The German Conception of History. Georg G. Iggers

to historicism, seems to be far less broadly European and have more peculiarly German roots than Meinecke suggests. Ernst Troeltsch has pointed at the peculiar twist which Luther gave to the theory of natural law. Subsequently, this turn, according to Troeltsch, profoundly distinguished Lutheran from Catholic and Calvinist ethics. In the place of a concept of a rational law of Nature, Luther substituted an irrational law of Nature. Luther argued in accordance with St. Paul’s admonition that “there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” Every state represented the will of God, and thus required the complete obedience of the Christian in all matters temporal. Reason therefore expressed itself not in abstract moral commandments, but in historical institutions. The positive authorities were the concrete manifestations of natural law. Luther’s political and social ethics are thus conservative.¹³ His concept of society lacked any real concern with change.

      A much more dynamic theory of individuality appears in the monadology of Leibniz in whom Meinecke sees one of the important sources of historicism. In the place of the Newtonian concept of Nature as a mechanism with interchangeable parts, governed by abstract laws reducible to mathematical formulae, Leibniz presented the vision of a cosmos filled with self-contained units, monads, each unique, deriving its energy from within and developing in accordance with its own inner laws of change, yet in harmony with the whole.

      The sharp distinction between reason and unreason drawn by Descartes disappears for Leibniz. “Not only through the lumen naturale of reason but also through instinct” we find innate truths.¹⁴ Similarly, the sharp line drawn in French and English thought, between the sciences and the humanities lessens. The term Wissenschaft as used since Leibniz encompasses a much broader scope than the French or English term “science.” Leibniz’s plan for scientific academies provided not only for the study of nature, but for the liberal arts as well.¹⁵ In Germany Leibniz’s ideas, systematized and popularized by his disciple Christian von Wolff—a man now almost forgotten but for several decades the dominant philosophical figure in Germany—left their impact upon the intellectual climate of the German Enlightenment. This also held true of the anti-intellectualism of the Pietist revival. Gottfried Arnold and Johann Georg Hamann stressed the interrelation of reason and passion, and Hamann saw in history “the cyphers, hidden signs” and “hieroglyphs” of God.¹⁶ A similar faith that divine wisdom expressed itself in the unique institutions of history was to be seen in the traditionalism of Justus Moser. Nevertheless, these were only isolated elements of a theory of history. It was Herder who, in Also a Philosophy of History, first offered an extensive presentation of historicist principles in Germany in an extreme form from which he retreated in his later works.¹⁷

      Basic to Herder’s position are two concepts which remain fundamental to the entire affirmative tradition of German historicism with which we are dealing. The first of these concepts involves the idea of individuality. Herder, in contrast to natural law philosophy assumes that all values and all cognitions are historic and individual. “In a certain sense, every human perfection is national, secular, and most closely considered, individual.”¹⁸ History, he insists, is constant movement. Nevertheless, within the flux of history, there are certain centers with at least relative stability: the nations. They possess a morphology; they are alive; they grow. They are not rational in character, but dynamic and vital; things in themselves, not means. It is the historian’s task to understand them. Nations have the characteristics of persons: they have a spirit and they have a life span. They are not a collection of individuals, but are organisms.¹⁹

      This concept of individuality involves a theory of value and knowledge, and contains at least certain implications for political theory. It assumes that there are no universally valid values, that ethics cannot be based upon precepts of reason or upon the assumption of a common human nature. Rather, all values come out of the spirit of nations. Herder, as a matter of fact, not only protested against the application of the standards of the Enlightenment to other civilizations or ages but, in contrast to later nineteenth-century writers, warned against a Europocentric approach to history.²⁰ His concept of the nation as the source of all truth implied that there were no objective criteria of truth. Again, this was an extreme position which he modified later, but it was inherent in the historicist position. Strictly speaking, there could be no objective approach to history, Herder insisted. Not only could man not transcend the process of history, but insofar as history was an organic stream, it had to be approached by methods other than those of what Herder called the “mechanistic” spirit of modern philosophy.²¹ Reason could not understand life, but only create lifeless concepts. Verbal description could not re-create living reality. History could only be understood through empathy.²² Indeed, the borderline between truth and error, good and evil, became a very difficult one to draw. Herder wondered whether there was such a thing as prejudice. He held that what we call prejudice, and what may be only the expression of the national spirit at an early stage of its development, may “be good … because it makes the nation happy and gives it cohesion.” Conversely, objectivity and rationality may be signs of national disintegration, of “disease” and “intimation of death.”²³ Although, in the area of politics, Herder shared the demands of his contemporaries for a liberalization of the state and greeted the coming of the French Revolution with sympathetic interest,²⁴ his view of history certainly undermined the theoretical basis upon which the tradition of classic liberalism was based. Herder’s theories of truth and value were incompatible with the philosophy of natural law or the theory of the social contract.²⁵

      The second central concept of Herder’s philosophy of history was that history was a benevolent process, an idea which was basic to all affirmative historicist traditions with which we are presently concerned. German historians in this century have tended to stress that historicism involved the negation of the idea of progress. This was true only to the extent that the historicist position denied that there was any unilinear advance in history or that history developed according to a scheme. In another sense, however, German historicism was much more optimistic about the meaningfulness of history than were even adherents of the classical idea of progress. Theories of progress may assume either that human advancement is inevitable and that the process of history is determined in an upward direction (Hegel, Saint-Simon, Marx, Comte), or that man can be perfected, that progress is possible if man applies rationality to human institutions. Either position, particularly the second (the two positions do not necessarily exclude each other) implies that there is irrationality in the existing world; that there is a conflict between the world as it should be, and one day may be, and the world as it is. In this sense, the idea of progress still adheres to the tradition of natural law. German historicism on the other hand, assumes that all that has grown naturally or historically is good. “Every nation has its center of happiness within it.”²⁶ History is the source of real value.

      To be sure, there are the seeds of relativism in this concept, for it assumes that all knowledge and all values are related to concrete cultural and historical settings. Such a supposition could lead to the anarchy of values.²⁷ The historicism of Herder rests upon the firm belief that there is a divine purpose in history, that “Providence guides the path of development onward.”²⁸ All of Nature and of history reflect God. Herder compares history to a stream rushing to the ocean or to a growing tree. History is indeed meaningful, the “scene of a guiding intention on earth, although we do not perceive this ultimate purpose at once.²⁹ Basically, mankind is still one, according to Herder. However, the meaning of history is not found in the direction of events toward a rational end, but in the multiplicity of ways in which the human mind expresses itself in the diversity of nations.

      Truth, value, and beauty are not one, but many. They are found only in history and manifest themselves only in the national spirit. True poetry and true art for Herder are thus always national and historical. He set to work to compile and translate his great anthologies of folk poetry. For him, as for much of nineteenth-century Germany, history became the cornerstone of true culture. Implied in this concept is the assumption that all meaningful philosophy must become history of philosophy, and all theology the history of theology.

      In Also a Philosophy of History, Herder had laid the foundations for a historicism which spread far beyond the German boundaries. Herder’s theory directly contributed