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Aristotle claimed that we are so constituted in terms of the power of our mind, that the question “What happened?”, is not merely asking for the facts of the matter ,but immediately poses another question, namely, “Why did it happen?” The “Why? question is not a fact-seeking question, but rather a principle-seeking question, and these principles in turn can be related to a number of different kinds of explanations(aitia). Men desire to know, Aristotle argued in his “Metaphysics”, and the invention of History is partly a response to this desire: a response which provides us with the answers to the questions “What happened?” and “Why did it happen?”. History, in a sense, is a tran-scientific discipline in which we are provided both with the facts, and also indirectly a practical knowledge of what ought or ought not to be done(areté).
The activities of man stretch over many domains, meeting both the concrete and abstract needs necessary to provide him with the life he believes he ought to lead: a good spirited, flourishing life(eudaimonia). We should recall here, the words of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, namely, that all activities of man aim at the Good. Wars(both foreign and internecine) disrupt the pattern of mans life at all levels, threatening the possibility of meeting both his concrete and abstract needs, and perhaps there is no greater need than the need to study a subject which documents the occurrence of wars, and the ways in which they are avoided and come to an end. This study has not, thus far, had much effect in the prevention of conflicts, in spite of the empirical evidence(facts) of the destruction they bring. Add to this evidence, the rational argument that wars are practical self-contradictions(massive loss of life to prevent massive loss of life), and one can indeed wonder whether the Delphic oracle’s prophecies relating to “Knowing thyself” and “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction” are not moral, but rather empirical warnings, relating to the importance of knowledge in all mans activities.
The question to raise, given our knowledge of History is, considering the thousands of years of wars man has experienced, whether knowledge of the facts, and knowledge of what we ought to do, is sufficient for man to begin living in the “perpetual peace” Kant imagined and hoped for, when mans rational powers mature and his activities become fully rational. Until this “telos”actualises itself, man must perhaps count himself among the Freudian discontents, insofar as his relation to our civilising activities are concerned. Both History and Philosophy, are obviously, two disciplined approaches to The Good, but their approaches differ, and the way in which they do may be instructive to explore in future writings. The History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History would seem, then, to be a necessary aspect of Sophia—the wisdom we need to answer the aporetic questions thrown up by the human powers of mind we possess.
The rationalism of both Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy insist that explanation/justification and theoretical and practical understanding are important moments involved in the contextualisation of facts, which are of course, spatio-temporal entities embedded in our experience. The question “What happened?”, implies the question “What happened, when, and where?” If, to take a historical example, the facts support the generalisation that the key sphere of influence upon the world has shifted from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, one cannot avoid posing and attempting to answer the question “Why?” In the answer, we can expect to find references to knowledge(epistemé) justice(diké) well-judged activity(areté) and a grasp of fundamental principles of both theoretical and practical activity(arché), especially insofar as we encounter these elements in the contexts of power and influence.
Shifting spheres of influence are part of the Transcendental Aesthetic of History. Yet even here, the focus is on the quality of the civilisation-building activities that the Historian closely monitors in accordance with the Kantian question “What can we hope for?” This question, for Kant, is one of 4 questions which, for him, define the scope of Philosophy. Part of the answer Kant gives, is that we can hope for a global civilisation that not merely aims at the Good but has actualised it in most of its institutional structures. On such a world-view, The Good consists in men treating each other as ends in themselves, and not instrumentally as means to serve other arbitrary ends.
Another aspect of the Transcendental Aesthetic is the Historians penchant for categorising and charting the course of events during long periods of time, e.g. The Middle Ages. The Transcendental Aesthetic also engages with a Transcendental Analytic, and both together constitute a context of explanation/justification. Aspects of the Transcendental Analytic include the importance of knowledge in civilisation-building, the importance of justice, good judgement, connected to wise action, and respect for others. Historical reasoning primarily moves in this arena that is constituted by the context of explanation/justification. Long term processes(e.g. the globalisation process) which take, according to Kant, hundreds of thousands of years are subject to an underlying telos, e.g. Cosmopolitanism, operating in the Historians explanations and justifications.
Ricoeur discusses the removal of the explanatory element from the fabric of literary narratives, and to the extent that this means that the Historian emphasises the explanatory element, it is not at the expense of the description of the facts. In the example of the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean, there would appear to be no problem with admitting that the Historian is using the facts to narrate the course of events that brought this shift about. The narrative obviously has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there is also the presence of an underlying possibility of the working of a complex “story” of globalisation as it unfolds and moves toward the end of Cosmopolitanism. It is difficult to fathom exactly what Ricoeur means by the above claim that the Historians explanations/justifications are not part of the “fabric” of the narrative. They are certainly part of the assumptions that are operating in the production of historical documents and texts.
A Phenomenological discussion of the “objectivity” of History follows, and there is no mention of explanatory or justificatory principles/laws. The focus is, instead, upon the consequences of the operation of principles/laws: consequences such as the linking of facts together, and the completeness of explanations/justifications. Ricoeur claims, that it is the aim of historians to make their explanations/justifications “autonomous” and independent of the “self-explanatory” intent of the narrative. Ricoeur also points out that History concentrates its attention upon a different type of object, compared to that of the narrative. One is, he argues, no longer concerned with the attribution of responsibility to individuals, as a consequence of their actions, but rather the concern is with “nations” “societies”, “civilisations”, social classes”(p.177). The characters we encounter in narratives are replaced by more abstract entities(quasi-characters), and the assumption is made that the differences between characters, and these entities, are more important than their ethical identity. Socrates, for example, pointed out how all entities concerned with justice and the work of civilisation, ought to be considered in terms of the “soul writ large”, which would retain the identity of these entities with that of psuche. This would in turn indicate that agency, action, and the types of explanation/justification associated with them, are very relevant to both the description and explanation of these so-called more “abstract” entities. This, then, suggests that if the “covering law model” or the “covering principle model” applies to the narrative and plot involving characters, it ought also to apply to historical narratives. Ricoeur, as we have pointed out in previous essays, rejects this reasoning, and retreats to the vocabulary of “generalisations” and “warrants” of the kind that we find in the work of Gilbert Ryle in his work “The Concept of Mind”. “The term “plot” may, of course be the wrong term to apply to the teleological process of globalisation that leads to the end of Cosmopolitanism, suggesting as it does the negative ethical activity of “conspiracy”. We suggested the term “story” but “Telos” may, be a better technical term and also be more appropriate ethically.
Both fictional narrative and historical narrative, are capable of charting causation of different kinds and logically related explanations/justifications of different kinds. If this reflection is correct, then the application of the idea of a “story”, is common to both forms of narrative. The “story” of Globalisation, and its end Cosmopolitanism is, of course, a more abstract form of narrative, but it is considerably more than merely a “point of view” and can be regarded as an “account”.
The issue of historical intentionality is sketched in phenomenological terms that focus upon the “differences” between History and the other disciplines, rather than upon what these disciplines have in common. Husserl’s idea of a “life-world” has proven to be a useful concept in many contexts, and it has proven its value in combatting “analytical” views of action, which emphasise causality at the expense of the reason for action and its associated intention. The application of Husserl’s apparatus of phenomenology, and this technical term(life-world) becomes difficult in History because of Husserl’s Cartesian rejection of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Husserl’s pupil, Heidegger, however, has managed to provide us with an architectonic of concepts which are more applicable to the domain of historical activity. The concepts of Being-in-the-world , historicality, and Being-there(Dasein) can all be used to explain/justify what is going on in the world of History. Dasein, for example, understands itself in terms of its possibilities–its possible ways of Being-there. Living in perpetual peace in a Cosmopolitan world, is obviously something that is both ethically and politically desirable. Historicality is, to take another example, for Heidegger, an important aspect of the temporality of Dasein and this includes the “possibility” of making the past ones own, as Heidegger puts the matter. What he partly means by this, is that we have forgotten an important way of thinking about Being, in favour of a more inauthentic mode of thinking about our existence. This is certainly something Kant might have claimed in relation to our modern forgetfulness(beginning with Descartes and Hobbes) of the work of Aristotle, but Heidegger paradoxically, claims that both Aristotle and Kant are examples of Philosophers who have forgotten “the meaning of Being”. Both, on his view are rationalists, who have failed to appreciate the transcendental power of our imagination.
As far as Ricoeur is concerned, the plot of the narrative, is not the work of rationality and the faculty of reason, but rather the work of the faculty of Judgement operating in conjunction with the power of imagination, which somehow accounts for the connection of particular facts. There are, however, assumptions operating in the selection of the facts, characters, actions, and expressed thoughts of the narrative, and it is highly likely that not just judgements are involved, but also the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason. Ricoeur would deny this, and insist that it is the “point of view” of the narrator, that is determining the flow of the narrative. This “point of view” is composed of a number of elements which all combine to produce what Ricoeur calls an “explanatory effect”. He invokes Husserlian phenomenology, in connection with his judgement that the Sciences are all experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. The suggestion of genetic phenomenology is that the type of explanation one finds in science, differs significantly from the kind of understanding demanded by the narrative produced by a narrator. It is then, paradoxically suggested, that causality is the nexus of all explanation in History.(P.181) Ricoeur means here, that the type of causality we encounter, is dissociated from the teleological and formal forms of explanation discussed by Aristotle in his discussion of systems of knowledge and the logical structure that manifests itself in the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would accept that a system of knowledge could be supported solely by the faculty of judgment, and a power of the imagination. Such a combination could not produce a system of knowledge that requires principles of logic as well as those principles we use to regulate our use of concepts, e.g. categories. On both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, explanation and understanding are different aspects of the same knowledge-complex and not the bipolar opposites suggested by Ricoeur.
Ricoeur refuses to accept the validity of the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity, and prefers instead to talk in terms of structures, e.g. the structure of singular causal imputation. The sociological account of Weber is invoked to investigate the “logic” of singular causal imputation which:
“consists essentially of the constructing by our imagination of a different course of events, then of weighing the probable consequences of this unreal course of events, and finally in comparing these consequences with the real course of events.”(P.183 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur chooses to illustrate this with the example of Bismark, and his decision to declare war on Austria-Hungary in 1866. Weber asks us to consider the hypothetical question of “What would have happened if he did not make this decision?” This question transports us into an unreal hypothetical world, in which the context of explanation/justification is replaced by a context of exploration/discovery. In this “investigation” the categorical and logical reasoning of Bismark, relating to reasons for actions and decisions are banished from the discussion, in favour of a form of reasoning about imagined particulars and the degree of probability of their consequences, insofar as these are capable of determination by a “calculating mind”. There is, it must be pointed out, a contradiction in this reasoning, since according to Bayes’ theorem, the degree of probability of an event can only be calculated if one has complete information about the event concerned,.e.g. there are 50 white balls and 50 black balls in the sack we are withdrawing our ball from. Bismark of course, did not have all the information necessary for making the right prediction of what would happen as a result of his decision, because his situation was not a “closed system,” like that of the sack containing a definite number of white and black balls. The type of “calculation” involved in Bismarks decision, can not contain any explanations or justifications, but only hypotheticals, arrived at inductively in the practical context of statecraft. This, of course, puts Bismark into a “relativist position”, connected to the “psychology of discovering hypotheses”(P.186). Neither Aristotle nor Kant would concede that what is going on in the Bismark case has anything to do with “knowledge”, i.e. justified true belief , best illustrated by the more modern terminology of a “nomological-deductive model”.
History was not a systematically organised discipline during the time of Aristotle who, as we know, saw no universality and necessity in a chain of singular judgements about past events. Insofar as there was no reference to formal and final aitia(causes, explanations), there could be no universal and necessary explanations/justifications. From a Kantian point of view, judgements receive their universality and necessity from both the categories that determine our judgements, and the principles of reasoning that serve to connect these judgements into nomological-deductive arguments. Reasons can be given for the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, and these will not be hypotheticals torn from the womb of imagining the unreal. Reasons can also be given for the conclusion that Bismark was either a good leader of Germany or not. All activities, Aristotle argued, aim at the Good. The possible exception in the Historical context is the decision to go to war ,which always brings ruin and destruction in its wake even if there are good instrumental reasons for the activity, e.g. stopping a tyrant from colonising a very large area of the world and, as a consequence, denying freedom to hundreds of millions of people. As a matter of fact, Bismarks decision can be evaluated from two different Kantian viewpoints: firstly from the instrumental civilisation-building perspective, where the outcome of the unification of Germany certainly provided Germany with considerable power and influence in the world well into the future. Secondly, in terms of his attachment to using war as a means to unify Germany, the failure to treat other states as ends in themselves is a contravention of the Kantian categorical imperative(second formulation). Aristotle too would have agreed that Bismark’s decisions were not for the sake of the principle of The Good. These two different judgements appear, at first sight, to be contradictory, but they are not so, because the principle of noncontradiction clearly qualifies itself with the words, “at the same time and in the same respect”. The positive judgement about Bismark is clearly a judgment that falls into the practical category of instrumental judgements and the negative judgement is a categorical ethical judgement.
Weber is again referred to in relation to the problem of causality and its consequence , determinism. The human decision can be situated in the context of causality or the context of freedom of choice. The idea of freedom is not completely detached from causality, because, on Kant’ theory, the free will causes itself to be active. Freedom, for Kant, is architectonic, i.e. an idea which orders the world in terms of ends, but it is also an idea that does not flow from experience. It is, rather, a principle which orders experience, by making our concepts, real or actual, in the world. According to Kant there is a detachment from the principle “Every event has a cause”, because this event of activity is self-causing. Also the relation of the act of will to an actual action, is not a causal one, where one can identify an independent cause and an independent effect. Bismarks decisions to go to war, can then be situated in a chain of causes situated in the “phenomenal world”(Kant), but they can also be situated in the noumenal world, in which, according to Kant, war may not be constitutional because it is not consistent with the ethical/political principle of bringing about the maximum freedom for everyone. This does not deny the fact that the eventual outcome for Germany was instrumentally useful in the future insofar as generating power and influence over its neighbours was concerned. The evaluation of Bismark’s legacy, which is the task of the Historian has, then, both instrumental and ethical components.
Weber’s claim that:
“causal analysis provides absolutely no value-judgement and a value judgement is absolutely not causal explanation.”(P.189 in Ricoeur)
needs further elaboration. Surely insofar as the concepts of power and influence are concerned, Bismarks legacy was obvious, and just as surely, in the noumenal world, there does not have to be a first cause or beginning of things: time is infinite and the causal chain will stretch into the past ad infinitum. In such a world a chain of causes can be begun by an act of will willing to make something happen in the world, and whilst this does not preclude situating this act in a causal chain, extending back into the past, neither does it preclude viewing this act of will as a first beginning of that chain, and thereby holding the agent concerned responsible for the consequences or ends of their action. Indeed, on the contrary, this self-causing of the chain is a condition of applying the concepts of responsibility and the associated praise or blame.
Ricoeur’s reasoning rests upon viewing individual decisions as singular events that cannot be generalised except in terms of “exemplary” necessity and “exemplary”universality(P.190). This reasoning confines us to charting the causal relation between, for example, the Protestant ethic and capitalism in terms of what Ricoeur calls” a singular causal chain”. Given the fact that ethical evaluations in their essence are universal, this approach eliminates them from the outset. Instead sociological generalisations are sought via the work of Weber, e.g. in terms of roles, attitudes and institutions which become the focus of attention(P.191). It is the Protestant “view of the world” rather than their ethical adherence to duty, that becomes the major issue. Predestination is obviously a critically important doctrine that testifies to the absence of one of the foundation stones of ethical theory, namely freedom. Predestination, Ricoeur argues:
“divests the individual f ultimate responsibility”(P.191)
Weber calls the rational ideas of God and freedom, “spiritual” ideas. Perhaps “responsibility” also falls into this category, which are set side in Ricoeur’s account, in favour of what he calls a “probability calculus”. This move reminds one of the consequentialist “hedonic calculus”, which rests upon an idea of “happiness” that Kant described as “the principle of self-love in disguise”. Neither happiness, nor the application of probability, to the events under consideration, can be connected to the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in contexts of explanation/justification related to reasoning ethically. Ricoeurs solution to the problems that emerge in his reflections, is to turn toward the concept of “plot”, and apply it in accordance with a concept of “analogy”, to the singular causal chain. The idea of “plot” becomes a carpetbag that holds the heterogeneous elements of “circumstances, intentions, interactions,, adversity, good or bad fortune”, together. Ricoeur then almost immediately modifies the term of “plot to “quasi-plot”, probably partly because of the difficulty of the possible connection of plot to ethical assumptions which do appeal to the characteristics of universality and necessity that are present in contexts of explanation/justification, and also present in Aristotle’s characterisation of tragic plots.
Historical knowledge, as we have pointed out is presented in Husserlian rather than Heideggerian terms, e.g. “noetic intention” is a favoured technical concept with its origins in genetic phenomenology(P.194). Ricoeur notes with approval Mandelbaum’s definition of society:
“individuals living in an organised community that controls a particular territory: the organisation of such a community is provided by institutions that serve to define the status occupied by different individuals, and ascribe to them the roles they are expected to play in perpetuating the continuing existence of the community.”(P.195 in Ricoeur)
This, according to Ricoeur, is:
“the ultimate reference of history”(P.195)
There is, also, reference once again to the singularity of societies–they are defined by their difference to one another, rather than in terms of their essential characteristics. It is, that is, the singular identity of a society , rather than the principles that constitute it, that become the primary issue for Ricoeur. The differences appealed to, are often empirical differences. Narratives, Ricoeur argues, allow us to portray singular individuals as characters, thereby conferring upon them a kind of exemplary universality that can be reconfigured into causes in historical accounts. The connection between cause and effect on this account is hypothetical:
“Causal necessity is therefore a conditional necessity: given the complex set of causal conditions that took place(and not others) it was necessary that the effect that was actually produced occur.”(P.201)
Part of this process involves a transition from the descriptive nature of facts in the historical account which are an attempt to answer the question “What happened?”, to the question “Why did it happen?”. Ricoeur believes in what he calls the “autonomy” of the Why-question from the What-question, because he rejects the “natural connection” proposed by Aristotle. This is partly because he demands a particular type of answer to the Why-question in terms of:
“factors, phases and structures”(P202)
This type of “analytical” approach dissolves the unity of the phenomenon being investigated which of, course, at some point, has to be “reconstructed” into a “structural unity”(P.202). Webers notion of ideal types is invoked in the ensuing discussion, which insists that the notion of a plot must have both singular characteristics and general typical characteristics. It must be acknowledged, that in certain types of historical explanation, e.g. the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean region to the north Atlantic region, the idea of a “plot” structuring what is happening, may be strained, and not be an effective means of referring to the material and efficient causes that are operating in such Historícal changes in the world. Material causes, according to Aristotle will include such elements as the territory and character of the peoples, and the efficient causes will include the decisions made by the important figures of the time. So-called “final” causes or explanations of this regional shift of power, may well include the idea of the freedom of the peoples of the region, and also perhaps an awareness of the role of the democratisation of society. This latter aspect was of course in no small part formed by ancient Greek ideas of Justice and knowledge as well as the importance of the understanding of rational principles connected to these ideas.
There does not seem to be any difficulty with using the term “narrative” to describe what is happening historically in the cases of either Bismarks decision or the regional power shift. The term “plot” may be more appropriate, however, in the Bismark case, but it must be pointed out that this literary term does not always best capture the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in historical explanations. When the “message” of the narrative account is ethical then the term becomes more appropriate.
Ricoeur again discusses the notion of event, and is keen once again to seek differences. The event, he claims:
“distinguishes the historians concept of structure from that of the sociologist or economist.”(P.217)
The event, however, is not on this account, a universal concept, but rather a differentiating mechanism situated dissonantly in different time zones(P.217). Structures too are, on this account, “transitional”, and can, as Ricoeur puts the matter, “die out”(P.217) Human works, Ricoeur continues, are “fragile”(P.217). Events are divisible, and become “quasi-events”, that occur in a quasi-plot. Ricoeur uses Von Wrights technical concept of a “system” and claims that a plot can be composed of “rival systems”(P.220). The “revolution” for example, is one “system” or “model” that contrasts with the more powerful “model” or system of “evolution”.
Ricoeur ends this chapter with a dialectical account of the chronological component of the episodic event versus an achronological component, which is configurational, and best suited for the portrayal of longer time spans. “Historical structures”, he argues paradoxically, can die out. He then qualifies this with the claim that whilst the Mediterranean region cannot die, Philip II can ,and does.
In his separate conclusion to volume one, Ricoeur maintains that his ideas of quasi-plot, quasi-event, and quasi-character, are intended to call into question our traditional and rational accounts of History, in favour of an idea of narrative that appeals not to our understanding and reason, but rather to a perspectival view of the world and its relation to the power of our imaginations.