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Barash - The Sense of History, On The Political Implications of Karl Lowiths Concept of Secularization
Barash - The Sense of History, On The Political Implications of Karl Lowiths Concept of Secularization
ABSTRACT
Written during the period of his emigration to the United States, during and just after
World War II, the originality of Karl Lwiths book Meaning in History lies in its resolute
critique of all forms of philosophy of history. This critique is based on the now famous
idea that modern philosophies of history have only extended and deepened an illusion fabricated by a long tradition of Christian historical reflection: the illusion that history itself
has an intrinsic goal. This modern extension and deepening of the chimera propagated by
Christian historical reflection is what Lwith terms secularization. Drawing on the
arguments in Meaning in History as well as those proposed in other contemporaneous and
earlier writings, including Lwiths heretofore unpublished correspondence with Leo
Strauss, this article attempts to set in relief the frequently neglected, yet eminently political implications of Lwiths idea of secularization. Among the problems implicitly considered in relation to the theory of secularization in Meaning in History is a theme frequently addressed in earlier writings: the motives that led German intellectuals like
Friedrich Gogarten, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt to adhere to the Nazi movement.
In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Karl Lwith
In the preface to his book Meaning in History, written during the period of his
emigration to the United States during and just following World War II and published in 1949, Karl Lwith described the main theme of his work in the following terms:
After I had finished this small study of the large topic of Weltgeschichte and
Heilsgeschehen [world history and the advent of salvation], I began to wonder whether the
reader might not be disappointed by the lack of constructive results. This apparent lack
is, however, a real gain if it is true that truth is more desirable than illusion. Assuming that
a single grain of truth is preferable to a vast construct of illusions, I have tried to be honest with myself and, consequently, also with my reader about the possibility, or rather the
impossibility, of imposing on history a reasoned order or of drawing out the working of
God.1
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acter of the task that Lwith set out to accomplish in it. Indeed, in Meaning in
History Lwith intended to demonstrate not only the illusory character of past
attempts to impose a reasoned order on history or to grasp in it the hidden work
of God; his purpose was to show that all of these different attempts to make sense
of history themselves constitute an ordered pattern. If Lwith consistently resisted any temptation to interpret this order in terms of a philosophy of history, he
nonetheless assumed that the great attempts to make sense of historical development configure a single coherent movement. For Lwith, the tacit meaning of
this historical movement, although hidden to those thinkers who traditionally
sought a Divine or reasoned order in history, became identifiable only at the
moment of its completion in the twentieth century. It is precisely this tacit pattern, as it emerged in the historicity of Western thought about history, that Lwith
interpreted in relation to an age-old process of secularization. What had above
all become secularized since the beginning of the Christian era was the quest for
historical meaning in the form of a final historical purpose.
In the pages that follow I will examine Lwiths paradoxical claim to have
grasped a historical pattern or, in other words, a connecting link between the
predominant conceptions of history in different periods which, from Antiquity
onward, constitute a coherent movement in the general interpretation of history.
If it can no longer be a question of a divine or reasoned teleological order,
but of a hidden tendency toward secularization which first became intelligible in
the twentieth century, what exactly could have been Karl Lwiths intention in
seeking to identify this tendency?
In regard to the possibility of deriving a constructive result from his analyses, Lwith confessed that his ambition was quite modestto the point that he
even feared disappointing his reader. To my mind, this same modesty in the
attempt to produce constructive results accounts for his hesitancy to buttress his
conclusions by drawing more explicitly on the political assumptions of this work,
which are either kept in the background or are not submitted to examination.2
Nevertheless, these same political assumptions are clearly expressed in other earlier or contemporary works.
In the analysis of Karl Lwiths thought which I will undertake in the following essay, my main purpose will be less to impute a philosophy of history to him
than to place in relief, in relation to the political assumptions of his concept of
secularization, the profound quest which may already be gleaned from the para2. In my opinion it is precisely Lwiths discretion concerning the political ramifications of his
idea of secularization that accounts for a certain confusion in Hans Blumenbergs analysis, in
Legitimitt der Neuzeit, of Lwiths interpretation of this historical phenomenon. Since emphasis
placed on the role of secularization would seem to presume that modern times are merely an offshoot
of Christianity, Blumenberg criticized the use of this concept by Lwith and other authors for placing
in doubt the legitimacy of modern times on their own terms. Among the authors criticized for their
use of the concept of secularization, Blumenberg includes Carl Schmitt who, while voicing the
strongest expression of secularization theorem, nonetheless represents a similar tendency. On the
contrary, Lwiths concept of secularization, as I will have occasion to demonstrate below, engages a
particularly sharp critique of the decisionist theory of Carl Schmitt. See Hans Blumenberg, Legitimitt
der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 35-41, 102.
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doxical title of the work, the search for lines of continuity between the past and
the present which permit us to elucidate, in the context of the twentieth century,
the contours of our own identity. In adumbrating the political implications of
Lwiths historical thought, I will attempt to show the way in which his thought
might provide insight into our own situation in the aftermath of the ideologically-charged clashes of twentieth-century philosophies of history.
My analysis will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus directly on
the idea of a historical pattern that emerges in the midst of the historicity of
Western ideas of history and that leads, in the modern period, to an increasing
secularization of thought. My analysis in the second part will draw out the political presuppositions of Lwiths reflection in order to examine the implications
of this reflection in its twentieth-century context.
I
Anyone who has read Meaning in History will recognize the broad lines of interpretation of Western historical thought that are developed in this work. According
to this book, Western historical thought is rooted in the original Christian experience of time, which distinguished itself from the type of cosmological interpretation of historical time, modeled on the cyclical ebb and flow of natural
events, that characterized ancient Greek speculation. The shift inaugurated by the
early Christians in relation to this ancient experience of historical time occurred
with the emergence of Christian eschatological faith for which history, far from
turning eternally in a circle, opens out to the future and orients itself in terms of
a goal: toward the eschaton in the guise of the end of the world and of the last
judgment.3
According to Lwiths well-known argument in Meaning in History, the modern idea of history extends this original Christian experience of historical time by
its tacit assimilation of the idea of an orientation in the lines of continuity
between different historical epochs. This assimilation becomes manifest through
the profound affinity in the interpretation of historical time as development
toward a goal that persists amid all the changes in Christian thought and then
dominates the modern idea of history. In this movement, however, it is less a matter of a simple prolongation of the Christian idea of historical time than of its
reconfiguration: while the Christian idea of historical time is the source of the
modern conception of progress, this modern conception could only come to predominance by undermining its original Christian inspiration. It is this tendency
3. Wilhelm Dilthey advances a similar argument in Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften,
Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart, 1973), I, 254-267, 334, 349. Diltheys interpretation of the contribution of Christianity to the development of Western historical consciousness, above all through Saint
Augustines idea of the advent of salvation, provided a target for sharp criticism by the young Martin
Heidegger in his course lectures of 1921, Augustinus und der Neuplatonismus. Heidegger,
Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), LX, 159-173. Although Lwith attended these lectures,
the critical analysis of Western historical thought that he developed in Meaning in History had a very
different aim.
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Lwith writes, the Christian truth itself has, like the logos of Hegel, a temporal
setting in its successive developments. With Augustine and Thomas, the
Christian truth rests, once and for all, on certain historical facts; with Joachim the
truth itself has an open horizon and a history which is essential to it.7 Moreover,
far from indicating a progression of the human spirit, the later reception of this
idea of the advent of the epochs of Christian truth provided the surest evidence
of the decline of Christian spirituality toward the modern philosophies of history.
The future reception of Joachims theological historism would propel this
decline by representing the advent of salvation in terms of a periodization of
world history. Here the supernatural intervenes directly in the field of human history, as the advent of salvation develops in the midst of three great historical
epochs: the Age of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This brings an
entirely new mode of historical interpretation to the fore, namely in relation to
the sharp doctrinal distinction between the civitas dei and the civitas terrena in
the thought of St. Augustine. Joachims followers and interpreters projected the
early Christian motif of the coming of salvation, subsequent to the overthrow of
the order of this world, directly onto the development of human secular history;8
in this manner they intended to turn a critical eye toward the worldly power of
the medieval Church. Claiming to extrapolate from the teachings of Joachim as
well as of St. Francis of Assisi, this movement mixed messianic Christianity with
the radicalism of political demands that the Church condemned as heretical.
Yet, to Lwiths mind, the heritage of this movement was particularly fateful.
In a footnote Lwith recalls the fascination it elicited throughout the centuries up
until the contemporary period. This fascination was reflected by the enormous
influence of the book of Ernst Kantorowicz, Friedrich II, with its theme of a messianic mission bequeathed to a secret Germany by the struggles of the fourteenth centuryuntil the utter profanation of this mission by Adolf Hitler.9
Another footnote recalls the persistence among the fascist ideologues of themes
borrowed from this movement.10 In an astonishing passage at the very end of the
chapter in Meaning in History dealing with Joachim, Lwith included the following lines which, in a book so politically discreet, are surprisingly charged
with political significance:
The revolution which had been proclaimed within the framework of an eschatological
faith and with reference to a perfect monastic life was taken over, five centuries later, by
a philosophical priesthood, which interpreted the process of secularization in terms of a
spiritual realization of the Kingdom of God on earth. As an attempt at realization, the
7. Ibid., 156. The German translation, which Lwith supervised, reinforces this interpretation by
referring not to a history which is essential to truth but to truths essential historicity (wesentliche
Geschichtlichkeit), Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, 170.
8. Lwith refers here to the interpretation and distortion of Joachims theological doctrine to political ends in the fourteenth century, notably by Cola di Rienzo. As Lwith explains, this later interpretation goes far beyond Joachims original theological intentions.
9. Ibid., 245.
10. Ibid.
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spiritual pattern of Lessing, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel could be transposed into the positivistic and materialistic schemes of Comte and Marx. The third dispensation of the
Joachites reappeared as a third International and a third Reich, inaugurated by a dux or a
Fhrer who was acclaimed as a savior and greeted by millions with Heil! The source of
all these formidable attempts to fulfill history by and within itself is the passionate, but
fearful and humble, expectation of the Franciscan Spirituals that a last conflict will bring
history to its climax and end.11
II
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ner (ganz unhistorisch); this critique of historical modes of reflection did not,
however, warrant for him the positing of a human nature in the Straussian
sense, patterned on a given idea of this nature as it had functioned in ancient
Greek philosophy. As Lwith wrote in this same letter composed on the eve of
Hitlers accession to power, which is of great help in clarifying his philosophical
orientation well beyond the year 1933:
I thus think in a more historical manner than you do, since the historicity of reason has
become self-evident for me, and at the same time, on that very ground, in a less historical
manner, since I constantly accord to the present, in the perspective of the future, an
absolute historical right. You, however, absolutize a history that is no longer our history,
and substitute an absolute Antiquity for an absolute Christianity. You ask: what is humanity and what has become of itI begin by formulating the question in this same way,
arrive however at the factical (faktische) conclusion: that is not the way we are and
what can still become of humanity!14
In my opinion, if Lwiths conception of the lines of continuity between different historical epochs distinguishes itself from the post-Hegelian philosophies
both of progress and of decline, this is due less to a precise model of cosmological time than to another concern, directly related to the dilemma of Lwiths
own present time. It is this dilemma which, since the period of his emigration in
1934, he constantly had to face. If Lwith sought a line of continuity between the
Christian quest for salvation and the modern philosophies of history, it was above
all in order to comprehend the link between historical ideas and totalitarian
movementsprincipally Nazism. For this reason, in a number of writings prior
to and contemporaneous with Meaning in History, reflection concerning this link
serves as a means for understanding the human situation in the twentieth century. Directly in relation to this link to the present time, Lwith engages the radically historical consciousness aiming toward the future overcoming of the present.
This aspect of Lwiths work comes to light above all in his writings on the
posterity of the Hegelian projection of salvation onto the secular historical world.
In Meaning in History, as in other contemporaneous essays such as The
Dynamics of History and Historicism (Die Dynamik der Geschichte und der
Historismus), Lwith extended his analysis of Hegelian philosophy as the culmination of a tendency tacitly present in the age-old Christian tradition. This
analysis focused on Hegels famous words : World history is the tribunal of the
world (Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht).15 As Hegel himself wrote, this
judgment represented a transposition of the Christian last judgment (jngster
Gericht) into the secular sphere. In this sense, world history is the tribunal of the
world embodies the movement of secularization that the Hegelian philosophy of
history brings to fulfillment. Yet it is not only due to the line of continuity it
14. Unpublished letter from Karl Lwith to Leo Strauss, 8 January, 1933, Leo Strauss archive,
University of Chicago. I would like to thank Professor Joseph Cropsey for permission to quote from
this letter.
15. Lwith, Meaning in History; Die Dynamik der Geschichte und der Historismus [1952],
Smtliche Schriften, II, 308.
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reveals in the movement of world history that this phrase proves especially
important for Lwith. Beyond the shift it indicates in the passage from the opacity of divine judgment ushering in the end of history to the rationalization of
human history, this phrase is of decisive significance for Lwith because of the
critical perspective it lays bare. This perspective most concerns contemporary
German assumptions about historicityparticularly fateful in their consequenceswhich constitute the principal legacy of Hegels thought.
In his commentary on this legacy, in The Dynamics of History and
Historicism and several years later, in Man and History (Mensch und
Geschichte), Lwith focused his criticism on Wilhelm Dilthey, noting that for
him, even more directly than for Hegel, world history is the tribunal of the
world.16 History is the tribunal of the world in the sense that success in the
sphere of world history is the ultimate criterion of truth. Viability in history
becomes the principle that decides the legitimacy of all truth claims as such. This
is the ultimate result of the millennial march of secularization, which tends to
disregard all supernatural claims to truth, since the validity of such claims, in
their independence of this world, cannot be judged in terms of the values that predominate in it.
In the essay Man and History Lwith once again cited the phrase of Hegel,
world history is the tribunal of the world, but this time in relation to a critique
addressed both against Dilthey and, even more fundamentally, against Marx.
According to Lwiths argument, the Marxian theory of ideologies inaugurated
the tendency to evaluate truth solely in terms of its historical efficacy (a tendency which would predominate, albeit for a very different purpose, in Diltheys historicism).17 For the Marxian theory of ideology, there are no criteria of truth independent of the historical process, since all truth criteria are expressions of a historical context configured by the material conditions of production. As ideologies
tacitly express the particular interests of given classes, only the proletarian revolution capable of abolishing classes and the particularity of their interests would,
through the process of history, overcome this particularity in establishing universally valid criteria of truth. In presupposing that this outcome is the necessary
result of the historical process, the Marxian theory of ideologies tacitly extended
the Hegelian assumption that world history is the tribunal of the world, while
transforming the very notion of philosophical truth itself. Where Hegel presupposed the absolute character of such truth, the Marxian notion of ideology, in
deriving truth criteria from material conditions of production, reduced all truth
claims advanced in a class society to mere instruments of political action to be
evaluated in light of their relation to the ultimate revolutionary goal.
Even more prominently than to Diltheys historicism, Lwith assigned an
especially important role to this Marxian transformation of Hegels philosophy
of history into an instrument of political action. In writings of the 1930s written
16. Lwith, Die Dynamik der Geschichte und der Historismus, Smtliche Schriften, II, 308;
Lwith, Mensch und Geschichte [1960], Smtliche Schriften, II, 368.
17. Lwith, Mensch und Geschichte, Smtliche Schriften, II, 368.
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much earlier than Man and History and even than Meaning in History, Lwith
considered the tacit extension and distortion of this Marxian theory to underlie
the decisionist theories of Carl Schmitt, Friedrich Gogarten, and Martin
Heidegger. All three of these authorsthe jurist, the theologian, and the philosopheracting on the conviction that all past historical traditions were in decline
and could no longer be considered to be a source of truth, identified resolute decision in the face of nothingness as the sole foundation of the legitimacy of truth.
And, after 1933, the call for resolute decision in the theories of all three of these
authors led to political activism in favor of the Nazi movement.
But how can decisionism be a development of the Marxian idea that truth criteria are historically configured? That is, what allows us to situate the respective
positions of these three authors in the movement of historical reflection as
Lwith conceived of it? Clearly, as witnessed by the accent placed on individual
decision in the context of cultural decline, the political orientations of Heidegger,
Schmitt, or Gogarten radically opposed the liberalism of Dilthey and Marxian
communism. It is true, of course, that fascism and Nazism both tacitly appropriated certain aspects of the Marxist legacy: Mussolini began his political career as
a socialist before World War I and, as Ernst Bloch was one of the first to note,
fascism and Nazism attempted to combat Marxism by co-opting certain of its
claims and symbols.18 Nonetheless, this in itself would hardly provide sufficient
support for the assertion that the decisionist theories are an ultimate outcome of
a long tradition of secularization of the Christian sources of historical thought.
Indeed, the decision concerning the criteria of political sovereignty according to
Schmitt, of the sense of being of Dasein for Heidegger, or of Christian faith out
of nothingness for Gogarten would seem to derive from anything but traditional Christian eschatology or from Lwiths notion of its secularized expression
tacitly embodied in Marxian or liberal assumptions concerning history as a
movement toward an ultimate goal. This is a crucial and admittedly difficult point
in Lwiths analysis. It is rendered still more problematic by the paucity of
explicit analysis of this theme, to which Lwith merely alludes in Meaning in
History.19 Yet I believe that it is in interpreting the striking affinities between
Lwiths analysis of the movement of historical reflection in this work in relation
to his analysis in an earlier article of the 1930s, entitled The Occasional
Decisionism of Carl Schmitt, that the profoundly political implications of
Lwiths interpretation of secularization come to light.
The early but seminal article entitled The Occasional Decisionism of Carl
Schmitt was initially published in 1935 as a critique of Carl Schmitt and later
rewritten and expanded to include critical analysis of Heidegger and Gogarten.
Where in Meaning in History Lwith attempted to link the perverse messianism
of twentieth-century fascist movements with a distortion of earlier historical
reflection that had found one of its culminating points in the Marxist theory of
18. Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit [1935] (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 70-75; translated as
Heritage of Our Times by N. and S. Plaice (Berkeley, 1990), 64-69.
19. See below.
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nung (Gesammelte Schriften, Band V, 2 [Frankfurt am Main, 1959], 1612). It is tempting to interpret
the idea of history presented in Meaning in History as a reaction to Blochs portrayal of the relation
between Marxism and Christianity in his earlier work Erbschaft dieser Zeit [1935] (Heritage of Our
Times). In this work, Bloch had already underlined the central role of the historical messianism of
Joachim of Floris for the development of later social movements. Blochs analyses are of particular
interest in relation to Lwiths theories, since they develop a number of assumptions which, in modifying orthodox Marxist doctrines, elaborated an idea of history diametrically opposed to that of
Lwith. Indeed, where for Bloch fascism incorporatedand pervertedcertain aspects of Marxist
philosophy that were in themselves legitimate, the major mistake of orthodox Marxism arose from its
inability to integrate and demystify the religious aspirations that, over the past centuries, have constantly nourished social demands. Thus, after praising the role of Joachim of Floris, Bloch wrote the
following passage in which he emphasized for the success of the Marxist program the importance of
appropriating the religious heritage : There will be no successful attack on the irrational front without dialectical intervention, no rationalization and conquest of these areas without its own theology,
adjusted to the always still irrational revolutionary content. (Erbschaft dieser Zeit, 154; English translation, 139). For Lwith, completely to the contrary, the idealism of Marxism results from the fact
that the aspirations of faith tacitly orient its social program. It is this secularization of an earlier religious promiseone that was doomed to be betrayedwhich for Lwith exhibits the hidden affinity
between Marxism and the Fascist programs which distort its fundamental principles.
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23. Carl Schmitt, Vorbemerkung zur zweiten Ausgabe Politische Theologie [1933] (Berlin,
1985),7.