Chapter Three
The Phenomenon of the Historical
§ 7. The Historical as Core Phenomenon
We want now to attempt to set forth a core phenomenon that reigns through the connections of meaning of the three words in the title (“Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion”). This core phenomenon is the “historical.” Insofar as we then intend to view the historical as core phenomenon of what is meant by the title, we will immediately find out how far the phenomena which occupy us can be characterized as historical. To what degree are “Introduction,” “Philosophy,” “Religion” historical phenomena? It goes without saying that the introduction to a science is historical. Science is a complex of timelessly valid principles. The process of introduction proceeds, on the contrary, in time, is dependent upon the particular, factical-historical situation of science, etc. The same holds for philosophy and religion. They are also subordinate to historical development. But is the historical not precisely a matter of indifference for philosophy, which seeks the eternally valid? Moreover, does not the characterization as “historical” fit any phenomenon one likes? Yet if we now assert that the philosophical problematic is motivated on principle from the historical, so is this possible only insofar as the concept of the historical is polysemous. In any case, the necessity arises of grasping the problem of the historical principally, and not to content oneself with the considerations of a sound common sense.
We have characterized philosophy and religion by subsuming it under the historical: “Philosophy and religion are historical phenomena.” (Just as: “The Feldberg and the Kandel are mountains,” or “The university, the cathedral, and the train station are buildings.”) How such a characterization of philosophy is possible is a problem; philosophy subsists, at any rate, in factical life experience. General concepts are handled like objects, so that one moves in a circle with characterizations through general concepts, and never leaves the realm of objects. Now the question is whether the possibility exists of discovering another sense of “historical” altogether, one which cannot be predicated of objects in this way. Perhaps today's concept of the historical is only a derivation of this original concept. To this aim, we must inspect more carefully in which sense the characterization “historical,” which we have just performed, is to be understood. Historical means here becoming, emergence, proceeding in time, a characterization that befits a reality. Insofar as one remains within the cognitive consideration of the connections among objects, each characterization or use of the sense of “historical” is always determined through this foreconception of the object. The object is historical; it has the particularity of proceeding in time, of changing.
We proceed not from the usual philosophy of history, which has the task ex professo of dealing with the historical. We mean the historical in the way we encounter it in life; not in the science of history. “Historical” means not only proceeding in time—that is to say, it is not only a characterization which befits a complex of objects. But in factical life experience and in the straightforward, attitudinal [einstellungshaften] evolution of philosophy, the historical, in accordance with this view, obtains the character of a quality of an object changing in time. In a much broader sense than the historical facts existing in the brain of a logician—which results only from a theory of science which empties out the living phenomena—the historical is immediate vivacity.
a) “Historical Thinking”
“Historical consciousness” is said to distinguish our present culture from others. Historical thinking indeed determines our culture; it disturbs our culture: firstly, in that it provokes, excites, stimulates; secondly, in that it hinders. This means (1) a fulfillment; life gains its foothold in the diversity of the historical; (2) a burden. Thus the historical is a power, against which life seeks to assert itself. One would have to consider the development of historical consciousness in the living cultural history. I refer you to Dilthey, who, I am convinced, has not grasped the core of the problem. What Troeltsch says about this—and also about the Reformation—is essentially influenced by Dilthey and, in terms of content, only determines it more closely.
1. The worldization [Verweltlichung] and the self-sufficiency of factical life—that one wants to secure one's own life by worldly means—lead to a tolerance of alien views, through which one wants to gain a new security. From there stems today's fury to understand cultural forms, the fury of classifying life-forms and cultural epochs—a typologization that goes all the way to the belief that it has reached the last frontier. Contenting oneself with this, one enjoys the diversity of life and its forms. Historical consciousness of the present is most sharply expressed in this panarchy of the understanding. In this sense, (present) life is filled with the historical. But what presents itself as the logic and methodology of history has no feeling for this living historicality which, as it were, has eaten into our existence [Dasein].
2. The opposed, hindering direction lies in that the historical withdraws the view from the present, and that it ruins and paralyzes the naïveté of creating. From there arises the assault of genuine activism against the historical.
b) The Concept of the Historical
The historical is the phenomenon that for us should open up an access to the self-understanding of philosophy. The phenomenological question of method is not a question of a methodical system, but rather a question of access that leads through factical life experience. Attendance to the methodological complex is important for understanding our study. It is a methodological complex in the sense of an access to the problems themselves. We will see that this access to the problems plays a decisive role in philosophizing. It is crucial to find motives in factical life experience for the self-understanding of philosophizing. From this self-understanding, the entire task of a phenomenology of religion first arises for us, one dominated throughout by the problem of the historical. When one hears the problem-word “the historical” immediately and factically, insofar as one wishes to philosophize about it, one seems to have already solved half the task by no more than reference to the philosophy of history, believing this to be a solidly circumscribed discipline.
But we cannot gain the phenomenon of the historical from the philosophy of history, since we reject the entire partitioning of philosophy into disciplines. With this the historical has become homeless, as it were, since it has lost its systematic place. We must therefore derive the historical from factical life. One never says: “Something is historical,” something, an object, has the quality of being historical. With that the historical shifts into a complex of objects. Philosophy and religion are likewise obviously historical phenomena. However, with such a characterization, nothing exceptional is said, for art and science are also historical in this sense. Particularly in the case of philosophy, this characterization seems secondary, since it depends exactly on what philosophy is in its meaning, irrespective of how it is historically actualized. Only if one problematizes the validity of scientific principles, the historical plays a certain (albeit negative) role. One says that the validity of these principles is independent of the historical, is extra-temporal; considering the historical serves then only to demonstrate this. But this would be a more secondary role for the historical; here the meaning of philosophy and validity is already presupposed.
But we assert the importance of the historical for the sense of philosophizing per se, before all questions of validity. This assertion is grounded in the concept of the historical as polysemous; and we have not yet grasped the authentic sense of the historical. We must clarify the sense of the historical phenomenologically. What is meant when one says that some occurrence or other, some undertaking, etc. is “historical”? What is meant is that every happening in time and space has the quality of standing in a temporal context, a context of becoming. The quality of being historical is then predicated of an object.
Object [Objekt] and thing [Gegenstand] are not the same. All objects are things, but not the other way around; all things are not objects. A danger ensues of holding determinates of objects for determinates of things. Conversely, one is seduced into holding some thingly determinates immediately for determinates of objects and into applying formal points of view to specific observations of things. Since Plato, the blurring of these differences has been disastrous. Now, a phenomenon is neither object nor thing. However, a phenomenon, formally speaking, is also a thing—that is to say, a something at all. But saying that says nothing essential about the phenomenon; one has only shifted it into a sphere into which it does not belong. That makes phenomenology so extraordinarily difficult. Objects, things, and phenomena cannot be placed alongside each other as on a chessboard; rather, this systematization of things also is inappropriate for phenomena, and from the point of view of phenomenology, a doctrine of categories or a philosophical system becomes senseless.
For the time being, only the difference between object and thing is important for us. It befits an object to be temporally determined; as such, it is historical. A more general concept of the historical than this seems not to be found. The historical actuality will, in each case, modify itself according to the character of the object; and yet in principle the historical remains the same. The application of the historical to human reality, too, will be a determination of the object-historical. The human being itself is, in its actuality, an object in becoming, standing within time. To be historical is simply one of its characteristics. This view of the historical runs entirely within the bounds of sound common sense. But philosophy is nothing else than a struggle against common sense! In this way, the problem of the historical is not to be settled. Indeed it is difficult to gain a different view today.
If today's philosophy of history were our point of departure, and if we let that philosophy stipulate the problems, we would never escape this object-conception of the historical. Therefore, we want to proceed from factical life. In this [consideration], philosophy of history is regarded only as a factical view of the historical problem. We are not, however, accepting its terms, participating in it; rather we are only trying to understand what the real motives are, in each case, for the viewpoint of the philosophy of history. To aim for a deep-rooted understanding, one would have to feel one's way into the entire present-day constitution of mind. Here we can emphasize only a few fundamental currents.
c) The Historical in Factical Life Experience
The historical plays a role in present-day factical life experience in two major directions. 1. Positively speaking, the diversity of historical forms provides life with a fulfillment and allows it to rest in the diversity of historical formations. 2. Negatively speaking, the historical is for us a burden, a hindrance.
In both respects, the historical is disturbing; against it, life seeks to assert and secure itself. But it remains in question whether that against which factical life asserts itself is still really the historical. Dilthey's investigations are important here: “Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften” [“Introduction to the Humanities”],1 “Die Aufklärung und die geschichtliche Welt” [“The Enlightenment and the Historical World”] (Deutsche Rundschau),2 “Analyse und Auffassung des Menschen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert” [“Analysis and View of the Human Being in the 15th and 16th Centuries”] (Gesammelte Werke II).3
The expression of historical consciousness is, at first, polysemous. The science of history exists because the historical plays a role in our present-day life, not the other way around. “Historical thinking” can have many meanings: In the face of the historical object I do not need at all to think historically; and yet I can think historically without having a historical object before me. The problem of the historical takes its meaning in this, that the historical, through the distancing from a particular, present, world-orienting standpoint, opens the eyes to other life-forms and cultural ages. Now either one glimpses the highest itself—which our time, gifted with enormous capacity of feeling, has to offer—in the all-encompassing understanding of this rise of accessibility and openness; or one lays out the different types that surface in history, and, in comparing, chooses and decides among them.
Still more, the historical is felt today as a burden. It inhibits our naïveté in creating. Historical consciousness incessantly accompanies, like a shadow, each attempt at a new creation. Immediately, consciousness of transitoriness stirs and takes from us enthusiasm for the absolute. Insofar as a new spiritual culture is insisted upon, historical consciousness, in this sense of being a burden, must be eradicated, and thus the self-assertion against the historical is a more or less open struggle against history.
§ 8. The Struggle of Life against the Historical
We can differentiate three ways of attempting to assert oneself against history. Perhaps this is a somewhat violent differentiation, also because spiritual life today is no longer clearly conscious that it incessantly confronts history:
The Platonic way: the historical is something with which a break must be made. Self-assertion is itself a break with the historical.
The way of radical self-extradition to the historical (Spengler).
The way of compromise between the two extremes (a) and (b). (Dilthey, “Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften” [“Introduction to the Humanities”], Simmel, “Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie” [“Problems of the Philosophy of History”]4, and the entire philosophy of history of Rickert and Windelband.)
We attempt to understand these modes of liberation from the disturbance of the historical entirely schematically, in order to understand the sense of the historical itself, as well as the sense of these tendencies of liberation.
a) The Platonic Way
The Platonic way is the most accessible, and, in present-day spiritual life, determined in its essence by Greek philosophy, the most readily given and most popular. Historical reality is not the only reality, not the fundamental reality at all; rather it is only to be understood by reference to the realm of ideas, in whatever way one may grasp them: as substances, as values, as norms or principles of reason. One should keep in mind that the motive in Plato, and also still today, for this discovery of the extra-temporal realm, is laid forth in the territory of theoretical knowledge, of logic; in such a realm, one opposes, in the struggle against skepticism (Protagoras), the content of knowledge to temporally proceeding operations thereof, and thus comes to a concept of truth which is grasped as the validity in itself of theoretical principles. Insofar as this theoretical thinking plays a foundational role in the Greeks, insofar as everything is only as it is known, given the dominating role of the theoretical, the moral act, artistic and practical creation are likewise referred to an ideal reality of norms and values. The primacy of the logical (theoretical) is to be found in Plato's relation to Socrates, in the explication of the principle “Virtue is knowledge.” Following Plato, a virtuous life is possible only through knowledge.
Now the connection between ideas and the sensible world arises as a difficulty to which this philosophy has never properly attended. Here, in modern Platonism, there is a great scope of possibilities. Some say that reality is only the occasion for the appearance of ideas, of anamnesis. Others want to grasp the historical as a fusion into reality itself [Einformung in die Wirklichkeit selbst]. The theories about the connection of the two worlds are various, and need concern us in no greater detail. In any case, the historical has become something secondary.
b) Radical Self-Extradition
Alternatively, the second way is a complete radicalization in an opposing sense; nevertheless, in principle, it proceeds in the same manner, so that today, in the struggle between absolutism and skepticism, both parties move in the same direction and fight over something they have not yet made clear to themselves. The second and third ways are grounded essentially epistemologically. This epistemological foundation [Fundierung] must be made clear. Platonism, too, has received such an epistemological foundation, but the ontological is its genuine uniqueness, that of a meta-real lawfulness. Simmel worked out an epistemological foundation of the second or, for example, third way, in his Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie (first edition 1892, second edition 1905, third edition 1907). His view is not original. Dilthey gave the first radical conception of the problem in the Einleitung. The philosophy of history of Windelband and Rickert is only an emptied-out, formal study of the points of view that Dilthey had already presented. Today one begins to return beyond this logic of history, to Dilthey, and, after fifty years, gradually to understand him.
If one wants to grasp the problem of the historical philosophically, it is not admissible to proceed from the philosophy of history, because this represents only a forming—out of a historical consciousness—in reference to which we question whether it itself arose from an originally historical motivation. It is telling that the task of turning against the historical falls to philosophy. Characterization of three ways: the mode of relation, the relational sense of the tendency-to-secure, and the sense of the conception of history itself.
Simmel asks: How does the “stuff” of immediate reality become the theoretical formation that we call “history”? The stuff undergoes a process of formation. There are two great categories for dividing reality, the natural-scientific and the historical. Similarly Rickert—only in that he (in his Grenzen5) supplies a logic of conceptual representation—whereas Simmel asks more in terms of a psychology of knowledge. He gives himself the task of investigating the process of formation in which history emerges. The result is that the human being, as known, is the product of nature and of history; yet the human being which knows makes nature and history. The free human personality holds history in its hand; history is a product of free, forming subjectivity. How does this peculiar process of formation occur? Each image of history, because it receives its structure from formative subjectivity, is dependent upon a present that views history. Each historical image is thus, in its view of its tendency of development, oriented toward the present. How does a historical image, a historical objectivity, arise? How is it that reality is grasped once according to the natural sciences, at other times historically?
It has been said that the historical is that which is effective; if an occurrence shows a certain amount of effects which another does not have, it thus receives historical meaning.6 However, according to Simmel, the sum of occurrences and of their effects does not equal the historical meaning, but rather brings it about. This is because a sum of occurrences can only be grasped as effective if an interest is there, against which the effect is seen as effective. Something becomes historical when the stuff of the immediately experienced releases in us a certain effect of feeling; when we are touched by it. Historical interest has two fundamental directions, which must always go together, so that something like history can emerge at all. On the one hand, historical interest is an interest in the content as such, irrespective of whether the story told is authentic, of whether it is truthfully recounted or not. This interest is enjoyment and pleasure taken in the contest between fate and personal energy, attention to the rhythm of profits and losses, etc. But this interest does not suffice. Then follows, on the other hand, an interest in whether or not the content is real. But a reality in itself is not yet historical; it must also awaken interest in the first sense, that is to say interest in the content. Only when both interests (in the content and in its reality) come together does historical interest exist.
What is decisive is that history loses its disturbing character, that in the epistemological analysis its structure is recognized as nothing other than a product of freely formative subjectivity. This tendency is radicalized in the second way. It is pre-formed in Spengler's philosophy of history (“Der Untergang des Abendlandes I”7). Spengler has the tendency to present the science of history as such as reliable. In a certain sense, his tendency is new, and one must wonder that the science of history has not welcomed and taken up this tendency in the way it actually deserves. Since Spengler wants to raise history to a science, he thereby supports interests that in the nineteenth century turn against the exclusive rule of the natural sciences. Exactly in that which Simmel emphasized—that history is always formed from a particular standpoint—Spengler sees the deficiency of the science of history. It would be crucial to render the science of history independent of the historical conditionality of the present. One must carry out a Copernican act. How can that happen? In that the present, which drives history and recognizes history, is not absolutized, but is rather placed within the objective process of historical happening. And this placing-within can only be achieved on the basis of an epistemological conviction. To this Spengler attaches a wild metaphysics, one which resembles Simmel's: History is the expression of a soul (“soul of culture”). History is not contrasted to an extra-temporal reality; rather, the security of the present against history is reached in that the present itself is seen as historical. The reality and uncertainty of the present are experienced in such a way that they themselves are drawn into the objective process of historical becoming, which is nothing else but an ebb and flow of the becoming of “Being which rests in its midst.”
c) Compromise between the Two Positions
The third way attempts to combine the first two. Both are fighting fiercely, as the reaction against Spengler's skepticism shows. It directs itself against the extreme position of the second, with whose epistemological foundations it begins. For the formation of history as objectivity in knowledge assumes the standard of the value of truth. History is a permanent actualization of values, which, however, can never be fully actualized. Rather, in the historical—here comes the dependence on Spengler—values are given only in a relative form, one through which, as it were, the absolute shines; in the confrontation with history, it is thus crucial not to wipe away, as it were, the historical reality, but rather, in a universal consideration, to form the future by oneself, from the entire treasure of the past, in a process which, according to its own nature, strives to actualize the generally human, the humane.
In all three modes, the tendency to typologize plays a role, but in each case the typologization has a different significance. The first mode requires the typology in order to refer the historical to the absolutely valid world (ideas)—history is “ideographical” 
(Windelband), it works with “ideal types” (Max Weber). In the second mode (in Spengler) typologization plays a still greater role. Insofar as history is the last reality, it is crucial to follow the different formations of this forming-out. The morphological study of types represents the peculiar vehicle of this kind of knowledge in the science of history. The fundamental reality itself is here a morphological concept; the morphological formation of types is the real vehicle of historical knowledge. For the third mode it is crucial to demarcate the present in its type sharply against the past, in order to determine the future by means of a universal-historical orientation (which is also only possible through the historical formation of types).
§ 9. Tendencies-to-Secure
The attempt to grasp the sense of the morphological-typologizing formation of concepts has never yet been made. The concept of typologizing is important for the sense of the securing that is striven for in the three [aforementioned] ways. We will consider, within the framework of our problem at large: a) the relation of the tendency-to-secure to history; b) the sense of the historical itself which follows from this; and c) the question whether the securing succeeds—namely, whether it actually hits upon that which, in the historical, genuinely disturbs us.
a) The Relation of the Tendency-to-Secure
The Platonic way consists not only in the juxtaposition of idea and reality; rather it is comprehensible only through the relation of temporal Being to extra-temporal Being. This relation is still today expressed in the characteristic Platonic concepts. The relation should be clarified by four limit-concepts or images: temporal Being is an “imitation” 
of the extra-temporal; the extra-temporal is the “paradigm” 
, while the temporal is the after-copy 
; the temporal “participates” 
in the extra-temporal 
; presence 
of the extra-temporal in temporal beings. These images signify an objective connection of Being between the two worlds of the temporal and the extra-temporal. Here we cannot go into a discussion of these concepts and of the way in which they are epistemologically bent and employed. We are concerned only that the temporal and the extra-temporal are here seen objectively. The mode, the sense of securing fulfills itself through the development of a theory about the sense of reality of the temporal. In recognizing what kind of sense of reality the temporal has, it ceases to disturb me, because I recognize it as a forming-out of the extra-temporal.
The second way shows the same type of securing. As much as the skepticism of the second way opposes absolute validity of Platonism, the mode of securing against history is the same in both. For in Spengler, the historical world is the foundational reality, the single reality; we know only cultures, that is to say, the process of becoming of world destiny. My recognizing as a foundational reality the historical in which I myself stand and which disturbs me results in my having to enter into the historical reality, since I cannot resist it. For us today, a conscious participation in the declining occidental culture ensues. Thus also in Spengler the interpretation of the reality of the historical has a liberating effect.
It is now entirely clear that the third way is merely a compromise of the first two. On the basis of a theory of historical reality, it seeks to fulfill the tendency toward securing. A “historical dialectic” is designated as the task of the philosophy of history; the oppositions of the temporal and the extra-temporal are to be pursued in their tension and suspension [Aufhebung], so that from this the dialectical lawfulness of the historical can be won. On the one hand, I am within history; on the other, I am oriented toward the ideas; I actualize the extra-temporal by entering into the temporal. This beautiful and touching sentimentality of culture has been recited for so long that I do not wish to bore you with it. One sees therein a deep dialectic and thinks with that to have solved the problems of history—while in fact this way represents the most extreme degeneration of the entire problem, already because it is, as a compromise, incapable of grasping originally the motives of the first two ways; rather, it merely takes them up and makes them accessible to the cultural needs of the present. For us the question is whether these tendencies-to-secure correspond at all to the disturbing motive itself. It is thus necessary that we, initially, attempt to understand, on the basis of the ways characterized above, why they actually defend themselves against history. And it is now characteristic of the three ways, and of the entire problem of the historical, that this question is a secondary one, that the disturbance is taken for granted. In the entire consideration, history as the science of history plays no role initially. The theory of the science of history is an entirely secondary problem within the problem of the historical itself.
The present-day confrontation with history testifies, in essence, to the struggle against skepticism and relativism. With this, history appears in a more popular sense, and the basic point of its argumentation is that every skepticism cancels itself out. But logical deduction is no match for historical forces, and the question of skepticism is in this way not to be done away with—for this argumentation was already used by the ancient Greeks. The struggle against history—indirectly and unconsciously—is a struggle for a new culture.
All three ways are fundamentally dominated throughout by the Platonic view, even Spengler, who absolutizes historical reality only in opposition to it. The first way posits the absolute norm as a higher reality against the historical. The second way renounces norms; it sees the reality in the historical itself, in the “cultures.” The third way recognizes a minimum of absolute values, but ones given only in relative forms in the historical. The orientation of a universal history should further develop in a productive synthesis of all past cultures. The historical reality is, in all three ways, posited as an objective Being. The way is that of knowledge [des Erkennens], of study of the material. Along with this goes a tendency to typologize, to understand by forming types. This tendency is important because it characterizes the fundamental character of the theoretical attitude in its relation to history. Therein the attitudinal character of the relation to history is shown.
“Attitude” has here an entirely particular sense. We use “relation” [Bezug] in the general meaning of the word. Not every “relation” is an “attitude,” but each “attitude” has the character of a “relation.” “Attitude” is a relation to objects in which the conduct [Verhalten] is absorbed in the material complex. I direct myself only to the matter, I focus away from myself toward the matter. With this “attitude” [Einstellung] the living relation to the object of knowledge has “ceased” [“eingestellt”] (in the sense of “it will cease,” for instance, as one says, “The struggle has ceased”). We have then a double meaning in the word “attitude”: first an attitude toward a realm of the matter, secondly a ceasing of the entire human relation to the material complex. In this sense we indicate the relation to history in the three ways as “attitudinal” [einstellungsmäßig]. History is here the material [Sache], the object toward which I take a cognitive attitude. Spengler too shows in the course of his study that that which disturbs us is the same as that which is disturbed: both are expressions of one soul of culture. His relation is attitudinally cognitive. The morphological study of types is nothing other than the solidification and foundation of the complex of the matter from out of itself; it executes the material complex in the logical sense: the typologization “executes” [erledigt] history. If one says that the conduct of system-building is an understanding, an attitudinal understanding is meant; but this has nothing to do with phenomenological understanding.
b) The Sense of the Historical Itself
What is it then that is disturbed? From out of what is the disturbance motivated? We can now go only so far as it is presented in the three ways, as they grasp it in concepts. It is peculiar of the three ways that that which seeks securing is not at all regarded as a problem. That which seeks securing and which disturbs us goes without saying. Where the phenomenon of disturbance is observed, it is already seen from within the Platonic schema.
(1) The Platonism of today is modified from its original through the inclusion of Kantian philosophy. From that standpoint, neo-Kantianism (of the Cohen and Windelband schools), too, seeks to interpret Plato anew. Platonism becomes “transcendental,” in the sense of having to do with consciousness [bewußtseinsmäßig gewendet]; between the temporal (historical) and the extra-temporal (world of ideas), a third, mediating realm appears, the realm of meaning (Marburg school, Rickert). In what sense does subjectivity form the mediation? The acts of consciousness, the abilities and activities of consciousness occur, proceed, run a “psychic” course; but they have a sense above and beyond that. Through this they are related to objects [Gegenstände] and this relation is determined through norms. But the difficulties of Platonism return in a refined form.
(2) Spengler: The decisive thing is: that which is true reality, the act-context of historical existence [Dasein], the human-historical reality, the achieving life and existence [Dasein], desires a security, and from this arises concern [Bekümmerung]. Spengler and others have the name “culture” for this achieving and creative historical actuality.
(3) Along the third way, what is meant by being in need of security is clearly shown, while the discontent itself remains unproblematized: existence [Dasein] is something that goes without saying, something which no longer needs to be attended to; only securing it is much more important. The third way is called the “philosophy of life.” Simmel grasps life more biologically, Dilthey more spiritually, Spengler links, in a peculiar way, the first and third ways. “Life” is the fundamental reality and secures itself through the “Turn to Ideas”;8 ideas are the “Dominators of Life” (Simmel).
Thus life tends to secure itself either against history (first way) or with history (second way) or from history (third way). The concept of life is a polysemous one; and, from this entirely general, formal point of view, the critique of present-day philosophy of life would make some sense. Such a critique is justified only when one succeeds in grasping this concept positively in an original sense; but in another sense not so, lest it misjudge the actual motives of the philosophy of life and pull it back into the rigid Platonism. In Rickert it becomes clear that, in the Platonic way, the human-historical reality is not understood from out of itself, but only with regard to an a priori complex of values. Rickert says that the human individual is, in his singularity, nothing other than what he achieved for the values of culture. With this, the concept of the individual is grasped purely Platonically.
c) Does the Securing Suffice?
Does the securing suffice for that which drives forth the disturbance? That which is disturbed, the reality of life, the human existence in its concern about its own security, is not taken in itself; rather it is regarded as object and as object it is placed within the historical objective reality. The worry is not answered, but rather is immediately objectified. Spengler is the clearest on this point and drives the tendencies subsumed with contemporary philosophy to the end. He wants to secure the science of history. Through this view, having supposedly first made history into a science, he has destroyed history, he has mathematized world history such that the types stand next to one another like houses. And the formal, aesthetic study of soul and expression is imposed on history from without. Thus: an aesthetic and a mathematical tendency. The life concerned for itself is set up in a historical context, but the actual tendency to concern is not attended to.
From where does it arise that, despite this, the three ways are recognized by life as securings? This is grounded in the fact that concern is already touched upon by the foreconception of the study. The concern is re-interpreted attitudinally. That comes from the tendency of factical life to fall away attitudinally. Thus the concern itself becomes the attitudinal foreconception of an object.
Here lies the actual fracture-point of the entire problem of the historical. The meaning of history, which is predelineated within the concern itself, cannot become clear in this way. The possibility is offered here to endure the attitudinality [das Einstellungsmässige] of the study of the historical, in order to uncover the true distress. We must avoid taking the phenomenon of the historical from the science of history. The positing of the logic of history as the fundamental discipline of the philosophy of history already sets the problem up in the wrong context. The attitudinal meaning of history which appears here is a derivative one. Mostly, one falsely derives from it all other historical phenomena. We must then attempt to catch sight of the phenomenon of concern unhidden in factical Dasein.
§ 10. The Concern of Factical Dasein
What effect does concern have in factical life? The relation between factical Dasein and worry is taken, in the three ways, as a relation of order. The concerned Dasein is placed within an objective context. But how does the concerned Dasein himself stand with respect to the historical in the three ways? The concerned Dasein is only an object-segment from a great whole object (from the entire objective historical happening). The distressed Dasein turns a) against [the] change; against the happening of existence [das geschehnishafte Dasein]. Expressed in terms of transcendental philosophy: Consciousness is more than a course of acts. The acts have a meaning; b) the own, present Dasein demands not only a meaning at all, but also a concrete meaning: namely, a meaning other than past cultures had, a new meaning that exceeds the one of earlier life. It wants to be a new creation, be it an entirely original one, a “great synthesis,” “away from the barbaric,” or however one names these tendencies.
We are asking not for the content and justification; rather we attempt to go back from these expressions of concerned Dasein to Dasein itself. With that we apparently return to the beginning. We attempt to understand the concerned Dasein out of our own life experience. How does the own living Dasein conduct itself as distressed by history, to history itself? How does factical life stand from out of itself to history? Theories remain completely peripheral, even as the view that the historical reality is the reality of happening proceeding in time. We attempt only to determine the meaning of history out of factical experience. The difficulties of the problem are those with which philosophy must struggle anew at each step and with each problem. Despite this, the guiding thread for our study will be the old concept of the historical.
In order to understand how this is possible, we must first present a main part of the phenomenological method. The confrontation with history is today so peculiar that one can say they fight with weapons that they themselves do not understand and which belong exactly to that which they are fighting against. The tendencies-to-secure against history have the same character as the grasped history itself, so that the problem moves perpetually in a circle and one theory of history replaces another. It is, of course, not meant that one day a philosophy of history would be given that would stand for all time—that is an entirely unphilosophical ideal; rather, at issue is a confrontation with history which arises from the sense of factical Dasein.
In the three considered ways, the distressed Dasein is considered as an object within history itself. What is genuinely (originally) distressed disappears in this view, and the solution of the distress becomes very simple. But we ask: What genuinely wants to secure itself against history? In all three ways life, the human historical reality, elevates itself as that which is supposed to have a meaning. This sphere is not problematized in today's philosophy, or at least is only grasped according to the conceptual schema of the respective philosophy. One does not pose the question, whether it is perhaps impossible to grasp the sense of factical Dasein with today's philosophical means. One does not ask how factical Dasein is to be explicated originally, that is to say, philosophically. Apparently, then, a gap in today's philosophical system of categories is to be filled. Yet we will see that, through the explication of factical Dasein, the entire traditional system of categories will be blown up—so radically new will the categories of factical Dasein be.
Factical Dasein, as an objectively proceeding occurrence, cannot be simply a blind one; rather it must carry a sense within itself and thereby require for itself a particular lawfulness. But not only a lawfulness per se is desired; rather the present wants to build itself further into the future, in a new creation of the own Dasein and in an own, new culture. Through this tendency, factical Dasein experiences a particular elevation [Abhebung]; all effort points to it.
We leave aside the view of history we discussed above. We ask: How does the historical stand with regard to factical life existence [Lebensdasein] itself? Which sense does the historical have in factical life existence? A difficulty is what is actually meant here by “historical.” I use already in the question a particular sense of “historical.” I already have in sight a particular meaning, according to which I decide in which sense the historical exists in factical life experience. Is a particular, perhaps disarranging sense of “historical” already introduced with the posing of the question? But the question cannot be gotten hold of otherwise, if I want to grasp the historical in factical life existence. This is a difficulty that appears in all of phenomenology and easily leads to hasty generalizations.
1. Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte, vol. I, Leipzig, 1883.
2. [The correct title reads:] “Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert und die geschichtliche Welt,” in Deutsche Rundschau 108 (1901).
3. [The correct title reads:] “Auffassung und Analyse des Menschen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert,” in Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (Gesammelte Schriften vol.II). Leipzig and Berlin, 1914.
4. Georg Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie, Leipzig, 1892.
5. Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 2nd ed., Tübingen, 1913.
6. [Cf. Eduard Meyer, Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte, Halle, 1902, p. 36.]
7. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. I: Gestalt und Wirklichkeit, Vienna and Leipzig, 1918. [On April 14, 1920, Heidegger spoke in Wiesbaden on “Oswald Spengler und sein Werk ‘Der Untergang des Abendlandes’ ” (“Oswald Spengler and his work ‘the Fall of the West’ ”). (Cf. Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1920–1963, ed. Walter Biemel, Hans Saner. Frankfurt and Munich/Zurich, 1990, p. 15.)]
8. Georg Simmel, Lebensanschauung. Vier metaphysische Kapitel, Munich and Leipzig, 1918, p. 28.