Peace, Force & Joy

| Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |

CHAPTER THREE

History and Temporality

1. Temporality and Process

Hegel (in the third book, second section of his Science of Logic) taught us to differentiate mechanical, chemical and vital processes. Thus, "the result of the mechanical process is not found pre-existent to itself; its end is not found in its beginning, as happens to finality. The product is a determination placed in the object in an extrinsic mode". Its process is, moreover, externality that does not alter itself and is not explained by it. later he says: "The same chemistry is its own negation of the indifferent objectivity and of the exteriority of the determination; this, therefore, still affected by the immediate independence of the object and by exteriority. Consequently, it still is not, by itself, that totality of the self-determination that results from it and in which it rather eliminates." In the vital process to appear the finality in as much as the living individual is placed in tension against his original presupposition and is placed as a subject in itself and by itself, in front of the presupposed objective world...

Time passed after the death of Hegel until that outline of vitality is converted into the central theme of a new point of view, the philosophy of life of W. Dilthey. By "life" he means not only psychic life but a unity found in a permanent change of state and in which the consciousness is a moment of subjective identity of that structure in process, constituted in relation with the external world. The form of correlation between subjective identity and the world is time. Passage appears as experience and assumes a teleological character: it is a process with direction. Dilthey intuits clearly, but he does not attempt to realize a scientific construction. For him, in the end, all truth is reduced to objectivity, and, as Zubiri annotates, "...applied this to any truth, everything, including the principle of contradiction, would be a simple fact." Thus, although the brilliant intuitions of philosophy of life would powerfully influence new thinking, it is reluctant to look for a scientific ground. Dilthey explains history from "inside" and from where it is given, in life, but he does not stop and precisely determine the nature of becoming itself. It is at this point that we find Phenomenology, which promises, after tiring roundabouts, to make us confront the enduring problems of Historiology.

Certainly, the difficulty of Phenomenology is justifying the existence of the other "I" different from one's own and of demonstrating, in general, the existence of a world different from the "world" obtained after the epoche, extends the problematic to historicity, inasmush as it is external to the experiential. The phenomenological solipsism turns subjectivity into a monad "with neither doors nor windows", following Beibniz's figure, is an enduring theme. But is it really so? If this were the case, the possibility of endowing Historiology with indubitable principles, as obtained by Philosophy as a strict science, would be seriously compromised. Surely, Historiology cannot take roughly the governing principles of the natural sciences, of mathematics, and incorporate them without much ado about their own sharpness. Here we are speaking of justification as science and, if it were the case, it must help towards its rise without appealing to the simple "evidence" of the historical fact's existence in order to later derive historical science from it. No one can escape the difference between the occupation over a region of facts and the making of a science over such region. Such was Husserl's comments in his discussion with Dilthey: "...it is not to doubt the truth of fact, but to know if to take it was universality of principle is justified."

The great problem around Historiology is that while the nature of time and historicity is not comprehended, the notion of process seems to be grafted in its explanations and not the explanations derived from such notion. Because of this, we insist that strict thinking must understand the problem. But philosophy has had to renounce, time and time again, the task of explaining this, while it tries to be positive science, as in Comte; science of logic, as in Hegel; critique of language, as in Wittgenstein, or science of Phenomenology, in fact, seems to comply with the requisites of a strict science, we ask ourselves whether in it lies the possibility of the grounding of Historiology. For this to happen, we must thresh out some difficulties.

Centering the theme: the insufficient response on historicity in Husserl is dies of an incomplete development of this point in particular, or is Phenomenology itself impeded in making a science out of intersubjectivity, of worldness, and definitely, of the temporal facts external to subjectivity?26

Husserl says in Cartesian Meditations: "If we could show that all the constituted as property, and therefore also the reduced world, pertains to the concrete essence of the subject constituting as inseparable internal determination, therefore, in the self-assertion of the I is encountered in its own world as in the interior and, on the other hand, crossing this world directly, the I finds itself as member of the exteriorities of the world, and will distinguish between itself and the exterior world." This greatly invalidates what was established in Ideas Relative to the Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, in the sense that the constitution of the I as "I and the surrounding world" pertains to the field of the natural attitude. A great gulf divides the thesis of 1913 (Ideas) and that of 1929 (Fifth Cartersian Medidiation). The latter is close to our concept of "opening", of being-open-to-the-world as essentially of the I. Here lies the conducting thread that will allow other thinkers to find being-there, without dealing with an isolated phenomenological "I" that could not be constituted except in its existence or, as Dilthey said, "in its life". We will make a detour before encountering Husserl again.

When Abenhazan27 explains that human action is effected in order "to be free of worries", he demonstrates that "placing oneself before" lies at the root of action. If on the basis of this thought as Historiology "seen from outside" is put together, it will try to explain historical facts through the distinct modes of action with reference to that sort of being-free-of-

worries. If, instead, someone will try to organize the aforementioned Historiology "seen from inside", he will try to provide reason for the historical human fact from the root of "placing oneself before". The result then would be two extremely different types of exposition , search and verification. The second case would be close to an assertion of the essential characteristics of the historical fact, inasmuch as it is produced by the human being, and the first would remain as a psychologistic and mechanical explanation of history without understanding how the simple "being free of worries" can engender processes and be, itself, a process. Hence,this form of understanding things has occupied first place up till now in diverse philosophies of history. This has not departed much from what Hegel informed us when he studied mechanical and chemical processes. Certainly similar positions could be admitted until before Hegel, but beginning from his explanations, to insist on it denotes, at least, intellectual short-sightedness, hardly compensated by simple historical erudition.

Abenhazan stresses action as a moving away from what we can call the "placing oneself before" or the Heideggerian "pre-being-

itself-already-in (the world) as being-possible". He touches the fundamental human structure in as much as existence is projection, and in this projection the existent plays his destiny.

If we put things that way, we consign ourselves to an exegesis of temporality, since its comprehension allows us to understand pro-ject, the "placing oneself before". Such exegesis is not incidental, it is unavoidable. There is no way of knowing how temporality occurs in facts, because they can temporalized in one historical conception if the intrinsic temporality of those who produce them is not accounted for. Thus it is fitting to remember: either history is an occurrence that places the human being in the quality of the epiphenomenon and, in that case, we can speak only of the natural history (moreover, unjustified without human construction), or we make human history (moreover, justifying any construction). We adhere in particular to the second. Let us see then what temporality signifies for us.

Hegel has shown the dialectic of movement, but not temporality. The latter he defines as the "abstraction of consuming" and locates it side by side with place and movement, following the Aristotelian tradition (particularly in Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, chapter: Philosophy of Nature). He says that the being of time is the now, but it no longer is and is not yet, and thus it is a non-being. If temporality is stripped of its "now", certainly it is converted into "abstraction of consuming", but the problem of "consuming" the linear position (according to his later explanation) of infinite nows the temporal sequence can be obtained. "Negativity, as point in space and in this developing its determinations as line and surface, exists in the being-outside-

of-itself equally for itself, placing its determinations in this for itself as in the sphere of being-outside-of-itself, showing indifference to the quiet one-with-another. Placed thus, for itself is the negativity of time." (cited by Heidegger in Being and Time, par. 82).

Heidegger says that both the naive conception of time and the Hegelian which shares the same perception, occurs through the levelling and concealment that hides the historicity of being-

there, for which passage is not, at bottom, a simple horizontal alignment of "nows". It deals, in reality, with the phenomenon of taking away the look from the "end of the being in the world" by means of an infinite time, which, in this case, may not be and so does not affect the end of being-there.28 In this way, as a result, up till now temporality is inaccessible, hidden by the vulgar conception of time that characterizes it as an irreversible "one before another". "Why is time irreversible? Of itself and just when the flux nows is attended to exclusively, it is not divided because their sequence need not start anew in the reverse direction. The impossibility of inversion is grounded in the behaviour, the public time of temporality, whose temporalization, primarily arriving, 'marches' ecstatically toward its end in such a way that it 'is' already in the end."

Thus only by starting from the temporality of "being there" can one comprehend how in it world time is inherent. And the temporality of "being there" is a structure in which past and future times - and the latter as projects, or more radically, as "protentions" (according to what Husserl taught) necessary to intentionality - coexist (but not one with the other as additions). In reality, the primacy of the future explains the pre-being-itself-in-the-world as the ontological root of "being there"... This, of course, has enormous consequences and affects our historiological investigation. According to Heidegger himself: "The proposition 'being there is historical' is revealed as a fundamental ontological-existential proposition. It is extremely far from expressing a mere ontical verification of the fact that 'being there' takes place in a 'history of the world.' The historicity of 'being there' is the ground of a possible historiological comprehension, which in turn involves the possibility of an intended development of historiography as science." With the last, we find ourselves in the plane of the pre-requisites which necessarily must be unveiled in order to justify the emergence of historical science.

At bottom, from Heidegger we have returned to Husserl.29 Not with respect to the discussion about whether or not philosophy must be science, but with respect to the fact that existential analysis based on Phenomenology allows the grounding of historiological science. Anyway, before Heidegger the accusations of solipsism levelled against Phenomenology result to be inconsistent, and so the temporal structurality of "being there" confirms, from another perspective, the immense value of Husserl's theory.

2. Temporal Horizon and Landscape

It is not necessary to discuss here that the configuration of ang situation is effected through representation of past facts

and of facts more or less possible in the future, such that, compared with present phenomena, they allow the structuring of what is given in the phrase "present situation". This inevitable process of representation before given facts implies that the latter can never have in themselves the structure attributed to them. Because of this, when we speak of "landscape" we refer to situations that always imply facts considered by the observer's "look".

Therefore, if a student of history fixes his temporal horizon in the past, not because of this does he reach an historical scenario in itself, but that he configures the scenario according to his special landscape, because his present study on the past is articulated as any situation study is (in which representation is referred). This makes us reflect on some lamentable intents where the historian attempts to "introduce himself" in the scenario chosen, in order to revive past facts, without being aware that such "introduction" is, at bottom, the introduction of his own present landscape.

In light of these observations we recommend that a chapter of Historiology be devoted to the study of the historians' landscape, because through their transformation historical change can be also surmised. In such sense, those writers depict the time they lived in, more than the historical horizon they chose to study.

One can object to the preceding by saying that the study of the historians' landscapes is also effected from a landscape. In effect, this is so, but the sort of metalandscape allows the establishment of comparisons among homogenized elements, because it makes them belong to the same category.

A first examination of the preceding proposition could result in its assimilation into any other historiological vision. If a supposed historiologist adheres to "will to power" as engine of history, he could infer (according to what it said) that the historians of different epochs are the representatives of the development of such will, or if he adopts the idea of "social class" as producer of historical movement, he would situate historians as representatives of a class, and so forth. Such historiologists would see themselves, in turn, as conscious champions of the mentioned "will" or "class". and this allows them to apply their own stamp on the category "landscape". They could attempt to study, for example, the landscape of the will to power among different historians. Nevertheless, that intent would be only a procedure based on an expression and not on a meaning, because the patent of the concept "landscape" requires the comprehension of temporality, which does not derive from the theory of will. Along with this theme, it is surprising that many historiologists could appropriate for themselves explanations of temporality outside their interpretative scheme, without the need to clarify (from a theory) how the representation of the world in general and of the historical world in particular is configured. The previous clarification we have made conditions the ulterior development of the ideas and is not just another step that can be dispensed with joyfully. This point is one of the necessary prerequisites of historiological discourse, and it cannot be discarded by labelling it "psychological" or "phenomenological" (meaning "Byzantine"). In opposition to the pre-predicates of those mentioned, we affirm yet with great audacity, that the category "landscape" is applicable not only to Historiology but to all vision of the world, as it allows the highlighting of the look of the one who observes the world. It is, then, a necessary concept for Science in general.30

Although the look of the observer, in this case the look of the historiologist, is modified as soon as he placed himself before a new object, his landscape helps direct his look. If this is opposed by the idea of a free look oriented without suppositions towards the historical fact that irrupts (something like the look that is attracted reflectively by a sudden stimulus of everyday life), one must consider that the placing in situation before an emerging phenomenon already falls within the configuration of a landscape. To continue to sustain that in order to make science, the observer must be passive does not contribute anything great to knowledge, except the comprehension that such position is a copy of the conception that the subject is a simple reflection of external stimuli. In turn, such obedience to "objective conditions" shows the devotion that certain anthropology professes for Nature, where the human is a simple moment of Nature and, therefore, himself or herself a natural being.

Certainly, other epochs asked about the nature of the human being and answered accordingly, but without realizing that what defines him or her as such was precisely his or her historicity and therefore his or her world-transforming and self-transforming activity.31

We must recognize, on the other hand, that while from a landscape one can penetrate into scenarios placed by different temporal horizons (that is, the habitual occurrence of the historian who studies a fact), what happens also is that in the same temporal horizon, in the same historical moment, the points of view of contemporaries concur and thus coexist, but they do them from different landscapes of formation with regard to non-

homogeneous temporal accumulations. This discovery reinforces the obviousness that has been endured until recently, by pointing out the big gap in the perspective sustained by generations. Even if they occupy the same historical scenario, they do it from diverse situational and experiential level.

Although the theme of generations was treated by various authors (Dromel, Lorenz, Petersen, Wechssler, Pinder, Drerup, Mannheim, etc.), we owe Ortega for having established, in his theory of generations, the point of support for the comprehension of the intrinsic movement of the historical process.32 If he is going to provide reason for the development process of facts, he must exert an effort similar to what Aristotle did when, through the concepts of potency and act, he attempted to explain movement. The argument supported by sensory perception is not enough in order to justify movement, neither is the present explanation given to the historical process of development through factors applied to the human being in a relation in which the former acts as a mere patient or, in all cases, a pulley of transmission of an agent that remains externalized.

3. Human History

We have seen that the human being's open constitution refers to the world, not only in the ontical but also in the ontological sense. In addition, we have considered that in that open constitution, the future, as pro-ject ans as finality, occuspies first place. That constitution, projected and open, structures the moment in which it is found, such that inevitably, it "makes a landscape of" the moment as present situation throught he "intercrossing" of temporal retentions and protentions, which are never arranged as linear "nows" but as actualizations of different times.

We add: the reference in situation is one's body. In it is subjective moment is related with objectivity, and because of this, it can be comprehended as "interiority" or "exteriority", according to the direction given to its intention, to its "look". Before this body lies all-that-is-not-it, recognized as immediately independent of one's own intentionality, but susceptible to being immediately independent of one's own intentionality, but susceptible to being acted upon through the intermediation of one's body. Thus, the world in general and other bodies, reached and whose actions are registered by one's body, set the conditions under which the human constitution configures its situation. These conditions determine the situation and are presented as possibles in the future and in the future relation with one's body. In this manner, the present situation can be comprehended as something that can be modified in the future.

The world is experienced as external to the body, but the body is also seen as part of the world, since it acts in the world, and from the world it receives action. In such manner, corporeality is also a temporal configuration, a living history launched toward action, toward future possibility. The body becomes prosthesis of the intention, responds to the placing-

oneself-before-the-intention, in the temporal and spatial sense. Temporally, inasmuch as it can actualize the possible of the intention in the future; spatially, inasmuch as it is representation and image of the future.33

The destiny of the body is the world, and, being part of the world, its destiny is to transform itself. In this occurence, objects are body extensions, and other bodies appear as multiplications of those possibilities, inasmuch as they are governed by intentions, recognized as resembling those that manage one's body.

Why does that human constitution need to transform the world and to transform itself? Because of the situation of finitude and temporal-spatial lack that it finds itself and which it registers, according to distinct conditionings, as pain (physical) and suffering (mental). Thus, the surpassing of pain is not simply an animal response but a temporal configuration, in which the future occupies first place and which is converted into a fundamental impulse of life, even if in a given instant it is not found urgent. Because of this, apart from the immediate, reflex, and natural response, deferred response and the construction for avoiding pain are impelled by suffering before danger, and, where pain is present in other human beings, they are re-presented as future or present possibilities. The surpassing of pain appears then as basic project guiding action. That intention has made communication among bodies and diverse intentions, which we call "social constitution", possible.

Social constitution is as historical as human life; it shapes human life. Its transformation is continuous, but in a manner different from that of nature. In nature, changes do not happen through intentions. Nature is presented as a "resource" for surpassing pain and suffering and as a "danger" for human constitution, and because of this, the destiny of nature is for it to be humanized, intended. And the body, as nature, as danger

and limitation, bears the same design: to be intentionally transformed, not only in position but also in motor availability; not only in exteriority but also in interiority; not only in confrontation but also in adaptation...

As nature, the natural world will recede as the human horizon amplifies. Social production continues and amplifies, but this continuity can occur not only through the presence of social objections which by themselves, although spokespersons of human intentions, have not been able (up till now) to continue to amplify. The continuity is given by human generations that are not placed "side by side with each other" but that interact among themselves and transform themselves. These generations that allow continuity and development are dynamic structures; they are social time in motion, without which a society would fall into a natural state and would lose its condition of (being a) society.

On the other hand, what happens is that in all historical moments, generations of distinct temporal level, of distinct retention and protention coexist and thus configure different landscapes of situation. The body and the behaviour of children and old ones reveal, for the active generations, a presence of what is coming and what is going and, in turn, for the extremes of this threefold relation, placements of equally extreme temporality. But this never stops, because while the active generations get old and the old ones die, the children transform themselves and start to occupy active positions.

When, through abstraction, the incessant flux is "stopped", one can speak of a "historical moment" in which all the members placed in the same social scenario can be considered contemporaries, living in the same time (with respect to datability), but they observe a heterogeous coetaneousness (with respect to their internal temporality: memory, project and landscape of situation). In reality, the generational dialectic is established between more contiguous "fringes" who attempt to occupy the central activity (the social present) according to their interests and beliefs. The ideas manifested by the generations in dialectic are formed by and grounded on the basic pre-predicates of their own formation, which includes an internal register of possible future.

That with the minimum "reticulum" or "atom" of historical moment, vaster processes (that is, molecular "dynamics" of historical life) can be comprehended, such is evidently possible. Of course, a complete theory of history must be developed. But such undertaking goes beyond the limits fixed in this short work.

4. The Prerequisites of Historiology

We are not the ones who should decide the characteristics of Historiology as science must have. This is the task of historiologists and epistemologists. Our concern has been to raise the questions necessary for the fundamental comprehension of the historical phenomenon viewed "from inside", without which Historiology could become a science of history in the formal sense, but not a science of human temporality in the profound sense.

Having comprehended the temporal-spatial structure of human life and its social generational dynamic, we are in conditions to say now that without grasping those concepts a coherent Historiology will not exist. Those concepts are precisely what are converted into necessary prerequisites of the future science of History.

Let us consider a few last themes. The discovery of human life as opening have torn down the old barriers between an "interiority" and an "exteriority" accepted by previous philosophies.

Previous philosophies also did not give sufficient account of how the human being apprehends spatiality and how it is possible that he or she acts in it. Determining that time and space are categories of knowledge, or similar things, does not tell us anything about the temporal-spatial constitution of the world and, particularly, of the human being. Because of this, the open breach, insurmountable up till now, between philosophy and the mathematical physical sciences has endured. These sciences have ended up by giving their special view on extension and duration of the human being and his or her internal and external processes. The deficiencies of previous philosophy have allowed, however, the fruitful independence of the mathematical physical sciences. It has brought about some difficulties for the comprehension of the human being and his or her meaning, and thus for the comprehension of the meaning of the world, and consequently primitive Historiology has struggled in the obscurity of its fundamental concepts.

Today, having comprehended how the structural constitution of human life is and how temporality and spatiality are in that constitution, we are in conditions to know how to act toward the future, coming from a "natural" being-thrown-into-the-world, coming from a prehistory of natural being, and intentionally generating a world history, inasmuch as the world will be converted into the pros-thesis of human society.

| Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |

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