Philosophy is an intellectual exercise in the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and truth. When Philosophies become political, they yield Worldviews that can potentially inform Ideologies, which in turn can provide the means by which to govern the State. History and Philosophy are not mutually opposed to each other; in fact, they are supportive of each other. There are always circumstances when it is better to evaluate something from the standpoint of an historian, an anthropologist or a sociologist as opposed to a philosopher. Sometimes, there are certain beliefs, ideas, and concepts which are in hindsight the byproducts of a specific historical epoch and should not be definitive of what something is capable of being when recontextualized for contemporary times. There will always be variations of the same timeless values, expressed in terms comprehensible and unique to different Cultures and Civilizations.
As a Historicist, I was very vocal yesterday in my dislike of Leo Strauss and his philosophy. Strauss’s definitions of Historicism come across being as a criticism of “Scientism,” which in itself is related to another Philosophy, “Positivism.” It is self-evident in the criticisms that Strauss himself raised in his 1941 lecture on Historicism. In that lecture, Strauss was adamant that if we can attribute certain values, ideas, beliefs and concepts to specific historical epochs, then we must assume that nothing is guaranteed to transcend beyond the boundaries of that historical epoch. Going by this logic, we would have to entertain the notion that a particular idea from a certain historical epoch within one Culture is incapable of attaining different forms. The content remains more or less the same, but the contexts and circumstances differ across historical epochs.
Consider the concept of “American Equality,” particularly how it has been interpreted throughout US History, as one example. There was once a point in US History when the definition of “Equality” in America was only applicable to “wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men.” That definition later expanded over the centuries to include all Americans who do not fit that particular background. Historicism argues that, beyond the appeals to ensuring that all Americans share the same constitutional rights, we can uncover the rules which ultimately drove those developments. It is from those rules that we eventually find opposing definitions of Equality among Hamiltonianism and Jeffersonianism.
In Jeffersonianism, Equality is understood to mean that the American people have “Natural Rights,” except the definitions of ‘American people’ were always subject to reinterpretation over the centuries. Meanwhile, in Hamiltonianism, Equality is understood as all Americans, regardless of their background, are bound to a shared American Essence that is also undergoing development. Seen in this context, Historicism maintains that all Americans contribute to either or both (as in the case of Progressivism) in one form or another as part of a shared American Consciousness.
The ideas, beliefs and concepts which define Jeffersonianism and Hamiltonianism do not exist in an historical vacuum; they can and will change whilst retaining other aspects which continue to stand the test of time because of their contemporary relevance. It then becomes necessary for the political philosopher as well as the political scientist to understand why specific ideas, values and beliefs assumed their proper forms in a given historical epoch, how it transcended its own historical epoch, and what it can offer for contemporary times. This means thinking critically about those same ideas, values and beliefs, understanding their historical context and discerning why they remain relevant.
One should wonder why Straussian philosophy opposes understanding Philosophy in general from an historical perspective with a keen eye for ascertaining its contemporary relevance. Straussian philosophy is inclined to believe that there is a direct line between Historicism and Positivism. Strauss once famously tried to demonstrate this relationship in Natural Right and History by simplifying Historicism to a slippery connection to “Positivism” through way of Max Weber. For those who do not know, Positivism refers to the idea that Science, not History, can be reapplied in fields beyond the natural sciences in the philosophical sense.
Unfortunately, the more I read about Strauss’s definitions of Historicism, the more I begin to realize that Strauss is not actually referring to Historicism at all. If anything, he was probably referring to something like “Scientism,” which has a much stronger connection to Positivism than Historicism. Scientism is an actual Philosophy which holds that Science, by means of the Scientific Method, can uncover knowledge of eternal truths that used to have been pondered by political philosophy. If Science itself is capable of making the sort of discoveries only dreamed of by philosophers, then it becomes tenable to assume that practically anything is open to scientific inquiry and potentially doomed to irrelevance. Once something has been made “irrelevant” after being disproven by scientific inquiry, it can no longer be deemed timeless and eternal because it is instead outmoded and outdated, creating the sort of “Moral Relativism” that is criticized throughout much of Straussian philosophy.
Therefore, I am convinced that the problems of Modernity which are the subject of intense criticism by Strauss are products of Science rather than History. It is notable that Science and Technology share a mutual bond where the latter feeds off of the discoveries of the former, establishing the conditions in which Modernity demolishes the premodern Platonic thought that forms the crux of Straussian philosophy. It is also an understandable conclusion when one realizes how Scientism in particular has oftentimes been targeted by an American Right influenced by Straussian philosophy. Curiously, History does not get targeted as much because History was always meant to be debated politically, which renders it open to reinterpretation. Our perspectives on past events cannot always be everlasting. The people of an entire nation can change.
Categories: Philosophy
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