In the Twilight of Western Thought

This and the subsequent chapter look at ‘historicism’. Historicism is the absolutization of one of the modal aspects. Elsewhere Dooyeweerd wrote:

Historicism is the fatal illness of our ‘dynamic’ times. There is no cure for this decadent view of reality s long as the scriptural creation motive does not regain its complete claim of our life and thought. Historicism robs us of our belief in abiding standards; it undermines our faith in the eternal truths of God’s Word. Historicim claims that everything is relative and historically determined, including one’s belief in lasting value. (Roots p. 61)

In this chapter Dooyeweerd traces the development of historicism from Vico to Spengler and Dilthey.

Summary

introduction pp. 61-63
One of the symptoms of the crisis at the end of the nineteenth century was the rise of historicism: a historistic world and life view. History becomes the place from which we view all things; everything is reduced to history. Destiny and inescapable fate rule.

Oswald Spengler’s influential The Decline of the West declared the end of history, and made way for existentialism. Tonybee’s work on world history also shows the influence of Spengler – though it is not so pessimistic.

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936)

Arnold Toynbee (1989-1975)
British historian

the origins of historicism pp 63-66
The rise of historicism can be traced back to Vico, but it wasn’t until the time of the Restoration that it gained ground.

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)

Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples and author of The New Science.

Aquinas and the medieval church held to a nature-grace religious motive. Nature can be known by rational thought, but subordinated by a supra-natural grace. This means that philosophy is subjected to ecclesiastical control. It unwittingly paved the way for humanist philosophy initiated by Descartes, where nothing apart from human reason was acknowledged.

Descartes and Hobbes: the science-ideal pp 66-70
Descartes and Hobbes had a mathematical view of the world; the world was a mechanism. This view left no room for autonomous human freedom. This showed up the conflict and tension within the nature-freedom basic motive.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Famous for his ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think, therefore I am’. Author of Meditations on First Philsophy

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Puritan author of Leviathan (1651). He was a vehement opponent of Descartes.

There was a constant shift in the emphasis either on freedom (the personality-ideal) or on nature (the science-ideal). The emphasis on the science ideal led to God being viewed as the great geometer. Human society was even constructed in this pattern. The state was given absolute sovereignty, consequently it absorbed all human freedom.

Gottfied Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

In his Discourse on Metaphysics V he describes God as an excellent geometer and as a good architect.

freedom-motive reaction pp 70-72
The eighteenth century had seen a fundamental criticism of Cartesian philosophy. Locke developed the doctrine of human rights and the liberal state idea. Rouseau once more emphasised freedom. Kant was influenced by Rousseau. Kant placed human freedom in the supra-sensory kingdom of ethics. This meant it could not be proved or refuted.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Influential British philosopher and author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Author of The Social Contract (1762)

God was no longer a mathematician but the ‘deified image of the autonomous free human personality in its ethical aspect’.

Nature and freedom were sharply separated. This separation corresponded to the separation of science and faith. However, the science-ideal was not completely overthrown.

restoration period pp 72-78
Post-Kantian idealistic philosophy (eg Hegel and Schelling) rejected the Kantian view of the legalistic ideal human personality, the ethical rule of behaviour can only come from the ‘concrete individuality of the human personality’. This irrationalistic view absolutizes the human subjectivity which was bound to the community. Individuals do not exist, community or nation is everything.

The national mind creates its culture in an organic process of historical development.

Schelling identified nature and the free spirit as two forms of appearance of the absolute. The organic form of nature developed into ever higher forms. History knows no general laws, however it is guided by this organic development which is an expression of the absolute spirit.

Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861)

Lutheran Jew he founded the antirevolutionary party in Germany and was an influence on Groen van Prinsterer.

This Historical School rejected the science-ideal approach; they developed a historistic image of reality.

Many Christians joined the Historical School thinking it gave them an ally against the philosophy of the French revolution without realising it was rooted in a pagan basic motive. The concept of the development of history could be in accordance with the concept of providence.

Stahl accepted the conclusion that the hidden law of history was a rule for human behaviour.

The historicst world-picture eventually undermined human belief: human belief was the historical product of a particular mind of culture. The radical form of Spengler was held in check by a belief in the progress of humankind. The breakdown of the belief in western civilisation led to the rise of a radical form of historicism.

radical historicism pp 78 – 82
Comte’s positivism subjected Christian and Humanistic belief to the historicist view. Comte’s Positivism restored the scientific mode of thought while retaining the new historicist approach.

Marxism gave Hegel’s idealism view a materialistic slant. Both Marx and Comte had a positive view of the gaol of history.

The more radical form of historicism did not have any positive belief.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854)

Schelling, Fichte and Hegel were the three main architects of German idealism.

Augustus Comte (1798-1857)

French founder of Positivism

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883)

William Dilthey (1883-1911)

German philosopher

Key terms

historicism The absolutization of the historical modal aspect.
Volkstgeist the spirit of the people
Schicksal

Review questions

1. What is historicism?
2. Why is historicism so pessimistic?
3. How did Spengler’s work pave the way for existentialism?
4. Why is Toynbee’s work not as pessimistic as Spengler’s?
5. How do Comte’s three states illustrate the historicist view?
6. What made many Christian thinkers join the Historical school?
7. Is Marxism a Christian heresy?
8. How did idealism contribute to the development of historicism?

Study questions
1. At the end of the Cold War Francis Fukuyama wrote an article ‘The end of history?’ National Interest (1989) and a book The End of history and the Last Man in what ways is his work an expression of historicism?
2. Why should historicism prove to be so pessimistic?
3. What were the factors that gave rise to historicism?

Taking it further
Dooyeweerd ‘History, historicism, and norms’ Roots of Western Culture ch 3.

At the end of the previous lecture/ chapter Dooyeweerd introduces two questions that will be addressed here:

 What is the snare in the historicist view of our temporal world in both its forms?
 What is the real place and meaning of the historical aspect in the temporal order of our experience?

Read the next chapter with these questions in mind – how does Dooyeweerd answer them?

Summary
introduction pp 83-84
Historicism is an absolutization of the historical viewpoint and is one of many isms in philosophy. all isms result I the absolutisation of one of the modal aspects.

Modal aspects are modes and as such relate to the ‘how’ rather than a concrete ‘what’.

historical facts 84-86
To smoke or to drink have historical aspects, they are not however historical facts. Historians are only concerned with the historical extracted from full reality.

analogical moments pp 87-
Dooyeweerd now applies the theory of modal aspects with the retrospective and anticipatory analogical moments to the historical aspect. (See 9-15 [9-12])

Modal aspect

retrocipations
anticipations
numerical
spatial
movement
energy (physico-chemical)
biotic
feeling and sensation
logical
historical
symbolic signification
social intercourse
economic
aesthetic
juridicial
moral
faith or belief

The important thing is to identify the modal kernel of the historical mode.

culture pp 89-93
Vico, under the influence of a humanistic freedom motive set the historical mode over the mathematical and scientific mode of thought. He identified culture with human society, the civil world. For Vico, against Descartes, the creation of culture occurs is a historical process. It is viewed as a separate world to nature; a world of specific historical reality.

The term ‘cultural’ is to be preferred to the term ‘culture’.

The modal kernel of the historical aspect is formative power or control. Hence, historical development is the development of formative power over the world and societal life.

There are two directions of the cultural mode: formative power over persons and formative power over things.

Personkultur = personal culture
Sachkultur = subject culture

Leopold Ranke

historical development pp 93-97
Cultural development is to be seen as a biotic analogy in the historical mode. It refers back to the biological aspect. It is founded in the logical mode.

Using the illustration of the battle of Waterloo shows that history cannot be founded on sensory perception alone.

Johan Huizinga (1872-1945)

Dutch historian and author of The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919)

norms for cultural development pp 97-99
Dooyeweerd then looks at the norm for determining cultural development. In the biological sense development is not ruled by norms, but by the laws of nature. However, in the historical sense cultural development is normative vocation, given to humanity at creation.

differentiated and undifferentiated societies pp 99-106
In general, communities are undifferentiated. A tradition has the monopoly of formative power. The development process only shows analogies of the biotic phases: birth, adolescence, decline. When such communities decline they may go without leaving any trace.

In opened-up cultures cultural development often leads to a conflict between the holders of tradition and those who propound fresh ideas.

The opening-up of human cultures leads to national communities. A nation is not blood and soil. Ethical differences between different groups are integrated into an individual whole.

Leopold von Ranke 1795- 1886

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Totalitarian regimes tend to annihilate the process of cultural differentiation.

Cultural differentiation, integration and individualization, is an objective norm of the unfolding of society. It provides a criterion to distinguish progressive from reactionary tendencies in history.

Georg Frobenius (1849-1917)

Comte and Spencer understand cultural differentiation in a different way to Dooyeweerd. They understand it in a pseudo-natural scientific sense. For Dooyeweerd in a differentiated society family, businesses, school, state and so on are clearly distinguished from each other. Each of the communities has their own sphere of formative power.

The typical structures of society are structures of individuality. All – except marriage and family – have a typical historico-cultural foundation. This means that they can be opened-up and developed.

Kulturkreislehre = culture circles
A German and Austrian movement in ethnology that arose at the end of the nineteenth century.

anticipatory aspects pp 106-110
In the linguistic aspect we have communication by signs with symbolic meaning. In the opening-up process of historical development this linguistic aspect anticipation gives rise to a symbolic signifying of historical facts in terms of for example chronicles and records.

This also leads to social intercourse between nations.

As cultures become differentiated this can lead to a battle between different cultural spheres (eg natural science, industry, commerce). Hence the preservation of harmonious relationships between the cultural spheres is vital.

The aesthetic and economic anticipations reveal themselves in the principle of cultural economy and cultural harmony. It is the violation of these principles that the juridicial anticipation is revealed.

Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht = The world’s history is the world’s judgment.

Key terms
individuality structure this is the characteristic created lawful order of concrete things.

Review questions
1. What makes the historicist position unacceptable for a Christian?
2. What makes an ‘historical fact’?
3. Why is Ranke’s description of history naïve?
4. Why is it important to identify a mode’s kernel?
5. Why does Dooyeweerd prefer ‘cultural’ to ‘culture’?
6. Why is development in history not a metaphor?
7. How does Dooyeweerd distinguish between primitive and opened-up cultures?
8. What characterises the opening-up process of cultural life?
9. What is the role of tradition in culture?
10. How does Dooyeweerd’s view of cultural differentiation differ from Comte’s and Spencer’s?
11. How did German Nazism undermine the national consciousness of Germanic peoples?
12. How does historicism deny the character and meaning of the cultural-historical aspect?

Study questions
1. What is history?
2. Compare and contrast history and historicism.
3. Compare and contrast one primitive with one opened-up culture
4. How might a primitive culture be opened up?
5. How does the concept of a differentiated community affect the issue of asylum?