journal of the philosophy of history (2016) 116

brill.com/jph

What was Geschichtsphilosophie?

Peter Vogt

Forschungszentrum Fundamente der Moderne

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
vogt.peter@hotmail.com

Abstract
This paper looks at modern philosophy of history in the sense of the German concept
of Geschichtsphilosophie. Geschichtsphilosophie, as it was formulated since the
heydays of German Idealism, always implied the belief that it is possible to make true
statements about the future. I will take a closer look at such a version of philosophy of
history by reconstructing Odo Marquards arguments against Geschichtsphilosophie
and Heinz Dieter Kittsteiners defense of it. These two authors were asking precisely
the same question about the essence of Geschichtsphilosophie, but came to totally
different conclusions. I will defend Marquards position and thus will come to the position that history cannot be made or at least cannot be made in the way agents want
it to be made. However, my insistence on the inevitable limits of any project to make
history as it has been constitutive for modern philosophy of history, in no way precludes the possibility of making politics. Thus, at the very end of my paper, I argue for
the fundamental difference between the making of history and the making of politics.

Keywords
philosophy of history Geschichtsphilosophie Odo Marquard Heinz Dieter
Kittsteiner Kants philosophy of history

If the essential task of historiography is to make true statements about the

past, as Arthur Dantos minimal characterization of history1 in his Analytical

1 See the second chapter in Arthur Danto, Narration and Knowledge (including the integral text
of Analytical Philosophy of History), New York 2007, pp. 1726.

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Philosophy of History implies, what tasks could there reasonably be left for a
philosophy of history? Three different theoretical options seem to be available.
First: The task of a philosophy of history might be characterized as a methodological clarification of the presuppositions of historiography. For instance,
one could raise serious doubts about Dantos minimal characterization: Will
it ever be possible to make true statements about the past? If not, why not?
If it is possible, how should the historian proceed? Is he mainly interested in
causal explanations? Or does the historians business mainly consist of interpretation? Does an interpretation imply explanations? Do interpretations
presuppose explanations? And so on, and so on. However, if the business of
philosophy of history is understood in this way, it seems to be more appropriate to call such an intellectual enterprise a methodology of history than to
speak of a philosophy of history.
Second: Apart from these methodological ambitions, a philosophy of history might, in a more general sense, also aim to be a better historiography than
historiography itself. Far from being paradoxical, such a point of view would
argue that a philosophy of history, based on the particular and highly specialized results of historiographical research, reaches or at least tries to reach to
a deeper, i.e. a more theoretical understanding of the past. According to this
model, a philosopher of history legitimately uses the results of historiography
for his own questions. And these questions might be called philosophical questions at least in the sense that a philosopher of history in this second sense
understands the problem of wie es eigentlich gewesen (Ranke) not as the
end, but purely and always as the starting-point for his more general investigations. Thus, a philosopher of history in this second sense aims to do something with the historical material the historian himself is not trained to do.
Be that as it may, philosophy of history, according to this second view, never
transcends the genuine sphere of the historian, namely the past. I am not sure
about the most appropriate terminology for such a kind of intellectual enterprise. Perhaps one should call it a theory of history. But I am convinced that it
has to be rigidly distinguished from a third approach.
Third: The two options mentioned hitherto might be understood as forms
or varieties of an analytical philosophy of history, to borrow once again a
phrase from Danto. Yet, needless to say, many authors who were inclined to
call themselves philosophers of history or at least understood their intellectual
projects as a philosophy of history never felt restricted to such an analytical
definition, but were always tempted to formulate a much more substantive
(Danto) philosophy of history. Questions that fuel this third approach are:
What is the meaning or the telos of history? Should human history be understood as a progress or as a decline? Is progress inevitable or is it only possible?
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Is decline a cyclical phenomenon or can it be overcome? Questions like these

stood, as far as I can see, historically in the center of modern philosophy of
history, at least in the center of the so-called Geschichtsphilosophie in the
German context since the heydays of German Idealism.2 These questions,
however, obviously transcend the ambition to make true statements about
the past or to clarify the methodological presuppositions for true statements
about the past. They do necessarily include the belief that it is possible to make
true statements about the future.
It is not the aim of the following remarks to judge the validity of these three
theoretical options in a general and abstract way. Rather, my ambition is much
more specific. In the first part of this paper, I want to reconstruct a 20th century
debate regarding the theoretical essence of philosophy of history in the third
sense just described. This attempt is quite paradoxical, because the debate I
have in mind never actually took place. However, I am still tempted to speak of
a debate, because the two authors I have in mind, a German philosopher and a
German historian, discussed exactly the same question regarding the nature of
philosophy of history, even though they totally ignored each others opinions
and came, as we will see, to completely opposing conclusions. This exciting
phenomenon of two intellectuals asking precisely the same question about the
essence of Geschichtsphilosophie and yet coming to totally different conclusions, seems to deserve a closer inspection, especially in the context of the
attempt to clarify what Geschichtsphilosophie is or was (I).
In the second part of this paper, I will turn from these two opposing interpretations of philosophy of history to modern philosophy of history itself. My
main point of reference in this second part will be Kants philosophy of history.
The reason for exclusively focusing on Kant in this second part is not that I
think Kant formulated the only or the most important philosophy of history in
the age of Enlightenment. The reason for my concentration on Kant is rather
heuristic. It is astonishing to see that both interpretations of philosophy of history I will present in the first part are based, though not exclusively, on a close
reading of Kant. Thus, an adequate understanding of Kants philosophy of history might be very helpful in formulating a judgment regarding our controversy and thus in deciding the question of the title of this paper, the question
of what the philosophy of history really was (II).

2 It seems to be necessary here to clarify what I mean by modern and modern philosophy of
history. Quite generally, I understand modern philosophy of history as precisely the form
of philosophy of history coming to intellectual and cultural prominence in the era of what
Reinhart Koselleck called Sattelzeit, i.e. around 1750.

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In the third and final part, I will speak neither about interpretations of philosophy of history nor about philosophers of history. I will rather focus on the
various forms of protest against philosophy of history. A common trait of a
quite manifold protest against philosophy of history at the early 19th century
was, I will argue, the conviction that history cannot be made or at least cannot
be made in the way agents want it to be made. As I generally share this conviction, I will try to make it more plausible by concluding my paper with some
thoughts on the difference between the making of history and the making of
politics (III).
I
The two protagonists in the conflict of interpretations I have in mind are a
German philosopher, Odo Marquard, born in 1928, a disciple of Joachim Ritter
and thus a member of what the sociologist Helmut Schelsky once called the
skeptical generation,3 and a German historian, Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, a
disciple of Jacob Taubes and Reinhart Koselleck, who was born in 1942 and
thus grew up in a completely different intellectual and political setting. Even
though the intellectual biographies and the writings of both figures deserve a
great deal of attention, attention I am very tempted to grant, given my admiration for the works of both authors the following remarks will provide only
a brief summary of Marquards and Kittsteiners interpretations of philosophy
of history and will not treat other aspects of their work.
Marquard, who labeled his general philosophical attitude a skeptical philosophy of human finitude4 throughout his entire intellectual development,
based his lifelong difficulties with the philosophy of history Schwierigkeiten
mit der Geschichtsphilosophie is the German title of probably his most
important book5 on a specific interpretation of philosophy of history.
In one of his later articles, Die Krise des Optimismus und die Geburt der
Geschichtsphilosophie (The crisis of optimism and the genesis of the philos3 Helmut Schelsky, Die skeptische Generation. Eine Soziologie der deutschen Jugend,
Dsseldorf 1958.
4 Marquards self-description as a skeptic can be found in his very first work as well as in
his latest writings. Compare: Odo Marquard, Skeptische Methode im Blick auf Kant, Freiburg/
Mnchen 1958; Odo Marquard, Skepsis und Zustimmung. Philosophische Studien, Stuttgart
1994; Odo Marquard, Skepsis in der Moderne. Philosophische Studien, Stuttgart 2007.
5 Odo Marquard, Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie. Aufstze, Frankfurt am
Main 1973.

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ophy of history), one can find Marquards latest and most coherent attempt to
understand and criticize modern philosophy of history.6 Modern philosophy
of history was the result of a philosophical crisis of optimism in mid-18th
century, he argues. This crisis of optimism can be seen most evidently, according to Marquard, in the loss of reputation that Leibniz theodicy experienced
after the mid 18th-century.7 The rise of modern philosophy of history must be
seen as the most important theoretical consequence of this crisis of the age
of the belief in optimism or in a pre-established harmony of the world. This
substitution of modern philosophy of history for theodicy took place, according to Marquard, in two steps:
First, around the mid-18th century and against any form of theological
or philosophical justification of evil, the Enlightenment began to insist that
human beings themselves are capable of making their own history.8 Thus, it is
humankind which must be held responsible for the course of history. History
is not good because it can be understood as a consequence of Gods benevolent creation. History is good only if and insofar as human action produces
good results in the course of human history.
Marquard understood the philosophy of German Idealism as the most radical embodiment of this belief in the possibility of making history. Needless
to say, I cannot discuss here at length the understanding of history foundational to German Idealism nor can I discuss the legitimacy of Marquards
interpretation of Idealism. Suffice it to say that it was certainly not a too
6 Odo Marquard, Die Krise des Optimismus und die Geburt der Geschichtsphilosophie, in:
Skepsis in der Moderne, ibid., pp. 93108.
7 Leibniz, it is well known, tried to answer the question, already asked by Job or Lactantius,
namely: Si deus, unde malum? (If God, whence evil?) in his Essais de Theodice sur la bont de
Dieu, la libert de lhomme et lorigin du mal of 1710. Leibniz still defended God as creator of the
best of all possible worlds and called his attempt to prove this position not by a traditional
faith but by the means of a systematic philosophical argumentation a theodicy. This world,
Leibniz conceded, is not an optimal world. Evil, indeed, exists. But this world, Leibniz insists,
is still the best of all possible worlds. This could be philosophically proven, he believed, by
showing that evil in the world is the condition, not of a perfect world, but of the best of
all possible worlds. Voltaire, in his Pome sur le dsastre de Lisbonne, expressed most succinctly the growing dissatisfaction with any philosophical system of optimism. Confronted
with more than 30,000 victims, Voltaire was more than horrified by any kind of philosophical justification of evil. His poem has been interpreted as the final blow to optimism.
8 One could call this first element of modern philosophy of history a Knnensbewusstsein,
to borrow a phrase from the historian Christian Meier, who used it, one has to admit,
in quite a different context. Compare: Christian Meier, Ein antikes quivalent des
Fortschrittsgedankens: Das Knnens-Bewusstsein des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (1978), in: Die
Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 435499.

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difficult task for Marquard to find passages and formulations, for example in
the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte that seemed to back-up his understanding of German Idealism.9 Self-sufficiency, Fichte once declared, which is our
ultimate goal, consists in everything depending on me and my not depending
on anything.10 Consequently, Fichte once summarized his own philosophy in
his Sun-Clear Statement to the Public at Large Concerning the True Nature of the
Newest Philosophy of 1801, one of his more popular pieces written for a broader
audience, with the following words: By becoming familiar with the principles
of his own Wissenschaftslehre, the whole human race will have been rid of the
rule of blind chance, and fate will have been annihilated. Mankind will henceforth control itself under the rule of its own conception, and will henceforth
make out of itself with absolute freedom all that can be made out of it.11 In the
sense of these quotations, Hermann Lbbe, a close colleague of Marquard and
a disciple of Joachim Ritter as well, once called Fichtes philosophy an idealistic form of existentialism.12 But let us not get caught in the complexities of
Fichtes philosophy.13
9 In contrast to Marquard, Dieter Henrich suggested a strikingly different interpretation
of Fichtes philosophy in his book Fichtes ursprngliche Einsicht. According to Henrich,
Fichtes philosophy did not understand human Selbstbewusstsein as a result of reflection: Das Selbstbewusstsein ist Manifestation, die Manifestation seiner selbst aber nur
die Erscheinung eines Grundes, der fr alles Erkennen unausdenkbar ist. Dieter Henrich,
Fichtes ursprngliche Einsicht, Frankfurt am Main 1967 (1966), p. 48.
10 Johann G. Fichte, The System of Ethics: According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre.
Translated by Daniel Breazeale, and Gnter Zller, Cambridge 2005, p. 217.
11 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sun-Clear Statement to the Public at Large Concerning the True
Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Force the Reader to an Understanding
(1801), translated by A. E. Kroeger, in: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 3 (1868),
pp. 318, 6582, 129140, here p. 136.
12 Hermann Lbbe, Die Transzendentalphilosophie und das Problem der Geschichte.
Untersuchungen zur Genesis der Geschichtsphilosophie (Kant, Fichte und Schelling),
Unverffentlichte Habilitationsschrift, Erlangen 1957, p. 150 [my translation; P. V.].
13 However, it deserves to be mentioned that there is an interesting remark in Kants Idea
for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View of 1784 which seems to underline Marquards general understanding of German Idealism. Kant writes: All amusement
which can make [mans; P. V.] life pleasant, insight and intelligence, finally even goodness of heart all this should be wholly his own work. The idea that human abilities
must be understood not only as the result of autonomous efforts, but also as the result
of a gift or, if one prefers to use a theological metaphor, of grace, apparently seems to
be refuted by Kant. Immanuel Kant Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan
Point of View (1784), in: Lewis White Beck (ed.), Kant on History, New York/London 1963,
pp. 1126, here p. 14.

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We still have to mention the second step of Marquards interpretation of

modern philosophy of history: At the end of the 18th century, the supposedly
autonomous making of history was viewed as being capable of bringing about
historical progress, a progress which manifold reality was not only observable
in the present, but was even to become more and more visible as time progressed. The goal of history, thus, neither laid in the past nor in the present,
but in the future. According to Marquard an affirmation of an already existing historical progress and a belief in further historical progress in the future
never doubted that human history could and should be described as a march
from an evil past to a better present and, finally, towards an even better future.
And this march was understood as the result of the human efforts to make and
control history.
It is precisely due to these two characteristics that Marquard dislikes modern philosophy of history so passionately. His central argument against any philosophy of history is its ignorance of human finitude. Indeed, neither the past
nor the future are open or at least endlessly open to our capacity to act. Birth
and death, according to Marquard, make this all too evident.14 Admittedly, this
seems to sound like a triviality. But then one wonders why this triviality has
been entirely ignored in the discourse of modern philosophy of history.
So much for the first interpretation of modern philosophy of history I want
to present in this part of the paper. I now turn to Marquards imaginary opponent: The protest against the tendency of professional historiography to separate rigidly between philosophical and historical questions must be seen as the
theoretical kernel of the work of the German historian Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner,
who unfortunately died in 2008 before he could finish his last project, a multivolume history of Germany from the early 17th to the mid-20th century.15
14 Marquards appeal to human finitude seems to be based mainly on a particular reading of
Heidegger. Yet, the early Marquard also borrowed arguments from the Protestant dialectical
theology which he quite correctly understood as a critique of German Idealism in the name
of human finitude (see especially Karl Barth, Der Rmerbrief: 1922, Zrich 2005; Friedrich
Gogarten, Zwischen den Zeiten, in Anfnge der dialektischen Theologie: Volume II,
ed. Jrgen Moltmann, Mnchen 1963, 95101). For this strain of Protestant theology,
the philosophical failure to take human finitude into account became the equivalent
to the theological failure to take into account the fact that man did and does not create
himself. For Marquards intellectual debt to Heidegger, see: Odo Marquard, Der Einzelne.
Vorlesungen zur Existenzphilosophie, Stuttgart 2013. For Marquards interpretation of dialectical theology and his ambivalent position towards it, see: Odo Marquard, Idealismus
und Theodizee (1965), in: Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, ibid., pp. 5265.
15 Only a first volume has been published posthumously: Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Die
Stabilisierungsmoderne. Deutschland und Europa 16181715, Mnchen 2010.

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Opposing the separation of theoretical from historical questions, as he perceived it in contemporary historiography, Kittsteiner defended and praised
modern philosophy of history, quite paradoxically, for exactly the same reasons that lie at the heart of Marquards passionate criticism of the philosophy of history.16 Before we try to solve this paradox, let us clarify Kittsteiners
understanding of modern philosophy of history: Kittsteiner always praised
modern philosophy of history for posing the right question, but he relentlessly
criticized modern philosophy of history for giving the wrong answers to the
right question. What was, according to Kittsteiner, the right question of modern philosophy of history?
Kittsteiners ambivalent interpretation of modern philosophy of history
was mainly the result of his reading of Immanuel Kant and, to a much lesser
degree, of Adam Smith. Kant and Smith realized, according to Kittsteiner, that
history is beyond human control.17 Thus, for Kittsteiner, the theoretical affirmation of something which is beyond human control and an acceptance of
the dimensions of history which cannot be made or produced, legitimately
stand in the center of modern philosophy of history. This insight into the noncontrollability of history was what provoked the right question of modern
philosophy of history, in Kittsteiners view. This separated him from Marquard,
who, as we have seen, believed that modern philosophy of history lacked precisely this insight.
But, according to Kittsteiner, modern philosophy of history did not deliver
the correct answers. Kittsteiner criticizes Kant and Smith for essentially jettisoning their awareness of the uncontrollable character of the historical process
by formulating teleological metaphors, the invisible hand in Smiths case, a
16 Whereas Marquard never mentions Kittsteiners interpretation of philosophy of history
in his writings, Kittsteiner indeed did mention, at least en passant, the difference between
his own position and Marquards understanding of philosophy of history in his very first
book Naturabsicht und unsichtbare Hand, the abbreviated version of his dissertation.
Kittsteiner even expressed a feeling of astonishment about Marquards strikingly different
interpretation. In Naturabsicht und unsichtbare Hand Kittsteiner writes: Desto erstaunlicher erscheint es, dass O. Marquard Geschichtsphilosophie als Behauptung der menschlichen Tterschaft von Geschichte darstellt. Even though Kittsteiner concedes here a
feeling of astonishment he did not feel compelled to look for the theoretical reasons of
this marked difference. See: Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Naturabsicht und Unsichtbare Hand.
Zur Kritik des geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens, Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1980, p. 157.
17 Out of control. Zur Unverfgbarkeit des historischen Prozesses is the title of Kittsteiners
most systematic book on the modern philosophy of history. See: Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner,
Out of Control. ber die Unverfgbarkeit des historischen Prozesses, Hamburg 2004.

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so-called Naturabsicht in Kants Ideen zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbrgerlicher Absicht of 1784. These were, Kittsteiner insists, wrong answers to
the right question.
Are we then able to find versions of philosophy of history which deliver
us not only the right question, but also the right answers? Kittsteiner always
looked at history and at modern philosophy of history from the perspective of Marxism, to be more precise, from the perspective of a structuralist
version of Marxism. Kittsteiner never doubted that the late Marx, but only the
late and not the early Marx, deciphered the riddle of history and realized that
the structural movements and tendencies of an anonymously operating capital, not human agents, were the prime movers of human history.
Kittsteiners interest in Kants and Smiths philosophy of history was thus
the result of a search for the earliest forerunners of such a structuralist
understanding of human history. Kittsteiner discovered in Kants and Smiths
philosophy of history the first glimpses of a true, albeit pre-Marxist diagnosis
of the uncontrollable character of human history. Although Kant and Smith
reified their diagnosis by introducing teleological metaphors, their diagnosis
was, for Kittsteiner, a valuable first step towards the insight that human history
is beyond our control, an insight which can be fully appreciated only from the
perspective of the late Marx. Thus, Kittsteiners affirmative interpretation of
modern philosophy of history does finally lead not to an apology of human
finitude, as it is central for Marquards criticism of the philosophy of history,
but to a defense of Marxism understood as a purely structural analysis of
capitalism.
II
The only philosopher of history who is discussed at length both by Marquard
and by Kittsteiner is Kant. Therefore, we are obliged to look more closely at
Kants philosophy of history. Did Kants philosophy of history realize and
accept the uncontrollable character of human history, as Kittsteiner suggests?
Or did Kant understand human history as the result of human actions and
as the already remarkably successful, even though endless attempt to control
these results in the name of human autonomy, as Marquard suggests? Needless
to say, the following attempt to answer these questions is meant only as a fragmentary sketch of what could be the subject of a separate article and does not
pretend to say anything conclusive about as vast a subject as Kants philosophy
of history. The following remarks are just meant to answer the question which

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lies at the core of the disagreement between Marquard and Kittsteiner, the
question whether modern philosophy of history affirms or denies the conviction that human history is inevitably beyond human control.
Regarding Kants philosophy of history, I want to stress three points: First,
I am convinced that the foundation of Kants philosophy of history can be discovered in his philosophy of religion. Kants philosophy of religion is, I argue,
a latent philosophy of history.18 He abolishes all versions of theodicy, as one of
his rather short texts, On the failure of all attempted philosophical theodicies
of 1791, makes evident: [...] no theodicy proposed so far, Kant writes, has
kept its promise; none has managed to justify the moral wisdom at work in the
government of the world against the doubts which arise out of our experience
of the world.19 Against the hopeless doctrinal speculations of theodicy, the
story of Job, he further adds, has taught us that what matters in such affairs is
not reasoning but honesty in the avowal of the powerlessness of our reason.20
Contrary to the theological speculations of Jobs friends and thus contrary to
all variants of theodicies, Kants philosophy of religion dismisses all attempts
to justify evil with philosophical or theological speculation. Evil, for Kant, is
not an inevitable component of the world. Evil can be overcome by history.
Thus Kants understanding of religion, as it becomes especially clear from his
Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft, sees no need for prayer
or for a supranaturalist belief in divine providence. Human beings are radically
evil, but, as Kants philosophy of religion presupposes in contrast to a Lutheran
orthodoxy, this radical evil leaves the absolute moral freedom of human beings
untouched.21 There is evil in this world, but there is no reason to despair.
Kants refutation of theodicy and his understanding of evil bring me to a
second point regarding Kants philosophy of history. To close the gap between
an evil reality and an ideal end of history is, according to Kant, not the task of
18 This thesis owes a strong debt to Michel Desplands excellent book Kant on History and
Religion. However, Despland is more interested in seeing Kants philosophy of history as
the appropriate context for a interpretation of Kants philosophy of religion, whereas I
would, quite on the contrary, prefer to interpret Kants philosophy of history in the context of his various minor pieces on religion as well as in the context of his Die Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft. See Michel Despland, Kant on History and
Religion, Montreal/London 1973.
19 Immanuel Kant, On the failure of all attempted philosophical theodicies (1791), in:
Michel Despland, Kant on History and Religion, ibid., pp. 283297, here p. 290.
20 Ibid., p. 293 f.
21 As is well known, for Luther human beings were incapacitated by sin. See: De servo
arbitrio, in Martin Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimarer Ausgabe. Band 18,
Weimar 1908, pp. 551788.

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11

God, but precisely the task of humanity. Furthermore, it is not only the task, but
rather the normative duty of mankind to work for the realization of a summum
bonum as the ideal end of history: History is the process in which the highest
good should be realized,22 Yirmiahu Yovel in his book Kant and the Philosophy
of History correctly summarizes this dimension of Kants understanding of history which is again presupposed by Kants philosophy of religion.
Kants philosophy of religion and his philosophy of history, one could summarize, are founded on a temporalization of evil and increase both the human
self-consciousness and the human obligation to be the autonomous creator
of his own history. Thus, it becomes quite evident that Kant shared a position
that, according to Marquard, was the first cornerstone of modern philosophy
of history. Yovel correctly summarizes the essence of Kants philosophy of history: Mans task is not to disclose a harmony which is pre-established but to
produce it. Man is the being who must impose the system of rational ends
upon the causal system of nature.23 It is, Michel Despland writes in Kant on
History and Religion, his duty to effect a certain kind of transition between
present and future.24 The age of Enlightenment, Kant concludes in his essay
Conjectural Beginning of Human History of 1786, develops gradually from the
worse toward the better; and each of us, for his part, is called upon by nature
itself to contribute as much as lies in his power to this progress.25 Mankind
should develop their capacities to perfection,26 Kant writes in his Idea for a
Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View.
These scattered remarks about Kants philosophy of religion and its influence on Kants understanding of history lead me to a third point regarding
Kants philosophy of history. For Kant, to effect a certain kind of transition
between present and future (Despland) is not only a normative challenge or
obligation. This transition towards a better future, is, in fact, permanently realized and fulfilled in the age of Enlightenment: Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them
in it,27 Kant writes in his essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?
22
23
24
25

Yirmiahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, Princeton 1980, p. 31.
Ibid., p. 134.
Michel Despland, Kant on History and Religion, ibid., p. 30.
Immanuel Kant, Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786), in: The Cambridge
Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History and Education, edited by
Robert Louden and Gnter Zller, Cambridge 2007, pp. 163175, here p. 175.
26 Immanuel Kant Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784),
in: ibid., p. 14.
27 Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784), in: Lewis White Beck (ed.), Kant on
History, New York/London 1963, pp. 310, here p. 9.

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of 1784. The current moral, political and cultural improvements follow, according to Kant, a specific pattern of progress. Kant certainly does not presuppose
an inevitable necessity of progress, but his philosophy of history is clearly
inspired by an optimistic confidence in the already existing fact of historical
progress. Similarly, Kant diagnoses in his Idea for a Universal History from a
Cosmopolitan Point of View a continued enlightenment28 as a fundamental
characteristic of his own age; faint indications of approach29 to the ideal of
an universal civic society can be observed everywhere, Kant adds, even though
the crooked wood as man is made of30 allows never a perfect solution, but
only a very slow and piecemeal approach to continuous perfection.
This optimistic diagnosis that historical progress was an undeniable fact
of the contemporary world becomes especially evident in some of Kants
smaller pieces of work. At the end of his On the Common Saying: This May be
True in Theory, But it Does not Apply in Practice of 1793, Kant explicitly refutes
Moses Mendelssohns understanding of history. Mendelssohn wrote in his
book Jerusalem oder ber religise Macht und Judentum (1783), written against
Lessings hypothesis of a divine education of humankind, that we see the
human race as a whole moving slowly back and forth, and whenever it takes
a few steps forward, it soon relapses twice as quickly into its former state.31
Thus, Mendelssohn argued, one could not reasonably believe that the whole
of mankind here on earth must continually progress and become more perfect through the ages.32 Arguing against Mendelssohn, Kant admired humankind for its constant advance towards the good:33 I may thus be permitted to
assume that, since the human race is constantly progressing in cultural matters [...], it is also engaged in progressive improvement in relation to the moral
end of its existence.34
One last piece of work to which I briefly want to refer in order to illustrate
Kants optimistic confidence in the moral and political superiority of his own
age is the post-revolutionary essay The Contest of Faculties of 1798, especially
its second part which bears the title An Old Question Raised Again: Is the
28 Immanuel Kant Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784),
in: ibid., p. 15.
29 Ibid., p. 22.
30 Ibid., p. 17 f.
31 Here quoted after: Immanuel Kant, On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory,
But it Does not Apply in Practice (1793), in: Hans Reiss (ed.), Kants Political Writings,
Cambridge 1970, pp. 6191, here p. 87 f.
32 Here quoted after ibid., p. 87.
33 Ibid., p. 87.
34 Ibid., S. 88.

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Human Race Constantly Progressing? Here Kant gives the skeptical attitude
regarding historical progress the label abderitic hypothesis. This terminology
originally stems from Christoph Martin Wielands satirical novel Die Abderiten
(17741780). According to this abderitic hypothesis, Kant says, human history
is a mere farcical comedy.35 He himself, however, is much more confident
about the progress of human history. The political tendency toward a republican and lawful regime of self-government, as Kant sees it primarily manifested
in the French Revolution, shows, as he writes in The Contest of Faculties (1798),
that the human race has always been in progress toward the better and will
continue to be so henceforth.36
What can we learn from these remarks about the one and only author
both Marquard and Kittsteiner took to be a main protagonist of modern philosophy of history? The conviction that history is always even though not
totally out of control, to call to mind a title of one of Kittsteiners books, can
definitely not be understood as a main trait of modern philosophy of history
or as a by-product of its rise. Quite the contrary, the genesis of this conviction,
regardless of whether we share it or not, must be understood as a consequence
of the various forms of protest against modern philosophy of history. I will try
to clarify this thesis in the third and final part of this paper.
III
Modern philosophy of history, it is very well known, was radically criticized by
various strains of 19th-century thought, especially after the disappointments
of the post-revolutionary era. In a recently published book, I tried to show how
the intellectual movement of historicism can and must be understood as a protest against the presumptions of a form of philosophy of history that arose
during the late 18th century.37 Historicism, according to this interpretation,
ultimately teaches us that history is never the exact outcome of the plans and
intentions of historical actors. Though human beings undeniably act in history,
they cannot control history or at least cannot make history as they please. In

35 Immanuel Kant, The Contest of Faculties. Part II: An Old Question Raised Again: Is the
Human Race Constantly Progressing? (1798), in: Lewis White Beck (ed.), Kant on History,
ibid., 137154, p. 141.
36 Ibid., p. 147 f.
37 Peter Vogt, Kontingenz und Zufall. Eine Begriffs- und Ideengeschichte, Berlin 2011,
pp. 367393.

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this respect I find Hermann Lbbes description of historicism as a sermon of

human finitude38 to be wholly accurate.
But the observation that modern philosophy of history has the propensity
to exaggerate mens capacities was shared by many thinkers outside of the
circles of historicism in early 19th century. Thus, modern philosophy of history was not only criticized in the name of a more adequate understanding
of history: In his magnificent work Von Hegel zu Nietzsche, a panoptical summary of the history of philosophy in the first half of the 19th century, Karl
Lwith discussed a wide range of authors who did not try to liberate history
from the presumptions of modern philosophy of history in the name of a better understanding of history, as I would like to define historicism, but criticized philosophy of history in the name of a better understanding of human
individuality. In this sense, Lwith presented Kierkegaard as a thinker who
stood in opposition both to the historicist protest against philosophy of history and to the Marxist attempt to transform philosophy of history by a better
understanding of social reality.
Kierkegaard, according to Lwith, insisted that it is human fragility which
has to be defended against a radical philosophy of autonomy as it is central
for modern philosophy of history. According to Kierkegaard, modern philosophy of history does not permit one to live as one is: fragile and finite. A philosophy which lives above and beyond human reality behaves like a man who,
to borrow a famous and recurring metaphor from Kierkegaards diaries, builds
the enormous castle of a system, but lives beside it in a simple hut.39
At the very end of this paper, however, I do not want to end my criticism
of modern philosophy of history with a too fatalistic impression. My strong
insistence on the inevitable limits of any project to make history as it has been
constitutive for modern philosophy of history, in no way precludes the possibility of making politics.
This difference between the making of history and the making of politics is,
at least implicitly, the guiding thought that allowed Hannah Arendt to vehemently criticize any form of modern philosophy of history but simultaneously
to passionately defend throughout her writings the possibility of politics.
Whereas Arendt understood totalitarianism to be ultimately a result of modern philosophy of history and thus as a result of the attempt to plan or control
history, she strongly insisted on the possibility of politics.
38 Hermann Lbbe, Religion nach der Aufklrung, Mnchen 1986, p. 282 [my translation;
P. V.]. The original version speaks of a Predigt der Endlichkeit.
39 Compare in this context: Howard and Edna Hong (ed.), Sren Kierkegaards Journals
and Papers. 7 Volumes, Bloomington/Indiana, 196778.

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For Arendt, politics always has to be and can only be based on human praxis
and thus on the insight that human beings inevitably are not the masters of
their action. To initiate an action, according to Arendt, does not mean to
know the results of ones action before the action is taken. Human action can
never be sure of its own future. In her essay The Concept of History: Ancient
and Modern, Arendt wrote: Whoever begins to act must know that he has
started something whose end he can never foretell, if only because his own
deed has already changed everything and made it even more unpredictable.40
Consequently, a form of politics which is based precisely on this acceptance
of the fragility and uncertainty of human action can never achieve more than
preliminary results. This understanding of politics, according to Arendt, helps
us to avoid human hybris and to guarantee human freedom, because, as Arendt
insists, neither freedom nor any other meaning can ever be the product of a
human activity in the sense in which the table is clearly the end-product of the
carpenters activity.41
At the end of my paper, I want to clarify this final conclusion, my insistence
on the difference between the making of politics and the making of history,
not by a discussion of Arendts work, but by a very short historical excursion:
John G. A. Pococks magnificent study of early modern political and historical thought in his The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and
the Atlantic Republican Tradition situates the political theory of early modern
republicanism in the context of a specific understanding of history. Pococks
interpretation of several Florentine or Venetian thinkers in the era of early
modern republicanism convincingly shows that history was understood by all
these thinkers as the realm of instability and disorder. Accordingly, the political attempt to create or to institutionalize a republic was understood as a desperate attempt to reach political stability, to give a durable, if not a perpetual
form to a political experiment that inevitably took place in the sphere of instability and entropy, namely in human history. Early modern republican political
thought thus identified the making of politics, according to Pocock, with an
escape from history.42
It was the dichotomy of virt and fortuna, not a historical march of progress,
that became of crucial importance for early modern republicanisms understanding of both politics and history. This was an understanding which pas40 Hannah Arendt, The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern (1957/1958), in: Between
Past and Future, London 1977, p. 84.
41 Ibid., p. 78.
42 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition, Princeton 1975, p. 283.

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sionately affirmed the attempt to make politics in the sense of a vivere civile, in
contrast to the Christian and medieval ideal of a vita contemplativa. But it seriously questioned the belief that history was a process which could completely
be controlled by human action. For thinkers like Machiavelli or Guicciardini
history was, to say it with the quite famous words of H. A. L. Fisher, the play
of the contingent, the unexpected and the unforeseen.43 Consequently, the
political stability of a republic could never be more than ephemeral. What a
republic could politically achieve, at the very best, was to stabilize its existence
against the terror of history.
Keeping early modern republicanisms understanding of both politics and
history in mind might teach us that we should not confuse the attempt to make
politics, necessarily taking place under the conditions of fragility, finitude and
uncertainty, with the belief that we can make and control history without any
restrictions. If one accepts this difference, one might still defend the attempt
to make politics and yet remain skeptical about any attempt to make history, as
it had been central for modern philosophy of history.

43 Quoted after ibid., p. 8.

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