Renouvier did much more in this direction. In his Second Essay of General Criticism he touched upon the problem of progress in relation to freedom, and his fourth and fifth essays constitute five large volumes dealing with the “Philosophy of History.” He also devotes the last two chapters of La Nouvelle Monadologie to progress in relation to societies, and brings out the central point of his social ethics, that justice is the criterion of progress. Indeed, all that Renouvier says regarding history and progress leads up, in a manner peculiarly his own, to his treatment of ethics, which will claim attention in our next chapter.
The Analytic Philosophy of History forms an important item in the philosophical repertoire of Renouvier. He claims it to be a necessary feature of the neo-critical, and indeed of any serious, philosophy. It is, he claims, not a branch of knowledge which has an isolated place, for it is as intimately connected to life as is any theory to the facts which it embraces. That is not to say, and Renouvier is careful to make this clear, that we approach history assuming that there are laws governing it, or a single law or formula by which human development can be expressed. The “Philosophy of History” assumes no such thing; it is precisely this investigation which it undertakes, loyal to the principles of General Criticism of which it, in a sense, forms a part. In a classification it strictly stands between General Criticism or Pure Philosophy and History itself.
“History,” says Renouvier, “is the experience which humanity has of itself,”[[7]] and his conclusions regarding progress depend on the views he holds regarding human personality and its essential attribute, freedom. The philosophy of history has to consider whether, in observing the development of humanity on the earth, one may assert the presence of any general law or laws. Can one say legitimately that there has been development? Is there really such a thing as progress? If so, what is our idea of progress? What is the trend of humanity’s history? These are great questions.
[7] Introduction à la Philosophie de l’Histoire, Préface.
The attitude which Renouvier adopts to the whole course of human history is based upon his fundamental doctrines of discontinuity, freedom and personality. There are, he claims, real beginnings, unpredicable occurrences, happenings which cannot be explained as having been caused by preceding events. We must not, he urges, allow ourselves to be hypnotised by the name “History,” as if it were in itself some great power, sweeping all of us onward in its course, or a vast ocean in which we are merely waves. Renouvier stands firm in his loyalty to personality, and sees in history, not a power of this sort, but simply the total result of human actions. History is the collective work of the human spirit or of free personalities.[[8]]
[8] Renouvier’s great objection to Comte’s work was due to his disagreement with Comte’s conception of Humanity. To Renouvier, with his intense valuation of personality, this Comtian conception was too much of an abstraction.
It is erroneous to look upon it as either the fatalistic functioning of a law of things or as the results of the action of an all-powerful Deity or Providence. Neither the “scientific” view of determinism nor the theological conception of God playing with loaded dice, says Renouvier, will explain history. It is the outcome of human action, of personal acts which have real worth and significance in its formation. History is no mere display of marionettes, no Punch-and-Judy show with a divine operator pulling strings from his concealed position behind the curtain. Equally Renouvier disagrees with the view that history is merely an unrolling in time of a plan conceived from eternity. Human society and civilisation (of which history is the record) are products of man’s own thought and action, and in consequence manifest discontinuity, freedom and contingency. Renouvier thus opposes strongly all those thinkers, such as the Saint-Simonists, Hegelians and Positivists, who see in history only a fatalistic development. He joins battle especially with those who claim that there is a fatalistic or necessitated progress. History has no law, he claims, and there is not and cannot be any law of progress.
The idea of progress is certainly, he admits, one with which the philosopher is brought very vitally into contact in his survey of history. Indeed an elucidation of, this notion might itself be a part of the historian’s task. If so, the historians have sadly neglected part of their work. Renouvier calls attention to the fact that all those historians or philosophers who accept a comforting doctrine of humanity’s assured progress make very plausible statements, but they never seem able to state with any clearness or definiteness what constitutes progress, or what significance lies in their oft-repeated phrase, “the law of progress.” He rightly points out that this insistence upon a law, coupled with a manifest inability to indicate what it is, causes naturally a certain scepticism as to there being any such law at all.
Renouvier brands the search for any law of progress a futile one, since we cannot scientifically or logically define the goal of humanity or the course of its development because of the fact of freedom and because of our ignorance. We must realise that we, personally at firsthand, see only an infinitesimal part of humanity’s life on this planet alone, not to speak of a destiny possible beyond this globe, and that, at second-hand, we have only evidence of a portion of the great procession of human events. We do not know humanity’s beginning and primitive history, nor do we know its goal, if it has one. These factors alone are grave hindrances to the formulation of any conception of progress. Reflection upon them might have saved men, Renouvier observes, from the presumptuous belief in assured progress. We cannot presume even to estimate the tendencies, the direction of its course, because of the enormous and ever-increasing complexity of free human activity.
By his large work on the “Philosophy of History,” Renouvier shows that the facts of history themselves are against the theory of a universal and continuous progress, for the record shows us conflict, advance, retrogression, peoples rising, others degenerating, empires establishing themselves and passing away by inward ruin or outer assaults, or both, and civilisations evolving and disintegrating in their turn. The spectacle does not readily promote an optimistic view of human development at all, much less support the doctrine of a sure and certain progress. Renouvier does not blind himself to the constant struggle and suffering. The theatre, or rather the arena, of history presents a curious spectacle. In politics and in religion he shows us that there are conflicts of authority and of free thought, a warfare of majorities with minorities, a method of fighting issues slightly less savage than the appeal to pure force, but amounting to what he terms “a pacific application of the principle of force.” History shows us the corruption, tyranny and blindness of many majorities, and the tragic and necessary resort to force as the only path to liberty for down-trodden minorities. How, Renouvier asks, can we fit this in with a doctrine of assured progress, or, indeed, progress at all?