The task of understanding must always begin with thorough immersion in the subject matter, “exact research, step by step apprehension, and study of the documents.” Having been immersed in the subject matter, we may then approach the spiritual essence through an act of intuition (Divination). Certainly, man knows too little to be able to unfathom the meaning of world history.
“I consider it impossible to solve the problem completely,” Ranke observes. “Only God knows world history. We only perceive its contradictions. As an Indian poet put it, its ‘harmony is known only to the gods but unknown to man’. We can only approach it intuitively and from a distance. Nevertheless we can perceive unity, continuity (Fortgang) and development.”64 “Thus,” Ranke concludes, “our paths as historians lead us to the problems of philosophy. If philosophy were what it should be and history were perfectly clear and complete, the two disciplines would be in complete agreement.”65
3. On the basis of this concept of history, Ranke is able to construct a metaphysics of politics. This view of history is striking in its radical optimism. Although Ranke rejects the Hegelian notion that historical development can be explained in rational terms, he is no less confident that history is a meaningful process. In one sense, his optimism goes considerably further than that of Hegel. For Hegel sees in all history, past and present, the signs of man’s irrationality and imperfection which has not yet been overcome. For Ranke, however, “every epoch is immediate to God.”66 This optimism expresses itself in several ways. History for Ranke is meaningful. Despite his recognition that man at any time could only see small perspectives of the total reality, Ranke was never bothered by the doubts of objective knowledge which troubled later historians. Admittedly, on the basis of religious faith, he assumes that there were meaningful units (geistige Einheiten) in history, something which did not follow from empirical inquiry. He further assumes that these meaningful units, individuals, institutions, states, and nations, are not merely ethically neutral, but as expressions of the will of God represent positive values. From this he draws the conclusion that states are such meaningful units, ends in themselves, and that in following their vital interests, they can only do good.
The belief held by Ranke that there is an ethical order in the universe which applies to the political realm, too, coincides with the faith of most of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But what is almost entirely missing in Ranke, despite his pronounced Christianity, and for that matter is absent in most Romantic thought, is the recognition of an element of evil in man and in human institutions.67 The biblical prophets, as well as Stoic, Christian, and Enlightenment natural law thinkers, have always seen a dualism between the ethical law and the positive reality. This conflict requires the active intervention of ethical man in order to bring human institutions in harmony with the demands of justice, even if the limitations of human nature permits only an approximation of this ideal. For Ranke there is operative within the political world an automatic harmony which restores the rightful order if it has been disturbed. Thus, in the famous essay, “The Great Powers,” he describes a balance of power among the great states as a central instrument in the European order, incapable of destruction by the urges of hegemony of any great power. “It is true that the commotions in the world now and again destroy this system of law and order,” as French ambitions had done. “But after they have subsided, this system is reconstituted, and all efforts aim at making it perfect once more.”68 The struggle of the powers is not merely a meaningless clash of power.
World history does not present such a chaotic tumult, warring, and planless succession of states and peoples as appears at first sight. Nor does history deal only with the often dubious advancement of civilization. There are forces and indeed spiritual, life-giving, creative forces, nay life itself and there are moral energies, whose development we see. They cannot be defined or put in abstract terms, but one can behold them and observe them. One can develop a sympathy for their existence. They unfold, capture the world, appear in manifold expressions, dispute with and check and overpower one another. In their interaction and succession, in their life, in their decline or rejuvenation, which then encompasses an ever greater fullness, higher importance and wider extent, lies the secret of world history.69
This leads Ranke to the concept of the spiritual character of power, a theme recurring throughout his writings, but most systematically developed in the “Political Dialogue” in the Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift. The state must not be conceived as the state in the abstract, but as the concretely existing, specific state in its historical development. The state is not merely an empirical concentration of power; it possesses a “positive spiritual content,” an idea which cannot be expressed in general, abstract terms because it relates specifically to the particular state. This “idea that inspires and dominates the whole”70 shapes the state into an organic unit, completely different from all other states. “There is an element which makes a state not a subdivision of general categories, but a living thing, an individual, a unique self.”71 This uniqueness, of course, prevents the successful transplantation of alien institutions or ideas. The state is real in its concrete particular existence; at the same time, it contains in its fundamental idea an element which is general, which transcends the transitory reality of the concrete state, but which can express itself only in the concrete state. The state, in Ranke’s terms, is thus “real-and-spiritual” (real-geistig) in its “unimagined uniqueness.”72 Thus every independent state has special tendencies of its own, determined by the idea derived from God. In the states themselves, Ranke writes, “instead of the passing conglomerations which the contractual theory of the state creates like cloud formations, I perceive spiritual substances, original creations of the human mind—I might say, thoughts of God.”73
Two important implications follow from the above: the spiritualization of power and struggle, and the subordination of the interests of the individual to the state. The activities of the state are determined by its idea, according to Ranke. This idea finds itself in conflict and ultimately involves the clash of military power. The state originated through struggle; its existence and development are inextricably connected with struggle. “The world, as we know, has been parceled out. To be somebody, you have to rise by your own efforts. You must achieve genuine independence. Your rights will not be voluntarily ceded to you. You must fight for them.” But is it not brute force alone that matters then, Karl asks Friedrich in the Political Dialogue. No, Friedrich replies. The foundations of the European community are there and remain, although this community requires “moral energy” to attain “universal significance.” As confident as Hegel in the victory of good through the struggle of arms in the course of history, Ranke has Friedrich observe: “But seriously, you will be able to name few significant wars for which it could not be proved that genuine moral energy achieved the final victory.”74 In one important sense, Ranke’s state is limited in its ambition: his recognition of a European community and of the role of all the great powers to maintain this community and contribute to the fullness and variety of the European family.
Thus, for Ranke, a state can only develop fully to the extent that it is independent of other states. Considerations of foreign policy and military strength are primary to the state. Its “supreme law” must be to subordinate its internal life to these needs.75 Opinions in regard to the internal structure of the state must fall behind considerations of foreign policy. Differences of domestic politics must be transcended in public discussion, as they were before the French Revolution, and “politics again relegated to the field of power and foreign affairs where it belongs.”76
The individual is thus clearly subordinated to the needs of the state. States as ideas of God are ends in themselves. “It would be ridiculous to explain them as so many institutions for the safeguarding of interests of individuals who may have banded together for the protection of their private property.”77 Individuals have their existence only in the state. In the good (rechten) state “purely private life” does not exist for the individual citizen. “Our activities belong primarily to our community.”78
Liberty in the sense in which liberals or democrats have traditionally understood the term therefore needs redefinition for Ranke. For Friedrich, in the Political