Introduction to Historicism (part I)
In this post I introduce the concept of historicism as I understand it. I argue that this concept is the result of two distinct historical developments.
I once thought about writing a short essay explaining what historicism is, how it entered the realm of Jewish philosophical texts in the late modern era, and what exactly is problematic about this whole story. In fact, I wrote most of the essay a long time ago. However, it took me so much time to work on it that I came to the conclusion that most of it should not be published at this time. Instead, I decided to split each part of the essay and devote more attention to each than I had initially planned. In this post, I will explain the concept of "historicism" through a general overview of its formation. In the next post, I will try to explain the problems with the concept of historicism. For now, I will forgo the part concerning the identification of historicism and its problems in some modern Jewish thought. In this explanation, I will use the secularization thesis to explain the formation of the concept—something that will serve me later in my critique.
Two preliminary assumptions together constitute what is called historicism here: (1) The good or rational order is a result of forces that do not themselves tend toward the good or rational. (2) Man is the product of a hidden destiny that reaches a time when he is able to discover what has guided his destiny.[1] The foundation of the first assumption developed and gained widespread circulation thanks to the work of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) and his interpretation of the writings of St. Augustine. The Jansenist, Pierre de Boisguilbert (1646-1714), established the perfection of nature created by God in that this nature, when left to itself, works on its own toward perfection. His theory is commonly seen as the first theological formulation of the idea of the "invisible hand."[2]
According to Boisguilbert, each person's private interest in advancing their own happiness is natural.[3] When there is no interference in the advancement of a person's private interest through foreign political means that prioritize the interests of certain people over others at the economic-political level, nature is able to perform its function and humans are able to achieve happiness. In this way, the private pursuit of happiness allows the natural divine good to find expression in the public sphere. Boisguilbert did not fully develop the theory, and it seems that for him it was still mainly directed against mercantilist political policy, an opposition that would later be shared by Adam Smith as well.
There is no basis for the claim that Boisguilbert's ideas reached political theorists who came after him directly. However, it appears that in the 17th century, the use of the popular phrase "invisible hand" expressed content approximately similar to what Jansenist theology proposed.[4] According to Jansenist theology, God's action does not require man's acceptance or rejection of divine grace, which is the central mechanism of providence in early modern Christianity. Often, a natural and evil tendency of a private individual was seen as one through which God advances his good purposes.
In any case, the secularized expression of this conception, an expression suggesting that selfish mechanisms in humans promote the good public order in a naturalistic way and therefore one that is in principle accessible to human reason, was extensively developed by the Anglo-Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). Bernard Mandeville coined the phrase that has since taken wing, "Private vice, public virtue." While theologians argued that the mechanism enabling the true perfection of nature is a divine mechanism, and therefore hidden, embedded in nature—Mandeville sees this process as one that is, in principle, accessible to human reason. But in this, the character of the process itself changes: it is no longer part of God's hidden modes of action, since the necessity of the laws underlying the social process stands in contrast to the fundamental hiddenness of God's modes of action. The process of secularization, then, is expressed in the constant pushing back of the realm of God's action.
Mandeville's conception led to Adam Smith's famous concept of the "invisible hand." While the invisible hand is mentioned only about three times in Smith's entire corpus, his first use of this term was to point out that there are natural astronomical processes in which "Jupiter's invisible hand" does not intervene.[5] The conception underlying this statement is that God's hand is in principle invisible—it is not accessible to human understanding. In "The Wealth of Nations," Smith uses this expression in a manner and context more familiar to us, namely how the (in his view) reprehensible pursuit of wealth by the rich indirectly contributes to satisfying the basic needs of the poor.[6] The ironic tone of Smith, who is after all a naturalist philosopher, should not blind us from seeing that his use of the expression "invisible hand" corresponds to the earlier use by the Jansenist theologian. As mentioned, Smith completes the process of secularization of the mode of providence that began with Mandeville. The mode of providence that was hidden in Boisguilbert's work is revealed in the new social laws that Smith discovered in the science of society. Since these laws are always visible and available to human reason, they cannot constitute the domain in which God acts.
But Smith himself was skeptical. Even if in principle we can understand the social laws by which the rich's pursuit of wealth indirectly contributes to the basic wealth of the poor in general, this does not mean that this process is evident to us on a practical level. In fact, it's quite the opposite. According to Smith, the theory dealing with general laws is a very poor tool to use when determining specific policy. The particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, even if their general laws are accessible to our cognition, do not allow us access to the details relevant to improving our practical, private, or public condition. Smith argues that "in this, as in many other cases, he is led by an invisible hand toward a goal that is not part of his intention." Man's practical intention is used by God, or the laws of political economy, to promote public order separate from the practical purposes we conceive. The modesty of Smith's theory leaves an opening for the hiddenness of the practical domain—and thereby preserves the medieval division between theory and practice.[7]
The second assumption of historicism that we discussed is somewhat more difficult. The idea that providence also works through the intentions of sinners, sometimes contrary to their acceptance of God, can be found earlier in religious literature.[8] Nevertheless, the fact remains that as a secularized and prevalent conception, it is mainly a phenomenon of the early modern period. In contrast, the second assumption of historicism, according to which man is the product of a hidden destiny that reaches a time when he can see what has guided his destiny, is as old as apocalyptic literature. "Apocalypse" in Greek simply means a sublime, divine vision revealed to a person who then records it. Its more prevalent meaning—following the Book of Revelation—adds that the special content of the apocalypse is an eschatological drama (that is, relating to the end of days).[9]
Apocalyptic literature is driven by a deep Jewish impulse, at least from the time of the Second Temple. In the world, there are many sinners, the congregation of Israel is humiliated, and God is silent. In such a situation, the apocalyptic impulse is expressed in visions according to which sinners receive what they deserve, and the righteous are rewarded for their righteousness. The congregation of Israel regains its senior status, and God's blessing is recognized in it. The apocalyptic impulse stems from the need to see the "end of the story": our eyes see that many sinners enjoy comfort and inheritance. Justice demands that our eyes see sinners receiving their punishment—because only then will God's presence receive greater validity in the world. The role of the end of the story here is theodicy (justification of judgment)—to see that God is good, we must see that He manages His world according to principles of justice. The apocalyptic impulse reveals itself from time to time in history, especially when the religious person feels pressure from the fact that things are not progressing, apparently, according to the divine good. However, apocalyptic literature has an additional role: it points to the urgency of repentance toward the Day of Judgment. The apocalypse is meant to create violent pressure to return to the right path. In ancient times, the rabbis were among the leading opponents of apocalyptic literature.
Here I will offer a few somewhat complex paragraphs about how Smith's conception, which nevertheless preserves important reservations about the practical application of his social theory, received a philosophical leap that established historicism's status as one of the most distinct philosophical concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The content is somewhat more "professional," so feel free to skip to the paragraph beginning with "The most distinctive modern expression."
As we have seen, Smith was hesitant to use his theoretical principles to outline concrete policy, while referring to the classical distinction between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. In classical political philosophy, the description of the activity of political bodies is caught and the practical activity within political bodies is caught. As we shall see, in German idealism, the fact of man acting in history becomes a guarantee that history in general has meaning. However, the classical gap between theory and practice was closed (and reformulated, with another problem) with Kantian philosophy. The fundamental question Kant asks, following which he actually establishes his table of categories, is "how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible." This question was actually reformulated by Fichte in the form of the question "how can we assume that something external to us corresponds to our internal representations?" Without getting into the reformulation of the question, and whether it is legitimate or not within the Kantian framework, this formulation was accepted in German idealism after Fichte.[10]
The line of thought is apparently that synthetic a priori judgments are what actually guarantee us that synthetic a posteriori judgments are possible. For example, if I say that "this table has a cause" (synthetic a priori), my judgment is valid because there is a transcendental category of causality, as part of the structure of cognition, which is valid for any object in experience. I can even extend to "Shmulik the carpenter is the cause of this table," and here there will already be room for error in empirical experience, but not for the very presence of cause in general. In this way, Kant establishes a certain guarantee that our representations correspond to reality, or any possible experience, even if they contain things that cannot be learned from any particular experience. In another way, Kant does indeed open the door to the insight that certain predicates may be found in their subjects implicitly and in accordance with the objective reality of experience, without them being the fruit of any particular experience themselves. This occurs precisely because the subjects supposedly "inherit" from the transcendental structure of cognition. Fichte apparently believes that there is an identity between the transcendental subject and the subjects of judgment ("table"). In fact, for Fichte, the subject is nothing but the sum of its evolving judgments, not just the unifying condition for all possible judgments. For Fichte, the subject to some extent creates itself and reality so that a match between them is possible.
Hegel actually expands Fichte's subject in another direction: the subject retains its categorical structure, but this categorical structure becomes the structure of the "Spirit." Thus, for example, every nation has a "spirit" that organizes around it institutions of law, religion, and politics. The categories of the Spirit are organized like a linguistic paradigm: if we have a "paradigm" of a certain form, it requires that we find corresponding institutions of law, politics, and religion. This assumption was taken by various philologists and historians methodologically: if we have certain clusters of concepts, we can say that even in the absence of direct historical evidence, we can say something like "given the spirit of the people [the paradigm] and the political and legal institutions we find, it must be assumed that this people had such and such a religion, even if we do not find direct evidence for it." Since for Hegel the Spirit develops, often this use took on more subtle and teleological forms: "since we find such and such religion and law at developmental stage A, one must assume that the religion of this people developed from these at stage B." The main point is that a way was found to bridge the theoretical principles of Smith's social science to concrete historical reality through the application of the activity of the Spirit in the world. As if each individual acts on his own, but he is also a tool in the hands of the Spirit to complete the paradigm of the Spirit—the general purpose. Kant's regulative idea is the guiding story of history itself, and consequently also of the activity of each and every one.
I am presenting the methodological leap somewhat humorously, but think about the fact that it's not such a far-fetched idea from a phenomenon that every historian is familiar with: if you spend enough time with sources from a certain period, you develop a kind of "sense" or "prejudice" about what can be found in these sources and what cannot. This sense is something that historians cannot do without, and it is, for example, what would cause them to be very skeptical if you told them that an agricultural plow was found in an excavation layer from 80,000 years ago. Alternatively, if someone found a manuscript according to which Socrates claimed that "it's not good to upload images to Snapchat because the Chinese will find them," this finding would be rejected outright. The idea that the "subject" is actually a period with a certain paradigm is not as absurd as it might have sounded in my initial presentation, although I do believe it is poor methodology. I think we would struggle to imagine a successful historian who is not "haunted" in this way.
The most distinctive modern expression of this deep religious conception is in the eschatological role that the Hegelian philosopher takes upon himself at the end of days. For Hegel, God's providence in history becomes visible to the philosopher's thought at the end of history. As we have seen, man serves simultaneously as the creator of history and as its judge in an ongoing process. The very fact that man is perceived as the central acting subject in history "guarantees," in the eyes of the Hegelian philosopher, the alignment of the framework story of history with what occurred in history. This guarantee, to some extent, is equivalent to the classical eschatological tension. However, this conception was prevalent in the 19th century also among Hegel's students. The reference to history as an apocalyptic framework story designed to reveal the mode of action of providence or nature in human history is a component that eventually reached Karl Marx as well. For both, the historical "discovery" of matter or of the Spirit constitutes the object of thought that gives meaning to general human history. The impulse here does not require secularization; on the contrary. It is, if you will, a "religionization" of philosophy. An authentic religious apocalyptic impulse underlies the revelation of providence in the world in a way that will be understandable to man.
The change, and therefore also the secularization, in the philosophy of modern history from ancient apocalypticism stems from the acceptance of the first assumption of historicism, which we have seen was established in the reconceptualization of subjectivity in German idealism. The second assumption, according to which the good or rational order is a result of forces that do not themselves tend toward the good or rational, was in fact shared, mostly under the direct influence of Hegelian philosophy, by most of the historiosophies of the nineteenth century. Historical forces that may appear destructive, and indeed are destructive at a certain point in time, are revealed in the future as contributing to the general course that gives all of history its good and therefore complete meaning. For Marx, unlike for Hegel or Smith before him (but in a manner similar to the French revolutionaries before Marx, as we shall see), the discovery of the internal mechanism of history takes place at the beginning of the "new history" in which man, not God (or Hegel's ambivalent Spirit), is the master of man's destiny. The discovery of the rational mechanism at the basis of nature's providence in history will serve man to create his destiny with his own hands.
We have learned that at the foundation of modern historicism there is, apparently, a reversal of things that in the past were hidden to things that are visible: (1) God's providence through the intentions of sinners. (2) God's verdict toward this world that gives it its moral meaning.
[1] These assumptions, with the relevant minor changes, were taken from: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Jerusalem 2005, 226.
[2] David McNally, Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation, Berkeley 1988, 80.
[3] By the way, the term "interest" itself is new in the literature of the modern era, and there is a very interesting paper published about it and the relationship between it and passions. This paper also contains several "previous" parallels, such as from Augustine himself, of some of the concepts presented here: Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph, Princeton U. P. 1977.
[4] Peter Harrison, "Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible Hand", Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 72, Number 1, January 2011, 35-7.
[5] Some of this work was done successfully in the article: Evan Gottlieb, "(Invisible) Hand Over Fist: On The Development And Legacy Of Adam Smith's Famous Phrase", As others see us, Issue 13.
[6] This is also the use he makes earlier in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments."
[7] To read a different study with a much greater emphasis on naturalistic theology in the modern era, see: Amons Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the middle ages to the seventeenth century, New Jersey 1986, 202.
[8] See, for example: Peter Harrison, "Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible Hand", Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 72, Number 1, January 2011, 31.
[9] See the detailed discussion on the subject in Joseph Dan, History of Hebrew Mysticism: The Ancient Period, Volume 1, "Chapter Six: The Beginning of Apocalypticism -- The Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Christianity", Jerusalem 2009.
[10] I am relying on, but also significantly changing, the move made in this successful article: Lee, Seung-Kee. "Kant and Hegel on Synthetic a priori Judgment" In Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses edited by Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing and David Wagner, 3461-3468. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.