The German Conception of History. Georg G. Iggers

thus to grasp the rational structure of the universe and of ethics. Classical liberalism viewed rights in terms of abstract, universal principles. It saw those characteristics as essentially human which were universal and uniform among men. But for Humboldt, as for Goethe, Schiller, or Herder, who also shared in the Humanitätsideal of German classicism, it was essential to man’s humanity that he develop his own unique individuality to its fullest. They shared the Enlightenment belief that man possessed a special dignity, but this dignity, they held, had to be understood in dynamic terms of individual growth. However, while they recognized that man’s dignity and end were prescribed by the nature of things or reason, they did not think that reason dictated clear rules for this development. Rather, man’s growth had to be governed by the inner nature of his peculiar individuality. Freedom from state interference was necessary because “man’s highest purpose—the one prescribed by eternal immutable reason, not by changing inclinations, (was) the highest and most proportioned development of his resources into one whole.”⁹ Yet this development was possible only when the state did not interfere with man’s natural development. The individual was a living organism; the state a mechanical tool which, through legislation, would impose external restraints upon natural growth.¹⁰ Man did not exist in a vacuum, Humboldt acknowledged, and in contrast to the state society was natural and necessary for the individual as he unfolded his “unique individuality” ( Eigentümlichkeit).¹¹ Humboldt assumed that there was a basic harmony among individualities in growth and did not see in society as such, as distinct from the state, a significant source of constraint. Indeed, if the functions of the state were restricted to a minimum, then in his opinion the “highest ideal of the co-existence of human beings” could be attained; namely, that in which “every being develops not only out of himself and for his own sake.”¹²

      Such a concept of individuality appears hardly compatible with the concept of equality in the classical sense. Indeed, certain important elements of classic liberal political theory are missing. There is nowhere any proposal for government by consent, nor for any system of checks and balances to control the power of the state. Indeed, because Humboldt conceives the state as unified and possessing “absolute power”¹³ and rejects the representative principle, he argues that the state’s functions must be limited to the bare minimum of preserving security. Because of the coercive character of the state, the positive social functions must be left to voluntary associations. Were the state to carry on positive functions, Humboldt maintains, it would require the consent of every individual, something very different from the majority will of its representatives.¹⁴

      The Limits of the State constitutes a theoretical repudiation of the paternalistic welfare state, primarily that of the absolutistic Polizeistaat of eighteenth-century enlightened depotism, but in principle also of the revolutionary state. In no sense does the book contain a rejection of monarchy as such, or even of absolute monarchy. As Siegfried Kaehler has pointed out in his political biography of Wilhelm von Humboldt,¹⁵ Humboldt’s endorsement of the French Revolution never goes beyond the idea of liberty. Already in 1789, he viewed with misgivings the egalitarian aspects of the revolution. In his diary, he condemns the decisions of the night of August 4th, abolishing feudal rights in France, “when a number of nobles, most of them poor, gave away what belonged to the wealthy.” As he tells an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution:

      I said that the deputies had no authority to renounce (these privileges), that the surrender of these privileges had come too quickly and had no useful but only harmful consequences since they nourished chimerical ideas of equality.¹⁶

      Perhaps most strikingly in discord with classic liberal ideals is Humboldt’s glorification of war in the Limits of the State. Kant, too, had paid homage to the positive aspects of war.¹⁷ War and antagonism had stimulated human activities and hastened the development toward a civil society on rational foundations in which war would be abolished. But for Humboldt war is a desirable end in itself, a permanent feature of human societies, “one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race.” He regretfully saw war assume a less and less important place in the modern world, and believed there is no substitute for it. War “alone gives to the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void.”¹⁸ Standing armies must be abolished not to dampen the warlike spirit but to spread it through the nation, to “inspire the citizen with spirit of true war.”¹⁹

      Doubtless, this positive attitude toward war is related to Humboldt’s anti-eudaemonism, his rejection of personal welfare as the highest ethical good. This attack against “eudaemonism” is central to the thought of all the significant writers of the German historical tradition from Humboldt to Meinecke and of German Idealists from Kant to the Hegelians. “Happiness and pleasure,” Humboldt observes, “are far removed from the dignity of man. Man most enjoys those moments in which he experiences the highest degree of strength and inner unity. But at these times he is also closest to profound misery.”²⁰ For Humboldt the highest ethical good is still found in the development of the individuality and uniqueness of each man. But the higher values, which replace personal happiness as the highest good, could be easily interpreted, as they later were by German writers of the historicist and German Idealist tradition, in terms of the subordination of the welfare of the greatest possible number of individuals to the historic destiny of the community.

      In that case, could the limited state, advocated by Humboldt in the Limits of the State, actually be established? This raises the question whether man possesses meaningful choices in his political behavior or must act exclusively within the framework of historical institutions. In the final chapter of his book on the application of theory to reality, Humboldt deals with this question, and develops a theory of social change. Classical liberalism holds that society could be effectively changed by the application of theory to social reality. Without entirely discounting the role of ideas, Humboldt emphasizes the limitations of such an approach. Change could take place only within a concrete historical and social situation, he argues; hence the application of theories to societies is possible only within very narrow limits. Every situation (Lage) in which men find themselves has a definite inner structure or form that can not be transformed into any self-chosen one. Change is possible, however, but it requires a prior transformation of opinions and attitudes. One could, without disturbing the existing order of things, prepare for transformations by acting on the minds and characters of men and giving them a direction no longer in accord with the status quo. Any other approach would disturb the natural course of human development.²¹ and have disastrous consequences.

      This stress upon the role of “pure theory” in legislation sharply distinguishes Humboldt from the historicist position of a Savigny. Despite his recognition of historical realities, Humboldt affirms:

      that natural and general law is the only foundation of all positive law, and that one always has to come back to natural law, and that therefore—to cite a principle of law which serves as the source of all other principles of law—no one can ever in any way obtain a right through the energy or the ability of another person without that person’s consent.²²

      Humboldt’s affirmation that such a transcendent law exists signified, of course, his recognition that not all institutions function in accord with this transhistorical norm. This was already implied in the mere fact that Humboldt wrote a book on the theory of a nonexisting state. But did this recognition of a “natural and universal law” not stand in contradiction with Humboldt’s belief that the individual should be judged only by measures proper to him, and not by external abstract norms? Humboldt thus agrees with the French revolutionaries that the state must bring the “real condition of things” as close to the “right and true theory” as possible. But this “approximation” is possible only insofar as “true necessity” does not hinder its course. The possibility of change, however, rests on the assumption that “men (were) sufficiently receptive of that liberty which the theory (taught), and that this liberty could bring about those wholesome consequences which always accompanied liberty when there were no obstacles in its way.” But the “possibility” of applying the theory is always limited by “Necessity” (Nothwendigkeit). Doubtlessly keeping in mind the developments in France, Humboldt