Meanings of History as Permanent Self-Tests
of Groups and Societies:
Philosophy and Social Sciences Versus Ideology
Nikolai S. Rozov
rozov@nsu.ru
Abstract. The analytical and
self-critical bias of modern philosophy lets ideology expand to most
significant world-view and value areas. Hence, philosophy of history escapes
such problems as meaning of history, course of history, and self-identification in history. Ideology
aggressively grasps these ideas and transforms them into its own primitive
dogmas that usually serve as symbolical tools for political struggle or for legitimating
ruling elites. This paper shows how it is possible for philosophy, in
cooperation with the social sciences (especially historical macrosociology), to
retrieve these problems of crucial world-view significance. A universal model
of historical dynamics and the concept of values of general significance are
described and integrated within a general frame for historical meanings:
permanent self-test of human communities.
The Problem of Meaning of
History Revives
History
always was and evidently will be one of the main fields in the struggle between
various political, religious, ethnic, class, gender, and other ideologies. History
is the human past, that’s why a definite interpretation of historical events
forms some special evaluation, self-identity, structures of loyalty and
solidarity – the bases for political mobilization in wide sense.
In the
modern ideological struggle mostly PR-technologies are used. Here history
serves as a cards pack in hands of a professional player. The religious vision
of the world and history was rather adequate for an illiterate population
before transit to secularization and mass education. Now one can expect that
mass higher education in developed countries leads to some new social and
intellectual situation when previous primitive PR-technologies including
falsification and misinterpretation of history are discredited. New forms of
more critical, more intellectual, more valid historical discourse will emerge.
It means appearance of new forms of debates on meaning, role and evaluation of
various historical events (wars, revolutions, secessions, alliances, victories
and failures). The discredited and almost forgotten problem of meaning of
history comes back.
Between Dogmatism
and Negativism
There
are two dominant poles in modern comprehension of meaning of history: dogmatic
and negativist ones. According to dogmatic view there is some unique absolute
and true meaning of history which is already known (say, presented or covered
in a sacred Book) or can be revealed once and forever.
Nowadays
much more popular is the negativistic (= constructivist and relativist) position:
there is an endless diversity of subjective opinions on meaning of history none
of which have any validity or objectivity. Beyond these free floating games of
mind there is nothing.
Via
media that I try to develop here is for the first glance more close to the
second — negativist view. The meaning of history is by no means any objective
platonic idea (logos, substance, thought, symbol, praphenomenon, concept,
principle, etc.) intrinsically and immanently hidden in the very historical
reality.
Generally
the meaning of history is (as any meaning) a mental construction of some
‘observer’[1]
(Fuchs 2001). The point is to reveal the nature of this construction, its
needed features, and to know who this observer is.
The
last question is the clearest one. According to general liberal and democratic
principles of open society (compare with Habermas’s ideals of free equal
communication) the set of possible ‘observers’ (=creators) of meaning of
history must not be restricted anyhow but it involves potentially any
community, group or individual who gives some impact into discourse about
comprehension of history (universal, national, ethnic, provincial history,
etc.).
This freedom
to propose own ‘meanings of history’ leads to competition between
interpretations and necessarily raises the issue of standards and criteria.
Here we can see the double role of philosophers of history: formal and material
(in terms of German, Kantian philosophical tradition).
‘Formally’
a philosopher of history elaborates epistemologically prescriptive rules,
criteria, and standards of intellectual competition (compare with norms of
correct and meaningful propositions, clear concepts and strict logic in the Vienna Circle and following analytical
philosophy), criticizes ideological falsifications of history, can accept the
role of a discussion moderator and an arbiter in intellectual conflicts.
‘Materially’
a philosopher of history is responsible more than others to reveal (create)
meanings of history. In this case he (or she) acts already not as an arbiter
but as one of main players in the discursive arena (compare with intellectual impacts
of Herder, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Spengler, Teillard de Charden, etc.).
The
status of the following ideas is intermediate. I do not try to propose
standards for any interpretations of
history (that is probably impossible). I do not also suggest some new precise
formula — what should be meaning of history for everybody. Instead I try to
provide some conceptual frames and methodological means that make possible any
community to create some distinct, rational meanings of own history. These
meanings as cognitive constructions should be comparable, falsifiable and
justified in some degree.
Historical
Self-identification as a Trial:
the Conceptual Frame
The adequacy
and validity of historical interpretations depend both on subjective values and
worldviews (that are diverse and always can be questioned), and on the knowledge
of objective deep historical trends and regularities that can be tested by
theoretical history and historical macrosociology (that are based on standard
scientific justification)[2].
According
to value-loaded approach the general
frame for historical self-identification can be defined as a test or a trial (more
precisely, a self-test, a self-trial) of some group, community, society to survive
and to accomplish its basic values and goals in given historical circumstances.
The main frame of such historical trial includes:
a)
some human community (a group, an ethnos, a society like nation-state, a
civilization, the international community, the humanity as a whole);
b) conscious
world-views, values, and goals of this community;
c) goals
- a state and qualities of social system that are objectively necessary for
accomplishment values (b);
d) deep
transformations, relevant laws and regularities which are necessary and
sufficient for this accomplishment (c); possibilities for action;
e)
real actions, interactions, events and their results;
f)
assessment by the community (a) of the actions and events (e) from the
viewpoint of the values (b), the goals (c), and the regularities (d).
The Universal Model of
Historical Dynamics
For
conceptualizing conditions and actions the universal model of historical
dynamics is used. The model consists of several phases which form three main loops
(fig.1). Each loop begins from the phase of social
stability - an organic system of effective regimes that allows influential
groups to achieve their values and goals. Stability is disturbed by so called basic factors of historical dynamics
(demographic, ecological, resource, social and cultural ones). Critical force
of disturbance leads to a challenge –
strong discomfort of influential groups which now must give a response i.e. must
change essentially everyday behavior and/or organize some large-scale mobilization
activity. The phase of response is
the main point of divergence (bifurcation) where according to type of response
one of main loops evolves.
The first loop just returns to the phase of
stability. The response in this case is adequate
and compensator one. New stability minimally differs from previous by minimal
amelioration of some functions, institutions, regimes that temporally softens
or neutralizes the destructive effect of historical dynamics factors. This is
the path of step-by-step evolution (L.White,
R.Carneiro).
The second loop is the most dramatic one. The
non-adequate response usually leads to conflicts
and enforcement of challenge. If inadequacy of the response prolongs
escalation of conflicts and destruction leads to a crisis. If no fresh effective response appears, this loop proceeds
“working” as a self-destructive way to a social abyss. Conceptually it is a
special kind of positive cycle where each destructive trend leads to next
destructive trend and all they enforce each other. Such structure was called the
megatrend “Well” (or “Abyss”). If the
social system is an empire or a state, this megatrend leads to a social
revolution, state breakdown and
territorial fragmentation.
Fig.1. The Universal Model of
Historical Dynamics.
Breakdowns
of Ancient and Medieval empires, of old regimes in modern social revolutions,
recent Soviet collapse can serve as examples of such a historical pattern (J.Tainter,
Th.Skocpol, J.Goldstone, R.Collins).
The third loop is the effect of series of adequate and prospective responses (here
the model is rather close to the Toynbean original explanation of growth of
“cultures” – local civilizations). How long such social resonance can continue?
It depends on the given resource basis and ability of new cooperative community
to find new sources, i.e. to give new adequate responses for new deficiency
challenges. If new mobilizing community is successful in providing necessary
resource basis for more than 1-2 generations, the specific historical
phenomenon evolves – dynamic strategies[3]. Here it means a bunch
of cooperative activities with general objective direction that prolongs for
two and more generations and uses each significant result as a base for new
movement in the same direction. Seven main groups of dynamic strategies include
coercive, commercial, technological, resource-transit, socio-engineer,
demographic, and cultural ones.
Usually
effective strategies are connected also into bunches. In cases of resource
abundance and new effective responses to deficiency challenges they form a megatrend “Lift” (or “Escalator” - a
positive cycle of factors but now factors of rise, growth and development).
Such megatrend always includes significant institutional reforms that open new
space for effective regimes development. These structural changes lead to a system transformation — the irreversible
ongoing transit to some new social stage. Sic! Here historical dynamics is connected with crucial shifts of social evolution[4](K.Marx, M.Weber,
W.Rostow, I.Wallerstein, E.Jones, S.Sanderson, I.Diakonoff, etc.). Sooner or
later some new balance establishes and this new stage becomes a new social
stability (the beginning of all three loops within the model).
Status of the Model —
the Ontological Paradigm for Theories of Dynamics
What
is methodological status of the presented model? Let’s consider the classical
discussion on objectivity and interpretation. “Naturalists” defend full
objectivity of their statements while “constructivists” (also adherents of
hermeneutics, phenomenology, relativism, postmodernism, etc.) insist on
inevitability of interpretations. It is true that all general propositions on
history, historical phenomena, processes, and trends are interpretations (“the
truth of constructivism”). But not all interpretations are equal in adequacy
and validity. Some of them can be justified by various empirical methods and
logical means (the systematic comparison of historical cases, formulating and
testing hypotheses, statistics, etc.) and can be considered as objective
theoretical knowledge (“the truth of naturalism”). Also there is a wide range
of helpful preliminary ontological, conceptual, logical, and methodological
concepts and propositions that can not be
tested and proved directly but serve as a necessary intellectual basis for
theoretical and empirical research.
In
these terms the following description of the universal model of historical
dynamics has the status of the ontological
paradigm for various theories of historical change. As far as the theories of step-by-step
evolution (L.White, R.Carneiro), collapses, state-breakdowns and revolutions (J.Tainter,
B.Moore, Th.Skocpol, J.Goldstone, R.Collins), mass mobilization, dynamic
strategies (Ch.Tilly, G.Snooks), systemic transformations and modernizations
(K.Marx, M.Weber, W.Rostow, I.Wallerstein, E.Jones, S.Sanderson, I.Diakonoff, A.Przeworski,
etc.) and other dynamic theories can be tested and proved — they all support this covering ontological model.
I admit that justification of any social ontology
(including our universal model of historical dynamics) belongs to the second-order
context (Gorman 2007, p.41-49)[5]
and is directly depends on capacity of this ontology to serve as a basis for
‘good’ explanatory theories. Are theories ‘good’ or not is a matter of
justification within the first-order context. I showed elsewhere[6].
that in spite of all bulk of analytical sophistication, almost all contemporary
theoretical knowledge including ethnology, experimental psychology, political
sciences and historical sociology successfully apply standards of the Popper-Hempelian
tradition especially in the version of research programs by Imre Lakatos. So
the second-order justification of these standards is also based on the
wide and blossoming practice of theoretical research[7].
The majority of historians (with seldom exclusion of several great ones such as
F.Braudel and W.McNeill) practicize traditional empirical research of some
narrow field. They are usually fully incompetent in the very theoretical
approach. They do not know and even don’t want to know what is a general
hypothesis and how it is possible to test it by systemic comparison of
historical cases. That’s why their constant idiosyncrasy towards Hempelian
standards of historical explanation still proceeds to confuse analytical
philosophers of history who restricted themselves from beginning and forever to
a subordinate analysis of only traditional empirical historiography).
The model of
historical dynamics presented above is not just a mere ‘interpretation’ (a voluntary one among dozens of others) but
a general cognitive scheme which both incorporates previous dynamic theories
with some range of objectivity (justification, validity etc.) and serves as an
heuristics for further formulations of hypotheses and theories.
From Self-trial and Universal
Model
to the Meaning of History
How
the presented model can be used? The meaning of history occurs to be a rather
complicate cognitive construction that integrates two conceptual frames (historical
self-identification and the universal model), empirical data to fill cells in
these frames, and the relevant theories of historical dynamics.
For
some community to reveal (= to establish) the historical meaning of
self-existence is:
1) to
identify its actual position on the basis of an empirical data as a phase in
the universal model of historical dynamics (stability, challenge, crisis,
conflicts, social resonance, dynamic strategies, transformation,);
2) to
explicate own values and goals;
3) to
know what deep objective changes are relevant to these values and goals taking
into account the known theories of historical dynamics;
4) to
reveal what activities, responses, strategies correspond to these changes;
5) to establish
(both discover and construct) the historical meaning of self-existence as a
specific trial to reach the values (2) by the strategies (4) in the specific
conditions (1) and according to theories of historical dynamics and regularities (3).
6) to
reveal the meaning of past relevant history as a series of trials in the
context of objective social changes and subjective changes of the values and
beliefs.
This
construction integrated both the descriptive elements (1 and theories in 3-5), the
pure prescriptive elements (2) and the prescriptive elements based on both
prescriptive and descriptive ones (3-6).
The
viewpoint of global international
community should take into account real and potential conflictness of goals of nation-states (especially neighbors
and competitors). Here the social stability is treated as the international stable peace and
cooperation. Conflicts, crises and megatrends “Well” are considered as a slip
to wars, in extreme cases – world wars.
Are
there any invariant values and goals that can serve as normative standards?
Yes, there are so called the minimal values, or the values of general
significance (VGS) which include human life, non-violence, freedom, human
rights, justice, etc.[8]
From
this viewpoint the Meaning of World History is a permanent global trial for
all communities (groups, societies, international alliances): if they manage or
do not manage (in what degree and how) to accomplish the values of general
significance while solving their own problems, giving responses to their own
challenges.
Presented
above universal model of historical dynamics and approach to comprehension of
historical meanings can serve as a conceptual and methodological base for new
highly intellectualized debates on history. These debates will still be actual
and significant for ideological struggle but they will be based already not on
PR‑tricks and cheating but on the systematic philosophical analysis of
value-ethical, ontological, and epistemological problems, testable theories of
historical dynamics and social evolution, supported by valid empirical
research.