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Lucio Bertelli’s essay “Aristotle and History”(https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/13-lucio-bertelli-aristotle-and-history/(The Center for Hellenic Studies)), maintains that there are many arguments to support the position that Aristotle, in fact, had a complex relation to the domain of knowledge we call Historiography. This obviously entails a rejection of the claim that he underestimated the significance of History. Bertelli’s defence is comprehensive and convincing, embracing as it does many of Aristotle’s works including Metaphysics, Politics, Topics, Metereologica, and the Constitution of Athens.
Bertelli also refers to the work of Raymond Weil in relation to the contention that, when Aristotle is interpreted as being critical of historiography(e.g. in the Poetics), he must be construed as making a distinction between popular empirical chronicled history, and a more philosophically based domain of knowledge that he associated with the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. Indeed, given the obvious fact that Aristotle was one of the first authors to institute a classification framework for knowledge and the sciences, it would be absurd if he could not fit his own work into this system.
Bertelli, also, in the context of this discussion presents us with Von Fritz’s 4 criteria for identifying a domain as historical, namely:
- identification and criticism of traditions
- chronological arrangement of facts
- explanation of causes, and
- demonstration of the forces that are operating in bringing about historical events
These criteria may not, however, suffice for either Aristotelian or Kantian accounts of the nature of historical knowledge. For Aristotle, in addition to the above, there would need to be focus on his three principles of change, 4 kinds of change, and the three media of change(space, time, and matter). We can see that in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory, the explanation of change includes a material cause. In his work Metereologica, for example, he refers to the principles of hot and cold operating over long periods of time(e.g. ice-ages, droughts), and how these phenomena transcend the life of both individuals, and their ill governed cities. This kind of account relies heavily on a Kantian ontological distinction, between that which happens to man, and that which he does(his deeds), which is a central part of his reflections upon anthropology or philosophical psychology.
Bertelli contributes to this discussion by pointing out that there is an empirical chronicle of events occurring in contexts of exploration/discovery, which provides us with a lower level of knowledge than that which is in accordance with the complex account of historical knowledge occurring in contexts of explanation/justification (e.g. of the kind we find in the works of both Aristotle and Kant). The chronicle of particular events, following upon one another, probably requires nothing more than accurate description, and the emphasis here is on the difference between the events, rather than their relation( a difference that is sensed rather than thought). A more universal form of conceptualisation, will obviously rely on saying something about these events, in accordance with the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason. The faculty of sensibility with its powers of perception and imagination, will obviously play some kind of role in the evolution and development of historical knowledge, but this activity will then inevitably in its turn be submitted to the work and powers of the understanding and reason in contexts of explanation /justification. For both Aristotle and Kant, particular intuitions of particular events, will be occurring in contexts of exploration/discovery, but knowledge of the past must require both the powers of understanding and reason if historical knowledge is to be generated. The knowledge of the past, that is, is not an imaginative construction or variation, but rather a consequence of our being able to think/judge something about something in accordance with a categorical system and principles of reason.
Ricoeur’s account of History and its relation to the reality of the past, largely disengages from the above epistemological/metaphysical account, and favours instead a hermeneutic/phenomenological commitment which focuses more upon “meaning”(sense and reference) than the true and the good(traditional concerns of rationalism). In this hermeneutic/phenomenological account, the powers of understanding and reason are given less priority than the sensible powers of perception and imagination. The reality of the past focuses, then, not upon the future temporal dimension, so important to Heidegger, but rather on a present that is absent: on a mimetic “trace”, which attempts to represent this absence. Ricoeur invokes the idea of “standing for”, or reference, in his attempt to explain the reality of the past. This requires, in turn, the postulation of a mysterious psychological process of “identification with” the past event, which results in what Ricoeur calls a “reenactment” of the past, and a “splitting” of the event into something with an “inner” face and an “outer” face. Collingwood’s “Idea of History” invoked the idea of an “a priori imagination”, to designate the power of the mind responsible for historical knowledge. Such an idea limits our relation to the past to an “imaginary picture of the past”(P.146):
“At the end of this analysis, we have to say that historians do not know the past at all but only their own thought about the past.”(P.146)
Those familiar with the “theories of meaning” generated by analytical Philosophers, will recognise that the inevitable outcome of these theories, is best illustrated by the early work of Wittgenstein(his “picture theory of meaning”), which led to the untenable position of a logical solipsism that is also shared by Husserl, as a consequence of his leading idea of an internal time consciousness. Denying that an understanding of History is knowledge, is a sceptical response which distorts both the pragmatic work that occurs in its name, and also creates theoretical difficulties, and this is a position that Aristotle, Kant and the later Wittgenstein would not adopt.
Ricoeur presents various dialectical arguments, to rescue this account from the obvious accusation that it violates both the principle of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. One such argument proposes that the historian constructs a “model” or “picture” of the past. The relation of “standing for” is obviously a meaning-relation, but this is construed in terms of the perceptual/imaginative relation of “seeing-as”. This latter term, is one which Wittgenstein used in his later work as a psychological curiosity,rather than as a defining feature of our ontological relation to the world. Indeed he was at pains to point out that one does not see a knife “as” a knife–a knife belongs to the category of instruments and the word is defined by its use—its meaning is not a picture, but rather defined by how we use the word. This is in line with his claim that all “inner” processes are in need of outward criteria, e.g. the human body is the best picture of the soul. The powers of the body are partly constitutive of the idea of the soul that has come down to us from the Greeks, Wittgenstein claims. The form of life(psuche) that is human, is, of course, a language-using form of life, and the power of discourse together with the power of reasoning are essence-specifying characteristics, which we can access via the grammar of language, Wittgenstein argues. The curious psychological phenomenon of noticing an aspect of something does, on the other hand, use the power of the imagination. When the change of seeing an aspect occurs, e.g. I see the drawing of a duck as a rabbit, the phenomenon is half visual experience, and half thought, and in such explorative contexts it is permissible to talk of interpretation of what is seen. Talk of “interpretation”, when we are thinking of a knife or using a knife confuses the two different categories of “see”. Relying on such perceptual/imaginative powers for the “interpretation” of History diminishes the role of Memory involved in our historical understanding of events—a power of memory that is not related to the power of the imagination but rather to the categories of understanding/judgement and the principles of reason. On the Kantian account of the generation of knowledge, sensibility schematises a process with the help of the imagination which then is governed by the rules of thought provided by the categories of understanding/judgement.