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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
American students of society and politics for the most part view “historicism”—the ascription to history of an overall direction and goal—with attitudes ranging from skepticism to overt hostility. In the general view, no valid propositions can be framed concerning matters so shrouded in darkness as the course and the end of history. Indeed it may well be asked, when we use such terms, whether we are referring to realities or merely to inventions of the imagination. Historicist theories are also said to tend to undermine concern for the individual; the needs of the present, living person are likely to shrink into apparent insignificance before the imagined events of a future age. On the part of those who in recent years have seen the bloody trails left by pretended ministers of historical missions, such misgivings are understandable.
Are social scientists and political thinkers at liberty, however, dogmatically to reject historicism? It is the purpose of this article to argue that they are not. For if history is without meaning, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that social and political affairs, which make up a large part of what we treat as history, are also without meaning. Why then should one study, or take part in, these affairs? What is at stake, in the last analysis, is our right—or duty—to regard the world we inhabit, not merely as alien material to be used or ignored as we please, but as a realm of being with which we are fundamentally united and in which, consequently, we are properly participants.
1 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Faith and History (New York, 1951), p. 3 Google Scholar.
2 See Niebuhr, op. cit., Bultmann, Rudolf, The Presence of Eternity (New York, 1957)Google Scholar, and Berdyaev, Nicolas, The Meaning of History, translated by Reavey, George (New York, 1936)Google Scholar. All of these include theological attacks on the idea of progress.
3 The spiritual similarity between the present period of history and the Hellenistic Age is brought out in Mora, José Ferrater, Man at the Crossroads, translated by Trask, Willard R. (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar.
4 For an exposition of the central role of Fortune in the minds of Romans see Grant, Michael, The World of Rome (Cleveland and New York, 1960)Google Scholar.
5 See Corwin, Virginia, “The Gnostics Speak Again: the Gospel of Truth ,” The Massachusetts Review, Vol. I (02, 1960), pp. 218–228 Google Scholar.
6 For example, in spite of all that is said in The City of God concerning the significance of temporal affairs, it is not easy to determine what meaning the world and history have for St. Augustine; it is nevertheless clear that he stands emphatically for the importance of action within the world.
7 An illuminating discussion of the contrast between the Hebraic and Greek views of reality may be found in Bultmann, Rudolf, Primitive Christianity, translated by Fuller, R. H. (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.
8 Even the sense of history on which the modern idea of progress is based has often been on the point of being reduced to cosmic order. In Condorcet, for example, the historical process is treated as an expression of scientific laws and as in principle predictable. Thus “all is given.”
9 For a discussion of the development of the concept of the soul see Taylor, A. E., Socrates (New York, 1953)Google Scholar.
10 Bergson is of course a classical source for one who desires to study the idea of novelty as opposed to the Hellenic conception that “all is given.” Cf. my “Encounter With Chaos,” The Yale Review, Vol. 50 (Spring, 1961), pp. 357–369 Google Scholar.
11 For extended comment on this aspect of Greek thought see Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress (New York, 1932)Google Scholar, and Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History (University of Chicago Press, 1949 (1))Google Scholar.
12 For a discussion of Nietzsche's rejection of the idea of progress, and his restatement of classical cyclicism, see Kaufmann, Walter, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.
13 Löwith, op. cit., p. 4.
14 See Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.
15 Bergson is a good case in point. No philosopher could be more intolerant of social theories in which reality is envisioned as final and systematic. But Bergson does not in the least eschew historical generalization nor does he deny the regularities on which such generalizations must rest. See The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, translated by Audra, R. Ashley and Brereton, Cloudesley (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.
16 It may be noted that originally social science and historicism were intimately joined. The names of Condorcet, of Saint-Simon, and of Comte, to mention no others, symbolize this union.
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