Substance & Form in History 0852244134

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SUBSTANCE AND FORM I N HISTORY

A Collection of Essays in Philosophy of History

EDITED BY

L.POMPA

AND

W.H.DRAY

FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH PRESS

Contents List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements 1.

© 1981 EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY P RESS 22 George Square, Edinburgh ISBN 0 85224 413 4

Set in Monotype Plantin and printed in Great Britain by Clark Constable Ltd Edinburgh

vu ix xn

Note on Alleged Relativism in Eighteenthcentury European Thought Isaiah Berlin

2. Kant's Philosophy of History

R. F. Atkinson

15

3. History and Morality in Hegel's Philosophy of History

Patrick Gardiner

27

4. Dialectic and Necessity in Hegel's Philosophy of History

Leon J. Goldstein

42

5. Psyche and Geist in History

Dennis O'Brien

58

6. Convertibility and Alienation

Nathan Rotenstreich

77

7. Collingwood's Doctrine of Absolute Presuppositions and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge

Rex Martin

89

8. Is Speculative Philosophy

CD \

'-..:> {

~

oo

Louis 0 . Mink

IO?

J.L.Gorman

120

J.R.Lucas

133

11. History as Patterns of Thought and Action

P.H. Nowell-Smith

145

12. Colligation Under Appropriate Conceptions

W.H.Dray

156

13. Truth and Fact in History

Leon Pompa

171

of History Possible?

'J

9. Precision in History IO .

UNIVERSITY OF YORK LIBRARY

Historian Malgre Moi

Bibliography of Published Writings of W. H. Walsh

187

Author index

195

Subject index

197

List of Contributors Sir Isaiah Berlin Professor R.F.Atkinson P. Gardiner Professor L. J. Goldstein Professor D. O'Brien Professor N. Rotenstreich Professor R.Martin Professor L. 0. Mink

J. L. Gorman J. R. Lucas Professor P.H. Nowell-Smith Professor W. H. Dray Professor L.Pompa

All Souls College, Oxford University of Exeter Magdalen College, Oxford State University of New York at Binghamton Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The University of Kansas, Lawrence Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut The Queen's University of Belfast Merton College, Oxford York University, Ontario University of Ottawa, Ontario University of Birmingham

Preface This Festschriftis in honour of Professor W. H. Walsh. Its focus is philosophy of history, a field in which his eminence is internationally acknowledged, but so many are the areas of philosophy in which he has achieved equal renown that it could as appropriately have comprised a volume of essays on the thought of Kant or Hegel, or in ethics, metaphysics or the history of metaphysics. It is unusual for a scholar to attain genuine international recognition over such a wide range of subjects and almost impossible to do justice to it in a single volume. It is our hope, however, that while centred in philosophy of history, the volume will be seen to relate its problems to those of other areas of philosophy in the way in which its dedicatee has done with such distinction in his own work. William Henry Walsh - Richard, as he is known to his friends -was born in 1913. Educated at Bradford and Leeds Grammar Schools, he gained a Classical Exhibition in 1932 at Merton College, Oxford, thus beginning a life-long connection with the College. His undergraduate career there was highly successful: having been awarded the Gaisford Greek Prize and a First in Honours Mods in 1934, he went on to take a First in Greats in 1936 and won a Junior Research Fellowship at the College in the same year. Although his equal facility in history and philosophy had left him at first undecided between these two subjects, by the time he took up his Research Fellowship it was clear that the formative influence of his distinguished tutor, G. R. G . Mure, had turned the focus of his interests towards philosophy, giving him a special feeling for the work of Kant, Hegel and the British Idealists, particularly that of Merton's own former Fellow, F.H.Bradley. In 1938 he married Trixie (nee Pearson) whom he met when she was studying French as an Exhibitioner at St Hilda's College. Her own passionate belief in academic values has afforded him constant support in his own research. Their three children, Catharine, Stephen and Polly, inherited their abilities and interests, going on themselves to study philosophy and modern languages at university. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the tenure of his fellowship, at a time when he was primarily engaged in a study of Kant. During the war he served first in the Signals Corps and then, from 1941-5, in the Foreign Office. Upon his return to Merton in 1946, his specialised research on Kant gave way to a more general concern with the various ways in which metaphysicians have sought to make sense of the notion of experience as a whole, resulting in his first book, Reason and Experience. After a brief spell as Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee ( 1946-7 ), his connection with Merton was re-established when he was appointed Fellow and Tutor of the College and Lecturer in the University of Oxford. Thus began the first of the two main periods into which his teaching career has fallen. He remained at Merton continuously until 1960,

x

Preface

with the exception of the year 1957-8, when he w~s Visiting.Professor at the State University of Ohio. Despite heavy teaching comnutmen:s - often around twenty hours a week - as well as administr~tiv~ tasks for his College, he produced an almost continuous st:eam ~f ~ubhcati?ns :hroughout these years. It was in this period also tha.t his ~arher intere~t in history resurfaced, leading first to a series of lectures in philos.ophy of history - Professor R. ~ . Atkinson recalls, in a personal letter, that it was these that first aroused his own interest in the subject, and there are many others w.ho would say the same-and then to the publication of An Introduction ~o PJ~ilos?phy of History in 1 9 r. Thirty years and two editions later, not on~y is this still the sta.n~ard 5 work of its kind in English, but it continues to stimulate more s~eciah:ed work in this field, many detailed monographs still reverting to and discussing ~

h The second period of his teaching career began in 19~0, w.hen e ~as appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphy~ics at the Urn.versity of ~di.n­ burgh. His tenure of this Chair coincided with the expansion. of the sixties and the retrenchment of the seventies. As Professor and ro:aui:ig Head ?f.a large department, he found himself inevitably drawn heavily into administration. Apart from his periods as Head of th: Derartmen:, he was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Chairman of the Urnversity ofEdinb:irgh Pre~s Committee (a circumstance that necessitated delaying the planrung o~ this volume until he had retired from the University), a member of the Urnversity Court, one of the Curators of Patronage - a ?ody empowere~ to make recommendations for the appointment to the Vice-Chancellorship - and, from 1975-9, one of the University's three ,Vice-Prin~ipals. Despite these and many other administrative tasks, he still found time to teach .for an average of twelve hours a week, while attending to the needs of his own department and of his research. . . When he first arrived in Edinburgh, the teaching of philos?phy was divided along traditional Scottish lines into two central areas, falling under the supervision of the Professor of Moral Philoso~hy and the Pr.of:ssor of Logic and Metaphysics. This division was aca~erru~ally :oo ~estncting and one of his first undertakings was, in consultation with his .fn:n~, the then Professor of Moral Philosophy, Winston H. Barnes, to modify it in favour of a more flexible structure which enabled both staff and students. t? pursue more easily the systematic connections that run across the divisions. of philosophy. Another important deve~opment wa.s to strengthen t_he teachin.g of logic, an area of philosophy previously relati~ely neglected ~n the Urnversity. A third was to alter the balance of teaching methods, hit~er~o.con­ sisting largely oflectures and seminars, mor~ towards the n~eds of.individual students by placing much more emphasis upon tutorials. Finally, the number ~f post-graduate students was much increased and new programmes of graduate work introduced. . . . Teaching, administration, membership of the Editona~ Boards of such journals as Kant-Studien and History and Theory, and incessant ad hoc

PREFACE xi advisory work, constituted in themselves a heavy enough load. Nevertheless his academic output was fully maintained in these years . Apart from a steady flow of articles and papers delivered to international conferences, three books, Metaphysics, Hegelian Ethics and Kant's Criticism of Metaphysics were published in 1963, 1969 and 1976, respectively, these reflecting three of the dominant themes with which he has continuously been concerned. Metaphysics, which continued to grapple with the problem posed in Reason and Experience, was written as a defence of that branch of philosophy, at a time when it was fashionable to question its very existence. Hegelian Ethics, apart from being a contribution to Hegelian studies, expresses his own view that a satisfactory understanding of the moral life must take into account the concrete social and historical context in which the agent finds himself, rather than seek to find an essence of morality which can be grasped in abstraction from it. With Kant's Criticism of M etaphy sics a longstanding ambition was fulfilled: to present an account of Kant's doctrines which, while sensitive to the difficulties and obscurities of the text of the Critique of Pure Reason, would show, by critical discussion, the on-going philosophical worth of Kant's work. Recognition of the academic value of his work was expressed in a series of honours conferred on him during these years. In 1963 he was the Dawes Hicks Lecturer in the British Academy. In 1964-5, he was President of the Aristotelian Society. In 1969 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy. In 1978 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and, in the same year, the University of Rochester conferred an Honorary Doctorate upon him. His standing in the U.S.A. was, indeed, such that he also spent periods of varying length there teaching, at Dartmouth College in 1965, at the University of Maryland, 1969- 70, and, upon his retirement from Edinburgh, at the University of Kansas as the Rose Morgan Visiting Professor, 1979-80. In 1979 he retired from Edinburgh University as Professor Emeritus and returned to Merton, where he is now Fellow Emeritus of the College. It is not, however, in his nature to be inactive and already in 1979 he had helped to found the Hegel Society of Great Britain, of whose Council he is now a member. In addition he has completed work on an anthology of selected essays, some of which are previously unpublished. He is now about to undertake a long-term project for which his background and abilities perfectly suit him: a study of the Oxford Idealists, particularly his own distinguished predecessor at Merton, F. H.Bradley. Its completion will be awaited with eager anticipation. Richard Walsh has never been a fashionable philosopher in the sense of being prepared to allow his interests to be too much determined by current trends in philosophy. Although always well aware of what these were, he has nevertheless pursued his research according to his own evaluation of what is important in the subject. This has had the consequence that whereas, in the case of philosophy of history, his work has been the object of much attention

xii

. Preface be:ause It has coincide~ with current interests, in the case of histor of ph~los~hy or m~taphys1cs, due to their comparative neglect until rece1tly it as een stu~ed largely by those who share his belief that most of th~ p~o?lems of i:hilosoph~ are of perennial interest. For them, however and t e1r number is large, his work has served as an ins irin ' the prevailing philosophical climate has seemed ~syi!pea~~~~leand, when c, a constant support.

~ =chrift;o.n~urs i!s subject. At the same time it affords pupils, friends rers o d1~tm~wshed scholars the great pleasure of ex ressin . an ~ r:~~~ie anf ~dmirat1~n publi