Chapter XIII

 

THE CAUSES OF HISTORY

 

            Every change, every process possesses its mechanism. It is something or an ensemble of things that passes from one stage to the other. This passage is caused by a series of factors. Its intelligibility is expressed in terms of classic laws and statistics; of tendencies and probabilities. In Aristotelian terms it is analyzed in terms of related causes: potential, formal, efficient, and final causes. It is in this sense that we place the question on the causes of history.

 

            History is the change of culture. How and why is this so? Every change supposes a reality subject to change (potential cause). It is limited by its potentiality: in our case the single culture according to its given stage of its existence. Every change is linked to a result, to something new. A form of existence of the reality, subjected to change (formal cause): in our case, the single culture is a consequent stage to the precedent. Every change supposes factors or efficient causes of its change. In our case - admitted that which we have already seen regarding culture- the participants to a given culture, often also to other cultures and actions of their participants, the transformation of the natural environment and the human biological aspect, are the efficient causes of change. If we have in mind the extreme complexity of all these factors, we would realize immediately that the mechanism of the historical process must also necessarily be an abysmal complexity. No history could exhaust the whole analysis of its minimal stage. Philosophers have tried to simplify things while raising the infinite contrasts of the importance with respect to the single factor of the single stage of this or that history, or of the fall of the Roman Empire, of the flowering of the Greek culture in the first 5th century of Christ, or the expansion of Islam and Buddhism.

 

            We do not pretend to tackle this in the few pages; the important cause of history, elaboration of laws and tendencies also appropriate to its discourse.

 

            Thus, it is in the light of these problematic that we understand culture and the human being. We would like to elucidate - in very general terms - the mechanism of the historical process emphasizing the complexity and the intricacy of the elements of the most varied nature. It is, so to say, the situation of the human individual in history, the rhythm of this, its predictability, value and finality.

 

            First of all - as we have already seen - every culture consists of many elements and aspects because it comprehends the whole of human life and the whole environment of the group. But at the same time it integrates, at least to a certain point, these elements and aspects, in a unity, a configuration and a structure. Because every culture - as potential cause of the historical process - when they are subtracted, added, modifieed, an element or a relation between elements would be readjusted to the whole and in the measure of its greater or lesser integration. But inversely, a culture is very integrated - because every minimum change has repercussions - it seems to be more resistant to change.

 

            Moreover, what need to be considered are the tensions and the present dis-equilibrium in a given culture. These could be of nature, technology, economics, social, affective, esthetics, intellectual, moral, and religious. They are present everywhere given the tensions in the same man, the exigencies and limits that every culture imposes, the logical deficiencies, and the unilaterality, which every culture more or less contains. They can also effect stimulants to actions of its participants. But the more their level is elevated, the more the culture seems to us susceptible to change.  Such tensions and dis-equilibrium can also accumulate itself proper to the cause of the resistance, which a culture in proportion of its integration and determination opposes. For more time, every adjustment in function of the factors that press on culture could lead to a crisis, to a profound change, to a political or social revolution, to a religious or artistic breakage.

 

            There is also a need to consider the demographical dimensions and the complexity of culture as subjected to change. In a complex system and very diversified in various sectors of life, every change reverberates in sectors more directly interested. It can also affect others in a more extended manner. A similar observation can be made concerning the sub-groups geographically, socially, and professionally - embraced by one sole culture.  To know the stage of history is indispensable in analyzing a culture in percentage to changing, in other words, knowing the potential cause of change and the historical that make it.

 

            The factors of change    - those which introduce in culture an element or new aspect which solicits one its restructuration - can be provided by nature on which it moves, or by other cultures, or by the participants themselves. 

 

            First, speaking about this single order of factors, we believe that it is useful to note that they are all truly efficient causes. The proposition of the notion of cause has been the reason of confusion that prevails in the sciences in general, and in the historical field in particular. When it speaks itself, generally of causes, it thinks itself of efficient causes.

 

            In fact, metaphysically, every change is a passage from potency to act. Every such passage as perfection is lacking of sufficient intelligibility in that which changes. Postulating a compliment of intelligibility in a distinct reality from it, at first sight it would seem that a system - as the material universe, a living organism, the life of humanity - transforms itself from the internal with the play of interdependent elements which composed it, and because without efficient causes properly speaking. Now, the proposition of the two prime orders of factors of historical process is easy to understand that they are extrinsic to the system of transformation. If history is change of culture and cultures a system really distinct from the natural environment although related to it, every change of natural environment is truly efficient cause of the historical process in the measure in which it provokes it. Thus, purely, if every culture is a system, the function of other cultures and the action of the participants, in as much as they provoked and explained the changes, which come in another culture, they are truly efficient causes to this regard. And the eventual influence in the inverse direction does not constitute a difficulty, unfolding itself in diverse aspects and provoking diverse effects, given the diversity, which enforces between culture and natural environment, or between two cultures. As to the actions of the factors included in the system - in our case the participants in the culture itself - it is enough to mention the fact that such factors possess a proper aspect independent from the system in the measure in which they have an existence. Such aspects are independent of the perfection, of the virtuality or potentiality not exhausted by the system itself. In a more specific case, it is enough to remember what we have said above on the role of the human individual in culture.

 

            Turning to its first single orders of factors of the historical process, nature in its unknown function, not provoked, not foreseen, and because not integrated in the cultural ambit, is extrinsic cause to the powerful times or directly decisive of the historical process. Let us take for example, a catastrophic volcanic eruption for some restricted culture, or the glaciating of the distant past. It could also be the extreme climactic fluctuation that had caused the great famine and the massive emigration of Ireland towards the middle course of the century. It can also treat itself of the process unknown by man: the aridity of the Mediterranean coast of Africa consequently to the deforestation and the intensive Roman cultivation of the grain, or our pollution of nature; or by the biological aspect of man himself: contamination, genetic degeneration, poisoning as was possible of the ruling class of the Roman Empire. The aspect that has to be noted is the crossing of the functions of two systems: cultural and natural. There is interdependence of both cultural and natural.

 

            On a small scale, the intervention of nature is manifested in unpredictable deaths and the premature decision of man. It is also manifested in man’s indisposition to the crucial moment (Napoleon to Waterloo), or extinction of a dynasty.  To sum up, if the unfolding of culture is systematic, the intervention of nature causes such unfolding as accidental and tortuous. We recall that the provoked effect by natural factors depends, in a measure more or less great but always considerable, from the culture on which they act. According to the famous adage: quidquid recipitur, ad modum recipientis recipitur. Thus, there is always a considerable proportion.

 

            The second order of factors consists in the direct or indirect influence stirred in a given culture by another culture, given that no culture whatsoever exists in a perfect isolation. Such influence is not only in one direction, nor it can assume and has assumed degrees of intensity, extension and variable forms to the infinite. The Degrees of intensity according to the respective geographical position of cultures, the structure of their socio-economic life, their intellective-affective opening on the natural world and human circumstance, their means of information ... Extensions and forms from the action on nature pertinent to a given culture, as would be the delimitation or occupation of territories or also physical extension of a part of the population.

 

            In primitive cultures, anthropologist discovered affinity and oppositions that explain itself partially with having refuted and reciprocal concurrence. In prehistory, there was the progressive spread of technique as that of bronze, of ways of sustenance as the agriculture…. The epochs and the cultures, which constitute of fact the subject of historical sciences, they offer innumerable examples of great cultures to contact more or less profound one with the other, with the positive repercussions, negative and also catastrophic, or of great cultures having contacted with cultures more primitive. Such contacts have led to the exchange in all sectors, from that of prime matter, products, techniques, to that of intellectual values, artistic, religious, but also to the hostile reaction of counter-reaffirmation of proper values, of flexibility, of closure. And they have given as final result the stagnation and the breakdown of great cultures and more frequently of those more primitive, and in long terms forming themselves into new great cultures. The phenomenon is totally grandiose and intricate that the global judgement on the value of such contacts oscillates from the negative for a Spengler or a Toynbee who see here a factor of adulteration, and positive for a Levy-Strauss who sees in it the essential motor of the richness of the diversification of history. The massive contacts provoke the excessive dis-equilibrium and the disintegration of one or both parts.

 

            The great culture prevails over the more primitive cultures not only by means of the military forces, but also through the invasion of technical products, techniques and modes in disproportionate dose to the capacity to assimilate themselves of the system of these ultimate cultures.

 

            History is full of examples for all the varying contacts. What are interesting here are the inter-cultural contacts. These contacts are also factors of change, external factors. In fact, any culture is a system of human life, but system different from the others. Because the human activity evolves in the ambit of a culture they result not systematically for other cultures, they disturb their function, or they become integrated partly to a culture.

 

            Now, as to this third order of factors of history, it seems that the consideration of nature of culture itself is decisive and also of the role of the individual which participates in it. And we have already discussed this in the second part of the present course and also in the course of the Philosophy of Man.

 

            As we have seen in the second part of this course, any culture is a human determination of the behavior and of the environment of a group. In involves in itself the psychical activity and it is not simply a reflection of the natural environment or simply the result of the biological structure of the group itself. Any culture stands as constituted by the original mode of acting of the single individual - in connection with the natural environment and in communication with the other members of the group - and it is moreover modifiable by the actions of the participants. Any culture has a proper font of change. The influence of the two orders of the factors of historical change - that of nature and that of other cultures - becomes mediated towards that source, because the culture does not change, but to the maximum it disappears with the extinction of its participants, if it does not change the mode with which these last they perceive, imagine, sense effectively, understand, judge, value, choose … and love the world and itself.

 

            So every culture possesses an order of factors of change internal to itself and that it flows from the participants. Knowing philosophy of man, the structure of human act and to the second part of the course, the fact that any culture implies such structure and rather it is one of the possible relations, we know what are these factors. First of all to act according to the culture is an explicitating act. It actualizes its virtuality but at the same time creates new obstacles, undergoes new problems, offers the occasion of new options. Then it rest on the individual either to follow what is dictated by his culture, and this would be the cause of the defect and deficiency on the level of the biological, psychical-experiential, or intellective, it would be for refuting freedom of this or that element of his culture. Finally and above all, every individual remains always open to the new understanding, to new judgments, and these become solicited it would be from the increasing explication of the culture itself, it would be from the proper game and others. Meanwhile any new knowledge, any new judgment, any new option on the part of the individual, they introduce in the bosom of his culture a new element which can be repressed through the participation by other members. In the long term, as it moves on it reflects itself in the modifications of the perceiving, of the imagining, of the affectivity and of the other cultural objects.

 

            Therefore no culture - also in the supposition of a total isolation and of the natural condition unmoved - would remain without change. Also the refuted repetition of new understandings, judgments, and options, it would modify it in the sense of a rigid attitude.

 

            Also this order of factors of the historical process - although internal to culture - it is systematic in the measure in whichh it explicitizes it, rather manifest thus the tensions, and it leads it to the order of more profound change.

 

            Also this order of factors of the historical process plays according to a certain dialectics between the diverse groups: political, social, regional, and among sectors more or less autonomous of the culture, because the principles to which some of them obeys are never integrated perfectly from the culture in a logical unity.

 

            The three orders of the factors explain the efficient causes in the change of cultures, history. Taking into account the complexity of any culture from the three orders of its change and of their intricacies, we are now in the level of raising the question on the sense of history. As we can see immediately, there are many questions. That is why in its general formulation strictly ambiguous. It is but a question that rises spontaneously to the multiplicity and complexity of the causes, to the diversity of cultures that change. It rises spontaneously to the cause of man immersed always in his historical situation; it rises spontaneously also to the reason of the end that every reality metaphysically possesses. Explicating it, clarifying it, giving it answers of which the philosophical thinker is capable, such would be the theme of the following chapter.