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NOTE 9. The Concept of Historical Individuality

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Part 3 Epistemological Problems of History Chapter 9

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THE CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 1

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THE ULTIMATE GIVEN OF HISTORY The human search for knowledge cannot go on

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endlessly.

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Inevitably, sooner or later it will reach a point beyond which it cannot proceed.

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will then be faced with an ultimate given, a datum that man's reason cannot trace back

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to other data.

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In the course of the evolution of knowledge, science has succeeded in tracing back to other

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data some things and events which previously had been viewed as ultimate.

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We may expect that this will also occur in the future, but there will always remain something

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that is for the human mind an ultimate given, unanalyzable and irreducible.

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and Reason cannot even conceive a kind of knowledge that would not encounter such an

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insurmountable obstacle. There is for man no such thing as omniscience.

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In dealing with such ultimate data, history refers to individuality. The characteristics

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of individual men, their ideas and judgments of value as well as the actions guided by

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those ideas and judgments, cannot be traced back to something of which they would be the

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Derivatives There is no answer to the question why Frederick

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II invaded Silesia except, because he was Frederick II.

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It is customary, although not very expedient, to call the mental process, by means of which

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a datum is traced back to other data, rational.

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Then an ultimate datum is called irrational.

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No historical research can be thought of that would not ultimately meet such irrational

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Thoughts.

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Philosophies of history claim to avoid referring to individuality and irrationality.

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They pretend to provide a thoroughgoing interpretation of all historical events.

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What they really do is relegate the ultimate given to two points of their scheme, to its

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supposed beginning and its supposed end.

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They assume that there is at the start of history an unanalyzable and irreducible agency,

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For example, Geist in the system of Hegel, or the material productive forces in that

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of Marx.

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And they further assume that this prime mover of history aims at a definite end, also unanalyzable

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and irreducible, for instance, the Prussian state of about 1825, or socialism.

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Whatever one may think about the various systems of philosophy of history, it is obvious that

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they do not eliminate reference to individuality and irrationality.

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They merely shift it to another point of their interpretation.

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Materialism wants to throw history overboard entirely.

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All ideas and actions should be explained as the necessary outcome of definite physiological

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processes.

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But this would not make it possible to reject any reference to irrationality.

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Like history, the natural sciences are ultimately faced with some data defying any further reduction

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2.

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THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

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In the context of a philosophy of history there is no room left for any reference to

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individuality other than that of the prime mover and his plan determining the way events

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must go.

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All individual men are merely tools in the hand of ineluctable destiny.

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Whatever they may do, the outcome of their actions must necessarily fit into the preordained

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plan of providence.

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What would have happened if Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte had been killed in action at Toulon?

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Friedrich Engels knew the answer.

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Another would have filled the place.

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For the man has always been found as soon as he became necessary.

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Necessary for whom and for what purpose?

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for the Material Productive Forces to bring about, at a later date, socialism.

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It seems that the material productive forces always have a substitute at hand, just as

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a cautious opera manager has an understudy ready to sing the tenor's part in case the

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star should catch a cold.

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If Shakespeare had died in infancy, another man would have written Hamlet and the sonnets.

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But some people ask, how did this surrogate while away his time since Shakespeare's good

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Health relieved him from this chore.

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The issue has been purposely obfuscated by the champions of historical necessity who

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confused it with other problems.

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Looking backward upon the past, the historian must say that, all conditions having been

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as they were, everything that happened was inevitable.

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At any instant the state of affairs was the necessary consequence of the immediately preceding

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But, among the elements determining any given state of historical affairs, there are factors

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that cannot be traced back further than to the point at which the historian is faced

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with the ideas and actions of individuals.

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When the historian says that the French Revolution of 1789 would not have happened if some things

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had been different, he is merely trying to establish the forces that brought about the

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event and the influence of each of these forces.

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Lenin did not indulge in idle speculations as to what would have happened if the doctrines

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that he called l'esprit revolutionnaire and l'esprit classique had not been developed.

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He wanted to assign to each of them its relevance in the chain of events that resulted in the

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outbreak and the course of the revolution.

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A second confusion concerns the limits drawn upon the influence of great men.

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Accounts of History, adapted to the capacity of people slow of comprehension, have presented

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history as a product of the feats of great men.

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The older Hohenzollern made Prussia, Bismarck made the Second Reich, William the Second

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ruined it, Hitler made and ruined the Third Reich.

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No serious historian ever shared in such nonsense.

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It has never been contested that the part played even by the greatest figures of history

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was much more moderate.

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Every man, whether great or small, lives and acts within the frame of his age's historical

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circumstances.

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These circumstances are determined by all the ideas and events of the preceding ages

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as well as by those of his own age.

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The titan may outweigh each of his contemporaries.

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He is no match for the united forces of the dwarves.

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A statesman can succeed only insofar as his plans are adjusted to the climate of opinion

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of his time, that is, to the ideas that have got hold of his fellows' minds.

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He can become a leader only if he is prepared to guide people along the paths they want

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to walk and toward the goal they want to attain.

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A statesman who antagonizes public opinion is doomed to failure.

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No matter whether he is an autocrat or an officer of a democracy, the politician must

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give the people what they wish to get, very much as a businessman must supply the customers

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with the things they wish to acquire.

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It is different with the pioneers of new ways of thinking and new modes of art and literature.

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The path-breaker who disdains the applause he may get from the crowd of his contemporaries

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does not depend on his own age's ideas.

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He is free to say, with Shiller's Marquis Posa, This century is not ripe for my ideas.

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I live as a citizen of centuries to come.

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The genius's work, too, is embedded in the sequence of historical events, is conditioned

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by the achievements of preceding generations, and is merely a chapter in the evolution of

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ideas.

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But it adds something new and unheard of to the treasure of thoughts and may in this sense

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be called Creative.

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The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas.

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It is ideas that distinguish man from all other beings.

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Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of production,

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and all that is called economic conditions.

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And in searching for their origin, we inevitably come to a point at which all that can be asserted

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is that a man had an idea.

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Whether the name of this man is known or not is of secondary importance.

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This is the meaning that history attaches to the notion of individuality.

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Ideas are the ultimate given of historical inquiry.

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All that can be said about ideas is that they came to pass.

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The historian may point out how a new idea fitted into the ideas developed by earlier

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generations and how it may be considered a continuation of these ideas and their logical

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Equal.

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New ideas do not originate in an ideological vacuum.

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They are called forth by the previously existing ideological structure.

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They are the response offered by a man's mind to the ideas developed by his predecessors.

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But it is an arbitrary surmise to assume that they were bound to come and that if A had

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not generated them, a certain B or C would have performed the job.

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In this sense, what the limitations of our knowledge induce us to call chance plays a

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part in history.

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If Aristotle had died in childhood, intellectual history would have been affected.

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If Bismarck had died in 1860, world affairs would have taken a different course.

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To what extent and with what consequences, nobody can know.

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3.

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The Chimera of the Group Mind

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In their eagerness to eliminate from history any reference to individuals and individual

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events, collectivist authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group mind or

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social mind.

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At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, German philologists

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began to study German medieval poetry, which had long since fallen into oblivion. Most

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of the epics they edited from old manuscripts were imitations of French works. The names

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of their authors, most of them knightly warriors in the service of dukes or counts, were known.

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These epics were not much to boast of. But there were two epics of a quite different

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character, genuinely original works of high literary value, far surpassing the conventional

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Professional Products of the Cordiers, the Nibelungenlied and the Gudrun.

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The former is one of the great books of world literature and undoubtedly the outstanding

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poem Germany produced before the days of Goethe and Schiller.

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The names of the authors of these masterpieces were not handed down to posterity.

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Perhaps the poets belonged to the class of professional entertainers who not only were

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snubbed by the nobility but had to endure mortifying legal disabilities.

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Perhaps they were heretical or Jewish and the clergy was eager to make people forget

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them.

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At any rate, the philologists called these two works, People's Epics or Volkssapen.

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This term suggested to naive minds the idea that they were written not by the individual

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authors but by the people.

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The same mythical authorship was attributed to popular songs called Volksleaders whose

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authors were unknown.

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Then in Germany, in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, the problem of comprehensive

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legislative codification was brought up for discussion.

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In this controversy, the historical school of jurisprudence, led by Sevigny, denied the

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competence of any age and any persons to write legislation.

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Like the Volksapien and the Volksleader, the nation's laws, they declared, are a spontaneous

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Emanation of the Volksgeist, the nation's spirit and peculiar character.

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Genuine laws are not arbitrarily written by legislators.

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They spring up and thrive organically from the Volksgeist.

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This Volksgeist doctrine was devised in Germany as a conscious reaction against the ideas

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of natural law and the un-German spirit of the French Revolution.

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But it was further developed and elevated to the dignity of a comprehensive social

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Doctrine by the French positivists, many of whom not only were committed to the principles

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of the most radical among the revolutionary leaders but aimed at completing the unfinished

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revolution by a violent overthrow of the capitalistic mode of production.

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Emile Durkheim and his school deal with the group mind as if it were a real phenomenon,

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a distinct agency, thinking and acting.

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As they see it, not individuals but the group is the subject of history.

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As a corrective of these fancies, the truism must be stressed that only individuals think

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and act.

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In dealing with the thoughts and actions of individuals, the historian establishes the

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fact that some individuals influence one another in their thinking and acting more strongly

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than they influence and are influenced by other individuals.

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He observes that cooperation and division of labor exist among some while existing to

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a lesser extent or not at all among others.

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He employs the term group to signify an aggregation of individuals who cooperate together more

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closely.

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However, the distinction of groups is optional.

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The group is not an ontological entity like the biological species.

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The various group concepts intersect one another.

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The historian chooses, according to the special plan of his studies, the features and attributes

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that determine the classification of individuals into various groups.

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The grouping may integrate people speaking the same language or professing the same religion

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or practicing the same vocation or occupation or descended from the same ancestry.

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The group concept of Gobineau was different from that of Marx.

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In short, the group concept is an ideal type and as such is derived from the historian's

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understanding of the historical forces and events.

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Only individuals think and act.

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Each individual's thinking and acting is influenced by his fellow's thinking and acting.

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These influences are variegated.

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The individual American thoughts and conduct cannot be interpreted if one assigns him to

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a single group.

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He is not only an American, but a member of a definite religious group or an agnostic

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or an atheist.

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He has a job, he belongs to a political party, he is affected by traditions inherited from

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from his ancestors and conveyed to him by his upbringing, by the family, the school,

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the neighborhood, by the ideas prevailing in his town, state and country.

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It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind.

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Every American has his own mind.

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It is absurd to ascribe any achievements and virtues or any misdeeds and vices of individual

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Americans to America as such.

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Most people are common men. They do not have thoughts of their own. They are only receptive.

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They do not create new ideas. They repeat what they have heard and imitate what they

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have seen. If the world were peopled only by such as these, there would not be any change

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and any history. What produces change is new ideas and actions guided by them. What distinguishes

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As one group from another is the effect of such innovations.

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These innovations are not accomplished by a group mind.

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They are always the achievements of individuals.

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What makes the American people different from any other people is the

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joint effect produced by the thoughts and actions of innumerable, uncommon Americans.

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We know the names of the men who invented and step-by-step perfected the motor car.

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A historian can write a detailed history of the evolution of the automobile.

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We do not know the names of the men who, in the beginnings of civilization, made the greatest

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inventions, for example, lighting a fire.

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But this ignorance does not permit us to ascribe this fundamental invention to a group mind.

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It is always an individual who starts a new method of doing things, and then other people

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imitate his example.

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Individuals and fashions have always been inaugurated by individuals and spread through

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imitation by other people.

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While the group mind school tried to eliminate the individual by ascribing activity to the

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mythical Volksgeist, the Marxians were intent on the one hand upon depreciating the individual's

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contribution and on the other hand upon crediting innovations to common men.

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Thus, Marx observed that a critical history of technology would demonstrate that none

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One of the eighteenth century's inventions was the achievement of a single individual.

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What does this prove?

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Nobody denies that technological progress is a gradual process, a chain of successive

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steps performed by long lines of men, each of whom adds something to the accomplishments

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of his predecessors.

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The history of every technological contrivance, when completely told, leads back to the most

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and Primitive Inventions Made by Cave Dwellers in the Earliest Ages of Mankind.

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To choose any later starting point is an arbitrary restriction of the whole tale.

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One may begin a history of wireless telegraphy with Maxwell and Hertz, but one may as well

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go back to the first experiments with electricity or to any previous technological feats that

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had necessarily to precede the construction of a radio network.

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All this does not in the least affect the truth that each step forward was made by an

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individual and not by some mythical impersonal agency.

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It does not detract from the contributions of Maxwell, Hertz and Marconi to admit that

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they could be made only because others had previously made other contributions.

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To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot

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even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's

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Angles Most Famous Book Here, in 1878, Angles apodictically announced

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that military weapons are now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing

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influence is any longer possible.

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Henceforth, all further technological progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare.

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The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed.

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This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists.

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He accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

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Engels, who considered himself an expert in the art of warfare, liked to exemplify his

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doctrines by referring to strategy and tactics.

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Changes in military tactics, he declared, are not brought about by ingenious army leaders.

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They are achievements of privates who are usually cleverer than their officers.

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The privates invent them by dint of their instincts and put them into operation in spite

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of the reluctance of their commanders.

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Every doctrine denying to the single paltry individual any role in history must finally

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ascribe changes and improvements to the operation of instincts.

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As those upholding such doctrines see it, man is an animal that has the instinct to

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produce poems, cathedrals, and airplanes.

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Civilization is the result of an unconscious and unpremeditated reaction of man to external

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stimuli.

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Each achievement is the automatic creation of an instinct with which man has been endowed

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especially for this purpose.

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There are as many instincts as there are human achievements.

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It is needless to enter into a critical examination of this fable invented by impotent people

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for sliding the achievements of better men and appealing to the resentment of the dull.

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Even on the basis of this makeshift doctrine one cannot negate the distinction between

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the man who had the instinct to write the book on the origin of species and those who

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lacked this instinct.

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4.

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PLANNING HISTORY

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Individuals act in order to bring about definite results. Whether they succeed or not depends

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on the suitability of the means applied and the response their actions encounter on the

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part of fellow individuals. Very often the outcome of an action differs considerably

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from what the actor was eager to achieve. The margin within which a man, however great,

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can act successfully is narrow. No man can through his actions direct the course of affairs

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for more than a comparatively short period of the future, still less for all time to

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come. Yet every action adds something to history, affects the course of future events, and is

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in this sense a historical fact. The most trivial performance of daily routine by dull

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people is no less a historical datum than is the most startling innovation of the genius.

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The aggregate of the unvarying repetition of traditional modes of acting determines,

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as habits, customs and mores, the course of events.

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The common man's historical role consists in contributing a particle to the structure

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of the tremendous power of consuitude.

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History is made by men.

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The conscious intentional action of individuals, great and small, determine the course of events

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is in so far as it is the result of the interaction of all men.

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But the historical process is not designed by individuals.

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It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all individuals.

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No man can plan history.

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All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the

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actions of other men, constitute the historical process.

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The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

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Of course, there have always been men who planned for eternity.

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For the most part, the failure of their designs appeared very soon.

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Sometimes their constructions lasted quite a while, but their effect was not what the

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builders had planned.

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The monumental tombs of the Egyptian kings still exist, but it was not the intention

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of Their Builders to Make Modern Egypt Attractive for Tourists and to Supply Present-day Museums

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with Mummies. Nothing demonstrates more emphatically the temporal limitations on human planning

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than the venerable ruins scattered about the surface of the earth. Ideas live longer than

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walls and other material artifacts. We still enjoy the masterpieces of the poetry and philosophy

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of Ancient India and Greece, but they do not mean for us what they meant to their authors.

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We may wonder whether Plato and Aristotle would have approved of the use later ages

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have made of their thoughts.

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Planning for eternity, to substitute an everlasting state of stability, rigidity and changelessness

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for historical evolution, is the theme of a special class of literature.

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The Utopian author wants to arrange future conditions according to his own ideas and

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to deprive the rest of mankind, once and for all, of the faculty to choose and to act.

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One plan alone, namely the author's plan, should be executed and all other people silenced.

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The author, and after his death his successor, will henceforth alone determine the course

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of events.

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There will no longer be any history, as history is the composite effect of the interaction

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of all men.

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The superhuman dictator will rule the universe and reduce all other people to pawns in his

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plans.

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He will deal with them as the engineer deals with the raw materials out of which he builds,

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a method pertinently called social engineering.

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Such projects are very popular nowadays.

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They enrapture the intellectuals.

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A few skeptics observe that their execution is contrary to human nature, but their supporters

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are confident that by suppressing all dissenters they can alter human nature. Then, people

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will be as happy as the ants are supposed to be in their hills.

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The essential question is, will all men be prepared to yield to the dictator? Will nobody

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have the ambition to contest his supremacy? Will nobody develop ideas at variance with

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For those underlying the dictator's plan, will all men, after thousands of years of

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anarchy in thinking and acting, tacitly submit to the tyranny of one or a few despots?

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It is possible that in a few years all nations will have adopted the system of all-around

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planning and totalitarian regimentation.

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The number of opponents is very small, and their direct political influence almost nil.

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But even a victory of planning will not mean the end of history.

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Atrocious wars among the candidates for the Supreme Office will break out.

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Totalitarianism may wipe out civilization, even the whole of the human race.

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Then of course, history will have come to its end, too.