By Prof. Dr. Mohammed Kareem Al-Saadi
History possesses a philosophy that provides it with the intellectual context defining its features according to its specific perspective and epistemological framework. History is the crucible for all days to come until they are numbered among the past; it is the inescapable gateway through which every human being, event, phenomenon, invention, or other matter enters to become an object of interest, a subject of debate and disagreement, or a matter of consensus. History has distinct features through which modern or contemporary philosophical thought can engage to comprehend a vision capable of offering alternative intellectual formulas and perspectives that humanity may have overlooked in its outlook on history—notwithstanding the extent of consensus or divergence in philosophical views of history among philosophers themselves.
This divergence can be found within the intellectual framework that opposes the metaphysical vision presented by the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico in his theses on history. This opposition is rooted in the view that metaphysics, through history, provides
“a description of events that can be used for a practical or educational purpose, yet means nothing for definitive knowledge. One had to wait for the nineteenth century to see views completely contrary to this metaphysics, which claims the ability to make the real world accessible, as well as the essence of human beings, without resorting to any kind of basic historical research. However, Vico acknowledged that thinking originating from the individual—considered independent—can only be limited, superficial, and necessarily erroneous above all. The knowledge that people can acquire about themselves is founded only on an analysis of the historical process within which people are active” (1).
This analysis of the historical process (becoming) provides another dimension for looking at historical teleology according to a consciousness capable of dispelling the previous view of history—the view that believes history is merely a form of cultural enrichment rather than an essential component for critical resolution in present experiences. Vico’s vision counters this by positioning history as a decisive factor through the functional activity within which society operates. This activity serves as a crucial engine and driver of human progress by linking the consciousness of individuals and groups to history as a process in which people themselves operate to sustain what they wish to establish in their present. Toynbee’s perspective on the scrutiny of history—presenting what is objective and discarding all prior judgments that might cloud our understanding of it—falls within the context of this process, which shapes the consciousness of historical facts and handles them within their proper framework.
In another outlook on history and its relationship to narrative—coupling it with the historical understanding of the subject matter that forms the structure of the historical story, its formulation, and the rebuilding of its foundations according to the justifications it offers for its existence within the specific context of events that transpired at the time—W.B. Gallie notes:
“Historical understanding is the exercise of the capacity to follow a story, where the story is known to be based on evidence and is presented as a sincere effort to get at the story” (2) itself.
Following a story from a standpoint of historical understanding is a conscious exercise in shaping the desired meaning intended by uncovering and reformulating the narrative of a historical event. This reformulation, which springs from specific particularities, represents an effort that cannot detach itself from the reality out of which the event originated while constructing its pathways. Historical understanding that proceeds from conscious formulations gives the historical story its clear significance without alienating the observer from its intentionality and its desired utility within its specific semantic context, as well as its impact on consciousness within the framework of the historical understanding of this practice. This practice is built on narrative formulations that mirror the actual transpired events that formed the image of the historical incident.
“In W.B. Gallie’s view, the actual events that really happened in the story of the past look surprisingly like the narrative form that the historian ultimately produces (…) while philosophers of history like Keith Jenkins, Louis Mink, and Hayden White believe that we do not live stories, but we only recount our lived experience in a narrative form. The American philosopher of history David Carr, Gallie, and the French philosopher of history Paul Ricoeur support the stance of maintaining that there is a fundamental continuity, or connection, between history as it was lived (the past) and history as it is written (the narrative)” (3).
This problematic intersection in the outlook toward history, narrative, the reconstruction of the story, historical understanding, and the previously lived moment presented in its narrative form, becomes a point of contention among philosophers of history themselves. They look at this moment through different inputs and contrasting frameworks in their visions of the past and its reconstruction in the present. This divergence directs us to identify specific points that clarify the scope of depth in the historical understanding of the recorded historical experience, categorized as follows:
The First Group: Proceeding from the ideas of the philosopher of history W.B. Gallie, this group attributes to history a characteristic of similarity between what happened in the past and the narrative form produced by the historian according to historical understanding and the capacity to present this historical truth in a narrative form. This form establishes a re-enactment of what transpired on one hand, and mirrors the narrative framework of its presenter on the other. Through this group’s view of history, we raise the following question: Does the narrative structure and its formulations resemble the conceptual structures and the method of historically constructing subjects with the form of the historical story? Or does the similarity reside in the reconstruction that the historian seeks to track in this direction?
The Second Group: Proceeding from the thought of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this group offers a visualization stating that history is a communicative process and an essential continuity between the lived and the written; this connection cannot separate the past and its narrative from how it was actually lived. Through this group’s view of history, we raise the following question: Is historical truth, according to the substance of historical understanding, a process in which continuity occurs without interruption between what is lived and what is written about it? And what is the extent of credibility that applies to this written material and its narrated image of the lived past?
In order to clarify the questions raised by both groups, Hayden White provides a distinction between the past and history, questioning whether this continuity can be entirely identical between them, given that the lived past and written history exist in a continuity that might lead some to assume an absolute convergence or identity between the two. White posits:
“that written history is a form of literature at its core. Hayden White also addresses the subject of history as knowledge relying on the distinction already observed between the past and history. Because, for White, we can never know the story of the past exactly as it really was, this means that there can be no past unblemished by the markings of historical historiography—the past exists only as written by historians. This is because history does not pre-exist in any set of facts that allows us direct access to the real past” (4).
If we agree with White that the past cannot be accessed exactly as it was in its true nature when it occurred, this is a very logical claim. There is no one who can literally transmit any historical event that occurred prior to the utilization of modern technologies in terms of direct documentation, photography, and recording things exactly as they are—even though the direct documentation of a historical event remains incomplete rather than absolute, since whoever documents it cannot grasp all its material facets. However, what White wants and what Ricoeur wants converge in one aspect and diverge in another:
The point of convergence: Each of them calls for continuity between the lived past and written history, since no history exists without a connection to some historical event that occurred in the past.
The point of divergence: Each has his own method for reaching the truth of the historical event intended for study; White regards the connection to it as an act of literary creation.
History confronting the past is
“a literary creation because it is always interpreted through textual remnants that cannot be understood in themselves except through layers of interpretation considered facts by the historian. Because facts never arrange themselves automatically to deliver meaning, White points out that the historian’s function is to impose a certain meaning using information that takes anarrative form, which requires the use of metaphor and rhetorical tropes” (5.
This function, which relies on the literary utilization of the story and how it is arranged, is what makes White’s stance on history dependent on reconstructing historical facts. These facts may not transmit everything that occurred exactly as it was, but their arrangement and the construction of their images—formed by the historian through the reformulation of these facts via metaphor and rhetorical tropes—constitute White’s tools for building the past through written history.
As for Paul Ricoeur, his method of reaching the formulation of historical images in what he wishes to convey to those interested in it proceeds from an idea different from the function intended by White. Ricoeur relies on four harmonious moments in understanding historical truth and building a communicative structure between the lived past and written history. These moments are:
“the moment of the symbol, the moment of the text, the moment of the action, then the moment of the narrative (…) inside a hierarchical arrangement of human capacities related to capability and power, the capacity to speak occupies the first rank. Speech is: doing things with words. From the capacity to speak, we move toward the capacity to act, and action is: the ability to make an event happen. In the third rank comes the capacity for narrative storytelling, and narrative is: the ability to say that something happened” (6).
These three capacities are what form the historical consciousness of the four moments that Ricoeur bets on in the continuity and connection between what is a lived past and what is a written history, thereby shaping the understanding of history and creating a moment of historical awareness of what was previously lived. For Ricoeur, continuity has an existential turn in understanding history and shaping historical consciousness, in contrast to his view of the critical turn. The existential turn makes his historical outlook based on the dimension of the Being in history in its ontological form, influenced by philosophers who share a similar character, namely Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as is evident through his deep readings in his book Memory, History, Forgetting.
On the matter of distinguishing between what is existential and what is critical in the historical condition, he notes that:
“on the critical turn, reflection is based on imposing limits on every totalizing claim related to historical knowledge; it targets certain modes of speculative vanity that cause historical discourse to turn inward upon itself to install itself as a discourse of history itself, knowing itself by itself (…) and on the ontological turn, hermeneutics undertakes its task to explore the presuppositions that we can call existential (existentiales), whether they relate to the actual knowledge of writing history or to the preceding critical discourse. They are existential in the sense that they construct the specific way of being, our way of being in the world and our being-in-it, this being which is each one of us” (7).
Ricoeur shapes the ontological vision of history through his understanding of human capacities to distinguish between the critical-epistemological and the ontological demand in shaping historical consciousness across the moments that form the awareness of what exists as a dimension in the reality of historical writing expressing our existence in the world. Ricoeur adds another feature to the historical meaning of our existence that expresses each of us in it in an emotional/existential way, and this feature is “repetition” (Wiederholung), tracking its operational root in both Kierkegaard and Heidegger—given that the origin of repetition goes back to Kierkegaard, and its operational applications in Dasein belong to Heidegger, who chooses his heroes in his ontological world.
Ricoeur views repetition as follows:
“As for us, what is much more promising than that is the assertion stating that repetition is neither a restoration after ruin nor a re-actualization, but it is (achievement anew). It is a matter here of remembering, of an answer and a response, or even a rejection of heritage and tradition. The creative power of repetition lies entirely in this capacity to reopen the past onto the future. When we understand repetition in this manner, we can consider it a new ontological foundation for the process of writing history, after grasping it in the line of its deepest intentionality” (8).
Reopening the past onto the present and the future requires a new foundation according to Ricoeur’s concept of history and the process of rewriting it ontologically through an intentionality in understanding and grasping historical consciousness. This consciousness is established on the intentional dimension in the ontological construction of historical facts and the method of building them through “achievement anew” via repetition.
However, in the concept of constructing historical material through storytelling and narrative methods, the process is not innocent to the extent of presenting something entirely neutral, given the presence of subjects who bias themselves in one way or another toward a thought or ideology in interpreting the historical story. They present it in light of the contexts in which it occurred, to which it succumbed, and which contributed to forming its images in the mind of the historian. For this reason, power has a hand in shaping some of the features of these images according to Michel Foucault’s perspective:
“written history is always more than just an innocent telling of a story, and the reason for this precisely is that it is the primary means for distributing and utilizing power. This is because the act of organizing historical information into narrative in itself does not constitute a deviation from the honest truth, but imparting an illegitimate accuracy to the past can be a mechanism of exercising power in contemporary society” (9).
History is more than just an innocent story; in this view, Foucault unleashes the principle of skepticism regarding written history because authorities of various designations (religious or secular) and various directions impart an illegitimate image to the written history that transmits the past to us. This is one of the practices of power itself, according to its desires, intentions, and what it wishes to narrate in written history. Foucault’s viewpoint is that written history falls within the form of organizations practiced by power in generating information and its role in shaping the nature of contemporary societies. Power is an exercise in shaping historical consciousness according to its desires. Despite presenting historical information within its contexts, this accuracy is illegitimate in written history; meaning that organizing the story in written history does not necessarily express the realities of the past, but necessarily expresses the construction that serves power itself in shaping the image of the past. Here, Foucault’s concept of “illegitimate accuracy” becomes clear.
History, within the problematic of the recorded experience, has contributed to making many historical events that reached the present fraught with a kind of obscurity in vision, resulting from the actions of power in confirming what pleases it or negating what does not. This Foucaultian perspective on history contains an incitement not only against power, but against history itself, rendering the discussion of history in its transmitted accounts and events a subject of doubt that must succumb to objective scrutiny and verification that does not tilt toward any ideology belonging to a certain power. If it is not so, history remains filled with contradictions imposed upon it by authorities. Even at times when the historian wishes to investigate the historical accuracy placed by power within the historical trajectory, it is necessary to emphasize the need to clarify the suitability of the moment of alignment between this historical accuracy and the moment the historical events occurred in their teleology. Does this alignment demonstrate the consistency of historical events with the goals of the power that shaped the consciousness of this historical event? Or do these events fail to narrate what power wants if they are placed in the required context for these historical events after stripping them of the goals of the power that recorded them in another way, while adding contexts ensuring for authorities that the alleged historical accuracy modifies the event in favor of power’s vision of it?
Hence, the problem lies in three points containing a set of questions:
Is history a literary creation, always interpreted through its textual remnants that can be understood through layers of interpretation of the historical event? Or is history what actually occurred of events transmitted as they are, without the entry of literary aspects and other things that prompt different understandings debating the philosophy behind the historical event and how it is transmitted to the reader—who may be an amateur reading history or a scholar interested in studying it?
Is history a series of moments distributed among the symbol, the text, the action, and the narrative? Or is it a self-contained whole that makes the examiner view it in a subjective manner formed by their consciousness at the moment of reading, without looking at these divisions that might conceal within them pathways for the infiltration of various ideologies when each adopts its reading according to its desires?
Is history an interpretation by non-innocent authorities in its recording? Or is it history that forces authorities to shape their pathways according to what is recorded in it? And who is the power concerned with recording it? Is it the victorious power at the moment history occurred? Or is it the momentary power that narrates and recounts the event now?
Sources:
Max Horkheimer: The Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History [Translated into Arabic by Muhammad Ali Al-Yousifi], Beirut: Dar Al-Farabi, 2006, p. 81.
Alun Munslow: Deconstructing History [Translated into Arabic by Qasim Abdeh Qasim], Cairo: National Center for Translation, 2006, p. 27, p. 28.
Ibid, p. 28.
Ibid, p. 56.
Ibid, p. 56.
Jannat Belkhen: Historical Narrative according to Paul Ricoeur, Algeria: Al-Ikhtilaf Publications, 2014, p. 43.
Paul Ricoeur: Memory, History, Forgetting [Translated into Arabic by Dr. George Zenati], France: Seuil / Beirut: Dar Al-Kitab Al-Jadeed, 2000, p. 427, p. 428.
Ibid, p. 558.
Alun Munslow: Ibid, p. 30.
