HISTORICITY

Albert Donceyne

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Man alone among the many realities of the world, is a historical being. He is the
only being of which history is written because he is the only one who makes history.1
When we remarked above that our time is characterized by its being a turning point of
history, everyone must have understood immediately that we were speaking of man and
not of atoms and electrons, ants and robins. For these things there are no turning points.
They have no freedom, hence they cannot take an autonomous attitude regarding the
situations in which they fine themselves, nor do new horizons open before them for the
future, for they always react in the same way. Therefore, when we study their behavior,
we can abstract from the past, the present and the future since we can with certainty
determine what their future will be by studying their past. Water boils at 100 degrees
centigrade, when spring returns to our region the robins once more build their nests s they
have always done. In a word, they do not make history since they do not create a
civilization, and therefore, they are not studied by history but only by physics, biology
and the many branches of research called natural science.
The fact that man alone is the bearer and actor of history, is rooted in the structure
itself o four being human. Modern philosophy expresses this idea by saying that man is a
history-making existence, or that historicity is an essential characteristic of mans
existence. A sharpened consciousness of historicity is precisely one of the main
characteristics of our time. It is one of the chief aspects of the way contemporary man
experiences his being-man.
We do not mean to say that formerly man was not historical. Man is that by his
very nature, but formerly he was not so keenly aware of the historical nature of his
existence. For example, the ancient Greeks were dominated by the all-pervading idea of
fate, which determined everything with an iron necessity, and this fate repressed their
consciousness of historicity. The so-called necessity imposed by fate, is, of course, a
pseudo-idea, the product of mans spontaneous inclination to transfer the inevitable
character of the past to the future. For, truly, what has happened can never be undone.
This inevitability of the past, however, is purely consequent, its necessity merely follows
the actual events. It would be wrong to conclude form it that the events were also
antecedently necessary and inevitable at the same time when they were nothing but future
possible events alongside numberless others. Yet. Man likes to endow possibilities with
inevitability. Thus, when a student fails in his test, he consoles himself with the thought
that
it has to be. In reality, it did not have to be. If he had worked harder, or if he had better
luck at the examination, he would not have failed. Now that he has failed, there is
1

Note that the word history has two meanings: the historical events and the historical descriptions and study
of these events. The term history refers of all to the historical event.

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nothing that he can do about it and he must make a virtue necessity, that is, he has to
take into account his present situation, change his plans for a vacation, and begin anew to
prepare for a successful test.
An example may show that this lack of historical awareness did not quite
disappear with the waning of the middle ages. Not many years have passed since the
following argument was used in numerous Christian circles for indiscriminately
condemning the social class struggle. A class struggle, so it was claimed, that aims at
removing the inequality among men must be wrong, for it is a struggle against been great
inequalities among men, classes and peoples points to a root in human nature itself, and
therefore must be considered to be a sign of Gods will who has created mans nature.
Here, then, what has always been serves to support a conclusion, by way of an appeal
of Gods will, with respect with what will be in the future. However, another conclusion
can be drawn from the same premises - the one that is now usually drawn: Since all men
are equal before God and we must love everyone as ourselves, it is in line with Gods will
that we try to eliminate the existing inequalities as much as possible, that we strive for the
establishment of an economical and social world which provides for a more equal
distribution of opportunities for all.
This transition from the present inequalities to a greater equality does not occur
without a struggle, yet this struggle should always retain a human character, it should
even take on a Christian character, but it may never degenerate into class war and class
murder. Where, we may ask, lies the difference between the earlier and the new line of
reasoning? It lies in the fact that man was formerly much more impressed by the
inevitability of the past than by the possibilities opened by future horizons.
Now it is characteristic of the spirit of our timecaused in part by the influence
of the enormous development of science and technology in our Promethean worldthat
man has recongized that the proverb there is nothing new under the sun expresses only
one side of what is taking place in the world. Man now realizes that it is equally true that
great changes are occurring and that it is necessary, to recreate the social structures. Our
modern awareness of historicity is directed to the future rather than to the past and puts
emphasis upon the fact that man not only undergoes history, but that he has also
responsibility for it. In other words, todays awareness of historicity is closely connected
with the awareness that the world, in a certain sense, is mans work, the fruit of his
labour, as creative of culture. Merleau-Ponty, the French Philosopher, has said very well:
Man is a working being, and labour, the foundations of historyis not merely the
production of wealth, but is, in general, the activity by which man projects around himself
a human milieu and transcends what nature provides for his life.2
To transform the raw materials of nature into a truly human milieu that is worthy
of man, is the task of man, of the worker, that is, of man as the builder of culture, of a
world. Consequently, man is also a historical being, for whenever there is civilization
there is also a history of civilization.
2

Sens et Nons-Sens, Paris, 1948. P. 215.

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Reflection, therefore, on mans contemporary awareness of historicity is necessary

if we wish to understand todays world and cooperate in its construction. This is most
important especially for the Christian because he has to reconcile this sensibility for the
historical with a sincere belief in divine providence. As we have pointed out in our
chapter on the Prometheus myth and modern atheism, this reconciliation is not always
very easily accomplished.
2. PRE-PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIENCE OF HISTORICITY
We must seek to define the nature of historicity, ask the questions. What exactly is
historicity? It is actually the task of philosophy to discover the nature of things and
express it in clear definition. But where does the philosopher obtain his knowledge? Like
anybody else, he gets it from the daily experience that is common to all and which for this
reason is called pre-philosophical experience.
Historicity is a structure that belongs to every human being as part of his essence.
In other words, that man is and knows himself to be a historical being, is contained in the
way man experiences, pursues and accomplishes his being-man every day. In some sense,
therefore, no one, not even a philosopher, can teach you what historicity is, just as no one
can teach what it is to be a man. You know this from you experience of being-man,
although you may perhaps not be able to give immediately a clear and precise answer to
the questions, What it is to be a man?, and, What is historicity? But there are many things
which we know without being able to formulate and define them clearly. Moreover, if a
definition of sadness, of joy, of love means something for us, it is because we, as it were
spontaneously, realize that the given definition agrees with what experience has already
taught us. In this sense, Socrates, the great Greek philosopher, said that mans learning
process is in many cases a sort of remembering, man becomes more clearly conscious of
what he already knew implicitly. Expressed in modern terms, when we reflect upon our
being man and the meaning of being-man, when for example, we want to bring to light its
historicity-which precisely is the task of philosophical thought-all we do is clarify and
make more precise a kind of pre-philosophical understanding which is contained in the
daily experience itself o f our being-man. What we are going to do now is to follow this
procedure. We will start with our pre-philosophical experiences of historicity, an
experience which we have had thousands of times.
We have perhaps first experienced what historicity is when, many years age, we
learned from our parents how to call things by their proper names: What is this? A spoon;
and that? A fork; and that? A chair.
What happened when we learned these names? We were taken into the homeworld of father and mother (a world that was there long before we were around) in other
words we were established, mad present in that world, so that from then on we would
conduct ourselves in its regard as becomes those who have to live together, to understand
one another, meet one another through the many things which we experience as being

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the same. When mother now asks me for a spoon, I shall no longer come back with a
fork, and when father wants a chair, I shall not bring him a broom. It is as if a secret
agreement has been made between father, mother, and myself: they can henceforth
depend on me and I on them. I have been admitted to a tradition which I myself take over,
and this dimension of the past, the present and the future. Every human product, however
humble, a fork, or a spoon, establishes us in history by the fact that it is experienced as a
centre of reference to others; these references points to the many with whom we live
together or to those whom we shall meet through the instrumentality of these same
products.
Later when e went to school, we were made familiar with the history of our own
country, with Europe, and the world. Of course we became acquainted only with high
points or outstanding events of history: the propagation of Christianity, the barbarian
invasions, wars and peace treaties, the lives and deeds of great men whose things in one
or another realm of culture, such as those of art, military science, the establishment of
law, or statesmanship. In this way, on the level of explicit conceptualism, the term
history gradually became synonymous with a series of datable events of the past.
Nevertheless, beneath this clear but rather superficial definition of history another
much richer and more original concept of history was at work, for otherwise, how
would we have been able to speak of highlights, turning points, of great men,
heroes and men of genius? Why did we call some events great? Because something
great had happened there, something that has decisive importance for the course of
future events. We learned, for example, that the discoveries of gunpowder, printing, and
the new World, had been turning points in the history of European civilization. Whom
did we call great men if not those who had known how to use circumstances to prepare
a better future for their people, those who instead of undergoing events, had helped to
make history?
At the university the student comes into contact with the great masters of culture
in a more direct and personal way. Instead of mechanically repeating what he finds in
textbooks of philosophy, he tries to get a personal philosophical insight; and for that
purpose he goes to school and sits at the feet of Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Kant.
Philosophy becomes a dialogue with the past by means of the work of these great masters,
and he hopes to learn true philosophizing by means of this of dialogue. He learns
through this contact with the masters in a personal way what history truly is, what is
meant by expressions such as the history of philosophy, the history of art, the history
of social institutions. He learns why man uses here the term history in preference to
other terms that are more or less related to it, such us becoming, growth,
evolution3; and he realizes especially what is meant when we say that now and then
something happens.

All those terms, becoming, growth, development are borrowed from the world of nature. History
implies choice, decision; in short, freedom in regard to given situations.
3

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When I give my usual course on Special Metaphysics every Thursday, or publish

an article about philosophy, little or nothing happens. But when Descartes wrote his
Discourse on Method, when Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, and Heidegger
gave the world his Being and Time, so much happened in the realm of philosophy that
whoever earnestly occupies himself with philosophy must henceforth take notice of these
events. Every great work of art, of culture, or of the mind is an event, that is, it has a
universal and lasting significance for mankind. Uniqueness, originality and universality
here walk hand and hand. No true history would be in hand without such major events.
They make it possible that the history of mankind in general does not run idly by, that
even outside those high points something happens; that, for example, the average man
also makes contributions to true science, art and philosophy.
Man knows what historicity is because he is a history-making existence,
even when he may not know it with the clarity and precision of a philosophical
definition. He knows what history is because he lives in history and has a responsible
share in it. In this original experience of historicity is rooted all that man, including the
philosopher, can ever tell about historicity.
3.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF HISTORICITY

From our past discussions it is evident that we must look for the nature of
historicity in the essence of our being-man itself, that is, in that which makes experience
our existence as the existence of a human being, as an existence worthy of man. There
could certainly be no question of history if man lived in a closed self-centered
consciousness that is incapable of coming out of itself and showing itself to others, or in
philosophical language, if he were a Cartesian kind of Cogito. Nor would there be a
history if he lived all alone on earth and if, like God, he were an eternal, unchangeable
and timeless being. In other words, that man makes history is the consequence of the
following three essential characteristics of his being man:
(1) Man is neither a pure spirit nor lifeless matter but an embodied spirit.
(2) Man is never alone in the world but always experiences and unfolds his beingman as a being together with the others. Modern philosophy expresses this
characteristic by the term intersubjectivity.
(3) Man lives in time.
These three properties of our being man constitute the three components of
historicity; but they are so intimately connected, that whenever one is mentioned, the two
are also implied. Let us consider this more closely.
Man as Embodied Spirit. As we have explained fully in the third chapter, man is
not a pure spirit, nor a lifeless body, but an embodied spirit, a besouled bodily being.
Materiality is not an obstacle to the unfolding of his life or the spirit but rather is the way
by which the spirit expresses itself in the threefold sense that is always attached to that

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term. This threefold meaning is: (1) it exteriorizes itself, comes out of itself; (2) it shows
itself to others, comes in the open; (3) it realizes, completes itself (in scholastic terms, it
passes from potency to act). To be man is to become man, or rather it means to take our
being man to heart in freedom and responsibility.
Man, therefore is not a raw datum of nature, but he is a task, a great programmed
that is never finished, a theme or a motif as in music, something that returns and is
taken up over and over again, because it can neither be sufficiently expressed nor uttered
with satisfying beauty. In short, man is a work of, a task for man.
The term work (oeuvre) must be taken here in a broad sense. A smile, a
gesture, speech, technology and art, poetry and the philosophical essay, social legislation
and charitable deeds, all of these are expressions of mans work, they are an encounter
of the human spirit with matter, with the materiality of our own body and that of the
outside world. In and by means of this encounter man puts his stamp on matter, he
humanizes matter and reveals himself, he shows himself to himself and to others and
becomes a reality for them. Man thus mirrors himself in his work and only through this
mirroring he completes his being-man. This work is both the product of his freedom and
at the same time an objective situation for a new free action. For this reason man, and
man alone, is the bearer of civilization and culture. To humanize himself, man must
humanize the world, he must re-create the crude materials given by nature into a world of
civilization and culture.4
Mans Being is a Being-Together. All this is true not only of man as an
individual, but also of mankind as a whole, for to be for man always means to be
together with that is , a mutual giving and receiving, listening and speaking by means of
work. It is first a receiving and listening. The best of what I own I have received from
others, beginning with my bodily being which enables me to maintain my earthly life; the
clothes that protect my body, the pen with which I write, the words I use, all these I owe
to others; even my openness-to-the-world that makes the things that surround me speak
with meaning and love to me, all these to a great extent I owe to the warm affection with
which I have been surrounded from my tender years.
But to be together with also is giving and speaking. Man is likewise always
directed to others in his conduct and creativity. What he does, he does in the name of
others, for others, in the sight of others, as if to say, what I think, say or do, is good and
has value, therefore, act as I do. He who lives in accordance with Gods commandments,
bears witness to those commandments in the sight of others, it is as if he were acting in
the name of all men. "

Cf. The chapter Christianity and Civilization.