the construction of historical consciousness

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The construction of historicalconsciousnessYves Charles ZarkaPublished online: 24 May 2006.

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ARTICLE

THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICALCONSCIOUSNESS

Yves Charles Zarka

In order to define the intellectual framework in which my reflections on theconstruction of historical consciousness are situated, and to define the issuesinvolved, I begin from a passage in a lecture given in French in 1958 byHans-Georg Gadamer:

The appearance of an historical consciousness is very probably the mostimportant revolution we have undergone since the beginning of the modernera. Its intellectual scope probably exceeds that which we acknowledge for the

accomplishments of natural science, which have visibly transformed the face ofour planet. The historical consciousness which characterises the man of todayis a privilege, perhaps even a burden, unlike any which was imposed on any

earlier generation.

The consciousness we currently have of history is profoundly different fromthe manner in which the past appeared to a people or an age in earlier times Byhistorical consciousness we mean the privilege of modern man: that of being

fully conscious of the historicity of every present moment and the relativity ofevery opinion.1

This text seems to me to mark, in a way which is both clear and profound,the place of historical consciousness in the self-reflection of the modern era.Of course Gadamer was not the only one to note the fundamentalimplications of the appearance of historical consciousness, which heconsiders even more important in the definition of the modern world thanthe accomplishments of science and technology. Indeed, if Gadamer makeshistorical consciousness a privilege rather than a burden, Leo Strauss (in acompletely different context, that of natural law) made of it on the contraryrather a burden than a privilege. Whatever the evaluation we make of thepresent time, we have to recognize the irreducible weight of historicalconsciousness – which includes within itself, on the one hand, the idea of thehistoricity of every present moment (no longer compensated by a naturalorder which is the foundation on which norms can be transcended), and on

1 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Le probleme de la conscience historique, ed. by Pierre Fruchon. Paris:

Seuil, 1996, p. 23.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12(3) 2004: 413 – 428

British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online # 2004 BSHP

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/0960878042000253088

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the other hand the principle of the relativity of traditions, cultures, moralsand opinions. Such a principle would identify any attempt to turn in ononeself, culturally or intellectually, as either naivety or blindness.

Gadamer underlined, for his part, the importance of historicalconsciousness for the human sciences as historical sciences, as well as forhermeneutical thought, of course. As for the perspectives deployed in thelectures of 1958, it will suffice to underline briefly two ways in which theydiffer from my own approach to historical consciousness.

The first consists in the fact that, whatever the weight one gives tohistorical consciousness in the modern era, it is not in my view its onlydimension, nor even its most fundamental. The modern era’s awareness ofthe self is in effect defined by other, equally fundamental, dimensions whichcannot be reduced to historicity. The modern era is in tension betweenhistoricity and transhistoricity and is constituted within this tension. I willsay no more on this for now because I do not intend to bring my presentanalysis to bear on the question. I did, however, wish to underline thisaspect of things at the outset in order that my analysis of the constitution ofhistorical consciousness should not be understood as an adherence to anhistoricist vision of the world as it now is.

I will lay more emphasis on the second distinguishing feature of what Iclaim, since this aspect will be at the centre of my analyses. Rather thanplacing myself ‘beneath’ historical consciousness in order to examine itsimplications for human sciences as historical sciences, I shall look at it ‘fromabove’ in order to study its construction. What are we to understand by theconstruction of historical consciousness? What gives it this place in themodern era?

It goes without saying that neither historiography nor historicity belongsto us alone. Greek and Roman historians had as much sense as we have ofboth. Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybus. Livy, Tacitus, to name only thosefew, were not ignorant of the requirement of truth which is indissociablefrom the writing of history, nor explanation by causes, nor the existence ofother peoples and civilizations than their own, nor the ruin of states and theconstitution of empires through war. It would be better to say that moderncritical historiography was constituted from the sixteenth to the eighteenthcentury in large part thanks to the reprise of the historians of antiquity inthe context of a new problematic.

In fact, what makes the modern period different, what the ancients couldnot appreciate in the same way as us, is on the one hand the fundamentalrelativity of viewpoints – as much that of historiography as that ofethnography – and on the other hand (and above all) the historical shift, notonly in all forms of knowledge but also of norms, values and ways of being.

What characterizes the awareness of self of the moderns is that alldomains of knowledge and of existence are found, in one way or another, tobe affected by historicity. It is precisely the place accorded to the historical,by means of the displacement of everything which could previously have

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been reckoned ahistorical, which specifies what modern historical con-sciousness is.

How was this consciousness constructed? For my part I understand thisconstruction in the sense of its formation. In other words, what I propose toexamine is an aspect of the history of the formation of historicalconsciousness. For me it is a matter of showing that this constructionbrought to bear simultaneously two distinct, but correlated, aspects: thoseof historiography and of historicity. It is in fact at the crossroads of thesetwo dimensions that modern historical consciousness was formed. To makethis enterprise feasible it will suffice here to show the role played in thisformation of historical consciousness by a certain number of thinkers fromBodin to Vico, thinkers whose reflections are situated, precisely, at thisnodal point of relationship between historiography and historicity, betweenhistory as knowledge and history as reality.

PRINCIPLES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE HISTORICAL‘ENCYCLOPAEDIA’ – THE HISTORICIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Bodin’s importance in the constitution of historical consciousness comesfrom the fact that he modifies the relationship between history and truth.This modification is already apparent in his considerations on the use ofhistory in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem.2

In a very traditional way, Bodin notes first of all that history enables us topreserve the memory of knowledge, and thus of truth – in particular that ofphilosophy:

And indeed philosophy, which we often call a guide to life, would long since

have ceased to remind us of the extreme terms of good and evi1 if it had notfound in history the words, actions and teachings of the past.3

This affirmation is of course placed under the aegis of the Ciceroniandefinition of history as ‘a teacher of life’. In Cicero this idea passed via theprinciple of the fulfilment of history by the orator.4 As we shall see, thisaspect of history’s dependence on rhetoric will be called into question byBodin.

But more profoundly, with Bodin history becomes the place where truthitself is accomplished, when one considers the three levels of human, natural

2 Jean Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, ed. by Pierre Mesnard, Paris:

PUF, Corpus General des Philosophes Francais, 1951.3 Ibid., p. 278 A.4 ‘In the end, history – witness to the ages, torchbearer of truth, soul of memory, school of life,

interpreter of the past – what voice, if not that of the orator, can make it immortal?’

HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 415

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and divine history. To the question ‘what fruits can be expected of history?’Bodin replies:

It is she [history] which will assume the task of completely revealing to us not

only the techniques necessary to our existence, but also the positive andnegative precepts of the moral life, that which is honourable or shameful, theproper extent of the law, the best form of the republic and the means of

achieving happiness. In the end if one were to suppress history one wouldallow the worship of God, religions and oracles to be swept away by the flux ofthe times.5

But Bodin goes much further than the characterization of history as atruthful narrative: ‘a narrative cannot be called historical if it is not inconformity with the truth’.6 What is involved in fact is not just the status ofhistorical knowledge, but more essentially its relationship to other forms ofknowledge. Henceforth history constitutes the foundation of the whole ofhuman knowledge, which now finds itself tinged with a historical dimension.

What I would like to show is that Bodin achieves two distinct butcorrelated operations. On the one hand he puts in place the principles ofwhat we could call an historical encyclopaedia – the historicization ofknowledge as a whole – and on the other he constitutes an encyclopaedicapproach to history. History in its three dimensions – human, natural anddivine – becomes the locus of a totalization of knowledge. One could saythat one of the major aspects of Bodin’s thought is an historical vision of theworld.

Let us begin with the epistemology of historical knowledge. I admit theremight be some incongruity in speaking of the historiographical principles ofthe Methodus when Bodin aimed to pass from the art of writing history tothe art of reading histories. The fundamental intellectual implications of thisshift from the art of writing to that of reading histories has been wellbrought out by Julian H. Franklin in his study Jean Bodin and the SixteenthCentury Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History.7 This is whatBodin actually writes:

I am willing to acknowledge that there have been people before me who havewritten books on how history should be composed, and their planundoubtedly had laudable objectives. But if you will allow me, I wouldcompare their approach to that of certain doctors – who, having proposed all

kinds of treatment to the invalid, start a new discussion about the righttreatment without any attempt either to weigh up the strength and nature ofthe remedies they have already used and abused, or to adapt them to the

sickness in question. However this is exactly the attitude of those who have

5 Jean Bodin, Methodus, op. cit. p. 280 B.6 Ibid.7 New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963.


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written books on the canons of history-writing – when we have other booksfilled with references to ancient works, and libraries crammed with historians –would it not be better to invite us to read and imitate them, rather than

discoursing in fine terms on their introductions and developments, and thevalue of words and phrases?.8

It is in this sense that Bodin present himself as the first to define historicalmethod. As Julian H. Franklin points out,9 the passage from a definition ofthe canons of the writing of history to the principle of a reading of historycontains a displacement – a revolution even – in the ideal model of theformation of the historical account defined in rhetorical terms according topropriety of style, order, composition, etc. This calling into question of thecanons of writing is linked in Bodin’s work to the definition of a criticaljudgement as a central factor in determining the degree of reliability orveracity of a given history. This change of viewpoint involves putting inplace a new epistemology of historical knowledge.

What we habitually do in connection with the exposition of scientific method, Ibelieve we ought to do for history; it is not enough to build up a pile ofhistorians, but it is also necessary to know what use to make of each, in what

order, and how best to read them.10

In what manner it is best to read them’, to judge them or indeed todetermine what degree of credence to accord to each of them? This newepistemology of historical knowledge brings to the foreground the questionsit examines:

1. the distinction in nature and rank of the sources;2. the status of the difference between an original and a copy;3. the question of the authenticity of documents;4. the foundation of the assent one gives to a narrative;5. relatedly, the criteria (psychological and others) which would put an

account or a testimony in doubt;6. the definition of the conditions of certainty.

Now this enables us to put in place an historiography which is liberatedfrom pre-established canons and which is able to equip history to search forthe truth.

Here there is a mutation as much in relation to medieval historiography(in its various forms: great historico-mythical stories, ecclesiastical histories,mirrors of princes, etc.) as in relation to that of the early Renaissance

8 Methodus, op. cit.; 280 B-281 A.9 Op. cit., pp. 86–7.

10 Methodus, op. cit., 283 B.


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connected to the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman historiansHerodotus, Thucydides, Polybus, Livy, Tacitus and so on. If the turn ofthe sixteenth century coincided, in Guicciardini and Machiavelli inparticular, with a return to the political history of the ancients, this returnhad as its essential object the reconstruction of a political and militaryhistoriography of the time of troubles and of the wars of Italy at the time.The objective was less to leave behind, like Thucydides, ‘an imperishablecapital’ to the memory of posterity, than to make intelligible, by imitatingthe ancients, the effects of the present invading flood of foreign armies inItaly and its domination, as Machiavelli puts it, by these new ‘barbarians’. Itwas thus a matter of learning political lessons by putting ancient andcontemporary history side by side. Machiavelli called this ‘imitation’.

Nonetheless, to govern a realm, organise an army and wage war, dispensejustice, build one’s empire, we find neither prince, nor republic, who has

recourse to the examples of Antiquity. I believe that this derives not from thefeeble state to which current religion has brought the world, nor from thesorrows brought to numerous countries and cities of Christendom by pride-

filled idleness, but really from the absence of the veritable knowledge of historywhich is essential to draw out its ill meaning and taste its flavour. Thus manyof those who read history take pleasure at learning of the diversity of events it

contains, without other wise thinking, to imitate them, judging imitation to benot only difficult but impossible: as if the sky, the sun, the elements and manhad changed their movement, order and power in comparison to what was the

case before. Desiring, to draw men from this error, I have judged it necessaryto write, starting from the books of Livy which have not been stolen from usby time, that which, in function of my knowledge of ancient and modernevents, I think necessary for a better comprehension of them.11

This knowledge of history, whose importance Machiavelli underlines andwhich he put into practice, did not really open up an epistemologicalreflection on historical knowledge, because for him the ancient historiansprovided an historiographical paradigm – real or imaginary. It wasnecessary for the paradigm to disappear as a result of Bodin’s interrogationon historical method for the epistemological question to come to theforeground. From this point on it is a concept which is totally different fromthat of imitation which will enable us to think of the relationship betweenancient and modern history.

On the historiographical plan, questions of the veracity of testimonies andnarratives, authenticity of sources, and the degree of credence one can giveto historical pronouncements take the place of the principle of imitation.The reference back to historians of antiquity is of course still present, butnow it is in order to problematize once more the status of historical

11 Niccolo Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, Tutte le Opere, a cura di

Mario Martelli, Sansoni Editore, Firenze, 1992.


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knowledge. One can notice this reprise of ancient themes on at least twofronts, in a renewed interrogation by means of questions of’ historical truthand acceptance of the account given.

It therefore follows that to bring historical truth into the light it is necessary

not only to choose one’s sources with care but also to remember Aristotle’swise advice that in reading history it is proper to be neither too credulous norentirely sceptical.12

But as it is very difficult to exempt oneself from every passion (even if we

require this as a necessary condition of our ideal historian) we must first of allbeware of acquiescing too easily to everything the writer may tell us which ispraiseworthy about himself, his fellow citizens, and his friends, and

dishonourable about his enemies.13

The issue of these reflections resides in the definition of what is, for Bodin, acritical position,14 and critical judgement of the veracity of histories:

Now is the time, it seems to me, to tell how to judge histories exactly. Were oneto find respect for truth and fidelity among those who ought to demonstrate itto the highest degree, there would be no reason to put their account in doubtor to withhold one’s assent: but there exists among historians such a profound

disagreement that, not content to oppose each other, the majority of them arefound to be in contradiction with themselves, according to the passion, themood or the error of the moment. One must therefore begin by establishing

generalities concerning what is natural – if not for all then for the principalpeoples – so as to be able to test the veracity of histories by a just criticism, andto appreciate their particular points more correctly.15

Related to this critique of historical judgement, Bodin achieves (as Iindicated above) a genuine historicization of knowledge. In other words, inhis work it is history that gives access to the whole of human knowledge. Itis in relation to history that other forms of knowledge will be defined.

There are three sorts of history or truthful narrative: human history, naturalhistory and sacred history. The first relates to man, the second to nature andthe third to its author. One exposes the acts of man in societies; the second

studies the causes operating, in nature and deduces their progress on the basisof a first principle; the last, finally, claims and considers the action andmanifestations of the sovereign God and immortal spirits.16

12 Methodus, op. cit., p. 294 A.13 Ibid., p. 295 A.14 cf. Ibid, p. 295 B: ‘The critical position will thus consist in evaluating the praises accorded to

each, less according, to the judgement of his familiars and friends than according to that of

his adversary’.15 Ibid., p. 313 B.


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The three sorts of history, thus defined, sum up not only the totality ofknowledge but also practical rules of virtues and ends.

These three disciplines thus lead to three sorts of assent which can be given to

verisimilitude, logical necessity, and faith; and to the corresponding virtues,prudence, science and religion. The first brings to bear discrimination betweenthe honest and the shameful; the second between the true and the false; the

third between piety and impiety. One receives, due to its conformity to reasonand experience, the title of a guide to existence; the second, from its researchinto the secrets of nature, that of universal inquisitor; the last, from the grace

of God towards us, the name scourge of the vices. Combined, these threevirtues lead to authentic wisdom, the supreme and sovereign good ofmankind.17

Knowledge, thus historicized, contains a gnoseological order which is thereverse of the ontological order: the former goes from human history tosacred history by way of natural history, whereas the latter places sacredhistory, which translates the omnipotence of God over nature and history,in a position of hegemony. This ontological hierarchy should in no way leadus to conclude that human history is subject to ineluctable necessity. Indeed,in opposition to natural history which is subject to necessity, and sacredhistory which proceeds from ends, human history is the locus ofcontingency:

But human history flows principally from the will of men, which neverresembles its own self and whose end one cannot so much as glimpse. Every

day, indeed, new laws, new customs, new institutions and new rites are born,and human actions never cease to lead to new errors so long as they are notoriented by their natural guide, that is to say by right reason.18

If it is possible to draw lessons from history, it is because it gives rise toconjunctions which return from time to time in a circular way. Individualhuman histories, whether those of a particular man or of a particular people,become part of universal history, which can take a comparative or achronological form.

We can thus see the fundamental place which history comes to occupy inBodin’s thought as much at the level of historiography as that of historicity.Bodin makes us witnesses to an historical shift in the human, natural andsacred world. This is a major moment in the construction of historicalconsciousness.

16 Ibid., p. 281 A.17 Ibid., p. 281 B.18 Ibid., p. 282 A-B.


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FROM HISTORICIZED KNOWLEDGE – THE HISTORICALENCYCLOPAEDIA – TO THE ‘HISTORICAL DICTIONARY’: THE

PREDOMINANCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

It was in relation to the two operations carried out by Bodin and analysedabove that certain of the fundamental dimensions of modern historicalconsciousness would be put in place in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies. In fact in the seventeenth century the principles of criticalhistoriography were defined, and in the eighteenth century the idea of ahistoricization of self-awareness.

In order to examine these two points I am going to try to elucidate, on theone hand, the putting in place of the principles of critical historiography byGabriel Naude and Pierre Bayle (with the transformation, in the latter case,of the historical encyclopaedia into an historical and critica1 dictionary),and on the other hand the historicization of the awareness of the selfaccomplished by Vico.

Gabriel Naude and Pierre Bayle19 knew Bodin’s work and both refer to it.But what is of prime importance for us is that these two authors formulatedthe principles of critical historiography in the seventeenth century.

Naude: Critical Historiography and the Identity of France

Naude traces the lineaments of a critical historiography in which the statusof the narrative, the value of testimony and the reliability of the witness areproblems which come to the foreground of reflection. At the beginning ofhis Addition to the History of Louis XI, Naude ponders the reasons whyhistorians wrote that Louis XI was ignorant. Here are the questions Naudeasks himself:

Whence then does this error come, and how has it become so common notonly in France but in all the academies of Europe, which spread it about every

day in their books, to the great discredit and detriment of our nation.20

Naude thus brings out the causes of the error and the flimsiness of thereasons which support it: ‘It now remains, after the complete deduction ofall the causes of this error, to show how weak they are and how littlesupported by, or based on, reason’.21

As to witnesses, for Naude it is a matter of ‘producing them as do judgesand commissaries – that is to say, without altering anything, whether of

19 Bayle gives Bodin a long entry in his Historical and Critical Dictionary, in which he also

makes reference to Naude’s fulsome judgement on the jurist from Angers.20 Naude, Addition a l’histoire de Louis XI, Paris, (=Addition) 1630, Bruxelles, 1713, II, p. 13.21 Ibid., II, p. 17.


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their substance or of their word – following in this regard both reason andthe example of the great Scaliger’22. But if the witness is thus brought forthit is so that he may reveal the reason underlying what he has to say. So in theanalysis brought to bear in chapter VII on the invention of printing, Naudemakes a comparison between the different theories held as to this inventionand criticizes their validity:

But now there appears a [theory] which is much harder to argue against in thatit is supported by Hadrianus Junius, the learned doctor, critic and historian

from Holland, who has taken it upon himself, in the town of Harlem, to claimthis fine invention [printing] for his country, believing it to have been stolen byhim who first published it in Germany; either he wanted to deceive the wholeof the rest of the world in favour of one little corner of his republic, or indeed

he let himself be persuaded by some old men – I know not whom – which, ashe said, told him the tale.23

This criticism of testimony is linked to an evaluation of conjectures and theirmore or less substantiated character. So, still in relation to the invention ofprinting, Naude shows that theories claiming that the invention was firstmade in China or Mexico are nothing but ill-founded conjecture. In order togive another argument to attest the critical character of the procedureundertaken by Naude it is enough to recall the terms in which he heralds hisanalysis:

I will include only that which I have been able to learn of its invention, asmuch by the reading of all those Authors who have written thereupon, as by alaborious research and inspection of more than fifteen thousand ancient books

in twenty-five or thirty of the best and most famous libraries of this city ofParis.24

This critical examination is necessary because printing is like any other finething – it is envied by everyone. Just as there were seven towns whichboasted in ancient times of being Homer’s birthplace, likewise nowadaysevery country or even every town seems to aspire to the immortal glory andhonour of this invention.

The discovery of the inventor of printing, presupposes that one examineswhat Naude calls ‘the conflict of diverse opinion’25 which suggests thatprinting was invented in China, Mexico, Holland, Germany, etc. The wholeproblem is obviously to discover which opinion will triumph: the opinion

22 Avertissement, Addition, pp. III–IV.23 Ibid., VII, p. 110.24 Ibid., VII, p. 105.25 Ibid., VII, p. 107.


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which should be retained is the one on which the affirmations of witnesseswho lived at the time converge:

That is why we must at last admit that printing began in Germany and that,

notwithstanding all the opposition of the Dutch, one must not frustrate thatgreat and ingenious nation of that which reason and the authority of all thegreat personages who lived at the time which gave us this fine invention accord

to her.26

The question of truth is also at the heart of Naude’s enquiry. Stillconcerning the invention of printing. Naude asks himself about ‘those towhom we really owe this fine invention’.27 What is more he claims forhimself a recognition that he is intervening in this issue ‘for truth’ and‘disinterested of all passion or affectivity’.28 The problem of historical truthis also at the centre of Naude’s first reflections in the Apology for all thegreat personages who where falsely suspected of witchcraft when he speaks ofthe prudence whose only goal is to cultivate and refine the mind. Thisprudence should permit us to distinguish the true from the false and toregulate ‘the search we would undertake for the truth’.

Critical historiography also assumes, with Naude, a function of publiccriticism of illusions and falsehoods which are so easily propagated inopinion on the basis of certain historical works, in particular on the subjectof France. The history of France is thus, according to him, largely composedof fictions and myths, such as the conversion of Clovis, the death of Joan ofArc at the stake when, according to him, she was in fact only burned ineffigy, the conversion of Henri IV which only had a political meaning, etc.

The application of rules of critical historiography thus affects the face ofhistory itself and therefore the identity of France.

Bayle: Discourse on Critical Method and the Historical Dictionary

Bayle’s role in the establishment of a critical historiography is fundamental.I will point out just one aspect of it: the highlighting of the specific status ofhistorical truth and certainty.

Notice first of all that in the Project for a Critical Dictionary of 1692 theidea of a critical dictionary was conceived as the touchstone for all otherbooks:

26 Ibid., VII, p. 120.27 Ibid., VII, p. 115.28 Ibid.


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Would it not be desirable for there to be in the world a critical dictionary towhich one could have recourse to assure himself whether what he Finds inother dictionaries, and in all sorts of other books, is true.29

The text of the Project of 1692 contains what one could quite legitimatelycall a discourse on critical method. I am using this expression on purpose ofcourse, first in order indirectly to evoke Bodin, but also and above all tounderline Bayle’s heterodox relationship with another method: theCartesian method.

This discourse on critical method is found exposed in section IX entitled:‘the same reasons which prove the usefulness of the other sciences prove theusefulness of critical research’.30

Bayle proceeds on the basis of a duality, which can legitimately bequalified as Cartesian, between authentic knowledge – containing truths onecannot doubt – and historical research or debates concerning human deedswhich leave us ‘always in the shadows’ and which remain always subject tobeing somehow newly contested. But, far from resting with an oppositionbetween reason and fact, mathematics and history, Bayle transgresses theCartesian prohibitions and defines the status of historical truth by anextension of the notions of truth and certainty beyond the area to whichDescartes had confined them:

I maintain that historical truths may be pushed to a degree of certainty moreindubitable than the degree of certitude to which one may bring geometrical

truths; it being well understood, that one will consider these two sorts of truthaccording to the kind of certainty which is proper to them.31

The notions of truth and certainty can thus be extended to the domain offacts and history, provided one determines the type of certainty to whichhistory can attain:

Thus a historical fact is to be found at the highest degree of certainty whichmay be proper to it once one has been able to find its existence apparent: for

that is all one requires for this sort of truth.32

By defining in this way the conditions of truth and certainty on which avariety of historians may agree, one can introduce into history criteria ofdistinction between the true, the uncertain and the false:

29 Pierre Bayle, Projet d’un dictionnaire critique, a M. du Rondel, 1692, in facsimile of the edition

of the Dictionnaire historique et critique, Paris, 1820–4, Geneve: Slatkine, 1969, T XV, p. 230.30 Ibid., p. 239.31 Ibid., p. 241.32 Ibid.


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One certainly shows the falseness of several things, the inexactitude of severalothers, and the truth of several others, and here there are demonstrationswhich are of use to a greater number of people than those of the geometricians;

for few people have a taste for those, or find them of use in the reformation ofmorals.33

This enlargement of the concepts of truth and certainty which leads Bayle toconceive a type of truth and of certainty which are proper to history (and,more generally, to factual research), enables us to make criticism the forumpar excellence where the truth can be established:

Besides, begging the pardon of the mathematicians, it is not as easy to arrive at

the certainty which, for them, is necessary as it is for historians to arrive at thecertainty which, for them, is sufficient.34

The characterization of a proper degree of historical truth and certainty –that is the truth and certainty of facts – is linked to the foregrounding ofhuman history which from this point on is at the centre of historicalresearch.

This favouring of human history in relation to sacred and natural historyis translated into the passage from the historical encyclopaedia of Bodin tothe historical dictionary. Reflection on the historiographical has majorconsequences on the consciousness of that of which history is made.

HISTORICIZATION OF THE AWARENESS OF THE SELF

So far we have seen two central intellectual moments in the construction ofhistorical consciousness. (a) First it was a question of the displacementeffected by Bodin’s historical encyclopaedia – his historicization of historyas a whole. In this displacement, human history was accompanied by sacredand natural history. Natural history was developed in the Theatre ofUniversal Nature, an important work by Bodin in which natural beings arefound classified from the most humble to the most elevated. (b) Next it wasa question of the passage from the ‘historical encyclopaedia’ to Bayle’sHistorical Dictionary. This transition operates by incorporating naturalhistory into human history; in other words, passing from Bodin’s‘encyclopaedia’ to Bayle’s Dictionary, nature is the dimension which isplaced in parenthesis.

We will now look at a third fundamental moment in the construction ofhistorical consciousness, what one could call the historicization of theawareness of the self. This historicization of the perception of the self is

33 Ibid.34 Ibid. p. 242.


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accomplished by Vico. But before even beginning my analysis of the NewScience of 1744, I would like to remove an apparent difficulty out of the way– one which would otherwise make my claims obscure.

I have no intention whatsoever of entering into the argument aboutwhether Vico is more of an ancient or a modern. Vico’s thought is in factheld in tension between opposing positions, and it is this tension whichmakes him interesting. Concerning history, for example, Vico affirms on theone hand that the civil world and that of nations is the work of man, and onthe other that it is the work of providence. Thus one can read in theconclusion of the New Science of 1744:

The world of nations is undoubtedly the work of man – we have made of this

the first principle of our science, adding that if she had not been able to beconstituted by philosophers and philologists this truth would have remainedunknown. . . . But it nonetheless has at its source a mind [Providence] whose

designs, often different from the particular ends which men propose tothemselves, are even sometimes opposed to them and always superior. Thesenecessarily limited ends thus become means serving to achieve other, much

more important, ends to the salvation of mankind.

(New Science: 1108)

Of course one can find numerous passages in Vico’s treatise which containthis tension. If I insist on this, it is in order to underline the fact that onemust not misunderstand the notion of the historicization of the awareness ofthe self, or of a people’s perception of the self which I apply to Vico. Thetheological and religious dimension of his thought in fact forbids thereduction of the New Science to historicism pure and simple. The idea of aperiodic return in human affairs, and the idea of the existence in nature of aneternal republic, tend in the same direction. On the other hand, there isindeed in Vico the idea that the perception which men have of themselveschanges: that their nature, morals, language, government, character – inshort, their perception of the world and of themselves – changes. Or rather,Vico heralds the idea that one of the major historical errors is to think thatmen today and yesterday have always been identical.

Now – and this is of fundamental importance for our considerations –that is precisely what Vico criticizes in the conception Bodin made of thecycle of constitutions. Here is one passage among others:

The fact of having applied the word ‘people’ to the primitive world of cities ina modern sense – philosophers and philologists having shown themselves

incapable of understanding the old severe aristocracies – has had as its resulttwo other errors in the use of the words ‘self’ and ‘liberty’. Everyone believedthat the ancient government of Rome was monarchical and that Brutus was

going to introduce a regime founded on popular liberty. Jean Bodin fell intothe same error of which all political writers were victims, for he says that


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governments succeed each other in the following order: monarchy, tyranny,democracy and aristocracy. Let us note to what point, when veritableprinciples are lacking, one is subject to the force of ideas.

(New Science: 663)

In other words, Bodin, like all other philosophers and philologists, has madea mistake in imagining a profound wisdom of the ancients, and by his wronginterpretation of the words ‘people’, ‘self’ and ‘liberty’ has failed tounderstand what the age of heroes really was:

We have allowed the ancients three ideas which only evolved, enlightenedminds could have conceived: the idea of a justice founded on the rules ofSocratic ethics, the idea of glory residing in the significance of service renderedto humanity, and finally the desire for immortality.

(New Science: 666)

What is lacking with the philosophers and philologists is the idea that theperception of the self and the world had a history, and that in consequencewe ought not to speak of the behaviour, language, morals, and governmentsof ancient peoples as we do of our own today. There is indeed a history ofnations, a history of peoples, which is in its main principles a history of theperception which men have had of themselves:

We shall study, in this fourth book, the course which the history of nations hasfollowed; the world [has] passed through the age of the gods, of heroes and of

men. It is according to this ternary division that one will see peoples develop,successively, three natures, in a constant and uninterrupted succession of causeand effect; from these three natures came three kinds of morals, they gave birthto three sorts of natural human rights, which in their turn served as

foundations for three types of civil societies or republics, three sorts oflanguages and characters.

(New Science: 915)

It is this history of the perception of the self, with the modification which itinvolves at every level of individual and collective existence, which allowedthe discovery of the real Homer – who was something quite other than awise philosopher – and more generally of the age of heroes which transformsour vision of antiquity.

If I speak here of the heroic age it is because, for Vico, it is fundamental tothe extent that it contains the element of proof for the New Science. To givean account of history it is thus necessary to call into question the principle ofimitation which homogenizes all historical eras. There are three distinct eraswhich correspond to distinct moments in man’s perception of himself. Inthis way Vico is led to reinterpret the heroic virtues in the context of anhistorical analysis of the formation of aristocratic societies.


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Societies which developed themselves in this way were naturally founded onthe authority of the best, those who distinguished themselves from the mass bytheir great virtues worthy of heroic times. It was piety, for they adored the

divinity, which, it is true, led their ignorance to multiply various gods . . . . Itwas modesty . . . temperance . . . . As to their courage and their magnanimity,the struggle against ferocious beasts, the care they put into cultivating the

earth, the hospitality they accorded to the weak and those who were in danger,all give us irrefutable proof; such were the ancient heroic societies worthy ofthe race of Hercules.

(New Science: 1099)

The heroic virtues are thus interpreted in function of the human perceptionof the self in the constitution of an aristocratic order defined by threecharacteristics: the protection of frontiers, the distinction of orders and thedefinition of laws. What constitutes the strength and uniqueness of Vico’shistorical thought is the way he puts the social, juridical and politicalstructure of peoples and nations in relation to means of recognition ormisunderstanding – that is, a history – of the perception of the self. Vico hasformidable intellectual strength on this level, as he does when thinking of therelationship between the mathematical knowledge on the one hand and thehistorical knowledge on the other. This conception of history containing ahistory of the representation of the self was to be highly successful afterVico. Once the teleological direction of his thought was called into question,the history of the representation of the self was to invade his historicistthought and the theory of conceptions of the world. Before that however,philosophies and histories were to follow paths which had already beeninvented by Vico. I am thinking in particular of historical thought inHerder, Kant and Hegel.

CONCLUSION

This brings me to my conclusion. Historical consciousness was constructedfrom the end of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth in threesuccessive movements whose significance I have attempted to recover. But, Irepeat, historicity, what is more the historicity of the representation of theself and the other, is not the only dimension that constitutes modernity.Over against history, there is a transhistoric dimension which ought to makeour understanding of the modern world more complex. But that is anotherpaper.35

CNRS, Paris

35 Translation: Edward Hughes.


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the construction of historical consciousness

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