Critique of Historical Reason

World History 
And The Eonic Effect
Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution
2nd. Edition
The Book
By  John Landon

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 3. Idea For A Universal History 
      3.1 A Short History of the World
             3.1.1 Stream and Sequence: A Frequency Hypothesis 
             3.1.2 Notes Toward an Eonic Model  
             3.1.3 A Certain Strangeness: Beyond Space and Time?
      3.2 Transition and Divide: A New Model of the Modern 
             3.2.1 The Discrete Freedom Sequence  
             3.2.2 The Old Testament as Eonic Data
             3.2.3 Religion, Transition and Oikoumene 
             3.2.4 The Economic Interpretation of History  
             3.2.5 Sequential Dependency and The Evolution of Theory   
      3.3 Kant’s Challenge  
            3.3.1 Kant’s Question  
            3.3.2 Intermezzo
Endnotes.  
      3.4 Critique of Historical Reason 
             3.4.1 Fisher’s Lament    
             3.4.2 A Science of History? The Third Antinomy             
             3.4.3 ‘Nature’s Secret Plan’ and Sociobiology   

 We can anticipate our result here, since we have a thumbnail sketch of our argument: the eonic effect shows the resolution of Kant’s Challenge. As we study world history with our ‘eonic periodization’, we suddenly, almost unexpectedly realize we are resolving ‘Kant’s Challenge’. Our job is to demonstrate a non-random pattern in history. A regular movement in the play of human freedom is almost instantly demonstrable from the eonic effect, and the result shows a cousin resemblance to Kant’s Third Antinomy .

Kant’s essay, as a ‘minor’ work, is actually one of the most influential of modern history, for it enters on cat’s paws into the whole struggle of modern philosophy of history and ideology. It seems to foretell the next two critiques, and is a deceptive work in the sense of giving consideration to what Kant calls ‘asocial sociability’, but is really pursuing a different issue, in the process asking a question. Many have answers to questions of history, Kant, with a curious brilliance, had the presence of mind to but ask, and leave some answer to the future, for he must have sensed that he was given inadequate data. The essay arises just after the first critique, and yet seems to foretell the next two.

The unsuspected significance of this work shows us something very elegant about our understanding of history, if we can manage the dangers of historical directionality, and its teleological implications, which we can successfully evade with our ‘discrete-continuous’ model. Kant created a critical system, yet was so curiously wry as to propose not a Critique of Historical Reason, the curious lot of his successor Dilthey (Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism being one attempt at this book), but an Idea for a Universal History. We shall have to hope the first book, still unwritten, appears in the attempt at the second.[i]

Resolution of Kant’s Challenge Our treatment of Kant’s Challenge will emerge over the course of the text, but at the same time let us note that we have already resolved the question, in essence, almost without trying. We can say that the eonic pattern satisfies, to a fuzzy first approximation of the Universal Historian, a different but related question to that which Kant posed, as we see broadest scope that the solution is within the range of the cycl ical driver of an evolutionary emergentism. Note Kant’s wording. It is very similar to our distinction of historical determination  and free action.

Our powerful model does this at a glance: we notice our three turning points show precisely the movement in the play of freedom as our levels eonic determination and free action alternate in degrees of freedom, and in relation to our two universal histories. The evidence is direct. We will say ‘resolved’ instead of ‘solved’, since we can see that the problem avalanches from randomness to directionality, hence teleology. That still does not fully solve the problem. The ‘mechanism’ is clearly beyond observation, the pattern seems to extend backwards into the Neolithic, and we see that while directionality is indicated, predictive teleology is foreclosed by our historical immersion.

Our discrete-continuous sequence model  follows this ‘regular movement’ precisely in almost eerie fashion, with the (relative transform) evolution of the state, religion, science, philosophy, all major categories of civilization, in the cowcatcher mainline of the eonic sequence. Problem solved: world history shows directionality, purposive evolution, incremental progress toward ‘civil constitutions’, perfect or imperfect, and the unfolding of ‘nature’s secret plan’ (in quotation marks). It is highly unlikely there could be any other solution to this Challenge from Kant. This is a strong, because limited, result, one that uses only large-scale blocks of history, simple periodization, and metaphysical austerity, generic history by the book. No ‘theory’ is invoked or required for the result, which is therefore a form of direct ‘pointing to’. It is probably the case that the dynamic of this system relates to the category of the ‘noumenon’ and is forever beyond observation, which will provoke a review of various Hegelian issues, Hegel being one of the first to respond to Kant’s essay. Kant’s Challenge, however, only asks for a regular movement in the play of freedom. Hegel’s philosophy of history, his metaphysical system apart, doesn’t see the eonic effect, and kludges an argument by design to get his result.

We should note in passing that, of all the action scripts  emerging from TP3, the Kantian discourse on moral freedom is one of the most significant. Beyond the question of demonstrating eonic effects we might well pause to consider this classic ‘action script’ emergence in Kant’s various critiques. Note that our passepartout distinction of consciousness and self-consciousness, the basis of our search for an eonic sutra, is easily adapted to this discourse on will, whose suggestion beyond theory is to claim as real the will to moral action and the freedom required. We can easily see that our self-consciousness, inchoate and fuzzy, is yet able to organize itself around this new evolutionary emergent. Of course, Kant’s distinction of theoretical and practical reason is itself theoretical, a challenge to Newtonian thinking, and his theoretical discussion may be difficult in practice, and open to later objections, but the gist of what he is up to is crystal clear, and should inform our tendency to be caught up in the mechanized consciousness of scientific theory applied to behavior, and its rote negation of practical reason.

3.4.1 Fisher’s Lament

If we enquire into ‘what runs history’, into the possibility of any pattern, structure or law, we are left to examine the rush of statistics and wonder if it is sufficient to account for the chronicles of kings and commoners, the flowering of civilizations, and the evolution of religious forms. We are entering the forbidden zone, large-scale historical patterns, and have to deal with a considerable dialectic. We can see that Popper’s critique of historicism is really a special case of the issue raised by Kant’s Challenge, which cleverly asks for a critique of historical reason even as it projects an Idea of Reason onto history, i.e. reinvents the genre of philosophic history. It is this subtle twist that allows us to deconstruct flat history. Thus, the historian H. A. L. Fisher, in one of the most quoted statements of modern historiography insists that there is no meaningful structure to be found in the randomness of historical process:

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.[ii]

Increased perspective in the rising tide of historical data forces us to consider that the eonic pattern reveals the counter-evidence to Fisher’s Lament. This is a negative version of Kant’s Challenge. The philosopher Karl Popper challenged Toynbee to answer Fisher’s objection. Even as Fisher wrote, the discovery of Sumer, better insight into the classical period, and a ‘post-transitional’ perspective on the rise of the modern was revealing the eonic snapshot emerging in fixer. We find an answer to the issue of historical regularity, answers, but what was the question? Confusion over the nature of historiography makes interpretation as ‘historical law’ uncertain at best, although our pattern essentially replaces the search with a complex evolutionary ‘trend’, unique yet recurrent. In fact we see the answer, without quite knowing what we are seeing.[iii]

Fisher’s lament, with a tragic flourish, was perhaps a pessimistic or proto-postmodernist reaction to the horrors of the First World War, and the shock this created in the hopes of so many in automatic progress . His evocative statement was made in the wake of nineteenth century ideas of unlimited progress, and earlier ideas of universal history and is an indirect expression of the view that there is no discoverable historical pattern or direction. Beside it lie the many attempts to challenge the great philosophies of history that arose in the Enlightenment passing into the phase of German Idealism, then followed by efforts to approach its study scientifically, or the reaction to philosophies of history in the various forms of historicism, beginning with Herder. The current postmodern critique, the ‘incredulity’ toward metanarratives, joins the list of the skeptics.

Fisher’s lament bundles together four, or more, quite separate concepts, that of rhythm, plot, pattern, and predetermination that do not necessarily stand or fall together. That historical patterned emergence can also be a series of chaotic ‘emergencies’, such as the French Revolution, is still another crisscross of meaning. A rhythm need have no plot, and a dramatic improvisation might show little or no predetermination, and yet operate under the constraint of a conditioned future.

The hold of Fisher’s lament on many quotation-mongers and historical handwringers, as the magic sword to slay the dragon of macrohistory, is also a testimony to the difficulties of the project of Universal History, and its cousin, the attempt to find laws of history. Although the trend of current historical thinking, in the afterglow of the ‘positive challenges’ of positivism, is against the perception of meaningful historical structure, the plain fact is that the rise of the philosophy of history is a foundational moment for historical understanding. The philosophy of history shows strong development in modern times, and its flowering demands a reckoning of what we mean by modernism. Darwin to the contrary, we see a definite ‘play in the movement of the philosophies of freedom’ themselves. At a bare minimum the emergentism of the philosophy of history is part of our evidence of a non-random pattern. Kant’s Challenge indeed!

Note: Popper and historicism We find the rejection of the entire domain of macrohistory in Popper, who amplifies Fisher’s Lament, in his attack on ‘historicist’ beliefs in The Poverty of Historicism, where he criticizes grand clichés of historic Destiny and the ‘dramatic’ view of history, the idea that history has a plot or significant structure. Unfortunately, the term ‘historicism’ has changed its meaning here. Not only Kant’s Idea, but Herder’s other Idea, arises in a genuine dialectic at the eonic synchronous moment of German philosophy. The different historicism of Herder, the complex world of nineteenth century German cultural philosophy, the phantom Book never written, The Critique of Historical Reason of Dilthey, as the emphasis on the unique, and Popper’s critique of his definition of historicism, as the historical generalization of physical law, show the complex legacy of this perspective, as the term seems to shift into its opposite. The eonic effect beautifully synchronizes the contrary meanings of the term ‘historicism’, for we can see therein a way in which the ‘lawful’ and ‘determinate’ can be taken in a sense that does not contradict the unique, the particular, or the potential individuality of the historical agent.[iv]

Our position with respect to this viewpoint that scorched the pot for all macrohistorical thinking in its Cold War vein, is that we cannot easily compute historical forces in action, but cannot conclude thereby the fallacy of the genre. In a play on the idea of the ‘covering law model’ (law as differential equation and initial conditions), we see the points of historical initializing, if not their law of dynamism in each of the fretting points of our eonic dynamism. If we cannot find historical laws, we can nonetheless discover a (not very rigorous) ‘deduction’ of the probable existence of some form of ‘Big History’. Turning toward world history to find what we suspect, we discover it in short order.[v]

In general, critics of ideas of Universal History (never the least critical of the idea of Universal Evolution extended over several billion years) expose the requirements for an historical law: such a ‘law’, that can be no law, as determination, or patterning, must not only have its forcefulness, but take into account or interact with what its agent or actor does or ‘will do’, and allow the transformation of optionality, that is a factor of human ‘will’. In other words, without fail, as in Popper’s critique, the idea of freedom is brought to causality, Kant’s Antinomy.

 We have one of the few solutions to the paradox, or at any rate the ‘solution’ we see in the eonic effect , in a cyclical driver, operating at different degrees of freedom, which is essentially our distinction of ‘eonic determination’ and ‘free action’. What our pattern suggests is that there can be an alternation between directionality and randomness or free action, a simple solution to the contradiction, if we can find evidence for this, and we can. The relative transformation of cultural streams operating on self-consciousness can take one’s breath away. Nature has a hidden mystery.

We see that Kant’s Challenge is ambiguous, for as we proceed toward a critical stance on issues of historicist metaphysics, the Critique of Historical Reason, we find this taking the form of a seemingly renewed quest, with an Idea for a Universal History.

Note: Two historicisms The generation of our divide produced a massive spectrum of emergent clusters, and our usage of the term historicism reflects only one part of the overall picture. Herder in the same period as Kant produced a classic essay on universal history, at the start of a tradition of historicist discourse stretching into the nineteenth century. Only lack of space prevents further pursuit of this spectrum. Herder’s viewpoint also has difficulties, and some ambiguous descendants, in the retrograde emergence of nationalism. One of the issues here is of the particular in relation to the universal, and the danger of universal laws and dynamics in the multiple contexts of diversity. But in fact our eonic model, while it seems to court this danger, is well adapted to dealing with this issue. For we see first that our eonic mainline is a balance of both processes, moving through the particular on the way to the universal. The transition time-slice of the Greek Archaic in our mainline is a perfect double of the particularity of the Greeks fulfilling a universal task. Beyond that we have the relationships of ‘reachability’ in our two universal histories, in a method that could, in principle, realize Kant and Herder both.