History as Synthesis.

• Author: Ryn, Claes G.
• Position: Response to David D. Roberts, in this issue, p. 68

Professor Roberts is correct about our having a great deal in common. [1] Indeed, certain philosophical prejudices and reflexes lead him to exaggerate our disagreement. I do differ with some of what he writes in defense of his interpretation of Croce and in criticism of my value-centered historicism, but for the most part I nod in assent wondering why Roberts thinks he is arguing against me. He repeatedly puts his shoulder to wide-open doors. It is puzzling that he should attribute to me some views that are clearly contradicted by my own explicit published arguments and that he, the intellectual historian, should leave his assertions largely without textual support. Although he consistently qualifies or dilutes his interpretations of my thinking by saying that I "seem" to hold the view to which he is taking exception, the combined effect of these unsupported speculations is to turn me into something rather different from what I am. Not surprisingly, the imaginary Ryn presents less of a philosophical challenge to Roberts than the real one.

Professor Roberts's general intuition about the difference between us is not without foundation, but his attempt to pinpoint and articulate the disagreement does, in my view, miss the crux of the matter and significantly misrepresent my position. Instead of indicating every specific point of disagreement or every instance of Roberts getting me wrong I shall try to formulate in general terms where I think that he and I, despite our broad agreement, actually differ. I shall concentrate on the issue of how the inescapable historicity of human existence is compatible with recognition of enduring order. Professor Roberts and I may have not so much a fundamental philosophical disagreement as a difference of philosophical nomenclature and emphasis. Ideas in Roberts's thinking that are still only tentatively stated could well evolve in ways that will reveal further consonance between us.

It makes me a little uncomfortable that in responding to Professor Roberts I shall have no choice in places but briefly to summarize or restate ideas that are already in print in various places. I shall, however, assume that readers interested in where I really stand will consult books and articles in which I have more fully addressed the questions at issue between Roberts and me.

Ahistorical conception of transcendence inappropriate.

Professor Roberts presents me as one arguing for something enduring "in terms of a residual transcendence" (75). In actuality, the transcendence, or universality, that I defend is not so much "residual" as it is reinterpreted in historicist terms. Let me suggest that Roberts's own conception of transcendence or universality is curiously ahistorical. He vaguely associates these terms with a Platonic way of thinking, which justifies his reserve and skepticism. He also tries to navigate within a postmodernist mind-set, and postmodernists harbor a deep prejudice against anything that might limit or structure freedom. They are often very similar to Rousseau's romanticism in their dislike of whatever stands in the way of living out spontaneity. Though Roberts reacts against the extremes of postmodernism, he is prejudiced against "transcendence" and "universality" as militating against an acceptance of radical immanence and contingency and unlimited questioning. Hence he has difficulty resisting the chaos and incoh erence that postmodernism threatens. Professor Roberts recognizes the need for something to balance "disruption." He asserts the possibility of such balancing, but he does not go very far toward philosophically explaining how the needed continuities are possible. A part of the problem is his not wanting to appear unfashionable, a fate that would surely befall him if he openly resorted to universality. He "solves" this problem by formulating a notion of order and balance in which universality only lies implicit, hidden for the most part even from himself. The philosophical weakness of his approach, as I see it, is not that he resists an ahistorically conceived transcendence or universality--he should--or that he does not want to scuttle historical contingency--he shouldn't--but that he does not give a philosophically satisfactory account of just how the ordering of contingency comes about. He asserts that the needed order can emerge within the historical process itself--and I agree that it can--but his explana tion is rather tentatively and cryptically stated and glosses over a central philosophical question. He is reluctant to acknowledge and fully explore the role and meaning of universality. Eager to give credit to the postmodernist rejection of universality and stress on unlimited contingency, he is prone to seeing transcendence and universality in general as belonging to an outdated ahistorical mind-set.

Professor Roberts claims that I am accusing him of "radicalism," but "radicalism" is in a certain sense philosophically beneficial, a necessity even, just as in a certain sense "conservatism" is beneficial and necessary. What I suggested was rather that Roberts goes so far in trying to do justice to the postmodernist themes of radical contingency and radical questioning that he talks himself into neglecting balancing insights that are necessary for the adequate articulation of his own promising intuition about historically evolved order. He may thus avoid unpleasant attention from postmodernists, but the more or less conscious suppression of "conservative" philosophical impulses also retards development of the fruitful potentialities in his thinking.

Universality and particularity implicated in each other.

The postmodernist resistance to universality helps explain Professor Roberts's ambivalence--or should I say unease?--about Croce's affirmation of universality and Roberts's misleading characterization of my own position on this issue. For example, he tries to make sense of my view of universality by asserting that for me the task of philosophy is "getting as best we can at something given, suprahistorical" (72). He makes this claim in spite of my having argued long and hard in print against precisely such a view. This is the case, for example, in Will, Imagination and Reason. [2] Though Roberts may simply be insufficiently familiar with this writing, his misinterpretation is probably due as much to intellectual propensities, wholly dominant in postmodernism, that predispose him artificially to separate universality and history, universality and particularity. Though these are in reality implicated in each other, existing together as well as in tension, postmodernism in its main trend will recognize only particularity and contingency, denying the reality of universality. Roberts is not consistent in this regard, but he is generally inclined to the view that we need to choose between history or universality, immanence or transcendence. To place emphasis on either universality or transcendence is for him to revert to a prehistoricist mode of thought. Roberts is of course correct that Croce opposed the notion of transcendence as the term was...