Karl Löwith's Meaning in History/Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen

"Das moderne Denken zehrt noch immer von beiden Sinnbildern: dem Kreuz und dem Kreis, und die Geistesgeschichte der abandländische Menschheit ist ein dauernder Versuch, Antike und Christentum zu vermitteln." (Modern thought is still drawing from both symbols: the Cross and the circle. And the intellectual history of Western humanity is a continuing attempt to mediate between antiquity and Christianity.) - Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, p. 179

Joachim of Fiore

Karl Löwith's Meaning in History first appeared in English in 1949. He reworked it for a 1953 German version, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen.Zur Kritik der Geschictsphilosophie. In it, he argues that modern Western philosophies of history are built on Christian theological assumptions about nature of history. I'm working here from the 1953 version in the Sämtliche Schriften 2.

He tells a fascinating and impressive story. However, his argument as a whole winds up being less than the sum of its parts, though the latter is substantial. He argues that the theological-teleological Christian view of history is invalid when applied to worldly history, even in the strictly secularized forms that emerged in the 19th century.

Yet he also argues that a Christian philosophy or theology of history is invalid in its own terms because  early Christianity completely rejected a concept of their religion having application to the secular world as such. That is in itself a highly contested interpretation of early Christian teaching.

Then in his conclusion he makes a argument which he articulates briefly but does not develop at length that Jewish history is the only part of world history that can validly be given a theological interpretation. Not only can but should: "eine jüdische Theologie der Geschichte möglich und innerlich notwendig ist, während eine christliche Geschichtsphlilosophie ein künstliches Gelilde ist." (A Jewish theology of history is possible and internally necessary, while a Christian philosophy of history is an artificial construction.) (p. 210) He continues directly to elaborate on the problem with such a Christian philosophy of history:

Sofern sie wirklich christlich denkt, ist sie keine Philosophie, sondern ein Verständnis geschichtlichen Handelns und Erleidens im Zeichen des Kreuzes - ohne wesentliche Beziehung auf bestimmte Völker und welthistoricsche Individuen - und sofern sie Philosophie ist, ist sie nicht christlich.

[In so far as it really thinks in a Christian way, it is no philosophy, but rather an understanding of historical acts and sufferings in the sign of the Cross - without any essential relationship to particular peoples and world-historical individuals. And in so far as it is philosophy, it is not Christian.]

He argues that "allein die Juden ein geschichtliches Volk und ein solches durch ihre Religion sind, durch den Akt der sinaitischen Offenbarung." (Only the Jews are an historical people and are such through their religion, through the act of the revelation on Sinai.) (p. 209)

Paulus Orosius

But Yahweh's revelations and visual manifestations to Moses on Mt. Sinai are neither more nor less worldly history than the Resurrection of Jesus, or the revelations of the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. If Jews are one people due to their religion, why are not Christians? Plausible answers can be found in world history in the self-definition and definition by others of the Jews as a distinct group not always fully accepted in the surrounding majority religious culture. But that wouldn't explain why only a Jewish theological theory of history would be valid.

The main argument of the book is that there is direct relationship between modern Western secular theories of history and Christian religious ones. And he explains the continuity with particular reference to St. Augustine (354-430), Paulus Orosius (c.383-c.420), Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202), Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744), Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) and Voltaire (1694-1778), along with some of the usual suspects from German philosophy: Hegel (1770-1831), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897). (If we want to nitpick, Burckhardt was Swiss.)

He also has an interesting treatment of the notion of progress as understood by Turgot (1727-1781), Condorcet (1743-1794), Auguste Comte (1798-1857), and Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865). He discusses the contrast between the ancient Greek and Roman notion of history as endless repetition with the Western notion of history as progress and development to a higher level. He notes in an appendix that Nietzsche's concept of the "eternal return" is a re-imagining of the ancient Greek concept of history. Löwith argues that Christianians initially viewed the progression of history as an interregnum of indeterminate length between the time of Jesus' life and Resurrection and the end of the world forecast in the Christian apocalyptic writings.

Later, as the Last Days seemed to be postponed into a more distant future, Christian thinkers like Augustine and his student Paulus Orosius began to speculate on stages of Christian history being enacted against the backdrop of world history. Here, Löwith's argument never resolves the tension between his contention that real Christian theology had to see worldly history (the "worldly city" of Augustine's conception) as radically irrelevant to Christian salvation history, and his account of how Christian thinkers over time incorporated Christian concepts of historical progress and meaning into their understanding of secular history.

One of his more thought-provoking arguments also creates problems for his larger argument about the invalidity of a Christian philosophy of history and its more purely secular descendants. He argues that the Jewish religious conception of history was more obviously suited to an emphasis on progress than the Christian view. Because Judaism looks forward to the historically decisive coming of the Jewish Messiah as a future event. The Christian understanding of salvation history sees history as have been fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus, but not yet completed by the Second Coming. The Christian conception fits well with an assumption the world history is unessential, irrelevant to the salvation history that occurs within the mystical Body of Christ, the fellowship of believers.

Here we come back to Löwith's flawed assumption about the radical difference between Judaism and Christianity in their views of history. The early Christians understood their faith as a continuation of the Jewish religion. And groups of Jewish Christians endured for centuries. Their influence is very apparent in the Qur'an and in Muhammad's religious vision. The clean separation he postulates between the conception of the Hebrew prophets of a divine manifestation in worldly history itself and a radically otherworldly view of human history on the part of Christians is an overstatement of the mystical element in the early history Christianity. As the Christian view of Roman persecutions as a test by God or trials permitted by God would illustrate.

Löwith makes two basic arguments against the validity of a secular philosophy of history. One is that discussed above: such philosophies of history are derived from Christian theological understandings of history, which are themselves invalid because they make a bad assumption about Christian theology. Yet even if that is so, it doesn't in itself invalidate secular theories of history that were influenced in some ways by Christian philosophies of history. Ironically, he's making a kind of Original Sin argument that because such secular theories of history emerged from Christian theories, they are fatally tainted by their intellectual heritage.

This argument is also inconsistent with his position that a Jewish theological theory of history is not only possible but necessary. But that inconsistency doesn't invalidate his fruit-of-the-poisoned-tree argument about secular philosophies of history; it just emphasis the vagueness of his argument that only a Jewish theological theory of history is legitimate.

He's on firmer ground when he argues that such historical theories can't actually predict the future:

Die Unmöglichkeit, ein progressives System der profanen Geschichte auf der Basis des Glaubens auszuarbeten, hat ihr Gegenstück in der Unmöglichkeit, einen sinnvollen Plan der Geschichte mittels der Vernunft zu entwerfen. ... Tatsächlich stellen wir seit Kriegsende Deutschlands Niederlage und Rußlands Sieg fest, Englands Selbsterhaltung und Amerikas Machterweiterung, Chinas Revolution und Japans Kapitulation. Aber was wir nicht sehen und nicht voraussehen können, das sind die geschchtlichen Möglichkeiten, die in diesen Fakten verborgen sind. Was 1943 möglich und 1944 wahrscheinlich wurde, war 1942 noch nicht offenbar und 1941 höchst unwahrscheinlich. Hilter hätte im Ersten Weltkireg oder im November 1939 oder im Juli 1944 umkommen können; er hätte auch Erfolg haben können, zumal in der Geschichte oft das Unwahrscheinlichste wahr wird.

[The impossibility of working out a progressive system of profane history on the basis of faith has its counterpart in the impossibility of designing a sensible plan of history by mean of reason. We actually know since the end of the war about Germany's defeat and Russia's victory, England's self-preservation and America's expansion of power, China's revolution and Japan's capitulation. But what we cannot see and predict are the historical possibilities that are hidden within these facts. What became possible in 1943 and probable in 1944 was still not apparent in 1942 and highly unlikely in 1941. Hitler could have perished in the First World War or in November 1939 or in July 1944. He could also have been successful, especially since it is often the case in history that the most unlikely thing comes to pass.] (p. 212)

Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

But is that really an invalidating argument? Geologists can't yet predict the timing of earthquakes. But studying past earthquakes has immensely increased our understanding of them and provided better ways to evaluate and mitigate earthquake risk. As a result, we are unlikely to see a repeat of what Löwith describes as a consequence of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, which is that it became "Anlaß zur Revision der rationalistisch Auffassung von der Vorsehung (grounds for a revision of the rationalistic concept of [historical] prediction)."  (p. 120) Such an event today would provide geologists and emergency responders new material for learning. It's doubtful that historians, sociologists or economists would find it cause to fundamentally revise their thinking.

The fact that we can't predict exactly how and when a major war will end doesn't mean that there are no laws or tendencies or trends in history that can be identified.

Tags: karl löwith