note: The presentation will be made available in word and powerpoint forms. Meanwhile, grab a cup of tea and enjoy reading

PART 1: INTRODUCTION AND VICO’S APPROACH TO HISTORY BY FOO MIN LI

Hello everybody!

The question for today is, ‘what in Vico’s system made him the first true philosopher of history’?

Vico was the first person who intended to write a philosophy of history, as embodied in his seminal work, Scienza Nuova, or New Science. Because of this accomplishment, he is the first true philosopher of history therefore our task to show how and why.

Before we can go into our question, let us establish what is the speculative philosophy and philosophy of history.

Lemon defines the SPH in the following ways, (1) looking at history, (2) making sense of history , (3) finding meaning in it or (4) at least deriving some pattern. He defines the Philosopher of History as someone who wrote a philosophy of history to reach conclusions on the following issues: does history demonstrate a single giant unfolding story, do laws govern historical development and finally, is the course of history determined by forces outside human control or can individual actions make a difference.

Vico answered these questions and claimed that in writing new science he had developed a system which could explain human history. His work was so ground breaking and his ideas so distinctive that it is impossible to associate him with any existing thinkers. basically, he brought everything together with his HUGE IDEA.

As such, it is necessary to situate him as a starting point.

His ideas on recourse and providence were unique and deviant from all previous conceptions of time and god and their roles in affecting history. What made him particularly unique was his master key which he claimed, enabled him to unlock the true meaning of all history.

His mind was so prodigious that Vico deserves the title, therefore, we present to you the genius!

After the huge introduction on Vico, let us briefly recall what we’ve learnt so far: Time being cyclical and/ or linear, agency where human or god determining events and methods used in history (e.g. rational inquiry by Thucydides and Herodotus).

Our presentation today will deal with some aspects of his New Science.

I will first talk about his approach to history and intellectual developments which inspired him to write his new science. Angeline will deal with the Quarrel- the issues and how it led to his masterkey. Shi Hui will talk about his treatment towards time and human agency in establishing his method. Lastly, Jin Xun will talk about providence- how it was human agency instead of god driving progress.

I will now deal with Vico’s approach to history by looking at (1) the context which he emerged from which influenced this thinking, (2) his criticism of past thinkers and the method, (3) how these two, together with his aims, brought about New Science and (4) Impact of New Science and that it was original, although it incorporated ideas from the past.

Lemon argued that Vico was the first true philosopher of history because he produced an overall theory of the course and meaning of human history, through his method. He responded to intellectual developments and capitalized on existing ideas to develop his theory and method which were NEW.

Firstly, 2 pillars of philosophy emerged during the Scientific Revolution:

1. Empiricism—knowledge derived from tested facts which would correct and uncover new truths

2. Rationalism—as proposed by Rene Descartes to doubt everything and deduce step by step what logically followed

However Lemon commented that these did not necessarily lead to any new overall synthetic or comprehensive theories of nature although it did imply a new ‘theory’ or ‘explanation’ of knowledge itself (Lemon, p. 112). Similarly, Spinoza and Hobbes commented that both appeared to have nothing to do with the study of history, let alone invite new insights into its overall course and meaning (Lemon, p. 123).

Secondly the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns over the usefulness of ancient literature inspired Vico to develop his master key, which Angeline will elaborate later.

Thirdly, the discipline of history, in the 16^th century, was becoming established as a specific form of literature. Humanists recognized that they could recapture the spirits of the past by retranslating the ancients’ texts and recovering meanings. In the 16^th century, a few French thinkers built upon these ideas to formulate basic rules for internal criticism of historical method which formed the foundations of modern historical practice.

Vico responded to intellectual developments by first criticizing past thinkers and their methods as shown in the table (refer to ppt).

Firstly, the Cartesian method was insufficient in shaping knowledge as it ignored the role of historical knowledge. Descartes method was to doubt everything and accepted things which existed or could be proven. He saw history as facts and it did not occur to him because one should turn to history when rationalizing what happened next. This suggests that Descartes saw history as insignificant, unlike Vico, who saw that history played a part in human development.

Secondly, history was deemed unhistorical in nature as suggested in ‘historians, on the other hand, have produced arbitrary and unhistorical accounts of history which cannot be accepted as knowledge’ (Pompa, pp. 54-55). This is because man has misinterpreted ancient culture because of his natural inclination use himself as a measure of all things. As a result, traditional tales became increasingly distorted at every retelling, which in turn involved further misinterpretation, leading to history being unhistorical in nature.

For human history to be historical in nature, human’s history, in Vico’s terms, was to be understood through the literature in its own terms and the historian should not impose his/her ideas in interpreting the literature.

Thirdly, Vico noted that either philology or philosophy alone cannot establish knowledge. This is evident in his criticism that “previous philosophers failed by half in not giving certainty, [i.e., particularity] to their reasoning by appeal to the authority of the philologians and . . . the latter failed by half in not taking care to give their authority the sanction of truth by appeal to the reasoning of the philosophers.” (Pompa, p. 54)

He stressed the mutual dependence between the two because philology gives philosophy ‘certainty’ while philosophy gives philology ‘true’. This is because philosophy deals with reasoning while philology deals with man- made facts. In constructing knowledge, Lemon mentioned all facts in the human world need to be interconnected through reasoning. Hence there is mutual dependence between the two in establishing knowledge to construct understanding of human history.

Despite the criticisms, Vico also knew that it was difficult for our civilized minds to understand how our ancient minds constructed their world, because we are detached from their time and senses. In other words, we are basically guided by what we’re brought up in.

Hence from these criticisms, we can see that Vico saw that:

1. Philosophy and philology mutually important in constructing knowledge

2. History was unhistorical in nature because of misinterpretation and pure imaginationà hints at some form of method to make history more reliable

Looking at the context and his criticism, we’ll see how Vico developed his New Science on top of his aims.

He aimed to devise an overall theory to explain the course and meaning of human history. As we have seen earlier on and perhaps later, the new knowledge which resulted from the Science Revolution were unrelated to history. Vico aimed to provide a logical explanation for the course and meaning of human history from its origins. He limited his study to the civil world, for only god has complete knowledge of the natural world since he made the natural world.

The key to understanding any aspect of the human world is to uncover its origins and trace its development in real history, rather than to hope to find true knowledge (e.g. ideal society, justice) by some process of logical deduction, empirical observation, philosophical speculation, or reliance on some ‘received wisdom’ from past tradition (Lemon, p. 125)

Vico fulfilled his aim by theorizing that there were universal laws which govern the history of all humanity by looking at patterns in development of human history. He established the idea that all nations go through the same stages independently, starting with the Age of Giantsto the Age of Heroes to the Age of Man. Each nation has 3 fundamental institutions religion, family/ marriage and burial. He stressed on human agency in this development, something which Jin Xun will cover later. This was the overall theory.

He responded to the intellectual developments and the problems he perceived by developing a method in his New Science which went beyond rationalism and empiricism to establish knowledge of the human world. This was part of his drive towards deriving meaning knowledge of the human world to derive the course the meaning of human history.

Firstly, he developed a method to make knowledge more complete; he proposed to use philosophy and philology to construct knowledge because they are mutually dependent and important to each other in constructing knowledge. As previously mentioned, man- made facts gave certainty to reasoning while reasoning helped to connect facts of the human world. Later Angeline will talk about the usefulness of ancient literature in understanding the ancient man, in bid to construct the human history

Secondly, he developed a method to study and write history by using both empiricism and rationalism. He found a method where the historian would be free from providing arbitrary explanations as he/she now had to be empirical in his/her approach and commit his/her account to a systematic scientific theory. Hence, the natural distortion of tales would be avoided and history would be historical in nature. (Pompa, p. 70)

In conclusion, Vico is the first philosopher of history because he was the first person to propose an overall theory for human history. Each nation goes through the stages independently and their progress in these stages depended on human agency and their culture. History became history of nations, rather than just history of religion (i.e. Christianity).

Secondly, he made history meaningful because he proposed a system to write and study history.

He did so by looking into language and time and Angeline will now discuss the former.

PART 2: QUARREL, HOMER AND THE MASTER KEY BY ANGELINE CHUI

Years before Vico began to embark on New Science an intellectual debate spread across Europe – this was the Quarrel. The Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns had a formative influence on Vico. First of all, it helped to shape Vico’s ideas on Homer. This is important because as Vico worked out his thoughts on Homer he developed his theory of poetry, which was essentially what he called his master key. As we will see in the following paragraphs, Vico’s master key was absolutely critical to his philosophy of history but first – a brief introduction on the Quarrel is necessary.

As a framework these are a few questions I hope to answer in my section of the presentation:

How did the Quarrel influence Vico?

How did the study of Homer influence Vico?

What is Vico’s master key? Why is it so important?

How does the master key make Vico the first true philosopher of history?

So what was the Quarrel? Basically it was a big debate between the ancients and the moderns – each side held fundamentally different views on how classic literature should be understood. At the centre of this quarrel were the Homeric epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Essentially the ancients and the moderns had competing ideas about Homer and what his works represented. A summary of these ideas, including Vico’s own thoughts on Homer, is presented in the following table (refer to ppt).

First, the ancients exalted Homer and put him on a pedestal, and identified him as the epitome of literary achievement, the likes of which moderns could only hope to imitate and never surpass. The moderns scoffed at this and saw the Homeric poems as exemplifying barbaric styles, written by a barbaric man. This is the context of the Quarrel. As the Quarrel raged on, Vico began to formulate his own ideas on Homer, and this is what he said: Homer was a primitive poet living in primitive times, describing a culture whose manners and mores had largely passed away. It would not be entirely unfair to accuse Vico of wanting to have his cake and eat it too – by sitting on the fence, Vico seemed to have taken the easy way out by operating in the middle ground. Truth is, Vico agreed with the ancients on certain points, agreed with the moderns on others, but in the end he disagreed with both and proposed his own theory. The following table evinces this argument (refer to ppt):

As shown, the ancients said the Homeric epics contained esoteric wisdoms –again with the pedestal. Then the moderns said the Homeric poems were useless. Vico agreed with the ancients in lauding Homer’s accomplishments but he stopped short of calling them esoteric – Vico believed Homer’s poems ccould be understood. This also basically meant Vico believed no one had successfully understood Homer yet. On the other hand Vico agreed with the moderns about bringing Homer down from the pedestal but he stopped short of identifying Homer’s wisdom as useless. Indeed he said the Homeric poems were not so obscure as to be incomprehensible but neither were they meaningless.

Therefore it seemed to Vico that both ancients and moderns knew certain things unknown to the other. Each emphasised a different set of disciplines and priorities, but both were wrong to think that the other was completely wrong and they themselves completely right. So what Vico did was to refute the two extremes and come out with his own view of how the Homeric epics should be understood. He built on both schools of thoughts and emerged with his own – Vico believed that history could be understood using both literary and scientific methods. Essentially, therefore, what the Quarrel did to Vico was allow him to develop a new methodology of looking at historical documents, which was basically how he saw the The Iliad and The Odyssey. The question now is, what was this methodology, and how did looking at Homer help him develop this methodology?

The vital importance of Homer to Vico’s philosophy of history operates on a single all-important premise: Vico believed that in order to understand something one had to return to the absolute beginning. This belief thus directed Vico to the initial moment when men began to think humanly – Vico associated this initial moment with Homer.

Armed with this belief that one had to go back to the very beginning of things in order to understand them, Vico realised that the Homeric poems could serve – not just as the exemplar of poetic grace, but as historical documents. This might come across as obvious once we establish the fact Homer wrote about Greek society and civilisation, therefore his poems must contain some historical value, but the thing is Homer wrote in verse, not prose. So how do we extrapolate the history from poetry? Vico said this could be done through the study of language –philology. This became his theory of poetry, which was subsequently coined his ‘master key’.

Now with his master key in hand, Vico could unlock Homer and understand Homer and his poems the way they were meant to be understood. Therefore in studying Homer Vico realised that history had to be understood not from the point of view of the observer – rather, history had to be understood in context.

To quote Lemon – in unlocking Homer, Vico opened up a methodology whereby he thought he could retrace distinct historical stages through which all human institutions have passed. What Vico accomplished with this was to develop a method – language, which he claimed could now be used to understand all histories. In addition, in seeing the merit of studying Homer and the classics and proposing a scientific method of studying them, Vico had taken literary works which had been popularly perceived as mythical stories and transformed them into history. In this sense, the study of Homer essentially helped Vico develop his master key. Yet, what exactly was his master key?

Vico’s ‘master key was simply that the early peoples ‘were poets who spoke in poetic characters.’ To quote Bruce Mazlish in The Riddle of History, ‘Vico had come to realise mythology was a language. Neither meaningless, nor a mere intuitive grasp of rational notions. It was simply a different language, expressing reality in a way distinct from 18^th C rationalism.’ Thus the task, Vico asserted, was to reverse this procedure and to ‘restore to the fables their original historical meanings.’ Indeed Vico’s master key, he said, was a literary or linguistic discovery, that the origin of language and letters was a result of the fact that the first men were natural poets who spoke in poetical characters – not philosophers concealing their wisdom in allegory.

As mentioned, what made Vico particularly unique was his method – his ‘master key.’ To pursue the analogy – Vico saw the histories of past civilisations as secrets that lay behind locked doors, and argued that he had found the master key that could unlock all those doors – again, quoting Mazlish.

So there lies the importance of Vico’s master key. As Joseph M. Levine said in ‘Giambattista Vico and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,’ – Vico and his master key had ‘unlocked the doors to the earliest human history, combining philosophical reasoning to determine what men must have been like in their bestial primitive condition with philological criticism of the ancient myths to divine what had actually happened in the evolution of human culture and institutions.’ In other words, Vico had traversed beyond myth to history – history here referring to the discipline grounded in empiricism and contextual interpretation. These were possible only with Vico’s master key.

Essentially, Vico’s master key was the method that underpinned his entire philosophy of history. Only after his discovery of the master key could Vico then truly understand history and from there philosophise about history and develop ideas on the driving forces that governed history, i.e. recourse and providence. And it was only with the master key that Vico was able to derive an intelligible pattern to history in its entirety. The Quarrel over Homer was the inspiration for Vico’s master key and essentially, the master key lent inspiration to Vico’s New Science. In this sense the master key is very much important to showing how Vico was the first true philosopher of history. Yet the master key was but one component of Vico’s system – we must remember that the most convincing argument for Vico being the first true philosopher of history lies in his system, surveyed in its entirety. With that we move on to the next component of Vico’s system – recourse, and look at Vico’s conception of time.

PART 3: VICO’S TREATMENT OF TIME IN ESTABLISHING HIS METHOD BY TAN SHI HUI

Vico used language to derive meaning from history. In my section of the presentation, I will be talking about how Vico used time to make sense of history in the New Science. His conception of time is basically the idea of recourse.

I will adopt the following framework for my part of the discussion:

Context: What previous thinkers thought of time?

What is recourse and how is it significant?

What did Vico say about human agency and how is it significant?

As a brief recap, the Greco-Romans saw the passing of time as cyclical, in that Time was infinite. It was a closed system of eternal recurrences, where events were repeats of the original story. History was therefore meaningless, with all occurrences governed by fate. Human agency was missing in this model. In the Judeo-Christian model, Time has a definite beginning and end. Each event was unique. History was meaningful in that that moves purposefully towards an end-fulfillment. As all these ideas were floating around, in comes Vico who posited his own theory of time which was the idea of recourse.

It is Vico’s idea which accounts for the passage of time. For Vico, time was neither cyclical nor linear. Rather, human history was governed by recourse, which was not pre-determined (i.e. human history is not actively determined by other agents such as Fate or God) or inevitable. Human history was instead driven by human agency.

Human agency moves men from one historical age to another in two ways, which would be elaborated later on. But briefly, it is firstly the crucial factor in preventing the potential demise of men back to primitivism. Secondly, men are capable of creating stability for themselves.

With the idea of recourse in mind, Vico attempted to chart human history with the following model:

He presented the idea of recourse in his three stages of civilization (refer to ppt).

The first historical development began with the Age of Gods, named so because the first institution created was religion. From bestiality, man progressed into the first societal form through marriage, and established family as the first social unit with the father as the authority. Refugees sought protection in exchange for cultivating the land and join the family unit. Under this structure, the government was essentially theocratic in nature. The rational ability of the mind has not been developed.

War ensued as the refugees increasingly aspired freedom and equality, compelling the fathers of families to unite into an aristocratic commonwealth against them. Man therefore entered the Age of Heroes, where collections of families and the refugees they pacified formed the political unit of the heroic cities.

The Age of Heroes gave way to the Age of Men when the refugees, having reached a greater development of mind, revolted and cause the transformation of the aristocratic commonwealth into a free popular commonwealth. The refugees across heroic cities joined ranks to form the masses, thereby creating the political unit of the age: nation. In this age, human reason has been fully developed and knowledge became rational.

The nature of human society in the age of men was benign, rational, and law-abiding, as opposed to previous ages: The Age of God was fierce and cruel, and the Ages of Heroes militant, with laws that were necessarily still brutal and fierce.

Having charted how man arrived at the age of men, Vico moved on to discuss the potential demise in the ‘Age of Men’.

Having matured to full rational consciousness in the age of men, human history then declined when the ‘proper human nature’ of the ‘age of men’ eventually departed from its optimistic origins to the point that it threatened the continuance of this historical age. The initial motivations for public interests of freedom and equality became motivation for self-interest, transforming the popular commonwealth into a realm of vicious competition for power.

It was in this state of ‘corruption’ that three possible remedies emerged to save the Age of Men from potential demise. In order of desirability, man can either

1) Transit into monarchy, that is, the people leave the governing of public interests in the hands of a sovereign prince. This is the most ideal condition, as Lemon explains on page 145. This is because in the neglect of public interests by the masses, the monarch makes the citizens equal through law, and humbles the powerful. Hence, monarchy in ‘the age of men’ best represents the common good of citizens.

2) Be conquered by better nations, which could be under the rule of a monarch;

3) Human conflict will result in the outbreak of civil wars so brutal that men are thrown back into primitivism, where the course of history and formation of civilizations begins again.

We will come back to these three remedies in a while. Meanwhile it is important to remember that Vico saw the first solution, which is the monarchy, as the “better, and ‘natural’ form of government for free, rational, ‘humane’ men.”

Recourse, as a concept in Vico’s New Science, contributed to his position as the first true philosopher of history. We need to recognize that Vico’s treatment of time was new. Just as the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian notions of time add to our understanding of history, so did Vico’s idea on time. It follows that in charting human history using this notion of recourse, Vico presented a completely new perspective from which to look at history. This is why recourse, as a component in his philosophy of history, made him the first true philosophy of history.

At the center of his idea of recourse stood the notion of human agency, which Vico argued was the driving force of history. Firstly, he posited that human agency move men from one historical age to another. As man’s mind matured and developed in the direction of greater rationality and greater knowledge of the truth, man’s history also matured from one historical age to the other. In a way, the progress of the historical ages therefore embodied the progress of the human mind. Through the course of history, man reached his true humanity when he fully developed his reason and consciousness in the age of men.

Secondly, Vico showed that human agency was the crucial factor in preventing the potential demise of men back to primitivism. Here, recall that Vico identified 3 remedies for the potential demise of men, with the governance by a monarch as the ideal. He identified two criteria which are essential to the sustenance of the monarchy, namely that the monarch must be sane and that he viewed and attended to the peoples’ interests as his personal interest. Thus, as long as the monarch was capable of rational reasoning and consciously works towards achieving the good of his people, the monarchy was maintained. This in turn ensures that man remain in the Age of Men where rationality and human consciousness has matured, all through the actions of man himself.

Therefore, human agency, as a key concept in Vico’s New Science, contributed to his position as the first true philosopher of history. By recognizing that human has an evident role to play in the history thus far, Vico attributed meaning to history and purpose for studying it. History was no longer that of the recordings of the act of fortune and fate, nor the conscious role of God, but that of human rationality and consciousness.

PART 4: PROVIDENCE- HUMAN AGENCY DRIVING PROGRESS BY CHUA JIN XUN

The following questions will be addressed in the course of my discussion. How did the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation influence Vico’s ideas on Providence? What was Vico’s method for establishing his ideas on ‘Providence’? What was ‘Providence’ about? Why was it so important? How do Vico’s ideas on Providence make him the first true philosopher of history?

Vico is the first true philosopher of History because his ideas on ‘Providence’ explained the orderliness of a world driven by human agency, and this provided a lens through which we can understand History. By which we mean he EXPLAINED history using his idea of human agency, governed by ‘providence’. Shihui has already explained how human history can be charted by looking at how human agency drives History. My part will overlap with hers, to show how human agency is governed by Providence.

Before I go into his ideas on ‘Providence’ proper, let me go through briefly how Vico got to his ideas on ‘Providence’ in his New Science. It is thus necessary to establish the context in which his ideas on Providence were derived. Please refer to table below (refer to ppt).

1. Reformation (Started from early 16^th century)

What is crucial here is not so much what happened during the Reformation, but despite increasing secularism from the Renaissance through to the Scientific Revolution, the “consciousness of religion” still exists.

2. Scientific Revolution (Started from mid 16^th century)

Raised questions about the nature of God and His role in the world

Realization that God is not a verifiable truth

3. Vico (1668-1744)

Providence–> Human agency drove gentile history, while God remains outside the realm of the civil world, intervening occasionally in “miraculous” ways.

The “obsession” with religion during the Reformation, and arguments between Pros and Catholics over the “true” religion, continued through to the 17th century, the era in which Vico lived in. This bout of religious fervor certainly impacted the way he thought. On the other hand, the Scientific Revolution sparked off an era where rationalization and empiricism were the order of the day.

What is Vico’s method for establishing his Philosophy of History? Vico possessed a wealth of knowledge on other thinkers before him who had tackled this whole concept of God in the past. What Vico did was to draw from existing scholarship, taking ideas and rejecting others and incorporating them into his system (refer to ppt).

He chose the following:

Hobbes: Attacking verifiability—Wrong to use the Bible or ‘God’ as the basis for discovering truth

Spinoza: Need to view the Bible as a historical work and to view it in context. The Bible had to be understood in historical context, as a work of history

Epicurus, Hobbes, Machiavelli: Those who did not believe that chance governs human history

Zeno and Spinoza: Those who did not believe in fate

And discarded the following:

Polybius: “if there were philosophers in the world, living in justice by force of reason and not of laws, there would be no need in the world of religion.”

Pierre Bayle: “There can be nations in the world without any knowledge of God”

Ultimately, it is important to note that Vico’s New Science was so unique because according to him, Providence which went hand in hand with human agency, explained the workings of the human world. This was an idea distinct from the likes of Machiavelli or Augustine.

Following the above, He excluded the Hebrews from civil history as he considered them a race that had been blessed by divine grace. Therefore there was a ‘fundamental difference’ between the principles governing Hebrew and gentile history. In contrast, the gentiles have had to make do with God’s ordinary help— and therefore, ‘Providence’—a notion to which we must shortly turn. In short, Vico situated God outside the realm of the civil world, as an omnipotent power that only interferes in miraculous ways. Linking this to Shihui’s part, Vico claims that what drives civil history is human agency, with ‘providence’ guiding, but NOT directing or determining the course of events.

So what is providence? As we saw from the Scientific Revolution, the role and nature of God was put to question. Yet from the Reformation, we see that this issue of religion was not one that Vico could set aside and ignore. Therefore Vico, with his ideas on Providence, placed God outside the realm of the civil world and human agency as the driving force, spearheading civil history. With Vico’s focus on the history of Gentile nations, the focus is no longer divine agency but human agency; God exists outside the realm of the civil world. Lemon explained that “providence works through human nature rather than being an external force such as fate or fortune governing history”. He also employs the analogy of the watch and the watch designer, ‘pprovidence’ is simply the way things turn out in the natural order of things, a consequence of the interaction of people’s behaviours. Second, ‘providence’ encompasses ALL religions, whether ‘true’ or ‘false’ and it explains the orderliness of a world driven by human agency. Finally, ‘providence’ proves the very existence of God. Vico says that his theory of history, his study of the history of institutions across time, reveals the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of God and therefore the existence of God himself. In essence, human history reveals God’s omnipotencee.

What makes ‘providence’ so important then? Most importantly, by saying that gentile peoples had ‘free will’ and agency, guided by ‘providence’, he gave meaning to, and made relevant the course of human history in its entirety across institutions. Also, Vico was the first to come up with a system that reconciled both the secular and the religious. Also, Vico moved beyond religious/ Christian history and focused on civil history of the gentiles.

Perhaps one of Vico’s weaknesses is his vagueness. This can be summed up in Lucente’s quote—“Vico’s inability to find a straightforward means of reconciling human knowledge and freedom with divine intention, gives rise to the ambiguity of this notion of divine providence, which is and is not strictly divine (since it stems from the deity but appears only in the world of men) and is and is not strictly providential (since it is concerned with human destiny but not with fortune or fate.” (Lucente, p. 184) HOWEVER, the greatness of Vico’s work is that, he avoids backlash from the religious orders of the day such as the Catholic church, and he is able to produce a piece of work that is unique in its attempt to make history relevant beyond the Church and across time. Also New Science is not the setting forth of final truth; it is, instead, a work which is, first and foremost, heuristic. Therefore he laid foundations for future philosophers to develop their own versions of philosophy of history.

To add, Lemon points out that Vico’s concept of divine grace sticks out like a sore thumb, also it is noted that Vico excluded the Hebrews for they were a race blessed by divine grace, yet he did not exclude the Christians, whom he also thought benefited from God’s divine grace. Lemon tries to explain this by pointing out Vico stopped short of omitting the Christians for fear of persecution from the Catholic Church. This brings us to the point that we cannot treat Vico as if he had not existed in the eighteenth century. Therefore we have to look at his work and Vico himself in context. This is similar to Lemon’s example on Charles Darwin, which he mentions in page 152, who also delayed the publication of his work for fear of persecution, thus demonstrating that Vico probably had to take into account the circumstances of the time, when he attempted to pen his ideas on recourse, human agency and ‘providence’. Yet again, as Lemon wrote, what he mentions about divine grace and Christianity’s truth does not matter in relation to his philosophy of history. Furthermore it is only through agreeing on the fact that Vico was attempting major self-censorship that was so prevalent at that time, can we move on and understand his overall theory on history. Only then would his New Science be coherent.

PART 5: GROUP CONCLUSION BY CHUA JIN XUN

Vico was the first true philosopher of History because he wrote New Science, which was the first book in Philosophy of History. History became not just history of the Church or history according to the Bible, but history that transcends all institutions and time. We have shown that Vico did not invent, rather he gathered from existing knowledge and formulated his own philosophy.Therefore, New Science was Vico’s attempt at a Speculative Philosophy of History. Because he attempted to chart the flow of human history and to find some intelligible pattern to it, he was the first true philosopher of History.

What is the question asking for?

1) Whether history is cyclical or linear

2) What does it mean to history

3) Asking the overall question: what does history mean to us?

· The Renaissance is about returning to the classics, but did history go back too?

Group’s framework

On the surface, Machiavelli and More used Greco- Roman tradition. However, when we look deeper into their work- they made new contributions to the philosophy of history e.g. Human agency (More) and linear history- things we can learn for history (Machiavelli)

Medieval Christian Historical Conciousness

Augustinian heritage:

Distinguish between the City of God vs. Earthly City. The main goal for individuals at that time was salvation, hence it can be said thta “people’s eyes turned towards heaven”. People in the middle ages were not interested in speculating beyond biblical version of history and Augustine tutelage, hence there was no innovative or new outlook on the significance of human history; theyarrogant and ignorant of intellectual and cultural history.

Aquinas:

Rediscovery of Aristotle’s philosophy (in the 13^th century) eventually led to the subsequent integration into Christian thought and the synthesis of the two systems culminated in the mammoth synthesis achieved by Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica (1273). The reconciliation of the two systems summarized into his famous dictum: “nature us not destroyed by grace, but perfected by it”- in other words, Earthly things not utterly corrupted but it does have value- there is beauty, truth and virtue found in temporal life, however, earthly things is incomplete on its own and it needs spiritual dimension to perfect it. It affected people’s way of thinking about life BUT it did not shift Augustinian perspective in the place of history in it.

Scholasticism:

Aquinas synthesis did not have much practical impact on people’s entrenched ways of thinking and behaving, where it did have impact was in the intellectual world- specifically monks and scholars. It was used and made into a formalized set of studied called scholasticism- from the Aristotelian school of philosophy- replete with obscure Aristotelian technical terms and Latinized – thus making it difficult to understand. It did not contribute to a new movement or a period which offered an alternative way of thinking about the course of history. However, it did help provoke the beginnings of a culture counter to medievalism.

Humanism:

Partly centered on Petrarch and most importantly inspired by contempt for scholasticism encouraged a return to the study of the ideas of the classical Greco-Roman worl. By the 15^th century- like-minded scholars or “Renaissance humanist” (or RH) began to impose their ideas on a rapidly changing society who were too willing to listen . RH had a more direct impact on how people thought about history because it was much easier comprehend.

Periodization:

RH invented the notion of the “middle ages” or attempt to re-periodize existing historical conventions . Petrarch and those who followed him turned upside down the medieval notion of history’s division into two periods: light ages to refer to the classical period and the dark ages to refer to the middle ages (5^th A.D. – 14^th century).

Why is it important?

This very boldness in re-priodizing by inventing the notion of medieval age is an evidence of the willingness to move away from medieval presuppositions about history.

RH opened the path for changes in the way people speculated upon history and its meaning, in two ways:

1) Humanities replaced scholastic curriculum- by studying changing things of this human world like drama, art, poetry and history. It had the greatest impact amongst the best scholars- who eventually used humanism and fostered a historical consciousness, where it opened people’s imagination- a crucial step towards shifting basic presupposition about the significance and meaning of history.

2) Turn people’s eyes back to earthly life, it studied the relationship between the individual and god. The humanist criticized the church but they were far from being anti-god or anti-religion.Nonetheless, they still scorned a life dominated by religion belief and enthusiasm and eventually pursued the good things of life (secularism) .

What is the Renaissance?

The Renaissance was a cultural and literary movement which spanned approximately from the 14^th to 17^th century. It started in Italy during the middle Ages and later expanded to other parts of Europe. The word Renaissance means “rebirth” in French and “again” [re] or “be born” [nascere] in Italian (from the Italian word: Rinascimento). The idea of rebirth originated in the belief that Europeans had rediscovered the superiority of Greek and Roman culture after many centuries of what they considered intellectual and cultural decline.

Features of the Renaissance- salient to our presentation

Economic activity and secularism:

The rise in population and prosperity in Europe in the 1500s allowed economic activities such as manufacture, commerce, international trading and banking to flourish and gave the freedom for more people to go to rising cities and get involved in specialized trades and other types of occupation- while in the cities, they were exposed to new ideas.

Around this period, the link and influence of the church on the people also started to weaken- leading to secularism.

Individualism:

Slowly but surely, with the decline of the church powers: the old ways of doing things, the old social attitude, the old set of religious and moral beliefs were increasingly abandoned by urban populations who were conscious of living in “new times”. Increasingly those in the developing commercial cities of Europe, who were loosened from a previously church-dominated rural way of life, began to think for themselves.

Cultural relativism:

The Age of Discovery and the rediscovery of Ptolemy;s second century map AD and texts during the Renaissance period assisted in the emergence of a new awareness of different societies and cultures. Gone forever was the narrow vision of European societies as the culmination of the centre of the human world and its history- cultural relativism was powerfully reinforced by European discovery of non-western societies

We will now look at the work of two Renaissance humanists whose writings are not only important to the Renaissance culture but are also largely influenced by the factors above.

More and Machiavelli – A return to the classics?

Suryati has already described the developments of the Renaissance and how it looked back to the Classical period for inspiration. My part is to look at Machiavelli and More to see how they might in their own ways appear to be a return to the classics, where the traits of classical SPH appears once again. However, I would caution that this is a surface look at their works, for I am concerned with highlighting the ways in which they looked back to the classics for.

Firstly, by looking at More, we can see that in some ways he seemed to be challenging the Augustinian SPH. As a recap, the Augustinian SPH posits the COG vs the Earthly City, where the notion of time is linear with an end, dictated by God. This was because More looked around to the problems besetting his society, and the problems of the Christian-medieval period, which did not have any worthwhile qualities to be gleaned. Scholasticism was becoming arid with little real value to non-scholars. Therefore, we see More going back to Plato’s ‘ideal society’ which is a manifestation of the Neo-Platonist movement. He uses the Platonic Ideal society to create his vision of what the best society should be. He fuses Greek and Christian philosophies that upheld that a society can only be improved by good acts, moral leadership, sense of community and selflessness. So, classical philosophies underpinned his work.

Similarly, for Machiavelli, we can see several themes in his work which suggest that he represents a return to the classics. The Classical themes such as cyclical History, the role of Fortune, unchanging human nature and Golden Ages seem to return in Machiavelli’s work after their disappearance in the Christian philosophy does suggest that he was attempting to revive the classical SPH.

Firstly, we can see the re-emergence of the cyclical notion of history. He accepted the Polybius model of political change within a polity. He also adheres to the notion of history as an eternally recurring cycle along cosmological lines. For instance, Nisbet claims that Machiavelli ’sees in history nothing but ups and downs, cyclical returns’. Machiavelli calls his recurring sequence ‘cerchio’ which is a circle within which goverments ‘rotate’. In his model the cycle of change is thus: monarchy-> tyranny->Aristocracy->Oligarchy->Democracy-> Monarchy. In this model licenza plays an important role. Licenza stands for immoral behaviors which cause the decline of the state, where ochlocracy (mob rule) causes a democracy to decline, before it is rescued by a prince who saves the society from further degeneration. In this also, we see the existence of growth, decay and decline that mirrors the classical notion afflicting a society. Additionally, this would also mean that machiavelli seeks to imitate the past because the recurrence of History allows the individual who is aware of the past recurrences to predict and prepare for the future.

Secondly, machiavelli frequently appealed to Fortune as a concept and force that could exert

its influence on the course of History. Fortune has the ability to create situations that can be both tests and opportunities for the individual. In this way, it seems to play the role of a transcendent God and also marks a return to the role of fortune as a suprahuman agency. In fact, we can see Fortune taking the place of God in Machiavelli’s works, for God hardly makes an appearance. This shows Mach moving away from the Christian ideology and moving back to the classics.

Thirdly, Machiavelli constantly stresses that human nature is unchanging. For instance, he states that “people are and ever have been animated by the same desires and the same passions.” Such lines show that he believes in the permanence of human nature. Thus, this allows for the past to be analyzed for previous recurrences for he is confident that people will behave in the exact manner if confronted with similar situations.

Lastly machiavelli constantly looks at Rome as the Golden Age for the Italians. He constantly looks to Rome for examples and also as a model to be followed to be fitted into the contemporary society. For instance, More’s idea of the impartial regime is a derivation of the Roman ideal Republic- Miste which he attributes as responsible for the glory of Rome. This has allowed Patrick Coby to state that “machiavelli is more Roman than modern, more old than new, his political modes and orders remain chiefly an imitation of Rome”, because he utilizes Roman models and ideas into his society, to recreate that society.

Therefore, these two individuals seem to embody a SPH that looks to revive the Classical SPH, and putting the classical SPH in their own contemporary context. However, as my 2 following presenters will show, although they may have extracted these elements from Classical SPH, they utilized these elements and fashioned it into a new SPH, and they also added new elements of their own.

Thomas More & Utopia

Circumstances surrounding the composition of Utopia:

Before we revisit what aidil posited about Thomas more, it would be helpful to look at the context in which ‘Utopia’ was written as it may suggest to us an alternative interpretation of Mores’ significance. In 1515, Europe was on the brink of a new age and perhaps it is to the prevailing spirit of expectation that utopia responds. Europe had been ravaged by wars. The medieval view of a unified Christendom with the emperor as its temporal head had broken down mainly due to the Investiture Controversy. Temporal rulers and popes rival claims to supremacy caused the political structure which had characterized Europe for a millennium to collapse causing chaos. Hence by More’s day it was clear that there was no hope for a restoration of the old system hence the drive for reform through Humanist ideas as mentioned by su earlier.

Utopia the work – came in 2 sections

Book 1:criticism of the political and social abuses of his society – harsh punishments of the criminal code, the sufferings of the rural poor from the enclosing land, the incessant wars between Christian states, and materialism

Book 2: he described the society of an island Utopia

“utopia”- Not the “perfect society we define today. Rather he wished to use the contrast between the imaginary land’s unusual political ideas and the chaotic politics of his own day as a platform from which to discuss social issues of Europe and the possibility of change and reform

NEO-PLATONISM?

Aidil mentioned that More was merely imitating Plato’s classical ideas. However, to Plato the ‘ideal’ like the ‘republic’ was impossible to attain on earth because he believed that human nature can never change.

He thought that it was only possible if one were “fortunate” enough to live in a state “adapted to his nature” and that this might happen only by “happy chance” or if the “gods” allowed it. Hence it was purely theoretical as he realized that principles such as chance and divine intervention – were beyond human capacities to engineer.

More on the other hand believed that it was possible to construct and live in that ideal. This was because he believed and demonstrated that human nature could be changed through human agency – not by god or chance. Because of this as we shall now see, history is given purpose & meaning… How is this so? We shall now take a closer look at the concepts of changing human nature and human agency.

Human nature:

· More allowed for a possibility that human nature is not fixed and is a product of environment seen in the ‘social engineering in Utopia.

· The Utopians started out like More’s own society – chaotic and unruly. Laws and measures were put in place in order to ‘engineer’/ MOULD its people towards the ideal where institutions were ordered for the common good. EXAMPLE: 1)harsh sentences for adultery to prevent divorce and abhorrence to marriage which is the basis for a family which in turn is the basis of a communist society which was what Utopia was moving towards, 2) idleness eliminated with everyone devoted to productive tasks, 3) no private property hence no reason to steal or for greed.

· Therefore, unlike the classical notion of unchanging human nature where in similar situations, people will act the same way hence producing similar outcomes, in Utopia, these ‘situations’ (which encourage social problems and crimes) are removed and more importantly, measures/laws change or MOULD the way people act in these situations.

· With regards to political cycles (the inevitable cycle of constitutional change. Remember: monarchy (corrupted by power and greed) – aristocracy (jealousy and ambition) – democracy – anarchy –tyranny – monarchy) – would also be eliminated since these laws and measures could change the way people acted in situations which would otherwise result in constitutional change. In Utopia, democracy is maintained by measures laws for instance if anyone caught talking about government/politics outside the official bodies will be tried in court thus preventing people from acting out of envy or selfishness – some of the supposed unchanging human nature that causes the political cycles – because of censure. Hence by adverting the endless cycles of repetitive disaster, historical change has meaning – because an event is no longer inevitable, people now have the power to change.

Human Agency:

The change in human nature is possible largely due to human agency where the human being is seen as possessing powerful capacities of body and spirit, capable of great decisive action – not fate, god or any ‘forces’.

· In Augustinian SPH, the world was finite and history unfolded according to god’s plan for mankind and the city of god is the ultimate place that one will end up and must strive towards – the end of history – “because no amount of zealous reformism can bring about a ‘city of earth’ which fulfills the human good”. The classics similarly have a notion of ‘fate’ or ‘wheel of fortune’ driving history. Hence in both these SPH, history is controlled by forces beyond the human

- However, it can be argued that More’s Utopia is both a heavenly republic designed around Justice, Temperance, Courage and Wisdom, the four cardinal virtues and a purgatorial place where greed and the other deadly sins; sloth, lust, envy, rage, pride, and gluttony are eradicated – all through human agency in enacting and thinking of the laws and measures mentioned – no god’s hand planning for mankind or the force of fate.

- Hence here, history does not end in apocalypse and the ‘city of god’ rather, men fashion their own history and society to fulfill the human good – the common good for all.

· Applying to his own society:

Similarly, More by urging his own society to learn from utopia is implying the use of human agency – to act to fashion/think of a better world by changing structures and value systems and not wait for god or fate. In other words, history is meaningful bcos it is not repetitive or finite and people have a hand in make their own histories and are not doomed to apocalypse due to god’s plan OR the ‘wheel of fortune’ to which ensures predictable circularity.

Cultural Relativism, Learning from History and Linearity:

As a humanist, cultural relativism was part of Mores’ framework which was brought about in part due to studying classical and other societies. Hence here, looking back to the classics gave rise to a new perspective of time and history which was awareness of diff societies and cultures. Similarly for us when we study but we do not blindly imitate or subscribe to whatever ideas we learn – we take what is relevant and apply it to our context.

Unlike the universal history of the medieval Christians centered solely on the church – the only point at which history can happen – man must fulfill god’s transcendent plan like going towards the city of god. It seems to be within a ‘box’ or parameter.

More was able to separate himself from his own world (standing as a third party) and proposes his own society look and learn from a different societal model – specifically the utopians and their history of 1760 of progress. Hence there are 2 implications: 1) by looking and learning from ‘out of the box’ (unlike the Christian narrow view) there is a possibility of many histories – there is no one universal history – each history has meaning in itself and not subject to a monolithic institution like the church. 2) Additionally, there is the implication that since one can actually learn something from history, it is inherently meaningful

· No full-stops/cycles in history: This is unlike the classical notion of biological growth/ teleological principle where “there is an inbuilt end realized at the zenith of their being” – a ‘full stop’ then followed by decay or the Augustinian notion of apocalypse which is also a ‘full stop’ in history and ‘city of god’ as the zenith.

· “How one sees the future depends on how one sees the past”. By using the earlier example of the possibility of social engineering for change, More is alluding to the notion that when we look back and see that we have progressed to come to a point through certain measures/agencies, we look to the future with confidence that we can do the same things OR build on it for further progress and change. The notion of “if we progress before we can progress again.” Hence the past has meaning from which we can learn. Also in learning from the past, we progress and evolve further –implying linearity of history possibly in an infinite way PROGRESSIVE Linear

· This is a term which our group has coined to imply that linearity does not necessarily have a definite end or a ‘full-stop’. The term ‘progressive’ and ‘linear’ may seem tautological but linearity can also be regressive – societies descending into chaos like More’s own society which is contrasted against Utopia which is progressive linear.

Conclusion:

More’s Utopia had the effect of opening people’s minds to the prospect that their future history is full of possibilities limited only by their imagination and not by the Augustinian SPH or Classical SPH. More turned the eyes of men back to earth, instilled a new confidence in humans as the agents of their own history – not divine providence or the force of inevitable historical recurrence – no cycles or ‘full-stops’ and highlighted the importance of learning from the past. Hence More’s work and contribution was not a return to the classic/past, rather, it was evidence of a new shift in the way in which history and its meaning is thought about.

Machiavelli

Although an earlier argument has been made to show that Machiavelli’s works appeared to be a return to the classics, it shall now be argued otherwise. Machiavelli’s consciousness of history did not represent a period of return to the classics. The elements of his thought were a clear departure from both Classical and Christian thought. In this light, he contributed to a change in the philosophy of history.

Machiavelli and his works

Before diving straight into the subject matter, it is pertinent to look at the man himself and the context in which his works were produced. Machiavelli was born in 1469 to a noble Florentine family. He started as a clerk in the Florentine government in the period following the exile of the Medici and eventually became a Florentine diplomat. With the sudden return of the Medici to power in 1512, however, he lost his job and he was unfairly viewed as an enemy of the recently restored Medicis. After a period of torture and imprisonment, he was allowed to retire to a small farm outside Florence. There he did his reading and writing and produced The Prince and Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. In The Prince, he argued for rational and real power politics over moral standards of good and evil. In the Discourses, he argued for a strong form of government that combines the best elements of a “principality, aristocracy and democracy”. Both have been seen as ‘manuals for statecraft’.

Having thus looked at Machiavelli and his works, it will now be shown that a deeper analysis of the different elements mentioned earlier will reveal that they offered more than an imitation of the Classics.

Cyclical vs. linear history

Instead of viewing Machiavelli’s works as representing the classical notion of cyclical history, it will be argued that Machiavelli’s consciousness of history was instead, linear. This is different from what De Grazia has argued, that Machiavelli did not subscribe to a theory of recurring political cycles and therefore viewed time (and thus history) as simply chaotic. While it cannot be denied that he used the Polybius cyclical model, he did so only to propound the idea that his society can replace this cycle of regimes with a perpetual republic. In other words, the Polybian model he used was a mere metaphor. In his words, “the impartial regime might be that ‘destined place’ (loco destinato)”. This idea reflects his view of time as linear because he is arguing for a future that his present society can strive towards. It is important to note that it is not linear in the sense of an apocalypse (as in Augustinian’s City of God) because to Machiavelli, there is no end point. The ‘princes’, for him, hold the key to changing the political system and thus society, according to their ability and wishes. To also quote Trompf’s argument, Machiavelli did not represent a return to the classics because he took apart the Polybian model by removing the supernatural notion of fortune underlying the course of history.

Fortune vs. human agency

Not only has fortune become a mere metaphor for Machiavelli, he is not a fatalist in the sense that he is obsessed by fortune’s power over history. Instead, his statecraft manual constantly highlights the importance of the human agency (or the individual) over the importance of fortune. Even when fortune can intervene, men who understand the art of government better can still manage affairs better. Again, unlike the Classical period of viewing human nature as simply wicked and unruly, Machiavelli removed the moralistic aspect and argued for rational brutes to reach a common good. To him, the world is made up of the vulgar, the few and the princes and only the latter have the ability and power to drive history – hence the importance of the human agency for him over fortune.

Unchanging nature and human nature vs. other agents of change

While M might have believed in the unchanging nature and human nature, he also has other agents that can change history and so we cannot view him as simply ‘returning to the classics’. He argued that education (as in the broader sense of culture instilled in people) have the power to change people and their history. He outlined three main elements of ‘education’, that is, the law, propaganda and the character of religion. For the latter, its educative role is best transmitted in its daily rites and frequent festivals but the fundamental issue is that he had contempt for the Christian religion (although he never explicitly said so but merely omitted any references to God or the Church) and would rather point out the advantages of secular Roman paganism. Yet this does not mean he returned to the classics because above constant human nature is this ‘education’ working to diversify and solidify nature. To quote him, “Education divides us by custom and habit. (Thus) one province is virtuous and another is not.”

Golden age vs. learning from history

Likewise, to point out that Machiavelli’s use of Rome as a golden age represented a ‘return to the classics’ would be misleading because it overlooks the other aspect of his historical consciousness – that one could essentially learn from history. To merely look to a golden age would imply a desire to go back to where one comes from (and thus imply a meaningless history) but Machiavelli asserted that history is essentially meaningful. To him, history is a storehouse of experience one can learn from. He pointed out the flaw in his society in that it failed to understand or empathize the culture of the history in which they read and conclude as if nothing could be learn from it. Thus this idea of learning from the past for a better future denotes a linear view of time that is missing from the Classics.

In addition, Machiavelli introduced new elements of historical consciousness that were missing from the Classics as well as the Christian philosophy of history. His new historical consciousness was tied to the notion that history was meaningful and that the conception of time was linear.

Cultural relativity

Machiavelli criticized how people in his time failed to see the connectedness of the culture of antiquity and the Middle Ages and between both and the present; thus they also fail to learn from the past since they did not understand the ‘true sense’ or ‘spirit’ of history. He injected a consciousness of the interconnectedness of history. The significance is that he sees history as meaningful (not “history is history, full stop”) in a sense that the connectedness of history overall allows people to find lessons, guidelines and principles for the benefit of mankind.

Secularism

He also wrote that God plays no role in humankind and its history and that religion is only useful as an ideology. So to Machiavelli, there is only this life, here on earth. But this life is not fixed because it is up to individuals to fashion their own political system, using ‘education’ to change a country’s character. Hence there is always a linear view of time unlike the classics. Yet there is no linear conception of time like Augustinian’s City of God because to Machiavelli, men are not doomed and can learn from the past for a better future. If he had believed in the soul’s salvation, he would not have written a statecraft manual to argue for a glorious state here in the ‘temporal life’.

In conclusion, Machiavelli, through his works, has contributed to a new historical consciousness that is different from the Classical period. In emphasizing the possibility to achieve a stable political system by learning from ancient Rome, he has implied that history is meaningful. Likewise, he injected a linear interpretation of historical consciousness (different from the Christian period) by arguing for the importance of the role of certain individuals and the omission of Christian/Godly values.

Overall Conclusion

In conclusion, despite having some basic similarities with the classics- where the form of Machiavelli’s and More’s ideas seemed to replicate the Classical SPH, in terms of its ideas and structure, in reality the pair innovated and contributed towards a new SPH that provided an entirely new vision of history and also its direction.

Though, in Machiavelli’s case he exhibited themes which mirrored the Classics, such as Cylical History, Golden Age, growth, decay and decline, these were secondary aspects to his stress on a progressive vision of a linear history where the past had a meaning fwhere they could learn from the past, and hence determined their own future. The past may have been important, but it did not dictate the development of the future, and in this way, Machiavelli gave the individual a more important role in the passage of history.

Meanwhile Thomas More continued in the Platonic form by adapting the idea of the ‘ideal society’ into his contemporary period. By doing so, he offered a goal for his society to aspire to and further improve their life. More importantly, this goal was not fixed, for it was ever-progressing rather than a full-stop as with the Augustinian SPH. Thus, the role of Human Agency was particularly important, for More shows how the actions of the people in the Utopian past created their society in the present.

Therefore, these individuals did a lot to create a role for Human Agency in the execution of their own history. This gave greater meaning to people’s actions and also their past, because the past could be examined for lessons which could then be applied to the present, in order to fashion their own future.It was important too, the fact that these individuals suggested a progressive linear history as a possibility rather than as an inevitability as seen in the Christian SPH. Again, this puts Human Agency at the centre of History for it is up to humans to determine their own future.

Aidil, Hurul, Saddiq, Suriati

Preamble: The notion of Time
When it comes to Graeco–Roman (GR) and Judeo-Christian (JC) speculative philosophies of history (SPH), there are a lot of grounds that we can cover. Issues such as source of authority can be seen to separate the two philosophies of history. However, in this discussion, the idea of the order of time between the two will be examined.

Time can be seen as the foundation for people to make sense of history. In intercultural comparative historiography, the notion of time as a dichotomy between linear and cyclical has often been used for comparison purposes. In the case of the GR and JC SPHs, numerous scholars have argued that the different notions of time is one of the most fundamental differences between the two. According to Arnaldo Momigliano, ‘everyone agrees that the differences between cyclical view and the progressive (linear) view of time is the most important feature distinguishing the GR and the JC attitudes towards history. Hence, if the notions of time  is going to be the central issue between the two SPHs, it makes sense for us to examine it in this question to determine if it is accurate to describe the two SPHs as a dichotomy.

Thesis
It has been accepted throughout the literature of speculative philosophies of history in antiquity that GR culture, with its devotion to realities and truths outside of time and its endemic distrust of change saw time as circular, and therefore history was seen as circular, repetitive and meaningless; and that JC thoughts affirm both a beginning and an end of time and for Christianity, there is an end to history in terms of which each individual event, as well as the entire time-line has meaning. The apparent two different notions of time was seen as a dichotomy for the basis of comparison.

However, it can be argued that the distinction between linear and cyclical time does not very usefully characterise the fundamental modes of historical thinking since there is no concept of history which does not make use of both of them. (Rusen) Compartmentalising the two SPHs with respect to this dvide is by itself a problematic approach. Doing so means that the similarities and the continuities between how the Graeco Roman and the Christian view time can easily be ignored and the differences easily exaggerated. It is possible to see continuities and similarities between the GRs and the JCs, as argued by scholars such as Trompf and Nisbet. There is also the argument that it is impossible to oppose the GR notion of time to the JC notion of time by showing that there is no coherent views of time even within the GR writers.

Therefore saying that they exist in a “dichotomy” is inaccurate because this term is inadequate in embodying the relationship between the  GR and JC SPHs. The two SPHs cannot be understood as the replacement of a circular by a linear notion of time, that the ideas of time and history were not seen as logically related nor discussed in connection with each other. It is problematic to assume that there are neat and mutually exclusive views about time between the GR and JC. This is because it is one thing to draw the line in theory, it is another to find the line in practice.  In its place, we propose an alternative understanding of the relationship between the GR and JC SPHs are not static, but dynamic in their interaction (continuity).

Context: Definitions
The definition of dichotomy used in this question is “a division into two mutually exclusive or contradictory groups”. It is actually a scientific term, but has been appropriated by the humanities as well. Thus, we seek to determine its accuracy by questioning the appropriateness of the word ‘dichotomy’ in describing the SPH of the GR and JC as two clear-cut mutually exclusive circles.

The cyclical perspective of history will be taken to refer to a doctrine of eternally recurring cosmological and historical cycles. This basically means that the universe and the events in history, will repeat infinitely. To illustrate this concept, the analogy of a wheel making revolutions will be used – after one round, the wheel will pass by the same point again, for infinite times. For the JC however, time is linear – it moves forward, where the universe itself is finite. Time has a unique beginning and a unique end.

The Dichotomy
This table captures the dichotomy as perceived by scholars who argue in favour of it.
The first category is the perspective of time. For the GR, time is infinite, circular and it is a closed system of eternal recurrences governed by cosmological laws. It is natural and there is nothing that the GRs can do to get out of the cycle. For the Christians, they believe that time has a beginning and end. This stems from their religion, Judeo-Christianity. Lemon sieves out points about Augustine’s perspective of time. He said that one of the key points of the book “The City of God” is the rejection of cosmic and historical cycles endlessly recurring. The world was supposedly created in time and hence, the world was finite according to God’s plan for mankind, and thus, history is linear in time.

Next, we shall discuss the category of the perspective of history as implied through the perspective of time. With time being circular, history by extension for the GR, is repeatable and hence, meaningless in the long run because historical events are bound to repeat themselves. In contrast, history becomes unique and purposeful for the Christians because each historical event is unique in itself [no matter how similar events may get], and it contributes to the moving towards the end of time. This is reinforced by their beliefs as Judeo-Christians. Butterfield argues that for the Judeo-Christians, God’s intervention in history makes history meaningful. Both history and divinity intermixes, thus making history meaningful.

Accompanying their perspectives toward history and time are the attitudes of the GR and JC. For the GR, they adopt a fatalistic perspective – they believe that they cannot do anything else other than what they actually do since historical events are cyclical and by extension, deterministic. As for the Judeo-Christians, they are forward-looking in their perspective. Butterfield argues that it is partially the persecution of Judeo-Christians in the GR times, that reinforced the choice to put their hope in the future as a way to rationalize what was happening to them – that as time progresses, the future will be better.

As a result, the objective of writing and the style of writing history differs. To put it simply, the GR historians see themselves as “accounting” for history while the JC historians consider themselves as “witnesses” of history [as interventions by God]. To elaborate, GR writes history in order to understand how it was. Quoting from the oldest logographers, Hecataeus of Miletus said “I write the following, as it appears to me to have truly happened”. W. Den Boer also included examples of Herodotus and Thucydides writing histories that are reports of their personal investigations. They are accounting for historical events. And they do so in a humanistic way where the man takes central stage. Humanism is the attitude that is centered on human values and interests, stressing on an individual’s dignity and worth, capacity of self-realization through reason, and the rejecting supernaturalism. The focus is not on gods but rather, what man does and the rationality behind human actions. Collingwood furthers this idea by arguing that since they are focused on man, their focus for history writing is also on particular states, like Rome or Greece, thus producing particularistic historical accounts.

On the other hand, for the Christians, the objective is to understand God and his character in history. Thus, for the JC model, is about God revealing Himself and His purposes in historical events. As a result, God takes the center state in their history writing – a theistic approach.  From Boer again, he puts this across by arguing that the biblical approach of historians are more about :“how will it [things] be [future]?” In asking this question, the historian assumes that God in the past has revealed how things will be. The central figure is not the reporter [unlike the GR historians] but rather, the “God of history”. Also, since Judeo-Christianity is monotheistic, they are concerned about other cultures as people from other cultures, are too, created by God. Hence, JC’s history is a universal history, covering and incorporating all the histories of other cultures – “the whole history of mankind” as Butterfield puts it.

To summarize and put all these into a nutshell, the GR and JC’s perspectives of time can be understood through their expectations and attitudes towards life. For the GR, it was all about living for the day. On the other hand, the Christians were all about enduring for tomorrow. Their attitudes and perspective of time stem from not just their cultures and religion, it also stem from the context they were in. Historians like Collingwood, W. Den Boer and Herbert Butterfield and Augustine explored the GR and Christian SPH through grappling with the context, culture and religions of these two groups and came to a conclusion that there is indeed a dichotomy between the two SPH. What is done here, is to sieve out the dichotomies within the cyclical/linear framework of time.

Is the dichotomy really that clear-cut and simple?
The dichotomy as described above seems plausible and simple enough to understand. However, one might just ask. Are things truly so simple? Can things be so clear cut? The truth is that the perspective of time as presented above, is too monolithic and static. After all, the fact is that the GR and the Christians lived side by side and interacted with one another. Exchanges of knowledge and perceptions are bound to happen, implying that the perspective of time for both the GR and JC SPH is not monolithic nor static. The subsequent sections will hence show and substantiate why and how this model of dichotomy is inadequate and thus, inaccurate as a description of the GR and Christian model with respect to time.

Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet’s argument in his book History of the Idea of Progress challenges the dichotomy in two ways.

The Idea of Progress
Firstly, he argues that from the Greco-Roman times, there had already been an idea of progress, which implies a linear progression of time. As such, he defies the conventional view of GR SPH of time as purely cyclical. His overarching thesis states “There has always been an idea of progress – that mankind has advanced in the past – from some aboriginal condition of primitiveness, barbarism, or even nullity – is now advancing, and will continue to advance through the foreseeable future”. Nisbet also cites Irish historian J.B. Bury, “the idea of progress is a synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future – inseparable from a sense of time flowing in unilinear fashion”.

These assertions essentially reflect three general ideas; the Greco Romans had a distinct awareness of 1) a long past 2) a measured progression of the arts and sciences and of man’s estate on earth (simply put, a growth in terms of knowledge and man’s spiritual and moral nature) and 3) a future in which civilization would have gone well beyond what it was in their own time. Therefore, Nisbet and Bury argue that from the Greco-Roman times, history was viewed to be in progression, with an element of being forward looking. This appears to run contrary to the conventional view of GR SPH, as shown earlier in the table. Instead, these qualities seem to describe a JC SPH, thus contsting the dichotomy.

Nisbet supports his argument by referring to Greek and Roman philosophers and citing them to be believers in progress. He quotes Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher and poet “The gods did not reveal to men all things from the beginning, but men through their own search find in the course of time that which is better”. This was regarded as the first statement in Western history of the idea of progress and Nisbet uses it to propose the notions of a beginning, progression, and linearity of time. He emphasizes the element of progress again via another Greek Philosopher, Protagoras, whose idea of a “Story” was an account of a development of mankind. Seneca, a Roman rhetorican and writer is also given as an example. Nisbet cites Seneca: “Many discoveries are reserved for the ages still to be”, “Much remains to do; much will remain; and no one born after thousands of centuries will be deprived of the chance of adding something.” Once again, the key theme of looking towards a future with the desire to achieve something is shown through Nisbet, thus contesting the view of the GR SPH as fatalistic.

Judeo-Christianity as a fusion of Greek and Jewish concepts
Secondly, Nisbet asserts that Judeo-Christianity was a fusion of Greek and Jewish concepts, thus rendering the dichotomy problematic. He argues that the Jews viewed history as sacred, divinely guided, with a golden age on earth in the distant future while the Greeks envisioned history as a process of natural growth, with fixed stages of the advancement of knowledge and mankind. He gives the example of St Paul, who compared growth of the Church to the growth of an individual human being, thus reflecting a process that was natural (as Greeks conceived nature) and necessary (as Jews conceived divine will). Therefore, Christianity, although Jewish at the core, “was affected by, directed and oriented toward Roman life”. Clearly, the continunities from the GR SPH challenge the notion of the two SPH existing in a dichotomy.

To prove how the JC SPH contained the Greek concepts, Nisbet provides a lengthy interpretation of Augustine. He argues that Augustine supports the notion of “Christian worldliness”, quoting Augustine “what wonderful – one might say stupefying – advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation”. Thus, Nisbet asserts that the Greek strain causes Augustine to put God in a developmental, progressive light. Nisbet also argues that this was not confined to the realm of material progress, arguing that Augustine’s belief in the “Spirit of Social Reform” was influenced by the Greek idea of moral progress. Lastly, he notes Augustine’s belief that humanity as a whole should be educated as a reflection of the Greek notion of development in knowledge. As such, Nisbet’s interpretation of Augustine points towards the existence of distinctive Greek concepts in the JC SPH, which in turn suggests that the dichotomy was not static.

Therefore, Nisbet asserts that the notion of a dichotomy is a problematic one. On one level, the GR SPH is not totally cyclical; it contains the idea of progress, whereby time is viewed us linear and has a past and future. On another level, the JC SPH was a fusion of Greek and Jewish concepts, for Greek elements were evident in Judeo-Christianity. As such, Nisbet’s perspective casts serious doubts on the dichotomy.

G. W. Trompf and the Idea of Historical Recurrence
In Trompf’s book, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, he deals mainly with the recurrence patterns that can be seen in history and argues that the idea of historical recurrence is evident in both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. He further elaborates on the various notions of recurrence and his evidence shows that the dichotomy between the two thoughts can be challenged.

Historical Recurrence
‘History repeats itself’― this is an idea that is not new to us and is still commonly held today. Historical recurrence has a long history and its most familiar notion, the cyclical paradigm, is often associated with the Greco-Roman SPH. However, the idea of historical recurrence should not be confined to the cyclical paradigm only, for historical recurrence consists of other notions such as alternation, reciprocity and reenactment.

Trompf asserts that is too simple a view to equate historical recurrence to the cyclical paradigm and to understand the Greco-Roman SPH through the cyclical paradigm alone. The SPH of the Greco-Roman school appears to include more than one notion of historical recurrence. Ideas of historical recurrence are also not exclusive to the Greco-Roman SPH but can be seen in the Judeo-Christian SPH as well. This causes us to recognize the complexities involved in both views of history and to reconsider the old contrast between the Greco-Roman cyclical views of history and the Judeo-Christian linear views.

Notions of Recurrence
According to Trompf, the idea of historical recurrence is made up of a variety of notions. Some of these include the cyclical view, the alternation view, the reciprocal view and the reenactment view. The cyclical view expresses the belief that history or sets of historical phenomena pass through a fixed sequence of at least three stages, returning to what is    understood to be an original point of departure, and beginning the cycle again. The alternation (or fluctuation) view portrays a movement in history wherein one set of general conditions is regularly succeeded by another, which then in turn gives way to the first. The reciprocal view refers to the view that common types of events are followed by consequences in such a way to exemplify a general pattern in history. The doctrines that departures from a mean are continually rectified, and that good and bad actions recurrently evoke their appropriate desert, are two particular and important varieties of this view. And finally, the reenactment view holds the belief that a given action (usually taken to be of great significance) has been repeated later in the actions of others. The imitation view, which acknowledges recurrence because a person has consciously copied the actions or habits of another, is a variety of this. Thus, the idea of historical recurrence is not exhausted by the cyclical notion.

Recurrence in Greco-Roman SPH

By understanding the Greco-Roman SPH through the cyclical view would not be a comprehensive way of viewing this historical thought. Although the Greco-Roman SPH is most commonly associated with the cyclical view, the idea of historical recurrence is expressed in other forms such as the alternation and the reciprocal paradigm.

Cycles and Alternation as Paradigms of Recurrence
Greek and Roman historians, in their research into the distant past, had to consider the relative antiquity of foreign cultures, and this factor was crucial for the emergence of ideas about the rise and fall of empires. However, rise and fall can be conceived as alternation between a high point and a low point or as a three-staged process of emergence; flourishing and dissipation, could be tied in with a cluster of cyclical notions― of growth and decay, mutable fortune, or regular heavenly influences upon human affairs. Moreover, Polybius did not explicitly refer to a cyclos of historical events and the term anacyclosis that he used is the only relevant instance of cognate terminology. The example of the stages or high and low points involved in the Age theory shows that the cyclical view and the alternation paradigm are closely related and can be hard to distinguish from each other, depending on how the patterns of historical events are viewed.

Reciprocal Paradigm of Recurrence
Ancient historians documented how the principles of reciprocity were recurrently actualized in human affairs. There is an idea that when an imbalance is created in human affairs, there is a kind of “gravitational pull” in history which tends toward the reclamation of ordered, balanced, and morally better conditions. These ideas refer to history’s moral order and it was held by Polybius and other historians. It is concerned with deviations, consequences of moral excess, committed against moderation, bringing about retribution. The principles held by the reciprocal paradigm could be recurrently actualized without the irregularity and fixed stages associated with cycles and alternation.

Examples of the reciprocal paradigm can be found in Herodotus and Polybius’ works, where nations or rulers who were immoral paid for their deeds by defeat and therefore, punishment.

The Greco-Roman SPH therefore consists of various paradigms of historical recurrence and to understand the Greco-Roman SPH only through the cyclical form is not at all comprehensive.

Recurrence in Judeo-Christian SPH
It is often contended that one great legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the straight-line view of history, a view that ran from Creation to the eschatological fulfillment of God’s promises. Just because these elements exist in the Judeo-Christian thought, it should not be taken to assume that the idea of historical recurrence is absent. Contrary to this belief which stems from the idea of the dichotomy, paradigms of recurrence were not foreign to Hebrew and Christian interpretations of historical change. The reenactment and reciprocal paradigms can be found in the Judeo-Christian SPH.

Reenactment of Significant Events
Early Christian work Luke-Acts has an impressive variety of reenactment ideas. There is much reenactment of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection by the apostles and missionaries of the earliest Church, and more generally, the reenactment of significant events. These evidences of recurrence run throughout Luke-Acts and points to the idea of recurrence thinking.

There is also the reenactment of Old Testament events in New Testament. Luke’s use of the Old Testament text and his recreation of ancient atmosphere surrounding the scriptures persuade one that he sought to forge links between the momentous happenings of recent times and the previous history of Israel. The notion of historical recurrence is closely related to the idea of prophecy fulfillment.

Retributive Principles
The notions of reciprocity examined in the Greco-Roman histories are also present in Judeo-Christian SPH though the hand that drives the retributive effects may differ in the two thoughts. The Deuteronomic history interprets laws of rewards and punishments and is a history of recurring execution of appropriate recompenses, and Israel’s past was viewed through the same principles operated time and time again. The Chronicler also deals with the idea of disobedience and retribution. In the treatment of retribution, it is interesting to note that they look almost mechanical and one could almost identity it with the cyclical notion.

In Trompf’s argument, recurrence ideas are therefore evident in Judeo-Christian SPH and they can even be considered an integral part of Christian writing. With these ideas of historical recurrence, the Judeo-Christian SPH should not be seen as strictly linear and lacking of recurrence patterns.

Historical Recurrence in Both SPH
The idea of historical recurrence is thus not confined to the cyclical notion and the classical was not the exclusive bearer of recurrence ideas.

Further Remarks
Lastly, it is important to note that even amongst GR writers, there were varying attitudes towards time. GR philosophers were not forced by race or language to have only one view of time, nor were historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides and Polybius been described as having cyclical view of time (Arnaldo Momigliano).

For Herodotus, historical cycles are unknown to him. Hhe believed that there are forces which become visible only at the end of a long chain of events and these forces are ususally connected with the intervention of gods in human life and man must reckon with them. There is also in him the simple notion that men make mistakes and start wars when they should not. These convictions show nothing of a cyclical interpretation of history. He has even attributed the Persian War a unique,non-cyclical conflict between free men and slaves. For Thucydides, he perhaps had a cyclical view of history when he wrote with the aim of helping ‘whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the events which have happened and of those which will some day, in all human probability, happen again in the same or similar way’. However, while he has vaguely suggested that there will be in the future events either identical or similar to those he is going to narrate, he did not explain whether the identity or similarity between the present and the future is meant to extend to the whole of his subject – the Peloponnesian War – or parts of it. For Polybius, while he has implied a cyclical view of time in the constitutional chapters of Book VI, in the rest of his history, he operated as if he did not hold any cyclical view of history. The first and second Punic Wars are not treated as repetitions of events which happened in the remote past and will happen again in a distant future.

These three examples show that there is no comprehensive view of a cyclical notion of time within the three of the most prominent GR historians. It is questionable whether they had thought of history in a cyclical manner as the dichotomy has suggested.

The crux of the matter is this: how can there be a dichotomy between GR and JC SPHs with respect to time if the notion of cyclical time is not applied in the major GR historical writings?  This shows that there was not a universal GR view of time as a circle, as is supposed by the usual account.

Conclusion
Summing up the ‘dichotomy’, traditional literatures argued that GR culture saw time as a cyclical and therefore history as cyclical and repetitive and that JC, having affirmed both a beginning and an end of time, understood time as linear and therefore progressive. However arguments that are presented by Nisbet and Trompf show that it is problematic to view the two speculative philosophies of history as two distinctive philosophies.

Think of the two view of time as two circles. We can see elements of both cyclical and linear time in both circles. It has been shown that both GR and JC historians use both cyclical and linear time in their writings. In some cases, as argued earlier on, GR writers didn’t even apply cyclical notion of time into their writings. In such a case, can there be a dichotomy since for a dichotomy to exist, we need to see two distinctive viewpoints?

Using the example of Augustine, he was one of the proponents of the dichotomy. However, Nisbet interpreted Augustine to support his argument that there was no dichotomy. Why are there so many interpretations of Augustine?This shows that there is a difference between theory and practice – people read differently into Augustine because they are making “a special pleading”, as Lemon argued. Their interpretations of Augustine can be seen as manifestations of their practice.

Therefore, in theory, it is very easy to say that there is a dichotomy. However, as can be seen, in practice, the dichotomy is not as simple as it seems due to the overlaps and continuities.

Bibliography

Books

Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of History. Basic Books. London. 1981

Collingwood, R.G. Idea of History. Hesperides Press. Oxford. 1973

Lemon, M.C. Philosophy of History: A Guide for Students. Routledge. New York. 2003.

Nisbet, Robert A. History of the idea of  progress. New York : Basic Books. 1980.

Trompf, G. W. The idea of historical recurrence in Western thought : from antiquity to the Reformation. Berkeley : University of California Press. 1979.

Journal Articles
Boer, W.Den. “Graeco-Roman Historiography in Its Relation to Biblical and Modern Thinking”, History and Theory, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1968).

Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Time in Ancient Historiography” History and Theory, Vol. 6, Beiheft 6: History and the Concept of Time (1966): 1-23.

Lorenz, Chris. “Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives”, History and Theory, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Feb., 1999): 25-39.

Rusen, Jorn. “Some Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Historiography”, History and Theory Vol. 35, No. 4, Theme Issue 35: Chinese Historiography in Comparative Perspective (Dec., 1996): 5-22.

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Sorry this took awhile! Thanks for reading!

Huanyan, Yoke Khee, Shihui and Michelle

Why it would be difficult, IMHO, for anyone – Lemon or otherwise – to build up a speculative philosophy of history for the Greco-Roman period:

1. Length of given period. The Greco-Roman period, from the time of Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) to the time of Christ (death around 30 to 36 AD), spans about 500 years – that’s a really long time period to draw thinkers and writers from, that might have attempted to write or analyze history. So much would have happened within these 500 years to evoke differences in perceptions and worldview of a historical analyst (I am trying to refrain from using the word “historian” here since I can’t be sure all the writers saw themselves as “historians” in the modern sense of the word) from 480 BC and another historical analyst from 30 AD.

2. Writers and analysts covered. Lemon mentioned Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius – how about others? I am sure there are many more who contributed to Lemon’s Greco-Roman speculative philosophy of history even though they had no idea they were going to. If he wants to convince us, one method would be to throw mountains of evidence at us. But he didn’t, so one could argue that he only took the ideas and strains of thought from a selected few characters – he himself admitted that “[selecting] examples less than impartially” is “all the more easy to do” (44) – and chose to ignore the rest.