#categoricity

[geopolicraticus]

An Ahistorical Conception of History

Non-Naturalistic Categoricity.—Schopenhauer gives us an essentially naturalistic form of historical categoricity, but the idea of a non-naturalistic historical categoricity could be said to characterize most history prior to the modern era, when every mundane detail was a symbol for a higher truth. The thirteenth century French work, Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, embodies an ahistorical conception of history in which nothing essential changes, in which the world has always been what it is, and will always be as it is. The Faits des Romains continues this tradition, further elaborating the ahistorical conception of history and institutionalizing what Huizinga would call historical ideals of life, doing so in the form of the life of Julius Caesar. Only, the relationship between past and present was not exclusively the emulation of past ideals, but also the transformation of the past into recognizably present forms, so that the past is no longer past, but is the embodiment of the present in an altered form. The non-naturalistic context of this conception yields, not surprisingly, an ahistorical conception of history. But, in its ahistorical historical consciousness, the Middle Ages was not without historical consciousness, but rather possessed an historical consciousness that did not know itself to be such. This is a paradoxical historical consciousness, to be sure, but no more paradoxical than the modern historical consciousness that sees nothing but progress while committing atrocities on an scale previously unknown in history. It may be that all forms of historical consciousness are paradoxical.

[geopolicraticus]

Finding Nomothetic Rigor in History

Relative Uniqueness.—Schopenhauer’s claim of Herodotus’ historical categoricity demonstrates that there is more than one way to find nomothetic rigor in history. In the absence of the form of abstraction employed in natural science, history unwittingly makes use for the forms of abstraction employed in the formal sciences. The natural science approach would subordinate the unique events of history to general concepts, which would transform history into a nomothetic discipline if only these methods could be applied in this context—and if history would be a science, then this is what it must become. Schopenhauer, however, denies this of history, as Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, and many others also have denied this of history. The approach of the formal sciences is to conceptualize unique events as tokens of a type that are not subordinated to a general concept, but are rather exemplifications of a formal concept. If Schopenhauer was wrong, and history is not categorical, then there is no unique model of history and we may need more than Herodotus to understand the totality of history. When an unprecedented event disrupts the historical process and redirects events onto a new course, Herodotus may no longer serve, but other works, works that describe a world in transition, may provide the models needed. It may yet be the case that each era of history, and each kind of era in history, has it own unique model—which in this case means one paradigmatic history for each period and for each geographical region. This is more fragmented than Schopenhauer’s historical categoricity, but also more adequate, and we can still obtain a model for the totality of history from the conjunction of the several models.    

[geopolicraticus]

Up to isomorphism, there is one and only one Herodotus.

Schopenhauer’s Categoricity.—Schopenhauer begins his account of history with the familiar idea that the facts of history are innumerable, but Schopenhauer recognizes that the facts of history aren’t organized like those of natural science. He says that history is a rational inquiry, but not a strictly scientific one. Almost a century before Windelband and Rickert, Schopenhauer gave an idiographic account of history as consisting of unique events that cannot be subsumed under universal concepts. Despite this conception of history as innumerable facts uncoordinated by any law or principle, so that each and every fact must be accounted for individually, Schopenhauer presents us with a strong form of historical categoricity. According to Schopenhauer, “If we have read Herodotus, we have already studied enough history from a philosophical point of view. For everything that which constitutes the subsequent history of the world is already there…” In other words, for Schopenhauer, history is categorical and Herodotus is the model to which all other models are demonstrably isomorphic. He allows that this is, “from a philosophical point of view,” so that from an independent historical point of view, historians can continue the business of history, but nothing philosophically novel will be found in their efforts. Everything that has and can happen in history is to be found in Herodotus, and the rest of history is superfluous from a philosophical perspective. Herodotus is a sufficient model of history; presumably, any other adequate history could serve as well, but Schopenhauer didn’t say whether he thought Thucydides, Gibbon, or Ranke would serve equally well up to isomorphism.