Making of Modernity II: The German Enlightenment Lecture 3 Making of Modernity II: The German Enlightenment

The ‘eternal’ questions of any historian – a reminder The question of human agency and human experience? The question of historical change and what causes change? The question of scale. The relationship between ‘particulars’ and ‘universals’ or, to frame it otherwise, between historical ‘facts’ and their wider meaning. What are historical ‘facts’? Is there such a thing? The nature of historical work and the persona of the historian? Can s/he be neutral and objective? Is objectivity in history writing a value, or not? Can it be achieved or is it a convenient myth? What is history? A science (in the sense of a natural science) or an art? Is it simply fiction? To what end does history serve?

General enthusiasm for some Enlightened values and aims: Enthusiasm for human reasons; ‘sape audere’ (Kant); freedom from traditional authorities ‘science of man’; the hope to create a more ‘humane society’ in which people to not oppress people but live in harmony and eternal happiness History writing offers orientation, guidance or even a lesson for people in the present  

No political unity in the German lands; hundreds of princely states So, how to write history for a divided German nation?

Def. Romanticism; Romantic period): intellectual, artistic, and literary movement in Europe towards end of 18th century - ca.1850).It was partly a reaction to the changes related to the Industrial Revolution (e.g. scientific rationalisation of nature) but also a turning against the social and political norms of the Enlightenment. The Romantic movement considered strong emotion – particularly in confronting nature - as an authentic source of aesthetic and intellectual experience (e.g. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774) Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

What do they reject? Human nature is not universal Civilisation develops in stages which lead to the highest stage: Enlightenment Europe Laws of nature Human history can be investigated like nature and be deciphered by the empirical method (see Hume fascination with Newton’s empirical method) Rejection of rationalisation/mechanismation of society through the empirical natural sciences (see Condorcet slide)

What do they offer? Def. Historicism historicism means ‘the fundamental historisation of all our thinking about mankind, its culture and values’. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, p. 2) What does it mean to historicise thinking? To historizise our thinking means to recognize that everything in the human world – culture, values, institutions, practices, (concepts such as) rationality – is made by history, so that nothing has an eternal form, permanent essence or constant identity which transcends historical change. The historicist holds, therefore, that the essence, identity or nature of everything in the human world is made by history, so that it is entirely the product of the particular historical process that brought it into being.’ (Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, p. 2) Ergo: everyone is part of this historical development; nobody can observe the past ‘objectively’

Herder is the first philosopher/historian of nationalism but his thinking has nothing to do with what 19th century nationalistic thinkers make out of it: ‘There is no such things as a specially favored nation on earth…there cannot, therefore be any order of rank…The Negro is as much entitled to think the white man degenerate as the white man thinks of the Negro as the black beast. ..Least of all must we think of European culture as the universal standard of human values. …only a real misanthrope could regard European culture as the universal condition of our species. The culture of man is not the culture of the European; it manifests itself according to place and time in every people.’ ‘No other person has the right to constrain me to feel as he does, nor the power to impart to me his mode of perception. No other person, can in short, transform my existence and identity into his.’ Herder’s new concepts: Heimat: the most complicated German word ever and there is no English equivalent. It denotes the relationship of a human being toward a certain spatial and social unit. It is often expressed with such terms as ‘home’ or ’homeland’. A place of belonging which extends into the past. Volksgeist (‘spirit of the people’): a nation expressed infused and expressed through language of a people

Yet another Philosophy of History for the Education of Humanity: Contribution to the Many Contributions of the Century (1774) – title is ironic! Presents the central themes of historicism: the past should not be judged by the standards of the present each culture is individual and a unique whole each age has its own standards of happiness and virtue that the past should be relived and felt rather than just described and ‘explained through empirical evidence from the sources Cultures should not be understood by empirical method along ‘… go into the age, in the region, and the entire history, feel yourself into it – only then are you on the way to understand the (general) word.’ Providence; not all we do can be know by empirical evidence; there is God’s plan  

Def. Historicism Involves the fundamental historisation of all thinking about mankind, its culture and values. What does it mean ‘to historicise’ all thinking about mankind? To historizise our thinking means to recognize and acknowledge that everything in the human world – culture, values, institutions, practices-- …. is made by history, so that nothing has an eternal form, permanent essence or constant identity which transcends historical change. The historicist holds, therefore, that the essence, identity or nature of everything in the human world is made by history, so that it is entirely the product of the particular historical process that brought it into being.’ (Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, p. 2)

Herder’s claims which became central to other historicist thinkers: the past should not be judged by the moral standards of the present each culture is individual and a unique whole each age has its own standards of happiness and virtue (Middle Ages are not barbaric as Enlightenment thinkers argued) past should be ‘relived’ as part of oneself rather than just described and explained through empirical evidence from the sources; empiricism and empathy; everyone is virtually part of the past History develops like an organism. All epoques and cultures are linked together in a continuum where earlier stages are the basis for the growth of later ones. Although there is no single uniform set of values for all nations, they are also not self-sufficient and independent from each other, rather they form a chain of continuum where each learns from past cultures and gives lessons for future ones. While each nation has its centre of happiness in itself, there is still a growth and progression because it builds according to is individual nature on the achievements of the past. History follows a secret plan unknowable for mankind (God’s plan; providence)

Humboldt University, Berlin (ca. 1811) Bildung: engl. education/formation but broader meaning German tradition of self-cultivation, wherein philosophy and education are linked in manner that refers to a process of both personal and cultural maturation. This maturation is understood as a harmonisation of the individuals mind/spirit and heart and in a unification of selfhood with broader society (e.g. Bildungsbürger) Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)

An event is only partially visible in the world of the senses, the rest has to be added by intuition, inferences and guesswork. The manifestations of an advent are scattered, disjointed, isolated. What it is that gives unity to this patchwork, puts the isolated fragments into a proper perspective, and gives shape to the whole, remains removed from direct observation. It is the historian who must separate the necessary from the accidental, uncover its inner structure and make visible the truly activating forces. (Humboldt, On the Historians Task)

How does the historian do this? Through the special power of divination; historians is not after ‘laws’ but connections but how the past consisted as a whole Difference between a philosopher of history and a historian? The historian moves from individual facts (particulars) to a grant thesis (universal); the philosopher from grant universals to particulars.

The so-called ‘father’ of history as an academic discipline Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886)

Deutsches Reich in 1871

Philology: the study of language in written historical sources. It is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning; it aims to produce ‘critical editions’ Barthold Georg Niebuhr ( 1776-1831), historian of antiquity

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

‘The strict presentation of facts, no matter how condition and unattractive they might be is undoubtedly the supreme law of any historian.’

The most famous but most misunderstood quote in history writing … to such high office the present work does not presume; it seeks to only show the past ‘how it essentially was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen) (History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples, 1824) Anglo-American world sees Ranke simply as an empiricist: ‘He taught it (history) to be critical, to be colorless he has done more for us than any other man. He decided effectually to repress the poet, the patriot, the religion or political partisan, to sustain no cause, to banish himself from his books.’ (J.EE.D Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London, 1960) Problem ‘error’ of translation: ‘eigentlich’ – ‘really’ ‘eigentlich’ – ‘essentially’

How do we have to understand the quote? 1. Different understanding of what ‘science’ means from the anglophone world Wissenschaft(en) = science(s): any scholarship that follows a systematic methodology NOT only natural sciences as in the English language Geisteswissenschaft(en) (human science(s) – Naturwissenschaft(en) (natural sciences) both are sciences

Ranke’s opposition to Hegel’s speculative philosophical history that dominated the scene when he arrived in Berlin Geist (‘spirit’, sometimes also translated as ‘mind’) Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) "World history... represents the development of the spirit's consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realization of this freedom.” This realization is seen by studying the various cultures that have developed over the millennia, and trying to understand the way that freedom has worked itself out through them.

But did he really get away from a philosophical history? Strong reliance on Humboldt’s idea of the ‘diving’ the connections in the past An event is only partially visible in the world of the senses, the rest has to be added by intuition, inferences and guesswork. The manifestations of an advent are scattered, disjointed, isolated. What it is that gives unity to this patchwork, puts the isolated fragments into a proper perspective, and gives shape to the whole, remains removed from direct observation. It is the historian who must separate the necessary from the accidental, uncover its inner structure and make visible the truly activating forces. (Humboldt, On the Historians Task) The past can never be fully known but only ‘divined’

Belief in Providence ‘Every epoch is immediate to God and its worth is not at all based on what derives from it but rests in its own existence, in its own self’ ‘Every human being, something eternal, comes from God, and this is a vital principle.’ ‘it is not necessary for us to prove at length that the eternal dwells in the individual. This is the religious foundation in which our efforts rest. We believe that there is nothing without God, and nothing lives except through God.’ It follows: never judge the past from one’s own standpoint but to grasp its uniqueness (see Herder and Humboldt) there is no progress to a higher state of civilization in history (see Herder and Humboldt)

History is a science and an art   ‘The historians task, however, is at once art and science. It has to fulfil all the demands of criticism and scholarship to the same degree as a philosophical work; but at the same time it is supposed to give the same pleasure to the educated mind as the most perfect literary creation. (Ranke, Wissenschaft und Kunst)

Ranke’s considers the state’ an individual and a living being, driven by an inner life force (see Herder and Humboldt) ‘A nation must feel independent in order to develop freely… It is necessary for the state to organise all its international resources for the purpose of self-preservation.’ Problem: he and his followers in the later 19th century welcome war as necessary for a state’s self-preservation

‘Objectivity’ is ‘Impartiality’ for Ranke ‘It would be impossible not to have one’s own opinion in the midst of all the struggles of power and of ideas which bear within them decisions of the greatest magnitude. Even so, the essence of impartiality can be preserved. For this consists merely in recognizing the positions occupied by the acting forces and in respecting the unique relationships, which characterize each of them. One observes how these forces appear in their distinctive identity, confront and struggle with one another; the events and the fates, which dominate the world, take place in this opposition. Objectivity is also always impartiality.’

Modern definition of objectivity is NOT Ranke’s understanding of the term ‘Objective’ accounts are attempts to capture the nature of the object studied in a way that does not depend on any features of the particular subject who studies it. An objective account is, in this sense, impartial, one, which could ideally be accepted by any subject, because it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices, or values of particular subjects’. Stephen Gaukroger, in: N. J. Smelse and P. B. Baltes, P. B. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Oxford, 2001), pp. 10785.

How can Ranke claim to be ‘objective’ and at the same time see history writing as a divine act? Ranke’s understanding of objectivity/objectivity The term ‘impartiability’ in the Enlightenment sense meant often simply that the historian should abstain from deliberately lining up with one side of the historical parties he was reporting about.  But it did not mean that the historian must take on a value-free position