Interpretation of History
B. Idea and fate
furthers subjectivity in scientific work. Subjectivity is a prehistoric category. The historical categories are freedom and fate. Where fate is discussed, the connection of the free deed—only what is free has fate—with the whole of existence is recognized, but not with existence insofar as it rests in itself but insofar as it stands before the Unconditioned. Only where this relation of existence is meant, rather than that which constantly vacillates between accident and necessity can one speak of fate. Just as freedom stands objectively before the Unconditioned, so fate stands objectively before it. Both are one in every event which constitutes history.
The free act of the decision in knowledge is therefore one with the fate of the existing thinker, in whom the deed occurs. The free decision in knowledge, at the same time, is the expression of the fate in which the thinker stands :—presupposing that his deed is free and not arbitrary and that his connection with reality is fate and not mechanical necessity. Knowledge is true insofar as it is subjectively free, and objectively fate. Then and only then is it the expression of
existence and thus in agreement with its object. Even customary speech knows thoughts which are the fate of a time, and means thereby those thoughts wherein the actual profundity of an epoch, its position before the Unconditioned is given creative, i.e., free expression.
In the third level of knowledge therefore the fatefulness of reality and the depth of life are effective. Reality also has an aspect which is subject to neither an empirical nor a rational necessity. It is fate and is therefore recognized only in the freedom of decision. But where such free—not arbitrary decision occurs, there this aspect of reality, fate, is effective. The third element of knowledge thus corresponds to a third element of being. The transcendental stratum of knowledge corresponds to the transcendental stratum of being.
academicians and Plotinus. The world of the eternal ideas is not touched by the flow of time; the eternal "son" is not subject to growth. These thoughts are all the more important, in view of their close connection to the practical attitude of antiquity. The will to overcome practical historical existence, the high estimate placed on pure observation, later asceticism, the goal of which is finally the unification with the super-being: all this is derived from the static conception of the idea. In the West, too, the state of things was not essentially different. To be sure, for the methodical line of modern philosophy, the Platonic doctrine of ideas was minimized to an increasing extent, but the concept of laws which took its place had a similar static character, notwithstanding all the dynamics of its application. And all a priori theory, critical as well as phenomenological, is static and can enter into the closest connection with the antique doctrine of ideas. For Schelling, too, there was no doubt of the static character of the idea. Yet at one point his departure from the opinion of antiquity showed plainly: he related the ideas in a polar
relationship. The dualistic and dynamic principle of his natural philosophy entered into his interpretation of ideas.
This brings us to the second, irrationalistic line of Western philosophy, and above all to Jakob Böhme. Böhme also has a doctrine of ideas which in most of its formulations lies within the compass of Neoplatonism; and yet there is in it something that must break through these confines: the polarity and tension in the world of ideas. For Böhme the world of ideas is the revelation of the divine abyss, which unfolds in it, but the unfolding. takes place dualistically, through the contrast of the dark, egoistic, contractive principle with the light, kindly,
communicative principle. To be sure this contrast is eliminated in eternity. The dark principle in eternity is the ground of the light one. It is in the place where it belongs, in which it forms the depth and power of ideas. Therefore, unity, harmony, contrasts are in the world of idea, i.e., in the unbroken, divine self-unfolding, but only in play. But this play contains within itself a threat;
it can become serious. Namely, when the dark principle does not remain at the bottom, but rises, becomes excited and as fury destroys the harmony of love. That happened, and this happening is the fall of "Lucifer," in Schelling the fall of the "transcendent man of the idea" and with him of the world of idea altogether.
What is the logical content of this myth? Obviously, that the idea itself is the dynamic element that leads to history. The world of ideas is not only the principle of completion, but in it there is an ambiguity, a threat, a power to enter into conflict with itself, to rush forward to the historical revelation of the contrasting elements unified in it. Böhme’s world of ideas and that of
Schelling, in his later period, rushes toward history, not by rational necessity but with a leap, a leap that is potentially in the idea, so to speak, as its inner temptation. While the Platonic idea offers eternal rest, the idea of Böhme is a unity of rest and unrest, a movable, in itself
questionable, being, pregnant with infinite tensions. The idea has inner infinity, not indeed for a supposed observer but for itself, and every one who regards it is drawn into the inner infinity of the idea. There is indeed a rest, an eternal, static element in it; otherwise it would not be idea, and the unrest would have no resistance, no immutable point through which it could become evident as unrest, but this static element is not to be severed from the dynamic. Therefore
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whoever regards the idea can never come to rest in it. Since, however, no absolute subject of perception is possible without rest, all interpretations of the idea can be only ambiguous, just as every factor of the inner infinity of the idea is finite and therefore ambiguous. This means,
however, that there can be no comprehension of the essential nature of things except in decision, because the nature of things itself stands in fate and ambiguity.
Only where the dynamic interpretation of the idea is applied, is history a genuine object of knowledge, and knowledge itself is drawn into history without a destruction of the idea of truth.
A philosophical understanding of history and a corresponding metaphysics of history can be established on the basis of this dynamic concept of truth. But the next question is whether the dynamic doctrine of ideas has meaning for nature, too. Nature with its forms and laws is always a heavy weight on the scale of thought for a static and against a dynamic epistemology. This is particularly true where nature is under the rule of mathematical form, and therefore is removed almost completely from the decisive character of perception. Consequently it seems that one should feel that even as a static doctrine of ideas was the background of the perception of nature, so a dynamic doctrine of ideas must become the background for the perception of history.
But the contrast of nature and history is correct for our considerations only as far as there is a polarity of rest and unrest, of statics and dynamics, of eternity and infinity of the idea. To tear apart nature and history and distribute them to two kinds of metaphysics would mean to disrupt genuine elements of reality.
This can be clarified from both sides. We have seen that individuality gains its depth and significance in decision. Now it is obvious that individuality in the psychological and
sociological sense rests on a natural basis, and that this natural basis is indissolubly joined with the biological, physical, indeed with the totality of microcosmic and macrocosmic happenings.
This, however, means that history is not a separate sphere of abstract freedom over or beside nature; rather it is one aspect of events, which at every moment also contain the other aspect:
nature and the totality of its relationships. All history is also nature. An idealism of freedom which overlooks this unity remains abstract and elicits a naturalistic opposition. It is therefore impossible to combine a dynamic metaphysics of history with a static metaphysics of nature.
Historical dynamics become pure imagination, if there are no dynamic qualities in nature; and consequently, the static necessity of nature makes all historical happenings a complicated example of universal laws. The opposite is equally true: nature at every moment holds
something within itself which is not to be determined by static and immutable laws. That nature is, as it is, with these qualities—and no matter how many of them could be traced back to
quantities, the original quality cannot be eliminated—is not derivable; it is fate and therefore implies freedom. The meaning of this original quality of nature, of this underivable existence, finds its highest expression in history. In history, fate becomes visible as fate, implying freedom.
In history, nature expresses its mystery: freedom and fate.
It is therefore shown that the metaphysics of history necessarily draw the metaphysics of nature
into new paths. Into paths which were never strange to the mythical consciousness, but which were neglected for a long time in the interests of rational knowledge and control of nature, although they present themselves most emphatically to the unbiassed observation of nature.
Essence and fate are not strange to each other: that is the conclusion of this argument. Fate belongs to essential being. The idea is inwardly infinite; it does not contrast with existence as eternal completion, in which existence imperfectly participates, but drives on toward existence, toward the pouring out of its inner infinity in the historic fate. Recognizing reality is recognizing reality as it stands in the historical fate, not beyond it. Therefore the knowledge of ideas is never complete and cannot even approach this state, as phenomenology thought. The knowledge of ideas participates in the inner infinity of ideas. An intuitive view of ideas is not a view of the resting idea in an—perhaps outstanding but always accidental—example. it is a view of the idea in its historic fate. The participation of the things in the idea corresponds just as seriously to the participation of the idea in the things. The Logos becomes flesh; it enters into time and reveals its inner infinity.