HISTORICITY-Albert+Dondeyne(1)

HISTORICITY Albert Donceyne

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Man alone among the many realities of the world, is a historical being. He is the only being of which history is written because he is the only one who makes history.1 When we remarked above that our time is characterized by its being a turning point of history, everyone must have understood immediately that we were speaking of man and not of atoms and electrons, ants and robins. For these things there are no turning points. They have no freedom, hence they cannot take an autonomous attitude regarding the situations in which they fine themselves, nor do new horizons open before them for the future, for they always react in the same way. Therefore, when we study their behavior, we can abstract from the past, the present and the future since we can with certainty determine what their future will be by studying their past. Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, when spring returns to our region the robins once more build their nests s they have always done. In a word, they do not make history since they do not create a civilization, and therefore, they are not studied by history but only by physics, biology and the many branches of research called “natural science.” The fact that man alone is the bearer and actor of history, is rooted in the structure itself o four being human. Modern philosophy expresses this idea by saying that man is a history-making existence, or that historicity is an essential characteristic of man’s existence. A sharpened consciousness of historicity is precisely one of the main characteristics of our time. It is one of the chief aspects of the way contemporary man experiences his being-man. We do not mean to say that formerly man was not historical. Man is that by his very nature, but formerly he was not so keenly aware of the historical nature of his existence. For example, the ancient Greeks were dominated by the all-pervading idea of fate, which determined everything with an iron necessity, and this fate repressed their consciousness of historicity. The so-called “necessity” imposed by fate, is, of course, a pseudo-idea, the product of man’s spontaneous inclination to transfer the inevitable character of the past to the future. For, truly, what has happened can never be undone. This inevitability of the past, however, is purely consequent, its necessity merely follows the actual events. It would be wrong to conclude form it that the events were also antecedently necessary and inevitable at the same time when they were nothing but future possible events alongside numberless others. Yet. Man likes to endow possibilities with inevitability. Thus, when a student fails in his test, he consoles himself with the thought that it has to be.” In reality, it did not have to be. If he had worked harder, or if he had better “luck” at the examination, he would not have failed. Now that he has failed, there is 1

Note that the word history has two meanings: the historical events and the historical descriptions and study of these events. The term “history” refers of all to the historical event.

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nothing that he can do about it and he must make a virtue “necessity,” that is, he has to take into account his present situation, change his plans for a vacation, and begin anew to prepare for a successful test. An example may show that this lack of historical awareness did not quite disappear with the waning of the middle ages. Not many years have passed since the following argument was used in numerous Christian circles for indiscriminately condemning the social class struggle. A class struggle, so it was claimed, that aims at removing the inequality among men must be wrong, for it is a struggle against been great inequalities among men, classes and peoples points to a root in human nature itself, and therefore must be considered to be a sign of God’s will who has created man’s nature. Here, then, “what has always been” serves to support a conclusion, by way of an appeal of God’s will, with respect with what will be in the future. However, another conclusion can be drawn from the same premises - the one that is now usually drawn: Since all men are equal before God and we must love everyone as ourselves, it is in line with God’s will that we try to eliminate the existing inequalities as much as possible, that we strive for the establishment of an economical and social world which provides for a more equal distribution of opportunities for all. This transition from the present inequalities to a greater equality does not occur without a struggle, yet this struggle should always retain a human character, it should even take on a Christian character, but it may never degenerate into class war and class murder. Where, we may ask, lies the difference between the earlier and the new line of reasoning? It lies in the fact that man was formerly much more impressed by the “inevitability” of the past than by the possibilities opened by future horizons. Now it is characteristic of the spirit of our time—caused in part by the influence of the enormous development of science and technology in our Promethean world—that man has recongized that the proverb “there is nothing new under the sun” expresses only one side of what is taking place in the world. Man now realizes that it is equally true that great changes are occurring and that it is necessary, to recreate the social structures. Our modern awareness of historicity is directed to the future rather than to the past and puts emphasis upon the fact that man not only “undergoes” history, but that he has also responsibility for it. In other words, today’s awareness of historicity is closely connected with the awareness that the world, in a certain sense, is man’s work, the fruit of his labour, as creative of culture. Merleau-Ponty, the French Philosopher, has said very well: “Man is a working being, and labour, the foundations of history…is not merely the production of wealth, but is, in general, the activity by which man projects around himself a human milieu and transcends what nature provides for his life.”2 To transform the raw materials of nature into a truly human milieu that is worthy of man, is the task of man, of the “worker”, that is, of man as the builder of culture, of a world. Consequently, man is also a historical being, for whenever there is civilization there is also a history of civilization. 2

Sens et Nons-Sens, Paris, 1948. P. 215.

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Reflection, therefore, on man’s contemporary awareness of historicity is necessary if we wish to understand today’s world and cooperate in its construction. This is most important especially for the Christian because he has to reconcile this sensibility for the historical with a sincere belief in divine providence. As we have pointed out in our chapter on the Prometheus myth and modern atheism, this reconciliation is not always very easily accomplished. 2. PRE-PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICITY We must seek to define the nature of historicity, ask the questions. What exactly is historicity? It is actually the task of philosophy to discover the nature of things and express it in clear definition. But where does the philosopher obtain his knowledge? Like anybody else, he gets it from the daily experience that is common to all and which for this reason is called pre-philosophical experience. Historicity is a structure that belongs to every human being as part of his essence. In other words, that man is and knows himself to be a historical being, is contained in the way man experiences, pursues and accomplishes his being-man every day. In some sense, therefore, no one, not even a philosopher, can teach you what historicity is, just as no one can teach what it is to be a man. You know this from you experience of being-man, although you may perhaps not be able to give immediately a clear and precise answer to the questions, What it is to be a man?, and, What is historicity? But there are many things which we know without being able to formulate and define them clearly. Moreover, if a definition of sadness, of joy, of love means something for us, it is because we, as it were spontaneously, realize that the given definition agrees with what experience has already taught us. In this sense, Socrates, the great Greek philosopher, said that man’s learning process is in many cases a sort of remembering, man becomes more clearly conscious of what he already knew implicitly. Expressed in modern terms, when we reflect upon our being man and the meaning of being-man, when for example, we want to bring to light its historicity-which precisely is the task of philosophical thought-all we do is clarify and make more precise a kind of pre-philosophical understanding which is contained in the daily experience itself o f our being-man. What we are going to do now is to follow this procedure. We will start with our pre-philosophical experiences of historicity, an experience which we have had thousands of times. We have perhaps first experienced what historicity is when, many years age, we learned from our parents how to call things by their proper names: What is this? A spoon; and that? A fork; and that? A chair. What happened when we learned these names? We were taken into the homeworld of father and mother (a world that was there long before we were around) in other words we were established, mad present in that world, so that from then on we would conduct ourselves in its regard as becomes those who have to live together, to understand one another, “meet one another” through the many things which we experience as being

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“the same.” When mother now asks me for a spoon, I shall no longer come back with a fork, and when father wants a chair, I shall not bring him a broom. It is as if a secret agreement has been made between father, mother, and myself: they can henceforth depend on me and I on them. I have been admitted to a tradition which I myself take over, and this dimension of the past, the present and the future. Every human product, however humble, a fork, or a spoon, establishes us in history by the fact that it is experienced as a centre of reference to others; these references points to the many with whom we live together or to those whom we shall meet through the instrumentality of these same products. Later when e went to school, we were made familiar with the history of our own country, with Europe, and the world. Of course we became acquainted only with high points or outstanding events of history: the propagation of Christianity, the barbarian invasions, wars and peace treaties, the lives and deeds of great men whose things in one or another realm of culture, such as those of art, military science, the establishment of law, or statesmanship. In this way, on the level of explicit conceptualism, the term “history” gradually became synonymous with a series of datable events of the past. Nevertheless, beneath this clear but rather superficial definition of history another much richer and more original concept of “history” was at work, for otherwise, how would we have been able to speak of “highlights”, “turning points”, of “great men”, “heroes” and “men of genius”? Why did we call some events “great”? Because something great had “happened” there, something that has decisive importance for the course of future events. We learned, for example, that the discoveries of gunpowder, printing, and the new World, had been “turning points” in the history of European civilization. Whom did we call “great men” if not those who had known how to use circumstances to prepare a better future for their people, those who instead of “undergoing” events, had helped to “make history”? At the university the student comes into contact with the great masters of culture in a more direct and personal way. Instead of mechanically repeating what he finds in textbooks of philosophy, he tries to get a personal philosophical insight; and for that purpose he goes to school and sits at the feet of Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Kant. Philosophy becomes a dialogue with the past by means of the work of these great masters, and he hopes to learn true philosophizing by means of this of dialogue. He learns through this contact with the masters in a personal way what history truly is, what is meant by expressions such as “the history of philosophy”, “the history of art”, “the history of social institutions”. He learns why man uses here the term “history” in preference to other terms that are more or less related to it, such us “becoming”, “growth”, “evolution”3; and he realizes especially what is meant when we say that now and then “something happens”.

All those terms, “becoming,” “growth,” “development” are borrowed from the world of nature. History implies choice, decision; in short, freedom in regard to given situations. 3

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When I give my usual course on Special Metaphysics every Thursday, or publish an article about philosophy, little or nothing “happens”. But when Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method, when Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, and Heidegger gave the world his Being and Time, so much happened in the realm of philosophy that whoever earnestly occupies himself with philosophy must henceforth take notice of these “events.” Every great work of art, of culture, or of the mind is an “event,” that is, it has a universal and lasting significance for mankind. Uniqueness, originality and universality here walk hand and hand. No true history would be in hand without such major events. They make it possible that the history of mankind in general does not run idly by, that even outside those “high points” something happens; that, for example, the average man also makes contributions to true science, art and philosophy. Man knows what “historicity” is because he “is” a “history-making” existence, even when he may not know it with the clarity and precision of a philosophical definition. He knows what history is because he lives in history and has a responsible share in it. In this original experience of historicity is rooted all that man, including the philosopher, can ever tell about “historicity.” 3.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF HISTORICITY

From our past discussions it is evident that we must look for the nature of historicity in the essence of our being-man itself, that is, in that which makes experience our existence as the existence of a human being, as an existence worthy of man. There could certainly be no question of history if man lived in a closed self-centered consciousness that is incapable of coming out of itself and showing itself to others, or in philosophical language, if he were a Cartesian kind of Cogito. Nor would there be a history if he lived all alone on earth and if, like God, he were an eternal, unchangeable and timeless being. In other words, that man makes history is the consequence of the following three essential characteristics of his being man: (1) Man is neither a pure spirit nor lifeless matter but an embodied spirit. (2) Man is never alone in the world but always experiences and unfolds his beingman as a being together with the others. Modern philosophy expresses this characteristic by the term intersubjectivity. (3) Man lives in time. These three properties of our being man constitute the three components of historicity; but they are so intimately connected, that whenever one is mentioned, the two are also implied. Let us consider this more closely. Man as Embodied Spirit. As we have explained fully in the third chapter, man is not a pure spirit, nor a lifeless body, but an embodied spirit, a besouled bodily being. Materiality is not an obstacle to the unfolding of his life or the spirit but rather is the way by which the spirit expresses itself in the threefold sense that is always attached to that

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term. This threefold meaning is: (1) it exteriorizes itself, comes out of itself; (2) it shows itself to others, comes in the open; (3) it realizes, completes itself (in scholastic terms, ‘it passes from potency to act). To be man is to become man, or rather it means to take our being man to heart in freedom and responsibility. Man, therefore is not a raw datum of nature, but he is a task, a great programmed that is never finished, a ‘theme’ or a ‘motif’ as in music, something that returns and is taken up over and over again, because it can neither be sufficiently expressed nor uttered with satisfying beauty. In short, man is a ‘work’ of, a task for man. The term ”work” (oeuvre) must be taken here in a broad sense. A smile, a gesture, speech, technology and art, poetry and the philosophical essay, social legislation and charitable deeds, all of these are expressions of man’s ‘work’, they are an encounter of the human spirit with matter, with the materiality of our own body and that of the outside world. In and by means of this encounter man puts his stamp on matter, he humanizes matter and reveals himself, he shows himself to himself and to others and becomes a reality for them. Man thus mirrors himself in his work and only through this mirroring he completes his being-man. This work is both the product of his freedom and at the same time an objective situation for a new free action. For this reason man, and man alone, is the bearer of civilization and culture. To humanize himself, man must humanize the world, he must re-create the crude materials given by nature into a world of civilization and culture.4 Man’s Being is a Being-Together. All this is true not only of man as an individual, but also of mankind as a whole, for ‘to be ‘ for man always means ‘to be together with’ that is , a mutual giving and receiving, listening and speaking by means of ‘work’. It is first a receiving and listening. The best of what I own I have received from others, beginning with my bodily being which enables me to maintain my earthly life; the clothes that protect my body, the pen with which I write, the words I use, all these I owe to others; even my openness-to-the-world that makes the things that surround me speak with meaning and love to me, all these to a great extent I owe to the warm affection with which I have been surrounded from my tender years. But ‘to be together with’ also is giving and speaking. Man is likewise always directed to others in his conduct and creativity. What he does, he does in the name of others, for others, in the sight of others, as if to say, ‘what I think, say or do, is good and has value, therefore, act as I do.’ He who lives in accordance with God’s commandments, bears witness to those commandments in the sight of others, it is as if he were acting in the name of all men. "

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Cf. The chapter Christianity and Civilization.