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The Past Within Us
An Empirical Approach to Philosophy of History
By Raymond Martin PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1989 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07341-5
CHAPTER 1
TWO APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Our past, it seems, is behind us: fixed, stable, and secure. Our future is not fixed, but open. We can know our past, but we can only speculate about our future. Our present, neither stable nor secure, constantly and swiftly recedes into the past. Only by interpreting the past, and then viewing the present through the lens of this interpretation, can we locate ourselves in a stable world. If we cannot know what we will be, and cannot directly interpret who we are, at least, it seems, we can know what we have been. And in knowing what we have been, we discover who we are.
One thing we are is historians. We not only interpret what we have been, we have a deep need to do so. Every reader of this book, from the time they acquire an awareness of themselves to the present moment, has constructed and continually revises a narrative account of his own personal past. We have also constructed and continually revise narrative accounts of various groups to which we belong, such as our families. These narrative accounts are largely the products of our deep need for an identity. And we, that is, the we who we take ourselves to be, are largely their products. Our interpretations construct us, as much as we them.
Our amateur activity of interpreting our personal and group histories shades off into the professional historian's activity of interpreting our collective histories. Both are motivated by the basic questions of historical studies: What happened? Why did it happen? What does it mean? The first question is a request for facts, the second for explanation, the third for meaning or significance. All historical accounts answer at least the first question. Minimally complete historical studies answer also the second. Full-blooded historical interpretations answer all three.
Historical interpretations are inevitable, and they come before philosophy of history. There would be no philosophy of history if there were not first historical interpretations. But philosophy of history is equally inevitable. Once there are historical interpretations, reflective people are bound to ask philosophical questions about them: What are historical interpretations? Why do we interpret our past as we do, rather than in some other way or not at all? What is the significance of the fact that we interpret our past as we do? These are the basic questions of philosophy of history. The first is a request for facts, the second for explanation, and the third for meaning or significance. No philosophy of history is complete unless it answers all three.
Once we ask the basic questions of philosophy of history, the past is no longer what it used to be — fixed, stable and secure. Only what is behind us can be fixed or stable or secure. Our past is not behind us. There may be a past behind us — we assume there is — and it may be what really happened. But, from our present perspective, that past is gone. It left its imprint on the present, but to the extent that we are ignorant of what it was and how it left that imprint, it is not a usable past. The usable past, our past, is embedded in our historical interpretations. And these interpretations are within us. For theoretical purposes, we distinguish between the past and our past, between what really happened and our best interpretations of what really happened. For practical purposes, this distinction collapses. We have no direct access to the past. We have direct access only to the present and to our past, which is an artifact of the present. We carry our past within us. Our past — the past within us — and the procedures we use to construct it are the focus of the present book.
There are a profusion of different, and even incompatible, ways in which we could interpret the past. We choose among them. But on what basis? To what extent are these choices an expression of personal or group subjective preference? To what extent are they constrained by evidence and by the conventions for interpreting evidence to which we subscribe? Are there realistic alternatives to our conventions for interpreting evidence? If not, why not? If there are, what are they, and why do we not adopt them?
How shall we answer these and related questions? The first step, surely, is to examine historical interpretations with an eye to exposing their evidential structure. To find out how, and how much, historical interpretations are constrained by evidential conventions, we have to look in detail at historical interpretations. The more carefully we look, the less fixed the past looks, and the less it looks like the source of stability and security we would like it to be. So, while historical interpretation tends to give us a relatively stable world, philosophy of history tends to take it away. This may be one reason — a deep, underlying reason — why historians are so often hostile to philosophy of history.
The present book does not answer the basic questions of philosophy of history. It is, rather, largely a prolegomenon to the sort of philosophy of history which I recommend. My main goal is a programmatic one, more methodological than substantive. It is to change the way we approach philosophy of history. I shall try to do this first by diagnosing what I take to be an essential flaw in the analytic approach to philosophy of history during its classic period, and then by characterizing and illustrating a better approach.
My diagnosis depends on seeing analytic philosophy of history during its classic period as heavily implicated in what I shall call "the conceptual approach" to philosophy of history. Philosophers of history following this approach have tried to answer the basic questions of philosophy of history primarily through conceptual analysis of the language of historical studies. Their point of departure has been words — like "explanation," "cause," and "objectivity" — rather than the evidential structure of actual historical interpretations. As a natural consequence, these philosophers have been primarily concerned with what is possible in principle, rather than with what is actual or with what is possible in fact. The legacy of this approach still haunts the philosophy of history today.
The alternative that I favor is to drop our preoccupation with conceptual analysis and look instead at actual historical interpretations, with an eye to uncovering the evidential conventions in terms of which we construct them. To be realistic, as we shall see, this looking at historical interpretations must be done from a comparative perspective that takes seriously the limitations within which historians actually work; that is, it must be done from the perspective of trying to determine how historians try to show that their favored interpretations are better than competing interpretations. I shall call this alternative approach "the empirical approach" to philosophy of history. It is empiricial, in contrast to the traditional, conceptual approach, in that it takes its point of departure not from an analysis of concepts, but rather from an examination of facts, the most central of which are the ways historians argue that one interpretation is better than its competitors. The empirical approach offers not only a new way of addressing the basic questions of philosophy of history, but also a new understanding of the traditional, conceptual approach to philosophy of history.
We, analytic philosophers of history, have grown tired of our old debates, but we have not yet addressed the task of understanding philosophically why our old debates became tiresome. I shall argue that when we do understand what was wrong with the old debates, we shall be able to see why our traditional, conceptual approach to philosophy of history has not been well suited to answering the basic questions of philosophy of history. It will then be easier to see how we need to change our approach so that it is better suited. Thus, my explanation of what I take to be an essential flaw in the conceptual approach to philosophy of history is an important part of my argument for the empirical approach.
The analytic approach to philosophy of history arose largely in order to correct the deficiencies of still earlier approaches. It retained throughout its classic period a spirit of reform as well as an undisguised enthusiasm for conceptual analysis. Both are nicely captured in the opening paragraph of Morton White's widely read The Foundations of Historical Knowledge, published in 1965:
This is a study in the philosophy of history, a discipline with a checkered past, a respectable present and, I hope, a brighter future. Once the philosophy of history was associated almost exclusively with grand speculation about the development of society, with pretentious volumes on the laws of civilization and its decay, and with futile debates about whether heroes, ideas, or material circumstances alone shape the course of human history. ... But all of this has changed dramatically when philosophers — especially British and American philosophers — came to focus so much of their attention on the logic of language, the method of science, and the analysis of concepts. ... Instead of seeking to chart the development of epochs, cultures, and civilizations, the contemporary philosopher of history is more interested in analyzing historical thought and language. ... [He is] anxious to elucidate terms that are commonly employed by historians and historically minded thinkers, and eager to advance toward a clearer understanding of the chief intellectual activities of the historian.
White leaves so-called speculative philosophy of history behind and stresses the importance of understanding the chief intellectual activities of the historian. It is hard to quarrel with these objectives. But should "elucidating terms" be our primary vehicle to such understanding?
Speculative philosophy of history began perhaps with the classical Greeks, certainly by the time of Augustine, and reached its zenith in the powerful historical visions of Vico, Hegel, and Marx. It arose, as all science arises, primarily from the need for theoretical coherence. And it was in its time an appropriate response to that need. At its best, it profoundly affected our approach to the study of human behavior, and it is still able to move us. But its time has passed, not for lack of speculative genius, but rather because historical studies themselves have replaced it. Just as the natural sciences earlier replaced theology as an intellectual discipline that could claim seriously to provide knowledge of nature, so also historical studies replaced speculative philosophy of history as a discipline that could claim seriously to provide knowledge of human society. The process of replacement was gradual, but by the end of the nineteenth century the transition was all but complete. Spengler and Toynbee, writing in the twentieth century, had almost no effect on either historical studies or philosophy.
Speculative philosophy of history, for all its majesty and insight and poetic vision, failed in the end because it had scientific pretensions but lacked both a scientific method and an adequate empirical base. Its practitioners characteristically made large-scale empirical claims, their so-called laws of historical development, which always suffered from one or another of two fatal defects: either they were too vague to be evaluated by appeal to empirical evidence, or else they were specific enough to be evaluated and could be shown to be false. With the professionalization of historical studies, historians restricted themselves to clearer claims and more modest objectives.
Speculative philosophy of history gave way to so-called critical philosophy of history, which was fully born in Vico's work in the early eighteenth century, but which did not begin in earnest or as a corporate enterprise until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Critical philosophy of history had to await the professionalization of historical studies. Just as speculative philosophy of history was possible as a serious intellectual discipline only before the professionalization of historical studies, so also critical philosophy of history was possible only after it.
The key question for critical philosophers of history has always been, and perhaps always will be, the question of how to resolve the tension between scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of human behavior. One might say that the question of how this tension should be resolved has been the main issue for critical philosophy of history. That would be true, but it would be an understatement. It is closer to the truth, if a slight overstatement, to say that it has been the only issue.
Analytic philosophy of history — the primary form that critical philosophy of history has taken in the British and American tradition — has twice gathered itself around a central problem. The first time, in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the problem was objectivity. The second time, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the problem was explanation. During each of these periods there was a prolonged debate, sometimes fierce, at the root of which was the perennial tension between scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of human behavior.
The basis for the first debate, over objectivity, was laid toward the end of the nineteenth century by American disciples of the German historian, Leopold von Ranke. These historians advocated an approach to historical studies that was born of respect for scientific methodology and nurtured by humility. This approach was, in effect, a retreat from the pretentious search for generalizations and laws toward a kind of scientific historiography that would devote itself exclusively to the discovery of facts.
These early positivists were answered in the United States by Carl Becker and Charles Beard. Both Becker and Beard called upon their fellow historians to cast off this suffocating ideal of a scientific historiography and to face up to the radically humanistic and relativistic character of their discipline. At about the same time, in Germany, the sociologist Karl Mannheim was also arguing forcefully for a relativistic account of historical studies. The fusion of these two sources of subjectivistic arguments provoked a philosophical literature on the possibility of objectivity in historical studies. My main concern in Chapter 5 is with the approach to the question of historical objectivity which is found in this philosophical literature. I explain why this approach, arguably still the dominant one in analytic circles, has outlived its usefulness. Then, in Chapter 6, I illustrate what I hope is a better approach.
The basis for the second analytic debate, over explanation, was laid in the 1930s and 1940s, also in America, and also by positivists, but this time primarily by philosophers, as a byproduct of the philosophical maturation of Logical Positivist philosophy of science. The approach of these later positivists, also born of respect for science but this time nurtured by audacity, grew into a call for a more scientific historiography that would appreciate the ubiquity and centrality of explanations in historical accounts and acknowledge the obligation to back up these explanations with a search for generalizations and historical laws.
The philosophy of science from which this later positivistic view of historical studies sprang provoked its most profound reaction in the 1960s and 1970s in the relativistic subjectivism of Thomas Kuhn. But Kuhn's focus was on science and its history, not on philosophy of history. Within philosophy of history, the most visible and influential reaction was perhaps that of William Dray, who developed a view which might be called "evaluative subjectivism."
It is curious that the earlier and later positivist initiatives, each of which provoked a long debate, advocated seemingly incompatible methodological recommendations: in the first case to eschew generalizations and laws, in the second to pursue them. These recommendations are not strictly incompatible because the two groups of positivists had different sorts of generalizations and laws in mind. The earlier positivists were trying to separate themselves from a historiography that appealed to grand laws of historical development such as are found in their most pretentious form in speculative philosophies of history. The later positivists had no sympathy with grand laws of historical development or with speculative philosophies of history, but advocated instead the modestly theoretical approach of academic social science. Even so, the two positivist recommendations are discordant. What makes them both positivist recommendations is that the ideal of historical methodology to which they appeal is scientific methodology, or what they take to be scientific methodology, and their methodological recommendations are based on the conviction that historians ought to imitate this scientific methodology as closely as they can within the limitations of historical studies.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Past Within Us by Raymond Martin. Copyright © 1989 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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