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Aristotle’s view of explanation and understanding is provided in his hylomorphic theory of change in which he refers to 3 media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change(Substantial, Qualitative, Quantitative, and Locomotion), 3 principles of change, 4 causes (accounts) and three different branches of science to consult for both the understanding of scientific phenomena and their explanation(Practical sciences, theoretical sciences, and productive sciences). Kant largely embraces the above matrix, and elaborates upon it by providing us with a number of categories of understanding/judgment, which can be found in the different branches of science. Kant condenses a cloud of metaphysical speculation on the nature of the soul into the “drops” or faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason, and much effort is expended in characterising the relation between the a priori intuitions of space and time(Sensibility), the Categories of the Understanding, and the Principles of Reason. Kant’s major task in his mature work, as we know, was to disperse the clouds of Metaphysics that had formed as a result of the triumph of Platonism over Aristotelianism in the writings of scholars. Aristotle’s works, we also know, as a result were translated into Latin very late (1200’s), and when they were, the translation itself was problematic, according to Heidegger. Certain key words of the Greek language did not retain their philosophical meaning, e.g. aletheia, psuche, physis, and eudaimonia. The “new meanings” of these words then helped to form the storm clouds of scholastic metaphysics that Kant felt the need to disperse in his Three Critiques. Other key terms such as areté, arché, diké, and phronimos were also problematically translated, because their “explanatory/justificatory” meanings were distorted. Areté, for example, is trans-categorical term extending over the domain of character(virtue) and action(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Kant’s strategy was to decentre prevailing theoretical considerations about the nature of God, in favour of practical considerations relating to freedom and the will. For Kant, it was clear that the world of willed phenomena was constitutive of the domain of History:
“Whatever conception of the freedom of the will one may form in terms of metaphysics, the will’s manifestations in the world of phenomena, i.e, human actions, are determined in accordance with natural laws, as is every other natural event. History is concerned with giving an account of these phenomena, no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be, and it allows us to hope that, if it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale, it will be able to discover a regular progression among freely willed actions. In the same way we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognised in the history of the entire species as a steadily advancing but slow development of mans original capacities.”(Kant’s Political Writings, Trans. Nisbet, H., B., Cambridge, CUP, 1970, P.41)
Kant is not generally recognised to be a major political/historical philosopher, but the above quote, taken from an essay entitled “Idea for a Universal History”, together with another essay from the same collection, entitled “Perpetual Peace”, are major contributions to both Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of History. The idea of the United Nations was floated in the former essay, but the complex idea of Human Rights incorporating ideas of freedom and legal equality needed, in addition to the above reflections, the kind of extended ethical argumentation one finds in “Metaphysics of Morals”. All the above works, including the second Critique and the Groundwork, were clearly recommending that man emancipate himself from his self-incurred immaturity via the founding activity of reconstituting political institutions on rational grounds and principles. A spirit of criticism was directed at authoritarian dogma. This spirit also avoided descending in a sceptical spiral that would deny the importance of ideas of reasons and practical a priori principles. Such a spirit required that man impose these practical a priori principles upon himself, e.g. as expressed by the various formulations of the categorical imperative. This, in turn, suggests that both politics and law require ethical argumentation and reference to necessary and sufficient conditions that are discussed in both of these practical sciences. Necessary and sufficient conditions are, of course, important in contexts of explanation/understanding/justification.
The idea of freedom, according to Hans Reiss’s “Introduction” to “Kant’s Political Writings”, requires of a government that they refrain from regulating the speech and thought of individual citizens, as well as refrain from regulating individual rights to acquire things in the external world. In the latter case everyone must respect both the freedom and right to possessions of other individuals. These factors stand or fall together. In totalitarian regimes, freedom of speech is severely limited and corruption is rife in both the economic and legal systems. Politically connected Elites dogmatically control many of the institutions in the above systems. Reiss:
“But mans inner life must not be subject to coercion. Because we cannot know for certain anything about another persons inner life, it ought not to be the task of political action or legislation to change or in any way to condition another persons thought…all individuals have this right of acquiring possessions. It is the expression of their freedom.”(P.22)
Kant clearly sees the realm of freedom to be that which it is the task of human rights to regulate. His vision is not dissimilar to the Ancient Greek view that one ought to lead ones life in accordance with principles connected to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), diké(justice) and phronesis. The categorical imperative incorporates aspects of these ideas of reason, especially the practically oriented second formulation which demands that we so act as to treat other people as ends-in-themselves. Kant elaborates upon the Greek position by forming the technical concept of The Will: a concept that is definitely a consequence of reflection upon the different formulations of the categorical imperative which all prioritise acting in accordance with ones duty over acting in accordance with sensibly-based personal appetites and desires. Citizens, on Kant’s view, are active agents, acting collectively, with a general universal will. The outcome of a long period of activity, will, on Kant’s view result in the establishment of a Cosmopolitan kingdom of ends composed of Cosmopolitan citizens respecting each others freedom. To be clear, what is being discussed here is not a Hegelian “final solution” of a spiritual end that disregards Kantian categories in favour of a dialectical march of opposites to some kind of absolute terminus.
Reiss points to the role of Teleology in Kant’s view of History:
“When Kant talks of plans of nature in history he does not mean that there is an actual legislator or mind called nature which has consciously made a plan to be carried out in history, but merely that if we wish to understand history as (according to him) we have to, we must resort to an Idea such as that nature has a purpose in history. This idea cannot be proved or disproved by a scientific enquiry, but without it, we cannot understand history at all”.(P.36)
This is part of the Kantian account of explanation/understanding. Two important implications of this account are:
- A rational idea is a condition of the possibility for understanding history, and
- This rational idea is an idea in the mind of man that cannot be demonstrated or “proved”.
The “mind” referred to above, however, is not a mind constituted of personal individual memories and private events. Rather, we are here dealing with a form of consciousness, possessing active power emanating from different regions of consciousness(sensibility, understanding/judgement, and reason).
Ricouer’s view of explanation/understanding in History is convoluted, but it is clear, that he is sceptical of certain aspects of both the hylomorphic and critical accounts. He begins his investigation, not with the material condition of testimony that is incorporated into documentation, nor with the historical text that is the telos of the historical “work of remembering” engaged in by historians. Of course, there is a sense in which documentation “explains” testimony because the latter is a necessary condition of the former. If, however, one is concerned with characterising the whole historical process in , for example, hylomorphic terms, then the form, principle, or telos of the “work of remembering” that is involved in testimony suggests that this latter is an important element in determining the final “form” of the historical text.
Ricoeur, has, in other works(Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning,Fort Worth, Texan Christian University Press, 1976), pointed out that writing “explodes” the dialogical situation in which speech acts are directed at specific audiences present at these acts. Writing, Ricoeur insists, may be addressed to an audience that has yet to be born. Nevertheless, the implication of such “distanciation” is that there is a responsibility placed upon the author to anticipate the responses of “any audience” by incorporating in his text a response to their responses. This can be characterised as a “work of expectation” that ought to complement any “work of remembering”, which might be incorporated in the text. The historical text differentiates itself from other kinds of text by the fact that it is meant to be about long spans of time, and must also be valid for long periods of time. The problem with conceptualising long periods of time is that of deciding which categories to use for this task. Historians have tended to favour using the category of “fact” rather than “action” because statistical techniques are more relevant to the former. This approach also opens up the realm of probability theory in possible “explanations” of the phenomena one is dealing with. Bayes´s theorem, that the probability of an event is related to the information about that event, construes this information in terms of facts rather than actions, and thus excludes the use of practical reasoning in favour of a mathematical form of mathematical reasoning. Involved in this decision we can detect a scepticism with reference to the “work of expectation”, relating to anticipating actions that occur in contexts of exploration/discovery. Such work focuses upon the “unknown consequences” of action, rather than the constitutive logical characterisation of action, where the consequences of action are logically or conceptually related to the reasons that are given for that action in contexts of explanation/justification.
History is concerned with action in a context of a long temporal span and therefore with long term consequences. Its task must include explaining in general terms why the action has occurred, and this in turn requires a focus on both cause and consequence in relation to the category of actuality rather than the category of hypothetical possibility (which classifies the action as a Y rather than an X). In this work the logical identity of the action must be established before there can be investigations into its causality and consequences. Attempts at establishing “what” has been done occurs in an inductive context of exploration/discovery.
The Historian does not consult the documents in an archive in order to identify actions of magnitude and significance. Rather the concern ought to be for providing the evidence for already identified actions and the “Why”(the reasons for and the causes of the action). The action recorded is rarely an ongoing event like swimming. We are rather dealing with past actions whose consequences have largely occurred, e.g. expressed in the following terms in the above non-historical example,”The swimmer swam to the nearby island”. Here the logical identity of the action is not at issue, but is rather “named” or “rigidly designated” in the above expression which is an answer to the question “Why was the swimmer swimming?” This is consistent with the Kantian quote above in which reference is made to the idea of “purpose” or telos in History insofar as this relates to actions/events of magnitude/significance and the free exercise of the human will.
Ricoeur claims that G. E. R. Lloyd´s work “Demystifying Mentalities”( New York, CUP,1990) attempts to replace the expression “the plurality of mentalities” with another expression, namely, “styles of enquiry”. This latter expression has more of a descriptive intent than the former and belongs not in contexts of explanation/justification but rather in contexts of exploration/discovery.
Freud’s relation to History is also discussed, and this is particularly interesting and relevant, given the clear relationship there is between the activities that occur in the dialogical relation of the analyst/analysand in the psychoanalytical situation, and the equally clear relationship there is to the more structured institutional relation of judge to legal tribunal. Both proceedings involve a “work of remembering” at the level firstly, of the individual, and secondly, at an institutional level where documents are created, archived, and accessed. Involved in such activity, especially insofar as early historical documents were concerned, is a phenomenon Freud wished to categorise as “collective repression”. Freud suggests this pathological phenomenon might have occurred in relation to the records concerning the assassination of Moses. The biblical “story”, merely has Moses dying before entry into the Promised Land, and this may be a half truth necessitated by a wish fulfilment related to an admired father figure.
Ricoeur refers to Norbert Elias and his work “The Civilising process”(Trans Jephcott, E., Malden, Mass, Blackwell, 2000) as a text of importance insofar as the history of the term “representation” is concerned. There is, it is claimed, an interesting point of differentiation between a feudal state, e.g. the “Ancien regime”, and the civilising process going on in the liberation from such “feudal forces” which, as we know result in States monopolising the financing of of a society(taxation), as well as the right to coerce in the name of the law. Elias focuses upon the relation of interdependence that exists between the political organisation of a society, and its changing sensibilities and behaviour patterns. In this discussion there is no reference to the Aristotelian political vision of the political task of the creation of a large middle class, situated between the Platonic “democrats”(disgruntled sons of oligarchs) and the “feudal” oligarchs. Such a middle class will be formed, Aristotle argues, by the principle of the Golden Mean, which navigates a course (through the realm of behaviour patterns and sensibilities) between bipolar extremes. The Golden Mean is the virtue-forming principle, and part of this process of course involves widespread public education which in both its content and its form will be related to the forming of both intellectual and moral virtues. This, for Aristotle is part of his “civilising process”, or actualisation process, that is working toward the telos of installing the power of rationality(intellectual and moral) in mankind. Elias does not reason in the above hylomorphic terms, but instead refers to the more “modern” expressions of “psychic economy” and “historical psychology”(P.208), connecting these to a process he calls “rationalisation”. Rationalisation, it is argued is a process that regulates both emotions and social settings. This, Ricoeur claims, is”more than what the history of ideas calls reason”(P.208) Ricoeur maintains that this process is involved in the forming of “habits”, and the implication is clearly that this process is not “rational” in the sense Aristotle used the term but is rather “non-rational”. For Aristotle the process of the Golden Mean was essentially a “rational” process implying the operation of consciousness. Aristotle’s account of non-rational habit formation is involved in the conscious operation of reason after non-rational habits such as cowardice in the face of the enemy are formed. There is some form of conscious evaluation of this irrational habit and a new type of response to the enemy is formed: e.g. rushing unintelligently into battle. This habit is equally irrational and is a far cry from the demands of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Conscious evaluation then uses the principle of the Golden mean and navigates a course somewhere in between the extremes. In the future these “bad habits” will perhaps still be present in the memory system and might require the operation of consciousness to select the new “rational” habit. The installation of the “virtuous” habit is certainly neither irrational nor rational, but rather the epitome of what Aristotle calls “rational”. It is not “rationalising” . In talking about his civilising process Elias has the following to say:
“But it is by no means impossible that we can make out of it(civilisation) something more “reasonable”, something that functions in terms of needs and purposes”(P.367, Civilising Process)
Reference to “purpose” in the above is interesting, because it demands a recognition of action, and a relation to the formal and final “causes” that help to form a teleological explanation/justification. Now it is the case that History and its work of remembering requires a truth orientation to objects in the past. The Historian may, of course, in their final reflections on their material, in the course of the preparations for the production of a historical text, refer to the “civilising process”, or what Aristotle would call the “actualisation process”. The language of the Historian becomes more teleological and in accordance with the practical rational principles (noncontradiction and sufficient reason) at all levels of reflection.
Ricoeur, as part of his hermeneutical approach which he once described in terms of being the “long road” to the understanding of Being that Heidegger he argued approached directly, wishes to focus upon a “rationalising process” rather than the rational outcome of the process. As part of one of his themes “The Conflict of Interpretations” Ricoeur quotes Pascal:
“Diversity….a town or a landscape from afar off is a town or a landscape but as one approaches it becomes houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grass, ants legs, and so on ad infinitum.”(Pascal, Pénsés(Trans Krailshaimer, A., J., Baltimore, Penguin, 1966, 48,65).
A Historian, it is argued chooses the scale of reflection to be used, e.g. economical, geographical, institutional, or social, on the ground of “mentalities” associated with these alternatives. This in turn makes possible and interplay between these levels as well as a dialectical discussion. Here we are not talking about seeing the same thing under different aspects, but rather, “different things”(P.211). Such attention to detail permits a change of priorities and allows the Historian to focus upon events relating to “the subordinate class”. This focus upgrades these events to events of magnitude/significance that suffice therefore to be plucked from the archives, and manifested in historical texts, e.g. the burning of a miller at the stake. In this refocussing, the life and worldview of the subordinate class becomes an issue of importance. Ricoeur believes that focussing upon the events of “village life” is “beginning at the bottom”.
Ricoeur arrives at the conclusion that this concept of “mentality” is too vague to perform the historical work of remembering. He suggests that we, instead focus upon the concept of “representation”, enriched by the phenomenological reflections of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty(P.217). The idea of “collective representation” emerges, and focus shifts from worldviews to social bonding. Unfortunately, in this discussion, the notion of “justification” is relativised, and the perspective of “scale” is used. The criteria of workable justifications, it is argued, differs from city to city. In this process of reflection, the normative element of justification, expressed in terms of ought premises and conclusions, is reduced to factual premises that form the basis for a “successful agreement”, which is then imitatively repeated via rationalising habit-formations. This “pattern” of behaviour is not in any sense categorical, but rather part of a dialectical process that leads to a “non-rational” result. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur prefers to refer to what he calls “the category of uncertainty”(P.226) which he then attempts to attach to the categorical idea of “trustworthiness”. Reference is also made to “the rules of the social game” and its “strategic logic”(P.226)
Representation is then unsurprisingly placed in a dialectical context in relation to the “political field”(P.227) and given “many meanings”. The discussion rotates back to the “faithfulness” of memory which preceded “the truth of history”(P.229). This essentially epistemological focus on “the moment of representation” thus neutralises both Aristotelian and Kantian rationalism which prioritises the world of will over the world of representation in practical contexts. The theoretical “form” of the village is not merely subsumed theoretically under the “form” of the city but is practical “matter” “formed” by the practical rational principle of the law-governed city.