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The Consecration of History: an Essay On the Genealogy of the Historical Consciousness
To Jean Ullmo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2024
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How did it become possible to philosophize about history? Man has generally sought to locate himself in natural space rather than in historical time. The various oriental philosophies give no place to history. “Humanistic” Greece herself, in other respects so eager to explore human conduct in all its characteristic dimensions and in all its aspects, prudently recoiled from anything which might give value to time or cause history to appear as the specifically human mode of existence. No other culture, perhaps, carried so far the concern for harmonizing human relationships, and yet the idea of progress was completely lacking in it. The organization of the terrestrial city always remained the central point of the reflection of Greek poets and philosophers, who were almost all teachers and law-givers—but they never thought to situate the true destiny of man in the historical world, much less to grant man a place in the universe which would make him forget the precariousness of his condition and his subordination to that which surpasses him. And, if we listen to Aristotle: “The life of moral virtue,” he says, “is happy only in a secondary degree. For the moral activities are purely human, ανθρωπικαι.” Naturally, “it is true that, being a man and living in the society of others, he chooses to engage in virtuous action, and so will need external goods to carry on his life as a human being, πρos τo ανθρωπɛνɛσθαι.” But we must take care not to assert “that man is superior to the other animals … since there are other things far more divine in their nature than man, for instance, to mention the most visible (ϕανɛρωτατα), the things of which the things of which the celestial system is composed.” Aristotle was referring to the stars—and, indeed, it was in the circular motions of the luminaries, much more than in the human domain, that the classic Greeks saw that which is manifested in being with the greatest splendor. If we limit ourselves to the specifically human—as do those whom Plotinus designates under the frankly disdainful term oι ανθρωπικωτɛρoι—we risk losing contact with the Good that revolves in the cosmos and is our sole guaranty against the senseless non-being which threatens us from every side. Under these conditions the question of knowing whether or not history has meaning, and whether or not it is provided with an appropriate logic which expresses the profound structure of our being, appears meaningless.
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- Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. Cf. Kostas Papaioannou, "Nature and History in the Greek Conception of the Cos mos," Diogenes, No. 25 (Spring, 1959), pp. 1-27
2. Nicomachean Ethics x. 8. 1. 1178a.9-10. (Trans. Harris Rackham ["Loeb Classical Library" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926)], p. 619).
3. Ibid. x. 8. 6. 1178b.5-7.
4. Ibid. v. 7. 4. 1141a.33-62.
5. Second Ennead i. 9: "the too human," or "the common earthly men" (Plotinus Complete Works, trans. Kenneth S. Guthrie [London: Bell, 1918], II, 616).
6. Ps. 19:1.
7. Ps. 104:29
8. Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 81.
9. Ps. 93: 1, 96: 10.
10. Ps. 102:25-27.
11. Gorgias 508 a (Dialogues, trans. Benjamin Jowett [New York: Liveright Publish ing Corporation, 1927], p. 200).
12. Ps. 51:4-5.
13. Ps. 116:16.
14. Cf. Exod. 13:21 and 15:3; Num. 14:14, etc.
15. The Bible insists upon the character of the election as being beyond good and evil: Deut. 9:4-5.
16. 6:7, 19:5-6.
17. Deut. 7:9.
18. Deut. 26:19.
19. Deut. 7:2.
20. Isa. 14:16-17.
21. Isa. 6:11-12.
22. Isa. 49:6.
23. Ps. 103:8-9.
24. Isa. 65:17, 66;22.
25. II Macc. 7: 28.
26. Mark 13:24-25.
27. John 15:26 and 16:7, 13.
28. II Pet. 3:13. Cf. Clement of Alexandria Ad. Cor. vi: "The present Aion and the future Aion are two enemies."
29. I Cor. 7:31.
30. I John 2:17.
31. Gal. 4:9.
32. Byzantium will complete this semantic revolution. In the στiχεîα people will no longer see anything but the magic spirits which emprison the vital force of beings and cast lands under their spell. (Modern Greeks still have this conception when they talk of the στiχετîα and bewitched places: στOiχεiωμυεOl τóπOi.) Similarly, Emperor Romanus I had the top cut off a pillar which was supposed to be the στOiχεîOν of his enemy, Czar Simeon of Bulgaria. And, if we think of the στOiχεîα of Euclid, we can measure the magnitude of this dislocation of the perspectives.
33. For Plotinus, the stars are divinities, "in view of their regular motion, and their carrying out a magnificent revolution around the world" (Ennead ii. 9. 9; Com plete Works, trans. Guthrie, II, 615). For the Gnostic, they are "tyrants" who misuse their power over the world, and the planets are the wicked archons who, in seven-fold ranks, close against us the way to the peace of the eighth heaven.
34. As quoted by Origen in his Contra Celsum iv. 23. (trans. Henry Chadwick [Cam bridge : Cambridge University Press, 1953], pp. 199-200).
35. Soliloquia I. i. 7 (The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine, trans. Thomas and Gilligan, [New York: Cosmopolitan, 1943], p. 17).
36. De civitate Dei v. 11. The City of God, trans. John Healey (London: J. Dent, 1945), I, 156.
37. Discours sur l'histoire universelle, Part III, chap. i.
38. Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Meiner, pp. 29-30 (Cf. Lectures on the Philos ophy of History by G. W. F. Hegel, trans J. Sibree (London: Bell, 1890), pp. 13-14.
39. System der Philosophie (Jubilee ed.; Stuttgart: Frommanns, 1958), III, 432, par. 549.
40. Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, p. 42 (Lectures …, trans. Sibree, p. 16).
41. Ibid., p. 74.
42. Marx, National Ökonomic und Philosophie (Kiepenheuer, 1951), p. 259.
43. Ibid., p. 194.
44. Problems xvii. 3.
45. Ps. 12:8:
46. Inferno, IV, 40-42 (trans. J. A. Carlyle in The Divine Comedy [New York: Mod ern Library, 1932]).
47. De civitate Dei xii. 20 (trans. Healey, I, 363).
48. Ibid. xii. 13 (trans. Healey, I, 356).
49. Corresp. Letter 136.
50. In Origen Contra Celsum iv. 8 (trans. Chadwick, p. 189).
51. Cf. St. Augustine Epistle 102. qu. 2: De tempore christianae religionis.
52. Clement of Alexandria Stromateis i. c. 5:
53. St. Augustine Corresp. Letter 138. Cf. Writings of Saint Augustine, Letters, trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, S.N.D. (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953), III, 37: "Child hood, never to return, gives place to youth; vigorous manhood, doomed not to last, suc ceeds to youth; old age, putting an end to vigorous manhood, is itself ended by death. All these are changes, yet the method of Divine Providence by which they are made to change does not change…. The master gives a different task to the youth from the one assigned to the boy."
54. Florus, Epitome, ad init. (cited in J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress [London: Mac millan & Co., 1928], p. 23, n. 1.).
55. Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Dietz, 1935), pp. 269-70 (trans. N. I. Stone [Chicago: Charles Kerr, Inc., 1913], p. 312).
56. Prudentius Contra Symmachum ii. 578-636 (in Prudentius, trans. H. J. Thomson ["Loeb Classical Library" (Harvard University Press, 1953)], II, 57).
57. De civitate Dei v. 12 ff. (trans. Healey, I, 163 [v. 14]).
58. Ibid., iv. 4 (trans. Healey, I, 115: "Set justice aside then, and what are kingdoms but fair thievish purchases?")
59. Ibid. iv. 1.
60. Sermon 362. 7.
61. Cf. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 51.
62. Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566), Cap. vii: Confutatio eorum qui quatuor monarchias … statuunt; see Method for the Easy Comprehension of History by John Bodin, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), "Refutation of Those Who Postulate Four Monarchies and the Golden Age," pp. 291 ff. (cf. Bury, op. cit., pp. 37-38, and Collingwood, op. cit., p. 57).
63. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. 263 (trans. Stone, p. 301).
64. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. 13 (trans. Stone, p. 13).
65. Thucydides (i. 22) says he has left a lasting monument to posterity, a "possession forever." He wanted to serve "as many as shall wish to see the truth of what both has happened, and will hereafter happen again, according to human nature—the same or pretty nearly so" (trans. Henry Dale [New York: Harper & Bros., 1861], p. 14)].
66. Phil. 3:20.
67. Apologeticum par. 38.
68. De monarchia I, chap. i ff.
69. Bury, op. cit., p. 25.
70. Ibid., p. 27.
71. Ét. Gilson, La Philosophie au moyen âge (Paris: Payot, 1944), p. 482.
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