Meaning in History

I’ve finally returned to and finished Karl Löwith’s book, Meaning in History. I’ve already talked about this book twice so I won’t say much more. I do, however, want to provide a quote (or two) from each chapter to give people a feel of what Löwith was trying to do with this book. It might seem boring but I promise that the quotes are worth a read :)

Preface:

…nations can be hypnotized into the belief that God or some world-process intends them to achieve this or that… but there is always something pathetic, if not ludicrous, in beliefs of this kind.

…religious faith is so little at variance with skepticism that both are rather united by their common opposition to the presumptions of a settled knowledge.

Introduction:

…the term “philosophy of history” is used to mean a systematic interpretation of universal history in accordance with a principle by which historical events and successions are unified and directed toward an ultimate meaning.

Buckhardt:

Marx:

The Communist Manifesto is, first of all, a prophetic document… It is not by chance that the last antagonism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat correspond to the Jewish-Christian belief in a final fight between Christ and Antichrist. …that the task of the proletariat corresponds to the world-historical mission of the chosen people.

Hegel:

The occidental conception of history, implying an irreversible direction toward a future goal, is not merely occidental. It is essentially a Hebrew and Christian assumption that history is directed toward an ultimate purpose and governed by the providence of a supreme insight and will – in Hegel’s terms, by spirit or reason as “the absolutely powerful essence.”

Progress versus Providence:

…man has to replace God, and the belief in human progress has to supplant the faith in providence.

The Christian Hope in the Kingdom of God is bound up with the fear of the Lord, while the secular hope for a “better world” looks forward without fear and trembling.

Voltaire:

…the modern religion of progress [is] an irreligion; for it is a belief in man’s perfectibility… And yet the irreligion of progress is still a sort of religion, derived from the Christian faith in a future goal, though substituting an indefinite and immanent eschaton for a definite and transcendent one.

Vico:

For man, perfect demonstrable knowledge is attainable only within the realm of mathematical fictions, where we, like God, are creating our objects. [...] We can know something about history, even the most obscure beginnings of history, because… this world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles can and must therefore be found within the modifications of our own human mind.

Joachim:

His expectation of a last providential progress toward the fulfillment of the history of salvation within the framework of the history of the world is radically new in comparison to the pattern of Augustine. Augustine never indulged in prophetic predictions of detailed and radical changes within the temporal order.

Augustine:

Only by this reference to an absolute beginning and end has history as a whole meaning.

…the whole scheme of Augustine’s work serves the purpose of vindicating God in history. Yet history remains definitely distinct from God, who is not a Hegelian god in history but the Lord of history.

The Biblical View of History:

…the biblical view of history is delineated as a history of salvation, progressing from promise to fulfillment and focused in Jesus Christ.

Even the articulation of all historical time into past, present and future reflects the temporal structure of the history of salvation.

Conclusion:

…faith in history was to [Burckhardt], as to Dilthey, Troeltsch and Croce a “last religion.”

History, instead of being governed by reason and providence, seems to be governed by chance and fate.

Epilogue:

The attempt at elucidation of the dependence of the philosophy of history on the eschatological history of fulfillment and salvation does not solve the problem of our historical thinking.

…the question arises of whether man’s living by expectation agrees with a sober view of the world and of man’s condition in it.

Appendix:

There would be no American, French and no Russian revolutions and constitutions without the idea of secular progress towards fulfillment without the original faith in a Kingdom of God…