there for the last hundred and fifty years, but is a very ephemeral
phenomenon, a post -1945 phenomenon.
I think that very few intellectuals writing before 1945 would have said
that the Western world had achieved that kind of equilibrium which we now
say is breaking up. It was rather the case, in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century, that there was never anything like a Hegelian Sittlichkeit
applicable in the Western world, that indeed Sittlichkeit in the sense of an
internalized societal ethics, if we try to translate this untranslatable German
term, was always denied to the proletariat in the West. Nor did it belong
even partially to the non-European world that was, until the middle of the
twentieth century, under Western political domination. Whatever forms of
Indian or African tribal Sittlichkeit or primitive Sittlichkeit, as Hegel would
say, did exist, were certainly being broken up in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Thus, it seems to me to be in general an illusion to suggest that the
West had this kind of Sittlichkeit.
There was only a very small part of Western society - I do not want to
use Marxist terminology, saying it was the bourgeois classes or the capitalist
classes - that was able to produce and maintain a very partial form of
internalized Sittlichkeit. This it did at the expense of denying any form of
Sittlichkeit to'other sectors of European society, as well as to the totality of
non-European society.
What happened after 1945 - between 1950 and the mid 1960's - was that
there occurred a very unusual phenomenon in that the Western world was
able - if I want to be topical, because of American aid and cheap oil
prices - to create the illusion of an equilibrium, the illusion that the threats
to democratic Western institutions, which before World War II had come
from Fascism on the one hand and Communism on the other, were being
contained. People spoke of the affluent society, the welfare state, the end of
ideology - supposing that these pretty Western phrases really reflected a
post -capitalist society to which the classical terminology of the class war
and the class society no longer applied. It was apparently a new form of
society and one which indeed possessed a Sittlichkeit.

COMMENTS

157

Now, what is really breaking up is not a hundred and fifty years of

history, but just this very unusual interlude of about twenty years that was
raised by sociologists, political scientists and sometimes even philosophers
into a new era, though what people have been writing about for the last
fifteen years, about the end of ideology and a new kind of stabilized society,
is very much like the kind of writing which Hegel attributed to his own time
when he talked about the end of history.
I do not, therefore, disagree with the general tendency of this paper as
regards our own picture of ourselves, our own understanding of our history,
our own image of man which is so very important to our understanding of
the processes which we are undergoing. I certainly agree with Taylor's
understanding of what the disruptive forces in present-day society are. My
difficulty, simply, is with the applicability of the Hegelian concept of
Sittlichkeit. Hegel was basically mistaken, if I may say so, in suggesting that
the nineteenth century had already achieved Sittlichkeit. Where things were
going wrong was in the lower strata of society. He even had, I think, a good
inkling of this, and therefore I attach very great importance to those
passages in which he discusses alienation among lower orders of society, but
his own system has no answer to that kind of alienation.
To use Hegelian language, I would say that the kind of limited
Sittlichkeit that parts of Western societies were Able to achieve in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries was premised on its involving partial
institutions and partial achievements. The unusual feature of the post-1945
era was an attempt to universalize this partial Sittlichkeit. But once an
attempt is made to universalize it, it begins to fall apart.
So you can understand, I think, even in a Hegelian way of saying ~t, that
the universalization of this sort of bourgeois Sittlichkeit creates within itself
its own transcendence, its own contradictions. Of course, the rhetoric of the
ideas of the liberal bourgeois West was always universal. Take the
Declaration of the Rights of Man: "All men are created equal." But the
possible application was de facto always partial, and there was always this
tension between the universal promise of the liberal democratic revolution
and its partial application within Western liberal societies. Once this rhetoric
was taken seriously as a universal rhetoric, applying first to all strata of
society in the West, applying secondly also to the Third World, then the
thing burst. Its internal contradictions made it incapable of survival.
In addition, I would like to ask whether the conception of the Western

158

SHLOMO AVINERI

form of society as one based on voting, on equal rights, lives up to the

Hegelian idea of Sittlichkeit. Towards the end of his remarks, Professor
Taylor made a comment which I wholly agree with as a very apt expression
of the Hegelian view, namely, that to Hegel political institutions are not
purely instrumental. Now, I think it could be said of the prevailing
conventional wisdom of the West that it always saw its political institutions
as instruments. In both its ideology and its practice, the egalitarianism of the
democratic process has been viewed as an instrumental one. Hence, it has
also been suggested that some societies, like Asian and African societies,
could not achieve maximal aims of, say, economic expansion under forms of
democratic institution; instead, military dictatorship or some sort of
Fascism might be good for them, because it CCluid achieve economic
progress, national liberation, and those are the real aims, while democratic
institutions are merely instruments.
Certainly in the United States context, the view of the political order as
being purely instrumental was until very recently the predominant one, and
therefore I do not feel that the democratic ethos of the West could be
subsumed under the Hegelian concept of Sittlichkeit. To put it in a nutshell,
a Sittlichkeit is not disappearing - it never existed. The promise, the
rhetoric, the dream perhaps all existed - the reality did not.
What I feel, is under attack is the inability of this partial system to
become truly universal. When you truly universalize the liberal ethos of the
West, its basic instrumental nature becomes clear and therefore it is unable
to get out of people the kind of internalized belief that Sittlichkeit really
necessitates. Further, it cannot be universalized socially, it is a system that
can only serve limited ends. When the rhetoric overtakes the reality, a gap
opens within Western societies, where you cannot give everything to
everybody on a universalized level when the economy is beginning to shrink,
where you do not have unlimited expansion. Nor can you really relate it to
the non-European world, where those very limited European concepts do
not have a reality, but certainly are dysfunctional in a developing society
like an African one or some Asian ones.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

JACQUES D'HONDT

MARX ET LES LEGONS DE L'HISTOIRE

SUM MAR Y.

The very idea of a lesson implies that of history, demands a consciousness or

knowledge of the past. The consciousness or knowledge of the past necessarily intervenes in
present action.
The motives for negating the existence of the lessons of history therefore derive from the
following. (I) The artificial isolation of the political domain. (2) The illegitimate restriction to
a certain type of lesson-to precepts for individual or occasional use. (3) Complex motives,
ones different from those alleged. One sometimes challenges the lessons of history because
one understands them only too plainly, and they are distasteful (Lachelier). But such an
attitude implies having recourse to the objectivity of history with a view to suggesting
precisely its lack of objectivity. (4) One of the most customary arguments in favour of this
negation takes into consideration the unique and irreversible character of historical
development. It is again employing recourse to history against that history itself. One finds in
Hegel this temptation to see in history a not very effective retrospective knowledge: "the bird
of Minerva takes its flight at nightfall."
In Marx this knowledge acquires a much more marked prospective and directing role.
(I) Marx produces historical works with a practical intention, as an educator of the

proletariat and organizer of its action. (2) He appeals constantly to historical examples in
order to orient present steps. (3) He puts a philosophy of history-historical materialism-at
the basis of all his theoretical conceptions. (4) He proposes a historical explanation of the
genesis and development of this historical materialism itself. This attitude implies a reversal
of common opinions on this subject and assumes a paradoxical aspect for many observers.
In order to adopt it, one must in fact submit to several theoretical demands. (I) The dialectic
of the subject and the object. (2) The indispensable role of consciousness in events: without
consciousness, no "lesson" of history would be evidently conceivable. (3) Conscious activity
produces partially unconscious effects. It becomes alienated in an objective reality which
emancipates itself from its tutelage, becomes autonomous and follows its own laws.
(4) Historical changes comprise moments of rupture and "qualitative bonds," but ones
integrated in a basic continuity.
History gives lessons only to the extent that it is capable of receiving lessons. Everything
takes place as if the human past instructed and guided the present, as if from a global
viewpoint, history were its own pupil.

159

Yirmiahu Yovel ,ed.}, Philosophy of History and Action. 159 -175 . All Rights Reserved.
Copyright @ 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dordrecht. Holland.

160

JACQUES D'HONDT

Y a-t-il des l~ons de l'histoire?

Cette question peut s'entendre diversement. Veut-on dire que l'histoire
donne des l~ons, comme un maitre, ou bien qu'elle les apprend, comme un
eleve?
II est particulierement interessant d'entendre la reponse de Marx it ces
questions, it cause de l'immense influence actuelle de ce penseur.
LA SAGESSE DES NATIONS

II semble bien que Marx recueille d'abord it ce propos un certain nombre

d'idees admises. QU'allegue-t-on, ordinairement, pour justifier la realite d'un
enseignement de l'histoire?
D'abord, peut-etre, cet argument: la notion meme de le~on implique celIe
d'histoire, elle reclame une conscience ou une connaissance du passe, et sa
transmission an present.
On n'enseigne jamais que ce que l'on a appris, directement ou
scolairement, sauf dans Ie cas, tout it fait rare, d'une creation immediate
dont Ie maitre ofTrirait Ie spectacle instantane it ses disciples.
Pour qui n'accepte aucun transcendentalisme, et c'est evidemment Ie cas
de Marx, il n'y a meme de le~ons que de l'histoire. D'ou une connaissance,
une reftexion sur des connaissances, pourraient-elles provenir, sinon d'une
experience ou d'une reflexion passee - a moins que ce ne soit d'une
situation, d'une experience ou d'une reftexion presente?
Pas de le~ons sans histoire!
Inversement, on voit mal comment une conscience, ou mieux une
connaissance du passe, de quelque ordre qu'il soit, pourrait s'instaurer, chez
un individu ou dans une collectivite, sans exercer d'inftuence sur Ie
comportement intellectuel et pratique de cet individu ou de cette collectivite.
La conscience et la connaissance du passe comportent des lacunes, des
defaillances, des erreurs, des illusions, mais telles qu'elles sont, qui donc leur
echapperait, qui donc pourrait volontairement et efficacement les occulter?
l'oubli n'obeit pas it une volonte arbitraire, et chacun agit, actuellement,
selon l'experience qu'il a acquise.
II n'est point de savoir sterile.
Encore moins, bien sur, pour qui admet la necessite tendancielle des
processus reels qu'il a detectes. Je ne puis enftammer une allumette en me
cachant it moi-meme tes consequences previsibles de ce geste, avec ses

MARX ET LES LEC;:ONS DE L'HISTOIRE

161

possibilites et ses risques. La conscience ne prophetise que parce qu'elle

recueille.
Mais tout cela n'implique pas que la connaissance du passe soit adequate.
II suffit qu'il y ait un passe, et que la conscience que nous en avons influence
nos attitudes presentes: l'histoire nous enseigne, plus ou moins utilement,
plus ou moins objectivement, mais ineluctablement.
LES CAUSES DE LA CONTESTATION

Pourquoi donc certains philosophes en doutent-ils, cependant, quand ils ne

Ie nient pas decidement?
Deja, peut-etre, parce que dans cette negation ils ne comprennent que
l'histoire politique, detachee arbitrairement de l'histoire universelle. lIs
isolent la vie politique des multiples autres aspects de la vie des societes, et
aussi de la vie du monde.
C'est pour l'histoire politique seule que vaut leur refus, et il est compense
par une approbation d'autant plus naive des enseignements du passe dans
d'autres domaines, dont ils n'aper~oivent pas, ou ne reconnaissent pas, Ie
caractere historique. lIs suivent docilement des preceptes d'hygiene ou de
politesse, des regles de circulation ou de concurrence, des ordonnances de
medicine ou d'administration, sans songer que tout cela leur vient du passe
et leur a ete transmis consciemment, non sans complications et incertitudes.
Cet heritage familier capte leur confiance si facilement qu'ils en oublient Que
c'est un heritage, dont l'estimation depend d'ailleurs de criteres qui valent
pour toute transmission historique. Si la connaissance du passe ne livrait pas
de l~ons, pourquoi donc lutterait-on contre l'alcoolisme, les exces de vitesse
en automobile, l'esclavage, l'analphabetisme? Sans elle, nous agirions dans
une spontaneite aveugle.
De plus, its ne considerent qu'un seul type de le~ons, fort restreint: celles
qui consisteraient en preceptes a usage individuel. Or, s'il est vrai, comme Ie
pense Marx Ii la suite de Hegel, que de meme que I'universel contient Ie
particulier, Ie necessaire implique Ie fortuit, alors la reconnaissance de lois
historiques globales a pour consequence que, par rapport Ii eIles, les
destinees individuelles presentent un caractere de fortuite relative.
Celui qui cherche Ii tirer son epingle du jeu considere une autre necessite,
une autre causalite, une autre finalite que celui qui vise la sauvegarde et Ie
developpement du jeu tout entier. Marx croit pouvoir tirer un riche

162

J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

enseignement de l'etude de la Commune de Paris. Mais cet enseignement ne

peut profiter, a son avis, qu'au proletariat. II n'a d'utilite pour les proletaires,
consideres en tant qu'individus, que si ces individus acceptent de confondre
leur destin personnel avec celui de leur classe sociale.
A Kugelmann qui s'efTrayait des consequences que pourrait avoir pour
l'avenir Ie massacre d'une grande partie des "chefs" ouvriers, la suite de la
defaite de la Commune de Paris, Marx repondit en avril 1871: "Les
Parisiens ont ete places devant I'alternative suivante: accepter Ie combat ou
succomber sans combat. Dans cette derniere eventualite, la demoralisation
de la classe ouvriere aurait ete un malheur bien plus grand que la perte d'un
nombre quelconque de 'chefs.' " I
II est bien possible que quelques-uns des revolutionnaires concernes aient
ete d'un autre avis, au moment de leur mise mort par les adversaires. Une
relation dramatique se noue, dans l'histoire, entre les destinees collectives et
les destinees individuelles, et Ie passe ne les eclaire pas de la meme lumiere.
De plus, la connaissance du passe n'atteint pas une certitude et une
preCision telles qu'elles permettraient de prevoir sans hesitation et de diriger
sans aleas. Elle reserve d'ailleurs toujours sa place au hasard objectif.
Le meme Marx qui a d'abord condamne Ie projet d'insurrection
parisienne en 1871, puis qui a vivement critique la tactique appliquee et les
fautes commises, magnifie I'entreprise apres qu'elle a echoue, et il analyse

minutieusement cette experience dont pourront, selon lui, s'inspirer des

tentatives ulterieures du meme ordre.

En meme temps, Marx met en valeur Ie caractere relatif des conjectures
que I'on peut faire, concernant un devenir humain dont la necessite n'a pas
grand chose de commun avec Ie determinisme absolu, et, selon lui, mystique,
que Laplace avait naguere expose. II ecrit a Kugelmann: "II serait certes fort
commode de faire I'histoire universelle si on n'engageait la lutte qu'a
condition d'avoir des chances infailliblement favorables. Cette histoire serait
d'ailleurs de nature fort mystique si les 'hasards' n'y jouaient aucun role." 2
L'action humaine n'echappe jamais compJetement au risque, mais on
calcule Ie risque, et I'on choisit, parmi d'autres, l'attitude convenable. II faut,
pour cela, se servir utilement de I'experience passee. Mais qui donc a jamais
pense qu'i! suffisait de prendre des le~ons de conduite automobile pour eviter
ensuite infailliblement tout accident de la route?
En realite, beaucoup de theoriciens omettent d'inscrire, au compte de
I'histoire, des connaissances qui presentent un caractere politique

MARX ET LES LE<;ONS DE L'HISTOIRE

163

indubitable, et qui leur sont si familieres qu'i1s croient ne les avoir jamais
acquises, comme si elles etaient innees, ou a priori.
Chacun, it notre epoque, sait que non seulement les individus sont
mortels, mais aussi les classes sociales, les nations, les religions, les langues,
les civilisations; que les frontieres des Etats ne sont ni naturelles, ni
immuables; que les hierarchies connaissent avec Ie temps des petrifications,
ou des renversements, ou des metamorphoses. On pourrait dresser une
longue liste de ces connaissances d'ample portee que seule I'experience
historique est capable de procurer.
Certes, on rencontre it chaque epoque des gens qui n'ont rien appris, qui
restent en retard d'une guerre, qui pensent dans un monde perime. Et sans
doute chacun doit-i1, it cet egard, se juger lui-meme avec modestie. Mais cela
ne change ni n'efface la realite: nous vivons et nous nous mouvons dans une
multitude de traditions, souvent contradictoires entre eUes, sou vent confuses,
et ce qu'eUes nous transmettent nous soutient, meme si nous Ie comprenons
mal, et diversement, et absurdement. La mediocrite des eleves ne contraint
pas Ie maitre au silence. II crie d'ailleurs parfois assez fort pour que les plus
durs d'oreille finis sent par I'entendre.
En notre ere du soup~on, nous sommes tentes de penser qp'en cette
affaire iI n'y a pire sourd que celui qui se bouche les oreilles. II arrive, dans
quelques cas singuliers, que les raisons alleguees d'une grande mefiance
envers I'histoire ne coincident pas avec les veritables motifs, tenus secrets,
ou restes inconscients.
L'obstination negatrice de quelques uns dissimule une foi profonde, et
peut-etre excessive, en I'objectivite massive de l'histoire et des le~ons. S'ils
veulent lui retirer la parole, c'est parce qu'it leurs oreilles elle ne parle que
trop!
Nous en trouverons Ie temoignage dans cet extrait d'une lettre de
Lachelier it Boutroux: "et quand cela serait arrive, il faudrait dire plus que
jamais que cela n'est pas arrive, que I'histoire est une illusion, et Ie passe une
projection, et qu'i1 n'y a de vrai quel'ideal et I'absolu; ( ... ) C'est la legende
qui est vraie et I'histoire qui est fausse." 3
L'indignation devant un fait historique deplaisant entrainait. Lachelier
peut etre plus loin qu'il n'eut deliberement voulu. Car I'herolsme de la
negation impJique une solide consistance de" la chose, et Ie propos de
Lachelier confirme, malgre son intention,!'objectivited'un passe irrecusable.
La denonciation du caractere pretendument ilIusoire de l'histoire se fonde

164

J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

sur un recours Ii cette histoire, et se retourne donc ironiquement contre son

auteur.
Hegellui-meme s'abandonne Ii ce paradoxe, d'une maniere partiellement
lucide - ce qui suscite Ie doute sur la portee exacte de ses propos:
On renvoie les souverains, les hommes d'Etat et surtout les peuples Ii I'enseignement par
I'experience de I'histoire. Mais ce que I'experience et I'histoire enseignent, c'est que jamais les
peuples ni les gouvernements n'ont rien appris de I'histoire, ni n'ont agi d'apres des le~ns
qu'on aurait pu en tirer. Chaque epoque, chaque peuple a des circonstances si particuiieres,
realise une situation si individuelle, que c' est uniquement en eUe et Ii partir d'elle qu'it faut
prendre ses decisions (et precisement, seul Ie grand caractere sait faire ici ce qui est
approprie). Dans la cohue des evenements mondiaux, une maxime generale ne sert Ii rien, Ie
souvenir des situations analogues dans Ie passe ne suffit pas ... 4

Comment la saisie d'un passe unique et irreversible pourrait-elle

manifester quelque utilite dans la construction intelligente du present et de
l'avenir?Surtout si I'on admet, comme Ie fait Hegel, que les periodes
historiques successives se separent les unes des autres par des ruptures
qualitatives, non pas radicales, certes, mais importantes!
En fait, Hegel repond lui-meme implicitement Ii ces questions, d'une part
en acceptant I'enseignement de I'histoire sur ce point, et d'autre part en
fondant son opinion sur une comprehension du developpement historique
qui lui est propre et qu'i1 expose longuement: histoire consideree comme un
processus; processus dialectique qui com porte des moments de fixation, de
stagnation, et des moments d'acceIeration; constatation des phenomenes de
rupture; unite de la continuite et de la discontinuite, etc.
II faut avoir beaucoup etudie l'histoire, pour apprendre qu'elle constitue
un processus necessaire et necessairement dialectique. Mais comment une
acquisition theorique d'une telle ampleur resterait-elle sans efTet sur la
conduite de ceux qui en beneficient?
Pourquoi Hegel s'interesserait-il Ii I'histoire autrement qu'en "antiquaire,"
comme iI Ie proclame, s'il n'envisageait pas un usage de ce savoir?
II veut etre Ie porte-parole de I'esprit mondial, et toutes les le90ns qu'il
prodigue ne sont que des I~ons de I'histoire!
II convient donc d'attenuer les presentations parfois excessives et
exclusives d'une tentation Ii laquelle Hegel cede parfois, et qu'il a
superbement iIIustree par I'image de "l'oiseau de Minerve qui ne prend son
vol qu'li la tombee du jour."

MARX ET LES LE<;'ONS DE L'HISTOIRE

165

Quelles sont alors les conditions qui, si elles etaient realisees, rendraient
efTectivement impossible toute influence du passe sur Ie present et l'avenir
humains, ainsi que sur les intentions humaines?
LES RUPTURES

La premiere serait une rupture absolue entre l'homme et Ie monde, ou,

plus exactement, entre l'esprit et Ie monde. On reconnait ici Ie principe de
toutes les metaphysiques traditionnelles, qui ont su en developper
diversement, de maniere coherente, les consequences. Elles presentent alors
une conception du monde qui comporte de grands avantages intellectuels, et
qui, notamment, donne beaucoup de commodites pour l'elaboration d'une
thoorie de la connaissance simple et bien structuree. Tout Ie monde aper~oit
la difficulte de leur refutation eventuelle.
Elles menagent d'ailleurs la justification d'une liberte humaine integrale et
elles autorisent l'esperance d'une immortalite de l'ame individuelle.
Elles rendent it la fois inacceptable theoriquement et insupportable
pratiquement une action du reel, considere comme exterieur, sur l'esprit
humain, du moins pour ce qui concerne l'essentiel. Celui-ci se garde pur de
toute contamination empirique: Noli me tangere! Et meme si certaines
doctrines concedent que quelques aspects de l'esprit dependent du monde,
du moins la production proprement intellectuelle reste-t-elle une immaculee

conception.
En tant que sujet spirituel, l'individu ne se trouve alors conditionne
d'aucune fa~on, ni par Ie monde naturel, ni par Ie monde historique. n ne
peut etre question, pour lui, d'obtemperer it des indications, des
commandements, des mises en garde qui lui viendraient de quelque positivite
que ce soit, habitude personnelle ou tradition collective: il n'a de l~ons it
recevoir de per sonne, et en tout cas pas de l'histoire. C'est plutot it lui d'en
donner, bien qu'il soit malaise de comprendre comment il peut agir sur une
realite aussi radicalement separee de lui. Celui qui refuse d'etre touche par
rien, comment pourra-t-il toucher quoi que ce soit? Paut-it oublier l'argile
dont on a ete petri?
Cette these fondamentale de la separation absolue de l'homme et du
monde, et donc de l'homme et de l'histoire objective du genre humain, a
trouve, ces derniers temps, une forme nouvelle d'expression: la thoorie de la

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J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

rupture epistemologique radicale, developpee et soutenue par des auteurs

talentueux.
El1e constitue la deuxieme de ce que nous pouvons appeler les "conditions
d'impossibilite" de l'histoire.
Ne retenons d'el1e que ce qui interesse ici notre propos. Elle veut mettre
en evidence que les connaissances et les activites humaines, concernant des
objets tres varies, comportent des structures similaires qui revelent leur unite
de composition epistemique.
El1e entraine des consequences importantes et bien connues: d'abord, il
n'y a pas de rapport entre les divers systemes epistemiques que I'on peut
detecter, et donc aucune filiation, aucun passage de l'un it I'autre.
Ensuite, elle interdit Ie maintien de la representation traditionnelle de
I'homme, un etre qui permanerait dans ou sous les constitutions
epistemiques successives. Cet antihumanisme a acquis rapidement une
grande popularite. Vne de ses implications c'est que chaque conception du
passe depend de.l'epistemie dont elle rei eve. Ce n'est pas l'histoire qui, dans
certaines conditions, produit les epistemies successives, mais c'est
l'epistemie dans laquelle on se trouve et dont on ne peut sortir, qui produit
un certain type d'historicite et d'histoire. Notre propre archive donne it notre
discours "ses modes d'apparition, ses formes d'existence et de coexistence,
son systeme de cumul, d'historicite et de disparition." 5
Pouvons-nous comprendre, dans ce dispositif, comment une epistemie
peut ressaisir authentiquement les autres, alors qu'elle les soumet
immediatement a ses propres contraintes? Cette epistemie, c'est comme si
elle tom bait du ciel, sans origine ni genese. Elle se pose comme
commencement absolu.
II n'y a plus alors d'histoire qu'a I'interieur de chaque systeme de
conditions, et constituee par lui. Cette epistemie de l'histoire compromet les
chances de toute histoire de l'epistemologie. Elle se revele par la
profondement antihistorique: on a pu evoquer a son propos, et fort
justement, un "transcendentalisme sans sujet" (Paul Ricoeur). Or ce que
Marx rejette, et iI scandalise par la, ce n'est pas Ie sujet, mais Ie
transcendentalisme!
L'histoire ne serait pas non plus possible si Ie developpement humain
n'offrait pas une continuite. On pourrait dire, par opposition it la continuite
epistemologique: une continuite phenomenale. Certes Marx, it la suite de
Hegel, et peut-etre meme davantage que lui, a insiste sur les ruptures

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167

relatives, et sur leur importance. Elles representent des moments decisifs du

cours de I'histoire. Mais it condition qu'elles ne soient pas elles-memes en
rupture radicale avec ce qui les precede et les prepare! Bonds qualitatifs
brusques, elles resultent de lents accroissements quantitatifs, et I'histoire
forme, en consequence, une continuite de ruptures et d'evolutions, realisant
la formule abstraite que Hegel avait enoncee: "Ie lien du lien et du non-lien."
Une revolution est un renversement, non pas un demenagement.
A defaut de toute continuite, nous aurions affaire it une rhapsodie, it un
decousu, roais meme it ce pot-pourri iI serait difficile de refuser une unite de
composition.
II n'y aurait pas d'histoire, au sens ordinaire, si Ie politique ne detenait une
specificire propre et une continuite de developpement. Ce qui n'implique
nullement son autonomie absolue.
L'histoire de la philosophie, I'histoire de I'art, reclament elles aussi la
specificite de leur objet. On constate donc une discontinuite relative des
objets consideres, mais pas une autonomie absolue: au contraire, i1s
exercent les uns sur les autres une influence mutuelle, et constituent un tout,
Ie tout de I'histoire humaine, elle meme comprise dans Ie "grand tout de la
nature."
L'HISTOIRE INSTITUTRICE

L'attitude de Marx, devant cette problematique, ne fait aucun doute. II a

admis qu'iI y a des I~ons de I'histoire et cela implique des conditions de
possibilite qu'iI a indiquees it maintes reprises.
Marx a lui-meme exerce Ie metier d'historien, et pas seulement celui de
philosophe de I'histoire. Apres avoir etabli Ie materialisme historique comme
theorie generale, iI a lui-meme mis, si I'on peut dire, la main it la pate. Dans
ce travail, une intention pratique Ie guidait, et elle s'exprime c1airement sous
sa plume: iI s'agit pour Iui d'eduquer et d'organiser Ie proletariat en lui
expliquant ce qui est advenu dans Ie passe, afin qu'iI ne retombe pas dans les
memes erreurs, et qu'i1 imite les exemples d'action efficace.
Que I'on relise La guerre civile en France, ou Le dix-huit Brumaire de
Louis-Bonaparte, on y trouvera des preceptes fondes sur la connaissance et
I'analyse d'experiences echues. Non pas que Marx envisage toujours une
histoire immediatement didactique! II insiste au contraire souvent sur Ie fait
que la recherche theorique doit prendre ses distances it I'egard des projets

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J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

d'application immediate. Aussi bien, Engels et lui-meme etudieront-ils

I'histoire grecque, retraceront-ils I'histoire du christianisme primitif, l'histoire
de l'Allemagne feodale, etc. La connaissance du passe se montre toujours
utile, en fin de compte, mais pas necessairement sous cette forme de
preceptes applicables instantanement.
Toutefois Marx ne les dedaigne pas. EAtre mille exemples, on peut citer
quelques-uns des plus celebres. L'etude de la Commune de Paris conduit
Marx a des conclusions telles que celles-ci: une revolution proletarienne ne
peut reus sir sans I'accord des classes moyennes, dont une grande partie est
constituee par la paysannerie. Sans l'alliance avec la paysannerie, la
revolution proletarienne reste un "solo funebre." Donc, si Ie proletariat n'a
pas noue cette alliance, il est vain de s'engager dans une revolution.
Autre enseignement tire du meme evenement: la revolution ne doit pas
changer I'Etat, tel qu'il est etabli, mais Ie briser. Et puis, nous l'avons deja
vu, dans certains cas, mieux vaut un echec sanglant qu'une resignation
decourageante.
Voila des ler;ons que les disciples de Marx n'ont pas laisse tomber dans
l'oubli.
Mais l'etude de l'histoire instruit aussi d'une autre far;on: elle permet
certaines previsions.
Par exemple, contre I'avis de tous les economistes de son temps, Marx a
maintenu la these selon laquelle tant que Ie systeme capitaliste persisterait, il
connaitrait des crises econorruques. Apres l'echec de la Commune, il a
pretendu qu'il y aurait d'autres revolutions proletariennes.
D'une manil~re plus precise, Engels, trente ans a I'avance, et contre
I'opinion commune, prevoyait Ie declenchement de la premiere guerre
mondiale et certaines consequences Ii ses yeux necessaires:
Et enfin, il n'y a plus pour la Prusse-Allemagne d'autre guerre possible qu'une guerre
la verite, une guerre mondiale d'une ampleur et d'une violence jamais
mondiale, et,
imaginees jusqu'ici. Huit adix millions de soldats s'entr'egorgeront; ce faisant, ils devoreront
et tandront toute l'Europe comme jamais ne Ie fit encore une nuee de sautereUes. Les
devastations de la guerre de Trente ans, condensees en 3 JU 4 annees et repandues sur tout Ie
continent, la famine, les epidemies, la ferocite generale des armees ainsi que des masses
populaires provoquee par l'aprete du besoin, Ie gachis desespere de notre mecanisme
artificiel du commerce, de l'industrie et du credit finissant dans la banqueroute generale.
L'effondrement des vieux Etats et de leur sagesse poIitique traditionneUe, et tel que les
couronnes rouleront par dizaines sur Ie pave et qu'i1 ne se trouvera personne pour les
ramasser; l'impossibilite absolue de prevoir comment tout cela finira et qui sortira vainqueur

MAR X E T L E S L E <; 0 N S DEL' HIS T 0 IRE

169

de la lutte; un seul resultat est absolument certain: I'epuisement general et la creation des
conditions necessaires a la victoire finale de la c1asse ouvriere. 6

C'etait ecrit en 1887. Cela s'accomplit en 1914-1918.

La prevision pennet d'adapter les comportements. Elle montre que tout
n'est pas possible, mais que ce qui est possible se realise plus ou moins
rapidement, plus ou moins heureusement. A quelle autre ambition pourrait
pretendre une le~on?
Tout avertissement ne porte cependant pas fatalement ses fruits.
Marx et Engels ont tres frequemment mis en garde contre ce qu'ils
appelaient Ie "Personenkult." En particulier, dans son Introduction it
l'edition de 1891 de la Gue"e civile en France, Engels precise les moyens
d'em.,echer la naissance et Ie developpement de ce "culte de la
personnalite," et, plus specialement, les moyens pour la classe ouvriere
d'assurer sa securite et sa liberte contre ses propres deputes et representants,
ainsi que contre ses propres employes. Reprt;nant une terminologie bien
connue, il explique que chaque serviteur a tendance it se metamorphoser en
maitre, et comment on peut em.,echer ce renversement. 7 II semble bien que
cette le~on, retiree de l'experience historique de la Commune de Paris, se
soit perdue.
Mais il reste que Marx en appelait constamment aux exemples historiques
pour orienter les demarches actuelles.
Comment pourrait-il en etre autrement chez un penseur qui place une
philosophie de l'histoire, Ie materialisme historique, it la base de toutes ses
recherches scientifiques et de toutes ses activites pratiques premeditees?
Comme l'a dit Engels, resumant brutalement une doctrine bien connue:
"Toutes les vues theoriques qui surgissent dans l'histoire ne peuvent etre
comprises que si les conditions de vie materielle de l'epoque correspondante
sont comprises et que si les premieres sont deduites de ces conditions
materielles." 8
Dans une telle perspective, l'histoire devient la science fondamentale, et Ie
point de vue historique inspire toute demarche intellectuelle.
Aussi, de maniere tres coherente - quelle que soit d'ailleurs la difficulte
d'une telle entreprise - Marx a voulu rendre compte historiquement de la
genese et du developpement de ce materialisme historique lui-meme.
III'a fait dans sa Prejace it la Contribution la critique de l'economie
politique de 1859, et il a approuve les articles qu'Engels a ecrits, it la meme

170

J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

epoque, a ce propos.9 L'idee generale, sur ce point, est celie qu'Engels

presenter a en raccourci dans l'Anti-Diihring:
La pen see theorique de chaque epoque, donc aussi celie de la notre, est un produit historique
qui prend en des temps ditThrents une forme tres ditTerente et, par hi, un contenu tres different.
La science de la pensee est donc, comme toute autre science, une science historique, la
science du developpement historique de la pensee humaine.1O

Le materialisme dialectique et Ie materialisme historique naissent

l'epoque qui les rend possibles, et la convergence des recherches de
theoriciens independants les uns des autres signale que, si I'on ose dire,
I'epoque attendait cette naissance.
JUSTIFICA TIONS THEORIQUES

V ne telle vue des choses implique un renversement des opinions communes

et prend, pour beaucoup d'observateurs, I'allure d'un scandale.
"Par I'etendue, Ie monde me comprend et m'engloutit comme un point.
Par la pensee je Ie comprends." Cette formule de Pascal semblait deja forte.
Mais Marx en rajoute: ce point de pen see qui comprend Ie monde est luimeme un produit du monde, une partie, une difTerenciation parcellaire et
ephemere de ce monde!
C'est la dialectique qui se charge de faciliter I'assimilation de ce paradoxe.
Elle reussit peut-etre ce tour de faire passer Ie sujet pour un enfant de l'objet,
un enfant tyrannique qui maimene son pere.
L'histoire qu'ecrivent les historiens (Historia) est distincte de l'histoire
effective (Res gestae), mais elle en est cependant, a certains egards, un
produit, et elle consiste en un reflet plus ou moins adequat du cours reel des
choses. Ce reflet n'est pas passif: d'une part, comme toute chose au monde,
et comme tout produit, il gagne une certaine autonomie, il s'autonomise
(Verselbstiindigung), et d'autre part il entre en interaction avec son modele:
l'histoire reelle ne serait pas ce qu'elle est, si n'y intervenait la conscience des
hommes, collective et individuelle.
Cette relation de I'histoire reelle et de la conscience historique comporte
toutefois une dominante: l'histoire reelle. Et, bien sur, avant que Ie genre
humain, par la production, ne se fUt engage dans un processus historique
concret, il ne pouvait naltre d'historiens pour raconter. L'histoire produit et
ensuite abolit Ie beQeficiaire de ses le-rons.

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171

Toutefois, si l'etre, selon Marx, precede la conscience, la conscience

disparait dans la mort, en meme temps que ses conditions naturelles.
On saisit alors Ie caractere relatif des ler;ons de I'histoire qui ne peuvent
surgir que dans I'entre deux, et qui gardent toujours une portee et une
validite subordonnees.
Autrement dit, il n'est possible de tirer des ler;ons de I'histoire que parce
que celle-ci, en fin de compte, ne manque pas d'inftiger une ler;on aceux qui
n'ont pas su s'instruire aupres d'elle. La conscience a toujours Ie dernier
mot, mais il peut etre faux. L'histoire, elle, donne toujours Ie dernier coup,
imp arable.
Cela suppose que la conscience joue un role dans les evenements. Sans
elle, aucune "Ier;on" de I'histoire ne serait concevable, car les evenements ne
prennent une signification monitrice, indicative ou reprobatrice, que par
rapport aux analyses et aux previsions. Une telle exaltation du role de la
conscience dans l'histoire ne peut surprendre chez un theoricien tel que
Marx, puisque precisement, sans elle, aucune theorie ne presenterait
d'interet. Celle-ci est, selon lui, un guide pour I'action, et il a toujours mis en
garde, en ce qui c;oncerne la vie politique, contre la spontaneite. L'homme,
etre conscient, organise intelligemment ses actions, et deja Ie type d'action
qui Ie definit com me espece singuliere et remarquable: Ie travail, la
production.
II n'est done pas question pour Marx de nier I'existence du sujet. Au
contraire, il s'y refere frequemment. Ainsi, par exemple, il ecrit, dans les
Theories sur la plus-value, qui forinent Ie tome IV du Capital:
C'est I'homme lui-meme qui est la base [die Basis] de sa production materielle, comme de
toutes les autres productions qu'il etTectue. Done, toutes les circonstances qui atTectent
l'homme, Ie sujet de la production [das Subjekt der Produktion]. modifient plus ou moins
toutes ses fonctions et toutes ses activites, et done aussi ses fonctions et ses activites en tant
que createur [SchOpfer] de la richesse materielle, des marchandises. 1l

II est done abusif d'attribuer a Marx une attitude "anti-humaniste," sinon

en prenant Ie mot "humanisme" en ce sens obscur et exceptionnel que lui a
impose Feuerbach.
Mais alors, si I'homme, sujet de la production, et aussi de la production
intellectuelle, entre en relation dialectique avec les circonstances et avec les
resultats de cette production, il convient, pour que la notion de ler;on garde
un sens dans un tel contexte, que Ie monde des produits detienne lui aussi
une autonomie relative. Si I'histoire, faite par les hommes, repondait

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J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

immediatement et limpidement it leurs intentions, ils la produiraient en y

pensant et ils n'en tireraient ni n'en recevraient jamais de le~ons.
En realite, selon Marx, I'activite consciente suscite des efTets partiellement
involontaires et inconscients. En fabriquant ce qu'ils veulent, les hommes
fabriquent en meme temps autre chose, un surplus non desire et peut-etre
indesirable. L'action s'alitme dans une realite objective qui s'emancipe de sa
tutelle, s'autonomise par rapport it elle, et suit ses propres lois. Cette
doctrine generale de I'alienation, heritee de Hegel et adaptee, soutient to ute
la theorie historique de Marx.
n n'y aurait pas d'histoire, si elle n'etait faite par les hommes. II n'y aurait
pas de le~ons de l'histoire, si celle-ci obeissait immediatement aux intentions
humaines: il f-aut donc qu'elle prenne sa propre consistance specifique,
etrangere, ou meme contradictoire it ces intentions. Elle se presente aux
hommes comme une manifestation d'etrangete (Fremdheit), souvent
surprenante et deroutante. Mais l'analyse revele qu'ils ont eux-memes cree
cette etrangete, sans Ie savoir ni Ie vouloir, dans une alienation de leurs
projets et de leurs actions (Entfremdung).
L'impression d'etrangete ressentie devant I'histoire resulte de multiples
constatations. Elle n'est jamais plus vive que lorsque Ie cours de I'histoire
semble "perdre la tete," renverser les institutions et les valeurs qu'il avait luimeme sanctifiees, s'emballer comme un cheval fou, dans les periodes de
crise et de revolution. Ce qui etait sagesse devient alors soudainement folie
(Weisheit-Narrheit), et la logique y perd son latin!
II se produit ainsi, dans Ie developpement, des bonds, des sauts, des
moments de discontinuite brut ale. A la suite de Hegel, Marx les tient pour
des ruptures qualitatives, et illeur accorde la plus grande importance: elles
sont decisives, du point de vue de l'intellection comme du point de vue de la
prospective. Au lieu de les nier, ou de s'indigner de leur irruption, Marx
adopte la dialectique hegelienne qui pretend se plier it elles pour les mieux
saisir, et qui les recupere au profit de la pensee rationnelle. On connait la
theorie fameuse du passage brusque du developpement quantitatif lent au
saut qualitatif, theorie qui constitue un aspect essen tiel de la dialectique.
Elle presente, pour Marx, une importance que l'on ne saurait surestimer.
Comment les hommes, en efTet, pourraient-ils tirer parti activement de leur
connaissance du passe, s'ils n'etaient capables d'intervenir utilement dans
ces sauts qualitatifs de l'histoire, de les prevoir, de les preparer, de les
orienter, de les moduler?

MARX ET LES LE(ONS DE L'HISTOIRE

173

Or, pour que l'action eclairee connaisse ici une efficacite, il faut que ces
ruptures decisives, et par exemple ces revolutions, ne se reduisent pas a des
coupures radicales telles qu'elles sont seules reconnues par la logique
c1assique, avec ses oppositions tranchees qui excluent tout tiers et toute
mediation possibles: "ou bien ... ou bien"!. ..
Les enseignements du passe ne guident Ie present que s'il est lie au passe
dans une continuite fondamentale qui comporte certes des ruptures, mais
des ruptures relatives. L'histoire se presente alors, pour l'essentiel, comme
un processus, c'est-a-dire une continuite d'evolutions progressives et de
ruptures brusques. Que I'on songe ace qu'implique la formule de Marx: "La
France est Ie pays c1assique des revolutions"!
Bien sur, Marx savait, et pour cause, que tout Ie monde n'admet pas une
telle representation du rapport de I'homme au monde et du rapport du genre
humain a sa propre histoire. II comptait un plus grand nombre d'adversaires
theoriques irreductibles que de disciples, en son temps.
L'appreciation de la validite et de I'efficacite des le~ons depend de la
representation que I'on se fait de I'histoire, plus ou moins objective, plus ou
moins accueillante au phenomene de I'alienation et a la relativisation du
sujet. L'analyse d'une meme .,eriode historique instruit differemment des
sujets differents, car elle depend des presuppositions theoriques et des
prejuges de chacun d'eux.
Le meme evimement, sa:si dans son objectivite, propose des taches
differentes au tyran et a I'opprime, a I'exploiteur et a I'exploite: tous deux,
l'ayant bien compris, s'en inspirent diversement pour leur conduite future.
Est-ce a dire, alors, que chacun choisisse ici l'air qu'il aime entendre? Estce l'ecoute qui fait la chanson?
Marx ne semble pas Ie penser. Sans doute, une meme connaissance
objective se trouve-t-elle utilisee dans des previsions et des orientations
differentes, parfois opposees. Le savoir du medecin lui permet de rnieux
soigner, mais aussi, eventuellement, de tuer.
Le deroulement de la grande guerre 1914-1918 et de la periode qui l'a
suivie inspira des activites tres ditTerentes a Aristide Briand, a Leoine, a
Churchill, a Hitler, et, de meme, a la France, a la Russie, a I' Angleterre, a
l'Allemagne, et, sur un autre plan, aux irnperialistes, au capitaiisme, au
proletariat, aux classes moyennes, etc.
Mais cette diversite ne temoigne ni en faveur du subjectivisme ni en faveur
du nihilisme, selon Marx.

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J A C QUE S D' H 0 N D T

Certaines gens se montrent, cependant, "impermeables aux I~ons de

I'histoire. "
C'est que si tous, volens nolens, tirent des le~ons de l'experience passee et
consciemment transmise, tous ne procMent pas en cela d'une maniere
egalement objective et complete.
A un certain niveau de difficulte, l'eteve doit etre prepare a entendre Ie
maitre. Encore faut-iJ qu'on I'ait envoye a l'ecole!
Or, l'histoire rrelle ne met pas tous les individus en situation aussi
favorable pour saisir la signification de leur propre passe. Chacun se trouve
la ou Ie cours de I'histoire l'a fait apparaitre: "Je suis la, et je n'y puis rien."
La meme condition de realite objective qui fonde la possibilite des le~ons
de I'histoire impose aussi des situations individuelles et collectives. Les
hommes de la Restauration n'avaient rien appris, ni rien oublie. II y a des
choses que ne comprendront jamais ceux qui n'ont jamais eu faim .. Des
obstacles sociaux interdisent parfois une intellection satisfaisante du passe.
MAITRE ET ELEVE

Comptetenu de ces conditions de possibilite, nous pouvons dire que, pour

Marx, I'histoire ne donne de I~ons que dans la me sure ou elle est capable
d'en recevoir. Tout se passe comme si Ie passe, en meme temps qu'it
I'engendre objectivement, intruisait et guidait Ie present dans la conscience
humaine. Ainsi, d'un point de vue global, I'histoire accepte d'etre son propre
eleve. En isolant cette maniere de voir, et en l'absolutisant, on aboutirait a
une conception mecaniste et structuraliste que Marx ne para!t pas avoir
jamais envisagee. Au contraire, Marx relativise cette conception en laissant
jouer, 11 I'interieur de I'histoire, une dialectique subtile, dont seuls quelques
moments viennent d'etre ici trt!S sommairement rappeles. De plus, sa
reconnaissance d'un role didactique de la saisie consciente du passe
implique I'activite subjective des individus, con~ue comme derivee, mais
efficace.
Marx, comme Engels, a aimc supremement Ie drame ephemere, ce que
jamais on ne verra deux fois: il a voulu se mettre a son ecole, et c'est a nous
de juger en queUe mesure, poussant I'extreme la modestie de l'ecolier, it a
n!ussi a devenir un maitre.

Universite de PoWers

MARX ET LES LE<;ONS DE L'HISTOIRE

NOTES

Lettres Kugelmann, Paris, 1971, p. 191.

Ibid., p. 190.
J Lettre a Boutroux, 21 janvier 1876.
4 La raison dans l'histoire (Introduction aux Lecons sur la philosophie de l'histoire).
, M. Foucault, L'arcMologie du savoir, Paris, 1969, p. 171.
6 Marx-Engels-Werke, Berlin, 1962, 21: 350-351 (Desonnais: MEW).
7 Ibid., 22: 197-198.
8 Etudes philosophiques, Paris, 1947, p. 75.
9 MEW, 13: 468-477.
10 Anti-Diiring, Trad. fran~aise, p. 445.
II MEW, 26/1: 260.
1

175

WERNER BECKER

DEMOKRA TIE UND DIE DIALEKTISCHE

THEORIE DER GESCHICHTE
UBER EIN PROBLEMATISCHES ERBE DEUTSCHER
GESCHIC HTSPHILOSOPHIE

SUM MAR Y. The picture of German philosophy of history is today largely dominated by
Hegel and Marx. But the characteristic feature of the historical theories of Hegel and Marx
does not lie in their being theories of lawlikeness in history, nor are they problematic merely
because philosophical theories of this kind cannot easily be demonstrated with the aid of
empirical methods. It is shown that the most important characteristic of the philosophies of
history of Hegel and Marx should be seen in the fact that they seek to use philosophical
(Hegel) or alternatively scientific (Marx) methods in order to provide a basis for political
evaluations. The best known of these political value conceot~ is the concept of alienation.
This concept plays a great role in both Hegel and Marx. It is shown that the paradigm
employed by Hegel and Marx to provide a basis for the philosophy of history and of society,
stands in opposition to the manner in which values and value concepts are legitimated
according to the concept of liberal democracy. This consequently means that Hegel's and
Marx's concepts of the state are in contradiction with liberal democracy's understanding of
the state.

Z wei Pole sind es, zwischen denen sich das Hauptthema der deutschen
Geschichtsphilosophie der Neuzeit bewegt. Sie lassen sich durch die Namen
von Hegel und Marx bezeichnen. Beide Denker spiegeln in exemplarischer
Weise das spezifische Verhaltnis, welches die deutsche Philo sophie der
letzten 200 Jahre zur Sphare des Politischen hatte.
Es handelt sich dabei nicht bloB urn ein Verhaltnis der Philosophen zur
Politik, auch nicht urn die verschiedenen Formen, in denen Politik in den
Theorien deutscher Philosophen thematisch geworden ist. Es geht darum,
da/3 die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie dem Begriff der Philosophie, wie sie
ihn sieht, seiber eine politische Rolle zugewiesen hat. Wie ist dies zu
verstehen? Die Philosophie der Geschichte beinhaltet spatestens seit Herder
ein bestimmtes Wissen tiber die Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts, eine
Entwicklung, die fUr Herder und die Deutsche Klassik, hier vor aHem fUr
Schiller, durch einen AbfaH von den Einheitsideen des klassischen

177
Yirmiahu Yovel ,ed.l. Philosophy of History and Action. 177 -'190. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dordrecht. Holland.

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WERNER BECKER

Griechentums gekennzeichnet ist. Doch nicht nur Abfall und Herausfallen

aus den klassisch-griechischen Harmonieidealen gilt es zu erkennen;
entscheidend wird zudem die Vorstellung, wonach die Geschichte wieder auf
das Niveau der verlorengegangenen Einheit zu bringen sei. Es ist dies eine
geschichtsphilosophische Grundvorstellung, die bei inhaltIich so
verschiedenartigen Denkern und Dichtern wie Herder, Schiller, dem
Romantiker Novalis und den deutschen Idealisten wie z.B. Fichte leitend
gewesen ist. AUe diese Philosophen und Dichter sind unbeschadet ihrer
Kritiken aneinander der Oberzeugung, daB ihre jeweiJige Geschichtsphilosophie d'as Ganze der Entwicklung der Menschheit wiedergibt. Zu diesem Ganzen gehort das Wissen der urspriinglichen
Einheit - bei Herder und den Dichtern der Deutschen Klassik die Epoche
des Griechentums der Antike, bei Novalis das christliche Mittelalter, bei
Fichte die Unschuld des rousseauschen Naturzustandes - ferner die
Analyse der Abfallszeit, zu der jeweils die eigene Gegenwart zahlt, und das
Zukunftsideal wiederherzustellender Einheit und Harmonie.
Zur entscheidenden Frage wird nun: wie kann die Philosophie ihr Wissen
yom Besseren an die schlechte, in Entzweiung lebende Gegenwart
iibermitteln? Soil die gegenwartige Wirklichkeit sich zur Philosophie
hinbewegen, urn damit ihre Mangelhaftigkeit loszuwerden, oder soli sich die
Philosophie in die Wirklichkeit hineinbegeben, urn diese entsprechend dem
philosophischen Ideal umzugestalten?
Fur beide Seiten der Alternative haben sich prominente Philosophen der
Zeit stark gemacht. Von den Vertretern des deutschen Idealismus war es vor
allem Hegel, der herausgestellt hat, daB die Wirklichkeit sich der
philosophischen Idee anzumessen habe; anders formuliert: daB die
Menschen durch philosophisches Wissen die Beschriinktheiten der
Wirklichkeit zu iiberwinden haben. In einem bertihmt gewordenen
pathetischen Satz tiber die Franzosische Revolution, in welch em er von der
Revolutionierung der 'geistigen Wirklichkeit' mehr erwartet als von der
Revolutionierung der historischen Gesellschaft, hat Hegel dies zum
Ausdruck gebracht:
Solange die Sonne am Firmamente steht und die Planeten urn sie herumkreisen. war das nicht
gesehen worden, daB der Mensch sich auf den Kopf, das ist, auf den Gedanken stellt und die
Wirklichkeit nach diesem erbaut ... , nun aber ist der Mensch dazu gekommen zu erkennen,
daB der Gedanke die geistige Wirklichkeit regieren sollte.

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179

Fur die andere Seite der Alternative hat sich mit groBem Nachdruck Karl
Marx ausgesprochen. Vor allem flir denjungen Marx ist das Ziel dieses: die
Philosophie ist in die zerruttete Wirklichkeit hineinzutragen; es gilt die
Wirklichkeit als das Ensemble aller gesellschaftlichen VerhaItnisse zu
verlindern. Auch hierzu ein beruhmtes Zitat, und zwar die letzte der 'Thesen
uber Feuerbach': "Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden
interpretiert, es kommt drauf an, sie zu verlindern." 2
Fur beide, flir Hegel wie flir Marx, leidet die Gegenwart unter einem
Grundmangel, daran nlimlich, daB philosophisches Wissen und die
historisch-gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit einander fremd sind und ohne
innere Beziehung zueinander stehen. Fur beide zeigt sich darin - in volliger
Entsprechung zur Tradition neuerer deutscher Geschichtsphilosophie - der
die Gegenwart kennzeichnende zentrale 'Widerspruch von Idee und
Wirklichkeit'; ein 'Widerspruch' deshalb, weil die 'Wahrheit' der Geschichte
in der Einheit der philosophischen Idee mit der historisch-~esellschaftlichen
Wirklichkeit liegen solI. Beide sind sich auch darin einig, daB das
philosophische Wissen als das eine Glied des 'Widerspruchs' sich seIber
noch im Zustand der 'Entfremdung' befindet. Das Faktum, daB Philosophie
und Wirklichkeit getrennt sind; daB Philosophie die Wirklichkeit nicht
ergrifTen hat, ist flir Hegel und den fruhen Marx in genau der gleichen Weise
das grundlegende Indiz der 'Entfremdung' in der modernen Zeit.
Es ist dies zunlichst die systematische Hauptthese Hegels: das
philosophische BewuBtsein erkllirt sich als das Wissen der absoluten
Einheit. Ais bloBes Wissen, in Gestalt rein wissensmliBiger Philo sophie aber
stehen ihm undurchdrungene Wirklichkeiten gegeniiber, die Wirklichkeiten
der Natur, der Geschichte, der Gesellschaft. Gegeniiber ail diesen
Wirklichkeiten macht das philosophische BewuGtsein die Erfahrung, daB es
mit ihnen nicht in Einheit ist: an der Natur, daB es sie durch Erkenntnis
nicht vollig zu bewliltigen vermag, an Geschichte und Gesellschaft, daB
Krieg, Konfiikt, Auseinandersetzung, Konkurrenz realer sind als Einheit
und Harmonie unter den Menschen. Hegels Phiinomen%gie des Geistes
gibt die Geschichte jener Erfahrungen wieder, die das philosophische
BewuBtsein macht. Dieses erfahrt in Permanenz den 'Widerspruch an ihm
selbst': es behauptet, in Einheit mit seinem Gegenstand, der jeweiligen
Wirklichkeit, zu Sein und muG doch einsehen, daB es ihr in 'Wahrheit' fremd
gegeniibersteht, daB es ihr faktisch 'entfremdet' ist. Den Terminus
'Entfremdung' hat Hegel denn auch ausdrucklich und aus Uberlegung fUr

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WERNER BECKER

das philosophische BewuBtsein reserviert, sofern es ein bloBes Wissen der

Einheit ist. Er nennt deshalb 'Bildung' den 'sich entfremdeten Geist'
schlechthin und sieht ihren Mangel, ihren 'entfremdeten' Charakter darin,
daB die 'Einheit' nur als das mehr oder weniger zufallige 'gebildete' Wissen
einzelner individueller Menschen vorhanden ist. In der Phiinomen%gie des
Geistes heillt es: "Wodurch also das Individuum hier Gelten und
Wirklichkeit hat, ist seine Bildung. Seine wahre urspriingliche Natur und
Substanz ist der Geist der Entfremdung des natiirlichen Seins." 3
W arum hat Hegel nun nicht, wie spater sein SchUler Marx, die
Revolutionierung der realen gesellschaftlichen Verhaltnisse gefordert, urn
die 'Entfremdung' der Philosopie von der Wirklichkeit aufzuheben? Hegel
hat das nicht get an, weil er als einziger in der skizzierten Tradition deutscher
Geschichtsphilosophie die Vorstellung aufgegeben hatte, die geforderte
Einheit sei erst nach volliger Beseitigung der gegensatzlichen Zerrissenheit
und Entfremdung herzustellen. Er hat gebrochen mit dem Gedanken,
wonach die Einheit, nach der die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie - von
Herder bis Fichte - sich sehnte, erst in der Zukunft - durch philosophische
Bildung oder praktisch-gesellschaftliche Revolutionierung - geschaffen
werden konne.
Hegel hat - im Gegenteil - das eine seiner beiden Hauptwerke, die
Phiinomen%gie des Geistes, mit einer deutlichen Kritik an der Vorstellung
eines zukibiftigen Einheitszustandes abgeschlossen. Nach ihm befreit sich
das philosophische Bewuf3tsein von den Erfahrungen seiner 'Entfremdung'
nicht durch die Arbeit fiir eine Gesellschaft, in der es keine Entfremdung
mehr gibt. N ach Hegel gibt es eine Befreiung von der Entfremdung nur
dadurch, daB das philosophische BewuJ3tsein aile aufgetretenen Formen der
Entfremdung als N otwendigkeiten erkennt und hinnimmt. Man kann
deshalb sagen: Befreiung von der Entfremdung heillt fUr Hegel Vers6hnung
mit der Entfremdung - und damit Aufgabe der utopischen HofTnung, es
konne einmal einen historischen Z ustand ohne Entfremdung geben, einen
Zustand, in dem der Mensch nicht an die Natur ausgeliefert ware und der
dem Kampf der Menschen untereinander ein Ende setzte.
Da Hegels Position eine Sache der philosophischen Einsicht ist, hat die
Philosophie bei ihm in der Tat das letzte Wort. Nur darin liegt der von ihm
beanspruchte Primal der Philosophie vor der gesellschaftlich-historischen
Praxis, ein Punkt, fUr den er bekanntlich von den meisten nachfolgenden
Philosophen - Marx war nur der prominenteste - heftige Kritik hat

DIALEKTISCHE THEORIE DER GESCHICHTE

181

einstecken miissen. Nun kann man zuniichst einmal sagen, daB Hegels Ideal
nicht zu bewiftigen ist - nicht zu bewiiltigen, weil zum einen kein Mensch in
der Lage ist, die Gesamtheit aller Entfremdungsformen zu erleben und
durch sie hindurchzugehen, und zum anderen nicht zu schafTen, weil die
Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit mancher Formen der Entfremdung - dazu
gehort nach Hegel auch die Erfahrung der Todesniihe - den meisten
Menschen entschieden zuviel abverlangt.
Doch sieht man von solchen realistischen Einwiinden des gesunden
Menschenverstandes einmal ab, so zeigt sich hier ein iiberraschender
Umstand. Hegel erweist sich ganz ofTensichtlich als der erste Kritiker des
Schemas, welches die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie seines Zeitalters
durchgehend beherrscht. Das Schema ist bekannt: es gab eine Epoche
idealer Harmonie, das klassische Griechentum, das christliche Mittelalter
oder einen Naturzustand men schlicher Unbefangenheit und ungezwungener
Solidaritiit. Die Geschichte der Zivilisation aber ist die Geschichte der
Zerriittung und Zerstorung der urspriinglichen Harmonie. Diese lebt in der
antagonistischen Gegenwart allein in Gestalt abstrakter, von der
Wirklichkeit abgeloster, ihr entfremdeter Ideale fort. Philosophie, Literatur
und hohere Bildung sind die Stiitten ihrer Aufbewahrung. Die Aufgabenstellung an die Gegenwart lautet: Wiedergewinnung der verlorengegangenen Einheit, zukiinftige Realisierung der philosophischen
Ideale - und clamit zugleich Au./hebung cler Kluft von Philo sophie uncl
Wirklichkeit, Aujhebung der Entfremdung von Philo sophie und Wirklichkeit.
Hegel erweist sich nun deshalb als Kritiker dieses grundlegenden
Schemas deutscher Geschichtsphilosophie, weil er die bei seinen Vorgiingern
und Zeitgenossen (z.B. Schiller, Fichte) iibliche Losgelostheit der Einheit
von der realen Wirklichkeit anders sieht. Der Inhalt des 'absoluten Wissens,'
in welches seine Phiinomenoiogie des Geistes einmiindet, fordert nicht zu
einer zukiinftigen Realisierung der klassischen Ideale auf. Das 'absolute
Wissen' verlangt vielmehr die Erkenntnis, daB das HofTen auf die Zukunft
seiber die Tiiuschung ist, die es - total und generell- fUr aile BewuBtseinsstufen - zu durchschauen gelte. Was man sich angewohnt hat, seit es
Hegel-Interpretationen gibt, als Resignation des alternden Philosophen zu
deuten, der seinen Frieden mit dem Zeitgeist, vor allem mit dem preuBischen
Staat der Restauration, gemacht hat,' ist in Wahrheit schon immer Hegels
objektiv-systematische Uberzeugung gewesen.

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WERNER BECKER

Die viel gehorte These, in der der 'progressive' Hegel der Phiinomen%gie
gegen den 'reaktioniiren' Hegel der Rechtsphilosophie ausgespielt wird, ist
eine schiefe These. Es gibt im Hegelschen Werk vom systematischen
Konzept her - gar keinen Raum fUr eine derartige Entgegensetzung. Bei
Hegel besteht das Absolute - und dies spiitestens seit der Phiinomen%gie
des Geistes - in nichts we iter als in der Totalitiit seiner Entfremdungsformen. Philosophie als 'Wissen des Absoluten,' als 'absolutes
Wissen' ist das Wissen von der unumgiinglichen Notwendigkeit der
Entfremdung, auch derjenigen Entfremdung, die in der Fremdheit der
Philo sophie und politisch-gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit liegt. Nur diesen
Sinn hat Hegels Bestehen auf der Selbstiindigkeit der Philosophie gegeniiber
Geschichte und Gesellschaft.
Die Linkshegelianer und vor allem Karl Marx haben Hegel stets mehr
unterstellt, als dieser hat sagen wollen. Sie haben Hegel vorgeworfen, er
habe das Absolute nur im Geist, im reinen Denken belassen, wiihrend
es seinem eigenen Anspruch nach in der gesellschaftlich-historischen
Wirklichkeit realisiert werden miisse. Die Kritik der Linkshegelianer und
von Marx ist jedoch der Sache nach mehr als Kritik an Fichte als eine an
Hegel aufzufassen, denn Fichte ist es gewesen, der die HofTnung auf
zukiinftige Realisierung des Absoluten geniihrt hat. Allerdings hat Fichtes
Philosophie das ZeitbewuJ3tsein in der 1. Hiilfte des 19. Jahrunderts nicht
anniihernd so gepriigt wie diejenige von Heg~l. Deshalb wurde Hegel zum
Exponenten der Kritik und eben nicht Fichte.
Marx hat das klassische Schema der Geschichtsphilosophie wieder
aufgegrifTen, das Schema von urspriinglicher Einheit, Zerfall und zukiinftiger Versohnung der Gegensiitze. Er ist derjenige in der Reihe
deutscher Geschichtsphilosophen, welcher das Schema am
nachdriicklichsten historisch und gesellschaftlich konkretisiert hat. Der
Zerfall urspriinglich-naiver und organischer Einheit men schlicher
Vergesellschaftung tritt nach Marx - und zwar in allen Stufen seiner
theoretischen Entwicklung - durch das Aufkommen der Tauschwirtschaft
ein. Zum hauptsiichlichen Indiz fUr die Zerriittung menschlicher
Verhiiltnisse in der neuzeitlichen Zivilisationsepoche wird die aus dem
Warentausch resultierende Bildung privaten kapitalistischen Eigentums. 1m
Phiinomen des Geldes kommt die okonomisch bedingte Zerriittung
beispielhaft zum Ausdruck: Geld verdriingt als Darstellungsmittel fUr den
Tauschwert aller Produkte und Gegenstiinde deren eigene, selbstiindige

D I ALE K TIS C H E THE 0 R lED ERG ESC H IC H T E

183

Qualitiit. In Marxens Aufsatz iiber die Judenfrage heiJ3t es yom Geld, es sei
der "fdr sich selbst konstituierte Wert aller Dinge," und weiter: "Es hat
daher die ganze Welt, die Menschenwelt wie die Natur, ihres eigentiimlichen
Wertes beraubt. Das Geld ist das dem Menschen entfremdete Wesen seiner
Arbeit und seines Daseins, und dieses fremde Wesen beherrscht ihn, und er
betet es an."4
In allen Phasen seiner Entwicklung ist Marx davon ausgegangen, da/3 der
Grundwiderspruch, welcher die neuere Gesellschaftsperiode charakterisisiert, aufgehoben werden miisse in einer Zukunftgesellschaft, die frei
davon ist - die weder das Marktsystem der Tauschwerte kennt noch das
privatkapitalistische Eigentum, vor allem nicht das an den Produk tionsmitteln.
Zwei Dinge sind klar: Erstens spielt bei Marx das Grundschema der
deutschen Geschichtsphilosophie ebenfalls die entscheidende Rolle. Es bildet
den Rahmen fdr die empirischen Einzelanalysen und Theorien, die Marx in
seinen Werken - auch den wissenschaftlich-okonomischen - vorgelegt hat.
Zweitens kommt auch bei ihm der Philosophie bezw. der philosophischen
Theorie eine ausschlaggebende Bedeutung zu: die philosophische Theorie ist
cler Platzhalter der gesellschaftlichen und historischen 'Wahrheit' iiber die
Entwicklung der menschlichen Gattung. Die einzige Frage ist nur, wie man
die Theorie in Praxis iiberfiihrt; wie man gemiiJ3 der Theorie die
gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit umgestalten kann. Aber selbst dies ist nicht
eigentlich eine Frage fUr Marx, enthalten materialistische Geschichtsphilosophie und politische 6konomie doch die 'Wahrheit' sowohl
iiber Vergangenheit, Gegenwart als auch Zukunft der neuzeitlichkapitalistischen Gesellschaftsentwicklung: aus der wissenschaftlich
fundierten Prognose der Zukunftsentwicklung lassen sich nach Marx
Handlungsanweisungen zur Beeinftussung der Entwicklung zu dem Zweck
ableiten, die sozialistische Gesellschaft zu verwirklichen.
Nun einige Bemerkungen - auch kritischer Art - zum ersten Punkt: Es
ist evident, da/3 die Lehre von Marx in ihren Grundziigen in den groJ3en
Zusammenhang der neueren deutschen Geschichtsphilosophie seit Herder
gehort. Sie fuJ3t auf dem bekannten Grundschema von urspriinglicher
Einheit; Zerfall in Entfremdungsformen und wiederzugewinnender Einheit.
Das Schema bildet zugleich die Grundlage der dialektischen Methode, denn
diese ist nichts anderes als die Nachkonstruktion des geschichtlichen
Verlaufs. 1m Rahmen der Dialektik - hauptsiichlich auch der

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WERNER BECKER

materialistischen Dialektik von Marx - spielt der BegrifT der Entfremdung

eine wichtige Rolle. Er kennzeichnet - neben dem der Verdinglichung - die
gesellschaftlich-historischen Phanomene der geschichtlichen Zerriittungsphase in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, bei Marx vomehmlich
die Phiinomene, in denen sich der den Kapitalismus grundsiitzlich
bestimmende 'Widerspruch von Kapital und Arbeit' spiegelt. Nun stellt der
BegrifT der Entfremdung - und dies gilt flir Marx wie auch bereits flir
Hegel - nicht bloB eine Kategorie der Beschreibung wirklicher Verhiiltnisse
dar. Er beinhaltet als deskriptive Kategorie zugleich eine Wertung, die
Wertung niimlich, daB die als 'entfremdet' diagnostizierten Verhiiltnisse
mangelhaft und schlecht sind; so schlecht, daB es dar auf ankomme, sie zu
iiberwinden. Kennzeichnend flir den dialektischen Entfremdungsbegriff ist
aber di~s, daB die in ihm liegende Wertung sich nicht als solche zu erkennen
gibt.
Es verhiilt sich vi~lmehr so, daB dasjenige, was uns als eine gesellschaftspolitische und sozialphilosophische Wertung de facto erscheinen
muB, als ein objektives, dem beschriebenen gesellschaftlich-historischen
Tatbestand innewohnendes Moment auftritt. Gerade darin besteht das
Charakteristische aller dialektischen Entfremdungsvorstellungen.
Die Dialektik - ob idealistische Hegelsche oder materialistische
Marxscher Version - kommt auf diese Weise in den Besitz eines in seiner
theoretischen und praktischen 'Fruchtbarkeit' kaum zu iiberschiitzenden
Instrumentariums. Sie erreicht so, daB die Frage der Giiltigkeit
gesellschaftspolitischer Wertsetzungen zur Sache einer wissenschaftlichen
Analyse von Tatsachen wird. Das wirkt sich auf die Oberzeugungskraft
einer Parteinahme flir bestimmte politische Wertungen - Wertungen, wie sie
in der kritischen Verurteilung des kapitalistischen Marktsystems und dem
Votum fiir den Sozialismus-Kommunismus zum Ausdruck kommen - auf
den ersten Blick ohne Zweifel giinstig aus. In Hegels Philosophie geht es
dabei allerdings nicht urn die Bevorzugung einer gesellschaftspolitischen
Wertvorstellung wie etwa des Sozialismus. Bei ihm driickt sich - in der
Phiinomenologie des Geistes z.B.- die Nichtbeachtung des Unterschieds
von Wert und Faktum in der Behauptung aus, daB jede Entfremdungsform
des philosophischen BewuBtseins in sich - d.h. als BewuBtseinssachverhalt - des Potentials flir seine Oberwindung und Aufhebung enthiilt.
Resiimieren wir kurz: in der dialektischen Philosophie ist der
Entfremdungs~grifT derjenige BegrifT, welcher als Faktenbeschreibung

DIALEKTISCHE THEORIE DER GESCHICHTE

185

zugleich die Giiltigkeit einer bestimmten Wertsetzung beinhaltet.

Ich bin nun der Meinung, daB in dieser kritischen Feststellung mehr liegt
als der Nachweis eines 'naturalistischen Fehlschlusses.' Die Vermischung
von Werten und Fakten, wie sie beispielhaft im dialektischen
EntfremdungsbegrifT zum Ausdruck kommt, hat eine weitergehende
Bedeutung. Sie macht namlich klar, warum es die deutsche dialektische
Geschichtsphilosophie nicht zu einer konsequenten Demokratietheorle
gebracht hat.
Die Theorien tiber Demokratie, die fUr die politische Entwicklung
Westeuropas und N ordamerikas bestimmend wurden, stammen aus dem
Umkreis der Philosophie des englischen Empirismus und des mit ihr
verbundenen politischen Liberalismus. Den Philosophen des Liberalismus,
von Locke tiber Hume zu Bentham und 1.S. Mill, geht es nicht urn
Geschichtsphilosophie, nicht urn globale Erkenntnis des Verlaufs der
Geschichte einschlieBlich des Wissens der 'richtigen' Ziele der zuktinftigen
Entwicklung. Ihnen geht es im Kern urn die Durchsetzung eines
nichtautoritaren staatlichen Entscheidungssystems fUr gesamtgesellschaftliche Wert- und Zielkonftikte, gemeint ist die Demokratie in
parlamentarischer Form. Hinter dieser Intention steht eine andere
philosophische Erkenntnistheorie als es die ist, die der deutschen
Geschichtsphilosophie zugrunde liegt. Wahrend diese Geschichtsphilo sophie letztlich immer mit der Vermischung von Faktenund Wertaussagen operiert, basiert das Demokratieverstandnis des
englischen Liberalismus auf der von David Hume exemplarisch
herausgestellten Unterscheidung von Fakten und Werten. Aus dem
prinzipiellen Unterschied von FaIcten und Werten folgt namlich, daB man
tiber divergierende Faktenbehauptungen mit Methoden der Wissens~haft
diskutieren und letztlich auch Entscheidungen herbeifUhren kann, ein
Vorgehen, das bei divergierenden politischen Wertbehauptungen nicht
moglich ist: im Urnkreis politi scher Wert- bzw. Zielkonftikte gibt es keine
wissenschaftlichen Entscheidungsmoglichkeiten, mithin keine 'Richtigkeits'Kriterien. Dieser werttheoretische Skeptizismus bildet meines Erachtens die
grundlegende Folie des angelsachsischen DemokratiebegrifTes. Er steht im
deutlicben Kontrast zum Erkenntnisoptimismus der deutschen
Geschichtsphilosophie; einem Optimisrnus, der am Beispiel 'Entfremdung'
aufgezeigt - zu bezahlen ist mit der Millachtung des fundamentalen
Unterschieds von Fakten- und Wertbehauptungen.

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WERNER BECKER

Wie sehen die Konsequenzen des werttheoretischen Skeptizismus fUr den

DemokratiebegrifT des politischen Liberalismus aus? Die Vertreter des
Liberalismus verbindet die gemeinsame Uberzeugung, daB Wahlen und
Mehrheitsentscheidungen die einzige Entscheidungsbasis fUr gesamtgeseUschafdiche Wertentscheidungen sein mussen. Warum nun Mehrheitsentscheide? Nicht deshalb, weil die Mehrheit die 'Wahrheit' bzw.
'Richtigkeit' von Wertentscheidungen garantiert, sondern weil es
mehrheitliche Ubemahme der Verantwortung fUr Wertentscheiduilgen
bedeutet, fUr Wertentscheidungen, die in der Konsequenz die Gesamtheit
der Burger betrefTen. Ich kann hier nur die Punkte heraussteIlen, die in
meinen Augen von prinzipieller Bedeutung fUr das liberale Demokratieverstandnis sind. Deshalb auch nur einige kurze Belege fur meine
AufTassung.
Erstens geben sich aIle Liberalen - von Locke bis J.S. Mill - mit dem
Konzept reprasentativer, d.h. indirekter Demokratie zufrieden. Ware fUr sie
Demokratie - wie etwa fUr Rousseau - gleichbedeutend mit der
Hervorbringung des 'wahren' Willens aller Gesellschaftsmitglieder, ware in
ihrem Pladoyer fUr die Reprasentation der Einzelwillen in der Tat ein
Widerspruch zu sehen.
Es geht ihnen zweitens uberhaupt nicht in erster Linie urn die Realisierung
eines 'wahren' Volkswillens, sondem urn die Kontrolle und rechtliche
Einschrankung der Macht, die durch die Mehrheit im Namen aller Burger
ausgeubt wird. Ausdruck dieses Grundgedankens ist schon Lockes
Konzeption der staatlichen Gewaltenteilung. Aber auch J.S. Mills
Verteidigung der Rechte von Minderheiten und des Einzelnen hat diesen
Sinn. Mill z.B. verbindet mit seiner Kritik an der Macht von Mehrheiten
keineswegs eine Kritik am demokratischen Prinzip seiber, wonach die
Mehrheit legitimiert ist, die Staatsmacht auszuiiben. Vnd dies deshalb nicht,
weil es nur politische Machtanspriiche auf die Vertretung des Gesamtwohles
geben kann, nicht aber objektive Richtigkeitskriterien dafUr, was das
Gesamtwohl ist und wer es adiiquat vertritt. Meines Erachtens lost mein
Deutungsvorschlag - werttheoretischer
Skeptizismus
als
erkenntnistheoretische Basis des liberalen Demokratiekonzepts - auch die
hiiufig bemerkte Schwierigkeit, die darin liegt, daB die meisten Vertreter des
liberalen Staatsgedankens einerseits ihrer philosophischen GrundeinsteUung
nach antiontologische, antimetaphysische Empiristen sind und andererseits
in ihrer politischen Philosophie - z.B. im Zusammenhang mit individueUen

DIALEKTISCHE THEORIE DER GESCHICHTE

187

Freiheitsrechten - sich auf naturrechtliche Begriindungen beziehen. Der

scheinbare 'Widerspruch' lost sich auf, wenn man daran denkt, daO
Mehrheiten zwar entscheiden sollen, andererseits aber nie Ausdruck eines
'wahren' Willens alIer sein konnen. Die englischen Liberalen haben aus
diesem Tatbestand nicht - wie Rousseau und seine Anhiinger, etwa
Fichte - auf die Notwendigkeit von Basisdemokratie geschlossen. Aus der
prinzipiellen Skepsis gegen die Mogiichkeit, den Gesamtwillen je adiiquat
feststellen zu konnen, haben sie vielmehr stets fUr die Einrichtung von
Freiriiumen pliidiert die durch Mehrheitsbeschliisse und Mehrheitsmeinungen nicht tangiert werden konnen. Das Naturrecht wird
von den Liberalen immer dann bemiiht, wenn es gilt, derartige
Eingrenzungen des d~mokratischen Prinzips seiber unter Bedingungen
seiner 'generellen Geltung zu begriinden.
Soweit einige kurze Bel!=ge fUr meine Meinung, daO der DemokratiebegrifT
des Liberalismus als Ausdruck eines werttheoretischen Skeptizismus zu
deuten ist, eines Skeptizismus, der die logische Konsequenz aus Humes
BeweisfUhrung fUr die strikte Trennung von Fakten- und Wertbehauptungen
darstellt.
Weder bei Hegel noch bei Marx gibt es eine Dimension, die mit der
skizzierten Rahmenvorstellung des angelsiichsischen Liberalismus zu
vergleichen ware. In beider Philosophien ist die Erkenntnis des bestehenden
Schlechten wie die Notwendigkeit seiner Uberwindung eine Sache
theoretisch-philosophischer Sachverhaltensanalyse. Der dialektische
EntfremdungsbegritT wird zum Hebel und zentralen Angelpunkt der
Analyse.
Oem liberalen Verstiindnis zufolge ist sowohl die gesellschaftliche
Bewertung der jeweils gegenwiirtigen Wirklichkeit als auch die FestIegung
der Gesellschaft auf wirklichkeitsverindemde Zielvorstellungen eine Sache
demokratischer Mehrheitsermittlung und nicht das Resultat wissenschaftlicher Sachverhaltserkenntnis. Als Anhiinger des liberalen Demokratiegedankens wird man jedoch unbeschadet des Votums fUr
Mehrheitsentscheide stiindig das MiJ3trauen gegen den Anspruch von
Mehrheiten wachhalten, die 'Richtigkeit' politi scher Wertentscheidungen zu
verbiirgen.
An der deutschen geschichtsphilosophischen Tradition kommt als
wesentliches politisches Kennzeichen so etwas wie ein 'Diktat der Vernurift'
zum Vorschein. Das mag widerspriichlich klingen, hilt man sich an die

188

WERNER BECKER

plausible Uberlegung, daB Vernunft und Zwang ohne Einsicht nicht

zueinander passen. Der Ausdruck 'Diktat der Vernunft' ist gleichwohl
angebracht, wenn von der Verwendung des W ortes 'Vernunft' im Idealismus
ausgegangen wird. 'Vernunft' bezeichnet dort die Fiihigkeit zu
philosophischer Erkenntnis der Wirklichkeit in einem umfassenden,
absoluten Sinn: sowohl im theoretisch-wissenschaftlichen als auch im
ethischen und politisch-praktischen.
Mir scheint, daB dieser Anspruch nur aufrechtzuerhalten war in einer
Zeit, in welcher Philosophie die Rolle iibernommen hatte, die im Mittelalter
und in der beginnenden Neuzeit die Theologie spielte. Und in der Tat nahm
die Philosophie - besonders im Deutschland der ersten Hiilfte des 19.
J ahrhunderts - eine Funktion wahr, die man als 'Religion fUr Aufgekliirte'
umschreiben kann. Mit ihr verband sich durchaus ein politischer
Machtanspruch 'haherer Bildung.' Weniger wichtig sind dabei die Inhalte
der politischen Wertvorstellungen, die mit dem Machtanspruch jeweils
verkniipft sind. Wichtig ist allein, daB Philosophie und mit ihr 'hahere
Bildung' den Anspruch erheben konnten, aus sich selbst heraus die
Giiltigkeit politischer MaBstiibe zu begriinden.
Karl Marx wurde zum konsequenten Vertreter des elitiiren
Machtanspruchs deutscher Bildung. Ihm ging es - hauptsiichlich in seiner
friihen Phase - urn 'Verwirklichung der Philo sophie,' urn das
'Philosophisch-Werden der Wirklichkeit.' Seine gesamte Kritik am
Idealismus JaBt sich auf die stiindig wiederholte kritische Formel reduzieren,
die idealistischen Philosophen, in seinen Augen vor allem Hegel, hiitten die
ihrer Philosophie innewohnende Forderung nach Umgestaltung der
Wirklichkeit nicht konsequent genug erfUllt; bei ihnen sei die Revolution im
Geiste - im BegrifT, im reinen Denken, in der Logik etc.- steckengeblieben.
Er fiihlt sich als der eigentiiche Verwirklicher der Philosophie.
In Wahrheit aber ist er der Vollstrecker des elitiiren Machtanspruchs des
deutschen Idealismus mit seinem iiberdimensionierten Vernunft- und
BildungsbegrifT. Auch Karl Marx ist der Uberzeugung, daB Philo sophie
allein sowohl die MaBstiibe der Kritik der 'bestehenden Verhiiltnisse' als
auch die politischen Wertvorstellungen, nach denen die Menschen in
Zukunft die Einrichtung der Gesellschaft betreiben werden, darlegen kann.
GewiB, man kann einwenden: wo gab es zu seiner Zeit schon
Demokratie? Jedenfalls nicht in dem Land, in dem Marx seine Jugend
verbracht hatte und dessen Bildungstradition ihn am stiirksten beeinf'luBt

DIALEKTISCHE THEORIE DER GESCHICHTE

189

hat: Deutschland. Das erkHirt vielleicht, widerlegt jedoch nicht die

Feststellung, daB er sich keine Gedanken gemacht hat iiber die fiir
Demokraten entscheidende Frage, wie manallgemein-politische
Wertvorstellungen als giiltig in Kraft setzt. Urn solche Wertvorstellungen
aber handelt es sich bei Marxens Kritik am Bestehenden wie bei seinen
Zukunftsprognosen. Er hat das eliHire Dik~at des idealistischen
VernunftbegrifTs in einer Weise exerziert wie kein anderer
Geschichtsphilosoph vor ihm. Der politische Machtanspruch fUr
Philo sophie ist bei ihm allerdings mit Raffinement kaschiert. Dadurch
namlich, daB er die Arbeiterklasse, im 19. lahrhundert die Klasse par
excellence der Unterprivilegierten und Entrechteten, zum ausschlaggegebenden Erftillungsgehilfen der 'Verwirklichung der Philosophie' gemacht hat.
Seit dieser Zeit gibt es die unkritisch ins Selbstverstandnis der deutschen
Arbeiterbewegung eingewanderte - mindestens kurios, wenn nicht gar
unheilig anmutende - Allianz zwischen Arbeiterklasse und deutschidealistischer Philosophie.
Ich glaube nicht, daB in demokratischen Verhiiltnissen Philosophie oder
irgendeine Wissenschaft eine iihnlich dominierende Rolle spielen konnten.
Und das ist nicht zuletzt deswegen gut so, weil Philo sophie und
Wissenschaft gar nicht die Mittel besitzen, langfristig wirksame politische
Wertorientierungen in rationaler Weise abzusichern. Wir haben keine
Wissenschaft, vor allen Dingen keine Sozialwissenschaft, die in ihrer

Prognosefahigkeit so sicher ware, daB die Folgen von politischen

Entscheidungen sich langfristig mit der notigen Exaktheit absehen lassen.
Und wir haben keine Philosophie, deren Legitimationskraft ausreichte, aus
sich heraus die Giiltigkeit politischer Werte und Wertentscheidungen zu
begriinden. Das bedeutet kein Pliidoyer fiir Irrationalitiit und gegen
Vernunft in politischen Dingen. Es liegt darin lediglich der Appell zu mehr
Bescheidenheit in Anforderungen an die Vernunft, einer Bescheidenheit, fUr
die speziell aus der zum Uberschwang neigenden jiingeren deutschen
Geistesgeschichte, abgesehen von der riihmlichen Ausnahme Kants, kaum
Vorbilder vorzuzeigen sind.

Johann Woifang Goethe Universitiit

Frankfurt am Main

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WERNER BECKER
NOTEN

1 Vorlesungen- iiber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, hrsg. G. Lasson, Leipzig, 1923,
4:926.
2 Marx & Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie, Berlin, 1917, S. 595'.
3 Stuttgart, 1951, 2:377.
MEGA, Berlin lOst], Dietz, 1975, 3:603.

MENACHEM BRINKER

TRANSHISTORICITY AND
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AUFHEBUNG
REMARKS ON J.-P. SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Some of those who read Sartre's lecture on Kierkegaard "L'universel

singuiier"l were surprised to find there the notion of transhistoricite
(transhistoricity). Yet it is this notion and the argument based upon it
which offers in my opinion the key to a true understanding of J.-P. Sartre's
writings in the late fifties and the sixties, mainly Questions de methode (QM)
and Critique de la raison dialectique (CRD). 2
Sartre wanted the CRD to be looked upon as a revised version of
Marxism. He stated many times that, due to political circumstances, the
development of Marxist thought had been arrested: Marxism had become
sterilized and needed a revival. He praised the originality of Marx's insights
and the fertility of the dialectical method. Yet if the only reasons for the
death of true Marxist research are political, it seems strange that
contemporary Marxist thought cannot be revived by going back to its
sources but must be revived from without and in the form of ontological
foundation.
The truth is, of course, that for J.-P. Sartre original Marxian thought
lacked an ontological basis. It succeeded in giving good descriptions of some
general historical phenomena but did not supply any satisfying analysis of
"the being of a class" and the meaning of "belonging to a class."
This has nothing to do with the historical evolution of Marxism. It has to
do with the influence of the Hegelian system and its tendency toward
endowing historical collectivities with meta-physical and meta-empiricaillfe.
For Sartre, however, the being of a collectivity (the group) is problematic
and dependent. Since it is limited on every side by the being of the
individuals, it is a secondary ontological structure. It is individual praxis and
consciousnesses which give rise to the collectivity in so far as this
collectivity is supported by them. In order that the "being of a class" be
191
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action, 191-198. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

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MENACHEM BRINKER

ontologically founded, it is necessary to recover a generative act where

individual human consciousnesses, due to similarity of circumstances and
vis-a-vis a natural or a social "other," form a group. Sartre devoted his
Critique to such an attempt.
What is of interest to us here is not so much his attempt to give Marxism
an ontological foundation but his way of doing so. It is clear that the
processes described in the Critique are, at least from the formal,
phenomenological aspect, to be found not only in the case of the working
class or the class of the capitalists, but in the case of any other human
group. Any group will come into being by individual praxis, that is, by
individuals discovering similarities of circumstances positing a common
goal, turning their circumstances into a historical situation and trying to
transcend it in view of their projected goal. I believe that it is possible to
discuss the dynamic involved in such a process outside the sphere of the
"being of a class" which is the immediate theme of the CRD. The title of
Sartre's Critique reads Theorie de [,ensembles pratiques, and an ensemble
pratique does not have to be a class. The modern Jewish collectivity
can - and does - serve Sartre as another example.
This must help us classify some of 'the most common criticisms of the
CRD. The one expressed by Lionel Abel' claiming that the CRD is a partial
apology for Stalinism has no foundation at all. The CRD was conceived and
composed by Sartre after the publication of his detailed analysis of

Stalinism, which covers more than four hundred pages. 3 But even without
this auxiliary evidence it is clear that the argument of the Critique suggests
that most of the history of the Soviet Union after the late twenties forms
different stages of the alienation of spontaneity inside the group. This
alienation comes with the introduction of hierarchy, institutionalization and
bureaucracy into the "groupe en fusion." It breaks the solidarity of the
group, turns its members against each other and introduces alienation which
is neither more desirable nor justified than capitalist alienation. Since a
revolution may degenerate but does not have to degenerate into this, it does
not exhibit any conceptual or historical necessity and must, therefore, be
morally and politically condemned.
On the other hand, the criticism made by Raymond Aron in Histoire et
dialectique de la violence, 4 claiming that violence has a special attraction for
Sartre's philosophy of history is, in a sense, true. There is a connection in
Sartre's philosophy of history between hi3torical creativity and violence, in

REMARKS ON SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

193

the same way as there is a connection in his metaphysical imagination

between the creative act of the individual projt and violence towards
oneself. Silice this has to do with basic attitudes towards history in the sense
of the human past, let us elaborate it in more detail.
The central motive of historical change in the CRD is totalization. A
totalization arises whenever an individual or a group conceive their need in
terms of a projected satisfaction in the future, its origin in the past and a
total evaluation of the means existing in the present, which are able to carry
on the transfoFIliation in the future. A totalization is the unification of all
these separate moments. Need being a lack, that is, a negation, brings about
totalization, that is, a structure which aims at a "negation of the negation."
By this it also gives the basic scheme of time, which differentiates past from
future in terms of the totalization.
It is obvious that within a totalization conceived in this way, the past is
recognized as something which is going to be transcended. Some of its
moments, of course, will be retained in the future and are retained during the
struggle for satisfaction which forms the present. But since the dominant
element in the totalization, that is, the unifying element, is the projected goal
to be achieved in the future, it is clear that the past is subjected to a rigorous
selection with only some of its structures retained. In fact, only those which
are regarded as conducive to the goal will remain, and even those will not be
taken by the present in the same sense with which they were endowed in the
past. Totalization, therefore, creates a rupture between past and future, by
which some elements of the past are not permitted to enter the new state of
affairs, since they have no bearing on the new projet, or are interfering with
its attainment.
A totalization, therefore, is not a synthesis. It is not even a synthesis of
the past and the present in terms of their more essential features which are
going to be incorporated into the future. It is a unification carried out on the
basis of a central negation. Thus it is exactly those features of the situation
which are all-important to the unification that are going to be negated in the
future rather than contained in it under any form. Need disappears with its
satisfaction and the new "present" does not have to understand itself in
terms of the satisfied need. It will rather understand itself in terms of new
needs, new lacks and new totalizations. Totalization will always be a
consciousness of a process or a struggle, and never a contemplation of an
achievement. It would be futile to preach to a new generation in history not

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MENACHEM BRINKER

to use the work of earlier generations as tools towards attaining its goals. In
the same way it would be futile to preach to a generation not to consider
itself as a tool for the attainment of some go8J. in the future, since this is
exactly what is done in history and no group of people can achieve its selfconsciousness without creating a disruption between the generations, while
the new one uses the old one and itself in the service of the future.
This inevitable "use" which any emerging group, class, or generation
makes of past and. present groups or generations turns familiar
philosophical forms of moral judgement inapplicable to historical reality.
When a group po!:its a new historical goal (an "end") and comes to
understand itself in terms of this projected goal it inevitably creates an
instrumentalistic attitude towards the past and the present which are now
seen mainly as "means." In his political writings Sartre recognized the
difficulties inherent in such a philosophical standpoint for the moral
assessment of current political events. He emphasized therefore that moral
disapproval or condemnation of political behaviour and decisions is always
possible not only on the abstract level where one judges "ends" and "goals"
by themselves. We must recognize that "means" participate in shaping
"ends"; they create deviations in them and a certain choice of certain means
may bring us to a point where we shall have to speak of a complete
transformation of the end itself and eventually also of its annihilation.
Unfortunately we cannot discuss here in more detail Sartre's attempts in
the fifties at making his own moralistic attitude towards -political life
compatible with his philosophical image of history. There is a certain
tension here as well as some basic contradictions that are far from being
resolved in a satisfactory way.
History as a living process does not guarantee an Aujhebung. It is at this
point that we can ask whether history as a body of knowledge does not
guarantee it by its mere preoccupation with the manner things become what
they are and as they are. A historian may choose to become interested in an
event of the past and turn it into an object of historical knowledge. Can the
past be retained in this way?
Let us see what is involved in positing such a question. The moment of
choice adds a new and important feature to the attitude of a new generation
towards an older one. Historical phenomena which depend on the choice of
a later age in order to be known or re-lived have a derived historical life. It
is a total dependence in the same sense in which the life, and sometimes even

REMARKS ON SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

195

the mere name, of a dead person is said to be dependent upon the memory
of the living.
Can an Atifhebung be achieved on this level? Can we regard the work
done by historians as a retention of past events, personalities and the like in
a new form?
The work of an ideal historian is the work of reconstruction. This effort of
reconstruction cannot be carried out unless people and events are seen
exactly as they were seen at the time, and this cannot be.achieved unless the
historian has "this faculty which German historians and psychologists call
comprehension." ~ Comprehension strives to achieve something which defies
generalities and any attempt at complete conceptualization. Its object is the
singularity of the personality and its situation. For Sartre singularity is not
just the epistemic status of the object of ideographic sciences. It arises as the
specific ontological characteristic of the human being, since this being is a
centre of totalization, achieved by constant interiorization. Any kind or
aspect of a situation which might be adduced in order to explain the
behaviour of a certain historical figure, must be looked upon as external
until we are sure that we have true understanding of the manner in which
this externality was seen by the agent, that is, the manner in which it was
interiorized.
In history human bejngs are constantly thrown into conditions which
might be described in general terms and looked upon as universals. Yet, as a
ground for explanation of the singular person, universals (such as the
persecution of the Jews or the unbearable conditions of the working class)
will not work. The historian, no less than the psychoanalyst or the writer of
a biography, must look for the process which interiorizes external
circumstances and singularizes the universal by its mere interiorization. The
universal itself is, of course, an objectivation or common result of the
objectivations of other agents, even when not recognized by them as such,
due to alienation of one kind or another. Yet history is not done by
objectivations (such as books, institutions, etc.) but by people, through their
objectivations. A person cannot avoid interiorization any more than he can
avoid objectivation, that is, engraving his subjectivity on things and objects
(including other people). In this sense every individual consciousness or
praxis is already a deviation in relation to the universal it is said to embody.
(Any Jew deviates from Jewishness by the mere fact of his consciously
existing as a Jew.) But by being this deviation in relation to the universal, the

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MENACHEM BRINKER

individual may also bring about the deviation of the universal itself.
The attempt to understand historical action or person must therefore - at
least at a certain stage - avoid any kind of inference, induction or deduction
and turn to be a comprehension, that is, a totalizing grasp of the person
based upon a comprehension of the kind of totalization he is. Sartre suggests
a special method for achieving this and recommends a certain circularity
between the comprehending of an act and the stages which preceded it. This
progressive-regressive method aims at making the totalization comprehensible by seeing its point of departure and its goal as illuminating
one another. Obviously, it is impossible for us to discuss this special
technique here. One point is important, however: we can now see that a true
comprehension of historical being is hard to achiev.e not because the faculty
of empathy is rare or occult. On the contrary, empathy is trivial, and all our
understandings of others in daily life implies the progressive-regressive
method. We understand a goal in terms of a condition that motivated its
projection, and we come to understand a condition in terms of a goal. We
comprehend an activity under the hypothesis of a projected goal, and we
grasp the projected goal as based on a certain interiorization of a condition.
Historical comprehension is technically difficult. It might be impossible to
attach to the historical agent the same signification he attached to the
general and particular externalities of his life and time. We might, for
example, attribute to him knowledge of certain factors ofa situation which
he could but did not have. These difficulties are obvious in the special case
of literature, where a poet's use of a word might derive from its use in a
previous period and differ from its common use in his own time. Individual
historicity is diachronic in the same sense that language is. The meaning
attached by an adult to a certain state of affairs may need an elucidation in
terms of his early childhood. And this is one way of explaining why nothing
can be directly deduced from the general objective characteristics of a
situation in order to explain personal behaviour.
This is perhaps a crude way of saying that comprehension differs not only
from deduction, induction, inference (though all these may form parts of it),
but also from evaluation. In evaluation one does not have to assume any
affinity between a person or an act under evaluation and the point of view,
values or norms which determine the evaluation.
Nevertheless, suppose comprehension in this sense is ideally possible,
would it help us to conclude that history may retain its signification in a

REMARKS ON SARTRE'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

197

different and new form?

Here Sartre's lecture on Kierkegaard is all important, for it offers a very
definite negative answer to the question.
The argument runs briefly in the following way: suppose Hegel was right
and the only signification of Kierkegaard is his being one exemplification of
the ungliicklisches Bewusstsein. Yet, in his way of life, Kierkegaard was
trying to show the heterogeneity of his existence and that of the Hegelian
notion. This is not just the opposition between Kant's concept of the
hundred thalers and their real existence, since Kierkegaard still has to be (in
the future) the kind of existence which Hegel described (in the past).
Kierkegaard's consciousness lives by rejecting Hegel's description of him.
He turns subjectivity into a secret and wants to create a state where overt
public behaviour will mislead us the moment we shall try to take it as a
signifie and move towards his subjectivity taken as a signifiant. Attempting
to shake our belief in the possibility of objective knowledge, Kierkegaard's
effort to detach himself from the Hegelian notion endures as long as he lives.
He dies: shall we say that at this precise moment his being is absorbed in the
all-embracing system and identifies finally with the notion it formed of him?
Sartre sarcastically formulates a possible Hegelian conclusion:
In ontological terms this would mean that the being of Kierkegaard before-his-birth identifies
with his being after-his-death, existence seems just a means to enrich the first being Ithat is,
the being of Kierkegaard before his birth} until it identifies with the second one Ithat is, the
being of Kierkegaard after his death}; a provisional malaise, an indispensable means to arrive
from the first one to the second, and in and by itself an inessential agitation of being.6

Given the difficulties of achieving a veritable signification and assuming

(as we did) that Hegel succeeded in overcoming them (an assumption which
Sartre accepts, of course, just for the sake of the argument) there is still
something in Kierkegaard's existence which is not included in the
signification. It is the failure of his attempt to dissociate himself from Hegel's

ungliicklisches Bewusstsein.
This failure, felt deeply in Kierkegaard's life, becomes something fixed
forever, an absolute, with his death. It existed and died with Kierkegaard as
a pure negation and cannot be retained in the system in the same way that a
privatio cannot be c.ontained in Spinoza's substance.
The lesson of Kierkegaard is therefore for Sartre the following: If there
ever existed an ideal comprehension which was able to comprehend a
singularity completely, that is, to the full extent of its deviations from the

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MENACHEM BRINKER

universals it is said to embody (or exemplify), there would still remain this
feeling of the lack which existence must feel toward its signification, which is
not retained in the signification itself. This aspect of being is completely
annihilated in death and it is therefore because of death that man' holds in
his historical existence a transhistorical dimension which history cannot
recapture.
Transhistoricity was misunderstood by Kierkegaard, who used it to make
rational historical knowledge impossible. For Sartre, however, rational
knowledge of history is possible so far as we remember that our general
concepts (structures, epochs, schools, tendencies, even our general concepts
of individual men) are surrounded by singularities which only
comprehension can comprehend. Universals make their appearance in
history only through men, that is, through singularizing agencies. But even
an ideal comprehension is never able to retain the historical past, since in
order to do this it must divorce individual existence from its transhistoricity.
An Aufhebung is therefore no more possible on the levels of knowledge
and comprehension than it is on the levels of praxis and totalization.
Tel-Aviv University
NOTES
I The lecture was originally read in a colloquium organized by Unesco to commemorate
Kierkegaard's 150th anniversary (21-23 April, 1964). It was published in Kierkegaard
vivant. Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
2 Questions de methode was written in 1957, Critique de la raison dialectique was written
between 1957 and 1960. They were both published in one volume by Gallimard, Paris, 1960.
For more details concerning the development of the ideas in these books and the
circumstances of their publication see Michel Contat and Michel Ribalka, Les ecrits de
Sartre, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, pp. 311-322 and 337-340. There is an English translation of
QM by H. Barnes, The Problem of Method, London, Methuen, 1963.
J See especially "Le fant6me de Staline," in Les temps modernes, Nos. 129-130-131,
Novembre-Decembre 1956-Janvier 1957, pp. 577-697; reprinted in Situations 7: 144-307.
English translation by M. Fletcher, The Ghost of Stalin, New York, George Braziller, 1962.
Paris, Gallimard, 1973.
l "Pour saisir Ie sens d'une conduite humaine, il faut disposer de ce que les psychiatres et les
historiens allemands ont nomme 'comprehension.'" QM, p. 96 (Eng. trans.: p. 153).
"En termes ontologiques, l'etre prenatal de Kierkegaard est homogene a son etre postmortem et I'existence parait un moyen d'enrichir Ie premier jusqu'a I'egaler au second:
malaise provisoire, moyen essen tiel pour aller de l'un a I'autre mais, en lui-meme, fievre
inessentielle de l'etre" (Kierkegaard vivant. pp. 31-32).

PART THREE

FAREWELL
TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY?

RAYMOND POLIN

FAREWELL TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

I did not choose this topic and title without deep regret. It is, in one respect,
my initiation to philosophy, my education as a philosopher that I am
renouncing. I have the impression that I am perpetrating a sort of
philosophical parricide. When I was a young man, French philosophers
were re-discovering Hegel with the help of Alexandre Koyre and Kojeve's
seminar, which I attended, and with the stimulus of the exciting publication
and translation into French of the papers of the young Marx.
We used to believe that philosophy of history was the necessary
framework for modern philosophy to be taught, to be written and to be
practised.
Each of us, according to his own vocation, used to find his inspiration
either in the invention of philosophy of history by Jean Jacques Rousseau,
writing his Discours sur I'Inegalite, or in the reflexions of Kant on the
history of mankind. The philosophy of Hegel himself was generally
considered the perfect model for a philosophy of history - the philosophy of
history itself. But some of us were more impressed by its avatars among the
post-Hegelians, and above all by Marx, or by the parallel skizza of Auguste
Comte.
Anyway, the present essay will concern itself with that type of philosophy
of history as the model of philosophy of history. We shall consequently
leave aside the philosophy implicit in the work of any historian and the
methodology of history as an epistemological approach, however important
or topical these may be.
In many respects, it is a sort of sacrifice I have to consummate in this
essay.

I
In order to be clear and direct, I shall try to establish, as rigorously as I can
and, I hope, without provoking any discussion, the ideal type of philosophy
201
Yirmiahu Yovel led.), Philosophy of History and Action, 201-218. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Rtidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.

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of history as such. I shall put aside the classical myths of history, the myths
concerning the beginnings of history, and the eschatologies, together with
the interpretation of the principles of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel or Marx, which
could be discussed indefinitely.
The first postulate of the ideal type seems to me that not simply the
human species, but mankind as a whole, exists as the true point of reference
for any meaning, for any means and ends in the world. Mankind may be
scattered aU over the earth, but it nevertheless constitutes a whole with its
universal laws, laws of existence, laws of development. It is remarkable that,
even if each phase of this development is governed by peculiar historical
laws, the whole of mankind obeys the same universal and unique laws of
development, passing through the same stages. Mankind does not initially
constitute a general society of mankind, communis societas humani generis,
but the general society of mankind will mark the achievement of its
becoming in the end of history.
The second postulate affirms that human nature as such is historical. It
does not however question the existence of a human nature, of its essence,
which is freedom and reason - freedom, that is to say, reason. But it means
that human essence does not fulfill itself in any single personal life, but that
all along its history, mankind's essence, its concept, becomes its effective
and efficient achievement. Especially for Hegel, that move represents a
renewal of the concept of entelechy and a transferring of the Aristotelian
theory of potentiality and actuality from the existence of the individual to
the existence of the species. Man is given in his essence in the human animal.
He frees himself from his animal nature and becomes more and more
human, when he prefers his values to the value of life, his work to his
existence. History, in its efficient actuality, is, in Kojeve's word, an
anthropogenesis through which the human species, the whole of mankind,
passes from generation to generation, from the state of an animal, bearer of
the concept of man, of reason, of freedom, to the state of a perfectly human
being, perfectly free, reasonable and wise, that is to say omniscient and
bejriedigt, peaceful and satisfied.
Hence a third postulate: the becoming of effective and efficient history
deriv.es from the conjunction, from the conciliation of freedom, which is
essential to human existence, and gives birth to its contingent manifestations, with necessity, which is essential to the successive stages of
mankind's historical development.

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203

Everything human happens as if it were necessary for developing the

concept of man into the actual reality of man, to pass through necessary
stages of a necessary way. But this necessity is purely abstract, defining the
condition sine qua non, not the sufficient conditions for the achievement of
the perfectly human man.
The living forces which produce facts and deeds, the contingent res
gestae, which constitute the object of historical studies, depend on freedom.
The living forces of freedom manifest themselves in very different forms,
according to the achievements of history, from instinct and passion to
freedom in itself and for itself, to perfectly absolute and efficient knowledge.
Freedom, which is just life in its primitive meaning, and mind, which is its
ultimate meaning, are the motor, the efficient means of this history of which
there is a philosophy. This freedom is properly the capacity of man to
produce himself, to create himself, in a specific progress which, from
generation to generation, leaves behind what is obsolete and preserves what
is essential.
That freedom is properly the modern mode of freedom invented by
Rousseau, freedom as a capacity for perfecting oneself, as a faculty of
perfectibility, of Perfektibilitiit as Hegel will later say. But, according to a
sort of heredity of invented or acquired characteristics, the making of man
not only provokes the education, the Bildung of man, it produces the
progressive transformation of the species from generation to generation, the
actualization of the concept of man in mankind.
The facts anddeeds produced by freedom compose what we traditionally
call history, the contingent facts and events of history historians are used to
studying. They are neither effectively real nor truly significant. The only acts
and facts which are effective and efficient in the realization of the essence of
man, are those which happen to coincide with the abstract necessary
development of man as such. It is as if the tapestry of mankind's real history
were composed of the interweaving of the necessary becoming of mankind
with the contingent threads, composed by human freedom. When the
threads projected by our freedom do not meet and interweave with those of
necessity, they are lost, they become vain and insignificant, a simple waste
of the historical contingency. Whenever they knit and knot themselves
together, they weave the actual tapestry of history. At this level of efficient
reality, reason and freedom are identical in actual history, the only history
worthy of the name, and the proper object for the philosophy of history.

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RAYMOND POLIN

Reason and freedom - that is, man himself - in their progressive

incarnations, constitute the principles as well as the work of history.
Their conciliation, their dialectical unification, in the omniscient and
perfectly free human being as well as in the relations between citizens in the
achieved modern State, give history its finality, its meaning, and its end. This
fourth postulate is certainly the most important for it implies all the others.
To say that history has a meaning, an end, implies that everything belonging
to the becoming of actual history is comprehensible and justified. Is not that
becoming of history in fact the actualization of reason? But philosophy of
history is possible as such only when history ends, when the meaning of
history can be understood as a whole. Inside of history, in any period in
which they live, men are only able to have a unilateral, partial consciousness
of the historical becoming. They are effectively blind to the meaning of
history, even to the meaning of the period of history in which they
participate: they do not really understand what they are doing, what the
consequences of their acts are. The subjective meaning they give their acts
has nothing to do with their objective meaning; they live by illusions.
The moment of wisdom, of lucidity and absolute knowledge, when the
meaning of history is revealed, is the moment when history can be
understood as a whole, when man can be perfectly conscious of the world
and of himself, and perfectly satisfied.
It is also the moment when a science of history, thus a philosophical
science of man and of his actions, can be achieved, can become effective and
efficient. If the perfectly wise man, the all-knowing man and the perfect
statesman, could be united in one person, this person would be like a
temporal god, a mortal god on earth.

II
This fourth postulate implies two major difficulties which may possibly be
two insoluble mysteries.
The first is the problem of the "end of history." There cannot be any
absolute philosophy, other than a philosophy of what has been achieved.
Even adepts of philosophy of history do not agree about the date of the end.
Is it l789? l806? or l848? or 1917? Who knows? In fact, it is the
pretension of understanding the whole of history which determines the date
of the end. For the philosopher who announces the end, his book is the best

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205

proof and, of course, the only possible proof of his affirmation.

The uncertainty is even greater about the content of post-historical time.
Will there be individual histories, or collective histories, or will the end of
history just be a formal end with internal adventures and contingent
transformations, the type of man having been perfectly realized once and for
all? If this does not mean that man is once and for all perfectly human,
completely satisfied, what does it mean? That all men are living in temporal
permanent bliss? That all men are omniscient and almighty? or some men
only? or one man? Would all the others be human and satisfied, just by
identifying with the 'number one' in a homogeneous society?
In principle, one should imagine man to be perfectly happy and satisfied
in this world, in this nature. But that would mean that he would not have to
act, to struggle, to labour any more. Would not that be, as Kojeve imagined,
the end of a properly human era, the end of man, his return to an animal
way of life in perfect harmony with nature? This animal man, beyond
history, would be a natural being, perfectly satisfied, not needing to think
any more: in that animal, philosophy, the search for wisdom, would be
accomplished, but wisdom itself would disappear with the disappearance of
the necessity for thought, of the possibility of error, of the imperfection
immanent in freedom.
Otherwise, we should have to assume that history ended in 1806; but are
they - these human' beings living beyond that date, in that posthistory-still men? Animal men perhaps, enjoying life in an affiuent society
according to the American way of life, or human men living, according to
the traditional Japanese way of life, in a permanent and purely formal
opposition to nature, expressing the human capacity of negation through
their snobbery.
Philosophers, even philosophers of history, are not prophets of the future.
Futurologists do not act like philosophers, but like men of action: their
hypotheses imagine a possible future as men of action do, they agree to run
a risk in appreciating the probability of future events.
The knowledge of philosophers stops with the present time. The
philosopher does not know anything about post-historical time, because he
lives neither beyond history, nor even at its end. Philosophy is the proof that
history has not ended. To affirm that history has to come to an end is an
arbitrary postulate, and it even contradicts the essential postulate of history
that man is free, that he always exists beyond himself, in constant self-

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RAYMOND POLIN

renewal, in a constant surpassing of himself. In such a situation, the

philosopher is not capable of absolute knowledge. In spite of its internal
logic, the end of history cannot be a necessary postulate for the philosophy
of history. And that is obviously the first indomitable objection to the very
concept of philosophy of history.
This first uncertainty, this first contradiction, constitutes the first mystery
of any philosophy of history. But there is also a second uncertainty, a
second mystery inherent in the philosophy of history, I mean the problem of
knowing whether or not it implies the existence of a God.
Thirty years ago, my answer would have been categorical. There are
philosophies of history, like that of Marx, which are explicitly atheistic, and
philosophies of history, like that of Rousseau and Kant, which are explicitly
theistic. But what of the most perfect model of any philosophy of history,
Hegel's philosophy? Is it or is it not, under its ma~k, the philosophy of an
atheist? Throughout the becoming of history, is not man his own creator, in
spite of its blindness? Is not history man's own work? Does he not play the
part of God? From Rousseau on, freedom is no longer the power and
possibility of realizing one's own essence; it is the power to add to what one
is, to surpass, to transcend what one is, to create oneself otherwise than
what one is. Is not man what he does? Is not even the meaning of history his
own work? After all, Hegel deals with Religion before dealing, in the
last chapter of the Phenomenology of the Mind,. with Absolute Knowledge - Absolute Knowledge, and not Religion, bringing Revelation,
the gospel of the Philosophy of History.
But today, I am more dubious about Hegel. I am certaiflIy convinced of
man's capacity to transcend himself, to go beyond himself and beyond
everything given or imposed upon him, to be the principle of the creation of
his values and actions. But I never confused that simply human power,
limited by its conditions, its obstacles, its failures, its falls, with a properly
divine power of creation. I have never believed that one could be substituted
for the other or play the part of the other. In any case, human creation and
divine creation can either coexist or not coexist without contradiction. A
philosophy of history can affirm the creative gift of human freedom without
necessarily excluding the creative power of God.
I must only indicate here that the theistic interpretation of Hegel's
philosophy of history is at least as plausible as the atheistic interpretation.
Indeed, if one is allowed to admit that a radical absence of order or initial

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207

fortuity do not pose metaphysical problems and require a metaphysical

answer, the Hegelian concept of freedom, his concept of man, or his theory
of concept itself imply a metaphysical question and a metaphysical solution.
Freedom is not a simple fact; it implies a meaningful world, a spiritual
world. Hegel himself declares that freedom is mind. Freedom requires
finality and teleology, with all the metaphysical requisites of teleology. And
what could the concept of man be, what would the concept of man and the
design for his development mean, what would man's function in this
historical becoming mean, without a thought able to conceive of these
meanings? Was not Nietzsche right when he wrote that the philosophy of a
meaningful history is but theology masked, eine verkappte Theologie?
In spite of the fact that we are dealing with a conceptual reconstruction of
an ideal model for a philosophy of history, this model, when perfect, seems
to imply necessarily the existence of a God as well as the existence of an
end. Only on these two conditions does this model become perfect and
acquire all its coherence, all its force of interpretation and of persuasion.
I do not consider it a valid objection that I am dealing only with the group
of philosophies of history born with Rousseau and which, with Hegel's help,
have inspired occidental philosophy until the present. There had not been
any proper philosophy of history before Rousseau: there had just been
myths of history: Greek or Judeo-Christian myths of the origin and of the
end of the world, eschatologies which reappear even in some present
philosophies, myths of progress, myths of decadence, myths of the eternal
return. These myths were expressed in different forms: histories, tales,
legends, symbols, dogmas. They were esoterically interiorized, they
reappeared in the form of poetical philosophies. They have never been
explicit philosophies of history as such.
Perhaps this is to their advantage. They rise again and again from their
ashes, they are resurrected again and again throughout time and
civilizations. On the other hand, our philosophies of history tried in our
civilization and in our day to supersede the old myths of history and to play
their philosophical role. Myths may be capable of permanent resurrection.
But philosophies die with their time. Philosophies of history are already
passe. And we have to bid them farewell.

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RAYMOND POLIN

III
Perhaps it is their mythical inspiration which gave philosophies of history
their fascination. Considered as a whole, a g.reat philosophy of history
possesses considerable power to create illusion. Reduced to its fundamental
axioms. the same philosophy of history does not resist the force of things
and it is easy to observe that its axioms do not obey the principle of noncontradiction.
First. we must observe that the greatest philosophies of history were
composed some time before 1817, the year in which the French essayist,
Ballanche, used the word civilization in the plural for the first time. A little
later. around 1840. philologists would demonstrate the irreducible plurality
of civilizations. Rousseau himself, as early as 1756 or 1757, ceased to speak
of a "general society of mankind" possessing unity, solidarity and a
universal natural right. Beyond the human species. which is an animal
species. humanity had only been the object of nice feelings and of nice
words. It was a kind of fetish, good enough to demonstrate one's good
conscience and good intentions at little cost to oneself.
How could one speak of a general history of the non-existing general
society of mankind, of its necessary becoming, of the unique formation and
education of man? There is no universal history of mankind considered asa
whole. Or else three words would be sufficient to write it: "They were born,
they lived, they died." But these three words concern not only mankind, but
any animal species. There is nothing to prove that an essential history of
mankind could exist, that mankind as such is like a single human individual
moving from a stage of potential humanity to a final stage of actual
humanity, that the same essential history was to be found among the
contingent events of individual lives, in every civilization, in every society, in
every people, in every nation.
There are many civilizations, societies, peoples, nations, groups and
individuals in the human animal species, and they are characterized by their
radical plurality and diversity, by their radical differences. The more distant
in space or time two civilizations are, the more incomprehensible,
incomparable and un assimilable they are to each other. No education can
reduce that unbridgeable gap. Bergson's formula: "the human species is a
species in which each individual constitutes by himself a unique species"
could just as well be applied to civilizations, societies, peoples, nations or
groups.

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209

This irreducible plurality does not jeopardize the unity of the human
species. It would be impossible to ground a pseudo-theory of the plurality of
human races on it.
There is one element which is coextensive with the whole of mankind, I
mean man himself, human nature. If it is always possible to recognize man
in his works without any doubt, however diverse and original civilizations
are, if there always remains a way for comprehension, a capacity for
communication among human beings, in spite of this radical irreducibility, it
is because there is a human essence. Even among civilizations capable of
writing, that essential encounter and, up to the limit, that unbridgeable
distance can be observed. A text is always to be understood wherever it
comes from. But there always exists - is it not symbolic? - undeciphered
writings and even, for lack of mediations, undecipherable writings. This
essence of man, made of freedom and consciousness, more or less perfectly
united and identified, actualizes itself into infinitely diverse appearances
unbridgeably distanced by freedom each from the other.
The pseudo-essential historicity of the manifestations of human existence
does not correspond to any experience. Quite to the contrary. There is no
progressive succession of species of men in the history of man, like subspecies within a general species, which would correspond to periods of
human history and to progressive stages of development, from the concept
of man to the actualization of the perfect man. This theory is a gratuitous
and arbitrary extrapolation of the fact, which can be confirmed, that each
man is, as Hegel says, "a son of his time" and more or less conditioned by
the historical circumstances in which he lives. But what is conditioned in
that case, is human nature as such - immutable, constant, marked by
permanent characteristics - which makes all men similar, which produces
the universal similarity existing among all men living in every time, place,
and civilization. Nothing for a man of our time better assures the permanent
identity of man than Thucydides' description of human nature, e
anthropopine phusis, as a duality of passion and intelligence or Plato's
doctrine of human nature as the conjunction of mind, will and desire (nous,
thumos and epithumetikon). Our civilization has not yet ceased to discuss
these two images of ourselves, and the analyses grounded upon them are as
convincing as they are familiar: they still deal with man, with ourselves.
For the ancients, human freedom consisted in the perfect and unhindered
realization of man's essence and function. Under the influence of

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RAYMOND POLIN

philosophies of history, the Moderns have interpreted freedom as a faculty

of self- production, as transcendence considered as an action, as a creation.
This creation is not, however, the negation of nature proper to man. The
philosopher who wrote that each man is his own father did not convince
anybody, and not even himself. Others have extrapolated the idea of
absolute freedom from the idea of creative freedom. They refuse to
recognize that there is an essence of man; they identify freedom with a
gratuitous and arbitrary existence; they do what they can to associate a
certain philosophy of history with all those elements in their doctrine which
are not consistent with the theory of an essential and necessaqr development
of human nature. The vanity of the so-called philosophies of the absurd does
seem to be fully recognized nowadays: if philosophy is a search for
meaning, for intelligibility, is not a philosophy of the absurd, of radical
disorder, an absence of philosophy, a non-philosophy? Anyway, modernday philosophers have to admit the sins of the philosophies currently d fa
mode. Scylla is not far from Charybdis: it is fashionable to celebrate the
non-philosophy, the absurd without philosophy and without any philosophical language.
Philosophy of history cannot accommodate itself to these incoherent and
insignificant, provocatively insignificant fulgurations. It affirms an essence
of man, which could be defined by Kant's formula: "The nature of man.
consists in the freedom of making one's own nature freely." But the proper
task of philosophies of history is to describe the stages of that making,
man's formal essence and the historical avatars of its becoming, the
succession of man's historical natures. The force of human realities imposes
the affirmation of a formal nature of man, and the observation that there
exist, in each historically contingent global situation, multiple variations,
multiple radically different manifestations of that same human nature,
throughout time, groups and individuals.
I know that Rousseau's ingenious intuitions and their suggestive poetry,
Kant's decisive indications, Hegel's philosophical genius utilized the
impossible scheme of philosophy of history to enlighten and to reveal
fundamental trends of human existence. I know that the period of the great
philosophies was also the period of great systematic philosophy, that Kant
and, above all, Hegel, and the too much forgotten Auguste Comte, were
able to compose admirable systems of understanding and of justification.
They were certainly perfectly understanding and understandable, if we

FAREWELL TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

211

consider the resistance and impenetrability of human realities. But their

magical power, their fascination and their capacity to transform illusions
into illuminations, also derives from these illuminations.
Karl Marx' philosophy of history derives its magical powers from another
source. From Hegel, he inherits the theory of the historical development of
man through a linear succession of stages corresponding to several totalities
(in spite of the efforts made later to enlarge and interpret broadly his
analysis of an "Asiatic mode of production"). Marx owes the anthropogenesis which culminates in the advent of a perfectly achieved
human being to Hegel. But Marx gives this eschatology, which is a renewal
of the ancient myths of an end of times, a lay and atheistic meaning. He
insists that the definitive human being will be able to live in this temporal
world, without alienation, in a homogeneous society, enjoying a freedom
which in fact belongs to the tradition of anarchist utopia. Through man's
self-production, Marx uses again the Hegelian metaphysic of freedom,
defined as man's capacity to make himself, to be the product of his own
action. But he turns the Hegelian system upside down, he denies the
function of the mind, the part played by the concept of man at the beginning
of the anthropogenesis, the immanent and meaningful necessity of that
historical development. He emphasizes the privilege of the economic
infrastructures in a determining totality. And that means that he reduces
man to something like a misfit animal (reappearance of the myth of Plato's
Protagoras, deprived!of the gifts of Prometheus and of Zeus). He opposes
this infrastructure to superstructures like culture or politics, whose historical
function he systematically minimizes (as it is also confirmed by Engels). For
him, culture or politics are just appearances or reflections, materials for the
mystified consciousness. That is why the Marxist philosophy of history,
which he himself scarcely exposes, loses its fecundity of interpretation and
locks itself up in simplistic causal explanations. Compared to the Hegelian
model, it is decadent and impoverished.
Some people have tried to strengthen Marxist philosophy and to
safeguard it from the disrepute that philosophy as such has fallen into
nowadays by treating Marxism as a science rather than as a philosophy. For
this reason they make the most of the quantitative data offered by economic
life and by all the material needs of human societies. But Marx' power of
convincing does not derive from this exaggeratedly scientific treatment of
human affairs. It comes from his humanistic inspiration, from the moral and

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humanitarian inspiration - in which he follows Rousseau rather than

Hegel - with which he studies the different forms of alienation, human
miseries, the mystifications men are suffering from. This moral inspiration,
which appeals to social demands and struggles, joins the eschatological
inspiration which urges Marx to proclaim a communist, homogeneous,
classless society without social struggles, whose members are perfectly
human, free and satisfied.
It is easy to guess why, if Hegel has philosophers for disciples, Marx'
disciples were mostly political men and militants.

IV
I readily admit that it is not greater or lesser perfection which matters in a
philosophy of history. What is most important is that the reality of history,
the historical force of things, does not agree with philosophy of history as
such.
We are not quarrelling with philosophers of history as historians might.
That would be ill founded, false and vain. There is no historical science
without a philosophy of its presuppositions and of its methods. The history
written by each historian implies its own postulates, which determine the
interpretation he gives the historical data. It is not to these postulates, to that
methodology, that we say "farewell." They are just the kind of hypotheses
without which a historian would be unable to observe, to describe, to
explain, to understand historical reality and unable to provide a narrative
capable of being understood, checked and verified.
But the epistemology of historical science is one thing and the philosophy
of history another. The objects of historical science can be such and such
domains and such and such periods of contingent human facts and deeds
upon such and such territory. The philosophy of history considers the
problem of the meaning of human existence and the becoming of mankind,
the problem of its origin, and of its end. These two types of approach belong
to two radically different orders.
The word history itself comes from the Greeks. But when Herodotus used
it, this word did not mean either the necessary process progressively
producing mankind as a perfectly achieved human being, generation after
generation, or even the whole set or a single and particular set of human
facts and deeds. History meant only an inquiry, istorie. The Romans had no

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213

corresponding word: they just spoke of res gestae, of accomplished things.

Hegel himself, setting the word Historie apart, would speak of Geschichte,
to designate effective and efficient reality, reasonable reality, die verniinjtige
Wirklichkeit. But geschehen means "what happens," and that is a
contingent event par excellence. Shall we say that a certain set of historical
facts is just the product of chance, or the result of causal determinations, or
a system ruled by laws? Shall we say that human decision and human
behaviour are determined or free? All these acts and facts remain
fundamentally contingent anyway.
Even if historians are looking for causal or legal relations, or for
meaningful and comprehensible sets of relations, historical science at best
only gets at a narrative of contingent history, of a contingent and
hypothetical ensemble of facts and events, an ensemble more or less
arbitrarily circumscribed, more or less coherent, more or less homogeneous,
happening in a certain area, manifesting a certain style, a certain spirit. It
could be the history of a certain group, of a certain population, of a certain
nation, of a certain civilization. Once again, we have to emphasize the fact
that there is no one unique human history, one total history of mankind,
with a specific immanent and meaningful teleology: there are just several
histories, an irreducible plurality of histories, which can be observed,
interpreted and told about people scattered all over the world, throughout
time. There are possible major trends in such and such a history, but
nothing in historical reality justifies a global teleology immanent in the total
history of mankind, with its initial implicit concept of free, conscious,
reasonable man, its necessary stages towards its immanent end, implying
the progressive revelation of its innate meaning.
And the distance between historical reality and philosophy of history is
greatest, when the latter pretends that it can only constitute itself at the end
of history, the indefinite and indefinitely renewing process of which we are
constantly observing and shall go on observing as long as there are men
capable of freedom and reflection. The illusion of philosophy of history is to
imagine that an end to the history of freedom and reason is actually
accomplished. An end is conceivable for reason, but not for freedom: the
goal of freedom cannot be the end of freedom. There is no goal for freedom
as such. Freedom is not achieved as long as freedom remains free, remains
freedom. What a marvellous vision it would be for man's labour to end, and
its happiness to begin. But what human being could be happy without being

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RAYMOND POLIN

free? He would not even be human; he would just be an animal. The tale
philosophers of history tell and ask credence for is spontaneously transformed into a fairy tale or into the good news of a temporal bliss, into a
gospel without divine Revelation.
Even this rudimentary form of philosophy of history, that caricature
which is the notion of progress, explodes under the impact of the reality and
complexity of historical facts. History is indeed the fact of a species, the
human species, which not only has a past, as does every other animal
species, but also a future, and which lives for its future. Even if man's nature
does not change, man lives by changing, he lives in change. History is the
existence of man in time, a dialectic of continuity and change, of tradition
and innovation, resulting in a permanent transformation.
But the theory of progress adds to the fact of change the purely subjective
appreciation of a certain teleology of that change, an interpretation of its
meaning corresponding to a certain supposed end. Even in the very
simplified case of progress by accumulation, dealing with science, with
techniques, with the production or consummation of equipment or goods,
the estimation of the direction of this progress remains an arbitrary and
indefinitely debatable decision. Our present fanatics of the return to nature,
our scientists of the leger de main trick of zero population growth, show us
that incertitude and that arbitrariness well enough. A fortiori, there is no
meaningful orientation inherent in their transformations when they deal with
culture, values, the work of human freedom. However, progress and
decadence, rise and fall, can have a more coherent and justifiable meaning
for the history of a nation which is born, lives and dies, like a biological
entity and whose history could be represented by a Gaussian curve.
Even if it were possible, though improbable, to give these different curves
an objective and universal validity, it is clear that they belong to different
types, that they are incoherent and unsuperposable. The progress of one of
the elements of history (science and technique) does not entail the progress
of other elements (morality or happiness, for example). The theory of global
progress is absurd and confused, whether we speak of the whole history of
mankind or even of the smallest area of one culture. It has no basis of any
kind in the reality of historical things.

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215

v
The purpose of discovering progress in history orients our reflection towards
practical considerations. History is not only an object of knowledge for
historians or a theme of meditation for philosophers. It is a job for every
man, and especially for men of action.
In a certain place, in a certain historical situation with everyone
struggling or collaborating with everyone, every group against and with
every other group, every nation against and with every other nation,
everybody tries, through his intentions, projects, discourses, acts, and
labour, to play his part in the building of his own history, of the history of
the group to which he belongs, the history of his nation and even of his
civilization. Everybody tries to influence his own history, the history of his
group, the history of his time. And if certain men are incapable of any
positive action, they try to insert their passivity into the history of their
group, so that its history will be their own history.
. The limits and conditions of efficiency of the historical action or passion
of. each of us in the historical situation in which we live, with our peculiar
form offreedom and lucidity, do not matter. What matters is that each man
is a historical being, a being who lives within history and makes history,
even if nobody can truly tell whether he actually makes history, even his
own history.
To say that history is the work of mankind is just a mythical truth. One
no longer tries to write the universal history of mankind, not because it is a
tremendous task, but because there is no unique and total reality
corresponding to that project. There are just histories, a multitude of
histories, which sometimes conflict, which were born, each in a certain area,
of the composition and convergence of a multitude of human efforts,
collaborations and struggles over the same problems and in the same
environment. The spirit of a nation, culture, or civilization, with its dominant
values, meanings, and peculiar style, appears and lives in the composition
formed from the interaction of historical conditions and traditions with the
actions and the work of generations of men. With the help of chance, with
greater or lesser success and coherence, each of these histories tends
towards the expression of common values, common ends, and clearer
meanings.
Is it not each man's, each group's human intention and the proper human
vocation to build a meaningful world, which he will understand, and in

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RAYMOND POLIN

which others will understand him, so that, with the help of chance,
everybody will live a meaningful, valuable and justified life? We are very far
from the glory and pride of the classical but mythical philosophies of
history. Even this vocation is never fully realized. Men are never perfectly
free and reasonable; their histories are never perfectly meaningful. Men live
from their desire to desire, from their desire for freedom. They are never
satisfied and their histories are never fully justified or fully understandable.
It is the essence of a free and intelligent being never to be satisfied, to desire
to pursue indefinitely his own truly human desire: to understand, to let
himself be understood, to actually be understood. To understand and to be
understood, is not this the proper end of man, the proper way for him to be
justified? Is it not what Hegel called Anerkennung, Versiihnung,
Befriedigung - that is, acknowledgement, reconciliation, satisfactionsymbols of man's actual achievement? The more or less coherent
period during which a group of men has the chance to achieve this supreme
human goal to some extent, is rightly called a history. The intention of
philosophies of history in fact corresponds to extrapolations of the absolute
of that essential experience: the effort towards reciprocal understanding in a
free, reasonable community. Aristotle already spoke of ph ilia in the politeia.
Those words, friendship, acknowledgement, reconciliation, satisfaction are
the passionate symbols of the ultimate human end: understanding, theoria.
This requirement, which makes man a being for understanding, a being
whose end is theoria, defines man's permanent nature - his individual as
well as his generic nature - in any given historical situation. It is the
problem of the transition from potentiality to actuality every man faces
within the double frame of his political community and his historical
situation, not as an element of the so-called progress of a human totality,
since the ideas of a general society of mankind, of progress, of human
totality are just specious myths, grandiose, moving but vain and void. They
have to be denounced, because they serve as pretexts and as guaranties for
pseudo-sciences of history, the source of insufferable political dogmatisms.
When they dissolve, philosophies of history are corrupted: either they
disappear and die, or they are transformed into dreadful superstitions of
history. Philosophies of history, farewell.
Of course, once again, we are considering philosophies of history in the
strongest sense of the word which, originating in Rousseau and Kant, found
their full expression in Hegel and were integrated into the mentality of our

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217

time, among our idees re~ues by his disciples and the disciples of Marx, the
greatest of the Hegelians. For them, philosophy was at best a philosophy of
history and of man asa historical being. Even if it does not indulge really
philosophical creeds, history, of course, remains the possible object of
philosophy. Everything which exists or happens on earth, inside the earth or
in the skies, is the possible object of a philosophical interpretation. We only
dispute history considered as history of human becoming through the whole
of a supposed history of mankind: of that history we observe the dissolution.
Histories of men, as we described them, are of course the object of some
philosophy, either at the level of historical description and of the task of the
historians, whose duties imply not only methodological principles requiring
certain philosophical principles, but the practice of a philosophical
anthropology; or at the level of historical ensembles lived or observed by
philosophers acting as philosophers. I readily admit that the positive
indications I gave about the ends, the means, the behaviours of men, each in
his situation, his community and his time, trying to compose a historical set,
a historical order, which would be meaningful, in which each one could
better understand and be better understood, could feel himself
acknowledged and justified, where his theory and his practice, as well as his
consciousness and his freedom would be unified - all these considerations
propose the principles of a philosophy of these histories. But the philosophy
of history of which we record the death was of a very different order.
As long as there are men, they will continue to act and to work, to make
their histories more or less freely, not only in order to live and to survive
among an inadequate nature, but in order to accomplish their vocation as
free and self-conscious beings: to understand, to be understood and
acknowledged. Temporal bliss, absolute knowledge, which are the
passionate symbols of that vocation, serve as symbolic ends for every
human existence, naturally frail and fragile in its finitude. These ends are
necessary for free and finite men, because they offer human creators and
necessarily unsatisfied beings, the necessary illusion of a possible
satisfaction, achievement, perfection. We must not forget that man is the
being capable of imagining the absolute. The philosophy of history allows
people to believe in an absolute which would be realized and progressively
understood throughout the time of the whole of mankind.
Each man of action who knows how to be a philosopher, each
philosopher who would like to be a man of action, has a peculiarly exacting

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RAYMOND POLIN

consciousness of that unity of existence and thought, of freedom and

consciousness, of action and lucidity. Philosophies of history having
disappeared, the best of their principles, the unity of theory and practice,
preserves our faith and our hope as men, as philosophers without any
illusions about the ineluctability of our illusions.

Universite de Paris-Sorbonne

PANEL DISCUSSION

IS A PHILOSOPHY OF HISTOR Y POSSIBLE?

Isaiah Berlil'J, Stuart Hampshire, Max Black, Paul Ricoeur, Yirmiahu

Yovel, Raymond Polin, Donald Davidson, Nathan Rotenstreich; Moderator:
Charles Taylor.
Charles Taylor: So far we have heard mostly negative statements about the
philosophy of history. We have heard, for instance, about assumptions
which can no longer form a tenable basis for it. So now, at the end, let us try
to answer the positive question: what can the philosophy of history be
today? Can there still be such a discipline as a meaningful area of study, as
a distinctive and fruitful kind of philosophical inquiry? Or, to put it bluntly,
who needs philosophy of history? And what could be the philosophy of
history today?
ISAIAH BERLIN

I think I must have been chosen to start this discussion because I have never
been an historian and have long ceased to be a working philosopher. And
therefore I have, or ought to have, a neutral attitude to this subject.
Let me begin to say something quite modest in order to try to build a
bridge between two very different points of view - between the analytical
philosophers and the others, far removed from them, which has occurred in
the course of these discussions. It seems to me that there exist apparently
quite routine, but in fact very rich, topics towards which the philosophy of
history could attract the attention of both: for example, the examination of
how certain key concepts are used by historians. This would involve them in
the philosophy of history in the most direct and central fashion.
Thus they might consider the apparently simple question (though it is not
simple at all), how do historians use the word 'because'? 'Because,' as used
in historical speech, is not necessarily a causal term; 'because' can apply to
motives, and to more mysterious connections between and within historical
219
Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.). Philosophy of History and Action. 219-240. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. Dordrecht. Holland.

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ISAIAH BERLIN

events. Or again, how do historians use terms like 'therefore'? Why do

historians use, from time to time in their narratives, phrases like 'thus we
see,' or 'small wonder that,' or 'it is not surprising that'? Why was it not
surprising? What is it that calls for such small wonder, and why? And so
on. These little coupling links are thrown in because they seem to bridge the
account of one event with the account of another event, even of one entire
culture with another. For they rest on the assumption of specific concepts
and categories, in terms of which plausible history can be written.
A famous distinction was made in the late nineteenth century between the
methods of the natural sciences and the humane sciences. It was maintained,
reasonably enough, that if one claimed that a phenomenon in the natural
sciences was what it was because of another phenomenon, or that an object
or event was invariably found in the company of another, such assertions
could only be established on evidence provided by recognized procedures of
observation and experiment. To use a modern example, one may ask "How
do we know that this particular medicine can cure disease, penicillin, let us
say, cure pneumonia?" There is no particular reason why this should be
believed except on the basis of a large number of carefully tested
generalizations, which between them form a logical system, a corpus of
scientific knowledge. There need be nothing about the events or objects
which are connected in this way, no principle or relation which unites them,
except that each event or thing belongs (more or less) to a definable class x,
members of which do in fact follow, in a clearly describable fashion, the
events or things which belong to an equally definable class y. On the other
hand, in the humane sciences this does not seem to be so. One tends to write
history, and expect to be believed, because one tacitly takes for granted
certain sociological and psychological laws, some of which are usually too
elaborate to be stated, which we all recognize, and which are not explicitly
based on any scientific procedures.
If one is trying t(' explain some historical event, say the incidents of a
revolution, one might say that a certain amount of discontent or indignation
occurred in a certain class within a certain province; and one might add that
as a result of concessions made by the ruling class to assuage these feelings,
rising expectations occurred among members of the discontented classes;
and that this in turn led them to demand more and more, which they might
not have done if the ruling class had repressed them more effectively; that
weakness and concessions by a ruling class strengthens resistance to it far

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221

more than it blunts it; and so on. This kind of argument assumes, takes for
granted, that certain kinds of situations, conceived in somewhat ,general
terms, are recognized as being the kind of situations which 'understandably'
lead to this or that result: 'understandably,' because human beings can be
expected to act in certain ways, given characters, goals, feelings, habits
which are implicitly taken for granted. To be human is, in part, to be liable
to act in this not sharply definable way; communication with others
presupposes this. Hence, to show that a given situation is an example of
such behaviour is normally regarded as an adequate historical explanation.
It may be rejoined that one of the developments of writing history in our
day is a greater reliance upon methods that are more exact: quantitative
measurement and statistical information. But this works best in rather
specialized types of history. For example, in economic history: the essential
facts about the economic history of England in the thirteenth century can
probably be learnt by examining such things as how many bales of wool
were sold by various groups of merchants, what prices they fetched, where
they travelled, what was done with them, and so on; it is not necessary to
ask about the moral or religious outlook of the merchants, their private lives,
their personal attributes. Psychological information is neither needed nor
helpful. Demographic factors arrived at by statistical generalizations are
more relevant; these are obtained by methods not very different from those
of the natural sciences. One may well discover that more is known about
economic history in the fourteenth century than about that in the
seventeenth century, because the facts - movement of goods and prices, for
instance - are more easily got at. This is one of the paradoxes of economic
history.
The same thing is probably true of the history of technology, and the
history of certain other subjects which can be to some extent idealized, that
is to say, where the subject is artificially delimited, and therefore models or
specialized methods for classification of evidence and inference can be
established. Mere common sense does not suffice. But in writing general
history, particularly political history, this is scarcely ever true. The
categories and concepts in terms of which situations and events and
processes are described and explained in such accounts are, to a large
extent, imprecise; they have a so-called 'open texture.' They are the
everyday notions common to mankind at large, related to the permanent
interests of men as such. They may be modified at particular periods, in

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ISAIAH BERLIN

particular countries, by particular circumstances, but all of them are species

of basic human attitudes, outlooks, goals, beliefs. Without some degree of
understanding - indeed, sharing of - these concepts. it would not be
possible to understand either men or history at all.
If this were not so, we should scarcely be able to understand Homer or
Herodotus as, at least to some extent, we claim to be able to do, in spite of
the fact that they wrote about societies widely different from our own. If you
ask, for example, such a question as why some historical figure acted as he
did, the explanation of his behaviour is likely to rest upon the use of
concepts, categories and beliefs about human nature, which we take for
granted in our everyday lives, and upon the assumption that much, if not all,
of these similarly entered the outlook of our predecessors from the
beginnings of recorded history.
If one relied solely upon inductive investigation, one would get very thin
results indeed. If, to take an example from fiction, one asks why Iago hated
Othello, and someone replies that lago was weak and Othello was strong,
Othello was noble and lago was base, and the weak or base are apt to resent
or hate the noble or strong, this would naturally be regarded as going some
way towards an adequate explanation of lago's behaviour. If one then goes
on to ask how many instances of envy the interlocutor has himself observed,
or how much he knows others to have observed, about the relation of the
weak to the strong; how much elaborate psychological investigations he has
conducted, in how many places, and on how many occasions; what
mountain of regularities he has accumulated on which to erect his
hypotheses which he can then test experimentally: one will certainly find
that chemists or physicists would not regard such evidence as an adequate
basis for scientific conclusions. Nevertheless, this is the only kind of way in
which one goes about to explain the greater part of the behaviour of human
beings; we could scarcely act or live otherwise. No doubt one is often
mistaken, and psychologists and sociologists can expose one's errors; no
doubt all kinds of untested assumptions are constantly made; but without
them one could not proceed at all.
The point I am making is based not on the famous contrast between
uniqueness and generality, or between Wertfreiheit and evaluation; it is that
of the difference between the application of laws or rules based on observed
uniformities, and beliefs based on coherence with experience, whether one's
OWIf and that of one's society, or that of other men and other cultures. All

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223

experience embodies what Collingwood called the 'absolute presuppositions'

of an age or a culture. They are not incorrigible, but it is the grasp of these
that distinguishes serious historians from bright storytellers and journalists:
it is a faculty which historians require to have in common with imaginative
writers.
Why do we call some historians great, and others competent or
superficial? May I put it to you that we call historians great not only
because they possess narrative skill, and certainly not because they possess
more knowledge than other historians, or because their observations are
more minute, their findings more accurate - all these are necessary and
indeed indispensable attainments, but they do not by themselves make a
great historian.
One calls only those historians great who are seen to possess insight into
a particular period, or a particular society, as a rounded whole, those who
present the reader with a picture of human life - the complete experience of
a society as a possible form of life, something which could have occurred,
and which the evidence available makes sufficiently probable. The danger of
the work of the resurrecting imagination is that it may generate coherent
fictions. To prove that one is concerned with facts one needs a solid basis of
inference from surviving data. Yet even on such evidence the construction
may - as Mommsen towards the end of his life began to suspect - prove to
be largely imaginary. The indispensable quality of a great historical work is
that the reader supposes, after reading it, that he can say to himself not only
what the various actors in these societies thought, or did, or aimed at, on the
occasions recorded, but also what they would (or at least might) have
thought on other imaginable occasions, or how they would have responded
to other particular circumstances and, indeed, to the general circumstances,
events, ideas and objects, natural and man-made, of their time. To conceive
what living in a society unlike one's own must be, it is not necessary to
introduce the somewhat mystical notion of transporting oneself into the
past, or making a timeless flight (as Collingwood comes near to saying) into
Caesar's consciousness, which would enable one to know by direct
introspective means what it was that made him invade Britain, what his
feelings and ambitions and purposes were.
If one has an imaginative grasp of what kind of society is being spoken
about, one can answer certain hypothetical questions, even if the answers
are far from certain. Unless, in other words, one is given some sense of the,

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ISAIAH BERLIN

as it were, concrete texture of a society, its structure and "zeel," its moral
and intellectual categories and values, one is not likely to regard the
historian who tries to describe it as a gifted historian; one may, indeed,
accuse him of lacking depth. Neither depth nor greatness, incidentally, are
concepts much mentioned by philosophers, although I daresay it would be
a good thing if they did; for they are not mere rhetorical flourishes. 'Deep' is
a metaphorical expression - a metaphor drawn from wells, perhaps. What
does it mean? What is meant by saying (whether or not this is true) that
Pascal is a profounder thinker than Descartes, or that Mommsen or Fustel
de Coulanges are greater historians than industrious compilers or the
authors of patriotic textbooks?
I do not wish to embark on this topic here, but only to insist that mere
reconstruction of the past in an archaeological sense is not enough. Nor will
the categories of the natural sciences alone do the job. This is plainly
connected with the differences between what is usually called knowledge,
and Dilthey's concept of Verstehen - understanding. I am inclined to argue
that what we mean by knowledge is identical in both the natural and the
human sciences, whereas there exists a cognitive function - namely,
understanding - which is involved only when we are speaking of agents,
their motives, their purposes, fears, hopes, feelings, ideas, acts: not only
those of individual human beings, but those of groups or classes or
movements or institutions or entire societies. Discussion of the lives and
outlooks and activities of such agents involves categories aild concepts
which cannot be applied to the subject matter of the natural sciences
without anthropomorphism; while treatment of topics which lie on the
borderline between the two kinds of science, or in a no man's land between
them (certain kinds of applied economics, or social psychology, for
instance) create problems of their own. To seek to understand the moral
codes, the social purposes, the cultural or spiritual trends and tendencies of
a given society, is to seek to understand what it must have been like to have
lived in a certain milieu. Capacity for this kind of insight requires the
possession of something akin to an artistic gift, which alone can integrate
and give life to the dry bones of research, the accumulation of relevant facts
which, of course, can be obtained only by empirical investigation.
All this is, of course, a row of truisms. Nevertheless, I cannot help
thinking that the most useful task - indeed, the main one - for philosophers
of history is the analysis of the logic of historical explanation. This means

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225

the analysis of the use of such words as 'because,' 'therefore,' 'in due
course,' 'it was not surprising that,' and so on, which act as connecting links
between various propositions about the past, and bind' them into logical
structures (so it seems to me) in a fashion different from that in which such
logical cement is used in the natural sciences. Under the latter I include all
those sciences which go to the making of, but are not themselves, historical
thought: archaeology, palaeography, epigraphy, demography, physical
geography and anthropology, astronomical, chemical or biological methods
of dating, and all the other ancillary disciplines which are needed for the
measurement of time spans, and the analysis of the environmental and other
material factors affecting human life, without which there can be no
accurate knowledge of the human past.
It may be that what I have said is heretical from both points of view, from
the point of view of science-directed analytical philosophers, and from that
of those here who are inclined in a Hegelian direction. Perhaps this is just as
well: I do not feel inclined to retreat, unless comoelled to do so by sheer
weight of rational argument.
STUART HAMPSHIRE

I agree that in history you are concerned with explanations, and that they
are explanations of the action and suffering of human beings, and that such
an explanation is not like an explanation in the physical sciences. All these
three propositions seem to me to be true.
One proposition, which Isaiah admittedly implied rather than stated,
seems to me not to be true: namely, that all explanation of physical change
is of a scientific character in the sense that it is a case of sUbsumption under
general laws. This is not the case. Ordinarily, explanations of accidents do
not invoke elaborate theories or covering laws. But given that qualification, I
would agree.
I would also agree - and I do not think that this has anything to do with
any variety of Hegelianism or particular school of philosophy - that
explanations of human actions and sufferings have peculiar features. Of
these I wish to point out one that has not been mentioned, but which I think
also deserves philosophical study. It is a feature important particularly for
history, but also in the social sciences, which are distinct from history
because they use methods, and aim at conclusions, of greater generality
than do historians.

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STUART HAMPSHIRE

The feature concerned is this: that when we explain human actions by

referring to human motives and purposes, and thus by referring to
thoughts - certainly at least to beliefs and desires - what we believe to be
the explanation of them affects what they actually are. That is, if I believe
that my beliefs and desires had certain causes - either certain types of
causes, or specific causes in specific cases - this has an effect on what I
believe and desire. Consequently throughout the human sciences there is a
playback effect of the explanations which are accepted - whether or not
they are true explanations.
This is not the case with physical conditions. No matter what I believe
about the causes of a lump on my arm, my beliefs (unless it is a hysterical
lump) do not affect either the lump or its real cause. But when I change my
opinion about what are the causes of my ambitions, desires and beliefs, I
indirectly change those desires and beliefs.
It is a familiar fact, which I have brought up here because it does effect a
bridge between analytical philosophy and Hegel and Marx, that the
acceptance of historical explanations, and indeed of psychological
explanations of any kind, has a playback effect upon the actual phenomena
under study. But that playback effect is given another name, and is
intimately connected with the notion of the unity of theory and praxis.
Finally, I should like to make a negative point, or to raise a question
rather than make an assertion. It is noticeable that, in gatherings such as
this, we do make references to spiritual realities which we somehow think we
can identify as if we had access to some form of collective consciousness.
For instance, we placidly refer to the spiritual malaise of our times.
Burckhardt and other great historians have certainly operated in this way.
Some of us - and I am one - have constituted subjects and delineated
periods in terms of spiritual realities which are collective states of minds, or
collective conditions. which they identify. Then they impose these patterns
upon history and one sees history through them. This habit of thought has
very serious consequences if you transfer it onto the present, because then
the playback effect comes into existence and you see the facts as forming a
certain constellation, and in these spiritual terms.
Now. I am exceedingly sceptical myself about whether we know that
there is a spiritual malaise, or how we know, or what this exactly means.
This is where the historical service of Karl Marx seems to me of inestimable
value.

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227

MAX BLACK

I should like to begin by repeating a point I made earlier, because I believe it

demands further attention. Borrowing an idea of Professor Gallie, I was
arguing that history, considered as narrative, not as what actually
happened, is an "essentially contested concept." That is to say, there is no
definite thing called history which we can examine, describe and analyse.
Indeed, I might say that there are degrees of essential contestedness, and
that compared, say, with science, which is also to some degree a contested
concept, history, like art, is even more contested.
To put it in plain language, it seems to me a mistake in method to suppose
that talking about history in the way that Isaiah Berlin and Stuart
Hampshire did, is like talking about horses or the State of Israel - talking
about something that is actually "given."
The "given" consists, in the first place, of a number of written narratives,
some of which, for somewhat arbitrary reasons, we choose to call history. It
is rather parochial, for instance, to insist upon history being exclusively
concerned with human beings. A good deal of history is done by
scientists - as in the theory of natural selection. A good deal of cosmology
and physics deals with time sequences that involve no human beings. It
really is parochial to confine our interest in the past to the dramatic episodes
occurring in the thin slice of the last 15,000 or 20,000 years.
In talking about history, and in producing history, people are making
debatable choices. If a young history student sets out to do some research, it
is not as if the nature of the task is predetermined: it is a matter of
controversy as to what he ought to undertake. He might choose to write a
history of ideas, a very ambiguous sort of subject, or he might even write a
history of the philosophy of history, which would be an even more
perplexing and frustrating project.
The rules are not laid down, and part of the trouble in this whole dispute,
under the rubric of what I take to be the subject under discussion - Do we
need a philosopy of history? - is that we do not know what we should be
talking about yet, and it is hard to come to any decision.
I shall now try to say one or two positive things. The prior question,
suggested by a famous remark of Henry Ford, might be: 'Do we need
history?' (For if we do not need any history then we probably do not need
any philosophy of history.) And to that I think the short answer is that we

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MAX BLACK

are going to have history, whether we want it or not. If you try the
Gedankenexperiment of imagining a community, like that of present-day
Israel, losing its memory, becoming all at once senile, able to function but
having no recollection of the past, you can see, by that dramatic illustration,
what an enormous change would be produced in the conditions of life. It is
perfectly clear, then, that having histories in the sense of more or less
reliable memories of the memorable past, is part of the human condition.
So the choice cannot be between having history or having no history: the
choice can only be between having better histories and worse histories. So
much for a preliminary banality.
It is less obvious, but true, that we are also going to have philosophy of
history, whether we want it or not. Of course, its quality will depend on the
choice one makes of the preferred philosophy of history. I agree with Isaiah
Berlin's identification of certain special problems that philosophical analysis
can help to clarify, but I would like to generalize his suggestion.
There is some kind of theory implicit in the practice of any
historian - and I mean any historian, including those that Carl Becker, a
Cornell historian, referred to under the title of "Every man his own
historian." Yes, every person is, to some degree, his or her own historian,
and behind even the crude and fragmented histories that result some kind of
theory can be discerned.
It can be put in this form: Why do you choose to remember what you do?
And why, if you were writing your own autobiography, would you choose
to include these things and leave out those? From the answers an
imaginative philosopher could construct a presupposed theory - a
fragmentary philosophy of history. The same is true a fortiori of a great
historian like Gibbon: whether or not they are stated, the presuppositions
are there.
So there again one has the choice, certainly in all developed history,
between either doing philosophy of history in the sense of having an explicit
theory of the writing of history amenable to elaboration, generalization,
evaluation, criticism, and clarification - or else writing history blindly.
I think that blind history will usually be bad history. The blindness will be
condemned by a later generation of historians, who can scornfully talk
about the prejudices of their predecessors, while ignoring the presuppositions that control their own research. And the only cure - though it
is really only a sort of alleviation - is for historians, when they can drag

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229

themselves away from the fascination of their own technical work, to

become philosophers. I hesitate to suggest symmetrically that philosophers
should also become historians, because, when they do so, they tend to be
such bad ones. But at least, given the state of affairs that must prevail, it
seems to me essential that some kind of meta-discipline should emerge,
which will be of an analytical and critical nature.
The one thing I would deplore is further effort to create a "philosophy of
history" in the sense that people used to think of it. That is, a sort of super,history, in which the philosopher sets out to do what the historian does not
manage to do, namely, to uncover' the sweeping, over-arching laws of
historical development. That seems to me neither good history nor good
philosophy, but a sort of bastard offspring of the two.
PAUL RICOEUR

I too think that there must be something like a philosophy of history,

because certain unavoidable questions arise. The easiest such question is the
one which has been elaborated by Sir Isaiah, while all the difficulties start
after that.
Sir Isaiah, in short, indicated the need to distinguish between human
actions and physical events, and therefore to recognize the conceptual
network which is implied by the vocabulary concerning actions. But this can
be done, I think, by a philosophy of action. Once that basic distinction has
been made, all the other questions arise, the questions which we have
already discussed with Prof. Rotenstreich. I shall enumerate four of these
questions which I think are unavoidable.
The first, of course, is why only certain actions are historical and not all
of them (as somebody has said: many people crossed the Rubicon, but this
was not always a historical event). Then, why are these actions historical
and not others? According to what criteria are some actions picked out and
put into the records as historical?
A second problem arises with what Prof. Rotenstreich called irradiation,
impact and effects. For then the opposition between physical events and
human action is more or less blurred. Our action becomes event, is joined to
the events of physics, to constitute one time, one development.
Consequently, we must ask ourselves: how can human action and physical
events form one time?

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PAUL RICOEUR

A third problem is: what is the epistemological status of things like

institutions, states, nations and so on? Are they merely the product of the
inter-action of all the individuals, or do we want some specific kind of
mediation, unlike questions concerning concealed Hegelianism? This is not
a question against Prof. Rotenstreich, but a question for myself. Can we do
without something like an "objective" Geist? For if we decide to do without
an "objective" Geist, we are condemned to a kind of ascetic methodology,
with its obvious difficulties. We must then draw all the consequences of
methodological individualism, and it is not certain that this type of approach
can succeed. If it indeed cannot succeed, what can we do with all the
mediations between individuals, which are not individual actions, but are
norms, super-personal goals, institutions and so on?
So I think this is a question, and it is a Hegelian question, not necessarily
as producinOg some "absolute" Geist somewhere, but as concerning a Geist
like our own - the Geist of men, the Geist working within men and at the
level of human history.
Finally, I see a fourth question, which is the most dangerous, but maybe
also the most unavoidable. The word 'history' is in the singular and not by
chance. It is very difficult to speak of histories. Why do we presuppose that
there is something like one history?
Here I return to some questions raised by Prof. Polin. Among all the
postulates whiGh he discarded, there is at least one which I should like to
preserve: the idea that there is only one mankind. For if I drop this
postulate, I can slip into fascism and into a kind of dispersion of human
reality, whereas I think that I must suppose that there is something like one
mankind, and therefore one history. If I do not suppose that, then ~ at one
time or another - I shall treat some part of humanity as non-human.
But - it will be said - this is not a problem of the philosophy of history,
but of ethics: since we have a kind of ideal which floats above history, we try
to demonstrate at least some convergences within languages, within
cultures, we try to make a whole from what we know of all our
contemporaries or predecessors, and this we call history. This sphere of
which Prof. Rotenstreich spoke is indeed one sphere. You can speak of
several spheres, but finally there is only one sphere. So we are obliged to
claim that there are some convergences and to try to recognize them.
Frankly, I see this as the danger. It is precisely the unavoidable danger,
because if I can invoke only ethics to say that there is only one mankind,

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231

then I expose history to dispersion and I face this radical gap between
empirical histories and the ideal of mankind.
I should say. therefore. that perhap~ each of us must consider himself as
the end of history. That is to say. as the point from which he has to make an
image of the whole. however precarious and dangerous it may be to
anticipate a certain unity of mankind in the history within which he lives.
YIRMIAHU YOVEL

The concept of a "philosophy of history" is traditionally used in a dual

sense. methodological and substantive. I should like to take this opportunity
to suggest a third possibility, over and above (or perhaps in between) the
two recognized ones.
Sir Isaiah mentioned problems that relate to the philosophy of history
when it is taken basically as a methodology of historiography. In this sense,
the philosophy of history occupies itself with what the historian does: How
he goes about his research, what his criteria for selection are, what causal
explanations are open to him, etc. Although this is an important aspect of
the philosophy of history, I will suggest that it does not represent an
autonomous interest, but one which in the last resort should be subordinate
to a different interest underlying history - which I shall define in a moment.
On the other side of the usual dichotomy we have the philosophy of
history in the substantive sense (the degenerate form of which has just been
criticized by Max Black). This involves viewing history as some object or
entity in' itself which is governed by certain "forces" or manifests a certain
pattern of evolution. History in this sense is no longer what the historian
does but what he writes about - a real process in the world - construed as
a nexus of "events," or of "facts," or of "actions," etc .. depending on who
does the constructing. The philosopher of history in this sense will try to find
some structure or even define certain super-laws over and above what the
empirical historian has done. This form of the philosophy of history has
given rise to many speculations. and its degenerate form - where the
philosopher of history takes the place of the practising historian - has
become no less obsolete than the old "philosophy of nature" (as a substitute
super-physics) has long become.
Another. more important. task of the philosophy of substantive history is
to bring to light the historicality of human existence and the manner in

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YIRMIAHU YOVEL

which history plays its role in shaping one's individual subjectivity and life.
Due recognition of its importance, however, implies a fundamental shift in
the interest underlying historical reflection. I believe that this task should be
a focus of a "third way" in the philosophy of history, namely, one which
approaches historical reflection as an expanded (and a mediated) form of
self-consciousness.
A major difference between this third way and the two traditional ones
will be its rejection of a feature common to both of them: both approach
history as an external cognitive object - as a part of the real world which
we simply encounter and wish to study. In this particular respect, there will
be no difference in kind between the study of history and the study of
nature. even if their respective methodologies are admitted to be different.
Moreover, there will be no difference in principle between studying one's
own culture and remote cultures. A Frenchman studying Louis XIV or the
Aztecs, a black American studying Abolition or eighth-century Japan, may
all treat their subject matter as a purely external object, about which they
are trying to obtain some objective body of knowledge. Their fundamental
interest will be outward-directed, aiming at the object as such, not at their
own existence and consciousness as reflected to them through this object.
Even if they are not satisfied with pure science alone, but wish to draw
practical lessons, promote liberal education or look for strategies of social
reform. etc. - this will only be a derivative. a kind of technological
corollary. Their basic attitude will remain object-directed, treating history as
something foreign and external, like natural entities.
By contrast. I suggest we view history as a form of self-understanding
and self-interpretation. Then, the focus of interest for historical reflection
resides neither in a historical entity (or object) in itself, nor in a story as
such. but in the kind of historical consciousness it makes possible; this
historical consciousness is not primarily outward-oriented, is not a
consciousness of some natural object, but rather an expanded and mediated
form of se(fconsciousness. We grasp our existence, our human condition,
indeed the constitutive layers of our subjective ego, only with respect to the
historical context with which they are interwoven. Moreover, it is only in
this manner that we interpret ourselves. assign specific meaning to our
SUbjectivity, recognize the origin of our wishes, ideas. prejudices and
queries. thus realizing ourselves within the constraints which our freedom
must both assume and transcend.

IS A PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY POSSIBLE?

233

What I propose, in other words, is to approach history from the

viewpoint of the "interest of reason" (to use a Kantian phrase) involved in it.
This interest is to expand my own understanding of myself and to become
more enlightened about my existential situation in the world. Equally, it is
the interest of forming, in reflection, a richer self-perception and of further
interpreting my life, social role and individual subjectivity within the
inevitable context in which they take shape.
This does not mean that I now regard myself as an object - as a reified
cluster of facts, features and behaviours - which has to be understood
deterministically, such that history becomes a mere supplement to the
natural sciences. Rather, the self-recognition (always, alas, partial) involved
in history becomes immediately self-interpretation; and by assigning a
meaning, a shape, and a goal to anything relating to myself, I do not simply
assert my features (historical and otherwise) as given, but participate in
their constitution. The function of meaning-assignment breaks away from
the inert, given datum and implies the negative power of freedom; it is never
reducible to a set of given "facts," but involves a reflective distance which
transcends (and shapes) facts. And, on the other hand, since my subject
matter is myself, not an external object, my self-interpretation equally
becomes a form of self-shaping. My subjective self is not a finished and
given thing, upon which I simply superimpose meanings and interpretations
from without. There is no "me" existing fully-formed in advance, which I
study externally, or come to know as a given object. Rather, my very
activity of interpreting myself has a formative function, in the sense that it
becomes a mode of my actual being. By self-interpretation I also change, I
become, I produce myself as a concrete subject.
So in this direction of self-understanding, and perhaps also with an
educational or formative corollary, I think that philosophy has still
something to do with regard to history.
RA YMOND POLIN

I should like to insist upon three points. First, the very notion of the
philosophy of history does have two different traditional senses, giving rise
to a certain permanent confusion in using this word. I would distinguish
between them as follows. On the one hand, there is philosophy of history in
the strongest sense, such as the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, or Marx; this is

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RA YMOND POLIN

the philosophy of history in general, but which can also simply consist of the
negation of that type of history and philosophy of history. And, on the other
hand, there is philosophy of history as just a set of considerations regarding
the method of the historian, regarding the function, duties and working rules
of historians.
The second point is that I think we should not forget that history is not
merely a set of deeds or events - or a narrative of certain such sets. It is also
the place of action of man. History is what we are doing, whether willingly
or unwillingly. We are historical beings. What does that mean? It means
that we try to influence the historical situation in which we are living. We
may succeed to a greater or to a lesser extent, but still we are trying, we are
intending to do something, and what we do is always something historical. I
would say that whenever a man crosses the Rubicon he is performing a
historical act. Of course, a certain crossing of the Rubicon had a very great
importance, a great influence in the building of history - at least, so
Machiavelli and Hegel thought. But any human deed is, to a certain
extent - even if to a very simple and elementary extent - a historical act.
The importance of this fact is that any set of historical realities, of
historical events and acts, acquires a certain significance; at any time some
values are becoming prevalent in a certain type of set we call a nation or a
civilization. Now, this is why it is very normal that philosophers or
historians should have spoken of the collective conscience, or of the
Volksgeist, as did Hegel. (Incidentally, I do not quite understand why Prof.
Hampshire gave Marx this kind of privilege. Marx did, however, speak of a
Totalitiit, of a Zusammenhang, which represents the same type of collective
existence.)
Moreover, it seems to me that in the perspective in which I put myself,
this collective existence is not behind us, it is not a hypostasis of a certain
type of reality. Rather, it is in front of us. It is what we are doing, what we
are aiming at, trying to establish. So Sir Isaiah gave us an excellent
definition of the great historian as a man who is precisely able to understand
that peculiar style of existence in a certain society, and who gives us the
pregnant impression that there is such a society, that civilization is breathing
a certain kind of spirit.
After all, why not speak of a "spirit" if we understand very well what we
mean by that word?
My last point concerns the problem posed by myoId friend, Paul

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235

Ricoeur. about mankind. Now. I said indeed that I do believe in the

existence of a human species. but not in the existence of a general society of
mankind. Yet I do not think that in saying this I was a fascist. What I mean
is that there are societies. civilizations, which are different, but which are to
be understood as a plurality of manifestations of the existence of the same
man. who has one and only one nature. So that there are not races - in that
respect. of course. It is the same man who is trying - in circumstances
which differ because he is a historical man - by his actions and his
intentions to establish. as a kind of work, a certain type of civilization, which
can be determined by a certain set or order of values.
Thus. I would consider it a manifestation of what Hegel once called "eine
schO'ne See Ie" to believe that there is a mankind, a humanity before us. That
could be the goal of our action - such a general society of mankind - but it
is not a presupposition. I think it would be merely a moral presupposition. but I am rather distrustful of a good heart and beautiful words.
I prefer to see lucidly and perhaps cynically the state of affairs among men,
who are often neither good nor pleasant to live with.
DONALD DAVIDSON

I would like to mention one way in which I think philosophy, or a

philosophical concern. enters into the writing of history.
What I have in mind is not at all a defense of philosophy of history. It
seems to me that analytic philosophers often exaggerate the value, to
workers in a certain area. of giving an analysis of the concepts those
workers use. Such analysis is often interesting, but mainly to philosophers.
It is a mistake to suppose that physics or economics or biology cannot get
along without the kind of clear understanding of presuppositions and
foundational concepts that philosophy is imagined to provide; philosophy
needs the other sciences far more than they need philosophy.
There is. however, a different way philosophy can enter into the writing of
history. Sir Isaiah spoke eloquently of the gift great historians have for
making actions and cultures intelligible. This is to a large extent the kind of
skill shown by any interpreter: the ability to create a meaningful pattern by
giving emphasis to some things while leaving other things in the
background. the ability to arrange the picture of motives, attitudes,
intentions and events so that it makes interesting sense to us. The talented

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DONALD DA VIDSON AND NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

historian makes us see what is significant in history much as a critic can lead
us to appreciate the beauty or style of a painting or a string quartet.
When actions are to be understood or explained, interpretation takes on a
unique flavour, for it falls under the control of the concept of rationality.
Take Thucydides' description of how people behaved during the plague in
Athens. He is frank about the fact that he is inventing much on the basis of
how he thinks people would have acted under the circumstances. His
description is brilliant; you feel this even if you are uncertain about the facts.
This projection of the unknown from the known is not mere science with a
margin for error, it is the art of the plausible. A story is not good history
because it convincingly hangs together; but this sort of coherence is a
condition of an important form of excellence in history.
In order to think about what makes a set of motives, beliefs and intentions
coherent, you must have a concept of what rationality is. The point is not
that people never do irrational things, but that you cannot appreciate
irrationality except against a background of rationality. Consequently the
ability to find an intelligible pattern in historical events requires, among
other things of course, a critical insight into the nature and role of reason in
human affairs.
A concern with the nature of rationality, validity and intelligibility is a
central trait of philosophy. The concern is normative, or even moral, as well
as descriptive and analytic. None of this should be claimed as a domain
reserved for philosophers, however. So I do not suggest that historians
ought to consult philosophers, but only that they must do one sort of
philosophy well to do one aspect of history well. Philosophy and history are
not two discrete disciplines which ought to talk to each other from time to
time; in a central area they simply overlap.
NATHAN ROTENSTREICH

Listening to these thoughts, it appeared to me that the interpretation of the

philosophy of history depends to a very large extent on the interpretation of
the nature of philosophy, philosophy being a self-referential enterprise.
I would like to make a few short comments.
To begin with, I do not think that what Sir Isaiah suggested can be
subsumed under the heading of methodology. It points rather to a mode of
cognition; this may imply methods, of course, but there is something which

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237

he wants to present as being a mode of cognition, and I think it is a totally

different emphasis than just methodological considerations.
Second, in Prof. Hampshire's statement there is an implicit
presupposition which I would render perhaps by taking advantage of a
saying, that in human affairs Einbildung ist auch eine Bildung. According
to the playback effect, what we imagine affects our perception of what
exists; this presupposes that there is a distinction between reality and
imagination, otherwise we cannot use these terms. In this sense philosophy
of history becomes part of a broader consideration about, let's say, what
reality is, what facts are, what there is.
More specifically, I would like to suggest that there are important
thematic points which still need to be explored, even today, in philosophy of
history. One is, if I may put it like this, the very paradoxical position of
history. On the one hand, we assume a kind of affinity, congeniality between
the knower and the known. We can give some explanation about lago and
Othello, as Sir Isaiah says, because we know what envy is and the like. But
on the other hand there is an epistemic chasm between the subject matter
and the knower. Here I would like to recall what Prof. Gershom Sholem told
us at the beginning of our conference, that we do not understand texts or
periods by experiencing them. But somehow we do understand them as
outsiders. It is not even through taking the role of-the other. This is some
special sort of cognition which needs to be delineated.
The most paradoxical expression, I think, of this ontological identity and
epistemic chasm is the question of prediction. We can predict the eclipses of
the sun, but we cannot predict, to any large extent, historical events. Why is
it so? I think we are closer, in terms of historical events, to earthquakes,
which we unfortunately cannot predict, than to eclipses of the sun, though
astronomical time has some importance for historical time.
There are further themes for philosophy of history today, which I can
merely indicate. For instance, time as it is used in different disciplines; what
is the common structure, what are the specific differences? Or again, the
relationship between social science and history: though the work of the
social scientist tries somehow to overshadow historical considerations, they
are not the same.
My last point is that, after having listened earlier to Prof. Polin's adieu to
the philosophy of history, we have now heard him say au revoir to it. For he
has shown that philosophy of history is not necessarily identical with the

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CHARLES TA YLOR

view that history is a converging process; he has shown that convergence is

only one of the possible interpretations of the historical process.
CHARLES TA YLOR

When I consider all these answers given to my opening question, I think that
one of our expectations has perhaps been partly disappointed. It may be
that we were hoping to learn that philosophy of history is not dead, that it is
alive and well in Jerusalem, or even that it has been resurrected in
Jerusalem. Yet though a lot of very kind things were said about it today, as
against yesterday, they were for the most part not really about the
philosophy of history. All the points made, with one or two exceptions
which I shall mention in a minute, were really made about philosophy of
social science, or sciences of man, or Geisteswissenschaften in general.
Thus, what Sir Isaiah Berlin stated at the beginning was really a point
about human affairs in general, as he explained. The same goes for what
Stuart Hampshire said about what he called the playback effect, and for at
least some of the issues mentioned by Paul Ricoeur - such as whether we
can speak of institutions and states and peoples as some kind of entity or
subject - and for most of the other points made.
There were, of course, a few things which did not fit into that category,
but these on their own would not be very exciting as philosophy of history.
They were certain methodological problems of historiography - such as
why people select certain events as significant and not others. Of course, we
can call that philosophy of history, and the subject can go on having some
kind of existence, but one can hardly imagine much time being alloted to it
in a university curriculum.
Yet since there were one or two defenders here, perhaps we might look at
the issues they raised. One of them was Yirmiahu Yovel, who actually
dared - particularly after Max Black had spoken - to intimate that perhaps
there still was something in the inquiry as to whether or not there might be
certain patterns or directions in history, something which might be worth
exploring, not perhaps with the same ambition or dogmatism as in the past,
but nevertheless. And if there were still something of this kind worth
exploring, it might deserve the name "philosophy of history" in a rather
exciting way.
I think myself that there is something of this kind, and I would like to

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239

mention two issues in this connection. First, although we cannot see an

inevitable direction in history through necessary stages towards an end that
we can now delineate, it may be the case that certain changes in history,
such as urbanization or the growth of a technological society, are
irreversible, such that when they happen to certain people, other people are,
as it were, swept into the stream one way or another. It may be, therefore,
that the distinction we make in history between barbarians and civilized is
not arbitrary. For even when the barbarians conquered the Roman Empire
they eventually recreated certain of its institutions, while when they lost
them temporarily they had nostalgia for them, so that they were no longer in
the same predicament as people before urbanization. If that were the case, it
would give some kind of sense to the notion of a direction in history.
The second issue is whether there are in certain civilizations, the
beginnings of which may have been contingent, certain ideas which are
fundamental to those civilizations, once they have bpgun. Whether these
ideas are fundamental to people's self-definition and hence impart a certain
direction, or limit the possibilities open of development in that civilization,
so that it cannot just go in any direction.
We can perhaps take an example. However successful or striking the
regime in China might be thought to be by many people in the West, it
might be that this is just something one cannot envisage as a possible regime
for Western society, for reasons that have to do with very important earlier
developments of this civilization. Something like Merleau-Ponty's "Illusion
retrospective" may arise here - that one may then read it into history as
something inevitable. But, however contingent at the outset,now that we
have come this far there may be a direction to our history. Here too we have
something more exciting to ponder on than simply the methodology of
history, or questions to do with social science.
There is also a point that Yovel mentioned and which gives, I think, a way
of distinguishing the philosophy of history from the philosophy of social
sciences, since the questions which concern simply the philosophy of social
science are those which would arise whether or not it was of any importance
whatever to human beings that they had a long past. Yovel was talking
about the very identification of oneself, and of what one is, in terms of one's
history - something that is, of course, extremely relevant right here in
Israel. If this kind of identification is important for what human beings are,
then in order to understand them we have to take into account not just

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CHARLES TAYLOR

social science in some general sense, which could be purely contemporary,

but history -- the whole development of the past. This would be another way
in which to regain philosophy of history of a more exciting kind.
So the question with which we are left is whether there is any life in these
or other significant possibilities for philosophy of history. Or are we, from
now on, to give this title only to those other rather empty and less exciting
issues?

INDEX OF NAMES

Abel, L. 192
Anscombe, G.E.M. 54 59 79 110
Aquinas, T. 66
Arieli, Y. 109
Aristotle 5 36 55 63 64 65 66 216
Arnold, M. 28
Aron, R. 192
AtweU, J.E. 110
Austin, J.L. 72 74 84 110

Dilthey, W. 13-15 224

Donagan, A. 84
Donne, J. 53
Dray, W.H. 97 98 101 109
Eisler, R. 126
Emerson, R.W. 28 33
Engels, F.
168 169 170 174 175 190
211
Eusebius 28

Barnes, H. 198
Becker, C. 228
Bentham, J. 185
Bergson, H. 208
Berlin, I. 32 219 225 227-229 231
234-238
Black, M. 59 110 219 227 231 238
Bloch, M. 12
Boutroux, E. 163
Bratman, M. 59
Briand, A. 173
Bryce. J. 27
Burckhardt, J. 226

Feinberg, J. 99
Feuerbach, L. 179
Fichte, J.G. 178 180 181 182 187
Foucault, M. 175
Frankfurt, H. 145
Frege. G. 14
Fustel de Coulanges 224
Gadamer, H.G.
Galilei, G.

10 11 18 19

22 36

Gallie, W.B. 227

Geach, P.T. 59
Gibbon, E. 30 228
Glaucon 151
Goldman, A.I. 110
Grice, H.P. 5051 59

Carlyle, T. 28 33
Chomsky, N. 10
Collingwood, R.G. 32 71 72 84 97
98 223
Comte, A. 201 210
Constantine 40
Contat, M. 198
Croce, B. 32

Habermas, J. 10
Hampshire, S. 59 110219 225 227234
237 238
Hare, R.M. 145
Harman, G. 59
Hart, H.L.A. 100 101
Hayek, F.A.v. 108 111
Hegel, G.W.F. 14 15 32 33 35 40 115
116 120 121 130 136 137 139 140-145

Dagognet, F. 13
Danto, A.C. 78 100 108
DaviClson, D. 6:-67 85-89 92-95
99-103 105 106 110219 235
Descartes, R. 115 130 224
Dewey, J. 34 78

241

242

INDEX OF NAMES

155-159161 164166167172 177-182

184 187 188 197 201-203 206 207
209-213 216 226 233-235
Heidegger, M. 18
Henderson, A.R. 84
Herder, J. G. v. 40 177 178 180 183
Herodotus 29 212 222
Homer 222
Honore, A.M. 100 101
Hook, S. 33
Hume, D. 55 185 187
Husserl, E. 7 70 84
Justinian

38

Kant, I. 3-5 8 16 30 66 116-130 189

197 201 202 206 210 216 233
Kaplan, A. 38-40
Kemp-Smith, N. 132
Kenny, A. 85
Kepler, J.
36
Kierkegaard, S.
191 197 198
Kojeve, A. 201 202 205
Koyre, A. 201
Knox, T.M. 154
Kugelmann, L. 162 175
Lachelier, J. 159 163
Langer, W. 109
Langford, G. 84
Laplace, P.S. de 162
Lemmon, E.1. 94
Lenin, N. 30 173
Locke, J. 151 185 186
Macauley, T.B. 24 32 36
Machiavelli, N. 107 133 234
MacIntyre, A. 107
Martin, G. 126
Marx, K. 323577 107 148 159 160-162
166-175 177 179 180182-184 187 188
190191 201202206 2Il 212217226
233 234

Mead, G.H. 29
Merleau-Ponty, M. 239
Mill, J.S. 151 185 186
Mommsen, T. 223, 224
Moraw.etz, T. 84
Newton, I. 22 36
Nietzsche, FW. 33 207
Oakeshott, M. 75 76 84
Orwell, G. 29
Parsons, T. 84
Pascal, B. 31 170 224
Petrarch, F. 108
Plato 3 12 1332 115 123 125 130209
211
Pocock, J.G.A. 39
Polin, R. 219 230 233 237
Popper, K. 32 108 111
Poznanski, E.IJ. 109
Ranke, L. v. 27
Rawls, J. 72 73 84
Reichenbach, H. 30
Ribalka, M. 198
Ricoeur, P. 21 23 24 38 166 219 229
235 238
Robespierre, M. 130
Rotenstreich, N. 219 229 230236
Rousseau, J.1. 107 148 149 151 153
186 187201-203 206-208210 212 216
Sachs, D. 59
Santayana, G. 36
Sartre, J.P. 145 191 192 194 195-197
Scheler, M. 75 84
Schiller, J.C. 177 178 180
Schutz, A. 8 84
Shaw, G.B. 36
Sholem, G. 237
Skinner, B.F. 107
Socrates 19 143

243

INDEX OF NAMES
Spengler, O. 35
Spinoza, B. 197
Stern. W. 83
Strawson, P.F. 4

Toynbee, A. 35
Trotsky, L. 29
Vieo. G. 32 35
Voltaire, F.M.A. de 28

Taylor. C. 38-40 155 157 158219238

Thalberg. I. 59
Thompson. E.P. 151
Thrasymachus 151
Thucydides. 32 209 236
Tocqueville. A. de
Tomer. A. 133

27

Walsh. W.H. 97 109

Weber. M. 23 79 80 81 84 134
Weil. E.
16
Woodward. L. 108
Wright. G.H. v. 99 104 106 110
Yovel. Y.

219231 238239

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES

IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRID SELLARS, Univ. of Pittsburgh and KEITH LEHRER, Univ. of Arizona

Board of Consulting Editors:

Jonathan Bennett, Alan Gibbard, Robert Stalnaker, and Robert G. Turnbull

I.
2.
3.

4.
5.
6.

JAY F. ROSENBERG, Linguistic Representation. 1974, xii + 159 pp.

WILFRID SELLARS, Essays in Philosophy and Its History. 1974, xiii + 462 pp.
DICKINSON S. MILLER, Philosophical Analysis and Human Welfare. Selected
Essays and Chapters from Six Decades. Edited with an Introduction by Lloyd D.
Easton. 1975, x + 333 pp.
KEITH LEHRER (ed.), Analysis and Metaphysics. Essays in Honor of R.M.
Chisholm. 1975, x+ 317 pp.
CARL GINET, Knowledge. Perception. and Memory. 1975, viii + 212 pp.
PETER H. HARE and EDWARD H. MADDEN, Causing. Perceiving and Believing.
An Examination of the Philosophy of C.J. Ducasse. 1975, vii + 211 pp.

7.

HECTOR-NERI CASTANEDA, Thinking and Doing. The Philosophical Foundations

of Institutions. 1975, xviii + 366 pp.
8. JOHN L. POLLOCK, Subjunctive Reasoning. 1976, xi + 255 pp.
9. BRUCE AUNE, Reason and Action. 1977, xi + 206 pp.
10. GEORGE SCHLESINGER, Religion and Scientific Method. 1977, vii + 203 pp.
II. YIRMIAHU YOVEL (ed.), Philosophy of History and Action. Papers Presented at the
First Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, December 1974. 1978 (forthcoming).
12. JOSEPH C. PITT (ed.), The Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars: Queries and Extensions.
Papers deriving from and related to a workshop on the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars
held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1976. 1978 (forthcoming).
13. ALVIN I. GOLDMAN and JAEGWON KIM (eds.), Values and Morals. Essays
in Honor of William prankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brandt.
1978 (forthcoming).
14. MICHAEL J. LOUX. Substance and Attribute. A Study in Ontology.
1978 (forthcoming).

244