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| Joos van Craesbeeck - The Smoker 1635/6 |
If I drank a cup of coffee yesterday
and smoked a cigar...
by Herman Dooyeweerd
(Excerpt from In the Twilight of Western Thought, Paideia Press, 2012, pp 59-64)
HISTORICISM IS JUST ONE MORE REDUCTIONIST ‘ISM’
The historicistic view is a philosophical total-view of empirical reality within the temporal order of our experiential horizon. And this total view originated from the absolutization of the scientific historical viewpoint. As such, it is nothing but one of the many 'isms' in the philosophical views of reality. It is on the same footing as the others, such as mechanism, biologism, psychologism, logicism, aestheticism, moralism, et cetera. All these isms originate from the absolutization of a specific scientific viewpoint which considers empirical reality only from one of the fundamental aspects of our temporal experience. These aspects are the fundamental modes or manners of this experience. As such they are only related to the how of the latter, not to the concrete what, i.e., to concrete things, or events or particular societal relationships, which we experience in these different modes or aspects. This concrete what, e.g., the Battle of Waterloo, is never to be identified with just one of its aspects. It is an individual whole, which in principle functions in all the aspects of our experience.
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| List of experiential Aspects (Modalities/ Law-spheres) in their fixed temporal order. NB Everything which exists in Time always functions in all Aspects. Theoretical abstraction or dissociation of Aspects happens only in our heads and necessarily involves a mental suspension of Time. Encounter with actual 'time-continuous' concrete Reality therefore transcends and eludes theory and requires the intuitive engagement of one's core concrete selfhood. It must be continually emphasised that the array of aspects is not a speculative feat of Logic. That would make it a reductionist logicistic description of reality. Rather the aspects are founded in intuition. We may note a general confirmatory parallel to university disciplines. (Chart & note by FMF) __________________________________ |
[...] The different modes or aspects of our experiential horizon are arranged in an irreversible order and display an unbreakable mutual coherence. It is only in the theoretical or scientific attitude of thought that we separate them and set them in opposition to one another. And we do so in order to delimit the different specific scientific viewpoints from which empirical reality is considered and examined. In the non-theoretical and pre-scientific attitude of thought and experience we never do this. There our attention is directed immediately to concrete things and events as individual wholes; and their different aspects are only experienced implicitly, not in the way of a theoretical logical distinction.
If, in the pre-scientific attitude of experience, we try to answer the question: “What is history?,” we usually say: “That which has happened in the past.” From this non-theoretical experiential attitude this answer is doubtless correct. In that situation we do not reflect on the particular historical mode, or aspect, of our experience, but we give our attention exclusively to the concrete what being experienced in this way. And in that way we refer to the concrete events that have occurred in the past. But if we wish to acquire an insight into the historical viewpoint, which in principle delimits the scientific field of research in historiography, there is no use in referring to the concrete what being experienced in the historical way [since concrete reality ALWAYS functions in ALL aspects without exception - FMF]. Rather, at that point we are much more interested in this particular mode of experience itself, that is to say, in the historical aspect of our experience as such.
SO JUST HOW ‘HISTORICAL’ IS MY CUP OF COFFEE OR CIGAR?
If I drank a cup of coffee yesterday and smoked a cigar, these facts belong to the past today. But are these activities really historical facts, and are they of any concern to the historian? They are by themselves certainly not historical facts in a typical sense; that is, they are not facts which are typically qualified by [ie defined by - FMF] their historical aspect, such as the Battle of Waterloo, the invention of typography, or the great invasion of the Allied military forces in France during the last world-war. Nevertheless, such simple things as drinking and smoking certainly have an historical aspect [among their complete panoply of aspects, ie economic, aesthetic, social etc - FMF]. In the Middle Ages one did not drink coffee or smoke cigars. The introduction of these means of enjoyment into our Western civilization has doubtless influenced our cultural life in an historical sense.
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These above two diagrams attempt to show example structures of the Logical and the Historical Modalities with their irreducible nucleus (moment or kernel) surrounded by analogies to all other Aspects, prior and subsequent. No Aspect can function within Time (ie within concrete reality) without the entire complement of remaining analogies. All aspects are mutually irreducible, therefore Logicism and Historicism are absolutizations infringing the irreducibility of the other modalities, leaving those as mere constructs of the Logical (Analytical) or Historical (Cultural Formative) aspects. Radical Historicism dissolves every abiding standard or enduring principle into a fugitive consensus. It is therefore nihilistic, bursting the bubble of meaning.
(Diagrams & note by FMF)
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THE STRUCTURE OF EACH EXPERIENTIAL ASPECT: OWN IRREDUCIBLE NUCLEUS PLUS ANALOGIES OF NUCLEI OF ALL OTHER ASPECTS
THE ABSOLUTIZATION OF ANY ASPECT RESULTS IN MEANINGLESSNESS
[...] The historicist view of the temporal world could not absolutize the historical aspect of our experience without eliminating its modal structure. For it is this very structure which excludes in principle any attempt at reducing all the other [equally irreducible - FMF] modes of experience to mere modalities of the historical aspect. The proper sense of the latter can only reveal itself in an unbreakable context with that of the other aspects; and this state of affairs explains why a consistent or radical historicism must lead to nihilism, which denies that there is any meaning to history. For the absolutization of a particular aspect, whose meaning is only relative, destroys this meaning and accordingly results in utter meaninglessness.
[...] Every ism in the realm of philosophical worldviews begins with the identification of one particular aspect or mode of experience with the whole reality of our empirical world. [...] The empirical reality of human social life can, therefore, never be exhausted in its cultural-historical aspect, as Historicism assumed. All that is real or that really happens in human society is more than merely historical.
Excerpt from ‘In the Twilight of Western Thought’ by Herman Dooyeweerd, Paideia Press, 2012, pp 59-64)
For similar analyses of religious ground motives, see New Critique Volume I, Part II; and Dooyeweerd, The Roots of Western Culture, Collected Works, Series B, Volume 3.
For FREE Downloads of these Dooyeweerd books go HERE
