Historicity

Albert Dondeyne

1.Statement of the Problem

Man alone among the many realities of the world, is a historical being. He is the only being of which
history is written because he is the only one who makes history. When we remarked above that our time is
characterized by its being a turning point of history, everyone must have understood immediately that we were
speaking of man and not of atoms and electrons, ants and robins. For these things there are no turning points. They
have no freedom, hence they cannot take an autonomous attitude regarding the situations in which they fine
themselves, nor do new horizons open before them for the future, for they always react in the same way. Therefore,
when we study their behavior, we can abstract from the past, the present and the future since we can with certainty
determine what their future will be by studying their past. Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, when spring returns
to our region the robins once more build their nests as they have always done. In a word, they do not make history
since they do not create a civilization, and therefore, they are not studied by history but only by physics, biology and
the many branches of research called natural science.

The fact that man alone is the bearer and actor of history, is rooted in the structure itself o four being
human. Modern philosophy expresses this idea by saying that man is a history-making existence, or that historicity
is an essential characteristic of man s existence. A sharpened consciousness of historicity is precisely one of the main
characteristics of our time. It is one of the chief aspects of the way contemporary man experiences his being man.

We do not mean to say that formerly man was not historical. Man is that by his very nature, but formerly he
was not so keenly aware of the historical nature of his existence. For example, the ancient Greeks were dominated
by the all-pervading idea of fate, which determined everything with an iron necessity, and this fate repressed their
consciousness of historicity. The so-called necessity imposed by fate, is, of course, a pseudo-idea, the product of a
mans spontaneous inclination to transfer the inevitable character of the past to the future. For, truly, what has
happened can never be undone. This inevitability of the past, however, is purely consequent, its necessity merely
follows the actual events. It would be wrong to conclude from it that the events were also antecedently necessary
and inevitable at the same time when they were nothing but future possible events alongside numberless others. Yet,
man likes to endow possibilities with inevitability. Thus, when a student fails in his test, he consoles himself with the
thought that it has to be. In reality, it did not have to be. If he had worked harder, or if he had better luck at the
examination, he would not have failed. Now that he has failed, there is nothing that he can do about it and he must
make a virtue necessity, that is, he has to take into account his present situation, change his plans for a vacation,
and begin anew to prepare for a successful test.
 An example may show that this lack of historical awareness did not quite disappear with the waning of the
middle ages. Not many years have passed since the following argument was used in numerous Christian circles for
indiscriminately condemning the social class struggle. A class struggle, so it was claimed, that aims at removing the
inequality among men must be wrong, for it is a struggle against the will of God. For the fact that there have always
been great inequalities among men, classes and peoples points to a root in human nature itself, and therefore must be
considered to be a sign of Gods will who has created mans nature. Here, then, what has always been serves to
support a conclusion, by way of an appeal of Gods will, with respect with what will be in the future. However,
another conclusion can be drawn: since all men are equal before God and we must love everyone as ourselves, it is
in line with Gods will that we try to eliminate the existing inequalities as much as possible, that we strive for the
establishment of an economical and social world which provides for a more equal distribution of opportunities for
all.

This transition from the present inequalities to a greater equality does not occur without a struggle, yet this
struggle should always retain a human character, it should even take on a Christian character, but it may never
degenerate into class war and class murder. Where, we may ask, lies the difference between the earlier and the new
line of reasoning? It lies in the fact that man was formerly much more impressed by the inevitability of the past
than by the possibilities opened by future horizons.

Now it is characteristic of the spirit of our time--caused in part by the influence of the enormous
development of science and technology in our Promethean world--that man has recognized that the proverb there is
nothing new under the sun" expresses only one side of what is taking place in the world. Man now realizes that it is
equally true that great changes are occurring and that it is necessary, to recreate the social structures. Our modern
awareness of historicity is directed to the future rather than to the past and puts emphasis upon the fact that man not
only undergoes history, but that he has also responsibility for it. In other words, today's awareness of historicity is
closely connected with the awareness that the world, in a certain sense, is man's work, the fruit of his labour, as
creative of culture. Merleau-Ponty, the French Philosopher, has said very well: Man is a working being, and labour,
the foundations of history...is not merely the production of wealth, but is, in general, the activity by which man
projects around himself a human milieu and transcends what nature provides for his life.

To transform the raw materials of nature into a truly human milieu that is worthy of man, is the task of man,
of the worker, that is, of man as the builder of culture, of a world. Consequently, man is also a historical being, for
whenever there is civilization there is also a history of civilization.

Reflection, therefore, on man's contemporary awareness of historicity is necessary if we wish to understand

today's world and cooperate in its construction. This is most important especially for the Christian because he has to
reconcile this sensibility for the historical with a sincere belief in divine providence. As we have pointed out in our
chapter on the Prometheus myth and modern atheism, this reconciliation is not always very easily accomplished.
 2. Pre-Philosophical Experience of Historicity

We must seek to define the nature of historicity, ask the questions. What exactly is historicity? It is actually the task
of philosophy to discover the nature of things and express it in clear definition. But where does the philosopher
obtain his knowledge? Like anybody else, he gets it from the daily experience that is common to all and which for
this reason is called pre-philosophical experience.

Historicity is a structure that belongs to every human being as part of his essence. In other words, that man is and
knows himself to be a historical being, is contained in the way man experiences, pursues and accomplishes his
being-man every day. In some sense, therefore, no one, not even a philosopher, can teach you what historicity is, just
as no one can teach what it is to be a man. You know this from your experience of being-man, although you may
perhaps not be able to give immediately a clear and precise answer to the questions, What is it to be a man? and,
What is historicity?" But there are many things which we know without being able to formulate and define them
clearly. Moreover, if a definition of sadness, of joy, of love means something for us, it is because we, as it were
spontaneously, realize that the given definition agrees with what experience has already taught us. In this sense,
Socrates, the great Greek philosopher, said that mans learning process is in many cases a sort of remembering, man
becomes more clearly conscious of what he already knew implicitly. Expressed in modern terms, when we reflect
upon our being man and the meaning of being-man, when for example, we want to bring to light its historicity
which precisely is the task of philosophical thought all we do is clarify and make more precise a kind of pre-
philosophical understanding which is contained in the daily experience itself of our being-man. What we are going
to do now is to follow this procedure. We will start with our pre-philosophical experiences of historicity, an
experience which we have had a thousand times.

We have perhaps first experienced what historicityis when, many years age, we learned from our parents how to call
things by their proper names: What is this? A spoon; and that? A fork; and that? A chair.

What happened when we learned these names? We were taken into the home-world of father and mother (a world
that was there long before we were around) in other words we were established, made present in that world, so that
from then on we would conduct ourselves in it regard as becomes those who have to live together, to understand one
another, "meet one another" through the many things which we experience as being "the same." When mother now
asks me for a spoon, I shall no longer come back with a fork, and when father wants a chair, I shall not bring him a
broom. It is as if a secret agreement has been made between father, mother, and myself: they can henceforth depend
on me and I on them. I have been admitted to a tradition which I myself take over, and this dimension of the past,
the present and the future. Every human product, however humble, a fork, or a spoon, establishes us in history by
the fact that it is experienced as a centre of reference to others; these references points to the many with whom we
live together or to those whom we shall meet through the instrumentality of these same products.

Later when we went to school, we were made familiar with the history of our own country, with Europe, and the
world. Of course we became acquainted only with high points or understanding events of history: the propagation of
Christianity, the barbarian invasions, wars and peace treaties, the lives and deeds of great men whose things in one
or another realm of culture, such as those of art, military science, the establishment of law, or statesmanship. In this
way, on the level of explicit conceptualism, the term "history" gradually became synonymous with a series of
dotable events of the past.
Nevertheless, beneath this clear but rather superficial definition of history another much richer amd more original
concept of "history" was at work, for otherwise, how would we have been able to speak of "highlights", "turning
points", of "great men", "heroes" and "men of genius"? Why did we call some events "great"? Because something
great had "happened" there, something that has decisive importance for the course of future events. We learned, for
example, that the discoveries of gunpowder, printing, and the new World, had been "turning points" in the history of
European civilization. Whom did we call "great men" if not those who had known how to use circumstances to
prepare a better future for the people, those who instead of "undergoing" events, had helped to "make history"?

At the university the student comes into contact with the great masters of culture in a more direct and personal way.
Instead of mechanically repeating what henfinds in textbooks of philosophy, he tries to get a personal philosophical
insight; and for that purpose he goes to school and sit at the feet of Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas and Kant. Philosophy
becomes a dialogue with the past by means of the work of these great masters, and he hopes to learn true
philosophizing by means of this dialogue. He learn through this contact with the masters in a personal way what
history truly is, what is meant by expressions such as "the history of philosophy", "the history of art", "the history of
social institutions". He learns why man uses here the term "history" in preference to other terms that are more or less
related to it, such as "becoming", "growth", "evolution", and he realizes especially what is meant when we say that
now and then "something happens".

When I give my usual course on Special Metaphysics every Thursday, or publish an article about philosophy, little
or nothing "happens". But when Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method, when Kant published his Critique of
Pure Reason, and Heidegger gabe rhe world his Being and Time, so much has happened in the realm of philosophy
that whoever earnestly occupies himself with philosophy must henceforth take notice of these "events".

Every great work of art, of culture, or of the mind is an "event", that is, it has a universal and lasting significance for
mankind. Uniqueness, originality and universality here walk hand and hand. No true history would be in hand
without major events. They make it possible that the history of mankind in general does not run idly by, that even
outside those "high points" something happens; that, for example, the average man also makes contributions to true
science, art and philosophy.

Man knows what historicity is because he is a history-making existence, even when he may not know it with
the clarity and precision of a philosophical definition. He knows what history is because he lives in history and has a
responsible share in it. In this original experience of historicity is rooted all that man, including the philosopher, can
ever tell about historicity.

3. The Three Components of Historicity

From our past discussions it is evident that we must look for the nature of historicity in the essence of our being-man
itself, that is, in that which makes us experience our existence as the existence of a human being , an an existence
worthy of man. There could certainly be no question of history if man lived in a closed self-centered consciousness
that is incapable of coming out of itself and showing itself to others, or in philosophical language, if he were a
Cartesian kind of a Cogito. Nor would there be a history if he lived all alone on earth and if, like God, he were an
eternal, unchangeable and timeless being. In other words, that man makes history is the consequence of the
following three essential characteristics of his being man:

1.) Man is neither a pure spirit nor lifeless matter but an embodied spirit.
2.) Man is never alone in the world but always experiences and unfolds his being-man as a being together
with the others. Modern philosophy expresses this characteristic by the term intersubjectivity.
3.) Man lives in time.

These three properties of our being man constitute the three components of historicity; but they are so intimately
connected, that whenever one is mentioned, the two are also implied. Let us consider this more closely.

Man as Embodied Spirit. As we have explained fully in the third chapter, man is not a pure spirit nor a lifeless
body, but an embodied spirit,a besouled bodily being. Materiality is not an obstacle to the unfolding of his life or the
spirit but rather is the way by which the

spirit expresses itself in the threefold sense that is always attached to that term. This threefold meaning is: (1) it
exteriorizes itself, comes out of itself; (2) it shows itself to others, comes in the open; (3) it realizes, completes itself
(in scholastic terms, it passes from potency to act). To be man is to become man, or rather it means to take our
being man to heart in freedom and responsibility.

Man, therefore is not a raw datum of nature, but he is a task, a great program that is never finished, a theme or a
motif as in music, something that returns and is taken up over and over again, because it can neither be sufficiently
expressed nor uttered with satisfying beauty. In short, man is a work of, a task for, man.

The term work (oeuvre) must be taken here in a broad sense. A smile, a gesture, speech technology and art, poetry
and the philosophical essay, social legislation and charitable deeds, all of these are expressions of mans work, they
are an encounter of the human spirit with matter, with the materiality of our own body and that of the outside world.
In and by means of this encounter man puts his stamp on matter, he humanizes matter and reveals himself, he shows
himself to himself and to others and becomes a reality for them. Man thus mirrors himself in his work and only
through this mirroring he completes his being-man. This work is both the product of his freedom and at the same
time an objective situation for a new free action. For this reason man, and man alone, is the bearer of civilization and
culture. To humanize himself, man must humanize the world, he must re-create the crude materials given by nature
into a world of civilization and culture.

Mans Being is a Being-Together. All this is true not only of man as an individual, but also of mankind as a whole,
for to be for man always means to be together with that is, a mutual giving and receiving, listening and speaking
by means of work. It is first a receiving and listening. The best of what I own I have received from others,
beginning with my bodily being which enables me to maintain my earthly life; the clothes that protect my body, the
pen with which I write, the words I use, all these I owe to others; even my openness-to-the-world that makes the
things that surround me speak with meaning and love to me, all these to a great extent I owe To the warm affection
with which I have been surrounded from my tender years.

But to be together with also is giving and speaking. Man is likewise always directed to others in his conduct and
creativity. What he does, he does in the name of others, for others, in the sight of others, as if to say, what I think,
say or do, is good and has value, therefore, act as I do. He lives in accordance with Gods commandments, bears
witness to those commandments in the sight of others, it is as if he were acting in the name of all men.