The Meaning and Goal of History (Part II)

Twentieth century historiography was heir to all the achievements of the previous era. This legacy, with diverse strains and characteristics, continued to shape as well as to inspire scholarship in the first decades of the new era. Optimism, historicism, and naturalism could all claim their representatives. Not even two world wars and the other cataclysmic events of our day have diminished the faith of some historians in the inevitability of progress and inherent goodness of man. Although natural law is still the frame of reference of historians, many of them derive from it interpretations of history startlingly different from those which it was formerly used to support. For his theory of history, Spengler adapted naturalism along lines quite different from nineteenth century versions.

But twentieth century historiography, perhaps even more than that of the nineteenth century, reflects the influence of contemporary philosophical currents. If philosophy before 1900 displayed greater concern for the meaning of history than many historians showed, it can also be said that historical scholarship has come to its own in this respect: its new awareness of the importance of the problem of meaning in history.

No longer are historians content to “let the facts speak for themselves” for they now see that the facts of history are not able to speak, and that it is the task of scholarship to interpret the data which it discovers. Thus contemporary historians are looking to philosophy with new respect and interest in search of a frame of reference by which they might fix meaning and goals in the historical process. The acquisition of facts is no longer regarded as the sole or the most important function of the historian; it is his solemn obligation to find their meaning as well.

NEW INTEREST IN PHILOSOPHY

This does not mean that contemporary scholars agree on this wider role of responsibility, nor that they agree on the frame of reference. But a great change has overtaken historical thought in the last few decades and with it has come a new interest in philosophy on the historian’s part. Scholars in both fields are now vitally concerned with the problem of meaning and purpose in the historical process. The increase in books and articles dealing with it are testimony to their concern. For some historians this concern takes the form of a return to a metaphysical or even a theological frame of reference. To others existentialism seems to offer a solution or an escape from the dilemma presented by the catastrophic present by making possible their denial that history has any meaning at all, except that which the historian may choose to give it for the moment. In short, for much of contemporary historiography epistemology has become the dominant issue, even as it has for philosophy and theology.

THE PROCESS ITSELF

Oswald Spengler, the first important philosopher of history in the twentieth century, represented the continuing influence of the appeal to natural law as a frame of reference, but from it he derived a view of history in sharp contrast to that of his predecessors. No longer could this resort-to-nature bring forth an evolutionary conception of the inevitability of progress, but rather in Spengler’s view it led to the conclusion that decay and doom are the inescapable fate of all cultures and civilizations. His insistence on spring, summer, autumn, and winter as the cycle through which they all must pass led to a naturalistic determinism which is the very negation of freedom and progress as the goals of history. Spengler believed that history has meaning, but the meaning which he professed to find was quite different from that found by nineteenth century liberalism. His pessimism was quite distasteful to a modern generation reared and nurtured on Hegelian and Darwinian optimism and which, even in 1920, still professed to believe that the recent holocaust through which the West had passed was only a temporary, though unfortunate, detour on humanity’s road to Utopia. Many historians voiced a protest against the thesis of Spengler’s Decline of the West, but events seemed to speak loudly in his defense.

Perhaps the most important answer to Spengler came from the learned Arnold Toynbee in his Study of History. Rejecting the former’s naturalism and determinism, Toynbee looked to the élan vital of Henri Bergson to furnish the clue to the meaning of the historical process, and to provide an answer to the riddle of the rise and fall of civilizations. While he agreed with Spengler that decay seems to be the ultimate destiny of all civilizations, he refused to admit that this must be the case, and that they must all pass through the same natural cycle of the four seasons.

Toynbee’s basic solution to the dilemma is found in his theory of challenge and response, by which he means that civilizations continue to grow and develop as long as they successfully meet the challenges which confront them with adequate responses. Although he presented extensive data in support of his position and an ingenious arrangement of myriads of historical facts, his Study of History leaves many questions unanswered and many historians, philosophers, and social scientists are dissatisfied with it. Historians criticize his tendency to arrange facts conveniently in support of his thesis, and they are convinced that his use of challenge and response was both artificial and forced at many points. His adaptation of Bergson’s élan vital is a facile attempt to explain why civilizations successfully respond to the challenges they meet, but it fails utterly to solve the problem as to why in the history of every culture there seems to be a moment when it no longer is able successfully to meet a challenge and disintegration sets in.

We appreciate Toynbee’s affirmation that history is meaningful, and we respect the breadth and depth of his learning. Likewise we commend him for rejecting Spengler’s unblushing resort to determinism. We stand in his debt for rescuing historiography from a debilitating fatalism into which it seemed to be drifting. But we must reject his attempt to find that meaning in an erroneous philosophy. His attempt to find the meaning and goal of history within the process itself is the serious weakness that mars his position. Yet this weakness characterizes all philosophies of history which look to man or nature for life’s meaning.

SUBJECTIVITY AND MEANING

As the twentieth century approached its mid-point, existentialism found increasing favor with many historians. These historians were in a state of despair, intellectually and spiritually, as a result of the rise of the totalitarian state and the coming of World War II. Existentialism offered them an invitation to retreat into a world of historical illusion devoid of ultimate truth or objective reality. Their acceptance of this philosophy is really their declaration that the time-honored assumption of the rationalists and their allies that the meaning of history can be found within the stream of events is a serious error, and that all attempt to find it there must end in failure. It is also a repudiation of the assumption, emanating from the Renaissance, that human reason is competent for the discovery of truth. In historiography, existentialism leads to the denial of a publicly recognizable body of objective truth, and of historical data, available to historians, and the validity of which they all must recognize. Historical fact, to the extent to which it can be achieved, thus becomes the private possession of the particular historian who is studying history.

Logically and almost inevitably the members of this school are driven to the conclusion that history, in the sense that it is the study of past reality, does not and cannot exist. It has no objective meaning and this can give no evidence of any goal or progress in human affairs. It has no meaning simply because it has so many meanings—as many meanings as historians—for every historian is free to give it his own interpretation.

Herbert Muller stated the case for this view of history in his The Uses of the Past in which he reduces all historical knowledge to thorough-going relativism. The past keeps changing with the present and every age has to rewrite its history. “In every age a different Christ dies on the Cross and is resurrected to a different end.” He concludes: “History has no meaning in the sense of a clear pattern or determinate plot, but it is simply not meaningless or pointless. It has no certain meaning because man is free to give it various possible meanings.”

Thus historiography, like philosophy, threatens in the twentieth century to become an epistemological jungle in which the unwary historian can easily be lost in a maze of meaningless facts. Existentialism logically leads to the conviction that the study of history is a useless and futile activity. It is but a short step from this position to the conclusion that the traditional approach to the teaching of history is likewise in need of drastic revision. Why teach that which cannot be known with certainty?

It was a vague consciousness of this dilemma which led John Dewey and his many disciples in the field of education to minimize the formal study of history as such and to suggest that it should be made to serve other ends in courses vaguely known as integrated experiences in the social sciences. Although the most that could be expected in its study was a “warranted assertability,” history was nevertheless to be called upon to aid in the creation of good social attitudes in the minds of students who, it was argued, lack all sense of historical judgment and all standards by which to judge either the present or the past. It has never seemed to bother the progressives in education that a past which cannot be known with certainty cannot be called on to shape either present or future.

But there is still another school in contemporary historiography which merits our consideration, partly because it has received considerable popular attention in recent years, and partly because of its own intrinsic significance. I refer to the return to a theological conception of history and, on the part of some philosophers and historians, even to a Christian outlook. The plight of modern man in general and that of twentieth century historiography on the other hand has forced scholars in these fields to take the contemporary crisis much more seriously than was the case 30 years ago. Unable to subscribe to a view which underscores the meaninglessness of human existence, they have been forced to look for the key to history outside the historical process. Thus Herbert Butterfield in England and Reinhold Niebuhr in this country have swept aside many of the humanistic assumptions of a previous generation and have assigned new importance to both human evil and divine providence as necessary ingredients of any satisfactory view of history. This is not to say that they have returned to an Augustinian or full evangelical position, since important elements of the biblical view are still absent from their thinking. Their openly expressed dissatisfaction with the Renaissance emphasis on human sufficiency and sovereignty does not of itself constitute a return to the biblical outlook in regard either to the sovereignty of God or to the nature of fallen man. Standing between them and many members of the school which they represent is the influence of neo-orthodoxy.

The neo-orthodox denial of common grace easily leads to the denial of the sovereignty of God in the government of human affairs. The sharp antithesis which this position draws between the sacred and the secular, between redemptive and human history as such, brings not only neo-orthodox theology but its view of history perilously close to an existentialist conception. Also the low view of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures which characterizes most of the theologians of this school tends to deprive them of that authority and certainty which must underlie all meaningful intellectual activity. In similar fashion in varying degrees they also fail to make the biblical view of the person of Jesus Christ and of redemption a vital element in their systems. To the extent to which such thinkers fall short of the historic orthodox Christian position, to that extent they fail to achieve an Augustinian philosophy or theology of history.

While there are biblical elements in Niebuhr’s treatment of history, I personally question whether Tillich’s system may be regarded as Christian in any sense of the word.

Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.

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