Rickert; Xénopol. History as science of the individual.
The first of these answers is to be found in the work of Rickert (1896-1902), cited above, and in the almost contemporary work of Xénopol (1899).[15] Rickert's work is that of a professional philosopher, and a follower of Windelband; the other, of an intelligent historian, who is somewhat lacking in equipment as a philosopher. Rickert, after having examined the naturalistic process and demonstrated how it finds a limit in individuality, next examines historical process, which takes possession of the field that naturalism is obliged to relinquish. Xénopol upholds the same distinction, of a double series of sciences, historical and theoretical, of phénomènes successifs and of phénomènes de répétition. To both these writers (besides the merit of having revived, in opposition to naturalism, the consciousness of individuality) belongs that of having understood that the field of history extends far beyond that ordinarily assigned to it, and embraces every manifestation of the real. But merely successive phenomena or phenomena of mere repetition do not exist and are not conceivable; nor is it true that the sciences dealing with the former stop at differences of fact and neglect identities. For how could a history of political facts be written, if no attention were paid to the constant political nature of those facts? or of poetry, without paying attention to the constant poetical nature of all its historical manifestations? or of zoological species, without paying attention to the constant nature of the organism and of life? The distinction, therefore, as formulated by Xénopol, is little enough elaborated, not to say crude. Rickert, for his part, falls into a like error, owing to his failure to respect that intuitive and individual element, which he had previously admitted. Hence the serious contradictions, in which he becomes involved in the second part of his book. After having defined the concept as peculiar to the naturalistic method, he eventually claims to find also a species of concept in the procedure of history, which he had distinguished from and opposed to the former: a historical concept, which is obtained by cutting out, in the extensive and intensive infinity of facts, certain groups, which are placed in relation by means of practical criteria of importance and of value. It is true (he writes) that the concept has been defined by us as something of universal content; but now we wish precisely to surpass this one-sidedness, and therefore in the interest of logic it is justifiable to give the name concepts also to the thoughts which express the historical essence of reality.[16] It is worse still when he attempts to explain the ineradicable intuitive and æsthetic element of historical narration; for holding art to be without truth and of use only in producing some sort of artistic (hedonistic?) effect, he recognizes that element as a means of endowing narration with liveliness and of exciting the fancy.[17] A consequence of this lack of understanding of the æsthetic function has been the laborious and vain attempt which Rickert is obliged to make, to determine to what personages and facts we are to attribute objective historical value.
History as art.
The second answer, that history is an art (that is to say, a special form of art, which is distinguished from the rest, in that it represents, not the possible but the real), avoids the above-mentioned difficulties. It distinguishes clearly between the natural sciences and history; it explains the ineliminability and the function of the intuitive element in history, and does not lose itself in the vain search for the distinctive criterion between historical facts and non-historical facts, because it declares that all facts are historical.[18] But it must in any case be corrected and completed with the conclusion that the representation of the real is no longer simple representation or simple art, but the interpenetration of thought and representation, that is to say, philosophy-history.[19]
Other controversies concerning history.
All the other controversies recently engaged upon, relate to the criteria of interpretation, or the system of ideas, which serves as the basis of any sort of historical narration. Thus there have been disputes as to the precise meaning and the greater or less importance in history of climate, of race, of economic factors, of individuality, of collectivity, of culture, of morality, and of intelligence; and also as to how teleology, immanence, providence, and so on, are to be understood in history. In these disputes there recur constantly the names of Buckle, of Taine, of Spencer, of Ranke, of Marx, of Lamprecht and of others. It is evident that those controversies concern, not only the gnoseological nature of historical writing, but the system of the spirit and of the real, the conception of the world itself. The materialist and the spiritualist, the theist and the pantheist, will solve them differently. To write their history here would be to go beyond the boundaries of Logic and of the particular history of Logic, that we have set ourselves.
[1] See my observations concerning the perpetuity of historical criticism in Critica, vi. pp. 383-84.
[2] Poetics, chap. 8.
[3] Anal. pr. i. chap. 27.