Shapes of Time

190 Pages·1977·69.376 MB·English

by  Peter Munz

THE
SHAPES
OF
TIME
ANe w Look at the Philosophy of History
by PETER MUNZ
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, Connecticut
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
2 The Time Sequence 22
3 The Covering Law 39
4 Explanation and Interpretation 62
5 Myth: An Alternative Coverage 113
6 The Taxonomy of Universals 151
7 Sources and Raw Material 173
8 The Nature of the Story 204
9 The Philosophy of the Story 246
Notes 301
Select Bibliography 351
Index 373
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PREFACE
Es zeigt sich dass hinter dem sogenannten Vorhange, welcher das Although the problem of the philosophy of history has been in my
Innere verdecken soil, nichts zu sehen ist, wenn wir nicht selbst dahintergehen,
mind ever since I was a student, I had no intention of writing
ebensosehr damit gesehen werde, als dass etwas dahinter sei, das gesehen
about it until I saw how much my own students needed a book to
werden kann. [It appears then that there is nothing to be seen behind the
explain to them the methods and purposes of a comprehensive
so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, unless
and speculative philosophy of history. I decided to write in order
we ourselves step behind it. When we step behind it, we do so not only to
see but also to put something there to be seen.]-G. W. F. Hegel to show that speculative philosophies of history are both impor
tant and necessary because they alone can establish the connec
. . . the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted tions between the separate, detailed studies historians specialise in .
theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory This book, therefore, was not only written to promote knowledge
with the world.-Thomas S. Kuhn and understanding but also to protest against the increasing frag
mentation of historical researches. Our knowledge of the past has
always had to suffer at the hands of mere antiquarians. But their
threat was tolerable. Today the threat has become real because it
comes from a completely different quarter. It comes, first, from
the division of historical studies into such courses as the credit sys
tem of any one university requires. And, second, from the intel
lectual habits of the teachers who cannot get appointments and
promotions in these universities unless they devote themselves to
the writing of impeccable monographs. In this way, both teachers
and students forget that the study of history is the study of a pro
cess that started in Sumer and led to World War II and the rise of
the Third World. Without a comprehensive philosophy of history,
which links the separate fragments historians are forced to concen
trate on, one is bound to lose sight of the significance of the whole
enterprise. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to show how
speculative and comprehensive philosophies of history are not
only necessary to make sense of specialised studies, but also feasi
ble - a point that is usually denied in the many papers and books
devoted to the subject. Since speculative philosophies of history
are out of fashion, I have been obliged to engage in a great deal of
controversy. I have felt a sense of urgency to rescue the study of
history from the hands of academic specialists and the speculative
x Preface Preface xi
philosophy of history from the dissecting tools of analytic philos Toynbee, disregard the warnings issued by their orthodox teachers,
ophers. This sense of urgency has made me write cum ira et studio. and discover a new sense of purpose in the study of history. The
To establish my arguments all the more effectively, I have made study of histor is, after all, the stud of the ast, which we can
no attempt to conceal my broad philosophical standpoints. no alter and since we cannot alte.I it, we might as well know
The book is addressed to historians, to students of history, and exacty wfiantis we h~ve to live_wi!h.
to those people who enjoy reading books about history. For this
reason I have not only taken care to avoid philosophical jargon
but also to consider many authors who are not professional philos
ophers, very seriously.
The book presents a coherent argument which begins with a
demonstration that, though history is concerned with the passage
of time, historians cannot avail themselves of the temporal conti
guity of events as a skeleton for their stories. From there the argu
ment advances, step by step, to the consideration that the difference
between history and fiction is not as great as most people like to
suppose and that historical knowledge is not a mirror image of
what happened in the past. It leads to the final conclusion that
speculative philosophies of history are both possible and necessary.
The first draft of this book was read to a special seminar
arranged with great kindness by Eugene Kamenka, at the Unit of
the History of Ideas at the Australian National University in Can
berra. Although I was not able to persuade all members of the
seminar of all my theories all the time, I wish to take this oppor
tunity to thank especially Eugene Kamenka, Walter Kaufmann,
Quentin Boyce Gibson, Francis West, John Passmore, Robert
Brown, Henri Arvon, and Hiram Caton for the patience with which
they listened and for the vigour with which they attacked my
arguments. In a different sense I wish to thank Ewa and Paul Hoff
mann in Tubingen for their continued hospitality, which has made
it possible for me to cast my net more widely than I could have
done in New Zealand and which has made it possible for me to
sit on the windowsill where Hegel used to sit when he was a stu
dent and from which he stared for hours on end at the pump in
the courtyard of the Tubingen Stift. I also wish to thank the staff
of the Reference Department of the Victoria University Library
for their patient and ingenious help and the Internal Research
Fund of Victoria University for their generous financial assistance.
Last, not least, I thank all those of my students at the Victoria
University of Wellington who showed sufficient bewilderment by
the specialised and ill-assorted courses they have to attend to make
me write a book to dispell their bewilderment. I hope that, when
they have read this book, they will take up their Hegel and their
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
The history of historical knowledge is the exact opposite of the
history of the natural sciences. The history of our knowledge and
awareness of the past began as pragmatic knowledge. From
Thucydides to Machiavelli historians were occupied with the
teaching of politics by example. History was the magister vitae,
the teacher of life. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
this pragmatic approach declined sharply and was followed by a
modern period of purely useless but theoretico-academic knowledge
to discover the truth about the past, to find out what actually
happened, and to detect the definitive shape of time. This modern
phase of historical knowledge is dominated by disinterested
curiosity and serves - apart from the futurological element con
tained in Marxist-inspired historical writing - no practical purpose
at all. It even attained a tinge of irony once historians became
sufficiently sophisticated to understand that time is not the sort
of thing that can have a definitive shape and that history therefore
is of necessity being constantly rewritten.
In our knowledge of nature we have gone in the opposite
direction. It all started with grand speculations about the elements
and the essential nature of matter. People were interested in
reading the book of God and in deciphering the hidden messages
of planets. It was all done to satisfy contemplative curiosity and to
assist meditation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
there came the enormous volte face, highlighted by Bacon and
Descartes. To know, they said, is to be able to manipulate. Knowl
edge is power. From that moment onwards, knowledge of nature
tended to cease to be contemplative theory and became linked to
technological success, which became the final touchstone of truth.
Here we have in history, a progression from pragmatism to con
templation and in our knowledge of nature a progression from
contemplative theory to pragmatism. The two lines, one ascending
and the other descending, intersected somewhere during the late
sixteen th century.
1
2 The Shapes of Time Introduction 3
The picture of the two lines moving in opposite directions (I in a purely empirical enterprise that consisted of transcribing
am intentionally refraining from identifying the line that moves events. We thus get the paradoxical situation in which a science or
down and the line that moves up) would not be complete if we did branch of knowledge became dimmer and less aware of its true
not remind ourselves that during the modern pragmatic phase of nature, the more mature and sophisticated its methods of particu
scientific inquiry, the contemplative or charismatic1 purpose of lar inquiry and research became.
scientific knowledge was never lost sight of. In 1543 Copernicus This last observation, however, needs an important qualifica
wrote that he wanted, above all, to understand 'the movements of tion. While practising and academic historians advanced from
the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most sys triumph to triumph in their meticulous source criticism, philoso
tematic Artisan of all'. And 400 years later Einstein remarked that phers, though they shared the unease that had come to surround
'what I am really interested in is whether God could have made the speculative and charismatic interest in the philosophy of his
this world in a different way; that is whether the necessity of tory, subjected various aspects of historical knowledge to very
logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all'. It will be generally detailed and searching scrutiny. This scrutiny took place in two
admitted that if it had not been for this constant charismatic major phases. There was first, at the beginning of the twentieth
purpose, scientific inquiry and discovery would have flagged, even century, a prolonged debate, especially in Germany, about such
though countless minor technological discoveries might have been questions as whether history is a science or an art, whether the
made. In the history of science this persistent conjunction of study of history is nomothetic or idiographic, whether historical
charismatic purpose and pragmatic inquiry is of primary impor knowledge relativises all values, and whether history explains or
tance and proved fruitful. describes. When all arguments on all sides had been fully examined
In the study of the human past, unfortunately, there has been and debated at great length, interest in these questions began to
no comparable fruitful conjunction during the modern period. As flag. And then, during the forties and fifties of this century, the
the study of history entered its nonpragmatic period and was arena moved from Germany to Britain and America and a new
carried on to satisfy curiosity, it came to be dominated by an in debate was started. It centred on the questions of whether histo
creasing spirit of specialisation and fragmentation. The study of rians employed universal laws, under what conditions universals
the sources tended to become an end in itself until most historians provided explanations, whether the employment of explanatory
nowadays are experts in certain sets of sources and admit quite laws impeded or promoted the composition of narratives, and how
openly that their interest in the knowledge to be derived from history was related to the social sciences. The problems were not
these sources about the past is only secondary. At the same time, really new but the terminology was. Like the earlier phase, the
the charismatic purpose has continued to assert itself. But it has new phase produced a large number of books and a veritable
dominated philosophers rather than historians. The philosophy of mountain of fastidiously argued papers, which were published in
history was pursued vigorously from Vico and Herder to Hegel, journals and, some of them, later collected in book form.
Spengler, and Toynbee. But it failed to hold the attention of prac Although in both phases the same problems were discussed,
tising historians. Indeed, it not only failed to hold that attention there are fundamental differences between the two phases of
but it became increasingly frowned upon by academic historians critico-analytical reflection on history. One only has to compare
who developed an attitude of fastidious contempt for the specu the chapters on hermeneutics in a contemporary German intro
lative philosophy of history, a contempt which they had derived duction to the theory of history2 with such collections of papers
from Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), the grandmaster of source and essays as have appeared frequently in England and the United
criticism. In the study of the past the charismatic purpose, which States3 to spot the difference. In the first, German phase, the
remained so strong in the study of nature, was not allowed to accent was on the importance of understanding the past. The past
exercise a fertilising influence. was seen as a series of incomprehensible conundrums. It was
In the study of history we are therefore confronted by a examined to find out how one could make sure to understand what
peculiar spectacle. Although history is one of the oldest studies, its people in the past had thought. Scholars came near to reducing
nature is one of the most misunderstood ones. In modern times, the study of history to a theological problem: they treated the
more and more historians began to imagine that they were engaged past as consisting of texts that were supposed to be authoritative
4 The Shapes of Time Introduction 5
though obscure and the meaning of which had to be disclosed.4 tive, or synthetic philosophy of history. The latter kind of
They tended to forget that even if the past were disclosed, one philosophy is the sort of philosophy that has been propounded by
would only achieve a very partial insight because, after all, the Hegel and Marx, Spengler, and Toynbee. Professional historians to
people who wrote those texts could well have been mistaken and a large extent have preferred to keep aloof from speculative phi
not written the truth. To understand what people in the past losophy of history. They agree with that analytical philosophy of
meant is to understand, at best, how mistaken or hallucinated or history that has come down almost unanimously against specula
mendacious they were. If one confines oneself to attempts to un tive philosophy of history, 6 although they view that analytical
cover what they meant, one merely scratches the surface, despite philosophy of history, too, with bemused scepticism. Their refusal
the fact that the immense laboriousness of the hermeneuticists to take speculative philosophy of history seriously comes mostly
always conveys an impression of unfathomable profundity. In the from professional pride, whereas their bemused scepticism about
second, Anglo-Saxon phase, the accent was on the importance of analytical philosophy of history is due to a lack of training in the
explaining to our modern satisfaction how one thing had led to necessary philosophical prerequisites. But the professional his
another regardless of the opinions that people in the past had held. torian feels that as long as the general conclusions of the analytical
With such attempts, history tended to be made into a social philosophers of history support his professional prejudice against
science and the hermeneutic problem was lost sight of. Again speculative philosophy of history, he need show no further inter
scholars overreacted. This time they tended to forget that if we est in the whole matter.
explain what happened by using our own logico-scientific criteria, In one way or another, philosophers and historians have joined
we may explain the past to our own satisfaction but do scant jus in their contempt for the speculative philosophy of history. To the
tice to the people of the past, who more often than not used quite philosopher the consequences of this contempt are peripheral. But
different criteria. If it is a mistake to treat the past as if it were a to the historian, although he does not realise it, this contempt will
theological problem, it is also a mistake to treat it as if it were a be fatal because it will deprive his activity of all meaning. The first
mere problem in the social science that is relative to our modern signs of the fatal disease are very apparent. The number of good
logical culture. In the second phase, scholars only dealt with the students who enroll in history schools in the modern university is
tip of an iceberg, for what counts as an explanation to modern constantly declining. Bright young people are no longer interested
man is not necessarily an explanation. in history. They find the subject boring and irrelevant. They can
It would therefore be quite untrue to say that there has been a no longer be fobbed off by insistence that the study of history is a
lack of interest in the nature of historical knowledge. On the con good preparation for politics. When the study of history meant
trary, if anything, there has been a surfeit of it. The real trouble is the reading of Thucydides and Tacitus and when politics meant
not lack of interest, but the fact that the interest is focussed on the politics of Renaissance Florence or Tudor England, the advice
the wrong problem. The real problem is the divorce of academic, that history is the magister vitae was good advice, for it helped
unselfconscious history from speculative and philosophical history. students of Athenian or Roman politics to keep their heads above
The present book is an attempt to concentrate on this real prob water and, in the environment of a Tudor scene, possibly on their
lem. 5 The papers and books mentioned in this text all deal explic shoulders. But today the study of history means the investigation
itly with the analytical philosophy of history. They examine what of the origins of Parliament and debates on the causes of the
it is we know when we have historical knowledge; they scrutinise English Civil War. The politics of the modern national state or the
the methods employed by historians and examine the relationship modern supernational state are not clearly affected by either of
between historical knowledge and other knowledge. Needless to these questions. 7 The only sensible way in which one can there
say, the authors of these books have usually been influenced by fore justify and recommend the study of separate pieces of history
one or the other of the prevailing and fashionable schools of phi is by drawing attention to the speculative philosophy of history
losophy and, for the most part, though not exclusively, they are and by showing how every single problem one studies is relevant
philosophers rather than practising historians. With the publication to a philosophy of history. If this cannot be done, the study of
of all these books, it has come to be established that one distin history must become more and more pointless. There is intrinsic
guishes analytical philosophy of history from speculative, substan- merit in reading Chaucer and Yeats, even if one cannot see the
6 The Shapes of Time Introduction 7
connection between the two poets. But there is no intrinsic merit they can be justified. In this sense, the intermission caused by the
in the study of Tudor parliaments or modern trade unions, unless advent of analysis was salutary, but neither fatal nor final. The
one can see how they are linked. general consensus that all speculative philosophy of history is an
In a very influential book, published just after the end of illegitimate pursuit is based on a variety of false analyses of the
World War II, Karl Popper attacked the philosophy of history and nature of historical knowledge, and the self-congratulatory conclu
held it responsible for the war as well as for the inhuman massacres sion that speculative philosophy of history is rightly superseded
perpetrated by Nazis and Stalinists. Whatever Popper's arguments by analytical philosophy of history is unwarranted.
against the philosophy of history were, a dispassionate reading of In pursuing the argument, I will therefore take care to avoid
The Poverty of Historicism8 shows that the main attack was oversubtle discussions of problems that are of no concern to the
directed against the scientific pretensions of the prophetic and historian. I propose to neglect, for example, the problem that
deterministic aspects of the philosophy of history. Both he and his must arise when one considers the possibility that the past is a
many readers ceased to ask whether there were other facets of the mirage. One can suppose that God made the world a split second
philosophy of history worth preserving and whether these other ago in such a way that it embodies all the evidence and all the
aspects are essential to the survival of the study of history. They memories necessary for creating the illusion that it is millions of
forgot that the philosophy of history tends only incidentally to years old. I believe, and this belief has been confirmed by count
make predictions of the future but is in reality concerned with less philosophers, that there is no argument to disprove this
the meaning of the past. In this way Popper underpinned the or supposition. People who hold it must severely be left to holding
dinary historian's contempt for the philosophy of history with a it.
philosophical argument. The historians who saw themselves The present book is written to bridge the gap between analyt-
essentially as craftsmen took comfort in finding their prejudices ical and speculative philosophy of history. It probes analytically;
philosophically confirmed and inconveniently forgot that such but not to show that speculative or substantive philosophy of
philosophical confirmation, if unchallenged, would eventually history is redundant or fanciful. It is written to demonstrate that
bring about the demise of their own craft. the difference between ordinary history, which is the professional
In a lower key, philosophers have simply remarked with pride historian's legitimate pursuit, and speculative philosophy of history
upon the fact that analytical philosophy of history seems to have is merely a matter of degree. If I cannot bring the philosopher and
replaced speculative philosophy of history .9 They have overlooked the historian together, I hope at least to reconcile the speculative
the fact that the speculative philosopher of history rendered a ser historian and the professional historian.
vice to historians that no analytical philosophy can possibly render. For this reason this book is yet another contribution to
Therefore one cannot congratulate oneself on the replacement un analytical philosophy of history and makes no attempt to offer a
less one is absolutely certain that the analyses that have brought speculative philosophy of history of its own. But it is a contribu
this replacement about are without fault. Genuine philosophy of tion with a difference. It aims to vindicate the speculative philoso
history is something too important for our knowledge of history phy of history. Furthermore, it pursues this aim not as a labour of
to be left in the hands of professional philosophers and logicians. love and not in the mere disinterested conviction that peace is
No matter how great their expertise, they lack the necessary better than strife. It pursues this aim in the belief that unless
concern. Its consequences are too far-reaching for it to be dis ordinary history and the philosophy of history are brought closely
missed in the near-contemptuous manner in which professional together, the former will gradually die of inanition. This does not
historians nowadays are invited to dismiss it. mean that I aim to defend all philosophies of history or any partic
Since I am writing with the concern of the practising historian, ular philosophy of history. On the contrary, I will establish a clear
I have set out to question the conclusions of the analytical philos distinction between historicist and nonhistoricist speculative
ophers, which have discredited all speculative philosophies of philosophies of history and examine the weaknesses of the former
history, 10 and hope to have discovered that stringent analysis and and the strengths of the latter. But all in all, my defence of specu
reexamination, far from discrediting speculative philosophies of lative philosophy of history is undertaken to solve the crisis of
history, open several possible as well as necessary ways in which historical scholarship and historical science.
8 The Shapes of Time Introduction 9
The crisis of historical scholarship or science has arisen of late than on its own intrinsic merits of meticulous and accurate de
for a very obvious reason. Today we have run out of easy oppor tection work, can historical scholarship and historical knowledge
tunities for exciting discoveries. Scholarship used to be sustained remain a living science. It is conventionally assumed by profession
by this excitement regardless of meaning. During the nineteenth al historians that speculation kills research. This book is written
century and the earlier part of the twentieth century a large num on the assumption that the opposite is true, that research will
ber of archives that had been closed for centuries were opened up. soon be killed by the absence of speculation and that continued
Historians could therefore plunge into their exploration with insistence on nonspeculative research will eventually defeat its own
vigour and all the acumen for criticism they were capable of. Thus purpose.11
there appeared editions of documents and of chronicles. New This task can best be achieved by a reexamination of a large
histories were written on the basis of these editions or on the basis number of conventional arguments and by an explanation of
of mere calendars of these documents. But it is clear that there points that have often been made before. I will therefore deal
was to be an end to these halcyon days of historical scholarship. with all the traditional problems of the theory of history - with
The day on which all the archives had been ransacked and exam causality, objectivity, interpretation, truth, and the relation of
ined was bound to dawn. In some cases, meticulous historians history to the social sciences. There will be a discussion on whether
were able to prolong their activities by claiming that a previous history is the history of thought and whether it has to be rewritten
editor had been careless and that his work had to be done over all the time. There is a plain acknowledgement that in the past
again. But there is an end in sight even for such overscrupulous discussion has focussed on all the right subjects. This book will
ness. Every academic teacher of history will know how increasing therefore not present new insights and new analyses. It will instead
ly difficult it is becoming to find suitable research topics for his seek to explain, for the most part, old ones to show that, provided
graduate students. We all live at a time when the kind of historical they are interpreted correctly, they do indeed add up to the con
scholarship that depended on unexplored documents and chroni clusion that ordinary history and speculative philosophy of history
cles is coming to an end. When it does, and if it remains established are much closer to each other than is commonly believed.
that the study of history is to be confined to minute research into I do not think that one needs to justify the view that there is
disconnected fragments, fewer and fewer intelligent people will a crisis in the study and teaching of history. The crisis has often
want to devote their time to it. Thus we will be left with the great been discussed and nobody would deny that it exists. But people
works of historical erudition and interpretation that were produced differ in the explanations they give of this crisis. Lionel Trilling
during past generations. But we ourselves will lose all living touch thinks that the crisis was brought about because people in modern
with them and gradually we will cease to be interested in them; times are less and less prepared to accept the past as a story 'told
and Henry Ford Sr. will have proved himself right - not because by a rational consciousness which perceives in things the processes
history is bunk but because our lack of involvement in it will that are their reason' .12 He links, and one must agree with him,
make it appear to be bunk. True, history continues to happen and the distrust of history to the decline of the novel. Our modern age,
documents will therefore continue to be left. But history cannot he says, is 'uneasy with the narrative mode'. I cannot discuss the
happen as fast as it can be researched, and if historians rely on the problem of the modern novel; but I wonder whether Trilling is not
arrival of new documents, their efforts must of necessity outrun putting the cart before the horse. He believes that the declining
the production of documents. We have already reached the point interest in historical narrative is due to a declining interest in
where for every statesman and even for every minor politician rational explanation, which presents one event as the intelligible
there are ten Ph.D. students waiting to pounce on his papers after succession of a preceding event. I would put it the other way
his death. round. It seems to me that the interest in historical narrative has
This crisis, if it is not to close all the doors that lead to the declined because the narrative has become divorced from the
past, can be resolved only if historical research is related once general preoccupation with the philosophy of history. There is no
again to a philosophy of history or, better still, to competing point in particular narratives if they cannot be linked to the
philosophies of history. Only if every piece of research can be general search for meaning. I would see the decline in the interest
judged and discussed in terms of a philosophy of history rather in the narrative mode of the novel as a consequence of the decline
10 The Shapes of Time Introduction 11
of interest in history, not the other way round. After all, history made to see how the study of any particular history is related to
is much older than the narrative novel and it is very likely that the the wider question of the meaning of history, he will consider it
latter is only a by-product of the former. When history declined, useless.
the novel was bound to follow. The most sensitive and penetrating diagnosis of the modern
G. R. Elton has given a completely different explanation.13 antagonism to history is given by Hayden V. White and the passage
He says that history is essentially concerned with the fact of must be quoted in full:
motion and that 'without a sense of time and change, of life and
The modern writer's hostility towards history is evidenced most clearly
death, history ceases altogether to be history'. He explains the
in the practice of using the historian to represent the extreme example
growing contempt for historical narration by the surfeit of evi of repressed sensibility in the novel and theatre. Writers who have used
dence that is nowadays available to the student of the past. Con historians in this way include Gide, Ibsen, Malraux, Aldous Huxley,
fronted with this surfeit, he argues, historians despair of narration Hermann Broch, Wyndham Lewis, Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Camus, Pirandello, Kingsley Amis, Angus Wilson, Elias Canetti, and
and attempt instead to put the pieces of evidence together like a
Edward Albee - to mention only major or currently fashionable writers.
jigsaw puzzle, which when properly assembled, will provide a
The list could be extended considerably if one included the names of
static picture of a system at any one particular point in time. I do authors who have implicitly condemned the historical consciousness
not doubt that Elton's observation is correct. But again I think by suggesting the essential contemporaneity of all significant human
that he is putting it the wrong way round. The narrative mode is experience. Virginia Woolf, Proust, Robert Musil, Italo Svevo, Gottfried
Benn, Ernst Junger, Valery, Yeats, Kafka and D. H. Lawrence, all reflect
failing to command attention because it has become divorced from
the currency of the conviction voiced by Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, that
the philosophy of history. For this reason historians try to make
history is the 'nightmare' from which Western man must awaken if
the best of the surfeit of evidence by treating it like a jigsaw humanity is to be served and saved. 15
puzzle. After all, the argument from the surfeit of evidence only
concerns modern and early modern history. It is hardly true of This analysis not only hits the nail on the head but also proves my
ancient and medieval history where the amount of evidence contention that the historian figures as the extreme example of
available has not significantly increased of late. And yet we find in repressed sensibility when he is not a philosopher of history in the
these fields exactly the same lack of interest in narrative history speculative sense. For, after all, although it is true that Ibsen uses
as we find in early modern and modern history, not to speak of the through and through academic historian Tessman to represent
contemporary history. the side of death in Hedda Gabler, it is also true that he uses the
Yet a different explanation is given by J. H. Plumb.14 He grand speculator and philosopher of history Lovborg to represent
argues that modern industrial society, unlike the commercial, the side of life. And all the writers whom Hayden White quotes
craft, and agrarian societies which it replaces, does not need the are thinking of the Tessmans. Not one of them would have chosen
past. He believes that in modern times, the past is being extermi a Lovborg. In all these books the historians are modelled on
nated from the consciousness of man. I doubt whether this argu George Eliot's Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch. There is not a single
ment is true. To begin with, almost all sociologies of modern writer who thought of the great speculators like Vico, Herder, or
industrial society are very aware of the fact that modern industrial Hegel as the prototype of 'repressed sensibility'.16 White's ob
society is a recent phenomenon that developed out of and on the servation also highlights another matter. Western society has always
basis of the destruction or displacement of these earlier societies. been a 'hot' society in the sense in which Levi-Strauss uses the
For this reason, these sociological accounts are very interested in term. A hot society is a society in which the historical process
the past. Moreover, we know of hundreds of primitive societies de (i.e., the passage of time) is internalised and made the moving
voted to commerce, crafts, and agriculture in which the interest power of its development. Cold societies, by contrast, are societies
in the past is either minimal or nonexistent. One can therefore that give themselves institutions to annul the possible effects of
hardly agree with the view that our modern industrial society has the passage of time on their equilibrium and continuity in a quasi
an in-built antagonism to the past. I would argue, on the contrary, automatic manner.17 Western societies are obviously of the hot
that that antagonism results from the demise of the philosophy of variety. They attach much importance to God as the God of his
history. Modern man is nothing if not utilitarian. If he cannot be tory, their Christian theology is, historically oriented, their