Characterizing Historicist Possibilities: A Reply to Claes Ryn.

• Author: Roberts, David D.
• Position: Humanitas, vol. 11, p. 86, 1998

A historicist reconstruction.

A Wayward Ally?

In his "Defining Historicism," published in these pages in 1998, Claes G. Ryn notes that a renewal of historicism has been central to the postmodern turn. But though potentially valuable, historicism in its postmodernist guise has seemed to invite overreaction--from the authority of "foundations" to a combination of relentless negativism and irresponsible "play." [1] In assessing the recent embrace of historicism, Ryn devoted particular attention to my Nothing but History, [2] generously crediting its range and offering a number of perceptive characterizations of its argument. He clearly finds me an ally up to a point, for each of us seeks a kind of middle ground between "a historical 'foundationalist' metaphysics" and aspects of postmodernism that we both see as an overreaction (91). Whereas, as Ryn puts it, historicism in its deconstructive postmodern form becomes "almost wholly negative" (90), obsessed "with discrediting inherited norms and meanings" (90), we both find scope for a more constructive orient ation. Thus my emphasis, as in my book's subtitle, on the scope for ongoing historicist reconstruction, stemming from responsible ethical response, which can even be responsibly rational insofar as it is informed by historical understanding.

In the last analysis, however, Ryn finds my way of recasting historicism wayward, partly because of a prejudicial tilt toward radicalism reflecting academic fashion, and typical of deconstructive postmodernism (96-97). But part of what is at issue, as we seek to think without foundationalist philosophy, is the meaning of such categories as radical and conservative, extremism and moderate, and their interface with the cultural possibilities before us. A measure of inflexibility on this score leads Ryn to misconstrue my argument at several points--and thus to magnify our differences. But more interesting are some genuine differences in orientation, which would seem worth pinpointing and exploring. Most importantly, Ryn holds that I place such emphasis on contingency, particularity, and finitude that I have difficulty explaining the basis of the continuity and coherence, weight and responsibility, that I myself find necessary for the reconstructive middle ground (95-96). As one of the editors of this journal, Ryn was good enough, even before finishing his own piece, to invite me to respond, and I gratefully accept the chance to do so.

Postmodernists neglect Croce.

Ryn and I agree that postmodemists have tended to overreact partly because, not knowing their own history, they have failed to engage earlier thinkers who explored much the same ground that the postmodernists themselves now breathlessly discover. [3] Central for both of us is the once influential, long misunderstood, and now neglected Italian thinker Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), who ended up propounding what he called an "absolute historicism." But we differ radically over Croce's center of gravity, even as we each claim him for our respective brands of reconstructive historicism.

Significance of Croce's categories at issue.

Most immediately at issue is the place in Croce's intellectual biography of the relatively systematic moment, centering on his circle of distinct spiritual categories, or attributes of human being, that he outlined in the core volumes, published from 1905 to 1908, of his "Philosophy of the Spirit." [4] For Ryn, this moment was central to Croce's enterprise, for in elaborating these categories, Croce "discerned a permanent structure of human consciousness" (100)--and the basis for the "enduring meaning" that Ryn finds crucial. Because, from Ryn's perspective, I downplay the enduring categories, I end up slanting Croce too much toward postmodernism--and end up too postmodernist myself.

Although I surely do not neglect the categories to the extent Ryn suggests (97), it is surely true that I do not feature them as he does. [5] Indeed, I counter that Ryn overvalues them because he has not placed them, as Croce himself came to do, in the context of Croce's whole career. Whereas Ryn finds my reading of Croce "rather truncated" (95), I argue that his is the truncated reading of Croce.

In one sense, of course, this particular squabble is distinctly a side issue. As with any thinker, especially one so rich and long-lived, readers may take Croce in various directions. What matters here is what Ryn himself can offer by building on Croce's earlier, more systematic works. Even if I should persuade the present reader that Ryn's appropriation of Croce is one-sided or incomplete, that would say nothing about the force of Ryn's argument, which, like my own, draws not only on Croce but on a number of other sources--for Ryn, most notably Irving Babbitt. But because he does not do justice to Croce's overall enterprise, and the place of the enduring categories within it, Ryn fails to grasp why the position I outline, derived especially from Croce, but also from Heidegger, Gadamer, Rorty, Derrida, and an array of recent thinkers, is enough for a reconstructive historicist middle ground--and why his own way of embracing Croce's categories is counterproductive.

Immanence and Transcendence

Ryn offers what he calls a "value-centered historicism," which takes "value" as the stuff affording "moral, imaginative, and intellectual form to man's historical existence" (91). At issue is the relationship between whatever endures, whatever we take to be universal or suprahistorical, and the fundamental historicity of things that we have come to embrace, or at least sidle up to, over the last century or so. Ryn insists on "historical universality," understood as "universality in particular form" (91). In other words, "[t]he transcendent reveals itself in history by becoming selectively immanent in it" (88). Thus, for example, moral goodness is universal but we know it only through its historically specific instances. In the face of the postmodernist "obsession with discrediting inherited norms and meanings," Ryn is determined to show the place of "enduring order or unity," especially "enduring standards" and "enduring higher purpose" (90, 100). And obviously what he finds in Croce is precisely an understa nding of the essential universal or enduring element.

The world is not a heap.

Although Ryn finds me tilting toward what he takes to be the general postmodern assumption "that in the end contingency, incoherence and meaninglessness are the whole of life (101)," I too am concerned with what endures. That there is some measure of continuity and coherence goes without saying; the world is not a heap. I even have room for "enduring standards." That only seems to be the issue between Ryn and me if we have not grasped the alternatives. To get what is genuinely at issue, the first question is how we conceive and characterize what endures; the second concerns the wider cultural stakes of the differences in our respective ways of doing so.

The difference at issue is not between "enduring order or unity" and some mishmash or heap, but between residual transcendence and radical immanence, residual metaphysics and absolute historicism. To be sure, our dualistic language, affording us the binary transcendence/immanence, may seem to make the dichotomy too neat, to overstate the differences. It is easy to assume--and Ryn may be assuming--that whatever it is that makes the world other than a heap is "transcendent" by definition. The issue, however, is not merely semantic--as becomes clear when we explore the wider cultural implications of conceiving "what endures" in terms of radical immanence, as Croce came to do, as opposed to residual transcendence, as Ryn does.

Ryn most tellingly tips his hand when characterizing the role of the philosopher: "bothered by what he does not yet know, or cannot yet express with conceptual clarity, the genuine philosopher is always striving to remove obstacles to fuller understanding" (98). Ryn goes on to say that "philosophical examination of human experience tries faithfully to record what is actually there," so that we might "improve our cognitive, conceptual hold on what persists in the midst of change and particularity" (99). Such accents suggest that philosophy is the culturally privileged enterprise of getting as best we can at something given, suprahistorical. Because we ourselves are historical and finite, as is our experience, we cannot definitively lay out the prior structure of reality, as a metaphysics. We can do no better than glimpse the universal, or perhaps approach it asymptotically as we "improve our cognitive, conceptual hold." But Ryn fears that without this premium on getting at something enduring, we invite postmo dern play and even a collapse into meaninglessness. But these priorities mean that Ryn's position is more a throwback to Dilthey than an embrace of the mature Croce of absolute historicism.

From a perspective like Dilthey's, we recognize--as explicitly for Ryn--that we can only glimpse the universal in the particular because we have come to understand ourselves as finite, historically specific. But though we get at it only indirectly, we still require that transcendent level; without it, we face the danger of relativism, nihilism, cultural collapse. So philosophy, with its aim of getting ever closer to the level of enduring truth, is a cultural priority, and a particular class of intellectuals called philosophers is especially equipped for this task--and thus plays a privileged role.

Dilthey insufficiently radical.

In Nothing but History, I use Gadamer in tandem with Croce, so it is worth recalling Gadamer's critique of Dilthey--as not sufficiently radical in embracing the fundamental historicity of the human world. Critique of Dilthey was a crucial starting point for Gadamer in his magnum opus, Wahrheit und Methode (1960). Croce had cut his teeth partly on the German tradition to which Dilthey was central, and two...