The Concept of History 9781474269117, 9781474269148, 9781474269124

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The Concept of History

Also available from Bloomsbury Philosophy of History After Hayden White, edited by Robert Doran Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert Full History, Steven Smith

The Concept of History Dmitri Nikulin

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Dmitri Nikulin, 2017 Dmitri Nikulin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:

HB: 9781474269117 PB: 9781350064898 ePDF: 9781474269124 ePub: 9781474269131

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nikulin, D. V. (Dmitriæi Vladimirovich), author. Title: The concept of history : how ideas are constituted, transmitted and interpreted / by Dmitri Nikulin. Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016017960 (print) | LCCN 2016038065 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474269117 (hardback) | ISBN 9781474269124 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474269131 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: History--Philosophy. Classification: LCC D16.8 .N477 2016 (print) | LCC D16.8 (ebook) | DDC 901--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017960 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

This book originated in a simple question that Ágnes Heller and I once discussed at length: if we had to choose, what would we have liked to be preserved of us once we are not physically present here anymore—an imageless name or an anonymous image? I dedicate this work to her—dear friend, wise colleague, and passionate interlocutor.

Contents Prefaceviii Acknowledgmentsxiii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The structures of history Early history The epic of history The Homer galaxy The logos of history Memory and history The genealogy of history

1 21 45 73 99 119 151

Conclusion173 Notes175 Bibliography209 Index225

Preface History is one of those subjects about which everyone seems to have an opinion. In this respect, history differs from mathematics and science, yet appears similar to art, morality, and politics. Ongoing conversations about these subjects that can be shared by everyone pervade both the public sphere and our most intimate personal experiences. In a sense, then, interest in history is “universal,” even if a universal history might not exist. History, however, is considered differently at different times and epochs, which themselves seem to be defined by a particular understanding of history. No wonder that “history” is a pluri-vocal term and has a broad range of meanings. This makes writing about history both a difficult and compelling task that calls for clarification of the (or at least a) meaning of history. Everybody is engaged, to an extent, in making history. Moreover, everyone takes part in transmitting history, within history. But some people also write about history, which makes it a specialized discipline of interpreting history ex professo, digging into the past and presenting certain things that are considered exemplary and as such are kept and remembered within a written tradition. History, however, is not only made and told but also studied and reflected upon: historians tell a history, whereas others (philosophers) explain what it is, why and how it is told. Yet, since everyone lives in history (or in a history) and has an opinion about it, historians or historiographers too get engaged in thinking about history. This explains why there has always been a certain rivalry between historians and philosophers of history. To use Kant’s metaphor, historiographers suspect philosophers of being empty and lacking in historical content, whereas philosophers suspect historiographers of being blind and lacking in the understanding of the “logic” or structure of what history is and how it works. The mutual disbelief is probably largely exaggerated on both sides. In this book, I am not doing a history of history but rather attempting a philosophy of history, which seems to be a timely enterprise in light of a recent surge of general interest in philosophy of history that somewhat waned with the end of the “short” twentieth century. In what follows, I want to present history both negatively (in what it is not) and positively (in what it is), and thus to demystify the concept of history, which in modernity has become inescapably teleological and universal.

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What history is not. First of all, there is no end of or to history, no objective purpose or telos that humans inevitably will have to realize at a certain point if we haven’t already done so. No doubt, we set various purposes for ourselves, both collectively and individually, which come as a result of rational deliberation or decisions that are not rational. Some of these purposes prove to be beneficial to a community or society and some not; some repressive and some liberating. But all such purposes are realized and corrected pragmatically, by and within human activity. Any purpose that we can possibly see or distinguish in history is an implicit or explicit construction of an intended goal put into history. Such a goal may or may not be successfully implemented within either an immediate history or the history of “longue durée,” and quite often it turns out to be not what we would have expected, planned, or hoped for. The modern understanding of history that arose at the end of the seventeenth century, however, is distinctly marked by teleology: history must have a purpose, because it must realize a hidden objective plan—either of divine design or of the order of things in nature—that is unfolding in and through history. On this account, history usually moves toward the realization of a greater good in human society, be it freedom, justice, or commonly shared and used wealth. As such, history becomes a kind of a theodicy of progress that explains how the tragedy of visible human suffering might be compatible with the idea of a supremely good and rational cause of the human and natural world. Psychologically, a teleology of history is attractive and appears liberating, since, despite all the calamities, all the unjust and unjustified suffering, a plan that seems to shimmer through will eventually put everything into the right order and thus justify peoples’ suffering. Of course, the one who happens to discover this plan and render it explicit assigns himself a particular role in history, which turns out to be equally pre-established in its plan. One reason that people like comedies is because they end well. Similarly, people want to see history as a “divine comedy” that ends well in a transhistorical culmination that grants meaning to past suffering, a meaning that has always been there even if concrete histories are filled with horrible events. Only a telos that would rectify all the injuries and injustices of history and would bring in moral or other judgment will redeem history. However, history is not teleological; it does not move toward a predetermined (natural or god-given) purpose or end. A good ending can only be given to a history by us through our shared effort. History is thus not comic a priori, but should be rendered comic by us. If there is a divine or natural plan for humankind that we have to and do follow without always knowing it, then we need revelatory philosophical work

x Preface

to make such a plan explicit, and its prophets and proponents in modernity are the philosophers of history. The modern idea of a universal history, “from the beginning of the world,” is vigorously defended by Bossuet.1 Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society is an important and influential source for the modern idea of universal social history based on progress that is ultimately conditioned by divine providence.2 In his Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, Herder considers the teleology of history as implicitly yet necessarily present in the “forces” of matter that progressively develop and lead up to human being, and then possibly further on. Kant (in the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose) accepts the teleology of a concealed plan of nature that is translated into history but is incomprehensible to us.3 And Hegel in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History stresses the rational, inevitable teleology of the unraveling of the (universal) spirit that constitutes history and happens in and through universal history, which no one, no single society, can escape.4 The belief in a teleology of history, that history has a purpose, either a doom or salvation of humankind, is deeply rooted in religious thinking and, with emancipation from religion, becomes a kind of secular religion itself. If history is not teleological, it is not universal either: it is not a history in which different peoples play different roles or fulfill “missions” assigned to them in advance by a divine plan or nature’s natural script. History, then, does not evolve or progress, whether through individuals (“great people”) or communities (“historical peoples”), who thus are not in the role of puppets in a more-than-human comedy of universal history. But if there is no end in and to history, there is no beginning of it either. Therefore, there is no single, singular, and unique event that would define history—the event before which history did not exist but would change it from now on, once and forever. Hence, contra the idea of universal history, history is always present in its entirety at any time and in every human culture, and not just in its assumed accomplishment in modernity. Much of the discussion and examples in this book are taken from ancient history. The reason for this is that, although history is always there where humans are, a coherent transcription and writing of history begins in antiquity. With writing comes also reflection on history, i.e., not only writing history but also writing about history as an attempt to explain the very possibility of remembering and speaking about how and why things have been. Following Vico, I recognize that history is opposed, although not opposite to, nature: nature is there and is not produced by us, although it can be transformed by our activity. There is no special historical method, no laws of history

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similar to natural laws. The laws of nature are not our construction but rather are discovered by us. On the contrary, history is a human product and as such has no predetermined end except for that which we assign or put into the movement of events. Hence, there are no laws of history analogous to those of nature. My thesis is that history has a particular structure that is exemplified in history but is itself not historical. If there is no teleology to and of history, there is no historical a priori and no unique method of getting history right. Here I agree with Paul Veyne, who denies any special method “innate” to history.5 However, contra Veyne, I will argue that history is not a simple description of the past, because in order to be able to describe something, we already need to know (at least, implicitly) what to describe, how to describe it, and for whom to describe at all. Furthermore, I want to argue that history is not immediately political. Since in modernity history is taken to be teleological, history has been associated with the idea of social and political progress that should unravel a hidden plan for humankind. As such, modern history always yields a political position that is meant to detect and respond to such a plan. In this spirit, Philippe Ariès argues for the primacy of political history in the modern age.6 The modern maxim, then, runs: tell me what you think about history, and I will tell you where you stand politically. Thinking that history is inevitably political also presupposes that we should learn from it and progress—in history and with history—toward the realization of a common goal that is already implicitly or explicitly present in such a history. Against the thesis that history is inevitably political, I argue that history inevitably becomes political (liberal, conservative, radical, or anarchist, if one is to follow Hayden White’s classification) only once it has been interpreted in terms of what it is meant to be. History is thus not immediately political, although politics is always based on an appropriation of a particular understanding of history. Because there is no single universal teleological history, but instead a beginning-less history, there are many histories, and within each one there can be a number of different understandings of what it has to yield in political action. In my approach to history I argue against historicism: I attempt to describe history as itself not historical, but defined by its ever-present constitution. In contemporary usage, “historicism” has a whole plurality of different meanings, often incompatible with each other.7 I take historicism to suggest that all knowledge, including the knowledge of the past in history, must be understood strictly within the historical context in which it has arisen. Patrick Hutton

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considers historicism to be “based on the proposition that humankind, having created its own experience, can re-create it.” Hence, historicism would attempt at “recollecting the world as it was once.”8 Yet, the problem with this interpretation is that historicism performs such a recreation from its own—historicist— perspective, which it takes to have established from within itself. Historicism, then, yields a paradox, because historicism has to be its own product. As Gadamer suggests, if one accepts that from a historicist point of view there is a development (a progress) in history, then it should be a development toward something that is history’s end and purpose. But then such an end must be already originally present in the beginning of history, because the notion of development implies immanence—an unwrapping of everything that is already there in and from the beginning.9 In other words, any historicist perspective always presupposes something within itself that transcends it, and yet does not allow for such a transcendent origin. From my perspective, however, this is a pseudo-paradox, because history is not teleological: a history may have a beginning or an end (in time) but it does not have to have a beginning or an end (as a purpose or telos).

Acknowledgments I want to thank Rainer Forst, Andreas Kalyvas, Elena Nikulina, Johanna Oksala and Massimiliano Tomba for fruitful discussions of various topics in the book, and Jeremy Gauger and Joseph Lemelin for help with editing the manuscript. My gratitude further extends to the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, which made it possible for me to work on the project at the Universities of Tübingen and Marburg, as well as to the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg.

Unum adiciam, omnia me quibus interfueram quaeque statim, cum maxime vera memorantur, audieram, persecutum. Tu potissima excerpes; aliud est enim epistulam aliud historiam aliud amico aliud omnibus scribere.1 Pliny, Epist. VI.16.22 (to Cornelius Tacitus)

1

The structures of history Ontological presuppositions. Why do people need history? Why do we conceive of ourselves as historical beings even before we properly understand what history is? My starting point for the discussion of history lies in ontology: on the one hand, as natural beings, we understand ourselves as being in a constant flux, becoming other than we currently are, physically, mentally, and socially. By becoming other we fulfill our aspirations, yet at the same time we are in constant decay, living toward our natural end, being toward death. On the other hand, we aspire to overcome our constant transition and thus to inhabit a way of being that is not in constant transience. Such an aspiration, however, is only possible for someone who is conscious of her individual fragility. This means that we are aware of our becoming other than we are now, and that stuck within this becoming, we cannot remain what we are or aspire to be. But this is an ontological condition, which itself is a precondition of the historical: constantly facing non-being in an effort to overcome it. Hence, history can only be attributed to and recognized by the living, natural beings that are alive and aware of their being and individual existence and, at the same time, aware of the possibility of non-being as non-existence, as a privation of being that is not an object of experience of and by the living. This ontological condition translates into two closely connected “existential perceptions”: fear of non-being as nothing and hope for overcoming such non-being. These are not psychological states, although they are always present in our lived experiences, being sometimes acute and sometimes dull in moments of desperation or insight. One might say, for instance, that boredom is a way

2

The Concept of History

of non-being, just as death is a reflection upon being as life, and that a really engaging, interesting activity is a way (maybe even the way in the form of a dialogue with the other) of overcoming the dreadful taedium vitae. Most of the well-known social institutions and culturally established habits (such as the family, the state, religion, art and literature) imply and address these two “existential perceptions” in their own way. It is not so important that there might be utterly different opinions about what it means to be, i.e., about what being is. What is important is that everyone understands (even if framed differently, according to one’s cultural, institutional, and individual discrepancies) both that there is a non-being, and also that there is a possibility of overcoming it. This is the bedrock of the historical. My main presupposition is that history derives from a profound need on the part of humans to somehow preserve themselves against non-being, which is expressed in the mode of epimeleia heautou or caritas sui, care for oneself. However, what exactly such preservation of the self is depends on the understanding of what the terms “preservation” and “self ” mean.2 Self-preservation may mean the straightforward biological preservation of ourselves as a species alongside a whole variety of other species. Yet I take historical preservation to be oriented toward a different kind of preservation of the self. Particularly, I see three ways in which humans tend to preserve themselves. First, through a kind of personal immortality. This form of preservation requires an established conception of a certain (non-material) component that acts as the human “core,” that is, a separable “essence” or a “soul” that may have an independent non-physical existence and which, after the dissolution of the body, may be somehow preserved beyond the transient flux of the physical as a supposedly non-temporal being. This kind of attempt at self-preservation gives rise, as I will argue, to a conception of teleological history. The second is physical preservation, which is hoped for in and through one’s descendants, within one’s family or bodily genetic heritage. As Aristotle suggests, since eternal endurance is not accessible to an individual, life therefore tends to preserve itself through a species. One might extend this way of overcoming non-being to the whole humankind. Already in Plato we can find the assertion that humankind as a whole is immortal, athanatos, insofar as it “grows together with the entirety of time.”3 But then one should establish a notion of humankind as universal, including and embracing all people irrespective of differences while at the same time preserving and respecting these differences. This kind of preservation can be found in the work of Hans Jonas, who claims that the preservation of humankind is the utmost political aim and the primary moral



The structures of history

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task and imperative. Jonas argues that the preservation of human life is the paramount of every human effort and is a precondition for the possibility of any moral action.4 Third is the preservation of oneself in one’s deeds through both individual memory and the commonly supported cultural memory of others. In a sense, each culture may be considered to have a particular set of ways of preserving an event, thing, or person in collective memory. To avoid the nihil of being forgotten and thus wiped out of history, one aspires to be remembered for what one has done and achieved. The struggle for recognition may take many different forms, which correspond to various ways in which collective memory orders, arranges, reasons, retains, and transmits a person’s name and deeds. Such collective memorizing becomes normative both morally (saving a person from the “futility of oblivion”) and politically (as the example that encapsulates the tasks for the whole socium). It is here that the collective memorial preservation becomes historically normative. People have a sense of the historical because they are capable of retaining a long-lasting personal and cultural memory. Logical and historical being. At this point, it might be useful to recall the Aristotelian distinction between being (existentia) and being-something (essentia).5 The notion of essentia is present in reference to the question “what something or somebody is” (ti esti? or quid est?). The notion of existentia appears in reference to the question “if something or somebody is” (ei esti? or an est?). In other words, the fact that a thing or event is (or is not) is not the same as whether it is something. What a thing is does not follow from that a thing is and vice versa. However, for a living being who is aware of non-being this distinction is not so evident. Indeed, if a person is, i.e., is living and communicating with other human beings, she inevitably is somebody, and is thus recognized by others and by herself—often in many different ways—as someone. And if a person is somebody, then she is. Historical being, then, is the being of an event or person for which or whom the event’s or person’s “is” is not fully dissociated from the event’s or person’s “what.” In this respect, history differs from literary fiction where an event or character may have only a “what” without an “is,” but is still significant. But historical and fictional narrative coincide in that, at the moment of recollection, of telling a story, the “is” is suspended because the events and people of the past no longer are (here the “is” is always a “was”), while fictional events and people have never been. If, for a person, to be and to be somebody are not really separate, and if a person as a living being is always historical, then historical being is different

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from logical being. Indeed, in logical being, which is a-temporal, the “is” and the “is something” can be clearly distinguished. Historical being, on the contrary, is the being of events and persons within a history. Historical being is not about what is but rather about what was (how and what a person was) and will be (how, and if, she will be remembered). Moreover, the “what” of a person can change over time, depending on how she has been remembered, told and retold within history. For if historical being is about what was and will be, then it is not ideal being, which does not change over time, but rather is a preservation of the being of a person or event for and by others. It is worth noting that the lack of a clear separation between the “what” and the “is” in personal being may be exemplified via identity. For a thing, that R is R, or RºR, means that R is not other than it is, or R is not other than R (to use Cusanus’ formulation) with reference to its essence or to what it is, which is not (yet) mentioned but is intended to be definitive. No existential aspect is implied in RºR. In the case of a person, PºP already means that she has an identity that is recognized (sometimes variously) by others and by herself. This identity is not explicitly mentioned, but instead is pointed at or implied, which means that a person is somebody both for others and for herself, and in this sense is qua person. Hence, to say “P is P” about a person implies that a person is meaningfully present for us, even if she might not be presently existing (e.g., she could be a fictional character or exist only in memory). That P is not other than P, then, means that a person primarily is, and if she is, she is always somebody. To be implies to be someone. This means, first, that a person’s “who” and “what” (her essentia) may, but does not necessarily, become known or made explicit in a historical account. Second, a person’s being as being-there (her “is,” existentia) may mean “was” or “will be.” And third, such personal being or “is” takes precedence over personal “what,” even if the is of a person is not ultimately and definitely separated from the fact that she is somebody. In this sense, personal being, or being as a person, is historical: personal being lives mostly in the remembered past and into the projected future. It is most important to preserve that a person was—which is the work of memory—and only then to possibly retain (or often to reconstruct) what she was or what happened. Thus, in the historical the “is” (or “was”) precedes the “what.” History and histories. I want to begin by outlining a framework that will allow us to speak about history and discern its structure(s). To have a “theoretical framework” is already to implicitly apply—or impose—a certain conceptual scheme or a set



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of presuppositions onto scattered events, thus molding them into something we might call “history.” As with other disciplines, we see what we can and want to see, we discover only that which is meaningful to discover, and we miss the rest, that which we are not “ready” to see. There are things in the world, but the world in its entirety is never a given: if we ourselves are part of it and thus are within it, can we understand the world as a whole? How would we do so? Similarly, there are events in our lives, but history as the entirety of all events is never a given: if we are part of them, can we understand history as a whole? How would we do so? In what follows, I will not attempt to present a general theory of history or another philosophy of history. People think differently about history at different times and in different cultures. With Vico, I take it that history is not an objective phenomenon that could have discoverable laws similar to the laws of nature. History is a construction—it is always a reconstruction of the past. As such, Vico’s history is primarily a political history. It is the history of and for the future that always involves a normative evaluation of what the future should be. Such a history studies the past in order to understand the not-so-recent past, the present, and possibly to anticipate—and change—the future. However, we do not yet have the proper distance from the present that is required in order to understand it; we do not already have the understanding of the relevant contexts and connections of the past that would allow us to grasp the present; and there are too many accidental factors that cannot be accounted for based on our knowledge of the past that nevertheless do affect the future in a manner that we cannot fully comprehend. Because history is never given as a whole and is always a construction, there can be many different histories. There may well be a history to which particular histories converge as its normative purpose. Such a history could be either actually reached at a certain point or else remains an ideal that is only partially realized by different histories. This sort of history may require the equal and just distribution of goods and the recognition of others as free and equal in their rights and dignity.6 As Hegel famously claims, history teaches that people never learn anything from history.7 Hegel’s statement seems pragmatically self-contradictory, since at least we learn that we do not learn anything from history. However, in what follows I do not intend to restore either any sort of “logic” of a possible succession of histories or a development of one universal history. Nor do I claim that everything in history is accidental and that we can never learn from it. Rather, I intend to establish possible invariants of different histories, elements that themselves might not be historical despite shaping particular histories.

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The Concept of History

History lives from and off the past, from how things were or have been. In and through a history, people want, on the one hand, to remember things past, the events and people to which they are directly or indirectly related. On the other hand, people want to understand these things and events from the perspective of the future—not so much a normative or predictable future (what should or will be), but rather one in which they themselves might still be a part and play a certain role, and thereby outlive their lives after they have passed away. The three kinds of personal (self-)preservation mentioned above all have a common ground: in order to outlast and overcome non-being, one must be a member of a community (social, political, ethnic, religious, ancestral, professional, of friends, etc., or several at a time), in which one keeps living as one who is remembered and still referred to as a member of a shared history, in the constitution of which one still plays a meaningful role even if one is physically no longer present. Hence, in what follows, by “history” I understand not a universal history but rather the sum total of all of the histories of past and present, even if they are never accessible in their entirety. A history, then, is a particular set or succession of stories in which actors, things, or events are present within a sequence or a list and are connected by a common narrative that tells what has happened and also possibly suggests what might or is going to happen.8 In its structure, although not in its function, a story is similar to a drama in which something happens, i.e., in which there are events, actions, and characters. Unlike in drama, however, historical action does not follow a preconceived plot, because there is no author of the story of history. Besides, unlike historical actors, dramatic characters only have their “what” but not the “is.” Therefore, everyone can live in multiple histories, or scenarios, at the same time: personal, familial, professional, institutional, ethnic, religious, local, state, etc. Massimiliano Tomba argues for the recognition of a plurality of histories that go beyond the modern singular history.9 Moreover, the same event or person can be evaluated and seen differently in different histories (e.g., Napoleon on either side of the Rhine). In fact, it is inevitable that for any person and any group of people there always will be a set of histories in which they exist at the same time, even if it is not always easy to make a clear distinction between the various histories in which one participates. There can thus be many different histories. But I do not want to claim that historical relativism is the way to understand history and that any history is equal to any other one. One can argue that a particular history is better suited for human well-being than another one (social democracy is better than



The structures of history

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national socialism, or a history in which women have equal opportunities and rights as men is better than the one where they don’t). This is, however, the task of social and political science, which goes beyond the scope of the present work. Fabula and the historical. A story is a narration of what has happened. But on the other hand, it is a comprehensive and detailed account of events and peoples’ perceptions, reflections, reactions to what has happened. The “what happened,” which is the “core” of a story, can be told in a few words, and is thus brief. For example, there was a war between U and V in the time of W (between Mithridates and Rome in the first century bce), X was defeated by Y in a battle at Z (Darius by Alexander at Gaugamela), or A traveled to B and discovered C (Solon went to Egypt and discovered ancient wisdom).10 This is the fabula, the “fable” or the “plot,” which has a double connotation, namely of (1) being a narrative or composition; and (2) being fictitious or a myth (Latin fabula translates Greek mythos). One might think of an event as that which is conveyed according to the form of a narration: somebody acted in a certain way, or something happened to that thing or person. The Trojan War is an event, and any episode of it is an event as well. Hence, an event is anything that can be conveyed in a story. Of course, the events thus told may or may not be mythical, i.e., they may have actually happened or they may be made up. However, when an event that happened long ago is mentioned (e.g., the Punic wars), it is inevitably accompanied by an accepted and recognized interpretation, or a number of conflicting interpretations, and thus acquires certain features of a myth, in which one has to rely more on the tradition of transmission rather than on the evidence one might uncover for oneself. Myth could be characterized by the following features: first, “myth” is a story that points us to the “what” of an event, while suspending its “is” (or “was”). Second, myth provides a space where difficult and complex problems (what really happened and what its causes were; who was right; who was the offender, etc.) are solved relatively easily and quickly, by telling a story where a long and complex series of events, of what did, might, or should have happened, can be condensed into a brief narration and thus simplified. And third, a conflict in the narrative is often resolved by a deus ex machina who makes things right according to what is considered just, even if in reality such was not the case. If myth is understood this way, then fabula always has mythical character. Because of its brevity, a fabula can be—and in fact is—constantly told and retold, interpreted and reinterpreted by people who share the same particular history.11 For this reason, first, a fabula can be easily preserved and passed on

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The Concept of History

not only in writing but also orally. In ancient Greece, everybody knows that there was the Trojan War and what its causes and its results were. However, in order to know the details of the war, to know who exactly took part in the action and committed heroic deeds, one has to preserve and transmit a detailed account of names and events. And second, the knowledge of a fabula constitutes the tradition within a history and as such is passed on from one person to another, from generation to generation. Cicero gives a notable explanation of the term “narrative” in his theoretical treatise on rhetoric, On Invention: “The narrative [narratio] is the exposition [expositio] of events that have occurred or are supposed to have occurred.” The exposition of an event, further, has three forms, or parts: fabula, historia, and argumentum. Fabula “is the term applied to a narrative in which the events are not true and have no verisimilitude.” It is, then, a fully invented, fantastic narrative, a failed story. For example, Plato’s story of Gyges who found a ring that could make him invisible is a fabula for Cicero.12 Historia, on the contrary, “is an account of actual occurrences [gesta res] remote from the recollection [memoria] of our age.” History is thus a true description of past events that are not immediately remembered but are to be kept and passed on in memory. In such a case, there is and can be no history of the present, but only of the past. Finally, argumentum “is a fictitious narrative [ficta res] that nevertheless could have occurred.” Therefore, the argumentum is produced by somebody who conveys what might have been or might have happened, by a man of letters, a writer who presents a story that is existentially false (what did not happen) but essentially true (meaningful for the reader), and which is thus both didactic and exhortative.13 My understanding of fabula, however, is opposed to that of Cicero: fabula is not false but instead tells a meaningful story about what happened, albeit usually briefly. Grammatically, the historical stands for a noun, whereas fabula for a verb. A fabula is always a narration and thus presupposes a narrative; it is bona fide told but is neither invented, nor feigned. Yet such a narrative may have features of fiction, particularly, when it attempts to give an account of the reasons, causes, and driving forces of a historical event, either natural or human (social and political). One might mention the distinction between syuzhet (сюжет) and fabula in Russian Formalism, where fabula is a chronologically organized and logically reconstructed story in its entirety, whereas syuzhet is the way the story is presented, often beginning in medias res, with intentional and unintentional lacunas, and even apparent inconsistencies. It is not my task here to argue that there is only a limited number of fabulae (e.g., of war and travel) with an infinite



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number of variations, including symbolic types, or to present a carefully elaborated typology of fabulae, as Propp has done with respect to plots and tales.14 However, in my understanding, fabula covers both syuzhet and the Formalist fabula, as way of telling a story the way it happened to be told. A fabula, therefore, implies narration; it is a narrative and as such must be told. Hence, a history is always told by someone (a historian in various avatars) to someone else (listeners or readers). Cicero is considered a great orator but not a historian because he wrote speeches and theoretical treatises on rhetoric, i.e., he both practiced and theorized about the art of speech, yet he left no historical works. However, he should also be considered a historian insofar as he tells various histories about political figures, rhetoricians, philosophers—and also preserves their names (in the Brutus, De natura deorum, Academica, De domo sua, et al.). As in literature, the same fabula can be told in various ways and may have many different, if not sometimes conflicting, expositions, paraphrases, and interpretations. Because a fabula is retold many times by different people and comes from various sources, it is eventually established as something that is commonly recognized—in a sense, it is thus recognized as an account of what happened that belongs to no one in particular. Becoming anonymous, a fabula is nevertheless not petrified but may be a matter of revision. It can be narrated and told always anew, because it can never be fully extinguished. As Ricoeur observes, “The idea of an exhaustive narrative is a performatively impossible idea.”15 For example, what happened in the American Civil War or Russian Revolution might not coincide with a commonly recognized story but rather be quite different when conceived from another perspective. In such a case, several fabulae can coexist, some being repressed while others are transmitted but not all equally accepted. Which among the fabulae will become mostly recognized depends on the particular history with its normative aspirations, to which people who share the dominant fabula belong. Such an understanding of fabula fits with the concept of myth I briefly laid out above. For in a myth likewise there is no unique story, since it can be told in many different, often conflicting and mutually inconsistent ways. The best strategy for passing on a myth is simply to collect and systematically arrange all known mythical stories, as Apollodorus does in his Library. A particular myth may be told differently in different places, at different times, and by different people, in which case there is a common “core” to such a myth, but its concrete renderings may widely differ or even explicitly contradict each other. For instance, Apollodorus mentions two utterly different accounts of the birth

10

The Concept of History

of Hyacinth, which, however, tell the same story of his death (Bibl. I.3.3 and III.10.3). Or we have the same myth of the birth of the Aloadae, but different versions of their death in Homer (Od. 11.305-320) and Apollodorus (Bibl. I.7.4). Thus, a fabula tells how people understand, interpret, and retell “what happened” in a history. From a different historical account, the same event can be seen as utterly fictitious and made up. However, once again, I do not want to claim that all histories are equal: a history can and should be judged by rational, moral, and political standards. But these standards as criteria of judging a history are already logical and thus lie outside of a fabula. Speaking about history, Ágnes Heller defines “master narrative” as a set of stories told within a culture. In particular, “the European master narratives are the Bible on the one hand, and the Greek/Roman philosophy and historiography on the other.”16 Master narratives tell what has happened, or what people think has happened, yet they do so in writing, in the form of texts, through which alone the past becomes accessible and comprehensible. For this reason, a master narrative is opposed to myth. Moreover, each master narrative may assume several forms, such as the narrative of liberation and freedom, which, however, has been understood differently at various times. A master narrative thus has certain features in common with fabula, but they also differ in that a master narrative is an established and recognized kind of story-telling, whereas a fabula can tell anything. Furthermore, fabula differs from master narrative in that master narrative is a general account of what might, and perhaps even should, happen, on the basis of an acknowledged set of stories. A fabula, on the contrary, is always particular and specific, telling who did what to whom, when and where. At the same time, the fabula also allows for a generalization and can itself become a new master narrative—of war, unjust suffering, conquest, courage, discovery, etc. Therefore, the number of fabulae is considerably greater than that of master narratives, and fabulae are more variegated. Besides, fabula is not univocally opposed to myth: every myth has a fabula, although not every fabula is mythological. Finally, a fabula is not necessarily preserved in and as a text, but instead can be—and often is—transmitted orally and exists through an oral tradition. The often short and oral “fabula,” which is the narrative “mythological” part of a story, is complemented by the long and mostly written “factual” description. This component of history, which I will call the historical, contains an account of names, things, and events arranged in a certain order and in an established mutual relation. Such a comprehensive description of names, things, and events should be kept, transmitted, interpreted, and organized according to a certain



The structures of history

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principle (a “logos”) and according to a form, which is usually that of a list. As a list of names, the historical may also contain descriptions of characters and heroes, which may be either condensed into an epithet or be more developed. The story of a history, then, is constituted by both a fabula, which is the rendering of what happened—and the historical, which is an account of the things that have happened. To draw a parallel with drama, fabula stands for the plot and action, whereas the historical represents the actors and characters. One can also draw a parallel with language, where the lexical and semantic component appears to be more mobile and prone to change than its syntactic component, which is more stable. Analogically, the historical is similar to syntax, whereas the fabula of a history is more like semantics. Or, fabula is similar to a plot in a literary piece, and the historical to the set of characters, where characters are quite independent of, and take precedence over, the plot. A similarity to the fabula/list distinction can be also found in film, which tells a story but also includes credits at the end, a long list of names of everyone who has been involved in the film’s production. This list of names is precisely the “historical” constituent of the film, to which nobody usually pays any attention because a film is seen as a work of art and not as a piece of history. There is, however, no direct correlation between the fabula/the historical and essentia/existentia distinctions. One might say that fabula stresses the “what,” thereby retaining its “is” (as “was”) as implicit in the narration. In this respect, again, fabula has much in common with fable and myth, insofar as these do not ask about the “is,” i.e., if the event has actually happened or if the characters are real, but rather suspend this question altogether. The historical, which is a detailed list or catalogue of names, events, and people, stresses their “is” (as “was”), thereby presupposing but not necessarily explicitly mentioning their “what.” An example here might be Hegel’s Logic, where the historical is the list of all the categories, and fabula consists in their deduction from each other according to a principle (dialectic), which is presented as a process and in such a way that there appears an immanent logic within the logic’s development, whereas, in fact, the whole process is just a classificatory mechanism of arranging all the logical categories in a certain order. The fabula is succinct yet may be rendered always more and more detailed. The implicit can become explicit or even “solved,” as in a mystery or detective story. Any part of a fabula can itself be a fabula. (In this respect, a fabula can perhaps be compared with a fractal, which also has a very simple description or formula, and is similar to itself in any of its minutest parts.) Not everything

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The Concept of History

should be told about and there is no a priori rule that would determine what is important for a history and what is not. It is the historian—anyone who tells a story—who should be the judge and decide what is relevant and hence what must be preserved when relating a history. Contrary to the rather brief and simple fabula, the historical is elaborate, long, and detailed. The historical may be expanded, too, by adding new names, acts, and facts. What is distinctive, though, is that no part of the historical is itself historical: a “minimum” of the historical is one single entry, which cannot be dissolved or “solved” any further. Sometimes, the distinction between the plot of a fabula and the more detailed list of things, names, and events may be not evident, so the two might appear fused. However, in early history, the fabula and the list are to a great extent kept recognizably separate from each other. While the fabula is captivating, engaging, and intriguing, the historical, which is an account that involves a possibly precise enumeration of individual names and things that might even appear irrelevant to the plot, is often perceived as boring. Yet any list, even seemingly unimportant (a laundry list), may always be meaningful and important in conveying a history (that of private and social hygiene). The (long and detailed) list is thus complementary to (the brief and enfolded) fabula. To give an example: The French Revolution took place in Paris in 1789. One might complement the telling of its story with a list of names that includes all of those who stormed the Bastille, or the list of bakeries in Paris that were still producing bread on that day, or the weather report on July 14, etc. In each case, one might argue that the more elaborate historical component might or might not clarify the events of the French Revolution in its unfolding. Another example of a fabula complemented by a list is the monument to the martyrs of the revolutionary days of 1830 and 1848 in Paris in the crypt of the Panthéon. It consists of the inscription, “A la mémoire des martyrs de la Révolution tombés en 1830 et 1848 pour la défense de leurs idéaux (In the memory of the martyrs of the Revolution fallen in 1830 and 1848 for the defense of their ideals),” followed by a list of the names of the fallen on four bronze boards arranged in alphabetical order. The inscription is the fabula, which is short yet sufficient for understanding what happened and provides the reason why the names are gathered and should be preserved and remembered; whereas the long list of the names is the historical. Each entry in the list is accompanied by a further brief description: the age of the hero and his occupation, which can be taken as an individual fabula (as was said above, any fabula can contain numerous further and independent fabulae), which might then be developed further by those



The structures of history

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who are supposed to remember it—by the descendants, compatriots, historians of the revolution, or anyone interested in its history. This list presents the very tissue of the historical. Kant’s distinction between nature as the realm of necessity and morality as the realm of freedom is picked up in the middle of the nineteenth century by Lotze, who leaves necessity to nature but associates freedom with history. By the end of the nineteenth century, this distinction becomes central to Neo-Kantianism, which, in its Baden version of Windelband and Rickert, postulates the distinction between the science of nature (nomothetic, in Windelband’s parlance) that deals with general phenomena—and the sciences of history (idiographic) that consider individuals.17 Upon a closer look, this Neo-Kantian distinction fits well with the one I made between list and fabula: list is a sequence or collection of data pertaining to an event and can be ordered according to a universal pattern that can be also arranged and studied scientifically. Fabula, on the other hand, is the realm of freedom, where those pertaining to a history can keep retelling, rethinking, and reinterpreting the story that clarifies the meaning of the event in a history. Things and events are thus retained by being listed within the account of a history. Hence, my main thesis here is that the historical is preserved in and as organized accounts that take the form of lists, which are kept, transmitted, interpreted, and reinterpreted within a history. The necessity of the historical lies in the ontological need for the overcoming of non-being, for preserving oneself in being, which is the historical being that is retained, mentioned, and remembered within a history. Ancient history is always partial, always incomplete, and open to revisions and an indeterminate future. Such history-making corresponds to the thinking and recollection of discursive reason, dianoia. Modern history, on the contrary, looks at things and events from a perspective of an anticipated completion, i.e., from an eschatological perspective. This corresponds to the thinking and recollection of a whole in an act of non-discursive reason, nous, which, according to Hegel, proudly achieves its own full reflective realization in the world through history. In this sense, ancient history prudently remains within the temporal, and does not impose anything for the sake of its completion, whereas modern providential history strives to lead into its own alleged a-temporal fulfillment. In sum, history is built up from multiple histories, each one constituted by the fabula and the historical. A history is constituted by a set of stories, in which histories are not isolated, but rather are interconnected and interact in

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The Concept of History

various ways. The relationship between the fabula and the historical in a history may be very different in different histories, although it is always meaningful to ask whether a particular fabula might or might not be universally valid and beneficial for any human history; they are very complex; and cannot be established a priori. In particular, this means that there is no single and uniformly structured, universal and teleological, history. Modern history: construction and progress. Everyone seems to have an opinion about history. This happens, perhaps, because we are historical beings and we always associate ourselves with a history or rather with several histories, which itself is a result of history’s working. For this reason, it seems rather difficult to establish a univocal meaning of history. However, even if concepts of history appear to be diverse, scholars mostly agree that the modern idea of history originates in Judeo-Christian eschatology. Thus, Karl Löwith takes history’s being directed toward the future as eschatological, and thus that history is meant to realize a preordained (divine) purpose, which is already clearly in Augustine.18 Or, as Bultmann puts it: “God confronts man with his blessing and demand, judging him in each successive moment. Every such moment however points toward the future. God is always a God who comes.”19 Hence, there is always a history envisaged for us humans by a god who comes. God, then, is the god of history. Because god has to be an omniscient being, he must have established a preconceived, divine history, which is both the history of the world (or natural history) and the history of and for humans (social and political history), who are its main actors and its ends at the same time. Although such history is divine, it is meant for humans, for their ultimate well-being, which should be realized in history and move humankind into an a-historical or post-historical condition as the ultimate fulfillment of historical movement. Importantly, this fulfillment of history should come about with human reflection on history itself from within history, which thus also belongs to history’s completion. From an eschatological perspective, as the fulfillment of a divine promise (of redemption and salvation) to humans, history then must have an end, or be teleological.20 And teleological history must be guided by divine providence, which, as Bossuet explains to Dauphin, leaves no room for chance in history.21 Or, as Hegel conveniently explains, world history is “the exhibition of the divine, absolute development of spirit in its highest forms—that gradation by which it attains its truth and consciousness of itself.”22 Providence in history is perhaps not a constitutive idea, but rather a regulative one, making us think of history as if providence were at work in it. Nevertheless, the providential understanding



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of history suggests that there is—has to be—an end to history, and that this end does not depend on anyone’s individual preferences or volitions, but rather must be commonly recognized and accepted as the end: in, of, and for history. But if some form of providence, rethought as an objective historical necessity, is supposed to govern both the social and the natural, then there ought to be one single universal history, or the history of humankind, Geschichte der Menschheit, as Herder calls it. This history might appear differently at different epochs, or, as Hegel thinks, different peoples might have different roles to play in the unfolding play of providential universal history, which already has a purpose and an end. But history itself is still universal, and various peoples share one and the same history. The very notion of one “humankind,” then, derives from the idea of a universal history. Divine history is thought of as forever complete, because it is established by an a-temporal and thus a-historical being. Yet human history always keeps on going, and only gradually approaches the supposedly already fulfilled divine history. This process may be considered either as accomplishable in its entirety at a certain point in history—or always unfolding in an approximation, striving toward an established and even understood but never ultimately achievable end. The alleged end of history may or may not be its actual temporal historical termination, but in either case history is thought to have an end that acts as its purpose. But what is the end of history? If history is an a-temporal product of a divinity, according to which everything natural and social is ordered and arranged, then the telos of history may be present in it providentially and as such realized without our knowledge or consent, often against our intention and will amidst the chaos and pettiness of human quarrels and strivings. Put otherwise, the end of history may be accessible and understood either through a revelation (in the text or book of nature) or in a philosophical speculation, in which case it is revealed through a thinker who thinks of himself (as Hegel clearly did) as providentially predestined to do so. In this case, one may establish a rational argument stating that what one takes to be history and its telos is indeed the case, and that such an end is the best and cannot be otherwise. Among various candidates for the (best and inevitable) end of history, the prevalent one that Hegel and his followers (Lukács, Croce) vigorously argued for is the realization of freedom.23 If history is not teleological, i.e., if there is no providentially established purpose for humans in the physical and social world, this nevertheless does not mean that there can be no purpose at all. As social and political beings, we

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The Concept of History

can and do set ends as purposes for ourselves at different levels. Such purposes, however, may be not only numerous but mutually conflicting and not subsumed under one another, and hence they do not converge toward a single, universal, and overarching purpose of history. Moreover, some such purposes may be set intentionally and some unintentionally; some willingly and some unwillingly; some individually and some collectively; some as a result of rational deliberation and some not; some beneficial to the community or society, and some detrimental; some repressive and some liberating. But all such ends are implemented and corrected pragmatically, by and within human activity and action. This means that, whether history is haphazard or planned, it can be our own product rather than a divine one. But our making of history may come without our realizing it at the moment of action. We may then come to understand what we have done only at the very end, which is the end we put into our own making, while pursuing various seemingly different purposes in (individual, social, and political) life. And this is where history becomes modern. Modern history has an end and can be known by us to have an end, but only insofar as it is put into history, produced, or constructed by us. Such an understanding of history is based on the verum factum principle formulated by Vico in the New Science. According to it, we can know only that which is made by us. In the object of knowledge, then, there can be as much knowledge as we ourselves have put into it by producing or constructing it. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant extends this principle to all possible knowledge, which for him is the knowledge of nature, but Vico reserves it for history only. For Vico, God produces nature, and humans produce history. Correspondingly, if knowledge is based on production, then we can only know human history, because it is our own construction.24 Hegel, however, conceives of history as the self-unfolding of reason, which governs both the world and history. Reason comprehends itself in history and as history (that of itself) as its own product and production. History thus becomes the reflective and productive self-realization of reason. No wonder, then, that everything historical is rational and reasonable, and everything reasonable and rational is historical.25 Hence, modern philosophy of history becomes a form of theodicy, or the justification of God as historically deployable reason.26 However, because modern (Enlightenment) reason becomes the maker of everything it knows, it therefore realizes—constructs—itself as universal. And as such, it establishes and produces a universal history, which heretofore was the prerogative of divine providence. If history is a construction, then it can be amended and changed according to what we have already put into it. Hence, we are capable not only of



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understanding history but also of changing it, as Marx claims in his famous Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach.27 With the assimilation of the providential and cognitive functions of divine reason to modern Reason, the end of modern history becomes a human product and project, and can be known to us only and insofar as it is conceived and produced by us. Humans, then, are the writers, the readers, and the actors of history, both its makers and its subjects. The homo historicus creates history by constructing it and thus coming to know it insofar as he himself produced and continues to produce history and projects a purpose into it. In this role, the homo historicus modernus assumes the role of the creator, yet not of nature or of the physical world, but at least of the social and historical world. (The Cartesian thinking subject also becomes the as if-creator of the world, engaged in a thought, or imaginary, experiment.) History, then, becomes the stage for the realization of human freedom neither as a normative, moral imperative nor as a political requirement that we set for ourselves. As providential and teleological, history comes with the idea of progress. The thought is that if humankind is indeed guided by providence, despite and even against each individual’s egoistic, unruly strivings, then together these all add up and are harmonized into a single motion toward a historical end, which, again, may be achievable or lie beyond the actual horizon of events. Correspondingly, if people are recognized to have a free will that goes against what is objectively best for them, then history becomes the story of regress, of turning away from the providential end both of and for humankind. But regress is a redressed progress, a progress that moves in the “wrong direction,” which happens once people misinterpret, or choose to misinterpret, the “objective end” of their historical aspirations. The story of progress or regress is framed by the idea of “evil” versus “good human nature” as a way of explaining why things turn out right or wrong (when, despite our originally “good nature,” we spoil that which was originally simple and good, which, according to Rousseau, can be disentangled by going back to the [good] “nature”).28 Specifically modern, the story of progress or regress occurs when history becomes a construction that moves toward the rationally established end(s) of reason, which, even in the form of the universal or Enlightenment reason, still is a redressed finite and vagabond human reason. Yet, even if people project and construct purposes into history by setting commonly achievable and pragmatically correctible ends, this does not yet mean that history necessarily implies progress. There can be progress in technology, in a particular social sphere as liberation from an oppressive practice, or maybe even in our understanding of

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The Concept of History

the world (not just a shift from one paradigm to another, as Kuhn thinks). This, however, does not yet mean a universal progress toward a pre-established end. Philosophy of history: rationality, unity, system, and teleology. If the end of history in modernity is a construction of reason, it can be known rationally through philosophical reflection. This gives rise to the specifically modern discipline of the philosophy of history (the term was introduced by Voltaire29), which is conceived of as a systematic rational enterprise that suspends the Leibnizian distinction between the “truths of reason” and the “truths of fact.” Philosophy of history provides an explanation (and sometimes a prediction) of concrete historical events as well as their normative evaluation within a certain theoretical framework conceived of as a philosophical system. The project of philosophy of history becomes meaningful once one assumes that (1) history is rational, (2) there is a unity in and to history that is brought about by its end, and (3) there is a system in history that is rendered explicit by an equally systematic rational speculation within a philosophy of history. These three presuppositions, which make a rational reconstruction of history possible, themselves originate and become meaningful within a theological vision. If there is a god that acts as infinite and providential reason, then the history of humankind is—and has to be—one, unified, rational, and systematic.30 Philosophy of history flourishes and turns into a strict, rational, and unified enterprise in Hegel.31 The system of history is already inscribed in a self-reflective and developing reason that assumes all the divine functions in the world and gradually clarifies itself to itself in, through, and as history. However, the presupposition that history is rational, unified and systematic, is not at all self-evident. For history may be taken not as a reflection but as a record of unique, often unpredictable and arbitrary, past events, without assuming any providential guiding, an end, or any progress in their succession. In his early work, “Is a Philosophy of History Possible?” Schelling argues that science (Wissenschaft) and history (Geschichte) are complementary to each other.32 On this reading, philosophy as a strict science provides a priori theoretical knowledge of things that follow necessary laws, whereas history speaks about singular things that are always progressing, moving forward (progressiv, Fortschreitende) in a new way. If we knew all the laws of nature in their completeness according to one integral law (Gesetz), history would come to a halt. For this reason, a philosophy of history is impossible for Schelling, and “philosophy of history” is itself a contradiction in terms. History is not pre-established for humans, but they themselves make history. Therefore, history is all that cannot be given a



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priori. However, it does not mean that history is a collection of utterly unrelated things and facts that are the subject of “knowing much,” because historical events for Schelling are not altogether random; instead they all differently exemplify one “ideal” (Ideal), yet each one shows its own unique “deviation” (Abweichung) from such ideal. Each historical event, then, is one of an infinite number of particulars (Einzelne), each one presents a single genus (Geschlecht) in a different way. In this sense, the original “past” of history is not itself historical: it can be known rationally by philosophy, but not by a philosophy of history. If things and events happen as singularities and at random, then Burkhardt is right in claiming that “philosophy of history” is a contradiction in terms, because philosophy is supposed to speak about the universal. But if history is a product of rational construction, then the assumptions of rationality, unity, and a systematic history are indispensable and unavoidable for the modern conception of history. Modern history thus provides certain knowledge about human things and events that are made possible because of a construction of reason in which reason conceives of itself as universal and as capable of strict knowledge, which also includes philosophy of history.33 What seems paradoxical, however, is that the knowledge of singular things and random events is characterized by systematicity on the one hand, and by historicism on the other. Systematicity implies knowledge that is rational and a priori. Historicism presupposes that all knowledge is historical, that everything known has to be understood from within its historical context and as incorporating previous meanings along the way. One might respond that this only appears to be a paradox, insofar as knowledge can be considered both rational and historical without contradiction, insofar as reason, which obtains knowledge as its own construction, is equally constructive of history. Hence, everything known by reason in history is known as historical, which means that there can be no extra-historical or meta-historical position from which reason may make judgments about history. Modern historical knowledge is therefore absolute, because it is reason’s own product relative to a given context insofar as it can only be as reason constructs it. There is thus a universal history and an end to history only if history is constructed as providential, rational, and universal (“divine”). Such a history, however, implies a particular understanding of being that has to be both teleological and historical. History as teleological describes things and events by prescribing them a place and role within the whole of history itself. Each historical event and history in its entirety, then, is considered to have a purpose

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The Concept of History

that is fulfilled either by achieving its end or by striving toward it. Yet such an understanding of being as historical, in fact, is not historically warranted, because people as historical beings who think about history and try to figure out its end, while still being in history, can never be in a position to verify that any such end is exactly as they rationally reconstruct it. In order to be able to see a series of events that include us as moving toward and realizing a certain end as the end of history, we must already have a theoretical and historical conception of what historical events are and should be and how we need to approach them. But this means that the notion of the end of history, its telos and purpose, is itself preordained, imposed, and constructed into what we take to be history. And if we do not have a complete understanding and knowledge of history, which is apparently already present there in its end, then such a lack of knowledge and lack of understanding with respect to what it is that we are doing qua historical, is already included in our struggle with (and for) history. The idea of a universal teleological history is a modern invention. We moderns are both the agents of history and subject to it. We both make history and reflect on it, which happens because history is a rational construction. Because history is a construction, it becomes possible for us, while still being in history, to study history as an object that may be thematized and systematically (“scientifically”) studied. Because history is a construction, there is no collective historical subject (a people, a class, a social or religious group, etc.), and there is no predominant moving force in history, unless these are constructed and projected into history. For this reason, I prefer to speak of a history as constituted by a multitude of histories at various levels of universality (personal, familial, professional, regional, national histories), which all interact with and affect each other. In order to further develop this concept, I want to first turn to a discussion of alternative historical ways of speaking about history, when history was first spoken of as “history”—namely in the early Greek historians. I will begin with a consideration of the fabula as constituent of a story within a history, and then turn to a consideration of the historical and its structure in the form of list.

2

Early history In the beginning: Hecataeus, Hellanicus. In order to better understand the structure of history, I want to look at the first historians and the way they practiced history, not to stress the “quarrel between ancients and moderns,” but to highlight the difference, otherness, and “strangeness” of early history. A discussion of early history might help both to further reflect on the modern concept of history as teleological and to establish the structures of history. As a systematic “scholarly” enterprise, history originates with ancient Greek authors in the second half of the sixth century bce and flourishes into the fifth. At this time and later in antiquity, historia means “inquiry.” Early historians establish patterns of writing about the past and present that become exemplary and are reproduced much later. The early forms of historical writing may have certain features that appear alien to modern historians, yet early historical works are certainly not naïve. In general, the idea that history as a particular kind of human activity may be naïve and unrefined, that is, neither reflective nor philosophical, as Hegel thinks, is itself originally a product of a historical vision based on the idea of progress. Many examples, however, speak against this idea. A particular form of activity (including art, science, or history) may be refined over generations (usually, within two or three) but the very form of doing things right is already there from the very beginning, for otherwise the activity would simply be impossible. I will begin by briefly mentioning several features of history that seem important and are present in the works of the early historians. These features include the general structure of history, the role of geography, natural history, and genealogy, as well as history as “much-knowing,” prose-style writing. Hecataeus of Miletus (sixth–fifth century bce) here is an exemplary figure, not only because he is the first recognized historian, but also because his approach to writing history exerted much influence on later historians, particularly, on Hellanicus and Herodotus (both fifth century bce).1 In this respect, Hecataeus is the historian par excellence in antiquity.2 Of his two major works, Periēgēsis

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The Concept of History

and Genealogiai, around 400 fragments have been preserved.3 Periēgēsis (frg. 43 sqq. Nenci) is the description of the known and inhabited world, oikoumenē, which comes with a map, Periodos Gēs (which is perhaps an improved version of the map of Anaximander). Most probably, this is the same map that Herodotus refers to in his critical remarks in his Histories IV.36, although Hecataeus is not mentioned here by name. Periēgēsis is later called “geography,” that is, “description of land,” by Strabo; it thus depicts—both tells about and shows—the world. As such, Periēgēsis has precursors in epic poetry, particularly in Homer. Hecataeus’ work is also based on the tradition and practice of composing navigational manuals (Limenes), which were often produced by sailing around (Periploys, e.g., in [Pseudo-]Skylax) or along the shore of a country or an island, and in which the landscape is described the way it appeared from aboard a ship (cf. Od. 9.105 sqq.). Periēgēsis, literally meaning “leading around,” to a great extent consists of the names of cities and peoples in various countries (mostly preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium, sixth century ce). These names are often accompanied by a story or myth of migration, as well as the founding and naming of a city or country, or war. Later, this genre becomes well established and developed, for example in Eratosthenes and Strabo, and is still used by Diodorus. Hecataeus’ Genealogiai (frg. 1 sqq. Nenci) contain genealogical accounts, mostly mythological, that of Deucalion (Frg. 15), as well as various stories, such as the labors of Heracles (Frg. 28 sqq.), the invention of the alphabet (Frg. 24), the Argonautica (Frg. 20), and others. Many later genealogies include those of Hellanicus, for instance, in the later epic Phorōnis, which is mostly a genealogical account of events from the times of Phoroneus the Argive to the return of the Heracleidae, and Herodotus’ mythological genealogy of the Lydian kings as the descendants of Heracles (I.7). As works of geography and genealogy, Hecataeus’ Periēgēsis and Genealogiai become paradigmatic for early history (despite containing genealogical and geographical data). Geography and genealogy are exemplary for history because any historical account is framed in terms of genealogical and geographical references. Yet most importantly, both works display a similar structure, which is borrowed and becomes the structure for any historical oeuvre and its narrative. The structure of a geographical and genealogical account is represented by a set of (sometimes loosely connected) histories, each of which is a story being told by its fabula and constituted by the historical, which is usually a list of names or data. A particular way of ordering the historical can be called logos: the story told and the principle of its organization. The fabula of a geographical account is the description of travel, of places, which are inhabited



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and “cultivated,” and which become known through a history. The fabula of a genealogy is the description of the genealogical relations or a succession of mythological or legendary (“cultural”) heroes. In both cases, the fabula depicts an excellence or virtue, such as that of courage in discovery (in a geography) or committing a feat, and thus places a person or people in a succession of other illustrious characters of the past all the way up to a hero or a god. The fabula of a geography refers to and explains a list of names: countries, cities, mountains, rivers, islands, peoples, travelers, as well as their encounters with other cultures, which may include mythical creatures and travelers’ own heroic deeds. The fabula of a genealogy refers to and explains a list of names: it justifies the inclusion of this particular person within that list. The ancient historia of Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and Herodotus is not just that of places, but of inhabited places in particular. Hence, it is a history of the people who are related to these places, and of a people’s common and individual origin. Such history does not need to refer to any other principle or reason that would make it meaningful or bring any systematicity into the things and deeds mentioned. Historia might appear as a naïve and non-reflective description of the cosmos as a whole and of everything contained in it, of which humans are a part. And yet, the fabula of both geography and genealogy is not just a description, but also a prescription, namely of how to look at the world and its inhabitants placed there (geographically) in a succession of generations (genealogically). Geography and genealogy do not therefore strictly distinguish between “reality” and “myth,” because their task is to explain, to give an account of things and events, to make them meaningful primarily in terms of their “what,” not in terms of their “was” or “is.” Early history is neither teleological, nor providential, nor universal. Most importantly, there is no end or telos to a geographical and genealogical history, other than the purpose of preserving memorable events, the names of people (both men and women), and the things of the past. In the opening sentence of his work, Herodotus tells us that the major purpose of his history is to preserve the great and remarkable deeds of the past (erga megala te kai thōmasta, I.1). Such a history, which is not specifically Greek but can be seen in many different cultures, intends to save things, both human and natural, by preserving them from the “futility of oblivion,” as Hannah Arendt puts it, insofar as the natural is inhabited by humans.4 Becoming historical, things and events are thus built into an existing narrative, a story that counts and preserves relevant names of people, things, and events.

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However, not all things are written into a history—only those that exemplify, positively or negatively, a certain quality of action and understanding of the other and the self, which is the quality of virtue or goodness. Only these things that are historically exemplary can be paradigms of notable cultural, moral, and political behavior and proper decision-making. History, then, is the preservation of the natural things that (always) are, as well as human events that have been, and the reproduction of actions that either demonstrate or deviate from virtuous actions, which, in turn, themselves are based on precedents and examples, which history must keep. If one does not know how to act in a particular situation, one has to act as Achilles did in Homer, or the way another remarkable “historical” (whether real or mythological) hero acted. As Polybius says, his predecessors all claimed the study of history for the sake of learning and training (paideia kai gymnasia) for political life, “and that the most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.”5 This is an epic idea of history (although Polybius himself claims to go further in his enteuxis, intercourse on Roman history, by showing the true causes of its remarkable rise): the one who perseveres in bearing misfortunes of life becomes a hero and an example for others to follow. Even if the situation of such an act is different and can never be exactly repeated, the hero sets the standard of notable behavior, of what is to be done or avoided by all means.6 Although such paradigms are valuable for the present, they are often withdrawn from it into the heroic, epic, and mythological past. In this case, the hero’s actions are considered primarily in terms of their “what” rather than in terms of their “was.” In this always visible yet unapproachable starry sky of the cultural past such events are preserved without being changed, since it is the “absolute past” incapable of absorbing any new events or names but only serving the paradigm for the present. Ancient history tells about the past insofar as it wants to save things past and allow them to continue existing in the recollection of those who share a history. But when universal and teleological history speaks about the present, it already knows in advance what it wants and has to say, because it already has an agenda to be implemented in the present. Such history of the present produces the present and shapes the future by interpreting the past. Yet, when speaking about the (human) present, history does not have a proper distance from it, because it is itself part of the present. Therefore, such history inevitably changes the present by speaking about it. Since ancient historians do not recognize a providential but only a paradigmatic end of history, there can be no single universal history and no progress



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in history toward a given end. There can only be many local histories. Already Hellanicus leaves behind many “histories” or historical accounts: geographical (descriptions of Aeolis, Lesbos, Argos, Attica, Boeotia, Thessaly, Cyprus, Egypt, Persia, Scythia, Lydia, Phoenicia, India, etc.), and genealogical, where he provides not one single but many (mythical and local) genealogies, such as Phorōnis, Atlantias, Trōika, etc. Multiple histories may pertain to a common tradition (e.g., of the Greeks, in Herodotus VI.53), and although Ephorus aims to write a universal history (in 29 books, ap. FGrH 2 Jacoby), it is still a general summary of all things known about various peoples past and present, from the return of the Heraclidae (the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus, cf. Herodotus IX.27) down to his own time (the fourth century bce). Such history is organized geographically and genealogically kata genos, and not as one that unifies all the histories by attaining to some purpose that is to be realized in the future. Besides, each of its books is edited separately, and thus can be read independently. Herodotus himself compiles his Histories around a particular history, that of the struggle between the Persians and the Greeks, accompanied by numerous incursions into neighboring countries, peoples, and histories. History as prose-writing. As a particular way of speaking about things past, ancient history developed late. History itself develops late, after the originary events that define and establish it, and as such those events are memorized and transmitted in myth and epic as that which has already happened. History, however, comes after poetry: after both epic and lyrical poetry had been established and flourished in Homer and Hesiod, Kallinos and Tyrtaios, Archilochus and Simonides, and Alkman and Stesichorus.7 Epic is originally oral in its composition and performance. Yet early historians write; history is written.8 History is a written and prosaic genre (Hecataeus, Frg. IX Nenci). Hecataeus is a writer of history; he is historiographos or historikos.9 The historian is thus a writer, syggrapheys, the one who collects and writes down historical facts, specifically a prose-writer, as opposed to a poet.10 The Pre-Socratic philosophers or “physiologists” use writing, but they still write in poetry composing poems about nature (Peri physeōs, e.g., of Parmenides, written in dactylic hexameter). After Empedocles, however, all philosophers use prose,11 and so do also early historians. The early historian is a logographer (Hecataeus, Hellanicus, Pherecydes) who writes down speeches, logoi. The reason for this is that a history must preserve an account of certain events. If the task of such preservation is delegated to unwritten memory, then that which is to be remembered must be put in a way that is easy to memorize and retrieve, which is delegated to oral poetry as

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The Concept of History

metrically structured. When, however, the historical things to be remembered are multiplied and, moreover, are constantly reinterpreted, re-established, and rethought, they have to be entrusted to a text and written down. Hence, prose is indispensable for historical memory, and often occurs in the form of written notes, hypomnēmata, in which things past are collected, preserved, and can be used for multiple histories. Such manifold writings came out of the Milesian school of Thales and were probably used for keeping notes for memory. Historians thus do not simply write—they write in prose. Hecataeus is reportedly the first ancient historian to have written in prose—logopoios— although before him Anaximander had already written in prose about the inhabited world, oikoumenē.12 Another ancient writer who was one of the first to use prose is Pherecydes, also considered a philosopher (Frg. A2 DK, ap. Suda). All historians after Hecataeus write in prose, which is simple and straightforward in its style. Thus, Hecataeus is “pure and clear” (katharos … kai saphēs, Hecataeus. Frg. XXX Nenci); and Hellanicus transmits everything aplastōs, in an unaffected, simple way (Hellanicus. Frg. T 13 Jacoby). Before them, Anaximenes, too, is said to have written in a simple and dignified language (Diog. Laert. II.3). Early historians can afford to write simply, because they rely on writing in order to transmit what has happened in the past in detail, for which purpose mnemonic, rhythmic, and poetic devices become obsolete. One might even say that, formally, (early) history is anything that is written in prose, not written poetically. As such, history as prosaic is opposed to epic and lyric poetry, but also to early natural philosophy written as poems about nature, and to tragedy. Later philosophy is exceptionally prosaic, and in this sense it is also historical. But rhetorical Sophistic speech, although prosaic, is nevertheless stylistically oriented toward poetic (rhythmic and architectonic) patterns, and thus formally differs from philosophical and historical.13 History’s turn to prose is very significant in that prose is not a straightforward “natural” imitation of ordinary spoken language. Rather, as Strabo tells us, prose arises as narrative in imitation of poetry. In its very arrangement and organization into an ordered line, prose goes back to the method of metrically organized poetic lines or stikhos (which initially meant a row of soldiers). In the beginning, there is poetry, which is originally oral yet is itself artificial, and then, in imitation of this poetry, there is prose, which emerges as both an appropriation and an overcoming of the poetic tradition. By writing simply, the prosaic writers, such as Pherecydes and Hecataeus, did away with metric structure (lysantes to metron). The later writers then eliminated the last remnants of poetry from their prose altogether, and, as Strabo says, “brought prose down



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to its present form, as from a sublime height.”14 Therefore, (historical) prose is highly artificial; it is a written imitation, a “copy” and “counterfeit” (mimēma) of originally oral poetry. Prose is a pezos logos, “speech on foot,” a speech that walks, but does not dance in rhythm.15 History in details: polymathia. If things past are to be remembered, then they have to be distilled into a history and thus abstracted or alienated from themselves. In other words, they have to be made memorable and derived from original, real events. To be remembered, things must be shown according to their essential components, where “essential” is understood here in both of its senses, as that which is “important” and also as “what a thing is (was).” This is the work done in a history by fabula. Yet the accidental components of a thing are equally important for history, because they reveal a thing’s individuality and uniqueness, which is preserved within the historical. The historical itself, however, is already not accidental, because it is constituted as a detailed account that has a particular structure, usually the structure of a list. Historical knowledge, then, is not universal or logical knowledge, but rather a knowledge of details, to which, in principle, new details may always be added (e.g., when new evidence is discovered). In turn, these new details may lead to a (radical) rethinking of a given history. Hence, in order to be a historian, one must know and transmit “what happened” in a relatively brief and simple fabula, which is supplied by a properly historical component of relevant things and names, a long and complex inventory that is both elaborate and ordered. Everyone knows the fabula, but the historian knows much, and thus knows many minor details, the minutiae of the historical. Due to the concreteness and minuteness of the details, they may appear insignificant but are exceptionally important for the constitution of a history. Heraclitus famously claims that much learning, polymathia, does not teach reason, as knowledge, thinking, and reasoning. Otherwise, he adds resentfully, it would have taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus, who for Heraclitus remain only “historians” who know much but to no avail. “Learning or knowing much” is pejorative for Heraclitus: it means having eclectic knowledge drawn indiscriminately from many sources and texts and made into one’s own “wisdom” that merely consists in fraudulent tricks and deplorable malpractice (kakotekhniē), and hence constitutes a pseudo-science.16 To which Democritus further adds: “thinking much, not learning much should be practiced.”17 Both the grouchy Heraclitus and the sage Democritus oppose knowledge as thinking, as discovering and learning from nature (polynoia), to knowledge as

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“knowing much” (polymathia). Perhaps by this they mean knowing too much, too many details, learning from dubitable sources, from anonymous others, from what is “told,” from an opinion for which nobody is responsible, and eventually also from myth, which obliterates an original simple truth discovered by the one (the thinker, the philosopher) and then was distorted by the transmission of the many (the tradition, hearsay). Yet the historian is a polyistōr, one who knows much and can tell much, an erudite “Renaissance man.” Hellanicus himself is a polyistōr, “much learned.”18 Later, this title becomes honorary for a widely learned person, e.g., of Alexander Polyhistor and Demetrios from Magnesia (first century bce).19 The historian is precisely the one who not only knows and judges possible reasons of an event, but is also primarily the one who knows many details about it, and who can convey them as if being a direct witness. History, therefore, is about knowing much. History is polymathia. Since knowledge of the historical is not about a universal, and is instead about particulars, details, and individuals, it is opposed to strict science, epistēmē, which involves the knowledge of principles, elements, and causes, and is about those things that cannot be otherwise. In history, everything to a great extent is accidental and can be otherwise. A historical event cannot be otherwise only insofar as and once it has happened. Any history, then, deals with descriptions and accounts of seemingly accidental facts and actions (e.g., of a sequence of cities along a seashore, or the members of a family in their generational succession). Yet, every minute feature counts for a history; hence, an apparent accident is not accidental at all but in fact may tell the whole story. Therefore, history as “knowing much” is not a strict mathematical, logical, or natural science as it was practiced, for example, by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics in antiquity, or by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in early modernity. Early historiē is a “science” only to the extent that it contains a geographical account of the world that includes a description of the then-known countries, rivers, seas, bays, mountains, peoples (ethnē), their customs, founding myths, genealogies, stories of their migrations, foundations of cities, descriptions of flora and fauna (natural history), philological (etymological) investigations into the names of peoples and places, their meanings, changes, eponyms, and so forth (in Hecataeus, Skylax and Hellanicus; cf. situus, gentes, maria, oppida in Pliny. N.H. I.4). This sort of science originates and flourishes with travel, which becomes a paradigm for history, since travel discovers new countries, peoples, histories, and customs. As Hartog shows, the paradigm of travel is embodied in Odysseus, whose search for home exemplifies theōria as a quest for knowledge that can be gathered in travels and then shared with others.20 Travel becomes a



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symbol of discovery, which occurs as “wonder” of finding out about other things, places, peoples, their customs, languages, local myths, and histories—about the natural and cultural “other.” It is worth noting that many early historians come from Asia Minor: Ionia (Hecataeus), Aeolis (Hellanicus), Caria (Herodotus). This is perhaps not by chance, because in antiquity Asia Minor saw constant and vivid interactions between different peoples and cultures, which makes the Anatolian Greek writers reflect upon others and themselves, as well as on the similarities and differences between peoples and their histories. History, then, comes close to being a science in the ancient pre-Aristotelian and Ionian sense—as the discovery of nature, peoples’ ordered genealogies and their natural surroundings. As such, history is knowledge, a “science” about things past and present that may be useful for the future and are inscribed into the ordered and beautiful cosmos. However, the future in ancient philosophy is mostly the prerogative of an oracle and does not happen according to any providential plan, which might either be revealed through a text or understood philosophically from studying the past. In ancient history, if a historical event can be of any use for the future, then it is so only as a paradigmatic example. As Thucydides says (I.22.4), it is important to know past events because future events may happen in exactly the same way, or very similarly, for human nature, always being the same, is not subject to history. Knowledge of history is therefore variable knowledge of things past that presupposes a historically invariable “condition” that does not evolve with or in history according to some preconceived plan. But history is not a systematic philosophical reflection on itself. (In this sense, what I am doing here is not history.) When ancient historians thematize history, that is, when they speak about history in their histories, they speak about its method(s): Hecataeus does so in the “Prooemion” to his Periēgēsis, Herodotus in the beginning of his History, as do Thucydides, Polybius, and even Strabo (as a “natural historian”). Method comes with the reflection of the historian about what exactly he is doing when he is writing history. And yet, ancient thinkers do not produce a philosophy of history, because there is no a priori “scientific” system of history; history is not guided by providence toward an inevitable end, and hence it does not have laws or law-like regularities. Even if early history collects much and thus is a matter of “much knowledge,” it is still non-accidental. For, on the one hand, there are very particular kinds of stories that serve the purpose of preserving the names of people, things, and events from the non-being of oblivion. On the other hand, there is systematicity in early history with regard to the arrangement and ordering of things into accounts that are also organized in a very particular way. History lays claim to

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The Concept of History

truth as the truth of the said, of the truth-telling, which is different from the truth of mathematics, logic, and the science of nature. History, therefore, does involve systematic thinking and truth-telling that can be rationally justifiable and empirically verifiable. However, it is a science of knowing much, and as such is opposed to science as strict knowledge or epistēmē, which knows few fundamental principles or laws thought to be at work in many particular instances of thinking and nature. It is not by chance that the early historia or historiē of Hecataeus and Hellanicus comes from the Ionian school of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes (according to Strabo, Thales was the originator of the science of nature).21 So history is science in the sense of the Ionian “physiologists” who peer into nature and its principles yet do not either establish a systematic science of nature (as Aristotle does) or use mathematics in its construction (as Galileo and Kant do). Genealogy and geography. Early history always has a genealogical component, on the one hand, and a geographical, on the other. Qua geographical, history includes a version of natural history, which, in turn, presupposes a natural philosophy as the explanation of nature. Thus, Hecataeus’ Genealogiai, also called Historiai or “histories,” are full of geographical data and references to people who inhabit each place, city, and country, which are thus lived places, cultured and cultivated by stories. Such are also the works of later Greek historians, such as Charon of Lampsacus and Theopompus of Chios, who called their works Hellenika or Historiai.22 Any geographical constituent, any “landscape,” has a human history inscribed into it—one of migration, settlement, travel, naming, and war. Every people inhabits a polis and a country that surrounds a polis: each polis is very concretely located, situated, and inscribed in its surroundings. Therefore, geography as a description of the country and neighboring countries, with its rivers, mountains, bays, capes, and islands, is indispensable for a history. Historical genealogy and natural history in geography are thus always intertwined. Genealogy is the study of the beginning and origin of a family or kinship, of people or gods, and of their deeds through a succession of generations, considered in their natural environment. Hecataeus, Acusilaus, Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Hippias all produced genealogies, either as special works entitled Genealogies (three books by Acusilaus), or used genealogies extensively in their writings (Herodotus, Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus).23 Divine genealogies play an important role in early histories and epic: they attempt to give an orderly and systematic account of various functions that gods play in



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things human, particularly, in teaching them certain knowledge, interfering with their affairs, and also being their forebears. As Herodotus tells us (II.53), Hesiod and Homer were the first “who composed divine genealogies and assigned the titles [and names] and distributed the privileges and skills over which the gods preside, and indicated their respective shapes.” Genealogies are abundant in ordered enumerations, lists, and epic catalogues. Such are, for instance, the catalogue of women in Hesiod and the catalogue of ships in Homer. Of Homer’s profuse genealogical accounts, some are reduced to a person’s patronymic, which then becomes a “minimal,” condensed genealogy— and some are quite elaborate, as that of Aeneas in the Iliad. One might consider Hecataeus a geographer, Acusilaus a mythographer, and Pherecydes a genealogist. Yet every ancient historian is a genealogist, insofar as every history contains genealogy. As a separate genre of historical literature, genealogy exists until circa the middle of the fourth century bce, which is the time when speculative philosophy and sophistry begin to ponder about the reliability of the transmitted stories and about their function within tradition, in particular, about myths and divine genealogies. It is no wonder, then, that both Hippias and Plato use genealogies but are critical of them nonetheless. Genealogical history is anthropological or ethnographic. Hellanicus writes ethnographic histories in which he follows Hecataeus. These histories are local histories of various Greek and foreign peoples and events, that is, they are both detailed and located in a place. Such, for example, is Atthis by Hellanicus, a history of Attica from the seventh through the fifth century bce. However, each people is always inscribed both into a genealogical and political history, that of its polis, on the one hand—and the history of its environment, places, limits, countries, its horoi, as well as the stories about migrations and settlements (e.g., Panyassis’ Ionica), on the other. For this reason, Hellanicus writes “horographic” and chronographic histories, the geographies of various countries, in which he follows Hecataeus. Genealogy inscribes people into the concreteness of their historical and geographical environment, which is why, again, genealogy is inextricably connected to geography—to the mountains, valleys, and rivers people live in and with. Thus, when Hesiod describes rivers (Nile, Meander, Ister, etc.) as born from Tethys to Ocean, he links genealogy and geography with history as knowledge and recollection: “The names of them all [children of Tethys and Ocean, i.e., rivers] it is difficult for a mortal to tell, but each of those who dwells around them knows them.”24 Both genealogy and history appear as defining who one is. Indeed, since ancient times, a person’s name provides one’s “condensed” personal history by

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including a personal name, patronymic (or family name), and the city of origin. Hecataeus, son of Hegesandros, from Miletus. Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, from Athens. The personal name is the (personal historical) constituent that points to the haecceitas of this person; the patronymic points to a family genealogy, which may include a mother’s name and the names of ancestors; and the city of origin points to the political and cultural history of a people who are concretely—geographically—inscribed into a place and country. Naming is therefore important for history, which is why both genealogical and geographical historical accounts contain, as an important constituent, etymologies of the names of peoples and countries. Etymology is a “history of names,” a restoration of the true meanings of names and as such was already used by Hesiod in the Theogony. Hellanicus pays special attention to the origins of and changes in the names of peoples and countries in many of his writings, particularly in the Ethnōn onomasiai, or Names of Peoples. Later, with the Sophists, particularly Hippias, as well as with Plato and Aristotle, restoring and “distinguishing the names” becomes an important component of thinking—and speaking—the truth of things by digging into their original meaning. In a history, geography and genealogy thus complement each other. A contemporary example of overlapping of geography and history is Braudel’s notion of the “longue durée,” one of three different levels of temporality— “individual,” “social,” and “geographical” time—which define the speed of change in history. The time of “long duration” sets almost static, long-winded, “geographical” or “spatial” structures in history.25 Yet geography and genealogy are also opposed to each other, since geography tends to describe the present synchronically (although not exclusively, for in Hecataeus’ Periēgēsis there are also descriptions of past events), whereas genealogy describes the past diachronically. Besides, the “geographical” nature has no beginning, whereas people do have an origin, which usually justifies the claim to power, fame, and property, and is described and prescribed— constructed—into their genealogies. Genealogy, then, goes back to its originary founders. It is an “archeology,” arkhaiologia, that goes back to its source and origin from which it begins and receives its meaning, which includes an account of what this thing was not before it became what it is. Moreover, geography constitutes the spatial component of history (arranged in a linear way, as seen in sailing around a coast, and then artificially reconstructed into a map), whereas genealogy establishes an order of succession or a sequence of generations and is thus the temporal component of history.



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Historian as witness and judge. Etymologically, as scholars mostly agree, the archaic Greek term historia comes from the root id, wid, eid, which both has the meanings “to know” (oida) and “to see” (2 aor. eidon/ weidon; cf. Lat. video),26 that is, to know through seeing. However, as was said, historia also means an investigation, inquiry, account, or story.27 Perhaps for this reason, Iamblichus reports that Pythagoras called geometry “history.”28 Aristotle too refers to his study of psychology as “history.”29 “History” thus implies telling a story that is based either on inquiring into the other (humans, nature, text, god, oracle), or on one’s own seeing or being an eyewitness. The related term is histōr (also istōr, Boeotian wistōr) or “historian,” which means “the one who knows,” but also “mediator” and “judge.” Chantraine stresses that the word “historian” has two distinct meanings: that of “witness” (in Boeotian usage), and that of “judge” (in Homer).30 Hence, being a historian presupposes investigation, questioning, and the establishment of knowledge about things past and present from personal evidence—and a reconstruction based on the testimonies of others.31 It is important to note that the notion of the historian as witness fits with Boeotian oral catalogue-style poetry, as opposed to early Ionian written history. The term histōr is also used in Greek epic poetry. In the famous description of the shield of Achilles, Homer mentions two people engaged in a dispute over whether one has or has not paid the other a forfeit for murder. Both are trying to end the dispute by appealing to a histōr (epi histōri, Il.18.501). Frisk suggests that it is not quite clear whether histōr here means a judge or a witness, since within the context of the description either meaning is possible. Some translators of Homer (A. T. Murray, N. I. Gnedich) take histōr in this passage to be a witness, whereas others understand histōr in Homer to mean a judge.32 In Hesiod, histōr is the wise man, the one who knows (Op. 792).33 Therefore, “historian” (histōr) originally means either a witness or a judge. The historian, then, is the one who knows how things were. That is to say, the historian knows the “what is” both in its “what” and “is” (“was”). The historian knows this from either attending the events (as a witness) or from the testimony of others (as a judge). The testimony of the other may be that of a human (in Homer), of wisdom (in Hesiod), of nature (in Aristotle), of reason (in Pythagoras), or of god (through an oracle).34 Thus, Hecataeus’ Periēgēsis to a great extent is based on his personal travels, which is why he is called polyplanēs, “wandering in all directions,” or one who has traveled much and far.35 The historian is a witness through personal presence, through opsis, “seeing,” which is often exercised through travel (by

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Hecataeus or Herodotus who travels to Egypt, II. 35 sqq.)—or through akoē (also akoēi legomena), “hearing” an account of a witness. Both the “seen” and the “heard” are then written down by a historian in the form of notes that may be reworked and included in a history. The “heard,” however, may be either oral, heard from other people—or written, heard (read) from texts (such as epics, travel notes, navigation manuals, which represent either a common or local tradition), thus transmitting the existing tradition (of registers, lists, and records) of names. The opsis and akoē complement, rather than oppose, each other, as personal evidence complements the communicated tradition.36 Still, the opsis is meant to be more reliable, as an “autopsy” (autopsia, “seeing with one’s own eyes”), whereas the akoē is less certain, insofar as it implies hearing what “they say” (legetai), and not what one has seen for oneself (ouk eidon; cf. Herodotus II.156, cf. I.183). The historian as a witness has an obligation to preserve even an unreliable testimony, despite it possibly being incomplete and untrustworthy and its only being that which is told, such as an “anecdote” or “myth.” For the purpose of collecting evidence from various sources, both from memory (mnēmē) and written accounts (logoi), is to save an event and pass it on for posterity. Thus, Hecataeus communicates a myth of the origin of wine, although it is an altogether incredible story.37 Herodotus is aware that many of the stories he is telling are not trustworthy and that there are discrepancies between different versions of the same story.38 Yet, he still chooses to tell them and pass them on even if he himself does not always believe them, since he considers them noteworthy and thus worth saving from the non-being of oblivion. One may say, therefore, that early history is already critical history, for even if it transmits many whimsical things, it knows that they are hardly credible and require an interpretation of the listeners and the readers. In the Odyssey, Homer allows the heroes to speak for themselves in their own voices about their fantastic adventures, thus delegating the responsibility for what they say to them as the “source,” since his own obligation is to convey what he has heard. This is the position of a historian. Because the historian tells not only what he has seen but more often what he has been told, which is not always reliable, mistrust of historians—including Hellanicus and Herodotus—was already widespread in antiquity. Severe criticism of Herodotus becomes almost a commonplace among later writers: Thucydides, Diodorus, Plutarch, Aelius Harpocration, Libanius, and Cicero all find him untrustworthy, and even Aristotle reproaches him for making minor mistakes in natural history. This makes Herodotus the father figure proper:



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Cicero famously claims that in the “father of history,” Herodotus, and also in Theopompus, one finds countless invented stories, innumerabiles fabulae.39 This does not mean, however, that for Cicero Herodotus is not a historian, but rather that not everything is trustworthy in his history. Dionysus of Halicarnassus is the only ancient writer who never accuses Herodotus of fabricating or distorting historical facts. However, Dionysus prefers Herodotus to Thucydides not because the former is more precise—but because he is more interesting and engaging as a storyteller.40 Obviously, many doubtful and outright false testimonies, many “lies,” are transmitted and told.41 Hecataeus begins his Genealogies by claiming that he writes down what appears to him to be right or true, for many writings appear “ridiculous” (geloioi).42 The task of a historian, then, is not only to preserve and possibly systematize (chronologically, genealogically, geographically) what is “seen” and “heard,” or told, but also to establish a reasonable and reasoned account, alēthēs logos, about things past. Such an account will then require (at least implicitly) a criterion for judging whether the things that have been told are true or false. For instance, Hellanicus in the Trōika explains that which appears wonderful and supernatural in a rational way. Therefore, being a witness, the historian must also be a judge, who in some cases may even suspend his own judgment (Herodotus, I.5), thus allowing us, the readers, ultimately to be the judges. For some events, one has to provide a rational explanation, if one wants to find a plausible account of what is told, logos eikōs (e.g., Hecataeus’ account of the Cerberus as an awful snake, Frg. 31 Nenci). But one must also tell the original story, even if it appears untrustworthy, and only then apply one’s own judgment. This is why Herodotus says that in composing his history he used opsis, gnōmē, historiē: seeing, judgment, and inquiry. In opposition to Herodotus, who conscientiously collects all available material, Thucydides thinks of himself as very much a judge who must discriminate and choose only the reliable evidence, which fits his own understanding of past events (particularly with respect to the political forces at play during the Peloponnesian War). “And with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way (ouk ek tou paratykhontos pynthamenos), and not even to be guided by my own general impressions (oud’ hōs emoi edokei); either I was present myself (hois te autos parēn) at the events which I have described or else I heard of them from my eye-witnesses whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible,” says Thucydides (I.22.2–3).43 This earns Thucydides a reputation of being trustworthy and “objective.”44 The price for such objectivity,

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however, is that in a history that has already been judged and interpreted, all doubtful stories and myths that do not fall within the scope of the judge’s approval become suppressed, forgotten, and forever inaccessible to posterity. The historian is thus not only a witness but also a judge who decides how to preserve things past (e.g., in a genealogical or geographical description) by passing judgment on their plausibility and credibility. As a judge, one has to take testimonies critically. Yet the historian should not make up or fabricate that which he conveys, even when judging them: if he himself does not have the opportunity to observe firsthand how things have happened, then he should take them from others, and not from his own fancy. In this respect, the historian differs from a thinker, who, like Heraclitus, treats the “much-knowing” of the historians with contempt. The thinker claims to get to the truth of things when investigating and inquiring on his own from within himself through, by a “self-growing” reason and account, the logos that increases itself.45 Yet, when no personal or other evidence is available, later historians often invent how things might have been according to their understanding of the events. Such are Pericles’ speeches in Thucydides, and also the details of the originary events of Roman history as they are accounted for in Livy (e.g., the story of Cincinnatus, III.26). In Thucydides’ own testimony about his judgment (I.22.1): “In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.”46 Yet, the immediate witnesses to an event do not have any distance from it, since they themselves are (were) part of the event. Besides, every witness always tells a slightly different story, since events are seen and recollected by being reconstructed from different perspectives, which implies an inevitable aberration that comes from and with each point of view being finite. Moreover, every witness always perceives an event with a particular “prejudgment” or “prejudice,” as Gadamer calls it.47 Hence, a fact told by a historian as a witness is thus inevitably a construction, an interpretation according to explicit or implicit ways or rules of looking at things and their meanings. Every empirical “observation” is already theoretically loaded, presupposing a certain theoretical scheme that allows seeing and experiencing things in a particular way. In fact, the very term “fact” comes from the Latin factum, which means “made” or “produced,” and not simply observed. In this sense, for the historian as judge,



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no facts are “mere” observations. In order that an event may become a fact, to be recognized as a historical fact, an account of it must be “judged” and “sentenced,” that is, both corroborated by other witnesses and fall under a “logically” consistent reconstruction of the event in question. And the witnesses who are distant from an event convey what they themselves have been told, and in this way also reconstruct and thus inevitably distort what has happened. Hence, the historian not only must preserve as much as he can, but must also decide what to admit among different witnesses’ accounts when inquiring about the motives, forces, and intentions at work in and behind an event. In this respect, the historian must always exercise judgment in distinguishing right from wrong and in pronouncing the truth of what has happened. Therefore, the historian as witness has to collect, gather, and amass all available artifacts, all the stories that are told and written, some of which might in fact not be relevant at all to the story itself. At the same time, the historian as judge must pass on a critical and discriminating judgment about what has been collected and told, exercising the ability to use her common sense and knowledge of related stories in order to decide what is relevant and what is not for the story being told. The truth of history. A history tells a story, or a number of stories, about things past, events that have happened, and people who lived and acted in them. When a story is told, it is told in good faith and with the intention to communicate the truth, how an event really happened, “wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist],” in the famous words of Leopold von Ranke.48 Yet, as I have argued, the “really” of what happened is inevitably distorted, even without any intention to do so, by being (re)interpreted and (re)collected. So does a history tell the truth about the events of the past—or does it always imply a fictional, “literary” account? And how much is and can be “real” in a history, and how much fiction is or can be admitted? There is always a possibility of making a mistake in the historical, in its detailed report and record, by omitting or misplacing an entry or a name. Yet, by the “truth of history” I do not mean only a reliable transmission of the historical. Clearly, the same event may be considered from different perspectives and points of view by different witnesses and judges, all of whom may also have different intentions and purposes in their accounts of what has happened, thus distorting (sometimes deliberately) the truth of a given history. The “truth of history,” however, can have different meanings: on the one hand, it may be taken as an adequatio rei et intellectus, a correspondence between what has happened and what we think and say has happened. On the other hand, it may

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also mean a coherent account of what happened, where possible inconsistencies in the available evidence and the preserved stories being told are smoothed out in and by an accepted and acceptable historical interpretation. I take it that, first, the truth of history is neither demonstrative or apodictic, nor providential. While the former is the truth established in mathematics and formal logic, the latter is a revealed truth. As neither apodictic nor providential, the truth of history is not a universal truth that is established by an argument. This means that history does not even have (nor should it have) a proper philosophical or scientific method. From what was said before about the structures of history, it is clear that the truth of history has nothing to do with either one of these. This does not mean, however, that there is no logos in history: the logos in history is a critical account that implies a process of thinking about and reasoned interpretation of what has happened in such a way that the general story or fabula being told might always be corrigible according to the particulars of the historical. This is a story that is critically thought out and expressed in thinking and speech. I am not at all denying that it may be possible to recover what has really happened. However, in order to be able to do this, one must do the difficult work of thinking critically through the existing narratives or fabula(e) about an event, of digging into the detailed and long accounts of what happened, comparing them, justifying particular exclusions or inclusions in the historical and its lists. Yet thinking about history may always also result in rethinking it. Therefore, a history is not set forever, is not written once and for all. The same history might always be considered and told differently: it might be rethought in light of new discoveries (concerning the historical) and new ways of thinking and narrating (concerning the fabula). There can be many, sometimes conflicting, descriptions of the same event, which, however, does not relativize the truth of a history. To tell “what happened,” even if it is not “heard” but actually “seen” by the historian as a witness, is always to some extent a reconstruction. That is to say, it is a construction such that a historical “fact” becomes a factum: that which is made or produced by the one who tells it, by the historian as a judge. That which is told, transmitted, and remembered in a history is often changed and manipulated by the historical memory itself and hence distorted. This, however, is not necessarily an intentional falsification or distortion. Simply put, a story can always be told otherwise and is a matter of ongoing corrections in both the fabula (which can be told differently) and the historical (which can be updated and rearranged). But the story as it is told is still a version of the same history at its “core”: it is a variation on the same theme, which, perhaps, can never be told in full (insofar as minor details will inevitably be lost and will not be conveyed), and



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yet can be told adequately, in a way that this same history can always be recognized. The truth of history is thus the truth of the truth-telling. Even if one might fall short of telling “the whole truth” due to a lack of the exact details, a paucity of sources, and the incompleteness of the available facts, the historian still must always make a conscientious effort to tell intentionally a bona fide history. The truth of a fabula is simple and straightforward: for instance, that there was a war; that innocent people perished; that people launched a woman into space; there was a revolution, a major change in the political and social order of a society. The truth of the historical, which is fabula’s detailed complement, may never be known in full: for instance, the names of all of the people who fought in that war; of those who perished; of those who made the launch possible; of all those who implemented, prepared, and inspired the change. And second, I take the truth of history to be the truth of telling what has happened. This means that a history primarily tells about how something happened, which implies a distinction between the “what” told in the fabula, and the “what” conveyed in its supplement, in the historical. The if of a story, whether it was or has actually happened, is always implicitly assumed yet almost never explicitly questioned in a history. A history always presupposes that what that is told is about that which was. In this sense, history differs from fiction or myth, where the question of the “was” of a story is either not presupposed or suspended. The reader of a literary fictional story is interested in its “what” and does not ask if it really was or has happened. Kleos and the fabulae of early history. It is remarkable that the fabulae, the ways of telling and interpreting a history in early historians do not seem to be all that numerous. In fact, there are only two such well-established and commonly repeated fabulae in early history, closely related yet different. One is the fabula of heroes: this story is the story of a virtue, aretē. Those who are chosen to be preserved in this way are those who act according to an ideal of proper action and embody it (courage, political wisdom, or any of the traditional virtues). Such people are considered heroes or heroines who deserve historical immortality (cf. Od. 11.225-329). The other fabula is that of rulers (kings and queens, royal descendants, magistrates, high priests, etc.). Originally, this fabula is also said to be based on virtue: the originator is chosen by people or gods due to his or her virtue, an accepted model of moral character and the ensuing action, which is either earned or bestowed as a gift of gods or nature. In the case of heroes, virtue is transmitted through those who are part of a succession because of their

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personal qualities. In the case of kings, virtue is supposedly transmitted as that which is embodied—literally, put into a body—as the mark of their successors. (Although this was not always the case, since in some societies [e.g., in Sparta] the successors of kings played a rather symbolic role; cf. Herodotus V.39–48). The uninterrupted succession is then supposedly completed by the descendants, by those who carry on and somehow embody the originator and his cause. The two fabulae of early history, those of heroes and of rulers, both contain genealogical and geographical references. Genealogically, both heroes and rulers form an uninterrupted, even if finite, succession, where any lacunas may be filled in retrospectively. Geographically, they are associated with a certain place, city, or country, which they may leave for the sake of seeking glory: to win a war, conquer a country, or to found a new city or country. Heroes who are described in one of the two fabulae of early history are those who made virtue visible and embodied it in their acts on the battlefield or in a long perilous journey. Therefore, virtue cannot be hidden—it must be seen and displayed in one’s actions, in a beautiful deed or thing, in order to be transmitted in a history by being told about, and thus be taught and learned within a political community. Heroes can be founders of cities (Aeneas), local deities, patrons or progenitors of a tribe (Abraham, Phocos). That heroes are conceived in this way ties their stories together with the stories of kings and the genealogical and geographical components, insofar as they originate a people and their feats are inscribed into a place. Such people deserve to be preserved after their physical death, which they often find in battle or in their adventures. In the “archaic” period this is achieved either through one’s offspring (“physically”), or in name (“poetically”), although not through a personal immortality (of the “soul”), which appears in classical times (e.g., with philosophical arguments in Plato).49 And while the poet, Homer, sings heroes and their accomplishments in epic, the historian, Hecataeus, leaves a “herology,” a written description of heroes and their deeds (hērōlogia).50 As a hero, one survives in glory or kleos.51 Kleos in Greek originally means “rumor” or “report,” “that which is heard,” “glorious renown” (A. T. Murray), “reputation,” or “fame.” It is frequently used in epic by Hesiod and Homer (“my fame reaches unto heaven”).52 Later historians use doxa for “fame,” which, however, may also mean “expectation,” “judgment,” and “opinion,” including the opinion of others.53 Glory comes with fame, with what is told through (poetically or historically) preserved stories. Glory provides immortality of and in the word of epic and history, the hope of which helps a hero overcome the fear of nothingness and of inescapable death.54 A hero becomes immortal through kleos



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that remembers him and, at the same time, reminds that the hero was a mortal. Hence, a hero must always prefer immortal fame to physical preservation.55 In Plato’s Menexenus (246 d–249 d) an epitaph ascribed to Aspasia (retold by Socrates yet invented by Plato) claims that it is important for us living not to diminish or wipe out the glory of our forerunners, because it is in such glory that they survive and live on. Fame comes with what is “told,” hence with “rumor,” which turns the “told” into a myth, wherein heroes abide until the end of time. Heroes live on as long as the stories about them are retold and reinterpreted. The stories then preserve them “culturally” or in a collectively shared and maintained memory. It is not by chance that the name of the Muse of history, Clio, Kleiō, means “giving fame.” Therefore, continues Aspasia, our fathers prayed to the gods that their children would not become immortal (ouk athanatous) but rather virtuous, glorious, and worthy of fame (agathous kai eukleeis), which are the greatest goods.56 In this way, their descendants themselves become glorious, insofar as they not only live themselves, but their predecessors also live through them, thus forming an uninterrupted succession of actors and listeners within a polis. But fame and glory are not given out for free: they must be earned. Hence, the heroic world where the quest for fame dominates and determines the acts of people and even of gods is inevitably agonistic, involving a constant search and struggle for glory as the recognition of one’s valiance and virtue.57 The most appropriate arena for obtaining glory is competition on a battlefield (or in the games, theatrical play, or dialectical dispute, which are all the epitome of agon and battle) or in a journey. It is not by chance that war is mostly portrayed in Homer as a series of individual duels, where the best prevail and thus obtain their share of fame, glory, and immortality. In this way, glory and fame become woven into history. Later, the Stoics provide a powerful critique of fame as vain and disposed to vanishing and forgetfulness with time. However, they still stress the centrality of virtue, which is its own reward and makes the virtuous self-sufficient, thereby fashioning her into a new kind of hero by removing her from temporality into the being of logos, which now is not (only) a story but also a universal law in things both human and natural. The prototype of this new hero is Socrates. In a sense, he is now the hero, since he embodies the new virtue of not only being virtuous but also by knowing what virtue means: it means inquiring into what virtue is as such, even if it is a knowledge that seemingly cannot be completed, a knowledge that does not consist in knowing but rather in a constant search for knowledge. The archaic hero of history acts without knowing, being driven

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by the desire for glory and immortality, becoming an actor in myth or epic. The new hero originates a new kind of a reflective quest, that of battle and journey as the search for virtue in its dialectical investigation, explanation, and justification. Fame thus follows virtue.58 But fame also provides honor, timē, which is the distinctive mark that places heroes as virtuous among the ranks of the (historically) immortals.59 As Diotima explains to Socrates, the love of honor (philotimia) comes from a striving for fame and glory, kleos, which alone makes one’s name immortal—remembered—for all time.60 Heroes are those who are honored and sung about by poets. Heroes are decorated with signs and emblems of distinction (e.g., military insignia, or phalerae in Rome); they are told about by historians and remembered by the people. It is honorable to be mentioned together with other heroes; correspondingly, one’s presence in an account of honorable and virtuous accomplishments also elevates others on the list to the rank of heroes. Only those who achieve and exemplify virtue deserve fame, a memorable narrative that would glorify them by placing them in a constellation of illustrious people. For this reason, Homer praises not only the victors but also those who are defeated, insofar as both display the virtue (of courage); and Herodotus eulogizes not only the Greeks but also other peoples of achievement. In this sense, the archaic heroic virtue becomes universal and transgresses ethnic or cultural boundaries. Even Hegel in his philosophy of history is still bound by the idea of kleos: glory (Ruhm) belongs both to peoples and individuals who through their accomplishments and deeds allow the world spirit to advance to a necessary stage of its triumphant progression.61 One might say that the constant search for honor and distinction is what marks the archaic or “pre-modern” apart from the modern, which is based on the notion of human dignity.62 Honor and fame are exclusive: not everyone can be famous and decorated in the same way, because otherwise being honored would not make any sense. Honor and fame make people unequal. Dignity, on the contrary, is inclusive: every human being has dignity, which makes all people equal. Distinction and honor still play an important role in contemporary society, especially in neoliberalism, which, similarly to the archaic culture, is based on an agonistic principle, on the idea of excellence and competition, where only a few—heroes of the market—are the winners. A specifically modern historical idea, however, is that the recognition of dignity in every human being implies that anyone and everyone—not just a chosen or famous and glorious few—is worth preserving in his or her name and acts for posterity within a universal and all-inclusive human history.



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The all-pervasive pursuit of honor is comparable to, and perhaps even more compelling than, the striving for bodily endurance in one’s physical progeny. In this sense, striving for honor and sexual drive are very similar: both are implanted in humans as powers for self-preservation in an attempt to gain immortality, athanasia—the one socially, and the other naturally. Heroes oftentimes cannot be preserved according to “what” their deeds were exactly; this is typical and follows the pattern that was already established above, e.g., with respect to the epic as a tradition of describing virtuous acts, particularly those of bravery and endurance on the battlefield and on journeys. Such clichés of behavior that lead to the glorification of the name of a hero, and hence immortality, are used when not much is known about a person’s life and acts, which are nevertheless told and written (e.g., the life of a saint). The listener or reader, then, can herself reconstruct—or even construct—the fabula around a name, and thus turn the life of a hero into a myth. In a sense, when not much is preserved of one’s life, then the “what” is not as important as the inclusion of the name (which is the “minimum” of one’s personality) in the historical, within a list of other heroes. When a name is put on a list, it becomes part of a history and is thus preserved. Fame, however, cannot be obtained by any means, but only through properly recognized virtues, which requires following the commonly established and approved rules of behavior. In this sense, virtue requires social conformism. In the agonistic social world, the model of acting is that of a sports competition, where one can only win by following the rules and in this way obtain fame and glory. A hero does not survive physically in kleos, but rather endures through a word, in the world of stories, in which alone a hero can live on and overcome non-being. Most importantly, her or his name should survive by being transmitted from generation to generation, thus becoming part of the epic and mythical narrative that constitutes a history. For this reason, heroes are already not quite human: it is human to die, but to be able to overcome death is not human but requires a heroic effort. Hence, heroes often become objects of local or universal worship. (Heracles is the most famous example, but perhaps also we could mention contemporary celebrities). Every hero is unique, yet stands within a tradition, thereby both following and exemplifying the pattern of the heroic. It is worth noting that later Roman writers, whether historians, poets, or philosophers, always looked at and read Greek writers as predecessors and examples whom they studied and consciously followed. Some later Greek historians even wrote histories of and for Rome (such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus).

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As different as ancient historians may be in their styles and the particular topics they cover, they all—both Greek and Roman—think and write within the same literary tradition established by Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Thucydides. Yet Hannah Arendt sees a stark opposition between the Greek and Roman understandings of history in that “Greek poetry and historiography saw the meaning of the event in some surpassing greatness justifying its remembrance by posterity. … Romans conceived of history as a storehouse of examples taken from actual political behavior.” She takes the Roman understanding of history to be based on action that implies moral understanding, whereas the Greeks act apparently according to the agonistic spirit, which is founded on competition, and hence “did not know any ‘moral’ considerations but only an aei aristeuein, an unceasing effort always to be the best of all.”63 This distinction between Greek and Roman historiography might stand if the heroic spirit of excellence and competition is found only in epic, which the Romans did not possess and had yet to invent with Virgil. In epic, the ideal of excellence transcends the one whose task it is to transmit and remember, and thus immortalize, the heroic memorable deeds of the past. In other words, the one whose history is epic-based cannot himself become a hero. If, however, the heroic is considered a measuring stick, and as such provides an example that can and should be followed, then the heroic ideals of earlier Greek epic and history and of later Roman historiography are not that different. Both Greek and Roman approaches to history, however, are opposed to the Judeo-Christian understanding of history as being teleological and providentially preordained. Providential history is non-heroic; instead it is meant for those who are already inescapably in history and thus cannot see its completion, since the meaning of history is accessible to the one who makes or produces history by one’s actions. In opposing Roman and Greek history, Arendt follows an accepted opposition that establishes a sui generis “historiosophy.” The opposition of “Athens” to “Rome” (which is accepted by Mommsen, Weber, Arendt, Jonas, et al.) is contemporary with the opposition of “Athens” to “Jerusalem” (accepted by Shestov, Buber, et al.), which is predated by an earlier opposition of “ancients” to “moderns” (accepted by Charles Perrault, Heidegger, et al.). All of these oppositions, however, are artificial simplifications and are historical constructions that serve various purposes, particularly the formation of one’s identity as modern, established in opposition to the historical “other” (equally a historical construction), in relation to which modernity either shares the “other’s” certain features, or radically rethinks and rejects them.

3

The epic of history Doer and teller, poet and historian. An important question is: who is the first in the constitution of a history based on stories of epic? Is it the “doer” or the “teller,” the hero or the poet, Achilles or Homer, the one who embodies virtue, or the one who tells about it?1 Does a hero act because there is a poet to tell about the act—or does a poet recount because of the actions of a hero? The relation between the hero and the poet, the doer and the teller, Achilles and Homer, appears to be central to the constitution of history yet seems to be paradoxical, because each one needs the other. On the one hand, the doer or the actor performs a remarkable and memorable feat, because he hopes that he will be spoken of and that his story will be told and recounted and will thus immortalize him in a history in the glorious realm of cultural memory. But the hero acts and becomes known only because there is the poet to tell the tale. An unvirtuous and unheroic actor, by contrast, perishes, and his name is forgotten forever. On the other hand, the teller or the poet narrates only because there are those who strive to save their names through memorable deeds, who are more than human and belong already to another realm of the lore, who thus become removed from this world residing instead in an epic or historical past. The poet tells a story only because there are heroes whose stories can be told.2 Rather paradoxically, neither the hero nor the poet is primary, because the doer and the teller need and presuppose each other. This, however, does not imply a vicious circle of mutual implication and definition. Rather, each one both is the other’s ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi, each one determining the other, although in different respects. Together, the doer and the teller make a history not only possible but also actual. The doer and the teller bring each other into a history and secure for each other a place in historical being. The two both live on in memory and within a memorable and memorizable text, which brings them both beyond the reach of the obliteration in oblivion. The hero becomes a teller (e.g., Pericles in Thucydides), just as Homer becomes a hero of “epic-telling” and as Herodotus becomes a hero of “history-telling.” Perhaps one might even say that there is just one “persona” in both epic- and history-telling,

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a persona who inevitably has two distinct yet mutually presupposing aspects or faces, namely those of the doer and the teller. If the task of the poet is poiēsis or production (of a poem), then it can be understood, as Arendt does, as “fabrication of memory” by translating action (praxis) into speech.3 For Aristotle, the difference between production and action consists in that the purpose of production lies outside or beyond that which is produced, whereas the purpose of (virtuous) action is the action itself. Therefore, contra Arendt, the doer and the teller both produce and act. On the one hand, the doer produces a beautiful act that is worth recalling and remembering in a history. Yet the doer also acts, insofar as his deeds exemplify virtue in action; and virtue is its own end. On the other hand, the teller produces a poem or text that is meant to become a foundational “standard reference” in a history. Nonetheless, the poet acts, too, because telling a story about a hero is an action that likewise has its own end, insofar as the teller, through the told, connects the order of memorable being with the listener.4 Moreover, as was said above, the writer as teller is also a doer. In this capacity, the writer too is a profoundly paradoxical figure. When literature is established in its various genres, which include various poetic forms, history, tragedy, comedy, prose, etc., the teller as writer consciously intends to become and be a doer, seeking fame and glory as a writer.5 Few—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes—happen to achieve this by the preservation of both their works and their names. Many—Polyphrasmon, Aristias, Timotheus, Xenarchus—leave either brief fragments, or only the titles of their works, or just their names mentioned in later authors, which, however, suffices to preserve them in the history of tragedy and thereby keeps them alive through cross-references and quotations. But when a teller (writer) composes and transmits the deeds and names of doers (heroes), does he then include himself in the list of doers or not? If the teller tells about all those who do not tell about themselves, then we encounter a version of Russell’s paradox: the teller both can and cannot include himself in the list of doers. Indeed, if the teller does not tell about himself, then he must tell about himself, and vice versa. This paradox seems to support the claim that one cannot tell about one’s own memorable deeds (a version of which is that a good person cannot say that she is good), because counting oneself among the history’s immortals is not a task for oneself as the teller. The teller can become a hero in a history only by telling about others (even if this other might be one’s own personification), about the hero who acts but does not tell her own story. Besides, on the one hand, the act of telling is descriptive, because it tells a story. Yet at the same time it is also prescriptive, because it prescribes a rule to



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be followed (e.g., to act virtuously), if one hopes to be preserved in a history. On the other hand, the act of doing is descriptive in that it embodies the acts that are considered heroic. But it is also prescriptive, because acting in a certain way (virtuously) prescribes a rule that is considered worth following. Finally, how does the historian as a witness and a judge relate to the doer and the teller? On the one hand, it seems that the witness is the doer because she establishes that which is right, the truths of fact, that which has actually happened; whereas the judge is the teller, because she tells what is right by discriminating the right from the wrong. On the other hand, the witness also tells what is right, and the judge equally does what is right by pronouncing the right judgment. In this way, the historian as a witness and judge relates to the writer as doer and teller. Therefore, one may say that the historian and the writer always imply and presuppose each other, just as witness and judge presuppose each other in the historian, and doer and teller presuppose each other in the writer. A third distinction relevant to the discussion of history, along with the witness/judge and doer/teller distinctions, is that between poet and historian. This distinction is introduced by Aristotle in his famous remark that “poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history, for the former shows things as they could be, while the latter shows merely how they were, so that poetry speaks rather about the universal, while history speaks about the particular and individual.”6 Although both poet (Homer) and historian (Herodotus) tell stories about heroes, each one does it differently. Aristotle himself clearly prefers the poetic casus irrealis not because it is normative and thus shows how things should have been, but rather because a poet speaks about universals that can and perhaps should be understood by everyone and hence are instructive for everyone. Correspondingly, Aristotle opposes “events” or “deeds” (erga) to “speeches” (logoi)7 in the same way as the “was” of the historian is opposed to the “might have been” of the poet. Deeds are of heroes or doers, whereas speeches are of tellers or poets. In the poetic telling of a story the intentional literary construction, the fictio, becomes a “poietic” production that attempts to reestablish the facticity of an event qua factum, not as a “fact,” but rather as an author’s fictional reinvention; not in the way it has actually happened, but rather in the way it might have been. This “might have been,” then, is a compromise and a substitution for a normative and rigid “should have been.” The “might have been” expresses the impossibility of the author’s resignation from the privileged position of the witness and the teller who judges and sentences the events and actors to “what” has happened and “how” it has occurred.

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Since the doer and the teller mutually presuppose each other in the writer, both play an important role in the constitution of the historical. One might say, however, that the Aristotelian poet tells of things not exactly as they occurred, but already as they have been processed, interpreted, and reflected upon as they might have been. This kind of writer narrates things in light of that which is considered constitutive historically and appropriate memorably. The poet, then, provides a universal framework for any history, namely, its narrative or fabula. The historian, on the contrary, diligently, thoroughly, and accurately fills in the details of the historical, building the detailed account of a history. Going back to the doer/teller distinction, one might say that, on the one hand, the Aristotelian poet is the doer, because he makes things happen by making them up, by molding them the way they might or perhaps should have been. Yet on the other hand, the Aristotelian historian is the teller, because he reports things in good faith and possibly in full. Epic and history. Epic as absolute past. Even if one disagrees with Georg Lukács that epic, together with tragedy and philosophy, constitutes one of three major kinds of literature8 (since one might wonder whether lyric poetry, comedy, and rhetoric are not equally important), nevertheless one has to recognize that epic is an important paradigm of action and recollection that stands at the very origin of literature. Aristotle defines epic as an art, and hence as an imitation, mimēsis, “of serious and important matters.”9 In another celebrated definition of epic, Plato characterizes it as “a mixed kind of poetry, which employs both the author’s narration of a story and an imitation [mimēsis] of heroes’ speeches.”10 Simply put, an epic is a long and solemn narration that tells mythoi akritoi, “endless stories” (Il. 2.796) about the glorious deeds of gods, heroes, and humans in battles of war and peaceful travels. Goethe and Schiller take epic to refer to the “absolute past,” to a heroic narrative separated from the present by an insurmountable and “absolute epic distance” that transforms real events into myth and thus becomes constitutive for a cultural tradition and a history.11 The temporal setting of an epic is the past par excellence. Like the starry skies, the epic past can only be seen; it can never be reached, and nothing in it can be changed. The epic past is always already complete, finished, and defined, both as a whole and in each of its parts. Self-contained and self-inclusive like a circle, the unalterable epic past can serve as a paradigmatic example for the present. In this sense, the temporality of an epic is self-enclosed and complete and, in a sense, is a-temporal. The “absolute past” is thus an eternity-like “when” in which each hero realizes his or her own



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“proper time” or kairos of the epic action. This “proper time” is also a-temporal: it is the time in which a deed is happening by having already happened, and thus found its fulfillment that leads to the hero’s immortality in and through the epic and the fame of its being “told.” But the epic deed does not happen because of providence, for nobody can control the kairos in which the hero’s action comes to its completion. Therefore, one must distinguish between providence and destiny. Providence, which is an implicit governing force of modern history, ultimately presupposes that a historical end-state comes about as a result of people’s actions that are inscribed into and unwittingly realize a natural or supernatural plan. Such an end-state is historical in that it provides an (or even the) end to history, yet it is ahistorical in that its source is usually thought of as lying beyond history. Yet this end is considered based on a model of a literary genre. Although tragedy is favored in modernity under the influence of the Romantics, insofar as tragedy corresponds to the construction of the modern Cartesian-Kantian subject, it is considered autonomous, isolated, and monological, and thus excludes the other from theoretical and practical deliberation. This makes the subject lonely, solitary and defined as being toward death, Sein zum Tode, which is the tragic condition. Such a predicament explains the philosophical attractiveness of tragedy to modern subjectivity. The privileging of tragedy and the underappreciating of comedy is an expression of the modern subject’s autonomy, loneliness, and solitude, which constitutes its “being toward death” and is a tragic condition.12 However, the good ending is the defining moment of comedy, which means that the providential history as striving toward a “good” end (e.g., of freedom) is in fact comic. Yet ancient history, as I want to argue, is based on the appropriation of epic. Although for the most part remaining hidden, such a plan may leave room for personal freedom and freedom of choice and still be rational, since it can be known philosophically and can yield a systematic conception of history. On the contrary, destiny as fate is not rational, especially in its epic personification as the goddess Moira (referred to once in Homer, and three times in Hesiod’s Theogony, 905 sqq.). The random choices of Moira in epic cannot be properly known but only guessed at. There is nothing to be known by way of rational systematic thinking when it comes to the lot of destiny: it is not science but divination and oracle that can clarify the opaque yet inevitable course of destiny, which rules even over the gods. (The concept of Zeus as a supreme deity as moiragetēs, “the one who presides over moiras,” is a later development.) Destiny does not necessarily lead to human well-being or freedom. Later, destiny is represented as tychē, an impersonal chance or accidental “luck,” which cannot

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be escaped but is not a subject that can be known rationally. Because a history provides an ordered and reasoned account of the historical, ancient history does not have to take fate much into consideration, because a history provides an ordered and reasoned account of the historical, leaving irrational destiny to epic and tragedy. In protecting events and names from oblivion, epic becomes the foundation for commonly shared identities that are preserved and transmitted as cultural memory (in the Iliad, the historical books of the Bible, the Ramayana, the Scandinavian sagas, The Song of Roland, Táin Bó Cúalnge, Beowulf, Kalevala, Manas, and many others). Since, as I have argued, a history always presupposes a narrative, fabula, epic becomes indispensable as the source of such fabulae. The idea of “national literature” is based on an adoption of an epic, from which literature freely borrows and adjusts according to its needs and new genres, thus not rejecting but appropriating the epic as both its other and its intimate own. European literatures have their paradigm in Homer, and if no epic of comparable scale is available, then it must be created on the basis of the already familiar legends and the existing myths. This is why Augustus commissions Virgil to write a “national” Roman epic. Later, Dante appropriates the Aeneid for his own newly created Italian epic poem, even if it is considered a comedy. Under the influence of the Romantics, one begins to look for a national epic in the local tradition, sometimes isolating a relatively obscure literary work or a manuscript. Thus, the Song of Roland becomes the French national epic, and Beowulf becomes the English national epic. The same happens in modern Russian literature, which emerged late in the eighteenth century, and immediately started searching for a candidate to fill the position of its epic foundation, which it found in a marginal late medieval poetic text, the Lay of Igor’s Campaign. This work was then assigned the utmost importance as an initial point of literary reference in the development of a whole literary tradition. A new literature, composed in a modern and emerging language, seeks to constitute itself primarily through an epic. Thus, Gogol intentionally wrote his Dead Souls (after which he was proclaimed the “Russian Homer”) as a modern epic poem, while in fact it is a satirical anti-epic, turning the seriousness and heroism of epic poetry upside down. Leo Tolstoy, another candidate for a modern Homer, intentionally wrote his opus magnum, War and Peace, as an epic, both in terms of its sheer volume and the scale on which it depicts the events and characters in war and journey, as well as its geographical and genealogical setting. Epic intentions and ambitions are also present in many modern literary pieces pivotal for the development of the modern novel (e.g., in



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James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake), which is explicitly interested in archaic modes of composition, including the simultaneous superposition of successive events. An important feature of epic, which distinguishes it from other literary genres, is that epic introduces and holds together many narrative parts all at once (hama), as if everything were present in one single moment of the a-temporal “absolute” past, that of memory and remembrance removed from any actual historical time. In epic, there are many stories told, all on an equal basis. For this reason, epic often consists of many loosely related, almost independent stories or myths (polymython), which contributes to its considerable volume.13 Because epic consists of a great number of episodes that are equal in value, epic is therefore voluminous, detailed, and lengthy, whereas the basic plot is rather simple and short and can be expressed in just a few words.14 Because the epic past is self-contained, an epic narrative can begin and end at any point, which demonstrates its intrinsic unity (for which Aristotle explicitly praises Homer, calling him “divinely sounding,” thespesios).15 Clear beginnings and ends are only added by later poets (e.g., in the Cypria) who continue and elaborate on the stories and myths told by Homer.16 Because the stories that are told coexist in the epic past, epic is therefore paratactic: it allows for the simultaneous co-existence, or co-presence, of a number of different parts within the plot or the lines of narrative “placed side by side.” The paratactic whole does not take precedence over its parts, so that while each constituent is meaningful within the context of the unified whole, each part is also nevertheless independent and is not ultimately determined by the whole as such. Each part remains equally important and is not subordinate to or hypotactically subsumed under the whole. In this way, epic assigns equal importance to various scenes, and even if the central narrative provides a unified frame for them, each story may still be told independently. That epic is paratactic means that, depending on the way we tell them, successive events may be depicted as simultaneous, or on the contrary, that simultaneous events may be shown as successive. As told, in its very production or epopoiia, epic is constituted by a tension between the doer and the teller, the hero and the author. Aristotle commends Homer as the epic poet, but Homer seldom speaks in his own voice, allowing a literary hero to speak, mostly through his actions, as an independent and distinct character or ēthos.17 Heroes, or doers, who primarily exemplify a virtue and in this way become worthy of being spoken of and remembered, and hence gain their share of immortal glory, are distinguished by their names, deeds, places of origin (geographically), and ancestors (genealogically). All of these features

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allow for a formal list or “catalogue” of heroes, which, however, does not describe them as characters in the modern sense as individuals defined by a unique set of psychological characteristics. Quite often, a hero is marked and identified by a single stable epithet, which would be insufficient for describing a character in full, but which can be considered a “condensed” personal description. There is no “inner” constituent of and in such a character: the hero is what he or she does, and is fully determined by the acts and identified with the deeds. The purpose of epic is the preservation of acts and names from the historical nihil by placing them into an unreachable and exemplary (“heroic” and “absolute”) past. Retained in the epic, such acts are accompanied by a story of how they were accomplished. But most importantly, an epic protects the name of the doer from oblivion and places it within a “genealogical” sequence of the renowned people of the past. The preservation of deeds and names requires an established cultural mechanism for passing them on, a traditio. Epic is exactly this kind of device in that it constitutes an accepted and shared narrative for protecting and passing on memorable events and heroes of the past. An epic account thus provides the doers with immortality and the listeners with remarkable examples to follow. Such models of virtue exemplified via action establish paradigms of behavior that are appropriated, and reproduced by the listeners within a history. Hence, epic is foundational for a culture as a set of shared histories, so that the very formation and education of responsible moral citizens as political and historical beings, their paideia or Bildung, is always carried out against the background of an epic.18 Epic and history: similarities and differences. But how does epic stand vis-à-vis history? In terms of the doer/teller distinction, the epic poet is the teller. Yet, as I argued above, the epic poet also becomes a doer once the teller joins a succession of the poets who are listened to, remembered, and imitated. In terms of the poet/historian distinction, the epic poet depicts heroes not according to the way they acted as humans, but according to the way they should have acted as heroes. Hence, epic is not “historical” but rather “poetic” in the Aristotelian sense, and the epic poet—Homer—is therefore properly a poet, rather than a historian. Finally, in terms of the witness/judge distinction, since the epic poet is not a “historian,” he is neither a witness nor a judge. Homer both tells what he has received from the previously transmitted tradition but at the same time himself establishes a tradition for generations to come. However, there are a number of similarities between epic and (early) history. Both tell about remarkable events within the paradigms of war and travel, of great deeds and discoveries. Hence, both epic and history contain geographical



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and genealogical descriptions. Both are long and serious, unlike later genres (e.g., comedy). Both epic (in Homer and Hesiod) and history (in Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and Herodotus) preserve things, events, and names from oblivion. Both do so by telling a major story (fabula) and elaborating on the story with minute details within the historical (in the form of detailed accounts, catalogues, and lists). But in doing so, neither epic nor history presupposes a transcendent purpose or telos. Neither dictates a necessary course of events for the future. Instead, they prudently leave a (potentially prescriptive) description of things past and provide memorable examples. However, epic and history are different in that epic is originally and essentially oral, whereas history, as well as drama, are already written once they first appear.19 Epic differs from history in the very way in which it is told and organized: epic is metric (and as such, poetic), whereas history is prosaic. Moreover, history is a systematic account organized hypotactically in accordance with a plan of exposition (a logos, geographical or genealogical), whereas epic is organized paratactically and can begin and stop at any point: epic does not have to have a systematic plot—only a general topic. Furthermore, history depicts things that have been seen or heard either immediately or through a witness who is not remote from the events being described, whereas epic tells about things so remote and distanced that they are removed into an unreachable past, which converts epic events into a “myth.” Hesiod says that in his poem he will “tell the truth” (etētyma mythēsaimēn, Op. 10). Horace takes this claim to mean that in poetry one has to say something that might be of use (prodesse) to the listeners, as opposed to saying things for the sake of sheer pleasure (delectare).20 But even if Horace is right, still the truth of epic differs from the truth of history in that the former is not critical of the story told and cannot be corrected, for an epic conveys things from an “absolute past.” Unlike history, epic cannot tell its story otherwise, because the time of live epictelling itself belongs to epic and its distant past, so that the epic story has already become part of a tradition whose letter cannot be changed. Only interpretations of an epic can be different and critical, but they already belong to a history of the interpretation of an epic. That which is “told” in an epic is “useful” in that it establishes a paradigmatic example of (virtuous) behavior. Yet similar to the truth of history, epic primarily tells about the “what” of the past, and not its “if.” That is to say, epic does not tell about whether the story that it communicates really “was” or has ever happened. The “was” is not spelled out in a history but instead is implied in its narrative, which is why the readers of a history tend to show a certain credulity and trustworthiness toward what they are told by accepting rather than

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critically questioning it. A history itself is not a dialectical construction that needs to be proven and established in its truth as a valid argument: it is a story told. Thus, a historical account and an epic poem do differ. Yet an epic poem should not be considered as requiring a critical reconstruction or a purge of unnecessary poetic embellishment and mythological supplements, so that it might become historical and reveal the real event behind it, e.g., the Trojan War as reflected in Homer’s epic.21 This means that the often mentioned distinction and the alleged succession of the myth–epic–history is too simplistic. In this scheme, myth is taken to be an imaginary, utterly fantastic story, behind which shimmer certain real events that are no longer recognizable; epic is taken as containing discernible traces of a real history that can still be reconstructed and restored; and history is taken as an account of real events as they really happened. The truth of epic is precise in its own way, in that it recollects and transmits the “musical” knowledge (told by the Muses and retold by the poet) of numerous past events into a commonly shared and maintained history. One may perhaps say that the truth of history is sober and “rational,” by a sane and accountable reason, whereas the truth of poetry is intoxicated and imaginative. History and fiction. A history may be about anything, the examples of which are the histories told by Suetonius. As I said before, every history contains the narrative element or fabula, which can be told differently but is the still recognizable “core” of the story. The fabula of a history preserves the “what” in what happened. The fabula is brief. It can be said “in three words,” it is rather simple and even dry but can also always be made more detailed and further attuned and expanded into a more comprehensive narrative.22 The fabula tells of actions but can also describe the appearances of heroes; it may even go into a “critical” analysis concerning the possible causes of what has happened. However, if we want a detailed and explicit account of “what exactly happened” in all of its available details, concrete dates, the exact names of the actors and a precise sequence of their deeds, misdeeds, and intentions, then we have to refer to the multiple, long, and often already implicitly interpretative accounts and lists that constitute what I have called “the historical.” History shares this fabula/list structure in common with literature, which also has a narrative plot (even if it is sometimes skillfully hidden in modern novels) and a list of characters.23 In antiquity anything written in prose is considered literature as logographia, to which also belong both history and philosophy. In early historians we already find quite elaborate stories that are often fictional, especially if they are based on a myth either as is commonly



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known or rationally interpreted by the teller. Such are probably the “histories” (of which we know only the titles) about the Argonauts, the Pelopids, Orpheus, and Musaeus in Herodorus of Heraclea (Frg. 31 T Jacoby). Prosaic literature as fiction emerges when history is already there and in this sense, it may be considered an “imitation” of history and its narrative technique. And yet, despite the structural similarity between history and fiction, there are significant differences between the two. Thus, although both tell a story of events and heroes, history and fiction have a different set of implicit presuppositions behind such telling. First of all, it is presupposed that the “what” told about in a history really was, that it did indeed happen, whereas—as the very (contemporary) terms “literature” and “fiction” suggest—a story told in a literary piece may be, and mostly is, made up or invented. The historical “was” is thus always implied in a history, whereas the fictional “was” is altogether suspended from literature. In other words, the “what” of the told in a history presupposes the “is” as the “was,” whereas in a fictional story it is not necessary. Fiction mostly provides what Cicero calls argumentum: a fictional story may be a documentary or have a real life prototype, yet it is always fictionalized by the author whose individual style and task of writing an artistic piece inevitably leads to a particular interpretation that, however, oftentimes distorts the “what” of the told. Although both early history and fiction depict characters that may become meaningful and significant to readers as examples of laudable and virtuous actions to be followed, a historical character is still meant to be “true to life” and depicted as she really was when she acted, whereas a literary character has to be uniquely recognizable yet not necessarily existing and does not require a real prototype. Since the fictional literary “what” is dissociated from the “is,” it is therefore “poetic,” whereas the historical “what” is properly historical in the Aristotelian sense. Thus, a historical person and a literary character may not be distinct in their individual “what,” but they do differ in their “is” (or “was”). In the beginning of the De legibus, Cicero asks whether a literary work is a reliable source: in particular, if a poem that tells a story (in his case, the story of an oak) can be trusted. Cicero’s answer is that one should not inquire too carefully or critically (diligenter) into the tradition, because it transmits (traditum) various stories the way they have been heard and told. Even if people ask whether the told is fictitious or true (fictante an vera), it is evident that one should not expect the same truthfulness (veritas) from a witness in court (a teste) and from a poet (a poëta, De legibus I.1.3–4). For this reason, unlike Aristotle, Cicero clearly gives preference to the historian, because the historian tells the truth, no matter how partial and particular it may be. The poet, on the

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contrary, invents various stories on the basis of the tradition, of that which has been transmitted. Therefore, the very principles or laws (leges) that are followed in history and poetry (fiction) are different. Why? As Cicero explains, “in history the standard by which everything is judged is the truth (veritas), while in poetry it is generally the pleasure (delectation) it gives” (De legibus I.1.5). Cicero thus stresses the difference between history and fiction, because the truth of history for him lies in the reality of the “is” being described, that is, whether the told has really happened the way in which it is told. Otherwise, the story is just a fictitious and invented “fable” told to please the listeners and readers. The truth of a history, then, is that of the Aristotelian “historian,” which consists in telling the truth of the “what” and the “is” (as the “was”). The truth of fiction, on the contrary, is that of the Aristotelian “poet,” which consists in telling the truth about characters and events as plausible, not the way they were but the way they are meaningful for the reader. The fabula both of a history and of a fictional story can be told differently from the perspective of different observers (e.g., by the witnesses to Caesar’s assassination or by the speakers in Kurosawa’s Rashōmon), and yet it always revolves around the “core” of a story. But the fictional story does not necessarily presuppose that it actually took place, whereas the events of a history as truth-telling should indeed have happened. Moreover, even if it might be rhetorically embellished, history tends to be boring, especially in its historical component, which keeps long and detailed lists of names, acts, and facts, whereas literature as fiction is meant to be engaging and entertaining. The boredom of history is already evident in Thucydides, and is explicitly mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. But history is to be boring if it intends to preserve and transmit every available minute fact and detail about an event, even if it cannot be achieved, because the majority of historically relevant, minor details are not only forgotten and unpreserved but are never even noticed in the first place. If one might imagine an all-knowing historical being, an absolute objective witness to all the details of every event, then such a witness cannot be a judge, because this being would already know all of the judgments about all of the things it has witnessed and observed. But for a finite human, which is endowed with forgetfulness that is both a burden and a blessing, the historical is never accessible in its entirety, no matter how finely grained it is. The all-knowing historical being is thus a non-human but rather angelic nature. Yet, as Schelling remarks, an angel is the most bored of all beings, because there is nothing really new for an angel, who already knows everything that has happened in history.24



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But humans as historical beings, who both make history and learn from and about it, are never bored. Stylistically, history tends to be rather simple, “scholarly,” and straightforward, which it is not only in modern professional history but already in Hecataeus and Herodotus. Literary and poetic fiction, on the contrary, is stylistically subtle and sophisticated and uses many different genres and devices, which it constantly explores and tirelessly elaborates. Perhaps the distinction between history and literature in terms of style is rather superficial, not only because from the very beginning history is considered a literary enterprise, but also because literary tools and sophisticated narratives are widely used in history from its very inception. And on the contrary, literature often borrows from history, and some literary genres are straightforwardly historical, such as memoirs, documentary scripts, or biographies. Moreover, paying attention to details is characteristic both of history and (good) literature. Also, history tends to be monological: each witness testifies without the other’s interference, and then the judge judges. A historian tells a story based on a long-winded sequence of facts and often supplements her understanding of them with an interpretation. Even when a historian reports an alleged dialogue (Herodotus talking to the Egyptian priests, II.113), it is usually retold and framed as a monological construction. Fiction, on the other hand, often uses dialogue as a narrative device, especially in novels, theater, radio, and film. As some theorists of literature have argued, most notably Schlegel and Novalis, any written text that has an author is meant implicitly to be a dialogue between the author and the reader, between the teller and the listener. Yet one might say that a fictional dialogue is equally monological, insofar as it is an invention of the author who puts his words into the mouths of different characters. History and drama: inner theater and anecdote. Because history needs narrative and thus an act of telling about acting, it has a certain affinity with theatre. In a history, heroes are actors, and actors are heroes; the list of heroes is the dramatis personae; and the fabula is the plot. As in fiction, both in history and drama it is not the “is” but rather the “what” that matters. But, unlike in history, fiction and drama do not presuppose the “is” or real existence of an event or a person, because theater depicts life through actors who themselves in turn live the lives of their characters. As the ancient saying runs, “all life is a stage,” skēnē pas ho bios. For the Stoics, each person is assigned a due role in life (which is echoed many times, from Plotinus to Shakespeare and Descartes).25 In Hegel, whole peoples play roles and

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thus perform in the universal drama of world history. On such reading, in the theater of life it is not up to us to choose our roles, which instead are given by the author, whether it be a god, a Stoic universal logos, or fate. As actors, we are responsible for (good or bad) acting. In such a drama, there is always the development of the plot, which is intentionally and consciously constructed by the dramatist and is thus, in a sense, providential. But in a history there is no place for an outside spectator as there is in theater, where the audience is so involved with the action on stage that it can end in a katharsis at the end, a purification or a “vomiting” up of one’s disturbances. One might say that modernity begins when people start thinking that they themselves can choose—and change—the roles they want to play in the drama of life. People themselves become the actors, authors, and directors of their own plays, even if in most cases they do not know the ultimate script or plot. In such a drama, there is no place left for the author or director as an extra or a behindthe-stage providential mastermind. There is no providence in a history unless it is brought into that history by the teller, and there is no universal history as a world drama until it is written or constructed to be such. The parallel between history and drama is still limited. The author of a history writes a history yet at the same time she does not write it. For on the one hand, she writes a history insofar as she collects and chooses the material for the history and often comments upon it. It might seem, then, that there can be no “objective” history, because even if the author might intend to interfere as little as possible with the story she is telling and abstain from explicitly expressing her attitude toward the told, the very choice and especially the arrangement of facts, acts, and heroes is already an interpretation. Yet on the other hand, the author of a history does not write it because she is not a demiurge; rather, she has the obligation of truth-telling. Hence, the historian is limited by “what happened,” at least by that which is accessible at the moment of writing a history. On the contrary, the author of a theatrical play is the demiurge of the dramatic cosmos, both of the plot and characters. Even if the dramatist chooses only to “listen” to each character’s voice and let the characters act on their own—thus allowing each one to act out of the consistency of one’s character—it is still the playwright who decides about the structure of the piece, its order, and the arrangement of the rejoinders. To be sure, there is a well-respected genre of historical drama (e.g., Shakespeare’s King Richard the Second, Schiller’s Maria Stuart), but both the plot and characters in such dramas are always fictionalized and dramatized, in order to fulfill artistic tasks no less than historical ones.



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Thus, despite their apparent structural similarities, history has only a limited affinity with drama. The work of history is instead closely connected with what one might call inner theater. The inner theater is constituted by interconnected stories about related events and people that are meaningful to those who remember and (re)collect them. In the inner theater, the distinction between what is significant and what is not is blurred: every thing, every minute fact, every seemingly trivial event might matter, because it can be referred to and become part of the previously arranged and ordered edifice of related stories about actors and events that are intertwined with one another and form a history. Within inner theater, a formerly isolated biographical fact, a simple story, a seemingly insignificant novelty, a subtle hint may always become significant, for it contributes to the ever more precise and detailed, although never finalized, description and knowledge of a person or an event. The inner theater is inhabited by one’s significant others, whose acts are thus meaningful and significant. The characters of one’s inner theater are no better than those of another’s inner theater; but they are better known insofar as one communicates with them, by chance or by choice. Everyone has a number of different inner theaters, as well as of histories, that one may or may not share with others and that may or may not be mutually connected. The inner theater does the work of memory, because it is the stage for the realization of a particular history in which a hero lives as she is told about (and retold) and thus remembered, existing posthumously in her “what” but not her “is.” As an actor may represent a character who might not exist in reality but who still might have personal features and be meaningful in a play related to other characters and events, so too a deceased person may live on in the memory of a particular history, remembered by and related both to the still active and deceased actors and players. Simply put, to live on is to be remembered; and to be remembered is to be an actor in someone’s inner theater. The number of inner theaters is never fixed and can change for every person and in every culture, corresponding to the various kinds of human activity or praxis. We do not even suspect what the others’ inner theaters may be about or what they may have been in other histories. Various inner theaters may share the same fabula or set of stories, yet be inhabited by a different group of actors; or, on the contrary, the fabulae may differ but concern the same people or characters. At the same time, various inner theaters, even of the same person, may be utterly unrelated and are not hierarchically ordered. For instance, one may be interested in Roman history and the history of the Sung empire, in the philosophy of Hegel and the philosophy of mind, in the poetry of Archilochus and Thomas

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Traherne, in the writings of Chaucer and Borges, chess and basketball, in collecting old children’s books and antique scientific instruments, etc. The list can cover all possible spheres of human and natural activity and thus can be continued indefinitely. In each case, one can be interested in either or both, or in all of the above, or one may invent a new inner theater. And yet, there will always be an alternative story or field of activity that remains un-appropriated within one’s inner theater, because the extent of such appropriation, and the number of one’s significant others, is limited. In each case, there is a distinct, different, and definite set of characters and events that belong to a particular inner theater: if one is interested in Plato, then stories about his life as well as about his close disciples, Xenocrates and Speusippus, or about contemporary political, artistic, and scientific events and characters might all be of significant interest. If one is interested in twentieth-century poetry, then a story of the relation, even a very minor detail, between Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin, or Tsvetaeva and Rilke, or Erika Mann and W. H. Auden, or a minor story about each one, might be meaningful. No inner theater, thus, is complete, but such is also a history whose fabula can always be retold and reinterpreted (at least slightly) differently and whose set of facts—the historical—can always be expanded or reconsidered. The inner theater is always in transition. It is somewhat similar to a collection of ancient artifacts where every new addition can make one rethink the whole story behind it. Evidently, there are as many different inner theaters as there are histories and people, each of whom has a number of related or unrelated inner theaters that may change over time. New inner theaters may emerge, the old ones may be abandoned: in this sense, everyone lives several lives during one’s life. If various inner theaters overlap, they do so only partially, because everyone has a different set of meaningful (“important”) events and characters as one’s significant others (the “celebrities” of one’s inner theater). The inner theater, however, is not private: it is not monadically closed and isolated from other inner theaters. Any inner theater can be incorporated into a public discourse, which itself is a form of inner theater, since it is always pluralistic. Any inner theater can always be expressed and shared with other people in a history, and hence it can involve and sometimes even enlist other participants. Events and characters in an inner theater can be funny, comic, tragic, indecent, sublime, cruel—but they are never boring. In the inner theater, history ceases to be boring, because every minute fact about an event or an actor from one’s inner theater becomes relevant and meaningful within the already existing set, collection, or mesh of interrelated stories and characters. Any history, once it is staged and realized in an inner theater, becomes fascinating and engaging.



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In a sense, every meaningful story told and shown within an inner theater has the structure of a rumor (in Latin “rumor” also has the meaning of “reputation,” which makes it the twin of kleos). Indeed, rumor is a (usually brief) story about people whose actions, lives, and characters are already known to the speaker and the listener and are thus appropriated as meaningful within an already familiar context of stories considered significant. Otherwise, a story (or a rumor) will not draw any attention and hence will not be passed on. Importantly, both actions and rumors in an inner theater are effectively shared and exist in oral communication, e.g., in the format “Did you know that …?” which is easily transmittable and readily fits within the appropriated set of stories and characters of a history or inner theater. The characters and events that are not included in an inner theater insofar as they are not related to those already established in it, are passed over and remain virtually unnoticed, because they are not connected to anybody inhabiting an inner theater. However, any, even minor, news about those recognized within an inner theater may be meaningful and significant, which is the foundation for short communications that people exchange in big numbers in social networks. Thus, if one is interested in ancient Greek poetry, then a seemingly unimportant story about Archilochus would be of interest, whereas the one about Mörike or Nekrasov might not be compelling at all, since it belongs to a different inner theater not appropriated by the listener or the reader, even if it might be of interest to somebody else. An “anecdote,” which is a minor, short story, can be told and shared with others, and as such becomes meaningful within an inner theater by adding another touch to an already known character, event, or form of action. An anecdote is oftentimes a seemingly trivial or “small” piece of news that does not need to represent an accomplished fact but is rather something told about a character or an event. Once told, an anecdote may always be retold, and hence reinterpreted and transmitted differently. Of course, an anecdote can be critically analyzed and possibly recognized as untrustworthy. In such a case, an anecdote may still be preserved simply for the sake of retaining a more complete history, of the Herodotian kind, which suggests: “I myself do not believe what is being said and what I have heard, yet I have to retain it for others to know that such a thing has been told.” This means that an anecdote may originate as a myth, which is born out of stories that are told and transmitted. An anecdote is thus exempt from the necessity of being ultimately true in the sense of an actual correspondence between an event and what is said about it. An anecdote suspends the “is” (or “was”) of an event by its very form of narration: “they say

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that …” An anecdote is engaging not so much in its “is,” but in the “what” of an actor or event of an inner theater, which is exactly the same in myth. Contributions to an ever more vivid and accurate portrayal of a character or event of one’s inner theater, which render their features more distinct and distinctive, can come not only from a “primary” or solid and commonly recognized source, but from anywhere, including unverified stories, unreliable recollections, idle chat, and other “secondary” sources, whether written or oral. Any relevant report, any anecdote, however small and seemingly unimportant, can potentially contribute to the enrichment and enlivenment of the picture and understanding of a significant other or event within one’s inner theater. There might not be much left of a person’s biography once she passes away: only a single brief story, an inscription, a bare name or an image. However, they all may become utterly important and tell or at least suggest a story if they become connected to other interrelated characters and stories or anecdotes in an inner theater. An anecdote can thus become a paradigmatic or standard reference to an event or a person (as are many anecdotes or chreiai about Diogenes the Cynic) within an inner theater. In its very structure, an anecdote is a “condensed” history insofar as it involves a brief and energetically expressed fabula, and a list of characters. The inner theater thus to a great extent is constituted by anecdotes. The Greek term itself, anekdotos, means “unpublished” (originally, “not given in marriage”), i.e., not given out in an official way or in order to constitute an approved or universally recognized fact.26 As “unpublished,” an anecdote is predominantly oral, although oral stories may also be published in a collection or a loosely organized compilation, as such are Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae, Aelian’s Varia historia or Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae. Publication is a reconstruction and interpretation of a history for the public, which makes a story accepted and acceptable in an existing cultural and political tradition. This is what Pliny the Younger suggests in his letter to Tacitus: that it is one thing to tell a story to a friend (amico), and another to tell it publicly to everyone (omnibus).27 As “unpublished,” anecdote belongs to an inner theater, which however, as said, is not private but can always be communicated and become part of a public discourse. In fact, an inner theater may exist on various “levels”: it may be one’s own and inhabited by real or imagined beings, it may also be shared by a small group of people, or it may be commonly shared and recognized within a culture. Each inner theater can always be communicated to and shared with others, either through a brief anecdote or an extended and systematic narrative. That a theater is “inner” but not private means that it is properly one’s own and appropriated. An anecdote of



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an inner theater always exists in the public media space, either oral or written, as a forum rumor, a newspaper article (which already existed in the late Republic in Rome), or internet communication within online publications and the media of social networks. A commonly shared history can even take the form of ideology, in which case a story that is told to everyone easily becomes that which is told to no one, and the anecdote then becomes a means of the struggle for political liberation against the oppression of a rigid and petrified “standard” interpretation and portrayal of events and characters. An inner theater is thus very much an “outer” theater of a commonly shared history. Fable and myth. An anecdote is a story that is told—a “fable.” Terminologically, “fable” derives from the Latin fabula, which translates the Greek mythos. But mythos, frequently found in Homer, may also mean “word,” “speech,” a “thing said or thought,” a “saying,” “tale,” “story,” “narrative,” “fiction,” or “the plot of a comedy or tragedy.” Furthermore, the verb mytheomai means to “speak” or “converse.”28 Thus, the etymological net of meanings surrounding the term “mythos” seems to justify the current use of the term “fabula” in consideration of history. In antiquity, the fable is a much loved and widespread literary genre. A fable is a short, didactic, and entertaining story that shows memorable examples of laudable behavior or its opposite in a particular situation, and is mostly short and poignant. Because fable is didactic, its characters are not unique individuals but rather schemes of persons, which are usually presented by animals or even things with generalized features and patterns of behavior ascribed to them. (As Archilocus writes,“A fox knows many things, while a hedgehog [knows] one but great.”29) Such characters can intentionally be replaced and substituted by anyone, for fables do not tell unique stories about unique people but rather establish paradigmatic reproducible examples of behavior. Therefore, fables do not preserve names but rather modes of (proper) action, which might make anyone who follows them become “fabulous,” a historically and memorially immortal moral hero. As in a history, in a fable one may discern both a fabula, the story that it tells, and a list of characters. Yet unlike a history, because fable intentionally creates plots and characters, it does not deal with their “is,” but only with their “what.” Fables thus overcome fiction by means of fiction. In fictionalizing the fictional, as though negating the negative, fables restore a memorable paradigm of action. Fables, then, are similar to epic in that both turn the factum of a fact into a fictio of literary production by referring primarily to the “what” of a person or event. Epic immortalizes their heroes in a moment of apotheosis by bringing them into glory, kleos, thereby turning a history into a myth. Fables, on the contrary,

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produce mythical creatures (things or animals who act like humans), in order to communicate a moral message and an example of behavior. It is worth noting that the fable-teller in antiquity is Aesop, who shares many features in common with Socrates and Diogenes: they all tell the truth (primarily about ethical, not natural, matters) through an apparent not-telling, withdrawing and concealing the true message, by its intentional playful “lowering,” and by displaying a seemingly base and ridiculous (“carnivalesque”) behavior. Like Socrates and Diogenes (who often use myths and stories to illustrate a philosophical point), Aesop is a personal realization of the ideal of equality, of someone who courageously crosses borders of social conventions and becomes the hero of the post-epic culture—an Achilles capable of moral reflection. If the fabula of a history is a mythos or the “plot” of the being told, we need to briefly turn to the discussion of myth. Myth may be, and has been, understood in many ways (traditionally, mostly allegorically and metaphorically), which I cannot discuss in detail here.30 Accounts of myth are perhaps as numerous as are those of history. One might even say: tell me what you think about myth or history, and I will tell you who you are. For the current purpose, it will suffice to say that myth may be taken as a spontaneous expression of an immediate and unreflected vision of the world, which might be considered the feature of “premodern” thinking and perception common to all cultures. Myth thus may be a symbolic manifestation of thinking that does not give an account of itself to itself and uses imagination to represent itself, which is then expressed and illustrated by artistic or poetic means. Or myth may be taken as a particular way of revealing—both hiding and showing—a truth that the originators wanted to communicate. In the latter case, a myth bears a message that needs to be “deciphered” or somehow interpreted—allegorically, linguistically (which also may include etymological interpretations, e.g., of epithets or eponyms), rationally or in some other way. Rationalistic explanations of myth emerge with the first Enlightenment, with Sophistry, and flourish again in early modernity.31 As Protagoras says in Plato, the same story can be told either by mythos (the way a story is transmitted in a tradition, from one generation to another, which is also more “pleasant”) or by logos (rational argument).32 Here, myth is opposed to a rational argument that is used to produce a “reasonable” understanding of a myth and thus to explain the myth. Such a reading presupposes that most, if not all, of the characters and events described in a myth have real prototypes in people and living beings and in natural and human events. Thus, the widely spread myth of the flood might reflect an actual natural disaster experienced in the past, while in later



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historiography such an event would already be transmitted as historical.33 The myth of Atlantis might retain vague memories of the destruction of the Minoan civilization as a result of a cataclysmic natural phenomenon. Or the myth of Tantalus and Pelops, which is complemented by archeological and anthropological data, might tell us something about ritual cannibalism in early human societies. In any event, whatever myth is taken to be, it is never taken at its face value but is meant to require an interpretation, whether poetic, hermeneutical, linguistic, rationalistic, or any other one. Myth as a story about unreal events is often opposed to history as a story about real ones. One way to address this opposition might be to claim that myths always have a “true” core, and thus refer to events that have really happened and thus are not made up but are “historical.” Yet when the events become too remote to have immediate witnesses and are only dimly preserved in testimonies, then past events begin to take on certain accepted prefabricated interpretations and narratives, and thus become mythical. In this case, “mythical” would mean not invented or false but rather “legendary” (literally, “collected” and “read aloud” and in this way made known publicly). And when an event becomes legendary, it becomes exemplary and paradigmatic within a particular history (e.g., the legends of Antigone or Electra). Another attempt to establish a relationship between myth and history can be found in Schelling, who takes mythology to be originally nothing else but a historical schematism of nature that has not yet been explained scientifically.34 Mythology, then, establishes patterns of scientific explanation of natural phenomena. These explanations are disguised as “prescientific” myths that allow one to see, recognize, and detect natural phenomena that are not yet understood scientifically on the basis of theoretical knowledge of fundamental natural laws. From the point of view of a rationalistic interpretation, myth might appear “irrational” or “illogical” because the same myth can be told differently at different times and places, often about the same event or hero. Thus, the story of the apotheosis of Semele has several versions: sometimes it is Dionysus who places her among the ranks of the gods, and sometimes she is rewarded with immortality for her role in the birth of a god.35 The number of mythological characters is virtually unlimited, and some characters known in one cycle of myths remain utterly unfamiliar or perfunctory in another, being mentioned only in name. And sometimes various versions of the same myth sometimes even explicitly contradict each other. In such a case, one might either pick out just one of the stories and (re)interpret it artistically and poetically (e.g., in tragedy, comedy, or a hymn to a god). Or, as a rational interpreter, one might

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provide a coherent systematic depiction of a myth, which would rationally explain away and remove the inconsistencies. Or, one might simply gather all the available myths in a mythographic collection without passing any judgment on their respective plausibility. The genre of mythography was already widespread in the times of the first logographers or historians (Hellanicus writes the Trōika, which for later scholars becomes the major prosaic work about the events at Troy) and also flourishes in later antiquity (in Callimachus and Apollodorus). Yet, rationalistic, artistic, prescientific, or any other (re)interpretations and consistent explanations of a myth are, of course, possible and may be quite meaningful. But in the context of the current discussion they are beside the point. Why? Because, again, myth is all about the “what” of an event, and not its “is” as “was.” A myth tells what it tells, altogether suspending the question of whether the told did or did not happen. A myth means something insofar as it is primarily concerned with what happened, and not that it happened—for, taken literally, it did not. The “telling” of myth preserves notable deeds transmitted by “rumor” and turns them into “legends” that are worthy of being told, remembered, and recollected in a history. Myths thus turn actions (deeds) into words (the told). In a myth, the doer and teller presuppose and need each other. In terms of the Aristotelian distinction, a myth is produced by a poet rather than a historian. Correspondingly, mythical things exist to the extent and as they are conveyed: their modus existendi is to be told. Myth works by telling a story while bracketing the question of the existence of the told. Hence, the distinction between a mythographer and a historian consists in that the mythographer implicitly introduces a story by: “They say that …,” whereas the historian by: “I personally do not believe this, but they say that …” Myth, then, becomes a problem-solving narrative device. In any history, many things happen. There may be a whole typology of events yet each event is also unique in its concreteness and requires a brief, convincing, and definitive explanation, which should both describe the event and present its causes. In this respect, as Schelling suggests, a mythological explanation does not differ from a scientific one. Of course, in myth the causes may be entirely made up or introduced ad hoc, and thus may not be verifiable or reproducible. Still, mythological explanation gives an immediate solution to a problem that otherwise often cannot be solved by other (e.g., scientific) means. The work of explanation can be done in myth in many different ways, e.g., by providing a cosmogony, a genealogy, divine or natural causes of a war, etc. In a sense, any explanation is sufficient in myth as long as it explains what it



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is supposed to explain. Moreover, there can be several different mythological explanations of the same event, which may turn out to be mutually inconsistent. For this reason, the law of non-contradiction does not (always) work in myth. Although every myth has a fabula, not every fabula is mythological. Still, there are important similarities between the two: fabula contains the explanatory “mythology” of the events that it describes. And myth is similar to fabula in that: 1. A myth is well known to all those who share the same history. Thus, the fifth- and fourth-century tragedians in Athens do not have to explain the basics of a mythological plot to their spectators, because everybody already knows it: the playwrights merely “complete” the story of a myth with new interpretations and fictional details. 2. Besides, a myth is originally transmitted orally (later, myths are collected in written form, e.g., in mythography). 3. Which is why a myth is a relatively short story, which is easy to pass on. As the rhetorician Menander explains, “myths, nakedly set out, pain and distress the hearer very much; they should therefore be dispatched as briefly as possible,” so that “lengthy discussion is inappropriate.”36 4. A myth usually exists not as one single story but as a whole cluster, a “nest” of interwoven, different, often mutually contradictory but related myths that may be considered various “interpretations” of the same story. All of these features are also characteristic of the fabula of a history, which is why each fabula has a “mythical” aspect. A fabula, then, tells about a person or an event making them legendary. To be legendary amounts to either being famous or infamous in the sense of being known to all, and it allows for their different, often conflicting, interpretations within a history. Antiquarian and historiographic. As Momigliano has argued, the notion of antiquarius or “a lover, collector and student of ancient traditions and remains—though not a historian,” is one of the central concepts of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanism that becomes important for later historiography. The notion of antiquitates, things and sayings of the venerable past, goes back at least to Varro but is still very much alive in the middle ages and the Renaissance. A whole civilization may be recovered through the antiquitates by the “systematic collection of the relics of the past” in various spheres, such as antiquitates publicae, privatae, sacrae, militares.37 Most importantly, the “antiquarian” is understood in opposition to the “historiographic.” The division between “antiquarian” and “historiographic” history is based on the distinction

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between collecting evidence and interpreting past events. Antiquarian history collects antiquities, reliquiae, “relics of ancient times,” as Vossius calls them, odd fragments not dissimilar to planks of wrecked ships, the remains and ruins from before (“ante”).38 Pausanias, then, is an antiquarian: narrating his travels in his Description of Greece, he makes observations, gathers personal evidence, stories, and myths related to the places he has visited. A historian should collect and preserve such reliquiae, on the one hand, but also reconstruct them into a consistent whole, on the other. The historical relics are further distinguished into things and words (or texts), which implies that to collect (and interpret) artifacts is not the same as to (collect and) interpret texts. The division between the antiquarian and the historiographic plays an important role in the construction of modern history. Originally, the task of the antiquarian was to provide commentaries on ancient history, still considered the prerogative of ancient historians: the idea that a history of antiquity composed by a modern writer could be as reliable and authoritative as that of Thucydides or Livy is alien to early modernity. In modernity, the antiquarian collector of historical facts predates the historiographer, who is a writer of canonic history based on an established conception of history as universal (which was especially prominent at Protestant universities), of which ancient history is thought to be the beginning. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the antagonism between antiquarians and historiographers reflects a new attitude toward history, which includes its politization, a mistrust of the past, and an attack on “erudition,” on “learned” or “philosophical” historians and “historical” philosophers. But history is not yet a profession, since anyone who tells about things past that she has witnessed, heard of, or read about, is a historian who thus may be a bookish historiographer or an amateur antiquarian and a memoirist. The historiographer uses primarily written sources and also writes himself, weaving and producing texts from and based on texts, whereas the antiquarian establishes history from anything, producing texts from non-texts. The antiquarian is a connoisseur who unearths, gathers, and somehow orders artifacts while trying not to neglect even the minute details. The historiographer, on the contrary, is a thinker who constructs a grand history that has a meaning and incorporates the histories of all peoples of all time, sacrificing and eliminating everything that does not fit into such rational and speculative history. However, the antiquarian/historiographer distinction does not coincide with the witness/judge one. Indeed, every antiquarian primarily collects evidence about the past of which she is mostly not a witness. Moreover, the antiquarian provides various classifications of the collected material, yet she is not an ultimate



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judge to the extent that she leaves open a possibility always to reinterpret the past or see it differently. But the historiographer is not a witness either, since she distrusts “myths” about the past and interprets the tradition critically and rationally. And the historiographer is not a judge, because her strong rational concept of history is already established before any witness has a chance to testify. One might say that historiography has a certain similarity to mathematics, insofar as both attempt to establish one consistent theory that explains a whole class of things in a uniform way, whereas antiquarianism is more like natural science (e.g., biology) in which there are many different objects of study, various methods and sub-disciplines, whose mutual relations and connections are often not apparent. The antiquarian and historiographic concepts of history thus appear to exclude rather than complement each other, even if some historians (Winckelmann) try to combine both approaches. Their distinctions may be presented in the following way: Antiquarian

Historiographic

Being Many narratives Collecting all facts without discrimination Description of the past

Becoming One critical narrative Choosing only some facts and interpreting them according to an established doctrine Description of the past to the extent that it helps to clarify the present39 Dynamic, developing world Genetic explanation Narrow, specialized knowledge Critical rational reconstruction Universal history based on a dominant theory and chronological approach

Static world Description Broad knowledge Erudition Systematic classification allowing for a plurality of approaches in various domains Geographical description, historical accounts of laws, customs, religion, art Predominantly observational, “a posteriori” knowledge Personal evidence, travel, hearsay Attention to detail Transmission of myth Learned lover of the past, often amateur Matter of leisure, often self-taught Learned society, circle of friends Travel, archeology Coins, statues, vases, inscriptions Private collection, anecdota

Political history, philosophy of history Predominantly theoretical, “a priori” knowledge Texts and documents Generalizing approach Rational or allegorical interpretation of myth Schoolman, mostly professional Matter of profession, of teaching and being taught University Emendation of texts Written and printed texts Public display, published books

70 Antiquarian

The Concept of History Historiographic

All sources, including oral, are important Texts are primary and major sources Original and derivative authorities are Original authority (primary text) is more equally important important than the derivative authority (secondary evidence) Hecataeus, Aelian, Bayle Thucydides, Herder, Hegel

According to Momigliano, the flourishing and rapid development of the antiquarian approach in opposition to the historiographic was originally motivated in early modernity by an attempt to cope with the new Pyrrhonism, which, in particular, led to the mistrust of history as a reliable account of things past. The anti-antiquarian historiography is a result of this skeptical stance, striving after a politically oriented description of present events, rather than after fabulous stories about the civil, legal, and religious mores of the past. One might add that modern historiography intends to return to the sought-after origin of events and, by providing a careful and systematic interpretation of present events, attempts to rationally reconstruct both the succession and the logic of things past and present—and thus also possibly to peek in to the eschatology of the future. The antiquarians challenge skeptical, speculative, and philosophicallyminded historiographers by arguing for the independence of previous historical accounts. Lorenzo Valla’s translation of Herodotus dates to 1452 and was published in 1474, and the sixteenth-century historians revive the interest in Herodotus and his method of writing history based on personal evidence, travel, and oral sources. By the end of the eighteenth century, with the great examples of Winckelmann and Gibbon (followed by others, including Mommsen and Rostovtzeff), it became clear that “erudition and philosophy … [are] not incompatible,” which thus implies “two difficult things: the constant repression of the a priori attitude inherent in the generalizing approach of the philosophic historian and … the avoidance of the antiquarian mentality with its fondness for classification and for irrelevant detail.”40 A historian might—and perhaps should—be neither altogether a historiographer nor an antiquarian. This, however, may mean two different things: either (1) that, taken in sharp contrast, historiography and antiquarianism each does not do justice to history; or (2) that historiography and antiquarianism can be practiced within their limits yet are not incompatible, so that one may find the right balance between the two. The first position takes historiography and antiquarianism as contradictories that cannot be mediated; the second takes



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them as contrarieties that can be mediated. If, as Momigliano takes it, neither historiography nor antiquarianism is viable, then one must come up with an entirely new historical method. Indeed, in the last two centuries there have been a number of attempts to introduce such new method (by Ranke, the Annales School, the Memory School, etc.) yet they all strongly favored the historiographic approach that comes with an implicit or explicit theory of how to do and study history. However, the second version seems preferable, because on the one hand, one cannot write a history without some theoretical, sometimes implicit, (pre)conception of what history is and should be, which would imply judgment about the relevance or irrelevance of its details. On the other hand, one might equally choose to keep the details that might seem utterly insignificant yet might be interpreted differently by later historians who might have a different conception of history. Therefore, the historian is a historiographer who already has a theoretical understanding of what history is even when such an understanding is left not thematized. But an historian is also an antiquarian, a collector of details, and as such is a “knower of much” or “much-knower” who practices polymathia. The distinction between antiquarianism and historiography is based on the dichotomy between empirical observation and rational reconstruction, which implicitly presupposes that the former is not theory-laden, whereas the latter can be established a priori. However, there is no purely “empirical” observation that would not already assume, implicitly or explicitly, a theoretical interpretative framework. There is no collection of things or fact that would not already have a principle that shapes it. Both antiquarianism and historiography are already organized in a certain way, which suggests what and how to look for and select (in the case of the antiquarian), and how to build a history as a (universal) project, what to choose as a paradigmatic historical example and how to interpret it (in the case of the historiographer). Yet, as was said, the antiquarian approach is not necessarily rigidly opposed to the historiographic one, so that one may establish a method that combines both antiquarianism and historiography and embraces both the interest in details (in the historical) and a particular “logic” or the way to narrate a history (the fabula).

Бессонница. Гомер. Тугие паруса. Я список кораблей прочел до середины: Сей длинный выводок, сей поезд журавлиный, Что над Элладою когда-то поднялся…1 O. Mandelstam, 1915.

4

The Homer galaxy Catalogue Poetry. Epic is usually considered the most archaic literary genre. Yet, there is an even more archaic constituent within the epic lore: the so-called “catalogue poetry,” which is the poetry that contains catalogues, lists, or enumerations. Catalogues in Hesiod, Homer, and epic poetry (often in the Homeric hymns, e.g., the Hymn to Apollo 421–429) are plentiful, and the literature on the role of catalogues in epic poetry is even more extensive.2 Being very archaic, poetic catalogue still plays a notable role in modern poetry.3 Catalogue poetry predates Hesiod and Homer, who both use it in their poems. The late Mycenaean catalogue tradition was most probably oral and was quite robust, being preserved for a long time with little change (for nearly 400 years) before it was included according to the epics that are well known and are written down. And even though writing was already widespread during the time of Homer, we cannot be certain that epic poems before Hesiod and Homer were written down at all; at least they were not among the scrolls of the library of Alexandria. Here, I do not attempt to produce a catalogue of poetic catalogues, since the topic is vast and, besides, following Russell, a catalogue of catalogues should not be included in itself. A short catalogue of famous catalogues in Homer contains the Teichoskopia, or Priam’s and Elena’s view of the Achaean troops from the walls (Il. 3.162–244); the Epipolesis, or Agamemnon’s going around the troops (Il. 4.250–418); and the catalogue of Nymphs or the list of Nereids lamenting Patroclus (Il. 18.39–48). Besides, catalogues of Zeus’ love affairs are found

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both in Homer (Il. 14.315–327) and in Hesiod—of Zeus’ liaisons with various goddesses and of goddesses with mortal men (Theog. 886–1022). Catalogues are abundant in Homer: such are the lists of Myrmidonian leaders as forming up for battle (Il. 16.173–198), of the heroes following Diomedes (Il. 8.261–267), of the nine volunteers intending to fight Hector (Il. 7.161–169), of the Phaeacian nobles going off to an athletic competition (Od. 8.110–120), of the seven towns offered by Agamemnon to Achilles (Il. 9.150–152 = 9.292–294), of Trojan heroes (Il. 11.56–61, 12.88–104), a description of arms (Il. 11.367–395), Aeneas’ genealogy (Il. 20.208–241), a list of prizes (Il. 23.259–270), a list of contestants in the games held in the memory of Patroclus (Il. 23.288–304), etc. In Homer we also find many so-called androktasiai or battle lists of those who slay and are slain in battle, which altogether contain about 200 names (Il. 5.37–83, 5.677–698, 6.5–65, et al.).4 Perhaps the most celebrated of all are the catalogues of women in Hesiod (the so-called Hoiai, or Ehoiai) and the catalogue of ships, nēōn katalogos, in Homer (Il. 2.494–877, which is the oldest part of the Iliad, although in its current form it probably goes back to the eighth century bce). Already in ancient times the catalogue of ships had become proverbial, standing for a long story.5 Thus, describing the Ionian revolt, in imitation of Homer, Herodotus lists the ships of the Ionians and Aeolians who had to defend Miletus from the Persian fleet, and also mentions their numbers.6 The Hesiodic catalogue of women is preserved in a substantial number (about 200) of fragments (many of which are in papyri) from five books.7 The latter is the list of mortal women who had lain with gods and originated families of nobles and heroes. The text of the catalogue contains genealogies that go back to earlier local genealogies of the eighth century bce (in Elis, Messene, Argos, Lesbos, et al.). The Homeric catalogue of ships describes the Achaean and the Trojan troops in the Trojan War: it contains a list of 29 Achaean contingents in 226 verses and a much shorter list of 16 Trojan contingents in 62 verses.8 For each of its entries, this list mentions the name of the country or the city of origin, which provides the name of a nation; the name of the leader(s); and the number of ships they brought to Troy. Such entries are often accompanied, and thus expanded, by a short narrative that mentions the myths connected with the birth, genealogy, and exploits of a particular hero or the stories pertaining to his country. In both Hesiod and Homer, a catalogue is often preceded by an invocation of the Muses or the gods, and is “framed as a question in which the poet asks for the material of his poem, often in quantitative terms (who? what? how many?), and what follows obtains the form of an answer, whereby the information is



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characteristically supplied as a catalogue or ordered enumeration.”9 The (brief) question and (long) answer form of the catalogue make it in fact a dialogue between the poet (the one who asks) and the gods (those who know, often the Muses). The source of knowledge about things past is divine, i.e., it is provided by the gods, and the poet must retain the dialogue as a recollection of names and events that are taught to him. Scholars stress that the genre of catalogue predates Hesiod and Homer, who both draw on a common ancient tradition that goes back to the late Mycenaean times. Jack Goody has shown that from early on, already in Mesopotamia, Iran, Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, Near East, and Egypt, every culture that knows how to process, store, and transmit the records it considers important take a form that is always based on an organized list.10 As Le Goff explains, such a list is “the series of words, concepts, gestures, operations that are to be carried out in a certain order.”11 The earliest administrative records come in the form of lists. In his study of literacy in the middle ages, Clanchy has argued that “literacy grew out of bureaucracy, rather than from an abstract desire for education or literature.”12 However, already in antiquity the use and impact of literacy are broader, growing out of a “desire for history.” Thus, the Sumerian lists of kings are well known. According to Wiseman and Jakobsen, the Sumerian lists, which often comprised public events (“accessions, deaths, mutinies, famines and plagues, major international events, wars, battles, religious ceremonies, royal decrees”), or compiled the names of the rulers going back probably for more than forty-five centuries, became the basis for Mesopotamian and later historiography.13 Early Babylonian astronomical tablets list the names of planets and numbers that indicate relations of distances between the celestial bodies. The Egyptian “Execration Texts” are abundant, containing “long lists of place and tribal names together with the names of chieftains who ruled these towns or tribes, dating from the late twentieth and nineteenth centuries bce.”14 Many texts from the Old Testament have the same structure. The preserved Egyptian Onomastica—such as the Onomasticon of Amenopĕ from the Dynasty XX—are arranged according to a classification of its entries into classes (such as persons, tribes, towns, buildings, cereals, beverages, parts of an ox, etc.). Onomasticon is a lexical prototype of modern encyclopedias, which list their items according to an explicit or implicit classification, as lexicon. A good example of such an encyclopedia is the fifth-century ce Sanskrit vocabulary Nāmaliňgānuçāsana, which classifies all the words into three books according to categories. Whereas book three classifies words according to certain linguistic principles (as adjectives, common notions, homonyms, indeclinable words, etc.), the first two

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books contain synonyms classified according to the then current natural and social picture of the world. Thus, book one contains chapters “Heaven” and “Underworld” that list the words for the things “highest” (gods, cosmos, space, time, sciences, arts) and the things “underground and aquatic”; and book two is dedicated to things earthly and contains such chapters as “Earth,” “Mountains,” “Plants” (domesticated plants excluded), “Animals” (wild only), “Human,” and four separate chapters on four distinct classes of society. The sheer number of catalogues and extant fragments testifies to the importance of the ancient Greek catalogue tradition, which transmits political and geographical knowledge from much earlier times.15 That the Hesiodic catalogue of women is preserved in a great number of fragments shows that it was considered an important source and genre by ancient writers and scholars. Yet, that it is not preserved in full shows that it was not considered the text of poetic and cultural tradition. The Homeric catalogues, on the contrary, are all meant to be kept intact, even if they might be sometimes manipulated, in order to justify political claims, which stresses the importance of poetic catalogues for the constitution of a history. Thus, the Megarian historian Dieuchidas insinuated that the Athenian Solon had inserted one line into the catalogue of ships (Il. 2.558) in order to justify the Athenian claim for Salamis against Megara, and that Pisistratus inserted the whole passage (Il. 2.546–558) in order to secure the place and glory of the Athenians in the Trojan expedition.16 Poetic catalogue thus always survives by being included in epic. However, sometimes certain entries of the catalogue are made redundant by and independent of the subsequent narrative, particularly when the author does not have anything to say about an event, thing, or person mentioned. For instance, Philoctetes is mentioned in the catalogue of ships (Il. 2.718, 725) but never plays any role in the battles. Protesilaus is mentioned (Il. 2.698–708) but has to be excused from the fighting and hastily sails away (Il. 15.705–706; cf. 16.286). Still, a catalogue must be preserved in full, as an antiquarian list, because even if those mentioned might not play any significant role in the developing story, they must still be saved from oblivion in and through the poetic epic memory. In this respect, the poetic catalogue functions as the historical. To be mentioned in a catalogue means to become a doer who is preserved from being forgotten by the teller. In early history one’s name and deeds are kept and transmitted in a history only because of their virtue, or sometimes a notable deviation from it, which serves as a negative example. But virtue is equally shown in epic, where only those who embody the current notion of excellence and virtue are included in a poetic catalogue. Only such people deserve being



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mentioned in the catalogue, and thus they survive by obtaining atemporal kleos. Sometimes even things or plants can be assigned kleos and thus included into a history, as in Homer’s catalogue of trees, which appear in and as the memory of home (Od. 24.340–344). It is important to note that not only men but also women share in kleos, even within the context of the heroic epic. Besides the celebrated catalogue of women in Hesiod, we also find a catalogue of nymphs (Theog. 240-264). In Homer, we encounter the famous catalogue of heroines in the Odyssey, which scholars consider a remnant of a Boeotian catalogue, which means that either Homer’s catalogue is an imitation of Hesiod’s catalogue of women or draws on a direct common source. Homer’s catalogue of heroines summons the ghosts of illustrious women from the past—Tyro, Antiope, Alcmena, Megara, Epicasta, Chlois, Leda, Iphimedeia, et al. (Od. 11.225-329). Each time, the catalogue mentions a name; provides a narrative about the woman’s place of origin and family relations, including the names of her father and husband, and a brief genealogy; tells a story about conceiving a son (or sons) and daughter to a god (e.g., Alcmena bears Heracles to Zeus, Od. 11.267-268); and mentions an account of the exploits (both the deeds and misdeeds) of the heroes born from these women. (The last name mentioned by Homer in the catalogue of heroines is that of “abominable” Eryphila [Od. 11.326; cf. Apollodorus. Bibl. III.6.2; III.7.5], who demonstrates virtue by means of its opposite.) In archaic times virtue was exemplified differently by women and men: for women it is virtuous to bear children who will either continue an illustrious line of leaders or kings, or who will grow into heroes; for men, it is virtuous to be courageous, to be heroes (this archaic ideal is present in many epic poems from different origins). The border between “female” and “male” virtue, however, can be transgressed: Epicasta has the courage to recognize the wrongdoing of incest committed with Oedipus, and subsequently commits suicide (Od. 11.271-280). Female and male characters are united in their capacity to represent a virtue, which alone justifies one’s claim for existence in an epic or a history. The structure of poetic catalogue and the structure of history. The bare structure of poetic catalogue in epic poetry is that of a list. In a list, the order of things—the how of the catalogue—arranges, enumerates, and names natural or unnatural things and events—the what of the catalogue. The order is the form of catalogue and thus can organize anything, although no record in a catalogue is “innocent,” since it has been already ordered as meaningful within a list, even if the list itself does not include any explicit indication of its principle of

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organization. The epic narrative in general follows, with some deviations and asides, chronological narration, which the Cyclic poets tried to “complete” with “sequels” and “prequels” to the Iliad.17 And yet, poetry is an embodiment of speech or logos, which is discursive and hence (re)presents one item after another in succession, so that the totality of the told is always spread in time. For this reason, synchronic events in poetry are often told about as diachronic, listed in succession one after another. In this respect, poetry differs from painting, in which, on the contrary, the diachronic events are often depicted as synchronic, side by side, or paratactically, where each entry is not assimilated to the whole. A catalogue can be arranged in various ways: chronologically, according to the times of events; geographically, following a natural order of places, cities, rivers, countries, or islands; genealogically, according to generations and family relations of one’s ancestors, one of whom is oftentimes a god; and later, alphabetically, e.g., in Virgil, who mentions the Rutulian military leaders more or less in alphabetical order.18 In Homer, the order of consecutive enumeration is often established by the indication of the “first” and “last” (prōton and hystaton, sometimes also called the deyteros or “second” in a series of things [Il. 2.405, 4.457, 11.299, 16.692, 19.369, et al.]), followed by a repetition of the conjunction “and … and … and …” (kai … kai … kai …). However, the first position in the list is not necessarily the most prominent one: thus, the battle lists in Homer begin with fourteen different names.19 What is important is to be on the list, to be recognized a doer by the teller, a hero by the poet. Unlike its order of arrangement or the how of a poetic catalogue, the things enumerated or the what of a catalogue is complex. For the most part, the records of poetic catalogues are names, i.e., each one stands for an individual that bears a claim and, in a sense, also the right to be exempt from oblivion by holding a place in the catalogue. Such a catalogue often consists of a bare list of names, for the most part without much of an expansion or any additional explanations. Such catalogues are found both in Hesiod (Theog. 243-262, 270-276, 338-362) and in Homer (the catalogue of Nymphs in Il. 18.39–48; Od. 22.241–243, et al.). Sometimes, however, a simple list is elaborated into a catalogue whose records are expanded by a narrative by attaching a brief story to each or some of the names. The catalogues of women in Hesiod and of ships in Homer are good illustrations of such kind of catalogue. When we come across a poetic catalogue, we usually know what it means and how it should be read. However, the explicit meaning of a list and its being an ordered (poetic) catalogue is neither explicit in its enumeration or arrangement,



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nor is it found in the bare names included in the list either. The meaning of a catalogue is found in its narrative, which is commonly known and understood and may accompany one or every name in a catalogue. Sometimes, a brief introduction at the beginning of a catalogue (e.g., the invocation of the Muses in the catalogue of ships in the Iliad) informs us about its meaning. Thus, the most basic structure of the poetic catalogue is: name (list of names) + narrative. The “name” refers to the personal name of an individual or place. The “narrative” may be brief or expanded and contains knowledge about a hero and thus refers to her or his story, deeds, misdemeanors, social position, wealth, genealogy, conception, birth, marriage, death, prophecy, migration to avoid a bloody revenge, etc. Or the narrative may tell us about a particular place (pertaining to a hero’s origin or exploits) into which a hero’s actions are thus inscribed. But most importantly, the structure of the catalogue coincides with that of a history, which is constituted by fabula and the historical, the latter of which is a list. Therefore, at least at a formal level, the catalogue, which is the “core” of epic, and the structure of history, are identical. The name/narrative and list/fabula structure is well illustrated by the story of the Wooden Horse: everybody knows the story and its fabula, how Ilion was destroyed by trickery—yet its counterpart, the list of names and the heroes hidden inside the horse, is not preserved. However, in order to make full sense of the story, there has to be such a list. This is why in the Odyssey Homer delegates the responsibility for knowing the exact list to another teller, Demodocus, who must know the list of heroes’ names. Since Homer himself does not know either the names or the number of heroes (Od. 8.514-516), he can only claim that it does exist but is known to somebody else, namely, to Demodocus. On this point, one can make several observations. First of all, the narrative can be independent of the listed names, and some of the mentioned characters do not play any considerable role in the narrative. This happens because epic includes transmitted catalogue as its important constituent, yet as a genre and structure epic is very different from catalogue. Epic poets evidently take traditional, already existing lists and catalogues and insert them into the narrative, which sometimes is very loosely connected with the catalogue and sometimes is corroborated by a catalogue. For example, the catalogue of the Achaeans in the Iliad (13.685–700) has little to do with the context of the story being told and is thus quite independent of the surrounding narrative. But when Homer wants to create a sense of the grandeur of the Greek and Trojan undertaking, he introduces the catalogue of ships, probably expanding it with poetic and

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narrative details; when he wants to create a picture of a battle, he utilizes a battle catalogue, enlivening it with picturesque details of violence, courage, and rage. There is, however, an evident difference between the Hesiodic and Homeric catalogues. In a sense, this difference reflects the continuing agōn or competition between the two poets that goes back to antiquity (Hesiod is usually considered to be the didactic epic poet, whereas Homer is the heroic epic poet). The Hesiodic catalogues consist mostly of enumerations of bare names with very little elaboration, whereas the Homeric catalogues often, although not always, are expanded by myths and stories added to a sequence of names. This makes some scholars portray Hesiod as a conservative poet and Homer as an innovator who used the tradition of catalogue poetry and accommodated it to the needs of epic poetry.20 This characterization appears to be somewhat of a simplification. One can say, rather, that although the lists of bare names are also frequent in Homer, he develops the use of the poetic catalogue into a full epic narrative and thus blends it into the grand narrative of the poem. Narrative considerations are more important for Homer than enumerative ones. For Hesiod, who follows the program of “telling the truth,” it is important to preserve the list itself, saving a distilled account of great events and actors of the past from oblivion, which is straightforwardly a historical, and not a poetic, task. Finally, the catalogue’s duality of name and narrative, of list and fabula, does not imply that there is an opposition between the two. Rather, this duality, which is not an opposition, characterizes the way in which a catalogue is structured, namely, in terms of “what” happened and “how” it happened. A recurrent duality can also be seen within the lists themselves, for instance, in the battle lists where heroes face each other in personal encounters and, while one slays and the other is slain, both become heroes, since both exemplify the excellence of behavior, or virtue. Such are Agamemnon and Odios, Idomeneus and Phaistos, Menelaos and Scamandrios, Meriones and Pherekles, Meges and Pedaios, Eurypylos and Hypsenor, et al. (Il. 5.37–83, cf. 6.5–65). Sometimes, this duality is used by Homer to suggest plurality, for instance, in the pairs of heroes killed by Agamemnon: Bienor and Oïleus, Isus and Antiphus, Pisander and Hippolochus (Il. 11.91–147).21 In this sense, a pair of names becomes an elementary and exemplary catalogue, where the idea of plurality comes with the very idea of the non-oppositional other, the two that provides the principle of enumeration and makes possible any number. Thus, one can say that the basic structure of poetic catalogue is dual without opposition and not tripartite, as some scholars argue.22 The structure of epic



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catalogue is that of name and narrative, the “how” and the “what,” and is identical with the structure of list and fabula in a history. Epithet as enfolded narrative. A distinctive feature of epic narrative (not only in Homer but of any epic heroic song or poem, e.g., in bylina) is the steady use of epithets that are assigned to people, gods, and places.23 For example, Demeter “provides much medimni (of grain, polymedimnos)” (Callimachus, To Demeter 2) or Dionysus is “ivy-bearing (kissophoros)” (Pindar, Ol. II.27). Each epithet is a description that allows for a unique identification. Of course, the same epithet may also be applicable to other heroes and gods, but still as a stable description in each case. Thus, Hera is “white-armed (leykōlenos)” (To Dionysus 1.8; Il. 1.195 et al.), but the same is also said of Persephone in Hesiod (Theog. 913) and of female slaves in Homer (Od. 6.239, et al.). Both Eunice and Hipponoe are “rosyarmed” (rhodopēkhys) in Hesiod (Theog. 246, 251). Many epithets are very stable in epic poetry, are passed on within the tradition, and become poetic definitions. However, the role of the epithet is not only to mark the uniqueness and thus recognizability of its subject (e.g., in Homer’s catalogue of Nymphs, Il. 18.45, 48) but also to substitute for a narrative about a hero when such a narrative is not explicitly given, particularly in a poetic catalogue. For example, in the Orphic hymn a list of invocations of the gods is accompanied by brief epithets for each (e.g., Dēmētēr t’ aglaokarpe, “bearing goodly fruits” in Orpheus pros Mousaion).24 These one-word descriptions are condensed, abbreviated narratives, which can be further unfolded by those who recite the hymn, since they already know the story or the fabula of the myth. Although both point to a distinctive being, names differ from epithets in the way that personal names differ from definite descriptions. The names themselves do not tell a story but instead point at particular individuals about whom or which a narration must be supplied. In this sense, a stable epithet reproduced within the poetic tradition is not a cliché but rather a brief, “enfolded” narrative, which the poet may unfold into an imaginative story. Telling a history behind a name, then, is a task delegated to the use of a stable epithet associated with it. In this capacity, an epithet may function as a condensed historical fabula. As I argued, in order to pass on a history one should preserve the historical, which usually takes the form of a list of names or facts, and supply it with a general fabula, which tells us what the list is about. Each entry in a list may have its own story or fabula attached to it but the general fabula is a matter of common knowledge. As such, the general fabula either does not need to be mentioned or is often conveyed in a single line, while particular stories about entries or names in a list may not be commonly known. Such

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individual stories are then distilled into either single epithets or very short, dry, and unelaborated narrations that encompass one’s activities and achievements. As an enveloped narrative, epithets do not include verbs. Hence, a poetic catalogue is often verbless. Poetic catalogues consist primarily of names, which are mostly (but not always) explained and expanded through epithets. Epithets, then, take on the function of short narratives in a poetic catalogue or a condensed fabula in a history. The list can exist in the poetic tradition and in a history relatively independently of the narrative/fabula, because the narrative/fabula is often commonly known. For this reason, a simple and brief verbless hint at the narrative/story oftentimes suffices. The action to which such a hint refers is already known to those who listen to, read, or interpret a poetic catalogue or historical list, although never in full, for it may always be told and interpreted differently around a common “core” of the fabula. In this respect, the narrative and fabula can be condensed and schematic, whereas the list must be detailed and very precise: the loss of an entry amounts to a historical death and vanishing from the commonly shared and maintained memory. It is often said that history does not tolerate counterfactuals, since no one can undo what has been done and happened. However, it is the historical that has to be precise and hence not allow for counterfactuals, whereas fabula is always open to counterfactual interpretations of how history might, or even should, have been. An epithet is a brief description of the outer appearance or action of a person, hero, god, animal, thing, or place—mostly of an action, since an epithet contains a distilled story, which always presupposes acts and actions, e.g., on a battlefield or in a speech. Therefore, even an epithet that describes a referent’s outer appearance presupposes—both conceals and reveals—a story. In epic catalogues, steady epithets are abundant and some of them appear to be traditional and very old, predating Homer. Thus, in the Iliad we find short lists of the Trojan heroes (Il. 17.215–218, 24.249–251) that mostly contain bare names, although Ennomus is said to be the augur (Il. 17.218), and Agathon is “noble” (Il. 24.249). Another example is the catalogue of mythological heroes in Konon’s Diēgēseis (Frg. 1 Jacoby), which consists of names, each accompanied by a short description or narrative. Epithets, then, are extremely important for the construction and transmission of poetic catalogues, which, as was said, are initially oral and thus should be memorized. For this reason, each entry in a list of names should be short: one can remember a list of names but not the detailed stories associated with each one. A story, therefore, should be “wrapped” into one word, which the listener of a poet or, later, the reader of a historian, should be able to unwrap.



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However, since the knowledge of how exactly to understand an epithet, to identify and know the story behind it, is often lost in the tradition, one often either has to poetically improvise or rationally interpret it, in order to establish the story behind with a particular name. Poetic catalogues consisting only of bare names are boring for a listener (as is also history as polymathia). The poet, then, should enliven them by inventively unfolding traditional epithets into tales, often improvising and telling what might have happened on the basis of associations with similarly known epithets. In this respect, the epic poet is an Aristotelian historian when he reproduces the catalogue; but he is an Aristotelian poet when he improvises on an epithet and produces a story about a name. Sometimes, however, the poet does not tell a story or mention an epithet at all, once the tradition no longer preserves it. In such a case, the poet may establish an interpretative pattern, a description allowing one to understand also all other names or records in a catalogue. Thus, in the catalogue of the Heroines in the Od. 11.225-329, only the first few heroines are described in detail, whereas the remaining descriptions and stories are left to be imagined and restored by the listeners, that is, recursively reconstructed according to the pattern established in the beginning of the catalogue. The Muses. The cult of the Muses plays an exceptional role in epic poetry.25 In both Homer and Hesiod, poetic catalogues often begin with an invocation of the Muses. So let me turn to (although not invoke, for the time of invocations has passed) the Muses. The Muses know everything, or remember everything, due to their origin from their mother Memory (Mnēmosynē) and their father Zeus.26 Reportedly, an archaic cult of the Muses was established by the Aloadae of Askra in Boeotia, a city at the bottom of mount Helicon, where Hesiod grew up. Originally there are only three Muses, not nine: Meleta (“Care”), Aioda (“Song”), and Mnema (“Memory”). Under the tradition of the three muses, the personified Memory is not the mother of the Muses (their father is Zeus), as in later times, but is one of them, herself a Muse closely related to lyric poetry, which retains the experience of “what happened.” Muses play a prominent role in Hesiod: the Theogony (Theog. 1-115), the Works and Days (Op. 1–12), and the Catalogue of Women open with a hymn or invocation of the Muses who taught (edidaxan [Theog. 22; Op. 662]) the poet beautiful songs about things past, which he further passes on to us. Homer’s most famous catalogue, that of the ships, is introduced by a ten-line invocation of the Muses.27 The Homeric hymn to the Muses and Apollo also begins with

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an invocation of the daughters of Zeus.28 Not surprisingly, when Virgil provides a catalogue of leaders in war, he too must summon the Muses at the very beginning of his catalogue, doing so in direct imitation of Homer.29 Speaking on behalf of humans, Homer directly addresses the Muses: You [hymeis] Muses are goddesses, you are [pareste], you are everywhere and know everything [iste te panta] [in Virgil, “you remember everything,” Aeneid 7.645]. By contrast, we [hēmeis] mortals know nothing [oude ti idmen] and can only hear tales of fame [kleos]. You, the gods, know all, whereas we humans hear only the opinions that are passed on to us, which, however, is what constitutes the kleos that gives some of us a share in immortality. So tell me now [espete nyn moi], who are the leaders and rulers of the Achaeans, their kings and heroes, for I can neither speak about everyone [mythēsomai], [i.e., cannot tell the fabula or story of each hero], nor am I, being mortal, capable of mentioning all of the names of the heroes [i.e., of furnishing the whole catalogue]: I would not be able to do it even if I were ten times stronger, had ten tongues, a powerful voice, and a chest of bronze [i.e., even if enhanced by powerful artificial devices or technology]. My memory and knowledge do not extend that far. Hence, I will mention only the names of the leaders, where each name will become a reference for a whole group of heroes who came to war. So, Muses, you who know everything, remind me [mnēsaiath’] of all those who came under Troy [i.e., restore your knowledge to my memory, so that I might communicate this knowledge to other fellow mortals]. (Il. 2.484–492)

Thus, in his invocation of the Muses Homer claims that he does not know all that happened concerning all of the actors and the stories of their deeds, although he knows what happened, the main story or fabula of the Trojan War. Besides, he cannot know the entire list of all of the heroes’ names and deeds. And even if the Muses told him the list of names and all the stories, he would still be unable to memorize them; and even if he were able to do so, he would not be able to tell it to the listeners; and even if the listeners were able to listen to the whole list, they would not be able to retain it in its entirety. Why is it so? Because the human capacity to know and remember is limited, unlike that of the gods, particularly of the Muses. Human knowledge of the past needs to be supported by the knowledge of the “musical” history retained and transferred by epic verse and catalogue poetry. About the Muses themselves, the poet says that they are or pertain to being. By telling the truth about history in an epic catalogue, the Muses, however, split up a single unified being, which until the moment of remembering and attendance is kept undivided in its totality. The act of telling, the appeal to the



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spoken and sung poetic word, is central to the cult of the Muses, which explains why there is no Muse of a figurative art, sculpture, or painting. It is not by chance, then, that the stable epithet of the Muses, which tells a condensed story about their role in the transmission of historical knowledge by recollection, is “clear-voiced” (ligeiai [To the Dioscuri XVI.1; Plato, Phaedr. 237 a]). The Muses separate the entirety of historical being, everything that happened, into a plurality of beings remembered by being told in a poetic catalogue or historical list and the accompanying narrative. The Muses attain to being, while we humans, who constantly move from non-being (not yet being) to non-being (already not being), in our very transience try to keep the historical being in poetic memory and historical recollection. In epic catalogue-telling, fame or kleos is a substitution for knowledge (Il. 2.486), just as in later philosophy opinion or doxa is a substitution for strict (“mathematical”) knowledge or epistēmē. Being as such is not accessible to humans in full in a history, which remains always partial and incomplete. For this reason, in telling and transmitting a history we must rely on the memory that passes it on and keeps a representation of its being in the poetic catalogue and the historical. Therefore, the Muses both know and remember how things were. Yet because the Muses themselves are, their memory and knowledge of what “was” does not differ from their memory and knowledge of what “is.” Their knowledge/ remembrance is always complete: they know/remember both the exact lists of names and the precise stories behind them. This is why the Muses guide both epic catalogue poetry and history, thus pointing at a common origin of history and epic without identifying the two. No wonder that in later times one of the nine sisters is Clio, the Muse of history, who shares the same attributes—stylus and scroll—with Calliope, the eldest Muse of epic poetry and knowledge. The Muse of history is thus a writer who transmits knowledge. Similarly to the historical, epic “musical” catalogues are detailed and precise, particularly in Hesiod, who appears to the modern ear somewhat boring and didactic. In this regard, the epic form of knowledge/remembrance, which exemplifies polymathia, differs from the knowledge that is revealed to later poets. The post-epic lyric (elegiac, iambic, or melic) poet does not meticulously and soberly relate a story he has heard or learned from others. Rather, he should be in a state of “enthusiasm” or “mania,” inebriated and possessed by the Muses or a god, in order to be able to sing with inspiration. The notion of divine poetic inspiration is unambiguously articulated by Democritus30 and also plays an important role in Plato, who explains that only in such a state can a poet begin singing and creating poems (at which point she or he really becomes

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a poet, capable of production or poiēsis). Because the poet is divinely inspired, her poems are far superior to those composed by reason and calculated by technique or tekhnē.31 In an ironic imitation of ancient epic poets, Socrates often begins his speech with an invocation of the Muses and Memory (Euthyd. 275 d; Phaedr. 237 a). Socrates’ speech is not of a poet, because it is prosaic, yet it is “poetic” nonetheless, because it is productive, insofar as he produces and constructs a dialectical argument, which he often claims to have only reproduced from and by memory. Even if it is frequently misguided, rational argumentation is a way to the knowledge of what a thing is. In appealing to the Muses, Plato radically extends the range of the beautiful from the “aesthetic” as sensually perceivable, physical, and poetic to the purely thinkable. In doing so, he radically rethinks the role of the Muses who now provide the gift of knowledge and the capacity to reason well (RP 455 e, 486 d, 545 d–547 a). The Muses of Socrates and Plato are the new Muses of philosophical knowledge, which becomes the highest art (Phaedo 60 e–61 a). As art, it requires the inspiration of love (for wisdom), but also the attentive and intense work of precise dialectical thinking and discursive reasoning.32 The “old” Muses of poetry provide only pleasure and pain but not understanding, and thus they have no place in Plato’s ideal city (RP 607 a). Plato takes it that Homer has no knowledge of the events at Troy (e.g., that Helena was not really there) and thus asserts that which has never happened. For this, blindness becomes retribution. Only Stesichorus, who can learn the truth—obviously, by extra-poetic means— and who can recognize his mistake, regains his vision, which is the vision of the truth provided by the inspirational philosophical Muse (Phaedr. 243 a). Thus, in Plato the poet is no longer a “historian” (even if he still can tell about historical events, e.g., Pindar) and does not transmit knowledge of things past by means of a poetic catalogue. Plato’s poet is similar to a pythia sitting solemnly on her tripod and giving a divinely inspired oracle, unable either to explain what is told or how she happens to communicate it (Legg. 719 c). Correspondingly, the sophisticated new historian is the one who tells the truth of history as a direct correspondence between what is said and what has happened, and who therefore does not rely on a historical memory as it is transmitted in a poetic catalogue, but instead speculatively restores the truth of history through dialectical means, guided and inspired by the new Muse of philosophy. Writing and the purpose of history. Writing is indispensable for history. As Herder says in the Foreword to his Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity, in the form of a book, writing provides the “invisible communication of minds and



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hearts.” In the form of printing and later electronic media, writing constitutes a significant change—a revolution—in our attitude to ourselves and to the social, political, religious, and legal world by providing new means for structuring and expressing knowledge.33 No doubt, writing has both its benefits and drawbacks: on the one hand, it allows us to preserve many things and details that oral tradition would have lost, which is particularly useful for history. Yet on the other hand, writing cuts people off from the spontaneity of dialogical communication and the mutuality of shared thought. Oral communication can exist without writing, but writing cannot exist without oral communication. In this sense, oral speech is not “unwritten,” but written words are “unoral.” The opposition between the oral and the written is itself a “written” opposition. Moreover, it is through such opposition that writing constructs itself as contradictory, and not just contrary, to oral speech, because writing neither allows nor requires any mediation by the oral but instead intends to establish itself as the sovereign of any communication, thus subduing the oral as “unwritten” or “illiterate.” The opposition between the written and the oral is therefore highly artificial, just as writing is artificial and hence is an art. From its inception, written text is very carefully constructed and, although apparently communicating a message, always serves an extra-textual purpose that does not immediately transpire in the text but needs to be extricated by extra-textual, even if written, means. This generates a long tradition, up to Derrida, of odd hermeneutic exercises in disclosing that which shows itself—or rather is shown—in the written. Yet, as non-oral, is not necessarily immanent to the written.34 On the contrary, the purpose of oral speech is in the oral speech itself, even if not stated explicitly. The intention of producing texts as works of art leads to the development of rhetoric, which, similarly to drama, produces written texts that are preformed orally and thus an art that carefully organizes speech under the pattern of artful writing. Walter Ong appropriately mentions the following nine characteristics of the oral, which is: 1. Additive rather than subordinative (uses “and,” which implies the paratactic organization of oral lists). 2. Aggregative rather than analytic (uses established descriptive epithets and standard formulae). 3. Redundant or “copious” (hence, uses repetitions as mnemonic devices). 4. Conservative or traditionalist. 5. Close to the human lifeworld.

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6. Agonistically toned (portrays the struggle between “good and evil, virtue and vice, villains and heroes”). 7. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced. 8. Homeostatic (lives in the equilibrium of the present, thus neglecting memories, forgetting that which is no longer relevant). 9. Situational rather than abstract.35 One can also add that, being artificial, a written text should be carefully produced and constructed, so that each of its parts must find its proper place in the wellconceived composition of the whole. The written can be intentionally short, yet usually tends to be long. Even when reproducing an oral speech, writing does so from its grammatically correct and linguistically proper perspective, and thus it misses the oral and, in a sense, betrays it. Writing has an author—its maker—and as such is monoconscious, self-righteous and, as Ong puts it, is “a solipsistic operation.”36 Oral speech, on the contrary, in its spontaneity tends to be brief and concise, stylistically unembellished, somewhat simplistic and rough, and seems to get straight to the point, rather than meandering around. As such, the oral is not owned by its author but is shared dialogically. Seemingly self-interruptive and even haphazard, the oral nevertheless always shows its entire subject, although it does so each time only partially and from a different perspective. A possible classification of the purposes of writing—in writing—might be the following. Writing either keeps traces of thinking as action and activity, or takes notes for thinking. In the first case, writing can be considered either as dialectical, as following the steps of ordered reasoning or argument; or as normative, presenting the prescriptions of law as an entire plurality of particular laws;37 or as historical, preserving minute details of things past for and in historical memory. In the second case (notes for thinking), writing may be either hermeneutical, assisting thinking in the (re)interpretation of a text; or preparatory, meant for further writing that assists in unpacking a systematic plan and arrangement of a text yet to be written (often on the basis of other texts); or stenographic or hypomnematic, which safeguards past events that one either witnessed or read about in the form of notes (e.g., lecture notes) or commentaries (hypomnēmata). In this last capacity, writing can be used for the purposes either of self-expression or of self-cognition. Here, I am interested only in the historical use of writing. As I have argued, history needs “knowing much” and is based on the historical, which is an account, list, or catalogue. But it is not easy to preserve such an account, which is detailed and tends to be long, without losing or changing anything in it.



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Hence, there should be a special technique for keeping and transmitting the historical: in archaic times the historical was transmitted orally, in the form of catalogue poetry; later, the historical is passed on through writing. Since the “pre-historical” is commonly conceived as pre-written, one might say that in “historical” times the detailed account of a history was kept and passed on exceptionally as written. My thesis, therefore, is that writing is absolutely indispensable for history, and history cannot exist otherwise than by using and appealing to writing. In this sense, history cannot be otherwise than written. Indeed, the purpose of writing in history is the preservation of things past in a history, which it does by keeping many of the available yet sometimes seemingly unimportant details, transmitting them within a historical memory that collects, constructs, and lives off and around such a history.38 Historical writing, or writing the historical, appears to emerge with a number of rather strong implicit presuppositions, which are: the written can adequately describe and present things past, i.e., without distorting them by writing them down; the written lasts longer than the oral; and the written is a more reliable source for a history and memory than the oral. The written, then, is supposed to address and solve the problem of how a history is passed on, by providing the mechanism for an adequate, long-lasting, and reliable transmission of what is thought to be known about the past. And yet, that a history is written does not guarantee its reliability, because a written text may be inauthentic or poorly preserved. Thus, Livy mentions “linen books,” which provided the sequence of Roman consuls in the fifth century bce and were used by some historians, while others considered them altogether unreliable.39 Writing was initially used for retaining details that seemed important, particularly, in legal documents (such as lists of things owned, articles of contribution, etc.) and chronicles of events and lists of names (heroes, kings, genealogies, etc.). For this reason, writing does not have to be poetic or even a stylistically polished speech, such as a rhetorical speech (reportedly, Isocrates worked on one of his speeches for almost two Olympiads). A written historical account is composed with care but its precision is more important than its style. A history may not have a beginning and an end (especially as its purpose), but it can treat a particular episode very much in detail. In this respect, history is closer to epic, which too is often without a beginning or an end. This incompleteness, however, is rather an advantage, because epic poetry is closer to the historical fabula and to the depiction of life in that it uses the plot that is overall relatively simple yet complex in its minute details and episodes, is hypotactic

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and often begins in medias res. By contrast, modern historiography, like drama, is paratactic and uses a carefully calculated and constructed plot. Thus, when the Athena of history is born out of the head of Zeus of epic catalogue poetry, history is already written and prosaic. When history arises, the history/poetry opposition is already clearly established in Hecataeus: history is written, whereas poetry (epic poetry) is originally oral. Poetry was oral long before Homer; it was unwritten and transmitted as memorized, and only later was it written down.40 In a sense, early history can formally be defined as the first written prose of considerable length; all other written prosaic genres, such as a philosophical dialogue or treatise, come only later. One might even say that philosophy, although it still uses poetry up until the time of the Sophists, imitates history and is “historical” in its very form: writing. (It is perhaps no coincidence that Heraclitus, who writes in prose,41 is a younger contemporary of Hecataeus.) However, as I have argued, (epic) poetry already includes a form of history, namely, the historically transmitted catalogue-poetry included in an epic poem. Epic poetry, which retains actors and actions in an “absolute past,” becomes not only the paradigm for education and culture (paideia), but also provides a canon for history, which keeps and transmits things past in their minute details within the historical. In this respect, the sober (epic) poetry paves the way for history. Again, history follows and imitates the very structure of catalogue poetry: a narrative, which is the fabula + an extended list or catalogue of names (each one possibly supplied with its own narrative, often just an epithet), which is the historical. That epic poetry is essentially oral and that it is and can be transmitted as oral speech can be further seen from the way in which it is structured and organized. Epic story-telling is kept alive even nowadays in many parts of the world and appears to be the same in very different cultures (e.g., in Siberia). As Milman Parry has famously argued, oral epic is based on the use of standard formulae that are further complemented by improvisation in a regular rhythm and metric. Such formulae are traditional and stable poetic constructions that practically do not change in the oral tradition and thus suit well the purpose of memorization and transmitting of epic texts.42 According to Parry, “The poet who composes with only the spoken word a poem of any considerable length must be able to fit his words into the mould of his verse after a fixed pattern. Unlike the poet who writes out his lines—or even dictates them—he cannot think without hurry about his next word, nor change what he has made, nor, before going on, read over what he has just written.”43 The originality of the oral



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poet consists, then, in the creative use of standard poetic formulae and spontaneous improvisation, which, however, always occurs within a well-established poetic tradition and includes poetic invariants of meter and text. An innovative poet is the one who can improvise on a given theme by using familiar poetic phrases and formulae for a long time without repetition (Homer in poetry, Bach in polyphony, Coltrane in jazz).44 Oral poetry is spontaneous and is composed quickly. For this reason, it may disregard minor irregularities and roughness in style and composition that are easily excused and remain rather unnoticeable with respect to oral perception. Reciting oral poetry is a live communal—political—event, it is listened to, heard, and interpreted publicly. One cannot say that an oral epic poet is properly the author of the story he is telling, because he always borrows from others, i.e., from the (often anonymous, yet commonly known) epic tradition, while adding his own elements, interpretations, and improvised reconstructions. Therefore, epic can be written down or recorded but cannot fully fit within the rigid Procrustean bed of a text. On the contrary, written poetry and history are composed slowly. Here, improvisation is reined in by the existing written canon, according to which—but also often contrary to which—a poet or a historian makes constant changes, producing several versions of the text, caring about the minutest details, style, and form. Reading a written text is a private matter, it is read and seen, transmitted in and as a text (often perceived as improper for the broader public, as are many of Catullus’s poems or Procopius’ Secret History) and is meant for a few chosen connoisseurs. Once recorded and written down as a philological canon, the orally improvised becomes petrified and makes poetic improvisation obsolete. Improvisation is substituted by the hermeneutical, philological, and philosophical reinterpretation of a text, which turns epic into a written “grand narrative,” but only once epic is dead. A catalogue is thus the “nucleus” of an oral epic tradition that preserves and contains its most important and most memorable events. However, the catalogue itself should not be improvised but must be transmitted exactly as it is and without changes. In other words, epic catalogues must be memorizable and memorized. The primary aid in this task is the organization of oral epic, its verse, rhythm, and tempo (for this reason, oral epic is sung, accompanied by a musical instrument). There is an ongoing debate about whether the prototype of the catalogue of ships was versified or not. But its rhythmic versified structure is not only a useful poetic device, but also a powerful mnemonic one. For this reason, sixth-century bce gnomic poetry (e.g., of Theognis) converts its maxims into verse for the purposes of memorization. Or,

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as Plato reports, Euenus compiled a work on “incidental censures” in verse, in order to make it easier to memorize.45 However, Plato already does not understand epic oral poetry, which for him has become a literary written foundation of culture, education, and edification (paideia). For this reason, Plato does not see that Homer is a “historian” as a sober histōr, the one who knows what he is talking about, taking him to be a Romantic poet, an inebriated and inspired “enthusiast” (in the Ion), a “maniac” (in the Phaedrus) or even a “liar” (in the Republic) who even needs to be banned from an orderly state. Even today, the fabulae of histories are often transmitted orally and shared within one inner theater, although printing and electronic media make the oral transmittance of long texts obsolete and a thing of the past. Thus, historians do not need oral poetry with its poetic catalogues. Historians need writing, insofar as they rely on long, written, and detailed (katalogadēn) prosaic lists for the preservation of the historical.46 History also exists as oral.47 However, while entrusting its fabula as a brief, commonly accessible story within the oral tradition, oral history nevertheless delegates a detailed description of the event to a carefully crafted written text. In other words, in catalogue poetry fabula and the historical are both oral; in oral history fabula is oral, while the historical is still kept and transmitted as written; and in written history both fabula and the historical are written. It is not by chance that the very term for “list” or “index” in Greek, anagraphion, already suggests that it is done and preserved in writing (graphē). Written history can afford itself the luxury of not caring about memorizing the minute features of an event or its actors, not packing its catalogues into verses. In writing, history may preserve any gathered or oral stories and available inscriptions within antiquarian history, even those “unimportant” details, before they are critically processed within historiographic history. Besides, in written historical treatises for the most part there is no clear distinction between the exposition of “what happened” (fabula) and the list of “who’s” and “what’s” (the historical), because, first, there can be many different lists pertinent to one fabula; and second, they may not be explicitly organized as lists, being dissipated within the exposition of the course of events. Therefore, one may say that the historical being is being in the written. Such historical being replaces and substitutes the atemporal being, which is a-historical, since, being non-discursive, it has no sequence of actors and events and thus no story to tell. Yet many important constituents of human intercourse are oral. Such, for example, is law, which is initially oral and is passed on as such. Thus, before the



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Mishnah was written down, the Oral Torah was transmitted from generation to generation as the oral law. When writing arrived, there was a long-lasting resistance to writing down laws (e.g., among the Romans).48 The list of laws is similar to a poetic catalogue and needs to be memorized, in order to be preserved. Commanding respect, law is often considered divine, which makes the figure of the law-giver sacred.49 Because law guarantees the successful surviving and functioning of a political community, it has to be kept intact.50 Therefore, nothing should be changed in a law. This means that laws are better off being left unwritten, since oral laws are known to everyone and thus cannot be changed single-handedly or due to mistakes of a copyist. However, once laws are written, their text should be preserved unchanged, not only by being inscribed into a material that lasts (bronze or stone) but primarily by being put on public display, so that nobody can change the law in private. Otherwise, the written text of the laws should somehow protect itself from being arbitrarily altered. For this reason, many ancient languages, for instance Hittite, developed a “formula of curse,” which is included in a text and is addressed to those who would dare to change anything in it. Some of the relatively late laws, from the seventh and sixth centuries bce (e.g., in Crete), are inscribed on temple walls, which again points toward the law’s divine origin and protection.51 The law exists and transpires through a plurality of concrete laws. And yet, no list of laws can ever be exhaustive, because each particular written law applies only to a limited number of cases, and thus cannot embrace all of the possible (potentially infinite) unprecedented cases that require new applications. Therefore, another argument for not writing down laws is that the unwritten law is robust in its ruling yet can be flexible enough to be extended to all possible cases, namely, through its interpretation. In ancient rhetoric, there is even a notion of “syllogism” (syllogismos), which is an inference from a written to an unwritten law, that is, from the “spirit” of law to its “letter.”52 Understood this way, law as oral thus constitutes the totality of law and precedes multiple concrete laws. Besides, myth, poetry, anecdote, inner theater, dialogue, learning, and teaching are all originally oral. As Havelock has argued, the introduction of alphabetic writing by the Greeks (ascribed to Cecrops), with the idea of linearity and ordered sequence that comes with it, resulted in the development of logic and philosophy as ordered discursive ways of thinking and representation of thought.53 And yet, the first philosophers, Pythagoras and Thales, did not leave anything in writing. It is only when philosophy becomes a prosaic, dialectical search for justified true proposition that it cannot be other than written, because it has to preserve long

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chains of reasoning in an argument. Among later thinkers who never wrote are Socrates, Epictetus, Ammonius Saccas, for whom writing was a betrayal of the spontaneity, originality and unfinalizability of thought that cannot be put into a rigid and unchangeable form.54 The oral logos of dialogue is more flexible and spontaneous than its written fixation in dialectic, which requires writing in order to transcribe and preserve all the steps of reasoning in their exact succession. Myths and fame are oral too, first coming via word of mouth as a rumor, in contrast to history, which in Hecataeus and Hellanicus is already essentially a written and “alphabetic” enterprise, utilizing the extant media of writing for its transmission and expression. Tragedy, a contemporary of history, is also written and ordered, as are rhetorical compositions: no wonder that Ephorus and Theopompus were students of Isocrates. Thus, from the perspective of writing, the oral is simply unwritten or illiterate. And yet, the oral has a different logic of functioning and transmission, which the written cannot grasp. Biography and autobiography. Modern thinkers (Adam Ferguson, Kant, Condorcet, Herder, Hegel, Marx) take the subject of history to be the whole of humankind, which progresses (or regresses, in Rousseau) toward a state in which each person is allowed to realize her freedom as a member of a political community.55 Modern history thus becomes political history. However, an individual can also have a personal history, which is meaningful as long as it is inscribed into and understood within a larger history. Such individual “history” even develops it own genre—biography and autobiography.56 The very notion of (auto)biography, which means “a writing about one’s (own) life,” suggests, first of all, that it is written. Moreover, (auto)biography has exactly the same structure as history: it consists of a fabula and the historical. (Auto) biography tells about what has happened in one’s life, its “how” and “when,” and provides a list of events, both important and seemingly unimportant. Most noteworthy, however, is the notion that biography has the same constituents as early history, since biography too refers to genealogy (one’s relatives and family) and geography (one’s place of origin, life, and travel). Biography is an ancient genre. Descriptions of the lives of kings, heroes, and high-ranking officials were already widespread in Egypt and Assyria. In a sense, the Bible contains a great number of biographies, which follow established hagiographic patterns. The first known literary biographies, however, were written by Isocrates (Life of Euagoras) and Xenophon (Life of Agesilaos), both of whom were contemporaries of Plato.57 Autobiography, on the contrary, appears to be a modern genre, because autobiography requires a reflective subjectivity that can



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take itself as its own other, think about itself systematically, and write a history of itself. Modernity is often considered as marked off by subjectivity’s self-study and reflective self-account. Thus, in Hegel’s philosophy of history the universal subjectivity, spirit, comes to its full historical realization by achieving a state of universal freedom, in which spirit knows itself as free in a complete and completed reflection. Indeed, being a historian of oneself presupposes subjectivity or a self to whom one’s story is directed and about whom it is told. It is not a coincidence, then, that the first modern autobiography appears together with modern (universal) history, at the end of the eighteenth century in a collection edited by Chr. Seybold, which was inspired by Herder.58 One might say that ancient biography tends to be antiquarian (e.g., in Suetonius), whereas modern biography is more likely to be historiography (e.g., the multiple contemporary biographies of a popular political figure). Autobiography, then, is a kind of reflective history of oneself written both for others, for the purpose of being remembered, and for oneself, for the double purpose of self-therapy and self-cognition. In an autobiography, the author becomes both a witness and a judge. And yet, such a witness is not utterly reliable and such a judge is not always impartial. Besides, in autobiography one becomes both the doer and the teller who tells about one’s exploits in an (often futile) hope to gain kleos and be posthumously preserved within it. Still, one might say that autobiographies were already produced and written in antiquity. Despite Hegel’s claims that the “inner” is a specifically modern product, the late Stoics (who are modern in many ways) were already familiar with writing one’s personal history to and for oneself as a means of moral selfeducation, self-discipline, and self-cognition, but also as exhortative for others and for the sake of others (as in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, called literally To oneself, Ta eis heauton). Plato’s Seventh Letter may be considered an autobiography—perhaps the first autobiography ever written. Here, while addressing another person (Dion), the philosopher speaks about himself in order to trace and give an account of his own political development, which might be instructive for the reader and possibly for himself too, in which case the letter becomes Plato’s reflection about his own life. Autobiography originates as a history of one’s life, as is, for example, David Hume’s My Own Life (1776), written shortly before his death but published only posthumously.59 It begins by acknowledging that “It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short.” The text then proceeds with a description of the major events in Hume’s life and intellectual development, and concludes with a brief description of his own character.

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(Evidently, Hume thinks that he has a safe reflective distance from himself to be able to describe his own character in an “objective” way!) In autobiography, the author is also the protagonist, but even if in modern novels the author often tries to suspend herself or even fully get rid of her presence in the text, she still experiments with the genre of autobiography as if it were a text apparently without an author, either anonymous (such as the memoirs of libertines) or fictitious (Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoirs d’Hadrien).60 The recollection as an ordered account of one’s life is related to the ancient genre of commentary, or hypomnēmata, which consists of “the notes an orator composed in preparing a speech.”61 Such written notes are used for organizing material, but above all they serve as a reminder. As Plato argues in the Phaedrus in his polemic against writing, a written text can never encompass being as memory and can at best serve as a set of notes (hypomnēmata) directed to oneself and meant to remind oneself of important things in one’s life when memory begins to fade and fail.62 Commentarii were also written as descriptions of events that one lived through, for example, a military campaign, in Caesar’s brilliantly written The Gallic Wars, or Commentarii de bello gallico.63 In late ancient philosophy (particularly in the Neoplatonists) philosophical commentary becomes a well-established and dominant genre. Initially, it is a set of lecture notes on a philosophical text, which is, in a sense, the record of an intellectual “journey” through a foundational philosophical work, usually of Plato or Aristotle. This explains why late ancient commentaries on Plato and Aristotle are so abundant (see the many-volume Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, 1882–1909). Philosophical commentary, however, itself became an independent philosophical written work that was read and utilized for further writing and commenting. Thus, Proclus, who wrote a number of extensive systematic treatises, considered the commentary on Plato’s Timaeus his most important work.64 There are, however, limits to autobiography, because one has to rely on one’s memory and notes. But the former may fail and the latter may be incomplete. Besides, one has to decide how much of a confession an autobiography should be, that is, whether one should include not only an account of one’s feelings, thoughts, and evaluations of the described events but also mention one’s mistakes and wrongdoings. Usually in an autobiography, one does not hesitate to express one’s (always reconstructed) thought and provide evaluations, yet one is hesitant to recognize one’s own faults, because one writes a history of one’s life in order to be remembered. If an autobiography is the only source about one’s life, then one will be remembered as one has told of it. Any history is an interpretation and a reconstruction, because fabula interprets and clarifies the historical. Autobiography seems to be more of a



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“benevolent” interpretation of one’s life than biography, which tends to be less partial. For this reason, in autobiography one is not only a historian but also— perhaps, inevitably—a poet in the Aristotelian sense, always (at least, slightly) bending the facts and changing the picture of one’s life in one’s favor. And when Augustine, Rousseau, and Tolstoy left their autobiographies as confessions, they did so because they wrote within a tradition that encourages the recognition of one’s wrongdoings as a way of critical self-study, which is considered therapeutic and laudable and which thus eventually turns self-blame into self-praise. But autobiography is always incomplete. It cannot be completed because its author is still alive when she is writing it. Autobiography belongs to itself, since it is a part of the author’s life that the autobiography describes, and yet it is not included within itself, because it cannot be finished. This was well understood by the dying Hume, who concluded his brief autobiography by writing that “I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me to speak my sentiments).”65 In this sense, autobiography always fails, because, as Judith Butler explains, “my effort at self-summarization fails, and fails necessarily, when the ‘I’ who is introduced in the opening line as a narrative voice cannot give an account of how it became an ‘I’ who might narrate itself or the story in particular. … I do not merely communicate something about my past, though that is doubtless part of what I do. I also enact the self I am trying to describe; the narrative ‘I’ is reconstituted at every moment it is invoked in the narrative itself.”66 In other words, the “I” that tells and the “I” that is told about are the same and yet not the same, because the “I” that is told about is changed by the unfolding narrative, as is also the “I” that narrates. Autobiography as a personal history differs from biography as a history of the other in that autobiography has access to certain memories and recollections that are only accessible to the author who may put them down in writing. Biography, on the contrary, often does not have access to such events and must utilize written, not always dependable sources and memories (as Plutarch does in Vitae parallelae). In order to absorb such materials, in writing a biography one often needs to rely on traditional formulae, rhetorical clichés, and narrative schemes (e.g., in hagiography), especially once almost nothing is preserved of a life except for scant oral tradition, surviving rumors and sometimes the bare name. In a sense, a name is itself a “minimal” biography as a personal history, falling within early history to the extent that it encompasses in itself a genealogy and geography, and can be placed in the historical, in a list of other names, that can be possibly clarified by a known narrative or fabula.

“…animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s-hair brush; (l) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies.” (Classification attributed to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.)1

5

The logos of history The fabula of a history tells what happened; a list retains what is worth preserving or can be preserved. But what is worth preserving? If historical non-being is oblivion, and thus disappearance from a history, then historical being is being in the historical. In what follows, I understand by “logos” the principle of inclusion into the historical or the rule for ordering it, either loosely or according to a strict classification. Logos brings in a delimitation and arrangement of things syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically, thus generating a list in which a logos is always present, even if it is usually not explicitly referred to. Logos, then, assigns historical being by choosing those events, names, and things that deserve preservation within a history and thus are granted being in and by the historical. This makes history a “logical” enterprise. In order to understand history, one must look for its “logic,” which, however, is neither syllogistic nor the logic of the progressive self-realization of a universal reason. Such a “logic” of history does not make history either a strict (theoretical or empirical) science or a speculative metaphysical discipline (in the Hegelian sense). One can say that there is a reason in history—but only as a logos, which is the (sometimes arbitrary) principle of ordering, and the inclusion into, the historical. A logos is the reason for someone or something to be in a history. Evidently, a particular logos is connected to the kind of story or fabula a history wants to tell. A fabula determines the necessity of acting in a certain way,

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although this necessity is established in a history post factum; the logos forms the historical that fills in the details. Since the historical can be understood and rearranged in many different ways, there can be many (in fact, any) number of logoi or principles of inclusion into the historical, although there are usually only a few that are current. Moreover, the same instantiation of the historical can include different logoi; and the same logos can produce different versions of the historical. For instance, all the inhabitants of New York City, which is probably the most diverse city in the history of humankind, can be considered along the lines of different logoi in a great number of ways, each time forming a new set: alphabetically by name, by profession, age, income, family relations, linguistic background, food preferences, the number of miles walked or driven on an average every day, leisure habits, etc. As I have argued, the historical is preserved in and as a list. By “list” I understand any number of entities or objects—things, events, names, notions— represented verbally, orally or in writing, in an ordered way, usually as a sequence, sometimes accompanied by images. A list can be such of anything and thus can be non-homogenous, although usually lists refer to entities of the same kind. Hence, a history can be of anything, not only of res gestae, as it is usually taken to be, but also of any things, activities, and phenomena, both human and natural. The historical tends to preserve certain exemplary lists of those names, things, and events that refer to exemplary cases, which show why and how historical non-being is overcome, yet in principle the historical may preserve any list, sometimes doing so accidentally. That objects in a list are “of the same kind” does not follow simply from the fact that they are on the same list. In what follows, I will call any such object of this kind “things” in the sense of res, which may also include the objectified representation of a person or a living being, of a fact or event; and the representation of a “thing” in a list will be called an “entry.” Of course, things are not the same as things that are represented, ordered, and named on a list. In history, we deal only in the representations of things, not the things themselves: even if the things are brought together and arranged in a certain order, each one is taken not (only) as itself but (also) to represent itself in an ordered whole. Entries in a list are represented by and within language. In some cases, as I will argue, images may supply or even produce a list themselves. In this case, however, images are “illustrations” that correspond to the “word” entries. Such entries may be either explicit or implicit (i.e., text may or may not be included in the image as part of the image), but in any event they are already known to the reader or “seer” of such a list.



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If logos is a generative and formative principle of a list, then there is no list without a logos: any list is already ordered, organized, and “ruled” by a logos, although the logos itself is usually not mentioned explicitly in the list. Every list has a logos, and if we recognize something as a list, we already implicitly refer to its organizing logos, even if we do not recognize it. Yet a different principle of ordering can always be assigned to a list insofar as it can always be rearranged and reordered. One can always find a new logos to the known historical (e.g., the Greeks brought their forces to Troy because this was a necessary moment in the development of Geist toward the realization of freedom; or it was a politically constitutive moment in the establishment of military unions between the cities, etc.). Etymologically, the term “list” means “limit” or “boundary.” Jack Goody distinguishes between three kinds of lists: (1) an inventory (“a record of outside events, roles, situations, persons, a typical early use of which would be a king-list”);2 (2) a retrospective list (a plan to follow, or a “shopping list”); (3) a lexical list (an “inventory of concepts, a proto-dictionary or embryonic encyclopedia”).3 However, contra Goody, I want to stress a profound structural similarity between all kinds of lists, which allows “list” to be the prototype for the historical. Some examples: from early on, history has maintained itself around the logos of the chronological order, of a succession of events or magistrates. Among the very first historical dates in Greek history, each one of which is the origin of a long and carefully preserved list, are: 776, the first Olympic games; 754, the beginning of the list of Spartan ephors;4 and 683, when the list of the annual Athenian archons began and continued almost uninterruptedly (with a few omissions) for about a thousand years.5 One of the first historical lists is Hellanicus’ Atthis, which includes a chronology of events pertaining to the history of Attica from 683 to the end of the Peloponnesian War (his chronology, however, is criticized by Thucydides, I.97). Examples of lists are innumerable in any culture: such are lists of ancestors, mythological or real (e.g., in the Bible, arranged genealogically, Gen. 4–5 et al.; or the ancestors of Lycurgus: Aristodemus, Procles, Soos, Eurypon, Prytanis, Eunomus);6 of cities (e.g., in the province of Henan); of gods (e.g., Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercurius, Jovi, Neptunus, Vulcanus, and Apollo);7 of heroes (e.g., of the Trojan War; or of the Second World War Memorial in Volgograd); of dwarfs (e.g., in the Voluspa from the Elder Edda as mentioned by the prophetess and also cited by Snorri: Nyi, Nidi, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, Vestri, Althiolf, Dvalin, Nar, Nain, Niping, Dain, Bifur, Bafur, Bombor,

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Nori, Ori, Onar, Oin, Modvintir, Vig, Gandalf, Vindalf, Thorin, Fili, Kili, Fundin, Vali, Thror, Throin, Thekk, Lit, Vitr, Nyr, Nyrad, Rekk, Radsvinn, etc.);8 of victors in games (e.g., in the Karneonikai by Hellanicus;9 the Olympianikai by Hippias; or the Pythionikai by Pindar); of citizens (e.g., at a city: liable to taxation, war conscription, proscription, etc.); of kings or rulers (e.g., of the sixth–eighth century ce Langobard kings in Italy: Alboin, Authari, Agilulf, Rothari, Grimwald I, Liutprand, Aistulf, Desiderius); of settlements, landowners and their property in a cadastre (e.g., in the Domesday Book); of consuls (complemented by the stories of their achievements, Livy II.9.1 sqq.); of magistrates (e.g., the Roman proconsuls of Asia in Pergamum: Vettius Bolanus, M. Plautius Silvanus, Q. Poppaeus Secundus, P. Petronius, C. Antius, A. Julius Quadratus; or of the cities named after magistrates, preserved by Phainias in the Prytaneis); of priestesses (e.g., of Hera at Argos; or those presented in chronological succession in the Hiereiai by Hellanicus; cf. Thucydides IV.133); of philosophers (e.g., the list of 218 men and 17 women associated by Iamblichus with the Pythagorean school);10 of historians (e.g., the list of ten great ancient historians from Thucydides to Polybius, in Hellanicus T 10 Jacoby); of laws (e.g., the leges duodecim tabularum in Rome; or the laws from the Cretan city of Gortyn from the late archaic to early classical period);11 of vices (e.g., of about sixty of them listed in the Byzantine satirical dialogue Mazaris);12 of deeds (e.g., the res gestae divi Augusti preserved in the Temple of Augustus and in Monumentum Ancyranum in Ankara, which is a posthumous list of Augustus’ political and military accomplishments); of archeological epigraphic inscriptions (e.g., Vindolanda Tablets); of steps in an argument (e.g., in a proposition of Euclid, Proclus, Spinoza, Kant, or Plantinga), etc. Lists are also pervasive in our contemporary world, being indispensable in legal, political, historical, artistic, and other matters: there are waiting lists; lists of things not to forget, such as shopping and traveling lists; there are lists of referees’ marks at a sporting event, and so on. A nice illustration of the omnipresence and importance of lists is found in a list of some 500 names of people to whom a post-production company decided to give a Christmas present in the form of a huge scroll hung on the wall of a house in SoHo, entitled “The Following People Are Great: No One is As Great As They Are.”13 The list combined the features of a gesture of recognition and an artistic ironic message, since it did not mention why these people were named and listed. In fact, any text may be considered a list, since it is a sequence of signs and words we read in succession and interpret. In so doing, we restore the text’s logos. With all this in mind, one cannot compose a list of all lists (which, then, should not include itself as a member).



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Properties of logos. A logos is always selective and exclusive: it selects and “cuts out” (as a sui generis historical “blade”) only particular things, names, and events, while excluding others. History does not make us free insofar as it brings us under the spell of a logos, with which we constantly struggle in an attempt to recognize, pinpoint, follow, and overcome. Against the contemporary struggle with logocentrism, one can say that insofar as we are historical beings we are inevitably “logical.” As a source of conviction and assurance, the logos is authoritative but it is not oppressive, since it allows us to be free in a history. A logos can be chosen among others commonly accepted or can be imposed onto a history, either arbitrarily, which can be brutal, or in order to achieve comprehensibility through systematicity. As such, a new logos of history can be detrimental to include into a history, from which others might learn (from a disaster of the past) and it also can be advantageous by promoting just political and moral forms of life and coexistence. A particular logos is thus judged within a history itself, which is already governed by a logos. A logos of a history becomes self-reflective when it tells how a history must be judged—taken, interpreted, understood—and explicitly explains itself, its purpose within a history. That history is “logical” means that it primarily engages discursive reasoning, i.e., reasoning that unfolds similarly to an argument, in a number of steps, following a certain order of unwrapping or “deduction.” In this sense, the logical form involves the deployment of order in a sequence of reasoning of different and countable entries on a list that arranges and organizes them according either to an explicit or implicit “order and measure,” ordo et mesura.14 A logos thus chooses the things that are both same (of the same kind) and other (uniquely different to each other). The arrangement of the historical according to a logos that gives the list an order and meaning thus presupposes enumeration and the idea of a historical method.15 Such arrangements are usually linear, but they may also be two- or three-dimensional according to the appropriate or desired order (e.g., of images on a page or things in displays). A list or catalogue may include images, which are not only themselves two-dimensional, but may also be arranged differently in a succession or on a plate. A logos, then, implies a classification, either explicit or implicit.16 Without going into a discussion of the problems related to classification, I assume that in a history classification is always possible, and one can provide a different classification for the same set of entries, and thus rearrange them differently according to a different logos. Even a willful and fantastic classification, of the kind inferred by the fictitious Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge with its “ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies,”17 can always make sense

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and constitute a new history. Such an “analytical” linguistic classification is concocted by Borges to show that in principle any classification of a set would make sense, and thus provide meaning to the things classified. Logos is one and many: it is always plural, because the same things can be arranged according to different logoi. But it is also one, because, on the one hand, different logoi can be connected. On the other hand, logos applies and embraces a plurality of things, and brings many things into a unity, that of a list, where all entries are linked within the same historical account. Logos thus allows for a multiplicity of subdivisions or subclasses in a classification. Logos both divides and unites. However, logos does not provide an ultimate, final, or finalized classification. The reason for this lack of finality is that one can always classify the same set of things in different ways, that is, one can always provide a different logos of and for the same things. Therefore, no ultimate system and systematization of things, and no ultimate history, is possible. Hence, logos produces a set of records or things that are the same (insofar as they all fall under the same principle of classification, the same rule of choice) but are also different (insofar as they are mutually different and can form different connections under different classifications). As authoritative, logos is exclusive of others but since no logos is ultimate, it is also inclusive, insofar as it allows for the establishment of relations with other logoi, which means that a history can, and in fact is, always connected to other histories. Logos is precise in its selective power for a history, which means that it is not relativistic and that not just anything goes in a history. Yet there is no privileged logos that can be considered the principle of the organization, as well as of the interpretation and understanding of the historical and its lists as giving them meaning. Therefore, there can be many different logoi defining a whole plurality of different versions of the historical and its lists based on the same set of things.18 Respectively, the same list may allow for a different logos, depending on an interpretation of the logos. For instance, a list of the names of active supporters of X may be taken as one that consists of either heroes or criminals, depending on how one takes X. Hence, there can be different logoi of a history that define different histories, even with the same fabula. Besides, the sources of such logoi can equally be very diverse (ad hoc; totally arbitrary or imaginary; coming out of an established practice; the construction of an object according to certain a priori rules, etc.). And these logoi can (but must not) be utterly incommensurable, that is, they may not follow, or be deducible from, the same common principle (which might be taken as a sui generis meta-logos or a universal logos).



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One might mention several particular cases of the relation between logoi and the historical defined by them: 1. One entry can be a list, in which case its logos can be understood in principle in any way. 2. There can be an empty list, analogous to an empty set. This can happen once there is no single instantiation of a logos, either because there can be none, or because no instantiation has yet been chosen. In the former case, it is an impossible logos, e.g., the one that establishes a list of all odd numbers divisible by two (a self-contradictory logos) or of all humans a mile tall (empirically impossible based on the principles of mechanics). The empty list may thus correspond to a “non-history,” that brings us back to the province of myth. 3. In a list of entries apparently brought together by accident there can always be a logos. Moreover, the logos of the accidental is not itself accidental. 4. A classifying rule can be established either by explicit (definitive) description or by adding some information to the entries19—or implicitly, e.g., by examples, which then may become paradigmatic for the constitution of a history. 5. A code or cipher is both an explicit and implicit logos, when the principle of organizing the things is purposefully withdrawn and undisclosed, so that the entries are explicit and seen as entries of a list only to those who know the principle and the rule of their order and arrangement.20 6. A particular logos might establish an infinite succession within a list, so that although any particular list is finite, it could always be expanded and continued. The historical is thus complete at any moment but it is in principle incapable of being completed and thus extends the past potentially into the future, allowing us to see and narrate the events according to an established logos or pattern of interpretation. 7. The logos of the whole list might not coincide with the logos that might be associated with each entry. A narrative that refers to a different logos may be supplied for each entry in a way that might have nothing to do with the historical “logic” of the whole. 8. Moreover, the logos of the whole list itself may be complex and explicitly or implicitly refer to several logoi at the same time. A simple example is a disjunction (A or B) that forms a list, a conjunction (A & B, e.g., all female professors of art history in Padua), etc.

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9. Following the above distinction between inquiry and systematization, one can say that the logos of a list can determine an inquiry (linguistic, scientific, legal, etc.), although in a history this role is primarily reserved for the narrative and fabula. But logos also establishes the way the historical is systematically presented. 10. Finally, logos can be both descriptive and prescriptive, i.e., both discovered in a list and put into it. Logos is descriptive insofar as it clarifies the particular kind of entries on the list; and it is prescriptive or constructive insofar as it selects only certain things for the historical. If there is no unique telos of and in a history, then there is no single ultimate logos that would disclose it. Put otherwise, logos is always multi-vocal. History, then, is constituted as multiple histories, each of which may have many possible logoi. That logos should bring precision into thinking and reasoning, and yet that it can nevertheless be uncertain and ambiguous, is one of the central discoveries of ancient philosophy and rhetoric.21 Logos is not only the principle of organization, but also the principle of interpretation and understanding of the historical and its list. To understand a history is to know both its fabula and its logos. Since, as said, there is no privileged logos of the historical, different coherent interpretations of it are possible. Such interpretations might conflict with each other, but nonetheless be hermeneutically coherent. For the most part, such interpretations are traditional and limited in number (a political interpretation might follow the patterns of liberal, conservative, anarchist or progressive), which are often considered opposite (e.g., liberal/conservative or historiographic/antiquarian). However, through a new logos, the historical is open to reinterpretation, to an always new and renewable logos, which makes the reader a writer and (co)author of a history. Any history always comes with a robust tradition of its interpretation, but nothing prevents one from interpreting it differently, either by rethinking its fabula or by arranging the historical in a new and different way. Yet, even if the historian attempts to interfere with the events as little as possible (i.e., if she exercises truthtelling), she still inevitably provides an interpretation of the fabula and arranges the historical in a certain way. A new history is always possible, and if freedom is indeed realized in a history, then it is the freedom to create a new history. The syllogism of history. History is thus a “logical” enterprise, which consists in the activity of reading in or out, of either constructing or discovering, a logos in things that consists in arranging, ordering, listing, and classifying



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them, bringing them together (in one set) and separating them (according to the various categories). Logos thus organizes things (historically) into a unity in plurality, both uniting and separating things in the historical, thus making them into a collection. In their multiplicity, things form one whole collection, a communicating unity in multiplicity where their communication is established according to their mutual relationship.22 Therefore, logos is the principle of collecting things, which makes history “syllogistic” in the sense of Greek syllogē as “collection.”23 There can be collections of anything: letters, ancient vases, matchboxes, bricks, dresses, stones, “natural curiosities,” Indian pottery, children’s books, toys, comics, stamps, Chukchi carvings, incunabulae, graphics, paintings, watercolor illustrations, word slips, notable events, philosophical terms. Collections are always incomplete and in their representation are a written enterprise, and some collections are published, such as Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, library catalogues, philosophical dictionaries, genealogies, map indexes, accounts of historians and their works, and so on. In a sense, any book and text is a collection of words and images put in certain order. Since the logoi of the historical may differ widely, the same set of entries may be organized into different collections. Thus, one can classify the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum geographically by city, by leagues of cities, by ancient country (Aeolis, Troas, Ionia) or, in Roman times, by conventus or province (Adramyteum, Pergamum, Ephesus). One may also classify the records chronologically, according to ruler, dynast, emperor, magistrate, by size, by weight standards (Attic, Phoenician, Rhodian, Lydo-Mylesian), by sets of dies, die-engravers, etc. Depending on various logoi, which although not arbitrary, may be significantly different, we produce various collections capable of telling very different aesthetic, political, social, or other histories. Any collection can be seen as a strongly ordered historical, which means that a collection tends also to be long, detailed, and rather boring in its entirety, and thus is always read or seen only in part, only what is needed and when needed. As such, it may presuppose further divisions, such as a chronological periodization, authorship, pedigree, etc., while striving to provide a possibly full description, classification, and the proper references for particular things or events. A collection is made public in and as a catalogue. Therefore, a catalogue must be published. Publishing a catalogue not only serves the purpose of making it accessible to others but also making it available for cross-references to other catalogues and thus to other histories. In this respect, a catalogue is the opposite of an anecdote, since an anecdote is not systematically described and is originally

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oral, existing only as it is told, heard, and transmitted, without pretending to be factually true, yet nevertheless, as was said, playing an important role in a history. As published but read only in part, a catalogue is similar to a commentary, which is consulted when a difficulty in interpreting or understanding a particular passage or term in a text arises (e.g., a commentary on Plato’s Parmenides). Yet, with logos a history obtains “logical” precision and “rational” meticulousness, which comes with the exactitude of reference and details in the historical. Yet, there can be various degrees of specification or “zooming in” of a collection: one may collect books, but one may also collect seventeenth-century books, or seventeenth-century books on medicine, or seventeenth-century books on medicine illustrated by particular artists, or seventeenth-century books on medicine illustrated by a particular artist and printed by a particular publisher, and so on. In other words, a collection can be as specific as it can be in and for a history. One could say that any history is a syllogism (syllogismos) and a collection (syllogē) and each one displays a duality of the historical and fabula, of premises and rules of deduction, of entries and logos of a list. As a judge, the historian is then a “logician” who constructs a historical “syllogism” concluding to the truth of what happened in a history. As a witness, the historian is a “collector” who gathers evidence that supports the right, correct, and true decision about what happened. Both kinds of historical activity, even if referring to painful and traumatic events and memories, imply a particular satisfaction with the preserving, understanding, and keeping alive of a history as the recognition of things past, which thus becomes a quasi-anamnesis of things past. Still, there is an important difference between the two. The syllogistic logos is universal and demonstrative, whereas the logos of catalogue and collecting can always be differently reinterpreted. Historical activity, then, consists in telling stories about things past by collecting them—rearranging, reading, transmitting, falsifying, forgetting, recovering, and reinterpreting. Hence, the human might be defined as homo colligens who tells stories about those things that she collects and orders, who finds a logos in a multiplicity of things and renders them into an ordered unity. To forget Herostratus. Historical being is personal being within the commonly shared memory that is preserved in a history. A person lives within a history once her name (that and who she was) is retained in the historical along with the story of her life as a fabula (what she was and has achieved in life). Since historical being keeps a person in a history, the existential aspect or that she was, lived and existed, becomes the minimal necessary condition for historical being. If what is lost, if the story of one’s life or exploits is not preserved, then



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at least one’s name should be, since anonymity amounts to historical death. To lose a name, or to be purposefully deprived of one’s name, is to be swept from a history and hence to vanish into oblivion and historical non-being. Hence, that a name must be preserved in and for a history is itself a historical imperative.24 A personal history, then, is kept in a history in such a way that one’s name may be meaningfully included within the historical or a list of other names; whereas the story of one’s life, one’s personal fabula, may be retained only synoptically and following the accepted biographic genres. The story of one’s life may be very brief, and is sometimes preserved solely as a single anecdote or even as an epithet. As was said, a stable epithet may function as a wrapped-up narrative attached to a name, which may be expanded into a story. Thus, in the Iliad’s battle lists, the narrative often clarifies a name by providing information about the hero’s birth, place of origin, social position, wealth, marriage, migration (often in order to avoid blood revenge) or a seer’s prophecy.25 In antiquity, personal names often include the family name (sometimes also patronymic) and the place of origin, i.e., it has a genealogical and geographical reference and thus reproduces the two basic components of early history. A person, therefore, is “saved” for a history by and in her name. Among the various strategies of preserving one’s name, one of the oldest and more efficient is through fame or kleos. To be preserved in and for a history, then, is to be spoken of or to “make a name for oneself.” As Plato puts it, to be famous (kleinos, also kleitos) is not to be nameless (mē anōnymos) or have a name for others.26 To be mentioned by name or referred to is to be kept within a history. One of the ways to preserve a name is through eponyms by engraving a personal name into the name of a people, country, city, year, or even a part of the human body. (We carry a great number of eponyms in our bodily parts without even being aware of it, e.g., the Island of Reil [insular cortex]). Thus, already in the first written history of Hecataeus we learn that the name of the country of Phocis comes from the name of Phocos, and the name of a city in Phocis, Krisa, comes from the name of Phocos’ son Krisos.27 Inscriptions on ancient coins usually present the name of a people in the genitive plural (e.g., “[coinage] of the Ephesians”), but the very first known inscription, Phanes, is a personal name (apparently, a magistrate). In Athens, a year was called by the name of the archon eponymous. The list of the archon thus establishes the chronology of Athens, which serves a basis for later reconstructions of its history. Similarly, yet independently, in Rome a year was referred to by its two consuls. This kind of local chronological reference in a history is still very much in use (e.g., “the second year of X’s presidency, consulate, or deanship”).

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Striving for preserving one’s name by being mentioned and discussed in a history is a powerful motive for human actions, perhaps even more powerful than the motivation for one’s physical self-preservation. Striving toward leaving one’s name empowers people to remarkable achievements and often selfsacrifice, and to actions that are at times at odds with the accepted rules of behavior. But overstepping such rules can also be dangerous. Since striving to preserve one’s name is powerful and alluring, its seamy side is vanity or cupiditas gloriae, which might turn into striving for fame by any means. For this reason, the restrictions against such an improper ambition are built into the notion of kleos itself, which is not to be obtained by disgraceful and immoral means, thus putting certain restraints on individual egoistic advances. The name of him who discredits a history will not—at least, should not—be kept and remembered. Cupiditas gloriae is another reason why writing will never be altogether abandoned.28 Writing—and publishing—is too attractive for human vanity and ambition, because writing induces the futile hope of one’s name being retained through and in one’s writings, and thus as written in and into the memory of future generations as long as such memory lasts. No wonder that saving one’s name by engraving it is coeval with writing itself: graffiti already covers the walls of many ancient temples (in Delphi). The Stoics already begin criticizing fame and striving for it as vain and futile. As Epictetus says, many people agree to assume a time-consuming yet entirely unrewarding office solely in the vain hope of preserving their names for posterity.29 An infamous case of preserving one’s name by committing a hideous crime solely for the purpose of becoming famous and being remembered is Herostratus, who in 356 bce burnt one of the wonders of the ancient world, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Justice demanded that his name be forgotten, and so it was forbidden to be mentioned. To annihilate a person from history, to sentence him to the non-being of oblivion is to purposefully obliterate and completely forget his name, to prohibit it from ever being mentioned again. The tactics of destroying political opponents by erasing their names and thus eradicating them from cultural and historical memory is well known and has been used from the opponents of Akhenaten (who, after his death, ordered that his name be destroyed from all inscriptions) to Stalin (who ordered the names of his political rivals and dissidents to be cut out from all previously printed materials, including encyclopedias). Damnatio memoriae, “damnation of memory,” was a common practice that imposed memory sanctions by memory erasure of a person who had committed a particularly grave crime, such as an act of



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turpitude or dishonor.30 As Aulus Gellius explains, the Latin terms inlaudatus and inlaudabilis designate “one who is worthy of neither mention nor remembrance and is never to be named; as, for example, in days gone by the common council of Asia decreed that no one should ever mention the name of the man who had burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus.”31 Still, Herostratus overcame the decree. Despite the prohibition, his name became emblematic of surviving in historical memory by any means (evidence of this is the fact that his name appears on this page). If one commits an outrageous crime with the sole purpose of being spoken about and remembered, then what should history do with such an act? To preserve the name of the villain or not, to remember or to purposefully forget? The harder individual memory tries to forget something the surer it remembers it, and only a special mechanism of repression might allow us if not to altogether forget, then at least to drive the (troubling) remembrance out of immediate reach. But historical memory may institute special procedures to forget (i.e., not to preserve) a name or event by prohibiting any mention of it. As the Biblical story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil suggests (Gen. 3), the conflict of knowledge and normative (legal or moral) prescription consists exactly in that law as prohibitive establishes an absolute limit that should never be overstepped, whereas knowledge always strives to go beyond any currently existing limits and thus to extend itself beyond them by attempting the impossible, often epistemologically and legally forbidden. As I have argued, history provides corrigible knowledge, which is knowledge that may always offer a new interpretation both of what has happened (in the narrative of the fabula) and may be extended in acquiring new data about past events (in the historical). Therefore, historical knowledge always tends to expand the available set or list of details and, qua knowledge, is always driven by curiosity. Hence, to forbid a name is precisely to save it in and for a history. The prohibited becomes attractive precisely because it has been unconditionally forbidden. In logic, a unique object may be described either by an individual name or by definite description, which uniquely describes this thing, person, or event without naming it (e.g., “Herostratus” or “the man who burned the temple of Artemis”). A name identifies a person, and as such may point at his or her distinctive place in a history, which then comes with a (brief) narrative and thus allows one to avoid being confused with another person. For instance, Ephialtes of Athens, a respected politician, is to be distinguished from Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus of Malis, a traitor. Both one’s individual name and definite description refer to a unique individual, but only the name preserves a person

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for a history, in which the historical usually consists of a list of names. The reason for this preservation is that a definite description refers to a fabula (to “what happened”: the temple of Artemis was burnt on purpose) but it has no place in the historical, whereas names are preserved precisely in the historical. This is why for Herostratus it is paramount to preserve his individual name, and not a definite description of someone who committed arson. Among later historians and writers there are those who mention Herostratus by name (Theopompus, Strabo, Aelian), and those who mention him only as a man who burned Artemision (Cicero, Plutarch, Gellius).32 Valerius Maximus does not give the name of the criminal but mentions the name of the historian— Theopompus—who preserved the name that had to be forgotten.33 Of the authors mentioned, only Theopompus, the great historian, was a contemporary of the event, and only he dared to disobey the decree, surely not to make his own name known by passing on the name of a vain villain, but rather out of the duty of a historian to preserve an event in as much detail as possible and out of curiosity, which drives the need for historical knowledge. The irony is that by giving out the personal name and not the definite description, Theopompus helps Herostratus fulfill his aim not only to become known but also to be remembered in a history. Unfortunately, many histories up until now know their own Herostratuses. So, should history forget the name of an evildoer or remember it, perhaps as a negative example or in an attempt to punish him through a disgraceful memory? Should it condemn a wrongdoer in writing, but in this way give him negative yet effective notoriety—or not mention him at all? We come across numerous examples of both strategies, that is, the approach of trying to forget a criminal by not mentioning his name, and of preserving it. Thus, on the one hand, when Herodotus tells about a Samian who improperly took possession of the treasures of a Persian Sataspos, the historian adds: “I know his name yet I am trying to forget it.”34 Or, as Aulus Gellius says, the ancient Romans ordered that in a genus no one should bear the name of the patricians who were sentenced to death, so that these names would be disgraced and perish in the genus. Livy confirms this report: when Marcus Manlius was executed, the court ordered that nobody in the genus Manlii could ever be named Marcus.35 On the other hand, Herodotus preserves the name of a traitor, Ephialtes, who showed the army of Xerxes a pass around Thermopylae.36 The dilemma of either remembering or forgetting the name of a vain villain is not univocally resolved, and we see that various histories consistently and intentionally use either the remembrance or suppression of the names of evildoers. On the one hand, forgetting is a normative task that intends to preserve only



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the examples of proper moral and political behavior, for preserving the name of a criminal might encourage other vanity crimes. Besides, forgetting the name may serve historical justice: to forget the name is to prevent the wrongdoer from fulfilling his intention. In this case, only the name has to be forgotten, but not the misdeed itself, the offender is to be blanked out from the historical, but not from the fabula. On the other hand, to remember a vain evil is to prevent (at least, to hope to prevent) it from happening again. Hence, the names of criminals are not to be forgotten; on the contrary, they must be carefully maintained and preserved as negative examples of how not to act and what not to do. Also, remembering the improper might be for the reason of a history’s striving for an unattainable completeness and fullness of its knowledge of the past, thus trying to keep as much as possible in the hope that at a certain point, under an interpretation of things past, it might become significant. Contrary to Herostratus’ attempt to save his name by any means is the preservation of oneself in one’s work, even anonymously. Since antiquity, people have chosen to write and publish under the names of others. Thus, later epic poets who imitate and “complete” Homer and his “epic cycle,” or philosophers who write under the name of Plato (Amatores, Hipparchus, Demodocus, Eryxias, et al.) or Aristotle (De lineis insecabilibus, Mechanica, De mirabilis auscultationibus, et al.). The chances of preserving one’s work within the oeuvre kept under a recognized name are much higher. This is an act that runs contrary to that of Herostratus, because literary and artistic mimicry preserves a person in and through the name and fame of the other, yet anonymously. Such selfpromotion and self-preservation is the opposite of plagiarism, which is the usurpation of the other’s deeds and works under one’s own name. But in a monument to unknown soldiers or victims of repressions, it is the very namelessness that is intentionally preserved, which also becomes a political gesture against oppression.37 The “nameless soldier” is not even a definite description of those who should but cannot be remembered, since their names could not be preserved. As Hannah Arendt notes, numerous cenotaphs to the “Unknown Soldier” erected after the First World War recognized the utter meaninglessness and brutality of war, yet they failed to make the fallen known and remembered through their personal names, taking away their dignity, but not their achievements.38 The attempt to save a nameless name appears selfcontradictory because it does not refer to anyone in particular. Yet it makes sense within a history, for in this unique case when no names are available but the story is known, what is preserved is only the fabula without the historical. The Unknown Soldier is a collective person who is saved in the memory of

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a history through a known collective act as the memorable example of brave action or undeserved suffering. If a name is lost from a list or the historical or the whole list is lost and only the fabula remains, then such a fabula becomes a myth—a story without a proper name that is substituted by a name-holder. Name and image in history. The first written history already comes with an image: Hecataeus’ Periēgēsis is accompanied by a complex and elaborate picture, a map, Periodos Gēs. Damastes’ Periploys also comes with a map. The mappa mundi demonstrates and comments on the inhabited cosmos, with its peoples, cities and countries, mountains and planes, seas and rivers, of the world that history as natural history must describe, explain, and interpret. History thus not only tells, but sometimes also shows what it tells. Therefore, an image may either supplement or stand in for the narrative or the fabula. My claim here is that while images may have normative meaning and be prohibitive, permissive, or prescriptive (e.g., a road sign), in a history they function as illustrations of an entry in the historical, and as such they complement or provide a visually enfolded narrative for names in a historical list. Images may come in any form—of the imagination, painting, printing, film, video installation, etc. As illustrations, images also tell a story that may be either implicit, already known to those who use it within a history or their inner theater (Leonardo’s Annunciation, an image of George Washington, a portrait of a politician in Roman times, a monument, etc.39). Otherwise, the story coming with an image may be told explicitly (in the title or accompanying text), or may be easily inferred from what is shown. Some images speak, providing a narrative that is built into their phonetic structure: when pronounced, they are named either directly or by association. Such, for example, is the image of a seal on the coinage of Phocaea (“seal” is phōkē in Greek, referring to the founding myth), or the bishop’s headdress in the form of a fish’s head (in Greek “fish,” ICQUS, an abbreviation, referring to the religious doctrinal statement), or phonogram, which is the phonetic determinative in a hieroglyph. Therefore, to be understood within a history, an image always needs some kind of an accompanying narrative, a fabula. This same principle, that an image should always be supplied with and illustrated by a narrative (a commonly known one; one condensed into a title; an inscription; one’s own interpretation), also appears in the visual arts. Thus, Roy Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl (1963, collection of the MoMA) indeed depicts a drowning girl with the inscription: “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!” The picture is based on the comic book Run for Life (1962) from



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the series Secret Hearts. Lichtenstein’s image may be understood as an ironic reinterpretation of the genre of comic books, which “elevates” it to a museum art genre. But now it is only one picture that tells a story, rather than a series of frames. One single picture, then, provides a narrative, which a picture normally cannot do without providing the context of the depicted event. Therefore, the picture inevitably tells a different story in a different context and through a different genre. Comic strips become so popular because they not only show but also tell a story through a sequence and succession of images in their readiness to narrate, to tell and show a story.40 In this sense, they function as a film (e.g., in The Warriors by Walter Hill), which is why quite often modern films are screen adaptations not of a text (of the narrative of a novel) supplied with a visual series—but of a visual series (comic strip, where every picture is an entry in a list) supplied with a more consistent text. This is well conveyed by Rivane Neuenschwanderer’s painting Zé Carioca, which depicts unpainted characters and pictures with empty text-bubbles, and is based on a comic book about a popular Brazilian character, the parrot Zé Carioca.41 The viewer, then, should fill in the blanks, drawing in the characters and writing in their rejoinders, thus constructing her own story. It is worth noting that any narrative in the form of a text is itself an image—of words that are written, printed, or represented visually or in any other way. As Ong puts it, “Though words are grounded in oral speech, writing tyrannically locks them into a visual field forever.”42 Moreover, a narrative qua text may present itself purposefully as an image, e.g., as an ideogram or a work of art.43 Yet, narrative is then already not historical, because a text qua image does not explain itself. By illustrating a (historical) narrative, an image may enfold the narrative, and hence serve as a mnemonic device, since one remembers and recollects better by referring to mental or real pictures and images arranged in a certain order.44 An image without a text may be used for the purpose of recollection of what is already known (such as images in an alphabet). Alternatively, an anonymous image may be used for memorizing a story by those who do not yet know it, i.e., do not know how to use the image. An image, then, may function as a steady epithet that enwraps and packs a narrative. In this capacity, an image illustrates a narrative, or literally clarifies it, making it clear and known. Such are, for example, the images around the main image of Mithras killing the bull in Mithraeum, where each one condenses and hints at a story, or reminds those who already know of it—and at the same time introduces the novices to the narrative of the cult.

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A name thus fits within the historical, whereas the explicit or implicit narrative of and around a name fits within the fabula of a history. A history is narrated, and hence a name that is accompanied by a narrative (as an “explanation” of the name) is preferable to a bare name, because a narrative is easier to fit within a history that is structured as a system of narratives or stories. Yet, an image also comes with and is clarified by a narrative and, once associated with a name, puts a face to the name. In a sense, the relation between image, name, and narrative parallels that between hieroglyphic and phonetic writing.45 Since a historical narrative is primarily a written text or orally told story, it can exist and live on without an illustrating image, whereas an image cannot live by itself in a history without a clarifying text, whether the text is an inscription or developed narrative. Therefore, in history the preservation of an imageless name is preferred to the preservation of an anonymous image, because, unlike an anonymous image for which no story is known or evident (e.g., a petroglyph), a name can always be included within an existing narrative and can thus become meaningful and significant for the further development and reinterpretation of a history. The anonymous image for which no one knows or remembers a story and cannot restore it, becomes a-historical, because anything—and thus nothing—can in principle be told and conjectured about such an image. History lives as and off narration; history is told, not shown. History can be told without images but cannot be told without names. Therefore, in a history, names take precedence over images, and writing gains the advantage over painting. In this sense, the medieval Jewish Biblical tradition of telling and transmitting stories in written form without images, but accompanied by successions of names that are explained by narrative and commentary, exactly expresses the structure of history. If, however, a name is lost from a list or the historical, or the whole list is lost, and only the fabula remains, then such an anonymous fabula turns into a myth, a story without a proper name that is substituted by an empty name-holder. An example of it is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which started being built after the First World War with its mass casualties. To further illustrate the point, we may consider a portrait that is supposed to be accompanied by the name of the person it portrays (the “doer”) and possibly also by the name of the painter (the [visual] “teller”). Each of the two names contains a biography that supposedly is either known to the spectator or may be restored within the history or inner theater in which the viewer participates. But what can one say about an unknown man depicted by an unknown painter (e.g., in the



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Kurzpflälzisches Museum in Heidelberg, Inv. Nr. G 2464)? Nothing. Until and unless a story, biography, or the historical context of the painting that might explain the portrait and put a name to it is discovered or reconstructed, the image remains anonymous, mute, and lost to history.

6

Memory and history The question of the relationship between history and memory has been the subject of an extensive debate in recent decades. However, memory was not among the main concepts of earlier modern reconstructions of history, which looked for law-like historical regularities or a universal teleological movement that has a single governing principle unraveling through seemingly accidental events. Such history was not interested in memory—either as remembering or memorizing—but in knowledge and reflection that transpires through history yet goes beyond it. Consequently, history was considered a reflective enterprise that provided self-cognition for those who study it while at the same time being in history. Memory testifies to the past, whereas universal history looks at the past as a forerunner of the present and an indication of the future, where both present and future are already contained in the historically conceived and reconstructed past. Universal history is a historiographic enterprise and not an antiquarian one, insofar as it picks only those events that it takes to be facts, which are the events that fit and are placed into its totalizing scheme. Historical facts, then, are easy to keep and preserve, because each one is taken as a “factum,” i.e., is constructed, chosen, and distilled according to the needs of a unified history. Universal history, therefore, does not have to care much about memory. Modern history has been created and regulated by universal Enlightenment Reason, which is meant to be reflective and to establish teleology in the humanproduced historical world. With the critique and demise of the Enlightenment conception of Reason in the last century, its place has been vacant for a while. That place has been taken by memory, which, in the imitation of reason, wants to understand itself as equally universal and reflective. And the reflection on memory is the task entrusted to history and historians. This explains why the interest in the study of memory has exploded and extended into philosophy, sociology, psychology, history, literary criticism, cultural studies, and film. The number of publications on memory is vast, which

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makes it difficult to provide a coherent picture of all these approaches in their achievements, limitations, and differences.1 In philosophy and sociology, Maurice Halbwachs was among those who first started speaking about historical memory as the memory shared and maintained by a group.2 He is primarily interested in understanding the role of individual memory, its functioning and connection with a collective memory, or memory of a group. For Halbwachs, personal memory is always inscribed into, and made possible by, collective memory (MC 98). On this account, a recollection is only possible within the texture of the common activity of remembering, retrieving, and interpreting past events, which frames the individual recollection. Yet, even if collective memory envelops personal memory, each kind of memory has its own extent (collective memory covers longer periods) and mode of functioning (one is individual, the other is present within a group). In Ricoeur’s succinct formulation, “no one ever remembers alone.”3 In a sense, by asserting the primacy of the collective “our” memory over the personal “my” memory, Halbwachs anticipates the philosophical critique of subjectivity, which places intersubjectivity in its stead, a “we” before an “I.” It is the shared thinking and remembering-together that makes individual thinking and memory possible (MC 129–30). Halbwachs intends to establish a connection between personal memory as mental and empirical and collective memory as social and culturally transmitted. However, he does not elaborate the mechanism of the inscription and translation of personal memory into the collective in detail but rather confines himself to a number of remarks and observations regarding memory. To a great extent, personal memory for him is autobiographical: it is an attempt to give a reflective account and to understand oneself and one’s life as inscribed into an account of a group (of which the family is the paradigm and the primary locus), into its recollections and shared memories. No wonder that the very genre of Halbwachs’ Collective Memory is autobiographical, imitating Proust in its style. Once personal memory realizes itself as autobiographical and “internal,” it tends to understand itself vis-à-vis historical, “external” memory (MC 99).4 History for Halbwachs is an account of past events that are understood as significant and thus occupy an important place in people’s memory. These events, then, are carefully classified and evaluated and enter written accounts that establish and secure a meaning both of these events and of the historical period to which they belong (MC 130). Rather than being a collection of facts and dates taught at school, history becomes processed within and by a collective memory. For Halbwachs, history begins there, where live tradition and collective memory



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stops—but then history has to be reintegrated into the personal and collective memory. Historical and collective memory thus have a tendency to converge yet never become identical. There are several important points of divergence between historical and collective memory (MC 131–40).5 First of all, there is one history yet many collective memories. Collective memory stays within the limits of a group and is always fragmented, whereas history and its historical memory places itself outside and beyond particular groups (“hors des groupes et au-dessus d’eux” [MC 132]). Besides, unlike historical memory, collective memory is present not only in texts but much more in oral transmission and communal practices.6 Moreover, collective memory has a rather blurred understanding of the limits between various periods, whereas history lives off them, establishing them as clear-cut, even if as artificial and constructed. Historical memory tends to draw a single unified picture of the past and is a kind of sea that comprises and integrates various currents. In such a representation, historical memory is external and pays particular attention to differences and oppositions, whereas collective memory is internal, takes notice of similarities, and is always inevitably partial. History thus is not constituted as a succession of dates: history accentuates the memorable distinctions within past events that are then accepted and recognized as distinctively characteristic of a period (MC 105), even if in doing so history tends to pay attention to superficial differences and neglects profound similarities.7 One might agree with Halbwachs that modern historiographic history attempts to grasp what is the same and identical (“the one,” the essence of events, often interpreted as teleological), whereas memory aims at what is other and different (“the many,” the accidental). Modern history aims at constructing one unified systematic view of the past, which then tends to become normative for the present and prescriptive for the future, whereas historical memory preserves and (re)produces many events in images and stories about the past without trying to provide an epimyth. However, within the account of history that I am trying to develop here, contra Halbwachs, the similarities in past events are established rather by the structure of the historical fabula, whereas the differences are preserved and kept by the historical within a list. Memory, then, comes with a discrete reminiscence, which creates a “hole” or “breach” within and into the remembered past. In this sense, the work of historical memory is similar to that of a short story, which is a single and simple narration, rather than a long and complexly structured novel, that relates various lines of narrative and weaves singular episodes together, which thus lose their accidentality.

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Halbwachs’ treatment of historical memory, together with the École des Annales (Annales School), which pays attention to various aspects of economy, demography, mentality, and culture, greatly influenced the “Memory School.” Under the direction of Pierre Nora, it published more than a hundred articles on various aspects of French history.8 The main starting point of the whole project is the claim of the loss of collective memory in modernity, which happens with the advent of mass culture and the “acceleration of history” (Reinhart Koselleck’s famous thesis).9 Once the communal memory and the rituals that accompany and preserve it are lost, a live group memory gets substituted by an archival memory and a single reconstructed history (GI 8). In Nora’s account, memory is private, spontaneous, represents (or is) life, and is the phenomenon of the present. History, on the contrary, is a social science, a cognitive enterprise, and comes with a rational reconstruction of the past. As such, history is opposed to memory: “Historiography has entered the epistemological age. … History has confiscated memory” (GI 14). Since, however, any historical interpretation is always “problematic and incomplete” (GI 3), we need to rethink history and substitute one unified and impersonal history with a whole plurality of fragmented histories. Hence, we have to “seek not our origins but a way of figuring out what we are from what we are no longer” (GI 13). These multiple histories are taken to be organized around the “memory sites” or lieux de mémoire. “Memory sites” signify the end of the tradition of memory: they are “fundamentally vestiges, the ultimate embodiments of a commemorative consciousness that survives in a history which, having renounced memory, cries out for it” (GI 6). Whether material or non-material, lieux de mémoire are symbolic entities that are of a particular significance for and within a community.10 The “memory sites” include the caves and paintings of Lascaux, Descartes’ Discours de la méthode, La Marseillaise, gastronomy, the French cock, demographic maps, monuments to the fallen in the First World War, etc.11 Lieux de mémoire are thus the symbolic sites that mean something: their meaning is a reconstructed recollection of the past. “Sites of memory” become central to a decentralized history whose task is no longer to resurrect the past but to create a representation of it (GI 12). Everything, then, is historical, because in principle anything can be considered a subject matter of reminiscence within collective memory, and thus become a memory site. However, the sites themselves are in a constant change, since they are open to, and always generate, new meanings. This happens because lieux de mémoire do not have any reference in the world but are pure signs that always suggest and invite new interpretations (GI 15, 19–20). Hence, Nora’s attempt at various classifications of “memory



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sites” into dominant/dominating, public/private, portable/non-portable, parts of everyday experience/products of reflection (GI 19) is itself never definitive but can always be readjusted, complemented, changed, and refined. Lost (as communal) and regained (as inscribed into the lieux de mémoire), memory is “promoted to the center of history” (“mémoire, promue au centre de l’histoire” [GI 20]). Perhaps the “Memory School” intends to become itself a memory site, unique among all the lieux de mémoire in being a reflection on itself, and thereby on the meaning of the “memory site” in general. Such a reflection would then complete the task of critical history, which is a constant reflection and reinterpretation of the meaning of these sites. The “Memory School” approach thus signifies a historical reflective turn and a return of history to itself, an attempt to understand history through thinking about ways in which it is preserved, transmitted, and interpreted. Another notable approach that sets history and memory apart, although from a very different perspective, is that of Collingwood, who in The Idea of History argues that “memory is not history, because history is a certain kind of organized or inferential knowledge, and memory is not organized, not inferential at all.”12 On such an interpretation, history has nothing to do with memory, because history has to “re-think past thoughts.” The task of the historian, then, is to critically reconstruct and reenact purposeful actions—not mere events—of the past in his mind and in this way attempt to understand and know the “thoughts” of past historical actors. Collingwood’s approach to history is an overly reflective Hegelian one tailored to a lonely thinker for whom memory is only an individual capacity of retaining singular—and therefore accidental and haphazard—thoughts of things. Memory is thus just a stock of loosely related representations that by themselves do not have much of a value for history, a rational systematic reconstruction and restoration of “thoughts” and reasons for and behind historical actions. When Halbwachs, Nora, and Collingwood detach memory from history (although each one in his own way), they presuppose a notion of history that uses memory yet itself is not useful to memory. History is considered a unified interpretative enterprise that comes to its own understanding and realization through historians as historiographers who reflect on how people remember, preserve, and live off acts and actions of the past. The discussion of memory and history often moves in terms of dichotomies, such as nature/culture, nature/freedom, science/history, etc., and the history/ memory opposition is itself one of them. A dichotomy is legitimate once it is clear what purpose it serves; whether a dichotomy is based on an opposition

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that is contradictory and thus cannot be mediated, or a contrariety that can be mediated; what the problem and question are to which a dichotomy has originally arisen as a solution and response; and whether it can be appropriated for a solution of a wholly different problem in a different context, or whether the inevitable set of implicit references with which a dichotomy is loaded will interfere with its new use, so that a critique of the dichotomy might turn out to be beside the point. At this juncture, I only need to observe that the dichotomic distinctions between individual/collective memory, collective/historical memory, and oral/written memory all can be taken as contrarities, i.e., as allowing for a mediation. Thus, personal and collective memory can be, and are, mediated by the historical. I cannot address here the difficult problem of whether mental/physical memory would allow for a mediation, and whether mental memory is independent of physical memory or is an epiphenomenon, but I want to suggest that in each of the above dichotomies of memory there is always a physical and material bearer. (Here, I agree with Nora, but only partly, because such a bearer can be not only a common “memory site” but also an individual brain’s neural network.) However, in order to be kept alive, such a material “inscription” of memory needs to be constantly rehearsed—which, contra Nora, is already not the work of memory but of a living history that preserves, reinterprets, or reinvents a story about things past. Against the thesis of the separation of history and memory, against Halbwachs and Collingwood, I want to argue that the way in which history is constituted cannot be isolated from the way it is preserved. In other words, history is not reducible to memory, yet memory is indispensable for the constitution of a history.13 The historical requires a fabula, but there may be several different fabulae of the same list, which would then establish different histories that might have a continuity or affinity with each other and yet be kept within a commonly shared memory. Therefore, history cannot be separated from memory, although memory as such is not yet historical.14 History needs memory to be transmitted, interpreted (within a fabula or narrative accepted in a history), and located (or placed within various lists of names, things, and events that are remembered and referred to in a historical narrative). In this case, there is no place for a universal teleological history, but always only for a history that is defined and established by its memory. Memory in antiquity. To move forward with the discussion of memory, let me first go back with a brief look at the ancient understanding of it.15 Memory appears as one of three Muses in the Greek archaic cult, whereas in later times,



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the Muses are all considered daughters of Memory-Mnēmosynē and Zeus. Of the nine Olympian Muses, two Muses stand rather apart from the other seven sisters: Clio, the Muse of history, and Ourania, the Muse of astronomy—Clio being the Muse of earthly things, and Ourania the Muse of heavenly things and events and of the knowledge of them. The catalogue of ships in the Iliad begins with the invocation of the Muses, where Homer addresses the Muses, saying: “You, Muses, know everything—but we, humans, know nothing; therefore tell us what you know, and we will remember it” (Il. 2.485). Hence, to remember means to know. The father of the Muses, Zeus, is commonly taken in antiquity as the embodiment of non-discursive reason (nous), whereas discursive proving (logical and dialectical) thinking establishes a developed step-by-step argument and deals with logoi. Hesiod, however, counts personified Logoi as Disputes among the evils (for humans) that are born by Strife (Eris) (Hesiod, Theog. 229). To remember, then, means to be, to live on, transmitted and maintained in the non-argumentative knowledge of the “was” (of past events) as the “is” (as present in knowledge). This is why old Nereus is said to be “unerring and truthful” and “infallible and gentle, and does not forget established customs but contrives just and gentle plans” (Theog. 235-236; trans. G. W. Most). On the contrary, to forget means to die. Thus, Forgetfulness-Lēthē in Hesiod is another evil born out of Strife (Theog. 227). No wonder that in the Iliad and Odyssey, souls after death have a most pitiful life in Hades, dwelling there without consciousness and hence without memory. Only when these souls drink the sacrificial blood do they get their memory back, but only for a while. Since the dead do not have any memory, and hence do not know anything, they do not interfere in the affairs of the living. The primacy of memory, then, explains a seeming paradox of oblivion as implied in memory: if one remembers, then one is, and thus forgets—non-being, sorrows, anxieties, and anguish.16 Homer’s catalogue of ships, along with Hesiod’s catalogue of the generations of gods in the Theogony, the catalogue of women in the Ehoiai, and the whole tradition of catalogue poetry are paradigmatic examples of memory’s work in ancient history. As I have argued, the task of the ancient historian, who in the times of Homer and Hesiod is also a poet, was to preserve a list of names of men and women—a catalogue—where each entry is accompanied by a brief description of a hero’s accomplishment. Such a description of the character’s vita can be enfolded into a single metaphor or a stable epithet whose meaning is known both to the poet and to the listeners. If no description of a person’s acts is transmitted, then at least the name must be preserved. The preservation of the name becomes a historical imperative, because, without a name, one

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cannot be in a history. To be, then, is to be in history, which means to be remembered, recalled, and told about within a history that thus connects with the past by constantly retelling and reconstructing itself through the recollection of the names of actors and, possibly, their deeds. We might say that historically one is what and how one is remembered, as personally one is what and how one remembers (as Socrates’ ironic “learned ignorance” seeks being through recollection). In any case, in a history there is always as much knowledge as there is memory. Memory becomes normative within history, both as setting standards of action and behavior, and as the way of history’s self-reproduction and self-cognition. The task of keeping and reproducing poetic catalogue puts a special demand on memory. The narrative or the story told in the fabula is easy to remember, since it does not have to be memorized literally. Yet, the poet has to memorize and remember precisely a very detailed sequence or list (primarily, of names), where he is aided by an established poetic meter, which suggests the principle of ordering (logos) of the list.17 Thus, Homer remembers about two hundred names of heroes altogether. In the Iliad, he borrows the names of minor characters and some major ones from the catalogue of ships (Il. 2) and the Epipolesis (Il. 4), and uses them in the battle scenes. Therefore, the poet first and foremost has to remember the names (in the historical), and then supply stories related to these names (in the fabula)—the stories that sometimes are improvised and embellished with commentaries, and sometimes condensed into a brief description or an epithet remembered together with a name. Therefore, in the archaic oral poetic tradition, to remember means to know and to live on. To live is to be remembered and preserved in memory, and thus to be. This understanding of the relation between memory and being is further echoed in Plato’s famous claim that knowledge is recollection or anamnēsis. By recollecting through proper questioning, we come to know what and how things really are. Such “things” for Plato do not change or perish over time but always stay the same, and hence can only be thought, for everything material is in constant flux and change.18 The known and recollected can be visualized as imaginary or mental images and deposited and stored in memory as a kind of a wax tablet, papyrus scroll, signet ring, birdcage, or storehouse.19 In the De anima 430a 10–25, Aristotle introduces the famous distinction between productive reason, nous poiētikos, and passive and receptive reason, nous pathētikos. Passive reason is acted upon and formed by active reason, but we do not have any memory or recollection of the activity of thinking, because the active reason is not affected in any way.20 However, since we have affections,



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we cannot grasp a thing or the truth of a proposition in an act and are incapable of thinking non-discursively, of having both a thought and its full justification at once. In order to know the ideal objects, we have to “recall” them in and through a dialectical discursive process or reasoning or questioning, which may lead us to the understanding of a thing. Because recollection is well-ordered and self-directed reasoning, for Aristotle it bears a striking similarity to logical syllogism.21 The result of such “recollection” is the restoration of thought by the partial step-by-step thinking that we keep and preserve in memory. Memory is thus both a testimony and a trace of being, since memory allows us to place and preserve the remembered out of the reach of dissipation and forgetfulness. And even if being itself is not historical for Plato, its recollection still allows for the understanding of being as being in a history. Therefore, memory turns out to be the capacity to attend to the things that are by “recollecting” them.22 However, if there is a non-discursive thinking that engenders its own thoughts and is not different from these thoughts, then such thinking does not need memory, because what it thinks does not undergo any change. Mnēmosynē, then, has to differ from and be opposed to Zeus-nous as its “spouse.” Reason cannot have any memory or recollection, because it does not need it: memory is superfluous for the thinking that at any moment thinks only itself and always in the same way. Yet paradoxically, from the point of view of thinking, recollection should be indistinguishable from forgetting, since only that which has existed before can be forgotten. But if there is no memory in being, there is no forgetfulness either. Therefore, in being and thinking there is neither memory nor forgetting but rather a forgetting of forgetting. Non-discursive thinking does not—and cannot—remember, memorize, recall, or forget anything, because it already has everything. Therefore, it cannot have a history. Discursive thinking leads us to retrieve knowledge by the recollection of that which appears to be forgotten but has never been lost. In non-discursive thought nothing is past and everything is present at the moment of being thought. For non-discursive thought, there is no “before” or “after.” Being is only in the present, and thus does not have memory, knows no history and itself is not historical. Only in discursive logical thinking and dialectical questioning can there be a “before” or “after,” and, consequently, memory and recollection. Therefore, the ancient conception of memory points to the incompleteness of our thinking and, insofar as memory testifies to things past, to our “historicity.”

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How memory works in history (1) That memory is preserved and transmitted in history. How is memory constitutive of history? An important point of departure is that, whether personal or collective, memory is only ever the memory of the past, not present. Of the immediate present, which is the current state of affairs, there can be a perception or a thought. But a reflection about the present requires distancing from it, so that the present becomes “removed” or “extended,” containing or referring to a past, even if reflection itself belongs to the present. Memory keeps the “what” of a person, thing, or event and—possibly but not necessarily—their “was.” However, memory is never about the “is,” because it keeps at least a minimal distance from the perceived and the thought. In this respect, the work of memory is similar to that of imagination, since, as both Sartre and Wittgenstein have noticed, a thing cannot be both simultaneously perceived and imagined. Thus, memory is of and about the past. Moreover, there is nothing else of and to the past except for memory. The past is the memory of the past, and as such constitutes the very tissue of history. Any systematic reconstruction of the past is distanced from it; the reconstruction belongs to the present and hence not to memory. Yet, history is not that of time, time-consciousness, or an experience of time. Memory becomes historical memory when it leads to the historical being that (because it is historical) embraces the past but (because it is being) stays in the present, which is the present where this memory is retold, rethought, and relived. This historical present, then, is the present of a history and hence the present of narrative and its interpretation.23 At the same time, it is difficult to speak about and impossible to predict the future. (Even grammatically, the future tense presents difficulties, which is why most languages have to invent special linguistic means to express and speak about the future, devices that do not resemble or parallel the ways of speaking about past or present.) The future is not historical but is an imaginary concept, meaningful only within an anticipated teleological history in which the future is already postulated non-historically from and in the very beginning and is immanent in the past, which is then reconstructed in and for the present. However, memory is never just a copy of things past. Memory is not “written in stone” (even once it is) but is always prone to change, both intentionally, on purpose, and non-intentionally, by forgetting. For this reason, memory is never boring (although it can be painful and traumatic) and is always capable of being otherwise. Memory not only testifies to the other (person, thing, event or the past as the other of the present) but also always intends and makes an effort to



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retain and transmit the same. Yet transmitting without alteration or change is an impossible task for memory, since it keeps the same (as content) by being otherwise (in reflective self-interpretation, and by forgetting). This means that memory is alive, for life is a mutual attendance and constant interaction of the same and the other. Therefore, on the one hand, memory is about the past, and on the other hand, it keeps and balances the same and the other of a history. There might be an indefinite number of various means of memorization and preservation of things past, whether in personal or collective memory. Yet memory works in the same way in different histories, insofar as it preserves a detailed account or list of names, things, and events, and a story that makes them meaningful, and places them within a current historical self-reflective interpreting narrative. If this is the case, then the conception that each historical epoch has its own unique form(s) of memory should be rejected.24 (2) Why memory is preserved and transmitted in history. A reason why memory is passed on in history and why a history is constituted around memory is that history is a form of caritas sui, of the preservation of oneself in one’s acts in both individual memory and commonly shared collective or cultural memory. Of the three ways in which humans attempt to overcome non-being, memory is the only properly historical way of opposing the nihil of oblivion; the other two are genealogical (through descendants) and ahistorical (“theological,” through personal “salvation”). People do care about being remembered by others. Memory secures one’s being as historical being, as a life of a unique individual in a commonly shared but personally maintained historical memory. Simply put, historical being is being remembered by others. Such historical being, on the one hand, differs from personal being, which, as I have argued elsewhere, is being in dialogue with others.25 On the other hand, historical being differs from historical non-being, which is either non-remembrance as accidental forgetting, or coercive damnatio memoriae. (3) How memory is preserved and transmitted in history. What we remember depends on how we remember. Hence, the mechanisms of remembering, transmitting, and interpreting things past are important in and for history. Speaking about memory, one may make a distinction between memory as a capacity of remembering and memory as an actual act of remembrance. However, in the historical preservation and transmission these two aspects are interconnected

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and dependent on each other—as the “how” and the “what” in the “that” of remembrance. At this point, the sharp dichotomy between individual/collective memory should be suspended, because even if independent, personal memory is expressed within a collective memory—and vice versa, collective memory is meaningful because it is exercised and preserved by many personal memories. Not only does both individual and collective memory presuppose a physical material bearer, but the “natural” (“psychological”) mechanisms of remembering we are endowed with as physical beings are also always framed culturally.26 Collective memory can be preserved and can work through cultural institutions that both keep reminiscences of the past through various media and interpret them in ways that are established and accepted in a history. Cultural memory might be supported by a tradition (through telling and retelling historical anecdotes, leaving memoirs, etc.) but also by a specially instituted form of its transmission and conservation (epic poetry, archive, academic institute for history, public memorials, etc.). (Halbwachs calls the mechanisms of remembrance and preservation of cultural memory cadres sociaux, “sustaining social contexts” or frames.27) Collective memory always needs a personal effort of recollection, as well as individual skills of using and appropriating such memory, which may differ widely and thus lead to different personal memories within the same collective memory. Besides, individual memory can be preserved both physically and culturally (through notes, images, souvenirs), and cultural memory may be passed on both through artificial structures and as physical memory inscribed into one’s body (primarily, in the brain’s neural networks, but also as tattoos, scars, etc.). Such a memory may be personal, and yet it presupposes certain cultural mechanisms at work (which themselves are remembered and transmitted) that allow for and facilitate memorization—for instance, orally, through a metric poetic catalogue or by writing into stone, paper, or an electronic carrier. Simply put, every personal memory can become collective, and every collective memory is personal. We remember that to which we pay attention. Historical mechanisms of paying attention, of attending to historical being in memory, are very selective, because every history pays attention to only a few particular things that it wants to keep and pass on, namely, those things, names, and events around which remembering and interpreting a history keeps constituting itself. Perhaps one should speak about collective recollection rather than collective memory, since collective remembrance significant for a history is always commonly shared and publicly displayed as a kind of collective “argument” or “syllogistic



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reconstruction” based on a (re)interpretation, narration, and reenactment of the “what happened” in the past. Memory thus secures one’s being as historical being, as an individual place to inhabit within a historical memory and collective recollection. From the previous discussion of the structure of history it follows that such a unique historical “inhabited place” can only be located within the historical, in a sequence or list of names that are carefully preserved and transmitted, and is further described or interpreted by the corresponding narrative or fabula. A remembered entry, preserved name, or definitive place in a history is similar to a “souvenir,” which too refers to a memorable event (a visit to a place). A “souvenir” is a thing that points at an event and attributes a sense to it,28 yet it still needs a narrative explanation meant for oneself or for the other, orally or in an inscription. However, historical being as being remembered also presupposes a narrative about one’s place in a history—a story that is meaningful within a history, that tells about one’s acts and actions, as well as about the reasons that are approved and commonly shared (or disapproved and rejected) within its inner theater. In this sense, fabula becomes a way of traditio and passes on the reliquiae of the past that thus become antiquitates, things and events “from before” yet present to a history through memory. As I have argued, the historical is relatively independent of fabula, and history (and, now one can add, memory) is all in the details of the historical. Yet it is its structural logos that “decides” what to choose for a historical account or list, how to organize and thus how to preserve it in order to pass on in a history. Therefore, one can say that historical memory is preserved, even if differently, both in and by (a) the historical and (b) the fabula of a history. (a) In a history, the memory of a name is preferable to the memory of an image. A name without an image can regain a voice by fitting within an already existing or new fabula or narrative, whereas an anonymous image might remain forever mute and an isolated artifact that only fits as a fragment of an old building recycled in a new one. Examples of names preserved for and within a history are numerous in all epochs and cultures. Thus, the Antikensammlung in München keeps an amphora (of c. 470 bce, painted by the Triptolemus Master) shaped in the form of an award given at the Panathenean games. The image on the amphora depicts Athena writing down the name of a winner in an athletic competition, who himself is shown on the reverse. By adding a name to the list of winners, Athena immortalizes the name and its bearer within a history in which the name now has to be preserved (and of which the amphora itself is a part). Here, to be

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named and mentioned in a particular list of names leads to being memorized and remembered, and thus to obtaining a place in the inhabited historical memory. In French, there is a special verb panthéoniser, which means to “bury someone in the Pantheon,” and thus to enter someone’s name into the honorable list of the “civil saints” remembered by the Patrie. However, remembering a name may not be (at least, not only) an ascription of honor but rather testimony to human dignity, when one’s historical being is secured by a historical memory that preserves a person not as a hero, a winner with the celebrity status within an agonistic narrative, but as a human being who lived according to (moral and political) norms of acting as, and being, human. (b) One might adopt a further distinction, that between memoranda and memorabilia, where memorabilia are those things and events that can be remembered, and memoranda those that should be remembered and are worth remembering.29 Memoranda, then, constitute a historiographic history, whereas memorabilia an antiquarian one. Here, the distinction might be helpful: if it is the historical narrative or fabula that is capable of preserving and transmitting a detailed arrangement or list of things in historical memory, then it is equally the fabula of a list that makes memoranda into memorabilia by choosing the memoranda according to a reason that makes the memoranda worth preserving. Historical memory is thus also transmitted through a fabula that organizes and interprets a particular set of names, things, or events and organizes them into a meaningful account of those that should be remembered for a reason. Such a reason may be either explicit or implicit; and if implicit, then understandable to those for whom the historical is meaningful within their commonly shared inner theater. As I have argued, inner theater does the work of memory, insofar as the inner theater realizes and “stages” a particular history in which a person lives on and keeps acting insofar as she is being remembered. An inner theater is not only a private show but can be communicated to others who then become involved in sustaining a historical memory as public, as commonly used and reproduced. Historical memory, then, lives off inner theater, which can be shared with others and in which everyone is assigned a place according to a fabula, to the story told. Such memory always lives in and through an individual, as does inner theater, but to be historical, memory has to be inscribed into a common collective memory (of a family, group, institution, society, etc.), and thus go public. A person outside communality will not live on historically, for she will not be remembered and will not be a member of anybody’s meaningful set of events, of an inner theater where she might continue playing a role. Once



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again, the distinction between individual and collective memory turns out to be not an impervious one. Everyone remembers “highlights” in a history (such as heroic deeds and tragic stories), together with the names that come with them. However, these discrete and often fragmentary points of remembrance have to be connected together and woven into the continuous fabric of a coherent historical narration and recollection. This is the traditional task of a historian, and it takes Michelet or Lefebvre to provide a comprehensive history of the French revolution out of disconnected entries.30 Yet one can always weave the historical narration differently, or slightly differently, where “slightness” might make all the difference. However, within a historical memory, names, things, and events are carefully preserved by the common fabula and put together into a detailed and coherent description in a list. One has to fill in the blanks and gaps and thus provide a possibly full and complete historical account, and further supply the whole list, or even each entry, with a relatively short, easily remembered and transmittable story or an individual fabula. Such a story, however, becomes the subject of a constant reinterpretation within the story itself, which means that it is the historical, the list with all its minutiae, that is the core of historical memory, (re)framed by a fabula. One might say, therefore, that, on the one hand, historical memory is conserved in the historical, in a detailed list. On the other hand, historical memory is also preserved within a shorter and commonly known fabula that, however, is liable to (re)interpretation and (re)construction. In other words, a list preserves as much as it can, and a fabula reconstructs the events, in order to understand them, at which point (but not before) historical memory becomes reflective, for to recollect a thing is to reproduce it. Together, the historical and its fabula allow a memory to be shown and staged in an inner theater shared by the participants of a history. At this point, one might mention that in Herder, one of the first modern theorists or philosophers of history, history comes in the form of cultural memory organized as an archive.31 Memory (memoria or Gedächtnis) for Herder, however, is immediately reflective, which means that if cultural memory is a kind of archive, it always comes with an interpretation of its own content. In other words, the archive is already processed in and by (cultural) memory. Herder, however, does not make a distinction between the historical and its structural organization (the story told), which become fused in the immediacy of the reflective cultural memory that now assumes the role of a universal cultural reason, where the subject and object (of history) become virtually identical. The

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archive is a particular cultural mechanism for the preservation of things past, in which archival materials need to be used and read, and hence interpreted—but not reflectively, not by and within the archive itself. The archive is a particular case of a catalogue that contains particular kinds of things that can or should be preserved, i.e., both memoranda and memorabilia. The archive is ordered (sometimes loosely) and keeps its records possibly precise in their descriptions and taxis, which explains how things are classified and, most importantly, why they need to be classified and preserved. An archive as a symbolic seat of memory is often utilized for the purpose of justifying institutional power (thus, the National Archives Building in Washington, DC is located pretty much in the center of the spatial distribution of political power). And yet, one does not always know exactly for whom and for what purpose the archive is preserved: it is kept for somebody who might need its records for a future purpose that could be utterly unknown and even now not understandable. One only knows that the records could be once needed and thus recalled and recollected for historical memory, and that they might be brought together and interpreted within a different history, the one that could establish an entirely new, unexpected, and now unpredictable narrative and fabula in order to see how things “really” were in history. We might also ask by whom historical memory is preserved and transmitted. Traditionally, there are people who are assigned a special role in the transmission and preservation of memory (catalogue poets, priests, scribes, et al.). Yet, everyone participates in a number of various, often loosely connected inner theaters, whose structure is identical with that of history. Therefore, everyone always participates in several histories. We all follow and reproduce events on several different stages and thus simultaneously preserve and transmit historical memory in various ways (orally, or through written or other means). This makes the recollection of history within a history not a monolithic teleological enterprise but rather an anarchic decentered one. As I have argued, all these histories can be publicly and collectively shared. But to be communicable, they need to be preserved or remembered, which imposes a sui generis historical imperative of memory: “preserve any memory about anyone or anything, to the extent you are capable of doing it.” The art of memory. Poetic and rhetorical memorization: narrative vs. image. Following Aristotle’s distinction in De memoria,32 one can say that the difference between memory and recollection is that memory is an acquired state (hexis), which can be retrieved when needed, while recollection needs a process for the restoration of the recalled, and as such is similar to an argument. Therefore, to



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recall, one needs to (re)produce a process of reasoning. And to remember, one needs to establish a state that would reproduce the remembered in an act when needed. Yet establishing and keeping memory alive needs repetition, which is true of both individual and collective memory, which should not be kept rigidly separate in historical memory, since the two always support each other and cannot exist apart from each other. Repetition, however, has the double meaning of preserving something by rehearsing it, and thus remembering it, not letting it go—and of understanding a thing by returning to it, again and again. In a sense, people repeat themselves by reproducing themselves in one of the three ways mentioned. One can say that genealogically we reproduce and repeat ourselves in and through generations, whereas historically we do this in memory, through the historical, an organized account of things, names, or events repeated according to a rule. Contrary to the understanding of memory as a storehouse of remembered things, repetition can be considered not in terms of storage but of enactment.33 In other words, in order to remember, one has to act, and repetition is exactly an activity of both memorization and retrieving memories, which brings them back to (private or public) life. Again, the past exists only in memory, at the moment when it is remembered as being repeated and reproduced. In this respect, historical memory is similar to a piece of music that exists “objectively” in musical notation but exists in actuality only at the moment of being performed and listened to. Similarly, humans keep historical being when they are remembered, but maintain personal being when they are in communication, in dialogue with others. Repeating the same appears boring. And yet, memory is never tiring, because it is always alive, reproducing life historically, in its constant renewal. Only that which is invariably the same can be boring. But memory is never the same, if it is not a storehouse out of which one can always extract the same exact thing. Memory is an action and activity that enacts the same thing, although always (slightly) differently. The exact repetition is impossible: everything repeated anew is always other and hence new. Repetition, therefore, always recalls by reproducing a thing (within the historical), and by reinterpreting it (within a fabula), and thus makes the other same, and the same other. In repetition, the same and the other always balance each other. In this sense, repetition always brings recollection, and yet never really brings it. Repetition may lead to establishing a (personal or cultural) habit. And habit (which is a meaning of hexis) is a way of obliterating the past, similar to the devices of a coin being obliterated when customarily used for a long time.

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The habitual makes the past conventional, ever the same, and thus boring. Hence, habit leads to forgetting and results in an abstract, utterly conventional “ideological” present, in which nothing is connected to the past and nothing changes, because such a present is a purely logical construction. However, the repetition of the historical as its recollection is non-habitual, precisely because it is never the same but always also other and another, and thus new, capable of always reviving the past. A capacity for doing something can be had (again, as a hexis), but in order to be significant, it needs to be used.34 Yet, using a capacity calls for its effective use. In particular, in the case of the capacity of memory, its effective use means retaining either as much as it can (memorabilia in “antiquarian” memory) or what is needed (memoranda in “historiographic” memory). Memory as an (effective) exercise of the capacity of retaining and reproducing things past can be considered, then, a skill or an art extended both to individual and cultural memory. As an art, memory presupposes and allows for various mnemonic techniques that have been used for various purposes.35 All these techniques appear to be derivable, genetically and in their purpose, from two ways of rehearsing and transmitting memory: from catalogue poetry and rhetoric. Catalogue poetry requires memorization of a long list, primarily of names. This kind of memory is a “poetic” remembrance based on reiteration and metric organization. It is discursive and “dianoetic,” insofar as it needs a part-by-part repetition of the whole, of one entry after another in a particular succession and sequence, and is organized as a catalogue or list. Poetry can be an important mnemonic device that supports memorization and recollection through a rhythmic structure. “Poetic” memory can be written down but is exercised as oral: it is transmitted by singing and recitation, still in the times of Pindar and later by the rhapsodes, as we learn it from Plato’s Ion.36 This type of memory is supported by meter, melody, and performance, which all have mnemonic meaning, insofar as they are associated with a rhythmically organized oral text (a poetic catalogue) and help in memorizing and transmitting it. If poetic catalogue has the same structure as history, then singing and music are a “historical” mnemonic device, contrary to modern “absolute music” without words that has no significance for the constitution of history (apart from the history of nineteenth-century European music). The other source of mnemotechnics is rhetoric. According to Cicero, a good orator has to be able to win over the audience’s sympathy; to prove what is true (from his perspective); and to stir the emotions in the desired action.37



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Yet, rhetoric is not historical and history is not rhetorical. A rhetorical speech may use and appeal to historical events and examples, and a history can use rhetorical devices—but the purposes of the two are different. The purpose of rhetoric is not to prove a claim but to persuade the listeners (which it sometimes does by means of deliberately flawed reasoning and (sophistic) fallacies),38 and the purpose of history is to preserve, transmit, and interpret past things and events. I have argued that literary forms, such as catalogue poetry or travelogue, are important for understanding how history functions and is structured. In a different way, Hayden White takes history as a form of literature, as being defined in its plot and story-telling by various literary genres (romantic, tragic, comic, and satirical, as history’s “modes of emplotment”), as well as by various rhetorical tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony). According to White, history as narrative has nowhere else to look for the forms of its organization and definition, style and emplotment, except for rhetorical and literary categories.39 However, such a history has the memory of rhetoric, and not of poetry. The memory of White’s history is organized by and around a system of loci (or rhetorical topoi): it is not the memory kept by a narration and a freely developing unpredictable story within an inner theater, in which the fabula is neither preestablished nor necessarily rhetorically determined. Therefore, contrary to White’s claim, history is neither grounded in nor defined as an applied rhetoric. For a rhetorician, memory is one of rhetoric’s major constituents,40 since an orator should memorize a speech he has written and prepared in advance, in order to deliver and perform it in public. Therefore, rhetoric needs mnemotechnics. In antiquity, the art of memory is ascribed to Simonides of Ceos; Hippias of Elis too is an acclaimed master of memorization.41 Ars memoriae allows for the memorization of long sequences or lists of words and is based on locating an image associated with the remembered item within a specific locus, which itself is conceived within an imaginary system of “places,” from which the image can be then retrieved in an act of remembrance.42 Rhetorical memory, then, is quasi-noetic, since it tends to locate and recover the remembered thing in a non-discursive, nous-like act of remembrance, which both creates an image and later restores it. The system of memory places forms a kind of imaginary “geographical” map in which specific entries are linked to specific places. In doing so, rhetorical memory constructs a quasi-visible imaginary landscape of memory.43 Historical memory thus differs from rhetorical memory in its functioning and structure: historical memory is associated with an ordered account (a list of

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names) and the accompanying discursive narration, whereas rhetorical memory implies a system of singular images and a kind of map. The two kinds of memory may be connected but they need not be: for instance, one can remember an image without a name associated with it and vice versa. Historical memory, then, is verbal and is “told.” It is the memory of hearing, based on sequence and “meter,” and is based on “dianoetic” repetition. Rhetorical memory, on the contrary, is that of seeing, insofar as it is visually oriented and “seen,” and is based on a momentary grasp and “noetic” recollection, which, however, is not that of reason but of imagination. Because the “poetic” historical memory is narrative-oriented, one might make additional genre-based subdivisions within it. In particular, one can further distinguish three kinds of historical memory: (1) The memory of sublime (heroic) deeds (of war and travel), which is preserved in and by epic. (2) It can be the memory of suffering, kept in and by tragedy. This is the memory of undeserved suffering of innocent people who are imputed with a guilt or crime without being guilty or without any intent to any wrongdoing. And (3) it can be the memory of thinking, preserved in and by philosophy and comedy as a dramatic representation of the experience of thinking. Although this kind of memory is reflective, its content is poorly remembered—not because thinking per se does not need or have memory, but because this memory has a different purpose and structure. The memory of thinking mostly preserves conclusions, and not the multiple dialectical steps and missteps of reasoning necessary to achieve these conclusions. Besides, memory operates more with the images that have sensual provenience rather than with those that come from thinking. Plato, then, has to invent image-like (imaginary) ideas or forms, which supposedly represent—are—the “true” memory of being, of what things really are. The ideas represent neither the sensual flux nor the progressing discursive thinking but thought: ideas wrap and keep—memorize—long chains of reasoning before the conclusion of an argument in philosophy or a good ending in comedy is reached. (Perhaps one might also add (4) the memory of an utter meaninglessness, of a lack of a preestablished meaning in history qua universal history, which would correspond to the genre of modern novel.) It is important to note that historical memory is conceptually oral, even if it may be written down and passed on as recorded. Rhetorical memory, on the contrary, is written memory par excellence, and even if used in an oral performance by an orator, it is written into imagination and text from the beginning. To be sure, a name can be connected to an image, and hence, poetic memory to rhetorical memory, once an image is supplied with a (brief) narrative, or



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“noun” with a “verb.” However, since the interpretation of the memorized and recalled through a story never restores the same in memory in exactly the same way but always (at least, slightly) differently, the image interpreted within a story always has a different meaning for a history. Yet, if one has to remember not one single entry but a sequence of them in a precise succession, one either has to tell a story in which they will come in exactly this same sequence as words—or to locate them “spatially,” as images in a system of imaginary places. These two mnemonic techniques are already developed and used in antiquity, primarily by the Sophists, by making the memorized being represented either as images (similitudines rerum) or as words (similitudines verborum). Another important distinction between the two types of memory and memorization consists in that in rhetorical memory, unlike in poetic memory of history, there is a clear-cut dichotomy between individual and collective memory. Image-based individual memory remembers things through mental images that are preserved differently (as private and imaginary) from the way cultural memory stores them (as publicly accessible, in writing, printing, digital format, etc.). Such a sharp division between psychological and cultural memorization is absent in “poetic” verbally oriented memory. A distinction between rhetorical memory and historical poetic memory is also implied in a suspicious and negative attitude toward mnemotechnics among those who are involved not so much in the constitution but in the reflection on history: memorizing is said to be a “mechanical,” uncreative, and dull cramming. Already Socrates speaks ironically of the mnemonic wonders demonstrated by Hippias to his potential students as proof of his alleged wisdom. In doing so, Socrates skeptically and ironically refers to such an art as providing only a reminder and not a real memory, which is the memory of being. For Socrates/Plato, on the contrary, it is memory and not memorization that can bear testimony to the knowledge of how things are, achieved through a thorough recollection, investigation, or historia, in which one has to think independently and for oneself, rather than learn by rote. Therefore, poetic memory is discursive, “dianoetic,” diachronic, oral performance-oriented, and is organized by a narration; whereas rhetorical memory is instantaneous, “noetic,” synchronic, writing-oriented, and is organized by and around a set of images inscribed into a “map.” And yet, the two kinds of memory are not rigidly opposite to each other, since they serve different purposes. But if history, the way I have described it, is opposed to rhetoric in its structure and purpose, then only poetic, and not rhetorical memory is properly historical.

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Memory interpreted and interpreting. Since rhetorical memory operates primarily with images, it is associated with imagination as the power and capacity to produce and reproduce images and act upon them.44 Although memory and imagination are distinct capacities, they are considered closely related in that both are capable of representing images to a mental gaze.45 Imagination plays a central role in representing and retaining quasi-spatial images of both sensual things (in mnemotechnics) and of mental things (in geometry, where abstract mathematical objects are represented as geometrical figures). As such, imagination is capable of locating and inscribing non-extended entities, including remembrances, into an imaginary topography, a “terrain” or “geographical map” from which these images can be then retrieved as quasivisual and in which these recollections can receive their meaning.46 A memory that is associated with imagination can make diachronic events synchronic (as rhetorical, by placing them as images on a “map,” through images) but can also turn diachronic events into synchronic (as poetic, by locating them in the historical, a catalogue or list of names, discursively presented and narratively organized by a fabula). From Plato and Aristotle through modernity, memory has often been considered a “storehouse of our ideas,” or “a repository,” as Locke puts it.47 Such an understanding takes memory to be passive in keeping, and transmitting its reminiscences as possibly true reproductions of the originals. However, if, as I argued, memory has to do with an enactment, then one can make a further distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory. Voluntary intentional memory works actively to memorize the memorabilia, that is, picks selected items that need to be remembered and makes them “unforgettable.”48 Involuntary memory, on the contrary, keeps the memoranda, those things that are remembered, or happen to be remembered. This type of memory is “contemplative” and non-intentional, ready to keep what it has visibly without an effort, and is not afraid of forgetting. It is similar to Buber’s Innewerden, “becoming aware,” or Proust’s mémoire involontaire.49 But in contradistinction to Proust, for whom memory is emphatically personal, I want to stress once again that there is no impermeable distinction between personal and collective memory. Involuntary memory is spontaneous and keeps—for any reason—what has not been forgotten. As such, it is not merely accidental but retains what it cannot forget, which includes both joyful and traumatic remembrances. Voluntary memory purposefully selects its items for the historical, in order to preserve them as entries in an ordered account. In doing so, it makes a special effort not to lose anything it has chosen. It needs, therefore, special



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skill (mnemotechnics), both individual and collective (cultural), as well as established procedures for keeping (long) lists (such as catalogue poetry or electronic media). As such, voluntary memory is indispensable for a history, because it allows for our historical being, which is being remembered by others in a history. And yet, such remembrance is always accompanied by involuntary memory, which is passed on without an apparent intention to select what it preserves, while in fact being selective without being aware of its choices. It is the fabula of history that is transmitted by involuntary memory, because “what happened” is remembered (if remembered) often without our intention. Productive and reproductive imagination acts through voluntary and involuntary memory: productive imagination is at work in spontaneous involuntary memory, while reproductive imagination acts in “planned” voluntary memory. Yet, if memory is not a storehouse (of the images of things) but an enactment, it can act differently at different times and in different situations in retrieving its items, which are then not copies of the original but its reenactments. Simply put, reproductive imagination can imagine the same thing or event differently, and thus (re)present, (re)consider and (re)construct it anew. Therefore, voluntary memory always allows for an interpretation within a history that can “recall” what has not happened, or in the way it has not happened. The voluntary memory is thus not an impeccable “source” for a history. As Jan Assmann puts it, memory “may be false, distorted, invented, or implanted. … [M]emory is not simply the storage of past ‘facts’ but the ongoing work of reconstructive imagination.”50 However, the involuntary historical memory is not a mere “copy” of things past, since it acts not by retrieving a dusty thing (image) stored in it as in a repository—but by enacting the past through telling a story about it. A fabula is always told and retold (at least, slightly) differently: it is the same by being always other, because fabula always allows and presupposes an interpretation. Therefore, involuntary memory, which is preserved in and by the fabula of a history, is connected with productive imagination. Historical productive imagination, however, produces a new interpretation of and within a fabula, in a constantly renewed attempt to know and understand what happened, although without an intention of doing so. The circumstances and context of an interpretation may change within a history, and nobody can either predict or control this change. Moreover, the very principles of telling—of what and how things past need to be told—may themselves be subject to change. For instance, one cannot speak any more about other cultures and histories with such arrogance and condescension as was common in the time of Herder and Hegel.

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Historical memory, therefore, never just reproduces the things and events that have happened: it always interprets them by producing them anew. Memory is always interpretative and interpreting the “what happened” of a history, thus inevitably transforming the remembered. Contra Ranke, there is no such thing as “as it really was” in historical memory. Ricoeur makes a famous hermeneutical distinction between remembrance as recollection and the restoration of meaning—and remembrance as interpretive suspicion and demystification.51 Such a distinction implies that memory can restore the “original” true meaning of a thing or event by a proper and skillful hermeneutical interpretation of history, demystifying and rejecting the wrong meanings. I want to suggest, however, that the truth of history consists in truth-telling, which is a truthful recollection and telling of “what happened.”52 But in doing so, historical memory, especially the involuntary one, needs to be—and is—always reinterpreted anew. If this is the case, then there is no single pre-established meaning in and behind an event. For this reason, remembering and transmitting a history, both in its most minute details (in the voluntary memory, by reproductive historical imagination, within the historical) and in telling “what happened” (in the involuntary memory, by productive imagination, within fabula) always requires a reinterpretation of a history. Everyone who has a share in a history (and not just a professional historian) becomes both a witness and a judge of it. Contra Ricoeur, remembrance always adds a “mystification” to history. Therefore, involuntary historical memory always remembers the same differently and changes a history by reinterpreting it, by telling the commonly known “what happened” again and again, although each time anew. Remembering and recollecting the past means (re)arranging it in a particular way, which implies a reorganization of the historical, and hence a change of the way the past is seen and told. In this sense, historical memory always presupposes and requires an interpretation as a reconstruction of the past, which is always a construction and production of and within historical imagination, with an intention of telling the truth about things past.53 Historical memory is thus disposed to alter the past by recollecting it, which means that historical remembrance always needs the critical detective work of cross-examining various “remembrances.” Oblivion. The paradox and precision of memory. As Hans Jonas has argued, mortality should be thought of as a blessing for humans, because it clears the way for the new to live and develop; mortality thus makes life meaningful as having a goal and an end.54 If historical being is being remembered, then memory and



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forgetting stand for (historical) life and death, which therefore are inseparable although not opposites. Death, then, can be rethought not as non-being but rather as other-being, as being in a history. By analogy, memory is (historically) meaningless in the absence of forgetting. As Gadamer points out, “Only by forgetting does the mind have the possibility of total renewal, the capacity to see everything with fresh eyes, so that what is long familiar fuses with the new into a many leveled unity.”55 Drinking from the river of Lethe allows one to forget the past and in this way to get ready for a new start in a renewed life. Since memory can be burdensome and traumatic, forgetting can have the healing power. Bringing renewal, forgetting helps us get rid of boredom of the repetition of the same. The renewal of historical being through forgetting does not mean the invention of the historical anew but rather looking at a history afresh, telling the same story anew, going back to the same “mythos” about things past, yet now in a different interpretation. Therefore, paradoxically, oblivion is necessary for historical preservation and memory.56 Indeed, there is something profoundly paradoxical about memory in history, because to be in and for a history means to be remembered. Yet, at the same time, to be in history also means to be forgotten, in order to be “reremembered,” i.e., constantly renewed in a historical memory by being told about again as the same but each time differently, as another. Therefore, historical memory needs to forget about remembering and to forget about forgetting, and hence to remember. This paradox is already hinted at by Socrates in an ironic remark on Hippias’ boasting about his memorization skills: “I did not think [oyk enenoēsa] about your art of remembering.”57 This observation can be understood as either claiming that thinking does not need memory—or, which seems more plausible, that Socrates paradoxically forgot about remembering, and thus could remember that which is by restoring it dialectically in thought. The paradox is also implied in what Ricoeur calls “the presence of absence.”58 Both memory and history testify to a name, thing, or event that is gone and hence belongs to the past yet is present in its absence. As said, for its renewal memory needs forgetting and thus presupposes the possibility of a loss of the presence of absence, which then needs to be restored again as the presence of absence. However, if a history forgot something to the extent that it does not even have any recollection of the forgotten, and thus forgot to remember, then the forgotten falls into a historical non-being, from which it might accidentally be restored by, and hence reversed in, another history. (This can happen through archival or archeological excavations. It is also exemplified in the story of Akhenaten, who after being rediscovered became the figure of [another]

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history but not of a memory within the history he originally belonged to.59) But if the forgotten is still remembered qua forgotten, if a history remembers that it has forgotten something, then this presence of absence or remembrance about something forgotten testifies to the once-historical being, which in a way continues to live in a history—although only in its historical that and not in its what, which has been irreversibly lost. Understanding forgetting as indispensable for memory and being in and for history goes against the mournful “forgetfulness of being,” Seinsvergessenheit, that plays a central role in Heidegger and appears in the opening line of Being and Time.60 Contrary to Hegel’s jubilant reflective remembrance of the spirit, the forgetfulness of being implies here that something of utter importance has been forgotten, and hence irreversibly lost in and for thought and its history. Yet this conception of forgetfulness as a plain negative force in history makes sense only within a teleological picture of history, in which, however, the purpose as the meaning of history is withdrawn from the future and put altogether into the past—perhaps, with the hope of its return through a magic of lonely thinking.61 As I have argued, memory implies the interaction of the same and the other, because involuntary memory always remembers the same (somewhat) differently. Memory is always inclined to forget and distort or at least to (re)interpret differently what it is supposed to transmit as identical and without any changes. Still, historical memory has the precision both of an exact reference and of telling the truth of history. The memory of the historical has to be precise in keeping the entries in the exactitude of details (which, however, is secured differently in written and oral transmission), and the memory of the fabula can be fuzzy yet it has to be recalled, constantly reinterpreted, and thus understood in its relative simplicity within a history. The necessity to remember and recall in a history considered as a historical and even moral duty may lead to “hypermnesia” or remembering (individually and collectively) more than what has happened.62 Yet the “addition” to, or change in, recollection is not a lie but an inevitable “mythological” interpretative moment of memory (of what has been said and told in fabula), so that one can still assert the precision of historical memory as an always renewed and renewable (re)interpretation of the past. If remembering “more” amounts to forgetting, then, again, in order to be precise memory needs oblivion. One might further add that voluntary and involuntary memory presuppose two forms of forgetting, namely a voluntary and an involuntary one. In voluntary forgetting, one has to make an effort to forget and suppress a remembrance, and in involuntary oblivion it is the forgetfulness that is a “natural”



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distortion and destruction of things past. It seems impossible to forget voluntarily, on purpose and at will, since the more one tries to forget a thing, the more one remembers it. The same is true of collective forgetting: the more one tries to forget Herostratus, the more he is kept in cultural memory. The way out is the cultivation of an “art of forgetting,” which implies developing and sustaining individual and cultural mechanisms of oblivion. This does not mean, however, that one has to get rid of a past that might appear uncomfortable or traumatic, but rather that one has to remember and incorporate the past into a history as meaningful and perhaps painful but not actually hurting. A voluntary act of forgetting means, then, a remembering that heals the pain of the memory of the past. However, the relationship between voluntary and involuntary memory— and voluntary and involuntary forgetting—appears to be a complex one. On the one hand, voluntary memory is wiped out by involuntary forgetting, for if an event or a name is not preserved within the historical by being memorized and actively remembered, it will go away, and will be “naturally” or “passively” forgotten. And involuntary memory that remembers even against one’s will or a history’s intention may require an act of forgetting, that is, active individual or collective forgetting (an “art of forgetting”). Yet the involuntary forgetting may also mean that a person or a community simply does not make a sufficient effort to preserve a remembrance. Therefore, on the other hand, involuntary forgetting may be considered also a completion of involuntary memory: listening to everything, inventing nothing; trying not to keep anything, since something—that which is historically important—still will be preserved. That which is preserved, by the very fact that it has been preserved, is and becomes important, and hence belongs to memoranda. Involuntary memory, then, needs involuntary forgetting as a productive historical force. Oblivion as involuntary forgetting is thus indispensable for historical being, as a way that leads to historical being in the memory beyond mere existence.63 Therefore, forgetting is necessary for memory, and memory can be considered both a reaction to forgetting (voluntary memory) and a testimony to historical being (involuntary memory). And yet, retaining all the events of the past in historical memory is impossible, first, because of the sheer amount of the memorabilia, and second, because not everything that has happened is worth remembering—but only that which is meaningful within a history and inner theater. There should be a reason to remember a name, thing, or event. Mostly, stories about human suffering captivate our attention, especially about people who have suffered

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unjustly: it is from such stories that we learn about others and thus about ourselves, our own human condition, about the fragility of goodness and the necessity to empathize with the other. A story about undeserved suffering, then, forms the basis not only for tragedy but also for history, as the paradigm for the narration of a fabula that allows us to keep the memory about things past. A happy event is primarily meaningful as having a private significance for those who lived through it (a wedding), whereas a tragic event has a universal appeal, being significant for everyone who may learn from it as one’s own. Tragedy remembers and is remembered better than comedy, because tragedy inflicts a wound on memory, whereas comedy does not. Moreover, comedy has a complex dialectically structured plot that represents reasoning on stage.64 Yet, thought in its complexity leaves fewer memory traces (few people remember the proofs of Gödel’s theorems yet many remember their formulations). For this reason, the plot of comedy and the majority of comic puns and gags are not remembered very well (which is why Gaius Sulpicius Apollinaris has to supply Terence’s comedies with a brief synopsis). History has a clear preference for sublime tragic events and figures, and not ridiculous comic ones. A historically significant and memorable event is more often uneasy and painful. Memory works best when the remembered stands out of the usual. One remembers a traumatic event (the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to California) longer and better than an ordinary one. Remembrance is best kept by and as a trauma, which also facilitates the process of recollection. Historical memory needs a sui generis trauma in order to retain an event. Yet trauma needs memory too. Trauma inflicts a wound (e.g., of a war, even if the war ends in a victory), the scar of which makes memory persistent. Historical remembrance is thus originally painful and traumatic, and is passed on as such, thus dislodging a “happy” history into an imaginary and mythological “golden age” or “state of nature.” In recent decades, discussions about trauma have become prominent in debates on individual and collective memory. Ruth Leys has argued that our understanding of trauma oscillates between mimetic and anti-mimetic, although in her reconstruction, the preference for one of them is ultimately a choice that is motivated solely by historical circumstances. The mimetic approach suggests, in line with Freud, that trauma is non-representational and can never be accounted for; hence, the traumatized subject is doomed to always imitate the original trauma in different ways, but will inevitably miss it. Anti-mimetic theories, on the contrary, consider trauma as representational, accessible to oneself and others in a narrative or in some other way.65 Contrary to mimetic accounts that claim that the original trauma persists yet remains inaccessible and, seemingly



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forgotten, returns again and again through a repetition, historical trauma is remembered and kept in a history’s narrative as what it is said to be, leaving nothing “hidden” or “concealed.” Any (legitimate) attempt to “uncover” an “original” past in a history simply amounts to changing the story told in a fabula, which may make the same event into very different histories. Wachtel shows that history is rational and hence has a meaning and purpose only for the conquerors. For the conquered history is seen as irrational and chaotic, having no apparent direction, so that rather than seeing a history within the past, the conquered establish “tradition as a means of rejection.”66 Both kinds of history have different fabulae, and the latter one still makes sense of a history as nonsensical. Yet, historical memory is uneasy not because it is culturally shaped in such a way as to remember duties, obligations, and contracts, which is accompanied by unhappiness, punishment, bad conscience, guilt, and sin, and not pleasure and happiness.67 Rather, historical memory retains an event to which it pays attention, a traumatic and painful occurrence or the one that caused a scandal is such kind of event. Memorable names, events, and deeds are therefore often tied with suffering. But historical memory comes not only with pain and mourning of the inability to repeat, relive, or change the past; historical memory also comes with the joy of the anamnetic recollection of a person or event that is thus restored to its historical being in a history as being remembered in a commonly shared, active and live reenactment of the past. Trauma and forgetting both have the sense of loss, of the presence of absence, the impossibility of the continuity of being-together in a shared history. In a history, the emptiness of a painful loss as privation is substituted and filled by the pleasure of shared being in historical memory. Yet joy can be traumatic too—in cases where the renewal of life or of victory, which can be no less traumatic than death or defeat, are constantly relived and rehearsed in a history. Both painful and joyful, trauma becomes memorable, distinguishing the memoranda among the memorabilia. Historical memory might not always be capable of healing the wound of past trauma, but it does make that trauma meaningful as a central event in the fabula of a history. Because historical memory is constituted both through remembrance and oblivion, trauma needs forgetting (of the actual pain), for otherwise it will not be able to heal. Yet at the same time trauma also needs to be remembered and shared with others (at which point it may even become a moral obligation, e.g., in Yevgenia Ginzburg’s memory of the Gulag), for otherwise it will not be able to live on, to be and remain meaningful in and for a history.

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If a trauma is inflicted deliberately and intentionally by the other, it calls for forgiveness, at least, for a possibility of forgiveness, although the wrongdoing in most cases is not reciprocal. In general, there is no reciprocity in the memory of acting and suffering: the memory and interpretation of what we did to others differs from the memory of what the others did to us. In the case of inflicting a wound, what has been done to us needs forgiveness from and by us, whereas what we did to others needs forgiveness not only from and by others but also from and by ourselves. Yet, strictly speaking, forgiveness is not a historical task but is a moral one. Forgiveness goes beyond the scope of history in the proper sense, since it is memory, recollection and remembering, and not forgetting the past that is the task of history.68 Forgiveness does not come in the constitution of the historical, although it can play an important role in a fabula, in judging and (re)interpreting past events within a history, bringing justice by deciding who is to be remembered as a hero and who as a perpetrator. The ultimate damnation and justification is historical memory. To forgive means not to forget but to remember, to judge properly, and to come to terms with things past within a history’s narrative about them. If, as Derrida claims, forgiveness is possible only because of its utter impossibility, that is, because of the graveness of the wound inflicted on memory, then forgiveness is possible precisely because this past is not—and can never be— forgotten, because it has caused a trauma that, again, turns the remembered into memoranda out of memorabilia.69 The memory of trauma heals when memory forgets the traumatic event by not forgetting it, either by not actually being in pain at the moment and in the act of remembrance, or remembering only that one once remembered but not what one remembered. The is (as the was) of a painful event, then, has to be recovered in memory from a trauma. Only then does it gain its what within a history. When we make a (traumatic) event our own, it becomes meaningful to us, and we can place and locate it within the historical. We may then either learn from it by interpreting the traumatic episode—or attempt to suppress it, in which case we still learn something, although painfully and negatively, from that which we still have to make our own, understand, and interpret. If we accept the formulated “historical imperative” (“preserve any memory about anyone or anything, to the extent you are capable of doing it”), then we can learn from the past, contra Hegel’s claim that we never really learn from the past, because the past never repeats itself but is only a necessary step for the present. However, if we do indeed learn mostly from traumatic, painful experiences of the past, which



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we cannot forget (because they are too painful), should not forget (because of the “historical imperative”), and should make our own, then such experiences can and should become universal and universalizable, shareable and potentially acceptable, as a part of any other history.

7

The genealogy of history As I have argued, two major constituents of early history are genealogy and geography, the paradigm for which are Hecataeus’ Periēgēsis and Genealogiai. Such history inscribes people geographically into their habitable locus and preserves the names of their environment—of local mountains, plains, and rivers—in their memory. But genealogy is also an integral element of every history (including poetic catalogue), insofar as it links and binds people together by relating them to each other and/or providing a story about people’s origin as common—mythological, natural, or political. History tells stories about people’s geographical inscription into their places, which then can become places of memory. Equally, history tells about people’s genealogical derivation in the succession of generations. Thus, Herodotus mentions sixteen generations of ancestors of Hecataeus, going back to a god, and twenty generations of ancestors of Leonidas, king of Sparta, all the way back to Heracles.1 History connects various narratives or myths as the “told” of and within a history; ties gods to gods (the Theogony of Hesiod is a genealogy), gods to humans (in Panyassis’ Heracleia), and humans to humans through kinship; organizes people socially; and justifies claims to wealth, power, submission, and kleos. Genealogy remains an important “form of thinking” through the Middle Ages yet receives special attention in early modernity, particularly, as a method of establishing a pedigree for a political history.2 And nineteenth-century philosophy attempts to rethink genealogy as a way of reconstructing a (or even the) meaning of the past that goes beyond all the established clichés about it, which transpires in Hegel’s philosophy of history and in the work of Nietzsche. If moral concepts are eternal and ahistorical ideas that one only needs to discover, then they can have no proper history but only a history of their discovery and appropriation. If, however, moral concepts implicitly are judgements that can change over time, once they are used and justified in different social, political, and moral contexts, then these concepts should have a history or “genealogy,” which needs to be uncovered through a careful and sometimes unorthodox historical reconstruction. In this latter case, one might hope to

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demystify moral concepts and find out what they might mean “originally,” when first used, and how this meaning has been changed, improved, or “betrayed.” An exemplary work for such an approach is Nietzsche’s Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals), which he himself famously takes to be a “wirkliche Historie der Moral”.3 Although critical of Paul Rée’s naturalistic Darwinian approach to the understanding of morality, Nietzsche is influenced by Rée in the very idea of a genealogy of morality, particularly in that moral concepts (such as “good” and “evil”) develop and thus have a history.4 Genealogy for Nietzsche, then, is a way to tell how things—moral notions and judgements—came to be and to mean what they mean now, and thus provide a story about their “original” meaning that has been distorted ever since. Yet, contrary to Rée’s story, Nietzsche’s is not an evolutionary one: it is a story, or a set of closely related stories (of double morality, ressentiment, will to power, celebration of life, in all of which Nietzsche closely follows and appropriates not only Schopenhauer but also Theognis) that presuppose a radical break between the (degenerate) way a moral concept is used now and the way it was used before, in an imaginary state before the moral and social “fall.” Philosophy, then, has to turn into a kind of archeology that discovers an assumed origin (or multiple origins) of concepts and judgements that heretofore were considered eternal. Nietzsche even encourages it to become an academically recognized discipline of the study in history of morality (moralhistorische Studien), in his concluding note to the First Essay. But this origin or beginning (Ursprung) is strictly separate from the purpose (Zweck) of a concept.5 In order to uncover the purpose and meaning of a moral concept, one has to establish—narrate—its putative origin. Such an origin, however, is not a source of immutable essences but a contingent point of the emergence and genealogical descent of (moral) things. It remains disputable whether Nietzsche considered the origin of moral notions to be exactly the way he described it—or whether it was only a possible explanation, one among many. Nietzsche’s tale can be understood either as a version of the story of decadence and decline within the frame of la querelle des ancients et des modèrnes—or as a merely fictional plausible narrative. In the former case, his story is as good as any other one that might explain the current state of affairs. Yet, in order to be able to detect and diagnose a specifically modern (moral, political, scientific, etc.) notion, even possibly distorted in its transmission, one already has to have an implicit or explicit understanding of it. Such a genealogical story, told from the perspective of the end—of modernity— then tends to become normative and prescriptive, and not just descriptive. But if this is the case, then any genealogical reconstruction is itself genealogical and,



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in turn, has to be genealogically reconstructed, ad infinitum. This makes any genealogy, including that of Nietzsche’s, a narrative that has to be taken as a fiction or, precisely, as a prescriptive fable or fabula for a history. Foucault takes up Nietzsche’s genealogical “unmasking of the past” of concepts and institutions, which he mostly sees as disguises of power and different systems of subjection.6 Genealogy for Foucault should be able to offer an alternative to grand narratives as a way of a radical critical rethinking of the formation of discourse constitutive of various aspects of human activity.7 Rather than speak about immutable essences and causes, the “what” and the “why,” we should pay attention to practices, the “how.”8 In doing so, we need to pay close attention to seemingly marginal phenomena, which requires going carefully through them, knowing their minutiae and thus embracing a form of polymathia. Genealogy, then, is intended to replace a generalizing universal history: history has to become genealogy. However, as some scholars have argued, Foucault himself uses a genealogical approach in a series of studies of punishment, sexuality, and different phenomena without making genealogy into a clearly defined method and without providing an explicit reflexive account of it.9 Instead of proposing another grand narrative and an implicitly universalizable historical approach, Foucault each time traces multiple fragmented histories of various things, notions, and phenomena. Genealogy is thus “unoriginal” and anarchic in that it subverts and replaces the historical reconstruction of the past as necessary and universal. Over and against genealogy, universal history claims to point at, and come out of, one single origin or a system of uniform conditions that define the emergence of moral notions and social institutions. For Foucault, “[t]he origin lies at a place of inevitable loss, the point where the truth of things corresponded to a truthful discourse” (NGH 143). For his part, Nietzsche still recognizes a beginning of the history of morality and its later distortion through a debased inversion of sublime moral notions, and tells a (rather improbable) story about such a beginning. But Foucault makes a more radical claim: history as genealogy needs to oppose any temptation for a search for origin. Genealogy should be careful not to overlook a discontinuity in its reconstructions of the past, able to recognize multiple possible origins of a phenomenon, and be capable of recognizing the incommensurability of extant practices: “Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity” (NGH 146). In this respect, genealogy is opposed to evolution, whose task is to trace one single origin of a species. Rather than justifying a necessity of the origin, genealogy

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tries to establish a “complex course of descent” and thus needs to pay attention to chance, contingency, deviations, and errors (NGH 145, 154–5). Foucault appropriates and rethinks Nietzsche’s famous distinction in the “Untimely Meditations” between three meanings of history—monumental, antiquarian, and critical—as the history of the great, of the traditional, and of the destructive-liberating.10 In fact, Nietzsche’s triple distinction of history reproduces the historiographic/antiquarian distinction, where the monumental and critical become subdivisions of the historiographic. Foucault’s tripartition of history, which “oppose and correspond to the three Platonic modalities of history,” includes parodistic history, directed against reality (l’usage destructeur) and thus standing against history as reminiscence and recognition; dissociative history, directed against identity, which affirms a dissipation and inhibition of identity and is opposed to history as a continuous tradition; and sacrificial history, directed against truth, which is opposed to history as knowledge (NGH 160–4). Genealogical history, then, is thus a profoundly negative and destructive enterprise that suspends and rejects, through critical questioning, the conventional, petrified uses of universal history that claim to establish an unambiguous personal identity and a firm and systematic knowledge of things past. In one of his last interviews, Foucault confirms his adherence to the life-long “project” of genealogy, or rather to a series of renewed attempts at it. The three domains in which genealogy as a historical ontology is possible are truth, power, and ethics.11 The seemingly oxymoronic “historical ontology” captures Foucault’s understanding of genealogy: ontology cannot but be historical, and history is predicated on the incommensurability of practices, their multiple accidental starting points and contingencies of various lines of their descent. According to Foucault, the three domains become interconnected through an account of interactions of the systems of empty and inherently violent rules that are seized, used, and controlled by those capable of doing so, who become the dominant rulers by interpreting and appropriating such rules and thus making them their own. Genealogy, then, is a record of the history of such “interpretations” and appropriations by and within various power structures (NGH 151–2). In Foucault’s account, the genealogical approach allows for the avoidances of claims to totality, validity, and universalization, yet at the same time makes it possible to say something meaningful and interesting about a topic that has been previously neglected, and thus “to open up a space of research.”12 Genealogy, therefore, is not a systematic method of a historical study but rather



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a constant exercise of one’s curiosity and inquisitiveness, a renewed attempt at seeing human things differently and anew by paying attention to seemingly unimportant and minor details and marginal phenomena that might change and transform our vision of social practices in a major way. Structures of genealogy. Similarly to Nietzsche and Foucault, my own approach to genealogy is defined by the consideration of the composition of history. Yet in contradistinction to Nietzsche and Foucault, my thesis is that genealogy has the same catalogue structure as history. Exactly as history, genealogy presupposes a list, a sequence of items (“generations”), and also needs a fabula, a genealogical narrative or “myth” meant to explain and justify the inclusion of each namerecord within the genealogical list. The story that accompanies the list of names, things, or events always comes with an explicit or implicit interpretation of each one and/or the whole list. These features are distinct in many extant genealogies, such as those of the Bible,13 where some names stand bare and others are accompanied by several lines of a brief explanation of one’s life and/or ancestry. Genealogy as a way of recognizing people (as well as gods and heroes, in Hesiod and Homer). Connecting people to each other and keeping them in and for a history is widely used in ancient history. A person is univocally identified by her or his position in a genealogical list, where one is uniquely defined by a personal name (often expanded by a patronymic, which is the genealogical component, itself a wrapped genealogy) and a city or place of origin (which is the geographical component). Genealogy is a sui generis one-dimensional line (the list of names) or a two-dimensional “map” (plus geographical location) of one’s descent in and through which one has a unique place in a memory and history. Genealogy, then, can be not only that of names of people but also of things and events that are located in their descent and lineage (diachronically) and location and position (“geographically”). As in history, the preservation of a name is more important for genealogy than the preservation of an anonymous image: as a way of locating a thing, person, or event, genealogy requires a name but can do without an image or illustration (and may even exclude any visual representation on purpose, except for the text itself, as in the Bible). Obviously, the order of listing the names in a genealogy does matter. In traditional genealogies, the order is relatively unimportant in a list of heroes (it can be topical or geographical and go by the order of places in a land or along a seashore, as in the Bible, Periploys or an epic catalogue, according to a certain order or even a formula [e.g., Num. 33.5–49]), whereas in a list of family

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members or rulers the order is important, since it should be chronological and represent the succession of generations, thus establishing a line of descent.14 A genealogical account is therefore a catalogue with a clearly established order, that of the sequence of discrete constituents or “generations,” which are ordered chronologically and/or by an implied relationship (e.g., of parenthood, kinship, order of succession, or geographically) that are known and understandable to a reader within a history. However, history also knows other ways of ordering its lists, which means that genealogy is only a particular way of organizing a history. This means that genealogy implies a kind of causality. One might further distinguish between parataxis and hypotaxis in genealogical listings. The paratactic ordering is of the kind “An, An+1, An+2, …,” whereas the hypotactic is: “An because of/after An-1, An-1 because of/after An-2, …” Clearly, genealogical order or taxis is hypotactic (unlike in epic paratactic catalogues), although many genealogies are presented in the paratactic (“epic”) form, because their ordering implies a particular kind of causality—that of kinship or temporal succession (e.g., of an office). However, in order to realize that what looks like a paratactic listing is in fact a hypotactic catalogue, one has to already know that this is a genealogy, which might not be immediately clear from a given list. In this sense, genealogical logos brings order to a genealogy but itself remains different from what it itself organizes and lists, similarly to the way fabula remains different from the historical in a history. For this reason, genealogy always needs an interpretation: it needs to be explicitly recognized as genealogy, for otherwise it can always be taken as something else (e.g., as a list of magistrates from the same year, players of a football team, mythological heroes taking part in an event [the Calydonian Hunt]). In Foucault, genealogy is always a genealogy. In my account of history, however, the historical is the genealogy (it can but should not be otherwise), whereas a fabula is always a genealogical interpretation. A particular genealogy is never isolated, never stands on its own, because it is always related, through established connections (e.g., common distant ancestors or commonly shared stories) to other genealogies of people, events, and concepts. Therefore, genealogy always comes with a whole plurality of genealogies that are somehow related to each other. Yet, due to a complexity of genealogies, such a connection cannot always be traced and univocally established, which is why one often has to use or invent a myth, a (simplified) narrative of such a relation. In a genealogy, the principle of relating its records may be that of succession (e.g., of begetting). But the genealogy of an event can also relate its entries in a different way (e.g., as repeated transformation of its meaning), which presupposes multiple ways—a plurality—of its interpretation, all of which can be



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present and valid at the same time (as political, artistic, natural, etc., including many different principles of interpretation within each division). Therefore, there can be many different accounts of the same event, which come with, and are defined by, its particular interpretation. In this sense, already in ancient writers (Hellanicus), genealogy is always present in pluralia tantum—as many genealogies. Similarly to history, genealogy refers to things past. In its form, genealogy is diachronic, because it suggests that somebody or something was an ancestor or predecessor of this particular person, event or concept within the whole succession. Yet any genealogy, as any history, also exists synchronically as a whole, because the past of genealogy and history is the past for the present. It is the past that needs understanding of its connection to the present, and hence always needs an explanation, an interpretative narrative. That we exist now and that we share certain values points at the existential aspect of our “being in the past” (the “was”). But since our knowledge of our ancestry and of preceding events is always limited (although its extent may change with new discoveries and rethinking of extant genealogies), the essential aspect of our being in the past (the “what” of the “what happened”) is never secure and needs constant renegotiation and reinterpretation in and through the fabula, the myth, or the story told about a genealogy. Hence, genealogy is also an important part of (auto)biography, and is thus a constituent of any personal history. One might say, then, that genealogy is unfinalizable, in the sense that it can never be completed although at the same time being a “task to be accomplished,”15 which means that we do not know exactly who our ancestors were 100,000 years ago but we know that they were, for otherwise we would not exist and could not even have asked about our past. This begs the question (which will be addressed below) of whether the first item in a genealogy is its origin or whether it can be extended indefinitely further back. An example of genealogy is history of philosophy taken not as a logic of the development of thought, as it is presented in Hegel, but as a chronological and genealogical history, an account (already given by Diogenes Laertius) that provides genealogical lineages of disciples and teachers within a school, as well as descriptions of their lives and doctrines—biographies and doxographies. To an extent, the history of philosophy is also geographical, insofar as it points at a particular locally inscribed philosophical practice (usually, into a city or university: Frankfurt, New York, Tübingen, etc.). Genealogy always involves and needs an interpretation as a condition for its preservation and reconstruction, which may imply a concordance or symphony

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of (at least, partially) incompatible records. A (re)interpretation of a genealogy or a history always has both an explicit and implicit purpose (“ixplicit” or “emplicit,” if you wish). Besides an “evident” explicit purpose (e.g., providing a list of ancestors, in order to locate oneself in a family history or legitimize a claim to property; or a reconstructing a social practice, in order to do away with a repressive practice), genealogy may have an implicit purpose, which may either remain apparently evident for the interpreter herself, to the one who tells and rethinks the story of a genealogy, or it may remain hidden even to the interpreter. In the latter case, one has to do the work of “archeological” reconstruction of an intended meaning built into a genealogy and possibly also an alleged beginning (which, however, might not be there at all). But who is this interpreter or “archeologist”? Against Nietzsche and Foucault who imply that this is the task of a philosopher, I want to suggest that such an interpreter can be anyone, either an “insider” or an “outsider” of a genealogy. However, since, as I have argued, there is no telos or purpose to a geographical or genealogical history beyond the one that is assigned to it by its interpreters or users, the narrative or fabula of genealogy, then, is not just a description but also always a prescription. As such, genealogy tends to become normative and legitimizing, although its legitimation is that of an interpreter and thus can in principle be justified differently and hence rejected and de-legitimized. Genealogy is usually represented as a linear succession or sequence of entries or records, which are usually personal names but can also be nouns or concepts predated by others, which, when interpreted, may reveal a meaning or practice different from the one currently assigned to the concept. Genealogy thus implies discursivity in its organization similar to a chain of reasoning in an argument that consists of a number of orderly placed discrete steps (in genealogy, “generations”). As discursive, genealogy is diachronic and as such presupposes temporality. In a sense, temporality itself may be considered as structured according to the pattern of hypotactic genealogy, i.e., as the genealogy establishing a causally related succession of names, concepts, or events. As discursive, genealogy is both a hermeneutical and “logical” enterprise, insofar as it always requires a (re)interpretation and justification of a genealogy and of single items. Similar to a Periploys, genealogy can be represented as a linear “record” of “traveling” along a genealogical/geographical “shore.” But in its entirety, genealogy can be considered a “map,” which is already a non-discursive structure represented through a spatial or imaginary arrangement of images (including those in imagination and memory) with a clearly established relation, defined by an order of their connection. As such,



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genealogy considered as a whole can be also thought of as synchronic and as a “geographical map” for and of a historical memory. In contradistinction to genealogy, pedigree is a systematically constructed (and often invented) ancestral “tree” that is two-dimensional. Etymologically, “pedigree” comes from the Old French pie de grue (Lat. pes and grus), “crane’s foot,” which it resembles in its visual representation. In such a tree, one can trace single lines or “branches” discursively, although not in a single move, since the structure is non-linear and thus falls, as it were, “in between” a strictly linear (dianoia-like) genealogy and an (imaginary, quasi-spatial) “map” of geographical representation. Linear genealogy is always non-exhaustive and cannot be finalized (is aufgegeben), insofar as it tends to ignore all the predecessors except in one selected line or succession. Thus, for instance, in ten generations of an ancestry out of 1,024 ancestors, a genealogy usually keeps only a dozen, whereas the rest are lost to historical (family) memory. In fact, pedigree can be—and has been—distinguished from genealogy (in Nietzsche and Foucault): pedigree traces a single line of descent, whereas genealogy traces multiple lines of descent, which often interweave and remain incomplete.16 A pedigree account is univocal and exhaustive, whereas genealogy is always plurivocal and needs interpretation, which too means that genealogy cannot be finalized and exhausted. Moreover, as said, each genealogy always relates to many other genealogies, whereas a pedigree has to be (re)constructed as unique, especially since it often becomes a ground for legitimation claims. In fact, any living being’s genealogy is evolutionarily related to any other one, and thus forms a part of “natural history’s map,” although this relation can be hardly traced in full. Genealogy thus allows for a chronology. No wonder that many ancient historians who provide genealogies also furnish chronologies.17 Historical chronology may be considered a representation of temporality that itself represents the activity of discursive thinking as a genealogical listing, which, in turn, reflects the activity and structure of discursivity. Often, when no common chronology (or era) is accepted, genealogy may substitute chronology precisely because genealogy presupposes a temporal succession and a sequence of entries (generations, genea, usually three in a century). On the basis of these entries, one can then count successions of events. But all chronology is a matter of convention, since there is no teleology in and to history or genealogy except for the one constructed into them by their users. Therefore, all attempts to establish, calculate, or predict “divine,” “natural,” or “scientific” eras, e.g., in Joachim of Floris, Newton, Hegel, or Peirce, are doomed to fail.18 In antiquity, there is no common chronology, and counting by Olympiads (from the first

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Olympiad, 776/775 bce) is an artificial scholarly invention. There are four main eras known in antiquity: Seleucid, Pompeian, Caesarian, and Actian, but also a number of local ones, counted by magistrates or rulers. Any common point of chronological reference is arbitrary, although the beginning or origin of an era—always, of a new era—is commonly marked by a remarkable, memorable, and unique event, such as the creation of the world, a revolution, a victory, establishing a dynasty, a defining moment in the life of a leader, adjustment of astronomic calculations, and so on. Thus, the Seleucid era begins in 312 bce with Seleucus’ taking of Babylon; and French and Russian revolutions mark new eras of their own, each establishing their own new calendars. The memory of genealogy. In a narrow sense, genealogy allows tracing and in this way preserving the names and, possibly, stories of people related to each other through ancestral connections. In a broader sense, genealogy allows for establishing a non-linear interpretative reconstruction of an event or concept, which can rethink and thus change its current use and meaning in a history. In this sense, genealogy works as restorative memory in and for a history. As I have argued, there are three ways of preserving oneself in the hope of overcoming the nihil of non-being and oblivion: physically, through one’s descendants; in the memory of the people who share the same history and inner theater; and theologically and teleologically through an idea of personal salvation. Yet only the second way is properly historical and can be politically progressive, while the other two may be incorporated into a history but as such are ahistorical and tend to be utopian or conservative. Taken in the narrow sense, genealogy appears to correspond to the first way of self-preservation, in and through one’s physical successors, to whom one passes on one’s genetic heritage to sustain and carry on. However, there is a certain paradox implied in genealogy, for, while passing on a physical heritage to the descendants, one also hopes to be remembered by them, which includes genealogy into a commonly shared history. Hence, a physical memory has to be preserved also as a historical memory. Genealogy in the narrow sense, then, presupposes genealogy in the broad sense but not vice versa. Historical memory is not only conservative in that it preserves what it keeps as possibly intact and identical, but it is also progressive insofar as it is capable of providing new interpretations, giving new meanings and thus relocating the same person, event, or notion differently, rethinking it in a new way. In ancient history, genealogy in the narrow sense is important, because it is a way to locate members of a political body in a shared history as related



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within a gens. Here, one keeps existing and often is justified in one’s claims to power through kleos, which traditionally is bestowed not only by one’s accomplishments but also by one’s descent. The relation can be mutual: not only are descendants glorified through their ancestors, but the progenitors too can be celebrated by their worthy descendants. Yet for modernity genealogy in the narrow sense as providing a political justification is suspect, since the political is meant to be kept separate from the familial, so that “nation” and even “global community” should mean the community of people sharing public life and certain moral and political ideals, not a commonality of descent. Manipulation with genealogically based claims may lead to socially and politically disastrous consequences. This means that genealogy has to be either abandoned in history or be radically rethought, as Nietzsche and Foucault do. In history, genealogy should be taken not as the genealogy of kinship but as a passing on of memory, which implies a “mythical” connection through a story, a narrative as it is told and transmitted in a history, in which, however, a story is always retold and reinterpreted. Genealogical memory is preserved both as written genealogies and records (anagraphai) about local things, events, and people (epikhōrioi) and orally using special techniques, such as catalogue poetry. This makes genealogy into the modern genealogy of meaning. (Etymology is always a genealogy.) One has to speak, then, of a historical reconstructive and interpretative genealogy, which passes memory on not as a physical heritage in a succession of generations but as a historical genealogical memory. Such memory always “works back” and is primarily the memory of a (cultural, linguistic, religious, scholarly, etc.) tradition in which one places and with which one identifies oneself. Such memory may be preserved by others who themselves do not participate in it. Such is, for example, the (genealogical) myth of the foundation of Athens by Athena, which is kept and remembered not by Greeks but by Egyptians, who then communicate it to Solon.19 This memory remains alien until it is appropriated through an interpretation (or a series of interpretations) that would locate it within an existing historical memory and a history. The historical memory of a tradition is not, however, specifically modern. Already Isocrates in his Panegyricus opposes physical to cultural genealogy, claiming that in Athens, which so much excelled in thought and speech (in culture), one considers as “Greeks” not those who share the same genus or kin (genos) but rather the same way of thinking (dianoia); hence, the Greeks are those who share the same education and culture (paideia) and not those who are related by nature (physis).20

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Cultural genealogical memory is therefore always related to a tradition, with which one identifies oneself by its constant retelling and reinterpreting. The very notion of tradition implies succession and continuity in transmission, which, in turn, presupposes preservation and understanding of the what and the that of the preserved by constant retelling and thus reinterpretation of the told (of its fabula). Tradition is thus always genealogical. One can say, then, that tradition is a generic extension of genealogy. The famous “catalogue of geometers” in Proclus’ Commentary to Euclid, in which Proclus explains the origin and purpose of geometry, beginning with Thales and ending with Eratosthenes, is a good example of cultural genealogy as a tradition in which mathematicians are connected through a series of disputes and inventions of sophisticated methods of demonstration that are passed on, preserved, criticized, and readjusted to solving new problems.21 In a sense, the very more geometrico method used by Euclid in mathematics, Proclus in first philosophy, and by Spinoza in his Ethics, is “genealogical,” insofar as it deduces propositions either from the accepted first principles (definitions, axioms, and postulates) or from other already deduced propositions, which in their entirety form a “genealogy.” Therefore, genealogy is a particular kind of tradition of keeping and transmitting a historical memory that: 1. Keeps its entries or records by listing them in a certain order, either discursively as linear or as a “map,” in the former case establishing a sequence that becomes the paradigm for (historical) chronology. 2. Presupposes a similarity or “kinship,” which enables those sharing it to become participants in the same history. 3. Requires an understanding and memory of continuity in passing along certain characteristics within a tradition, profession, etc., which, however, are never rigidly established once and for all but can always change through transformative interpretations. What determines one’s belonging to a genealogy is the identification with the transmitted and remembered by inclusion into a genealogical list, into the historical (e.g., that of geometers): of “members” (synchronically) or “generations” (diachronically), which is then further complemented by a preserved and transmitted story (narrative, myth, fabula) that identifies a sequence of names or entries as a tradition or genealogy. 4. Means that one can—and does—belong to several genealogies at a time, thus being determined by inclusion into different traditions or genealogies. However, one might not be aware of all of such genealogies and hence not



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always recognize oneself as a member of a particular tradition or genealogy, which can be established through the work of its interpretation together with the others. 5. Marks one’s belonging to a tradition (scholarly, culturally, politically, etc.) not only “physically” (through physis) but much more “practically” (through praxis or action). All these features point at genealogy as defining a person “historically,” through a story or narrative told as both traced and established (or constructed) within a history. Genealogy and myth. Similarly to history, genealogy intends to bridge the gap between ontology and normativity, “is” and “ought,” where the “ought” should be justified by an alleged “is,” which in turn should be justified by its extraction from an assumed origin. This requires establishing an origin, which originally is or might not be there, making it the origin of a genealogy. And yet, first, the “is” of genealogy is indeed a “was,” that is, the “is” of and from the past. And second, the “is” as it is told, and thus already interpreted as a “was,” that is, not as it “really” happened but as it is said to have happened. This does not mean that what is told about in a genealogy is fictional; rather, that the reference to its “was” implying a normative “ought” is assured by the (re)interpretation of its narrative. Precisely as in myth, the “what” takes precedence in genealogy over the “is,” which is presupposed but in fact is suspended, in order to justify the “what” of the told. This brings us to the discussion of the role of myth in genealogy. Myth might be taken as an allegory veiling certain “real” events that might be disclosed by a rational analysis and restored to their “original” meaning hidden behind a myth.22 For instance, the “Younger Edda” Snorri Sturlusson, who preserves and transmits many myths and genealogies, attempts to interpret the story of a war between the gods Æsir and Vanir allegorically, as a reflection of a real past struggle between kings who later became deified in people’s (historical) memory. However, as I have argued before, “myth” in history is present in a fabula, as the said about a history and the historical. In this sense, fabula is always a myth as it is told and preserved in an inner theater of one’s life expanded to include those events that make it meaningful, although at times only after the life’s completion. A genealogical myth is often (ab)used to legitimize certain (e.g., power) claims in a history. Yet myth is never legitimizing, because it can always be reinterpreted and thus told differently—at least, slightly, which might make all the difference. The “myth” in a history suspends the “is” (the “was”) and only tells the “what” of what happened. Myth is an interpretation of things past in

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an attempt to fit them into an existing understanding of them, whereby this understanding is also always changed. The discursive reconstruction of a genealogy from an alleged origin is itself not historical but is a mythological interpretative invention. The task of genealogy, therefore, is to explain an alleged—restored and reconstructed— origin of a phenomenon or a concept in order to explain, first, its current state and the way it is used, and second, the possibility of understanding it otherwise than it is commonly understood. Genealogy intends to establish a first point of reference that would then become the origin of a whole class of related phenomena or concepts. Yet, as said, in natural things (both physical and mental), as long as they are not produced or constructed by us (physically or mentally), there is no origin. Such things simply are, “unoriginally.” But if there is no origin until it is constructed by an interpretation of a genealogy, such an origin is itself always mythological: it is said to be in the beginning. Genealogy always is, and implies, a myth. Genealogy is mythical insofar as it tells how things might have been in the modus of casus irrealis, thus bracketing or suspending the reality, the “is” of the origin. As a myth, genealogy may be used and abused in support of a particular claim (to ownership, power, political privileges, etc.) justified by its constructed narrative. Ancient Greek history demonstrates the close relation between myth and genealogy, in which mythography is an inalienable constituent.23 Hecataeus, Pherecydes, and Hellanicus all write mythical genealogies. Thus, Hecataeus in his Genealogiai preserves and orders mythical genealogies of Deucalion and Heracles.24 In Hellanicus, we find four mythical genealogies, each one beginning with a founder of a genus, arkhēgetēs: Phoroneus, Deucalion, Atlas, and Asopus. In the Asōpis and Atlantias, Hellanicus also provides female genealogies that begin with the offspring of Asopus’ and Atlas’ daughters and gods.25 And most extensive mythical genealogies are compiled by Apollodorus in his Library. Therefore, if there is no origin, genealogy should always be mythological, because its origin has to be postulated or constructed. In this sense, mythical genealogies are devised when they refer to an alleged origin of a genus extracted from a god or hero, or to an “original” meaning of a concept. Mythical genealogies play an important role in tragedy, where they are used to establish relations between heroes, which become constitutive for the plot, for example, in the Theban cycle. Moreover, since any genealogy (e.g., of games with a stick [hurling, hockey, cricket]) and any list (e.g., of magistrates) have to be uninterrupted, the historian often has to (re)invent and (re)construct one or several missing links (e.g., generations, geneai) that would make a genealogy



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continuous. In this sense, once again, interpretation is a necessary constituent of every genealogy (including a genealogy of “morals” or political institutions) and every history. Such an interpretation is a fictitious narrative about an alleged beginning, which is an invention of an origin and of the continuity of succession. However, the historian should fit her account into the already known epic, legends, myths, or philological and philosophical reconstructions, which themselves are often fragmented and mutually contradictory. In this respect, the historian has to follow an established pattern of telling a story by making it coherent with the already told ones. By doing so, she becomes a “logician,” insofar as she should provide a coherent interpretation of the myths by avoiding apparent contradictions and at the same time preserving and following the required patterns of a history. Moreover, the historian should provide and (re)construct a causal explanation of certain events and relationships about which a myth only tells but does not give any reason why they are the way they are presented. For this reason, many myths that appear in historically appropriated genealogies are aetiological, because they explain the origin of a dynasty, sanctuary, object, concept, etc. (e.g., that the lyre was invented by Hermes who gave it to Apollo for a reason), and thus offer a cause (aitia) of and for their origin. Therefore, every genealogical myth is aetiological but not vice versa, since there can be many different causes of an origin, not all of which are genealogical. Myth and genealogy are also closely connected in ancient poetry, as the rhetoricians, the first sophistic and sophisticated literary critics, tell us. Thus, the late ancient writer Menander provides a classification of hymns to gods, among which he includes both mythical and genealogical hymns that “are habitually employed by all writers when they narrate the origins (geneseis).”26 Regarding the relation between the two kinds of hymns, continues Menander, some people think that there is no difference between mythical and genealogical hymns, while some think there is a difference. The former argue that genealogies are myths; such are the theogonies of Acusilaus, Hesiod, and Orpheus. The latter claim that there are mythical hymns that are not genealogical, insofar as they do not contain any genealogy, as in the stories about Icarius’ hospitality to Dionysus or Celeus’ hospitality to Demeter. Menander himself holds that “all genealogies and all hymns involving genealogical elements proceed by means of mythical circumstances, whereas it is not true that all mythical hymns proceed by means of genealogies. Consequently, the class of mythical hymns will be more generic, and that of genealogical hymns the more specific.”27 Every genealogy is then a myth, but not every myth is a genealogy. However, when the

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origin of a genealogy is not known, one has to invent it, for which purpose the writer often uses an already existing myth. Genealogy, origin, legitimation. The search for an origin, a beginning, is deeply embedded in the “project” of every culture. To understand oneself is to realize oneself not just as a unique individual but also as standing within a certain tradition. One of the defining features of modernity is the understanding that each person belongs simultaneously to a number of different, often loosely connected or even independent traditions or genealogies (family, profession, politics, hobby, etc.) and not to a single unified and unifying one that reduces all genealogies to one denominator. But to understand a tradition is to give an account of its beginning, explained in an acceptable and accepted narrative, which is always an interpretation of the tradition. The question: “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” should be asked and answered each time anew, even if there is always already a tradition of answering this question in a particular way. For example, early modernity looks for and finds its own origin in antiquity— in Rome (politically) and Greece (culturally). Yet ancient Greece itself establishes its cultural identity by looking for its own beginning, which it finds elsewhere. Already Hecataeus and Herodotus consider the origin of Greek culture Oriental, brought by Cadmus, Danaos, and Pelops. The Ionian thinkers—the “physiologists”—who themselves are later considered to be at the origin of Greek thought, are constantly searching for an origin or arkhē of all things, both in their logical and physical make-up. History keeps looking for an origin. Even in the history of history one speaks about “first or early historians” and “ancient history.” This “need for an origin” that becomes the origin of a historical inquiry is embedded in the very structure of history, which uses narrative to construct its fabula, in order to tell and explain what happened and to provide an interpretation of it, on the one hand—and to understand itself reflectively through self-interpretation, on the other. Yet in order to provide such an explanation, history needs to begin somehow and somewhere. Such a beginning, then, becomes an “origin” for and in a history. The need for a coherent self-account turns a beginning into the origin. Thus, in Greek mythical and heroic genealogies and histories, the Trojan War is often taken as the initial point of reference. Genealogy too is in desperate need of finding an origin, because as a reduction to, or deduction from, an assumed beginning, genealogy often serves as a self-identification: if I know my “origin,” I know who I am; or if I know the origin of a concept, I know what it really means, how it can be used, and



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how it should be changed, in order to change the social and political world. In this sense, genealogy may not necessarily be an account of who begat whom, but also a succession of people one meaningfully identifies oneself with or a particular history of a (cultural, artistic, political, philosophical) phenomenon or notion. In this case, the genealogy of origin establishes a tradition, even if each of its members might have no intention to join or be inscribed into it. In tekhnē, the artificial humanly-made things, the origin and beginning is more easily recognizable: it is the moment of (physical and temporal origin) and reason for (logical and aesthetic origin) the production of a thing or a concept. But in physis, natural things do not have a logical origin; they may have only a temporal beginning (the non-verifiable and hence “mythical” Big Bang). Each physical thing, then, has no origin when it comes to its genealogy. Since each physical thing always originates in another one, every genealogy is evolutionary. There is no first entry to genealogy, no origin of humans as a natural species in the evolutionary descent, and hence, no beginning to it. At best, genealogy may only point at the unfinalizability of (human) origin in the Kantian sense, i.e., that at any time we had ancestors, even if we might not know who they were. Therefore, our genealogy in principle can always be extended further back. In a genealogy, we need to begin somewhere, with somebody or something, for the simple reason that the capacity of our memory to keep names, things, and events is limited. In order to be meaningful, a genealogy has to have a beginning. Paraphrasing Voltaire, “si l’origine n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer” (“if the origin did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it”). In the case of a tradition or genealogy of a “school,” there should be a founder (e.g., Thales in Proclus’ catalogue of geometers), although one can also provide a cause as its origin (measuring pieces of land as the beginning of geometry). But, if a cause is the origin and a beginning, one can always ask about the beginning of a beginning, contrary to the assumption of the uniqueness of the cause being the origin. Hence, if for any origin we can find a cause, and thus another origin, there is no origin of and to a tradition. Therefore, again, there is no origin to natural things, even if they are of a logical nature, but there is an origin to artificial things. In this sense, there is no origin to geometry as a logical and mathematical enterprise, but there is an origin of geometry as an art (of measuring natural or artificial things), and there is a temporal beginning to it (in the times of Thales). There is an important difference between the claim that there is no origin in a genealogical digression to an unreachable origin and the claim that there is no origin in a continuous magnitude (Aristotle, Phys. 236a 7–35): one can approach the point of the beginning of a segment (e.g., by dividing it into halves) but never

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reach it, since there is no point “closest” to the origin. The difference is explained by the fact that the genealogical procedure is countable, that is, moves in discrete steps (“generations”), whereas a magnitude is continuous. The statement that genealogy has no beginning should be further distinguished from Deleuze’s account of (Nietzsche’s) genealogy as pointing at “the differential element of values from which their value itself derives.” Genealogy for Deleuze establishes a “difference or distance” to the origin.28 Hence, it is not the origin but the distance to it that matters, for it is the difference of the distance, and not the sameness of the origin that allows for a critique of values. The question of the existence of the origin, then, should be suspended for Deleuze, and the origin might or might not be reachable by means of a critique. An “as if ” origin will suffice, since it is capable of providing a gap that would allow the critical thinking to move on (or off) in its incessant wandering. The no-origin account of genealogy implies that the very motion toward establishing a genealogy of things, concepts, or values is itself originated not by an originary distance or difference but by the need of history to provide a story to the historical that has the structure of a (coherent) genealogy. The search for an origin that has to become the origin is thus always constructive, which means that in order to demonstrate that something (a genealogy or a history) has an origin, one has to establish this origin not by postulating it, but by showing how the current state of affairs is derived from such an origin (by synthesis) and how this origin can be reached “backwards” from the current state (by analysis). Only pedigree, an artificially reconstructed lineage, has an arkhē as its beginning, whereas genealogy, which has a “natural” origin, even if it is a genealogy of a concept, has no arkhē, no beginning or origin. For example, there is no origin of humankind, but there can be an origin to a city or a state with its reconstructed pedigree entrusted to historical memory, where such an origin becomes a point of reference in a history. When Herodotus mentions the founding of the Greek sanctuary Hellenion in Egypt, he carefully lists all the cities that took part in the establishment of it at which point he also provides the ethnic genealogical origin of the founding cities (Ionian, Dorian, and Aeolian).29 Yet not all cities or states have such a clearly distinguishable beginning. The majority have a “natural” genealogical history with no origin, which means that any origin established in this case (e.g., a mythological one, in the case of Rome) is an artificial construction that can in principle always be rethought, revised (e.g., in light of new archeological data), or considered otherwise. Founding a polis is a “republican moment” of an intended, deliberate and artificial establishing of a beginning that becomes constitutive for a political history.



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Therefore, in order to be complete, genealogy needs a beginning, which it does not have unless an arkhē is ascribed as the point of a privileged access to it. The construction of an origin in a genealogy is always an interpretation or reinterpretation of its own structure and myth, as in a theogony. In the words of Richard Bernstein, genealogy is “a constructed past that would explain the present.”30 In genealogy, an interpretative reconstruction is always a construction, where conjectures often become reasons.31 In order to reconstruct a genealogy, one may (re)tell a story that would place the genealogy within a history and in this way connect this history with a “beginning.” Such a story, which is a fabula or “myth” of a history, may either give this history a new beginning and a new meaning, or reinterpret an already recognized one. Or a reconstruction of a genealogy may imply changing the historical ordered in terms of “generations.” In this case, if an author means to preserve and transmit a genealogy, she also has to provide an interpretation of it, according to a logic of the genealogical succession, filling in the lacunae, weaving a genealogy out of the available myths, epic narratives, historical lists, and other genealogies. In this case, much needs to be “thought into” such genealogies. Thus, Homer names Zeus the father of Dardanus, the first native king of the Troad, but mentions no mother (Il. 20.215), whereas Hellanicus makes Electra the mother of Dardanus. Quite often, Hellanicus creates new genealogical trees and considerably extends—that is, reinterprets—the old ones: for instance, the list of the names of the Attic kings contains only four names in Herodotus, from Cecrops to Theseus, yet gets nine names in Hellanicus’ Hiereiai.32 Therefore, one may say that an origin is either constructed and invented, in which case it is a mythological event; or an origin is remembered and recalled, in which case it is an already established and recognized one. An example of the first is the beginning (origin) of a family or kin; an example of the second is the beginning of a polis. If one assumes, invents, or postulates an origin by producing it, then one has to proceed in a linear way toward or from the arkhē. Such a reconstruction presupposes temporal succession, historically reconstructed time, and a “dianoetic” discursive order of the sequence of entries or records. Moreover, such a construction may be considered recursive. A recursive function is one in which every element an can only be calculated on the basis of the preceding elements. (An example is a Fibonacci number, which is the sum of the two preceding integers: an=an-2+an-1). In order to calculate an, one needs to calculate every preceding term. For such a function, it is not sufficient to provide the first element (the “beginning”) and the rule of passing from one element to another (the “genealogical” rule or principle), but one has to actually

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produce each element from the previous ones, where the beginning is always present. Hence, recursivity is always a construction that discloses both the origin and each element of a series (“pedigree”) by establishing an immediate relation of each element or entry with the previous and succeeding ones and a mediated connection with the beginning. However, if one chooses to remain in the “natural” order of things without an origin (the second), then one gets into a kind of “map,” thus considering genealogy non-discursively and quasi-spatially, that is, not as a linear succession but as a “noetic” or “geographical” simultaneity. One might then distinguish different levels in a genealogy (e.g., family, lineage, clan, tribe), all of which may interact in different ways. For instance, one level may be considered a species of another or also radically opposed to it—but this is a matter of interpretation within a history. That genealogy and history share the same structure can also be seen from their renewed attempts to revert to an origin through a kind of “archeology.” In Plato, Hippias says that when the Lacedemonians are not so much interested in listening to him speak about science as they are eager to hear about genealogies (peri tōn genōn) of heroes and people, about foundation of cities, and in general about things past (tēs arkhaiologias).33 In these cases, if an origin is not there by an act of production (foundation), it is constructed by an act of telling and the responsive listening, both of which are interpretative. The very term “archeology” (arkhaiologia), probably invented by the Sophists, means an ordered account (logos) about things past that stand for the listeners in the beginning and are shared and understood by them, things shown the way they were—and still are, at the moment of being told and listened to—in and from the beginning. Later, in Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Josephus Flavius, “archeology” receives a narrower meaning of “history from origin,” i.e., ancient, archaic history.34 It is also the title of the first chapters in Thucydides. Therefore, “archeology” implies an interpretative activity of digging into the past in order to extract an origin of a genealogy, list of eponyms, people, city, etc. Such looking (or hearing) back into the origin should locate a name, thing, or event within a listeners’ history and add further accents and touches to it, and thus reinforce or possibly change their understanding of themselves and the practices they are engaged in.35 “Genealogical” archeology thus has the formal structure of interpretative narrative (fabula), supplied by a sequence or list of names (of heroes, ancestors, eponyms, cities, concepts, etc.). “Archeology” thus has the same structure as history. The accompanying “ixplicit” interpretation of a genealogy and its alleged origin is often used—and abused—for the legitimation of various claims, most



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notably, claims to power, property and fame. When praising the courage of Leonidas at Thermopylae, Herodotus provides his whole genealogy, in order to show that Leonidas’ kleos is secured not only because of his personal courage but also because of his standing in a tradition of illustrious heroic ancestors in a glorious history to which he did not fail to contribute. Or, before the battle with Achilles, Aeneas recounts his genealogy and the origin of his kin from a god, in order to stress his virtue and valiance, which will then yield kleos and immortality as a result of a battle.36 In his article “Généalogie,” written for the Dictionnaire Philosophique, Voltaire takes genealogy to be both a history of lineage or origin—and a critical reflection on texts that justify current opinions. Both purposes of genealogy imply a legitimation of claims to power or social position, insofar as genealogy always needs, and comes with, an interpretation.37 Voltaire begins with a problem of reconciling the discrepancy between the report of Matthew and Luke, who mention a different number of generations in the genealogy of Jesus (Mt. 1:1-17 and Lk. 3:23-38). Both, however, provide their genealogies in order to refer to the origin of Jesus as a response to an imputation of illicit birth, and hence, of an illegitimate origin. In this case, both evangelists explicitly use genealogy as a legitimation of an implicit claim to spiritual leadership and power through an interpretation of the story of the birth, origin, and genealogy. Sometimes, in order to legitimize the validity of one’s claim to social position, truth, or power (or often all of the above), one needs to invent or even forge a genealogy and an assumed origin. Yet the legitimation of such claims by reference to a genealogy is prone to become paltry and even abusive, since it may be easily used to justify most arrogant claims. Thus, Egyptians as portrayed in Plato look down on Greek history with pride and disdain, because it is all new and miserably short for them.38 The genealogical hubris becomes the target of criticism already in antiquity. Thus, Antisthenes ironically speaks about the Athenians proud of their genealogy, “being sprung from the soil” (gēgeneis, obviously referring to the myth of Cecrops, born from the earth), pointing out that in this respect they are no better than snails or wingless locusts.39 And Plato argues that, for a philosopher, a voluminous list or catalogue (katalogos) of ancestors leading back to Heracles or Amphitryon appears petty and ridiculous, because everyone has an innumerable number of ancestors, among whom are people of all walks of life. Hence, for Plato, genealogy cannot be used as a justification of claims to virtue, intelligence, or goodness at something, especially in matters of politics.40 Voltaire reproduces the same argument when saying, with a grain of irony, that if there was a first man (Adam), then we all are his

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descendants, which means that all people are to be considered equal and no one should take pride in his or her genealogy and origin.41 From a genealogical point of view, to explain a phenomenon or concept is to trace its origin, or invent one, if it is not there. As I have argued, this approach lies at the heart of the axiomatic deductive method, since the series of deductions more geometrico can be considered genealogical. But looking for and establishing an origin as a way of explaining a (social) phenomenon is also widely used in a history as a justification and legitimation of certain (ethical, political, religious) codes of behavior, which, however, can be mutually conflicting, depending on the interpretation of the story. Thus, in reference to the postulated “beginning” of the original sin, one might demand, “act in such a way as to possibly neutralize the evil nature in you which results from the ‘original sin’”; or, on the contrary, “act in such a way as to wholly ignore the ‘original sin,’ because it is a historical construction used to oppress people and distract them from seeing each other’s natural goodness.” Because any genealogical historical account can be used for improper claims to wealth and power, personal genealogies should be considered significant primarily in the private sphere. This is what modernity seeks to accomplish with the Enlightenment, when every human is judged according to her or his inalienable dignity rather than honor that can be bestowed by a genealogy. However, once again, there is no “natural” origin to genealogy, which has no beginning until such origin, hitherto unknown and hypothetical, is produced or constructed into a genealogy. Therefore, all justification and legitimation by reference to a genealogy and its origin remains itself an unjustified and illegitimate construction.42 That an alleged origin and genealogy cannot justify any claim to power or social or political position, and thus never should be used for such a legitimation, becomes one of the major political principles in modernity. As a reference to tradition, genealogy is still often used for legitimizing certain legal claims as consistent with a tradition of the interpretation of a law (e.g., of the Constitution). Still, tradition can be a legitimate way of (individual or group) self-identification, but it does not have a power to legitimize until it establishes a tradition of rational scrutiny and justification of its claims.43 Such a justification can be considered a form of genealogy and a particular history, insofar as it starts with certain principles as its beginning (e.g., of freedom, human equality, and universal worth of any human being). Such principles themselves belong to a tradition of interpretation yet they are not considered genealogical; rather, they are used to rationally and speculatively deduce, and thus justify and legitimate, the claims of a tradition.

Conclusion What history is. It is now time to finally say what history is. Since history is not one monolithic universal and teleological history, it should allow for a coexisting plurality of histories, so that we always participate and live in several histories at the same time. This means that, contrary to the modern understanding of history epitomized in Hegel, there are no “prehistorical” societies: every human collective, large or small, is entitled to a proper history. Each history depends on the narrative that defines it. The story that accompanies a history might appear contingent, and yet, as I have argued, a history is not at all contingent in its very structure. One can attempt to identify something in history that itself is not historical but is rather invariant in history—in any history. If history does not evolve toward a universal telos, it must admit of differences. In particular, in every human culture there is a sense of history as keeping score of names, things, and events of the past, which are carefully organized, kept, and preserved, and as such constitute what I have called the historical. For example, in the second book of the Iliad, Homer transmits a long “catalogue of ships”; the Bible abundantly preserves lists of names. However, the historical, which is detailed and properly organized, is always supplied with a narrative, a relatively easy-to-tell story that accompanies, clarifies, and appropriates names, things, and events. Every history, then, has the structure of the historical that provides the form of and for a history and the interpretative narrative, the fabula, that gives content to history and describes interactions between people within a history. The narrative does, can, and should change, in accordance with new political visions and demands, but the historical should be preserved. The historical should be conservative but the narrative of history should be progressive. History allows us not to overcome our finitude but rather to suspend it by stressing and using it. Always historically finite and concrete, we become capable of living on in a history precisely as historical beings—after our physical existence comes to its natural end. Such a continued historical existence is secured by being kept within the historical of a history, against the non-being of forgetfulness, of the “futility of oblivion.” Hence, being in history means living in a history, in the memory of those who share and themselves live in and off

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that history. But in order to be capable of acting in history, memory must be properly organized and achieve the structure of history, which is that of the historical (lists of names, things, and events) and of the narrative (fabula). History does not necessarily give us freedom by locating or assigning us a proper place within a preestablished and predetermined order that realizes an objective trans-historical end. History gives us life as (historical) being. Human freedom may be achieved in a history, but this already depends on the use of history for a political purpose. If history is not a realization of an inalienable logic in and behind its unwinding, then history is not about the future that might be anticipated or disclosed in a history’s objective end or purpose. Moreover, at the moment that we are in the midst of current events, we do not yet have an appropriate distance from them and thus do not have an account or recollection of them yet. This means that history is not about the present either. History is about the past. In a sense, this past is “absolute,” because nobody can change the historical; no one can make what happened “unhappen.” For this reason, one is always tempted to claim, as Hegel does, that any contingency of the past is not contingent at all but necessary in the way of history’s progression. From early on, epic as the genre of telling, constituting, and passing on a history becomes particularly appropriate for history, and epic poets were considered historians or those who know the past, because epic tells about the “absolute past.” One can, however, narrate, reconstruct, or interpret the past differently, by telling a new or differing story about the names, things, and events that have been preserved and still work in a history in which we would like to live. Yet, history is not just about the past: it is about the past for the sake of the present. Similarly the grammatical infinitive distinguishing a verb of state from that of action, history—always as a history—translates past action into a present state. History recollects and reinterprets the past for and into the present, and thus makes historical being possible.

Notes Preface 1

2

3

4

5

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l’Histoire universelle à Monsieur le Dauphin, pour expliquer la suite de la Religion et les changements des empires, depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à l’empire de Charlemagne (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1681). Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1767. Condorcet is the author of the manifesto of the Enlightenment non-theological interpretation of social and political progress as driven by the progress of knowledge, science, and technology: Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind (Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain [Paris: Flammarion, 1988], 265–86 et passim; orig. publ. 1795). “Individual people and even entire nations little think that, while they are pursuing their own ends, each according to its own understanding and often in opposition to others, they are unwittingly instructed in their advance by the end of nature (Naturabsicht), which is unknown to them …” (Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss, 2nd ed., 41–53 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 41; trans. mod). On the identification of nature with providence (Vorsehung), see ibid., 53. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie und Pädagogik, vol. 12 of Werkausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 31–50. See also an excellent discussion of Kant’s philosophy of history in Christoph Horn, Nichtideale Normativität: Ein neuer Blick auf Kants politische Philosophie (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014), 241–56. See George Dennis O’Brien, Hegel on Reason and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 159–64; Joseph McCarne, Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000), 173–9; Fredrick Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); John Zammito, “Philosophy of History: The German Tradition from Herder to Marx,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790–1870), ed. Allen W. Wood and Songsuk Susan Hahn, 817–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). “L’histoire est affaire d’entendement; elle ne présente que des difficultés de détail.

176 Notes

6

7

8 9

Elle n’a pas de méthode, ce qui veut dire que sa méthode est innée,” (Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit l’histoire [Paris: Seuil, 1971], 132; see also 200–3). Philippe Ariès, Le temps de l’histoire, with a preface by Roger Chartier (Monaco: Rocher, 1954; repr. Paris: Seuil, 1986), 44–68 et passim. Cf. Frank Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 250: “Political history is prototypical of all history.” Tom Rockmore, On Constructivist Epistemology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 112–4. Historicism “is the view that the nature of a thing lies in its history.” (Ankersmit, Meaning, Truth, and Reference, 1). Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1993), xxiii. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Der Anfang der Philosophie (Stuttgart: Philip Reclam, 1996), 18–19. In his Truth and Method, Gadamer outlines non-historical grounds for hermeneutical interpretation and understanding of texts or works of art. Such grounds, however, might themselves be considered historical, since interpretation for Gadamer is always only an interpretation, and understanding—only a different understanding, which should then include his own hermeneutical project.

Chapter 1: The structures of history 1

“I will say no more, except to add that I have described in detail every incident which I either witnessed myself or heard about immediately after the event, when reports were most likely to be accurate. It is for you to select what best suits your purpose, for there is a great difference between a letter to a friend and history written for all to read.” (Pliny, Letters, Books I–VII, vol. 1 of Letters and Panegyricus, trans. Betty Radice [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969], 432–5). Cf. the account of the notion of the “self ” in modernity in Charles Taylor, 2 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 3 Plato, Legg. 721 b–c: humans strive toward immortality, athanasia, through fame and their descendants, whereby they remain eternally the same and one being (tauton kai hen on aei), which is how humans overcome becoming. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the 4 Technological Age, trans. Hans Jonas with D. Herr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); orig. publ. as: Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1979). 5 Aristotle, Anal. post. 92 b 4 sqq., et al.

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See Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Recognition or Redistribution? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christian Wilke (New York: Verso, 2003). 7 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie II, vol. 19 of Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 17. 8 A fine example of history is Banu Bargu’s Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), which preserves a very detailed list of everyone in prison who sacrificed their life for fighting for freedom (310–25), and supplies a refined and detailed narrative, or fabula, of such struggle. 9 See Massimiliano Tomba, Marx’s Temporalities (Leiden: Brill, 2012). According to Reinhart Koselleck, the term “Geschichte” was still used in plural in the German language until the end of the eighteenth century. See Reinhart Koselleck, “Is There an Acceleration of History?” in High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity, ed. H. Rosa and W. E. Scheuermann, 113–34 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). 10 Plato, Tim. 21 e sqq. 11 As Aristotle says, the “things said” (mythoi) in poetry must be about one action (praxis), and be whole and complete, as in a living being (Poet. 1459a 17–21). 12 Plato, RP 359 c–360 b, 612 b; cf. Cicero, De officiis III.8.39. 13 “Narratio est rerum gestarum aut ut gestarum expositio. Fabula est in qua nec verae nec veri similes res continentur. Historia est gesta res, ab aetatis nostra memoria remota. Argumentum est ficta res, quae tamen fieri potuit.” (Cicero, De inventione, trans. H. M. Hubbell [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949], I.19.27). 14 Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale, trans. Laurence Scott, with an introduction by Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968); 2nd ed. revised and edited with a preface by Louis A. Wagner, with a new introduction by Alan Dundes; Viktor Shklovsky, Knight’s Move, trans. Richard Sheldon (Normal-London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005). Baumgarten distinguishes between historical, poetic, and mixed fabulae. In terms of the ancient genre distinctions, fabula for him is a kind of story told in epic, whereas the fable of Aesop and Phaedrus is fabella. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Ästhetik, ed. Dagmar Mirbach, 2 vols (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2007), vol. 1, 502–4; vol. 2, 1011. 15 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 448. 16 Ágnes Heller, “European Master Narratives About Freedom,” in Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory, ed. G. Delanty, 257–65 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 258. 6

178 Notes 17 18 19 20

21

22

23

24

25

See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 165–8. Cf. Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. XI. See Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 18–19. Rudolph Bultmann, Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 34. Teleology is embedded in the very “idea of a divine providence giving to the whole of man’s historical time the unity of a plan of salvation,” (Hannah Arendt, “The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern,” in Between Past and Future, 41–90, 284–9 [New York: Penguin, 1977; 1st ed. Viking, 1961], 65). Voltaire, however, vigorously denies it in his Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations (1756). See Pierre Force, “Voltaire and the Necessity of Modern History,” Modern Intellectual History 6 (2009), 457–84. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1956), 53; “… die Weltgeschichte ist die Darstellung des göttlichen, absoluten Prozesses des Geistes in seinen höchsten Gestalten, dieses Stufenganges, wodurch er seine Wahrheit, das Selbstbewußtsein über sich erlangt,” (G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, vol. 12 of Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980], 73). “World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom,” (G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History: A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. R. S. Hartmann. [Indianapolis: LLA, 1953], 24); “Die Weltgeschichte ist der Fortschritt in Bewußtsein der Freiheit,” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 32). Cf.: “Universal history … shows the development of the consciousness of freedom on the part of spirit, and of the consequent realization of that freedom,” (Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 63); “Die Weltgeschichte stellt nun den Stufengang der Entwicklung des Prinzips, dessen Gehalt das Bewußtsein der Freiheit ist, dar,” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 73). See also Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971); Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty (New York: W. W. Norton, 1941); Herbert Marcuse, Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, trans. Seyla Benhabib (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 276–91 et passim. Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Th. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), sec. 331, 52–3. See also Dmitri Nikulin, Metaphysik und Ethik (München: C. H. Beck, 1996), 38–47. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 14–35. For Castoriadis, history is a creation of totalizing forms of human life, i.e., of institutionalized societies, through which people construct the world. See Cornelius Castoriadis, Ce qui fait la Grèce. 1. D’Homère à Héraclite

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(Paris: Seuil, 2004), 40 et passim. One might object, however, that the institutions themselves already come as a result and thus after a world and a history are produced. 26 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 28. 27 “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” (Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer [Garden City: Anchor Books, 1959], 245). Noteworthily, Merleau-Ponty takes it that “Marx did not speak of an end of history but of an end to prehistory,” (Maurice MerleauPonty, Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. J. Bien [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], 5). In other words, only after a jumbled prehistory does there come history proper, which can already be strictly cognized and ordered accordingly. 28 It might be worth noting that modernity generated two ways of getting history back on track, making it correspond to its end through revolution. The English and American revolutions are based on the idea of human nature as evil, which has to be restrained from affecting ourselves and others through a system of restrictive normative laws, or checks and balances. Contrary to this, the French and Russian revolutions presupposed that human nature is good, and that it must be restored and liberated from the oppression of a wrongly developed civilization. 29 See Collingwood, The Idea of History, 1. 30 As Michelet, one of the founders of contemporary historiography and the author of the many-volume Histoire de France, remarks (Journal des idées, 1826): “De l’unité de l’histoire du genre humain. Si Dieu est infini, infiniment prévoyant, sage, l’histoire du monde est un système,” (Jules Michelet, Écrits de jeunesse, ed. P. Viallaneix [Paris: Gallimard, 1954], 237). 31 Adorno stresses the discontinuity and rupture of universal history (Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton [New York: Continuum, 1973], 319–20). Still, even as discontinuous, history remains unified. 32 F. W. J. Schelling, “Ist eine Philosophie der Geschichte möglich?” in vol. 1 of Ausgewählte Schriften, 295–304 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985). 33 Cf. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

Chapter 2: Early history 1

Felix Jacoby, “Hekataios,” in Griechische Historiker, 185–237 (Stuttgart: Alfred Druckenmüller Verlag, 1956); “Hellanikos,” in Griechische Historiker, 262–87. See also Lionel Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

180 Notes 1939), 25–108 and William A. Heidel, “Hecataeus and Xenophanes,” American Journal of Philology LXIV (1943) 257–77; esp. 260–6. 2 Aelian, Varia hist. XIII.20. 3 See Felix Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker von F. Jacoby. Erster Teil. Genealogie und Mythographie (Leiden: Brill, 1957; 1st publ. Berlin, 1923) and G. Nenci, ed., Hecatei Milesii Fragmenta (Firenze: La nuova Italia editrice, 1954). 4 Hannah Arendt, “The Concept of History,” in Between Past and Future, 41–90, 284–9 (New York: Penguin, 1977; 1st publ. Viking, 1961), 41: “Greek poetry and historiography saw the meaning of the event in some surpassing greatness justifying its remembrance by posterity.” See also ibid., 64. Herodotus wants to preserve all great deeds of the past worth remembering, whether committed by Greeks or Barbarians, which is why sometimes he was reproached for Philobarbarism. Polybius I.1.2. 5 6 Livy I, Praef. 10. 7 See Joachim Latacz, ed., Die griechische Literatur in Text und Darstellung. Bd. 1: Archaische Periode (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1998). 8 See Dmitri Nikulin, Dialectic and Dialogue (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 119–52. 9 Hecataeus, Frg. XLV–XLVI Nenci; Acusilaus, A 4 DK. Thus, for Aelian (Varia hist. XII.8.20 = Hecataeus, Frg. XXXI Nenci) Hecataeus is a “historian” par excellence, as Pythagoras is the philosopher, and Homer is the poet. 10 Hecataeus, Frg. XIX Nenci; Hellanicus T 2 Jacoby. See also Xenophon, Hellenica VII.2.1; Plato, Phaedr. 272 b and Strabo XIII.2.4. 11 “Empedocles was the last great Presocratic cosmologist to write in verse. After Parmenides the usual medium of philosophical writers was prose: this is true of the later Eleatics Zeno and Melissus, of the natural philosophers Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Leucippus, and Democritus, and of the later Pythagoreans Philolaus and Archytas, as well as of the host of lesser cosmologists,” (G. E. R. Lloyd, Methods and Problems in Greek Science [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 135). 12 Hecataeus, Frg. T1 Jacoby = Frg. XLV Nenci. Frg. Frg. II–IV, XXIII, XXV, XXXII, XXXIV–XXXV, XLVIII, 24, 313–14, 321 Nenci. 13 Isocrates struggles against using the poetic style as a paradigm for prose (F. Jacoby, Griechische Historiker, 226). And Ephoros wrote Peri lexeōs, which treated the rhythm of prosaic style. 14 Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, trans. Horace Leonard Jones, based in part upon the unfinished version of John Robert Sitlington Sterrett, 8 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989; 1st ed. 1917), I.2.6. 15 Hesiod T121 Most.

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16 “polymathiē noon ekhein ou didaskei,” (Heraclitus, B 40 DK, ap. Diog. Laert. VIII.6; cf. B 35 DK). See also Plato, Legg. 811 a, 819 a (polymathia); 936 d (kakotekhnia). 17 “polynoiēn, ou polymathiēn askeein khrē,” (Democritus, B 65 DK). 18 Hellanicus, Frg. T13 Jacoby. 19 See Eduard Schwartz, Griechische Geschichtsschreiber (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1957), 235–9. 20 François Hartog, Mémoire d’Ulysse. Récits sur la frontière en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 98–9. 21 “ho prōtos physiologias arxas,” (Strabo XIV.1.7). 22 FGrH 2 Jacoby. 23 Cf. FGrH 2 Jacoby; Acusilaus, B 1–B 40 DK; Thucydides II.36.1. 24 Hesiod, Theog. 369–70, cf. 337–45. 25 Fernand Braudel, “Histoire et sciences sociales: la longue durée,” Annales E.S.C. 13 4 (1958), 725–53 (repr. in Fernand Braudel, Écrits sur l’histoire [Paris: Flammarion, 1969], 41–83). 26 The English “wit,” “witness,” the German wissen, and Russian видеть and ведать, all derive from the same root as the Greek eidos and Latin video. 27 Cf. historiēisi eidenai (Weisman), “to know through questioning or investigation.” Etymologically, historia is Kenntnis, Erzählung (Frisk) and exploration, connaissance, récit, histoire (Boisacq). Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bd. I. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960), 740–1; Émile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Heidelberg: Carl Winter-Paris: Klincksieck, 1916), 385; А. Д. Вейсманъ, Греческо-русскiй словарь (СПб: Изд. автора, 1899). 28 “ekaleito de hē geōmetria … historia,” (Iamblichus. De vita Pyth. 52.11 Deubner). (Iamblichus, De vita Pythagorica liber, ed. L. Deubner, rev’d. U. Klein. [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1975; 1st publ. 1937]). Cf. Diog. Laert. VIII.6. 29 “peri tēs psykhēs historia[n],” (Aristotle, De an. 402a 3–4). 30 Cf. Max Pohlenz, Herodot. Der erste Geschichtsschreiber des Abendlandes (LeipzigBerlin: B. G. Teubner, 1937), 43–5. 31 A histōr is “one who knows law and right,” a “judge”; “knowing,” “learned”; “witness” (in a Boeotian inscription) (LSJ); sciens, peritus (“the one who knows,” “skilled,” Ast); Wissende, Zeuge (Pappe); qui sait, juge (Boisacq); wissend is related to idyioi, Zeugen, and “witnesses” (Hofmann); der Wisser (Frisk); “one who sees and knows ,” “one familiar with the facts” (Edwards); celui qui sait pour avoir vu ou appris, temoin, arbitre (Chantraine), wissend, kundig. See Lexikon der frühgriechischen Epos. Bd. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), col. 1253; J. B. Hofmann, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Griechischen (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1949), 126; G. S. Kirk, ed. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5, bks 17–20 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 216–17; Pierre

182 Notes Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. T. II. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970), 472; Lexicon Platonicum, sive vocum Platonicarum index. Condidit D. F. Astius. Vol. II (Lipsiae: Weidmann, 1835; repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1956), 109. 32 “… The meaning ‘witness’ does not fit very well here,” (M. W. Edwards. Comm. ad loc). That the Homeric historian is a judge is also stressed by Hannah Arendt. She, however, needs the historian to be solely a judge, because it suits her conception of thinking qua judgment: “If judgment is our faculty for dealing with the past the historian is the inquiring man who by relating it sits in the judgment over it,” (Hannah Arendt, Thinking, vol. 1 of The Life of the Mind [San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1978; 1st ed. 1971], 216). 33 West takes histōr as “wise” or “learned.” Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. M. L. West (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 357. 34 Theuth is a sui generis witness to Thamus as a judge in Plato, Phaedrus 274 b sqq. 35 Hecataeus, Frg. T 12 Jacoby = XXXIV Nenci. 36 Akoē also allows one to tell a myth: cf. Socrates’ akoē in Plato, Phaedr. 274 c. 37 Hecataeus, Frg. 18 Nenci. 38 Herodotus III.2–3; IV.5; IV.96; IV.8, et al. 39 “… quamquam et apud Herodotum patrem historiae et apud Theopompum sunt innumerabiles fabulae,” (Cicero, De legibus, I.1.5). 40 See also Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography (1961),” in Studies in Historiography, 127–42 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). The attitude toward Herodotus is summed up by Momigliano as: “Either he had concealed his sources, and was a plagiarist, or he had invented the facts and was a liar,” (ibid., 131). Cicero (De divinatione II.116) accuses Herodotus of having fabricated the Delphic oracle concerning Croesus’ question of whether he should wage war against Cyrus (Herodotus I.46–53). 41 Cf. Hesiod, Theog. 27. 42 “tade graphō, hōs moi dokei alēthea einai: hoi gar Hellēnōn logoi polloi te kai geloioi, hōs emoi phainontai, eisin,” (Hecataeus, Genealogiai, Bk. I, Prooimion, Frg. 1 Nenci; cf. Strabo VII.3.6). 43 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. by R. Warner, ed. M. I. Finley (New York: Penguin, 1972), 48. 44 Cf., however: Darien Shanske, Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 22 sqq.; 157–8 (the discussion of ta deonta, “what is appropriate”). 45 Heraclitus, B 101, B 115 DK. 46 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 47. 47 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1989; 1st ed. 1975), 278 sqq.

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Leopold von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History, trans. W. A. Iggers and K. von Moltke, ed. G. C. Iggers and K. von Moltke (Indianapolis-New York: BobbsMerrill, 1973), 38–42. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 195 sqq. 49 Plato, Phaedr. 245 c–246 a; Phaedo 70 c–107 b. 50 Hecataeus, Frg. F 10 Nenci. 51 Hesiod, Theog. 530, cf. 32. 52 “kai meu kleos ouranon hikei,” (Homer, Od. 9.20; cf. Il. 4.197; 5.3; 9.413 [“kleos aphthiton,” “fame imperishable”] et al.). Kleos is “bruit qui court” in Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, vol. II, 510) and also “réputation, renom, gloire”; cf. Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique, 467. See Gregory Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 122–42, for parallel in Rig-Veda. 53 Kleos is mostly used with positive connotations. In Thucydides (II.45.2), doxa means both “rumor” and “fame”: thus, Pericles speaks of “great fame,” megalē hē doxa. See Lexikon der frühgriechischen Epos. Bd. 2, col. 1438–40. 54 Cf. Kirillov in Dostoevsky’s Demons (Pt. I, Ch. 3, VIII): “God is the pain of the fear of death.” 55 Homer, Il. 7.91; 12.243–6; 18.115–21. Immortalization of a hero leads to his doubling: Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, with a new preface by William Chester Jordan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997; first publ. 1957), 500–3. Cf. Herodotus II.44 who praises the Greek cities that established two cults to Heracles, one as immortal, and the other as dead hero. 56 Plato, Menex. 247 d. 57 Homer, Il. 6.208; 11.784. 58 Cf. Montesqieu’s famous division in De l’esprit des lois of three forms of government: republic (based on virtue in a small city or polis), monarchy (based on honor in a mid-sized country), and despotism (based on fear in a big country) is too schematic and does not take into consideration that honor and virtue in “premodern” times always presuppose each other as well as the fear of nothingness. 59 Hesiod, Theog. 112, 414, et al.; Simonides. Frg. 5 Diehl. (E. Diehl, ed., Anthologia lyrica graeca, 2 vols. [Lipsiae: Teubner, 1925]). 60 Plato, Symp. 208 c–e. 61 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §§ 345, 348. 62 See Dmitri Nikulin, On Dialogue (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 249–50. 63 Arendt, “The Concept of History,” 64–7. 48

184 Notes

Chapter 3: The epic of history Hannah Arendt, Thinking, 132–3. See Anne Carson, Economy of the Unlost (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 38–44 et passim. 3 Hannah Arendt, “The Concept of History,” in Between Past and Future, 41–90, 284–9 (New York: Penguin, 1977; 1st ed. Viking, 1961), 44­–6. “Herodotus wanted ‘to say what is’ (legein ta eonta), because saying and writing stabilize the futile and perishable, ‘fabricate a memory’ for it, in Greek idiom: mnēmēn poieisthai; yet he never would have doubted that each thing that is or was carries its meaning within itself and needs only the word to make it manifest (logois dēloin, ‘to disclose through words’), to ‘display the great deeds in public,’ apodeixis ergōn megalōn,” (ibid., 46). 4 Plato, Ion 530 b sqq. Livy, I, Praef. 3. 5 6 Aristotle, Poet. 1451b 4–7. Cf. Livy. I, Praef. 6. 7 Aristotle, Poet. 1459b 14–32, in reference to tragedy, although the same may be said about epic and history. 8 Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971); orig. publ. as Die Theorie des Romans (Berlin: P. Cassirer, 1920). 9 “Epopoiia … mimēsis einai spoudaiōn,” (Aristotle, Poet. 1449b 9–10). Epic shares “seriousness” with tragedy but differs from tragedy in meter. 10 Plato, RP 394 a–c. 11 Cf. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Epic and the Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel” (1941), in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, ed. M. Holquist, 3–40 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 12 For an extended discussion of this, see Dmitri Nikulin, Comedy, Seriously: A Philosophical Study (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 13 Aristotle, Poet. 1455b 15–16; 1456a 12; 1459b 26–8. 14 The plot can also be (pre)conceived in an ordered way: see the discussion of the “geometric pattern” in the Iliad: Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 249–84. 15 Aristotle, Poet. 1459a 30; cf. 1451a 19 sqq. 16 Alberto Bernabé, ed., Poetae et epici Graeci. Testimonia et fragmenta. Pars I. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1987), 36–64. See also Martin L. West, trans. and ed. Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 17 Aristotle, Poet. 1460a 5–11.

1 2

Notes

185

See Werner Jaeger, Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 1989; Bd. I–III, orig. publ. 1933–47). 19 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London-New York: Routledge, 1988; 1st publ. 1982), 136–48; cf. Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990; orig. publ. 1957), 248–50, 293–303. Jolles distinguished nine oral narrative “simple forms.” See André Jolles, Formes simples, trans. A. M. Buguet (Paris: Seuil, 1972); orig. publ. as: Einfache Formen. Legende, Sage, Mythe, Rätsel, Spruch, Kasus, Memorabile, Märchen, Witz (Halle: Saale, 1930). Cf. Robert Scholles, Structuralism in Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 47. 20 “Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare poetae …” (Horace, Ars poetica 333). 21 Gilbert Murray, The Rise of Greek Epic, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934; 1st ed. 1907), 195–237. Cf. Denys L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959), which attempts to reconstruct a real history and geography behind the descriptions of the Iliad. 22 For a defense of the importance of narrative, similar to ordinary discourse, to history, see David Carr, Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 211–23. 23 For a (semiotic) comparison of literary and historical discourses, see T. Todorov, “Les catégories du récit litteraire,” in L’analyse structurale du récit, 131–57 (Paris: Seuil, 1981), esp. 134–8 (history as a narrative about a succession of actions and its models). Cf. also Roland Barthes, Michelet (Paris: Seuil, 1995; 1st ed. 1954). 24 F. W. J. Schelling, “Ist eine Philosophie der Geschichte möglich?,” in vol. 1 of Ausgewählte Schriften, 295–304 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 304. 25 Cf. Plotinus, Enn. III.2.17.27 sqq. 26 Cf. Diodorus Siculus, I.4.6 (not yet published books: “hai bibloi de mekhri tou nun anekdotoi tugkhanousin ousai”) and Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum 14.17.6. 27 Pliny, Epist. VI.16.22. 28 The very beginning of the first written history, that of Hecataeus’ Genealogiai, is: “Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus” (hōde mytheitai), (Hecataeus, Frg. 1 Nenci). 29 “poll’ oid’ alōpēx, all’ ekhinos hen mega,” (Archilochus, Frg. 201 West). 30 See Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Cultures, with a foreword by Wendy Doniger (New York: Schocken Books, 1979); Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); Gregory Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 85–265; Chiara Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 31 Ludwig Rademacher, Mythos und Sage bei den Griechen, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968; 1st ed. 1938), 11 sqq. 18

186 Notes 32 Plato, Prot. 320 c. 33 Gen. 6.9. Cf. the myth of Deucalion, ap. Hellanicus. F 117–21 Jacoby; Apollodorus, Bibl. I.7.2; and Ammianus Marcellinus 26.10.15-9. 34 F. W. J. Schelling, “Ist eine Philosophie der Geschichte möglich?,” 303. 35 Pindar, Ol. II.25–8; Apollodorus, Bibl. II.5.3; cf. Hesiod, Theog. 940-2; Pausanias II.37.5. 36 Menander, Menander Rhetor, trans. and ed. D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 16–18. 37 Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian” (1950), in Studies in Historiography, 1–39; 5–6 et passim. 38 According to Johan Gerhard Vossius, De philologia liber (1650), “Historia civilis comprehendit antiquitates, memorias et historiam iustam. Antiquitates sunt reliquiae antiqui temporis, tabellis alicuius naufragii non absimiles,” (cited in Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” 7). 39 Terminologically, historiographos, or a writer about things past, a “chronicler,” is opposed to syggrapheus, or a writer of contemporary history (LSJ). 40 Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” 25. In a different way, the notion of antiquarian history (as opposed to monumental and critical history) was appropriated by Nietzsche. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,” in Unfashionable Observations (Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), trans. Richard T. Gray, 83–167 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). The distinction between an antiquarian and a historiographer parallels that between the fox and the hedgehog in Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953).

Chapter 4: The Homer galaxy 1 2

Osip Mandelstam, Kamen’ (Leningrad: Nauka, 1990), p. 73. See, for example, Frederick A. G. Beck, Greek Education. 450–350 B.C. (London: Methuen, 1964), 35–8; R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer’s Iliad (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970) (provides a detailed commentary to each entry in Homer); T. W. Allen, The Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921); Denys L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959), ch. 4; Martin L. West, “Frühere Interpolationen in der Ilias,” Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. I. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 4 (1999), 3–11; William W. Minton, “Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 93 (1962), 188–212; Mark W. Edwards, “The Structure of Homeric Catalogues,”

Notes

187

Transactions of the American Philological Association 110 (1980), 81–105. On the catalogue scholarship and on various types of catalogues in Homer see Benjamin Sammons, The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4–22, 135–96 et passim. Catalogues are abundant in later literature, particularly in the accounts of epic stories, e.g., Apollodorus, Bibl. III.7.2, et al. 3 Cf. W. H. Auden, “Making and Judging Poetry,” The Atlantic Monthly 199 (1957), 44–52; 48. Elaborate catalogues, some of which contain more then twenty items, play an important role in Pushkin. His poetic catalogues seem to (1) present an integral picture through a practically verbless and rhythmically organized description, by simple enumeration of things or people; (2) depict a dynamic picture by presenting things in succession and motion; and (3) almost always imply ironic overtones. Examples from Eugene Onegin include: “Лай, хохот, пенье, свист и хлоп/ Людская молвь и конский топ!” (V, 17); “Обоз обычный, три кибитки/ Везут домашние пожитки,/ Кастрюльки, стулья, сундуки,/ Варенье в банках, тюфяки,/ Перины: клетки с петухами,/ Горшки, тазы et cetera,/ Ну, много всякого добра.” (VII, 31); “… вот уж по Тверской/ Возок несется чрез ухабы./ Мелькают мимо будки, бабы,/ Мальчишки, лавки, фонари,/ Дворцы, сады, монастыри,/ Бухарцы, сани, огороды,/ Купцы, лачужки, мужики,/ Бульвары, башни, казаки,/ Аптеки, магазины моды,/ Балконы, львы на воротах./ И стаи галок на крестах,” (VII, 38; cf. VII, 51 and VII, 53). 4 Charles R. Beye, “Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68 (1964), 345–73. 5 Aristotle, Poet. 1459a 36: “neōn de katalogon doxeis m’erein.” Apollodorus Comicus, CAF III.292, frg. 13.17 (Thomas Kock, ed., Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, 3 vols [Leipzig: Teubner, 1880–8]). 6 Herodotus, VI.8-9. 7 Hesiod, Fragmenta Hesiodea, ed. R. Merkelbach and Martin L. West (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967); Theogonia, Opera et dies, Scutum, ed. Friedrich Solmsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Fragmenta selecta, ed. R. Merkelbach and Martin L. West (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments, ed. and trans. G. W. Most (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Cf. Martin L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). There is a close parallel between the catalogue of women and the two mentioned catalogues of women in the Theogony, whose last two lines (Theog. 1021-1022) coincide with the first two opening lines of the Ehoiai. G. S. Kirk, ed., The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1, books 1–4 (Cambridge: 8 Cambridge University Press, 1985), 168–263.

188 Notes 9

Minton, “Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer,” 188. Cf. the Orphic hymn To Musaeus. 10 Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 74–111, esp. 83, 90–102. For Goody, the very passage from oral to written culture comes with the possibility of a reliable word for word transmission, which is why written cultures are always based on lists. And vice versa, lists begin with writing. However, oral cultures are also extremely efficient in the use and transmitting of lists of names, things, and events—by means of poetry. 11 Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. S. Rendall and E. Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 61. 12 Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 19. Cf.: “accumulation of documents, and their bureaucratic use, made more people literate,” (ibid., 21). 13 Donald J. Wiseman, “Books of the Ancient Near East in the Old Testament,” in From the Beginnings to Jerome, vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, 30–47 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 45; Thorkild Jakobsen, The Sumerian King List (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 71–127; 165–90. 14 Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, 89. 15 The catalogue tradition has a mainland origin (probably Boeotian), which is foreign to the Ionian form of heroic song. In the catalogue of ships, the description of the Boeotians’ is one of the longest and most detailed. 16 Cf. Diog. Laert. I.57. 17 Thomas B. L. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer (London: Methuen, 1964; 1st publ. 1958), 273–5. 18 Virgil, Aeneid 7.641–803. 19 Beye, “Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues,” 351, 371. 20 Minton, “Invocation and Catalogue in Hesiod and Homer,” 190, 210. 21 Ibid., 209–10. 22 According to Charles R. Beye (“Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues,” 347–8), the battle lists that are similar to catalogues in their structure, contain (1) the basic information (that X killed Y), (2) additional data about the hero, and (3) a contextual elaboration of the basic information (the details of how exactly X killed Y). However, (2) and (3) both fall within the fabula. According to M. W. Edwards, the structure of Hesiod’s catalogue of the suitors of Helen (the Catalogue of Women, frg. 197–204 Merkelbach-West = 154a–156 Most) is also tripartite: (1) the name of a suitor and his origin (X came as a suitor from Y), (2) a list of gifts, and (3) his intentions. Again, (2) and (3) constitute the fabula of the story told, which may contain numerous elements.

Notes

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Geoffrey S. Kirk, Homer and the Oral Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976; repr. 2010), 4; Boris Tomashevsky, Poetica (Moscow: CC, 1996), 97. 24 Eugenius Abel, ed., Orphica (Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1885). 25 E.g., Eumelus, Frg. 34, 35 West; Hegesinous, Atthis West. 26 Hesiod, Theog. 52–62; 915–917; Hymn. Hom. 4.429–430. In later Neoplatonic interpretations, Zeus becomes reason or nous and is being; cf. Plotinus, Enn. III.5.8.5–11 and Plato, Phil. 30 d. The word “Muse” may be Lydian in origin: Roberto Gusmani, Lydisches Wörterbuch. Mit grammatischer Skizze und Inschriftensammlung (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1964), 275. See also Reinhart Herzog, “Zur Genealogie der Memoria,” in Memoria: Vergessen und Erinnern, ed. Anselm Haverkamp and Renate Lachmann, 3–8 (München: Fink, 1993). 27 Homer, Il. 2.484–492; cf. 16.112. Cf. also Plato, RP 545 d; Plotinus. Enn. III.7.11.7–10. 28 Homer, “To the Muses and Apollo,” in Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer, trans. and ed. Martin L. West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 206. 29 Virgil, Aeneid 7.641–6. 30 Democritus, B 17, B 18 DK; cf. B 21 DK. The divine poetic inspiration, enthousiasmos, is rendered by Cicero as inflammatio animorum and furor (Cicero, De orat. II.46.194; De divin. I.38.80). 31 Plato, Phaedr. 245 a, 265 b; Ion 533 d–534 d et passim; Apol. 22 b–c; cf. Tim. 71 e. “Musical” inspiration is guided by love or Eros: Symp. 197 b; Phaedr. 248 d. Cf. also Aristotle, Pol. 1349a 9–11 and modern philippics against (religious) “enthusiasm” in Locke’s Essay IV 19, 6–9. 32 Plato, Crat. 406 a; RP 499 d, 546 a sqq; Tim. 73 a; Phil. 67 b. 33 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 78, 174–9. As Ong argues, writing restructures consciousness and is an expression of inwardness, while orality can produce works beyond the reach of literate culture. Although contemporary internet culture is a written one, it also has distinctive features of the oral—in the form of forums, blogs, and emails, which all allow for a feedback and thus are a kind of postponed quasi-oral communication. For Ong, electronic media constitute a “secondary orality”: “This new orality has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas,” (ibid., 135–6). See also Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1962), 58–9; and Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 127 sqq. et passim. 34 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 23

190 Notes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 14 et passim; Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Ong criticizes Derrida’s deconstructive approach for its being “tied to typography rather than … merely to writing,” (Ong, Orality and Literacy, 77, 123; “Derrida’s logomachy”). 35 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 36–57, sometimes in reference to Jack Goody and Ian P. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1962–1963), 304–45. 36 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 101. 37 Cf. Justinian, Institutiones I.1: “Iuris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere.” 38 Michel de Certeau opposes the experience of history to written history as a practice: the former is a live process (often oral), whereas the latter presupposes a distance between the past and the present, and comes in the form of historiography as a written reflection on history. See Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 19–55. Cf. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 15. 39 Livy, IV.23.2–3. 40 See Kirk, Homer and the Oral Tradition, 19–39; Berkley Peabody, The Winged Word: A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally through Hesiod’s Works and Days (Albany: SUNY Press, 1975), 1–19 et passim. 41 E.g., Plutarch, De E apud Delphos 388 E. 42 Milman Parry, “Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making,” in The Making of the Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, 266–364 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), esp. 325–64. Formula is “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea,” (ibid., 272). See also Albert B. Lord, “Homer’s Originality: Oral Dictated Texts,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 84 (1953), 124–34, 128, 133; and “Perspectives on Recent Work in Oral Literature,” in Oral Literature, ed. J. J. Duggan, 1–24 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975). 43 Parry, “Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Verse-Making,” 269. 44 On the transmission of Homeric formulae, see Cecil Maurice Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1961; 2nd rev. ed., repr. 2000), 23, 79–81 et passim. 45 “parapsogous … en metrōi … mnēmēs kharin,” (Plato, Phaedr. 267 a). 46 Athenaeus 11.498 b–c; Hecataeus, Frg. XXIII Nenci; Aristeas T 1 Jacoby; Plato, Symp. 177 a, Lysis 204 d. 47 See Arnaldo Momigliano, “Historiography on Written Tradition and

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Historiography on Oral Tradition,” in Studies in Historiography, 211–20 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). 48 Michael von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius with Special Regard to Its Influence on World Literature, vol. 1. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 631. Thus, the Law of the XII tablets was written, and thus codified, only in the middle of the fifth century bce. 49 Cf. Heraclitus, B 114 DK: human laws all depend on one divine law (theios nomos), which rules everything and extends its authority as far as it wishes. In a sense, Socrates in various ways assimilates himself to Lycurgus, whose law, reportedly received directly from the divinity in Delphi, was oral and kept as unwritten. Cf. Plutarch, Lycurgus 29.1–11 and Herodotus I.29. 50 As Heraclitus says, people should fight for the law as for the city wall (B 44 DK). 51 Lilian H. Jeffrey, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and Its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C., ed. A. W. Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 59. Although in Sumer early legal codes were already written. See L. Adolph Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977; 1st ed. 1964), 232. 52 Hermogenes, De Stat. 2 (Hermogenes, Opera, ed. H. Rabe [Leipzig: Teubner, 1913, repr. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969]). 53 Eric A. Havelock, Origins of Western Literacy (Toronto: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976); Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982; 1st ed. 1963); The Literate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 3–38 et passim; The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). See also John Halverson, “Havelock on Greek Orality and Literacy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992), 148–63. 54 In contemporary philosophy, Wittgenstein always looks for a compromise in writing that points toward something unutterable or Unasspechliches (Tractatus 6.522 et sqq.) or expressible only partially in an aphorism (Philosophical Investigations). 55 Cf. G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 3–27. 56 Hegel, Enc. § 549. 57 Holger Sonnabend, Geschichte der antiken Biographie. Von Isokrates bis zur Historia Augusta (Stuttgart–Weimar: Metzler, 2002), 32–59. 58 See Georg Misch, “Begriff und Ursprung der Autobiographie [1907/1949],” in Die Autobiographie. Zu Form und Geschichte einer literarischen Gattung, ed. G. Niggl (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), 33–54; Geschichte der

192 Notes Autobiographie, Erster Band: Das Altertum, Erste Hälfte, 3rd ed. (Bern: Francke, 1949; 1st publ. 1907). 59 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Selections from A Treatise on Human Nature, with Hume’s Autobiography and A Letter from Adam Smith (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1963), v–xvi. 60 Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian and Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian, trans. Grace Frick with Marguerite Yourcenar (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1963; orig. publ. 1951). 61 George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 B.C.– A.D. 300 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 287–8. 62 Plato, Phaedr. 274 b sqq. 63 Cf. the genre of ephēmeris, that of a diary, journal, or military record. A “personal organizer” was kept by Alexander’s staff: Arrian, Anabasis 7.25.1. 64 Marinus, Vita Procli 38. 65 Cf. Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Feyerabend’s autobiography was published a year after his death but its text is still incomplete at the moment when he is facing his end: “That is what I would like to happen, not intellectual survival but the survival of love,” (ibid., 181). 66 Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 66.

Chapter 5: The logos of history 1 2

3 4 5

Jorge Luis Borges, “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,” in Selected Non-Fictions, ed. E. Weinberger (New York: Viking, 1999), 231. A comic example of an inventory list: in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Viola jokingly promises to provide a list of the features of her face as an attachment to her will: “I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labeled to my will:—as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids on them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth,” (Act I, Sc. V, 246–51). Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, 74–111, esp. 80–90. The list of ephors was created either by Lycurgus (Herodotus I.65; Diog. Laert. I.68) or by Theopompus (Aristotle, Pol. 1313a 27). See Aristotle, Athēnaiōn politeia, ed. Thomas Thalheim (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914), 2.14 sqq.; Michael Rostovtzeff, Greece, trans. J. D. Duff, ed. E. J. Bickerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 76; William B. Dinsmoor, The Archons of Athens in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931;

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repr. 1966); The Athenian Archon List in the Light of Recent Discoveries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939; repr. 1974); Debra Hamel, Athenian Generals: Military Authority in the Classical Period (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 140–57 (the list of deposed Athenian strategoi). The lists of Olympic victors, Spartan ephors, and Athenian and Parian archons are known from Hellanicus, Hippias, and Charon of Lampsacus. The practice of preserving the names of those who held secular or religious offices or won a prize at a local festival is known to have occurred at least as early as the sixth century bce. See Lilian H. Jeffrey, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and Its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C., ed. A. W. Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 59–61. In the Aeolis and on Lesbos, every city had a list of its kings and magistrates. 6 Plutarch, Lycurgus 1.8. 7 The list of Ennius as mentioned by Apuleius in De deo Socratis, 2. Demeter, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, Asclepius, Hestia, Muses, Gea, Helios, Selene, Pan, Hercules, and Dioscuri are the addressees of the Homeric hymns. Cf. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 46–50. Snorri Sturluson, Gylfanning 14–15, in Edda, trans. A. Faulkes (London8 Melbourne: Dent, 1987), 16–17; and Voluspo, stanzas 10-16, in The Poetic Edda, trans. and ed. Henry Adams Bellows (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1968; 1st ed. 1928), 6–8. 9 Karneonikai is a poetic work written in meter. 10 Iamblichus, De vita Pyth. 143.19–147.6 Deubner. 11 Ronald F. Willetts, ed., The Law Code of Gortyn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967). 12 Jean François Boissonade, Anecdota Graeca (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962; orig. publ. Paris, 1831), vol. 3, 112–86 (Epidêmia Mazari); Mazaris, Journey to Hades: Greek Text with Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Index (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Seminar Classic, 1975). 13 The New York Times, February 15, 2004. 14 René Descartes, Reg. IV, AT X 378. Order as taxis discloses both a structural similarity and a cause of all mutually related elements of a whole (taxis ergasias homoiotēs tōn pros allēla pantōn ontōn) ([Plato]. Def. 413 d). An implicit “political” logos is always present in the planning of a city, coming from ergonomic or geographic necessity or intended architectural plan. 15 Beginning with Descartes and culminating in the Neo-Kantians and Positivists, philosophy expels the ontological non-discursive (substantial) form as unknowable and obsolete, and attempts to establish itself only and exceptionally as method, which is to be universal, mathematics-oriented and logically strict.

194 Notes

16

17 18

19

20

21

See Descartes, Reg. IV, AT X, 376 sqq.; Disc. III, AT VI, 29 and the recent debates about the methodology of science in Popper, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. The notion of class comes back to Livy who reports that Servius Tullius was the first to introduce the census in Rome, according to which all citizens were divided into six categories, or classes, according to a citizen’s property and origin for purposes of civil and military duties and taxation. See Livy, I.42.4–43.13. Jorge Luis Borges, “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,” 231. Thus, in a list of stone tools from a Paleolithic site, the entries can be arranged according to the layer in which they were found, or according to their form, size, ornaments, material, etc. Or one might arrange the tools according to a speculative theory about their function and purpose in a Paleolithic society. Of course, such a reconstruction may have nothing to do with the actual purpose, which we might never be able to restore due to a paucity of resources and lack of evidence. As, for example, in the list of more than a hundred birds from Tell Harmal in Mesopotamia (outside Baghdad), from the second millennium bce, where a determinative (“bird”) is added to each entry on the list that puts the entry into a specific lexical class. See Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, 74–111, esp. 80–90. A coded list is similar to an ancient symbol, which is a thing (usually, a coin) broken into halves, and each half is given to a different keeper. The “symbol” (from symballō, “throw together”), then, is a pass that authenticates its bearer and gives access to something that is otherwise inaccessible. In modernity, nature is seen by science as encoded. Even if nature “likes to hide” (Heraclitus, B 123 DK), still as Kepler and Galileo have discovered, it can be understood properly because it is a sui generis book or catalogue arranged in a precise order that can be read when one knows the key (as with a cipher), which, in the case of nature, is geometry and the language of mathematics. The “struggle” with logos is reflected in the Sophistic attempt to relativize it by making the weakest argument the strongest and the most persuasive (“[T]on hēttō … logon kreittō poiein,” [Protagoras, B 6b DK, ap. Aristotle, Rhet. 1402a 23]), as well as in Aristotle’s program (which originated in Prodicus) of “saving” logos from deliberate manipulation and misuse by methodically considering its various meanings (Aristotle, Phys. 185a 21 [pollakhōs legetai to on]; Met. 1003a 33 [to de on legetai men pollakhōs]; cf. Met. 1014b 16–1015a 19, 1017a 7–1017b 26). Cf.: “the explanations for names [i.e., particular specifications of one proper name, which is already infinite, nomen proprium est infinitum] can be many, and never so many that there cannot be more [explicantia possunt esse multa et nunquam tot et tanta, quin possent esse plura]” (Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia I.25).

Notes 22

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An artistic example of catalogue being both the same and different is Charles LeDray’s Oasis (2003) in the collection of the MoMA, which consists of several hundred meticulously crafted small ceramic pots: all are different (each one is individual; and moreover, they may be arranged differently) yet all the same (small pots, small pots). 23 “Syllogism” means “computation,” “calculation,” and (right) “reasoning,” particularly in Plato (Crat. 412 a; Theaet. 186 d). In Aristotle, a syllogism provides a reasoned and a deductive argument and leads to knowledge (Anal. priora 24b 18–20, cf. 47a 34–35; Top. 100b 25). Cf. the pseudo-Platonic Definitions: “proof is a true syllogistic logos” (apodeixis logos syllogistikos alēthēs) ([Plato]. Def. 414 e). Syllogē in Greek means both “gathering” and “collecting,” as well as “collection” and “acquisition.” Cf. Plato, Legg. 736 b: gathering of citizens; close to this is the term syllogos, which means an “assembly,” a “meeting” of citizens: Gorg. 452 e, 455 b; RP 492 b; Legg. 671 a. Demosthenes, Kata Meidiou 21.23 mentions a collection, syllogē, of Meidias’ misdeeds, hybreis: “The collection was an easy matter, for the victims themselves applied to me,” (Demosthenes, Demosthenis Orationes, ed. S. H. Butcher [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955; 1st ed. 1907]). In Aristotle, De part. anim. 662b 8: small birds have a fine beak for picking up seeds, pros tas syllogas tōn karpōn. Theophrastus, De odoribus 37 mentions syllogē as a collection of odors or aromas (arōmatōn), mostly of artificial odors in general and their manufacture, especially of the use of perfumes in wine; one can also speak of collecting herbs, i.e., harvesting them: depending on the time of collection, they can have various odors, which depends on their maturity and ripeness (akmē), (Theophrastus, Inquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs, trans. A. Hort, vol. 2 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949; 1st ed. 1916]). The Latin collectio is a linguistic calque from Greek, and means “collection,” “gathering,” which is derived from colligo: con-, “with,” and lego, “to gather.” It is worth mentioning that collectio in Quintilian and Seneca stands for “syllogism.” 24 The preservation of one’s name was already of the utmost importance in ancient Egypt. Posthumous monuments and epitaphs serve the same purpose of preserving the name of the deceased, as in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where nearly 60,000 names come in the form of a list, of which the story is known to everyone who attends it. 25 Charles R. Beye, “Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues,” 358. 26 Plato, Legg. 721 c. 27 Hecataeus, Frg. 124–6 Nenci. 28 Alcidamas, Peri soph. 31; cf. 19–20. 29 Epictetus, Disc. I.19.26–9. The main motivation is “My name will remain after me” (menei mou to onoma Ibid., I.19.28).

196 Notes See Harriet I. Flower, The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 67 sqq., who argues that memory sanctions cover a whole range of various practices. The term damnatio memoriae, however, was not used in ancient times. 31 “uti nomen eius qui templum Dianae Ephesi incenderat ne quis ullo tempore nominaret,” (Aulus Gellius. Noct. Att. II.6.18). 32 Theopompus, 115 F 69 Jacoby; Strabo XIV.1.22; Aelian, De natura animalium VI.40; Cicero, De natura deorum II.69, De divin. I.47; Plutarch, Alex. 3 (Alexander the Great was presumably born on the same day that Artemision was burnt); Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. II.6.18. 33 Valerius Maximus VIII.14 ext. 5. Valerii Maximi, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem, ed. K. Kempf (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888; repr. 1966). 34 Herodotus, IV.43; cf. II.123. 35 Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. IX.2.11; Livy VI.20.12-14. Cf. also the testimony about the rejection of the name Lucius in the genus Claudii, in Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Tib. I.2. 36 Herodotus, VII.213. Herodotus actually distorts his name as “Epialtes.” 37 Cf. the Hamburg-Harburg Monument Against Fascism by Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz. 38 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 180–1. 39 Such is also a coat of arms which bears, in compact form, data about (1) the owner’s genealogy, and (2) the ownership of a geographic territory. In this way, a coat of arms follows the two patterns of early history. 40 Film can be taken as a series of quickly changing still images, a sui generis quickly unwrapping comic strip, that tell a story through their very sequence and associated rejoinders. 41 Rivane Neuenschwanderer. Zé Carioca no.4, A Volta de Zé Carioca (1960). Edição Histórica, Ed. Abril (2004), collection of the MoMA. 42 Ong, Orality and Literacy, 12. 43 In ideograms, each word is an image, an illustration of a concept. The first writing was pictographic or hieroglyphic, so that each written word provided a graphic illustration of a non-discursive concept. The relationship between ideograms and painting is thus quite intimate. It is not by chance, then, that hieroglyphic inscriptions are an integral part of Egyptian and Chinese visual art. In modern art, inscriptions are often used as images. For instance, Alighiero e Boetti’s The Thousand Longest Rivers (1976–82, collection of the MoMA) provides, in the form of a tapestry, a catalogue of the thousand longest rivers of the world with their tributaries arranged according to their length. Here, names are used as inscriptions that are the elements of the picture, as images that 30

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both constitute the integral image and contribute to the meaning of the whole picture. See Dmitri Nikulin, “Memory in Recollection of Itself,” in Memory: A Philosophical History, ed. Dmitri Nikulin, 3–33 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). This relation can be further rethought as the one between mimēsis (imitation) and diēgēsis (narration). See Paul Veyne, Comment on écrit l’histoire, 15, who takes history to be diēgēsis, and not mimēsis (the distinction is originally introduced by G. Genette).

Chapter 6: Memory and history Dmitri Nikulin, ed., Memory: A Philosophical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also Raphael Samuel, Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, vol. 1 of Theaters of Memory (New York: Verso, 1994); John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995); Richard J. Bernstein, “The Culture of Memory,” History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 43 (2004), 165–78. Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective, ed. Gérard Namer and Marie Jaisson 2 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997; orig. publ. Paris: PUF, 1950), 51–96; translated as The Collective Memory, trans. F. J. Ditter and V. Y. Dinnter (New York: Harper & Row, 1950; repr. 1980). All references are to the French edition, henceforth referred to as MC. See also Amos Funkenstein, “Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness,” History and Memory 1 (1989), 5–26; Patrick H. Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), 76–9; Jan Assmann, “Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität,” in Kultur und Gedächtnis, ed. Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher, 9–19 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988). Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David 3 Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 122; cf. 120–4, 393–7. 4 Halbwachs, La mémoire collective, 97–142. In Geary’s characterization of the distinction between collective and historical 5 memory, “The former is the fluid, transformative and enveloping lived tradition of a social group. The latter is analytic, critical, and rational, the product of the application of specialized scientific methodology,” (Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994], 11); cf. also Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, 147–53. 1

198 Notes Cf. André Leroi-Gourhan, La mémoire et les rhythmes, vol. 2 of Le geste et la parole (Paris: Albin Michel, 1964–5), 22–6 (“la mémoire collective”), 269. 7 “[L]’histoire s’attache aux ressemblances superficielles et néglige les différences profondes,” (MC 137). 8 Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1997); translated as Realms of Memory, ed. Pierre Nora, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–8). See esp. Pierre Nora, “Entre Mémoire et Histoire,” in Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 1, 23–43; “The Era of Commemoration,” in Symbols, vol. 3 of Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, ed. L. D. Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 609–37, 702–7. Cf. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. S. Rendall and E. Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 95–7 et passim. 9 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History,” general introduction to Realms of Memory, vol. 1, 1–20; henceforth referred to as GI. See also Reinhart Koselleck, “Is There an Acceleration of History?” 10 “a lieu de mémoire is any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of a community,” (Pierre Nora, preface to Realms of Memory, vol. 1, xviii). 11 The very term refers to the mnemonic loci memoriae. In Nora’s interpretation, lieux de mémoire are “places, sites, causes—in three senses: material, symbolic, and functional,” (GI 14). Cf. Nora, “The Era of Commemoration,” 635. 12 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, ed. Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 252; cf. 238. For a discussion and critique, see Mark Olsen, “Motives, Memory and Mind: Collingwood’s Theory of Action and Histoire des Mentalités,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 19 (1993), 35–62. 13 Dmitri Nikulin, “Memory and History,” Idealistic Studies 38 (2008), 75–90. 14 See Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 119–34. 15 For further discussion, see Dmitri Nikulin, “Memory in Antiquity,” chap. 1 of Memory: A Philosophical History. 16 Hesiod, Theog. 55, 99–103. By helping people forget their sorrows and anxieties, the Muses bring about forgetfulness (lēsmosynē). In archaic times, memoryMnemosyne and forgetting-Lethe (Lesmosyne) are inseparable and mutually complementary, where Lethe is the power to absolve from disaster. See Charles E. Scott, The Time of Memory (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 30–5. 17 Berkley Peabody, The Winged Word, 24 sqq. 18 Similarly, remembrance (Erinnerung) in Hegel is the internalization of all the historical experience of the spirit as its own self and interiority (Er-Innerung), 6

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which comes on the very last page of the Phenomenology of Spirit. See G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, vol. 3 of Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 591. See also Angelica Nuzzo, “History and Memory in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 29 (2008): 161–98. 19 Plato, Theaet. 191 c–d, 197 c–199 c; Aristotle, De memoria 450 a–b; Cicero, De oratore II.360. 20 Active reason is apathes, “undisturbed”: Aristotle, De an. 430a 23–4. On the difference between Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of memory, see Helen S. Lang, “On Memory: Aristotle’s Corrections of Plato,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (1980), 379–93. 21 Aristotle, De mem. 453a 10. See David Bloch, Aristotle on Memory and Recollection: Text, Translation, Interpretation, and Reception in Western Scholasticism (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 22 Cf. Plato, Meno 81 b sqq.; Aristotle, De an. 430a 10 sqq. 23 The historical present thus differs from Benjamin’s “nowtime” (Jetztzeit), which is a plenitude of the historical non-homogeneous time wrapped into the now. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt, 253–64 (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 261. 24 For Yates, each historical period has its own form and organization of memory. See Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 25 Dmitri Nikulin, On Dialogue (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 231–59. 26 The thesis of the ultimate non-distinction between individual and collective memory is supported by Marcuse, although for a wrong reason: for him, “the individual itself still is in archaic identity with the species,” (Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud [Boston: Beacon Press, 1966; 1st ed., 1955], 55–6); cf. Martin Jay, “Anamnestic Totalization: Reflections on Marcuse’s Theory of Remembrance,” Theory and Society 11 (1982), 1–15. 27 Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Mouton, 1975; orig. publ. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1925). 28 See Patrizia Calefato, “Memory, History, Discourse,” in Signs of Change: Premodern-Modern-Postmodern, ed. S. Barker (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 176–7 (describing Uspensky’s semiotic approach). 29 The distinction goes back at least to Gervase of Canterbury, who lived at the end of the eleventh century (Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance, 9). 30 Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, ed. Gordon Wright, trans. Charles Cocks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947).

200 Notes See Ralf Simon, Das Gedächtnis der Interpretation. Gedächtnistheorie als Fundament für Hermeneutik (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), 26, 67, 109, et al.; Peter D. Kraus, “Gedächtnis und Interpretation bei J. G. Herder,” Philosophische Rundschau 47 (2000), 39–46. 32 Aristotle, De mem. 450a 25 sqq. 33 Joseph Farrell, “The Phenomenology of Memory in Roman Culture,” The Classical Journal 92 (1997), 373–83. 34 Aristotle, NE 1147a 11–14. 35 Cf. Paolo Rossi, Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language, trans. Stephen Clucas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); J. J. Berns and W. Neuber, “Mnemonik zwischen Renaissance und Aufklärung. Ein Ausblick,” in Ars Memorativa. Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400–1750, ed. Jörg Jochen Berns and Wolfgang Neuber (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), 373–85 et passim; Aleksandr R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory, trans. Lynn Solotaroff (New York: Basic Books, 1968). 36 Cf.: “… a poem, no matter how long it existed as a living spoken word in the recollection of the bard and those who listened to him, will eventually be ‘made,’ that is, written down and transformed into a tangible thing among things, because remembrance and the gift of recollection, from which all desire for imperishability springs, need tangible things to remind them, lest they perish themselves.” (Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 170). 37 Cicero, De oratore II.15–16. See also George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 207. 38 Aristotle, Rhet. I.1–2, 1354a 1 sqq.; cf. Plato, Euthyd. 275 d–277 c et passim. 39 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 31–8 et passim; and “Historical Discourse and Literary Writing,” in Tropes of the Past: Hayden White and the History/ Literature Debate (New York: Rodopi, 2006). 40 Cicero, De oratore II.114 sqq.: rhetoric comprises: (1) invention (inventio); (2) arrangement (elocutio); (3) memory (memoria). (To which the tradition also adds style and delivery.) Cf. Joachim Knape, “Die Stellung der memoria in der frühneuzeitlichen Rhetoriktheorie,” in Ars Memorativa: Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400–1750, 274–85 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993). 41 Plato, Hipp. mai. 285 e; Cicero. De oratore II.350–60; Quintilian, De institutione oratoria III.3.10. 42 Cicero, De oratore II.87; [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium III.23.38–9, III.19.31–2; Quintilian, De institutione oratoria XI.2.21, 29–30. 43 Cf. Maurice Halbwachs, “The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy 31

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Land,” in On Collective Memory, trans. and ed. L. A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 193–225, orig. publ. as Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, Paris: Alcan, 1925; repr. Paris: Mouton, 1976, with a preface by François Châtelet). Cf. also Chinese paintings from the Song dynasty, which are large scrolls into which a spectator can imaginarily transfer herself and in which she travels in her imagination, from one depicted place to another. 44 Cf. Aristotle, De an. 427b 20. Marcuse has argued that memory is linked to imagination as a synthetic epistemological faculty that reassembles “the bits and fragments which can be found in the distorted humanity and distorted nature,” (Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt [Boston: Beacon Press, 1972], 70). 45 Hume’s not very fortunate way of discriminating between the two is to claim that memory retains impressions with “vivacity,” whereas imagination apparently keeps “faint and languid” images (David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, bk. 1, pt. 1, § 3). 46 See Dmitri Nikulin, Matter, Imagination and Geometry: Ontology, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Plotinus, Proclus and Descartes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 128–32 et passim. 47 Plato, Theaet. 197 c–198 a; John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. 2, ch. 10, § 2. For Zeno of Citium, memory is “a treasury of impressions” (thēsaurismos phantasiōn, ap. Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. VII.373 = SVF I, fr. 64). 48 Agamben follows this distinction in discerning between the “Unvergessliches” and “Erinnerbares,” (Giorgio Agamben, “Die zwei Gedächtnisse,” Die Zeit, 4 Mai 2005, 45). 49 Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 8–10. When Benjamin makes a distinction between “Erfahrung,” an integral experience, and “Erlebnis,” a discrete event of experience, he links the Erlebnis to Proust’s idea of “involuntary memory,” which is connected with a living communal tradition of remembrance. See Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Illuminations, 155–200; 156–7. Benjamin also distinguishes an “ungewolltes Eingedeneken” (involuntary “memoration”) from that which should be remembered as a souvenir (Andenken), which is the relic of the past and the complement of Erlebnis: Walter Benjamin, “Central Park,” New German Critique 34 (1985): 32–58; 48, 55. Cf. David Gross, “Bergson, Proust and the Revaluation of Memory,” International Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1985), 369–80. 50 Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9, 14. 51 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 28–36.

202 Notes Cf. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001). 53 The reconstructive character of cultural memory is also stressed by Assmann: Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 26–8. 54 Hans Jonas, “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality,” The Hastings Center Report 22 (1992), 34–40. 55 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 14. See also Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 412–59 (“Forgetting”); Anselm Haverkamp and Renate Lachmann, eds., Memoria: Vergessen und Erinnern (München: Fink, 1993), 81–194. 56 Speaking about individual memory, Merleau-Ponty argues that memory is found at the moment when, forgotten and kept by forgottenness, a remembrance returns, “à l’instant où revient le souvenir oublié et gardé par l’oubli,” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le problème de la passivité: le sommeil, l’inconscient, la mémoire,” in Résumés de cours, Collège de France 1952-1960, 66–73 [Paris: Gallimard, 1968], 72). 57 Plato, Hipp. mai. 285 e; cf. Symp. 208 a. 58 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 430, 433. 59 Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 23. 60 See also Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (1935) (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 14; “Brief über den ‘Humanismus’,” in Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), vol. 9, 328; Nietzsche I, 7th ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008), 366; The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 3 sqq. 61 Adorno and Horkheimer follow the same pattern of understanding oblivion as reification or objectification, which for them means forgetting of what a thing is beyond its meant purpose and use. In a “negative teleology,” reification as forgetfulness even becomes a precondition for science, including the science of history: “The loss of memory is a transcendental condition for science. All objectification is a forgetting,” (Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment [New York: Continuum, 1993], 230). 62 Cf. Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 151 sqq. 63 Cf. Zhuang Zi, ch. XXII. 64 See Dmitri Nikulin, Comedy, Seriously, 47–68. 65 Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 299–300. See also Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 444–8. 52

Notes 66 67

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Nathan Wachtel, La vision des vaincus: Les Indiens du Pérou devant la conqête espagnole, 1530–1570 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 300–14. As Marcuse suggests in Eros and Civilization, 232 (in reference to Nietzsche’s discussion of memory and the origin of morality in The Genealogy of Morals). Contrary to Nietzsche, who in The Genealogy of Morals speaks in support of forgetfulness as a mark of the “noble man” “beyond good and evil.” See the discussion in Alphonso Lingis, “The Will to Power,” in The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation, ed. David B. Allison, 37–63 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 52–5. Historical memory thus works against rancor (Nachträglichkeit) as a (or even the) historical force. See David Kaufmann, “Thanks for the Memory: Bloch, Benjamin and the Philosophy of History,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 6 (1993), 143–62, 156; and Rainer Nägele, Theater, Theory, Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 76 (Nachträglichkeit as “the negative force of forgetting”).

Chapter 7: The genealogy of history 1 2

3

4

5 6

Herodotus. II.143; VII.204. Cf. R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Genealogie als Denkform in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. K. Heck and B. Jahn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000). For a history of genealogy and the forms it has taken in France, see André Burguière, “La généalogie,” in Les lieux de mémoire, 3879–907. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic [1887], trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA), vol. 5, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988), 245–412. For the critique of Rée, see Nietzsche’s preface to On the Genealogy of Morals, 4. The First Essay in the On the Genealogy of Morals (“Good and Evil,” “Good and Bad”) has to be read vis-à-vis Paul Rée’s chapter on “The Origin of the Concepts of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’” in The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877); see Paul Rée, Basic Writings, trans. and ed. Robin Small (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 89–99. See Paul de Man, “Genesis and Genealogy in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” Diacritics 2 (1972): 44–53. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald F. Bouchard

204 Notes

7

8

9

10 11

and Sherry Simon, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, 139–64 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977) henceforth referred to as NGH; repr. in The Foucault Reader, trans. J. Harari, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin, 1984), 76–100; orig. publ. as “Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire,” in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris: PUF, 1971), 145–72. In his 1970 inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Foucault makes a distinction between critical and genealogical descriptions: “Critical and genealogical descriptions are to alternate, support and complement each other. The critical side of the analysis deals with the system’s enveloping discourse. … The genealogical side of analysis, by way of contrast, deals with series of effective formation of discourse …” (cited in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 105). See also the discussion in Jürgen Habermas, “The Genealogical Writing of History: On Some Aporias in Foucault’s Theory of Power,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/ Revue canadienne de théorie politique et sociale 10 (1986), 1–9; Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 112: “Genealogy takes as its objects precisely those institutions and practices which, like morality, are usually thought to be totally exempt from change and development;” Rudi Visker, Genealogy as Critique (New York: Verso, 1995), 54 et passim; David Farrell Krell, Infectious Nietzsche (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 25–30; C. G. Prado, Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 2000), 33 sqq.; Martin Saar, “Genealogy and Subjectivity,” European Journal of Philosophy 10 (2002), 231–45. Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in Power, ed. James D. Faubion, vol. 3 of Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, trans. Robert Hurley, et al., 223–38 (New York: The New Press, 2000), 224. See Martin Kusch, Foucault’s Strata and Fields: An Investigation into Archaeological and Genealogical Science Studies (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991); Johanna Oksala, Foucault (London: Granta Books, 2007), 45–54. Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,” 96; KSA I, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II 2–3. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics (1983),” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, vol. 1 of Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (New York: The New Press, 1997), 262: “Three domains of genealogy are possible. First, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, a historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, a historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents.”

Notes 12

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Foucault, “Questions of Method,” 223. See also Foucault’s attempt at a genealogical reconstruction of free speech as truth-telling in Fearless Speech. 13 “Irad begat Mehajael, Mehajael begat Methusael, Methusael begat Lamech” (Gen. 4.18. Cf. Gen. 10 et passim). For the impact of writing on collective memory and family genealogies, see Jack Goody and Ian P. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 27–68; orig. publ. in Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (1962–1963), 304–45. 14 Cf. Pierre Nora, “La génération,” Les lieux de mémoire, 2975–3015; see also Conflicts and Divisions, vol. 1 of Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, ed. L. D. Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 499–531). 15 “Aufgegeben,” which Kant defines as progressus in indefinitum, or “empirical regress”: Kant, KrV B 537. Kant uses genealogy as an example. 16 Cf. Yvonne Sherratt, Continental Philosophy of Social Science: Hermeneutics, Genealogy, Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 121–42. Raymond Geuss argues that pedigree is defined by five main characteristics, in all of which pedigree differs from (Nietzschean) genealogy: pedigree provides a “positive valorization of an item”; starts “from a single origin”; this origin is “an actual source of that value”; pedigree “traces an unbroken line of succession from the origin to that item”; and moves “by a series of steps that preserve or enhance whatever value is in question,” (Raymond Geuss, “Nietzsche and Genealogy,” European Journal of Philosophy 2 [1994], 274–92; esp. 275–7). 17 Cf. the Chronology of Apollodorus, ap. Diog. Laert. IX. 41. 18 C. S. Peirce, “Evolutionary Love,” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, ed. N. Houser and Ch. Kloesel, vol. 1, 352–71 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 369. 19 Plato, Tim. 23 d sqq. 20 Isocrates, Panegyricus 50 (Isocrates, Panegyricus, vol. 1 of Speeches and Letters, trans. and ed. G. Norlin and L. van Hook [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980]). 21 Proclus, In Eucl. 65.7–70.18. 22 For a discussion of contemporary approaches to myth, see Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth, 17–130. 23 See Felix Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker von F. Jacoby. Erster Teil. Genealogie und Mythographie (Leiden: Brill, 1957; 1st ed. Berlin, 1923). 24 Hecataeus, Frg. 15; 28–35 Nenci. 25 Cf. Herodotus, I.173: Lycians establish their origin by maternal, and not paternal, lineage.

206 Notes 26

“Mythical hymns (mythikoi) are those which contain myths and proceed by bare allegory, e.g., Apollo built the wall, Apollo was a serf under Admetus, and the like. Genealogical hymns (genealogikoi) are those which follow the theogonies of the poets: e.g. when we say that Apollo is the child of Leto, and the Muses of Memory,” (Menander Rhetor, 6-8). Altogether, Menander distinguishes eight kinds of hymns, among which we even find “scientific” hymns to gods, those about nature. See also George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 636–7. 27 Menander Rhetor, 14–16. 28 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh J. Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 3–6, 36 et passim. 29 “Hellenion, founded jointly by the Ionian cities of Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae, the Dorian cities of Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis, and one Aeolian city, Mytilene,” (Herodotus II.178). 30 Richard J. Bernstein, Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 140–2. 31 I owe this observation to Juan Donado. 32 Herodotus, VIII.44; Jacoby, Griechische Historiker, 273. 33 Plato, Hipp. mai. 285 d. Cleanthes wrote a book called Arkhaiologia, of which, however, we only have the title and do not know anything about its content (ap. Diog. Laert. VII.175). 34 Diod. Sic. II.46.6; Dionys. Hal. I.4.1; Flavius Josephus. Ant. Iud. I.1.5. See also Philostratus, Vita Apoll. Tyan. II.9; Proclus, In Tim. I.101–2 Diehl; and Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and Antiquarianism,” 3–5, 30–1. 35 In this sense, Foucault appropriately calls his investigation into various ways of looking at and reconstructing the past knowledge and representation “archeology,” (Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines [Paris: Gallimard, 1966]). 36 Homer, Il. 20.200–258. 37 Voltaire, “Généalogie,” Dictionnaire Philosophique, vol. 3 of Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, 452–7 (Paris: Hachette, 1860). 38 Says an Egyptian priest to Solon: “You, Greeks, are like children and there is no old man among you,” (Plato, Tim. 22 b). In Herodotus II.143 an Egyptian priest counts 345 generations—and still no god, as opposed to Hecataeus’ only 16 generations of ancestors. 39 Diog. Laert. VI.1. 40 Plato, Theaet. 174 e–175 b. 41 Voltaire, “Généalogie,” § II. 42 Contra Marquard who attempts to make a distinction between “kompromitierende Genealogie” and “legitimierende Genealogie.” See Odo

Notes

43

207

Marquard, Skeptische Methode in Blick auf Kant (Freiburg: K. Alber, 1958), 9, Anm. 1. See the discussion of the “legitimation problem,” (Legitimitätasproblem) in Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983). See Rainer Forst, Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 95–108 et passim.

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Index absolute past 24, 48–52, 53, 90, 174 Acusilaus 30–1, 165 Aelian 62, 70, 112 Anaximander 22, 26, 30 Anaximenes 26, 30 anecdote 34, 57, 61–3, 93, 107, 109, 130 Ankersmit, Frank 176 nn.6–7 Annales School, the 71, 122 Apollodorus 9–10, 66, 77, 164, 186 n.33, 187 n.2, 205 n.17 Archilochus 25, 59, 61 Arendt, Hannah 23, 44, 46, 113, 178 n.20, 182 n.32, 200 n.36 Ariès, Philippe xi Aristotle 30, 32–4, 46–8, 51, 55, 96, 113, 126–7, 134, 140, 167, 177 n.11, 189 n.31, 194 n.21, 195 n.23 Assmann, Jan 141, 193 n.7, 197 n.2, 202 n.53 Augustine 14, 97 Aulus Gellius 62, 111–12 autobiography see biography Bible the 94, 101, 155, 173 biography 62, 94–7, 116–17 auto- 94–7, 157 boredom 1, 12, 56, 60, 83, 107, 128, 135–6, 143 Borges, Jorge L. 104 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne x, 14 Braudel, Fernand 32 see also longue durée Buber, Martin 44, 140 Bultmann, Rudolph 14 Butler, Judith 97 catalogue 11, 52–3, 73–7, 88, 103, 126, 130, 134, 140, 151, 162, 167, 171 in oral tradition 33, 92 poetry 33, 73–7, 80, 84–5, 89–90, 92, 125, 136, 141, 161 as public collection 107–8

of ships in Homer (neōn katalogos) 31, 74, 76, 78–9, 91, 125–6, 173 structure of 77–81, 155–6 of women in Hesiod (Ehoiai) 31, 74, 77–8, 83, 125, 187 n.7 Charon of Lampsacus 30, 193 n.5 chronology 101, 109, 159, 162 Cicero 8–9, 34–5, 55–6, 112, 136, 177 n.12, 182 n.40, 185 n.26, 189 n.30, 200 n.40 Clanchy, Michael T. 75 Collingwood, Robin G. 123–4, 178 n.17, 179 n.29 comedy ix–x, 46, 48–50, 63, 65, 138, 146 Dante 50 Deleuze, Gilles 168 Democritus 27 Derrida, Jacques 87, 148, 190 n.34 Descartes, René 28, 57, 122, 193 n.15 dialogue 2, 57, 75, 90, 93–4, 129, 135 Diodorus Siculus 22, 34, 170, 185 n.26 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 30, 43, 56, 170 drama 6, 11, 53, 57–63, 87, 90, 138 Enlightenment 16–17, 64, 119, 172, 175 n.2 Epictetus 94, 110 epithet 11, 52, 64, 81–3, 85, 87, 90, 109, 115, 125–6 Eratosthenes 22, 162 eschatology 13–14, 70 etymology 32, 161 fabula 7–14, 20, 22–3, 27, 38–40, 43, 48, 50, 54, 56–7, 64, 71, 79–81, 90, 96, 106, 131 in genealogy 153, 155–8, 170 and memory 121, 126, 131–3, 137, 140–1, 144 and myth 67, 81, 114, 116, 163, 169 fact (factum) 12, 18–19, 35–9, 47, 56–60, 63, 68–9, 119–20, 141

226 Index Ferguson, Adam x, 94 fiction 3–4, 8, 37, 39, 47, 54–7, 63, 152–3, 163 forgetting 41, 56, 88, 108–14, 125, 127–9, 136, 140, 173 see also oblivion Foucault, Michel 153–6, 158–9, 161, 202 n.52, 204 n.7, 206 n.35 Gadamer, Hans-Georg xii, 36, 143, 176 n.9, 183 n.48 Galileo 28, 30, 194 n.20 genealogy 21–3, 30–2, 94, 97, 151–72 geography 21–3, 30–2, 94, 97, 151 see also travel glory (kleos) 40–3, 46, 51, 61, 63, 76–7, 84–5, 95, 109–10, 151, 161, 171 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 48 Goody, Jack 75, 101, 188 n.10, 189 n.33, 190 n.35, 194 n.19, 205 n.13 Halbwachs, Maurice 120–4, 130, 200 n.43 Hartog, François 28 Havelock, Eric A. 93 Hecataeus of Miletus 21–3, 25–35, 40, 44, 53, 57, 70, 90, 94, 109, 114, 151, 164, 166, 185 n.28 Hegel, G. W. F. x, 5, 11, 13–16, 18, 21, 42, 57, 59, 70, 94–5, 99, 123, 141, 144, 148, 151, 157, 159, 173–4, 178 n.23, 198–9 n.18 Heidegger, Martin 44, 144, 202 n.60 Hellanicus of Mytilene 21–3, 25–6, 28–32, 34–5, 53, 66, 94, 101–2, 157, 164, 169, 193 n.5 Heller, Ágnes 10 Heraclitus 27, 36, 90, 191 nn.49–50, 194 n.20 Herder, Johann Gottfried x, 15, 70, 86, 94–5, 133, 141 Herodotus 21–3, 25, 29–31, 34–5, 40, 42, 44–5, 47, 53, 57, 70, 74, 112, 151, 166, 168–9, 171, 180 n.4, 182 n.40, 183 n.55, 205 n.25, 206 n.38 Herostratus 108–14, 145 Hesiod 25, 27, 31, 33, 40, 53, 73, 80, 85, 155, 165 Ehoiai see catalogue Theogony 32, 49, 74, 77–8, 81, 83, 125, 151

Hippias of Elis 30–2, 102, 137, 139, 143, 170 historian as doer and teller 45–8, 51–2, 66, 95 as witness and judge 33–7, 47, 52, 56, 68–9, 95, 108, 142 historical imperative 109, 125, 134, 148–9 historicism xi–xii, 19, 176 n.7 history ancient x, 13, 24–5, 29, 49–50, 68, 125, 155, 160, 166 antiquarian 68, 92, 186 n.40 historiographic 67, 92, 121, 132 laws of x–xi, 5, 18, 29–30, 56 modern xi, 13–17, 19, 49, 68, 94, 119, 121 as multiple 6, 13, 25, 104, 106, 122, 153, 173 natural 14, 21, 28, 30, 34, 114, 159 personal 31, 94–5, 97, 109, 157 political xi, 5, 14, 31, 69, 94, 151, 168 as prose-writing 21, 25–7, 54, 90 truth of 37–9, 53–4, 56, 86, 142, 144 universal viii, x, 5–6, 15–6, 19, 24–5, 58, 68–9, 95, 119, 138, 153–4 Homer 22, 24–5, 33, 40–2, 45, 47, 49–54, 63, 73–94 Iliad 31, 48, 50, 73–4, 76, 78–82, 84–5 109, 125–6, 169, 173, 184 n.14, 185 n.21 neōn katalogos see catalogue Odyssey 10, 22, 34, 39, 74, 77–9, 81, 83, 125 Hume, David 95–7, 201n45 image 62, 100, 103, 107, 114–17, 131, 134, 137–41, 155, 158, 196–7 n.43 imagination 64, 128, 138, 140–2, 158, 201 n.44 imitation (mimēsis) 26–7, 48, 55, 119 immortality see preservation inner theater 57, 59–63, 92–3, 114, 116, 131–4, 137, 145, 160, 163 Isocrates 89, 94, 161, 180 n.13 Jonas, Hans 2–3, 44, 142 Kant, Immanuel viii, x, 13, 16, 30, 49, 94, 102, 167 kleos see glory Koselleck, Reinhart 122, 177 n.9, 198 n.9

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227

Kuhn, Thomas 18, 194 n.15

Nora, Pierre 122–4, 198 n.11, 205 n.14

Le Goff, Jacques 75, 198 n.8 Leys, Ruth 146 literature 9, 50, 54–7, 75 genres of 31, 46, 48, 137 see also fiction lists 13, 31, 34, 38, 53–4, 56, 73–5, 79–80, 85, 87, 92, 100–4, 137, 141, 156, 173–4 see also catalogue Livy 36, 68, 89, 102, 112, 194 n.16 logos 11, 22, 35–6, 38, 41, 58, 64, 78, 94, 99–117, 126, 131, 156, 170 longue durée ix, 32 Löwith, Karl 14 Lukács, Georg 15, 48, 178 n.23

oblivion 3, 23, 29, 34, 45, 50, 52–3, 76, 78, 80, 99, 109–10, 125, 129, 142–9, 160, 173 Ong, Walter 87–8, 115, 189 n.33, 190 n.34 ontology 1, 154, 163, 204 n.11 orality 10, 25–7, 34, 53, 62, 73, 87–94, 115–16, 121, 126, 136, 138–9, 161 origin (arkhē) 23, 70, 93, 122 in genealogy 30, 32, 151–3, 157, 163–72

Marx, Karl 17, 94 master narrative 10 memory 3–4, 8, 25–6, 34, 45–6, 51, 59, 76, 96, 119–49, 151, 173–4 in antiquity 124–7 collective 3, 41, 82, 120–2, 124, 128–30, 132–2, 135, 139–40, 146 cultural 3, 45, 50, 129–30, 133, 136, 139, 145 damnation of (damnatio memoriae) 110, 129, 148 genealogical 160–3, 167 historical 26, 38, 86, 88–9, 110–11, 120–2, 124, 128–9, 131–5, 137–8, 141–8, 159, 160–3, 168 hypermnesia 144 individual 3, 111, 120, 129–30, 139 personal 120, 130 poetic 84–5, 136, 138–9 rhetorical 137–40 sites (lieux de mémoire) 122–3 techniques of 136, 139, 161 voluntary and involuntary 140–2, 144–5 Memory School, the 71, 122–3 Menander 67, 165 Michelet, Jules 133, 179 n.30 Momigliano, Arnaldo 67, 70–1, 182 n.40 Montesqieu 183 n.58 Muses, the 41, 54, 74–5, 79, 83–6, 124–5 Nietzsche, Friedrich 151–5, 158–9, 161, 168, 186 n.40, 203 nn.67–8

Panyassis of Halicarnassus 31, 151 parataxis 51, 53, 78, 87, 90, 156 see also catalogue Parry, Milman 90 pedigree 151, 159, 168, 170, 205 n.16 Pherecydes 25–6, 30–1, 164 Plato 2, 28, 31–2, 40–1, 48, 60, 64, 85–6, 92, 94–6, 108–9, 113, 126–7, 136, 138–40, 154, 170–1 Pliny 1, 28, 62 Plotinus 57, 185 n.25, 189 n.26 Plutarch 34, 97, 112, 190 n.41, 191 n.49 Polybius 24, 29, 102 polymathia 27–8, 71, 83, 85, 153 preservation 2–4, 24–5, 52, 89, 92, 99, 112, 116, 157, 162 in memory 125, 129–30, 134, 143 physical 41, 110 self- 43, 110, 113, 160 Proclus 96, 102, 162, 167 progress ix–xii, 14, 17–18, 21, 24, 42, 94, 160, 173 Propp, Vladimir 9 prose 21, 25–7, 54, 90 Protagoras 64, 194 n.21 Proust, Marcel 120, 140, 201 n.49 providence x, 14–17, 29, 49, 58 Pythagoras 27, 33, 93 Ranke, Leopold 37, 71, 142 recollection 3, 8, 13, 23, 31, 48, 75, 85, 96–7, 115, 120, 126–7, 130–1, 133–6, 138–40, 142–4, 146–8, 174 Rée, Paul 152, 203 n.4 repetition 78, 87, 91, 135–6, 138, 143, 147 Ricoeur, Paul 9, 120, 142–3 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 17, 94, 97

228 Index Schelling, F. W. J. 18–19, 56, 65–6 Schiller, Friedrich 48, 58 Socrates 32, 41–2, 64, 86, 94, 126, 139, 143 Sophists, the 32, 90, 139, 170 Spinoza 102, 162 Stesichorus 25, 86 Stoics, the 28, 41, 57, 95, 110 story-telling 3, 7, 9–10, 33, 46, 66, 90, 137, 141, 165 Strabo 22, 26, 29–30, 112 Suetonius 54, 95, 196 n.35 syllogism 93, 106, 108, 127, 195 n.23

Tolstoy, Leo 50, 97 tragedy ix, 26, 46, 48–50, 94, 138, 146, 164 trauma 108, 128, 140, 143, 146–8 travel 22–3, 28, 33–4, 52, 68–70, 137, 158

teleology viii–xii, 2, 14–15, 17–20, 23–4, 44, 119, 121, 124, 128, 134, 144, 159–60, 173, 178 n.20, 202 n.61 temporality see time Thales 26, 30, 93, 162, 167 Theopompus of Chios 30, 35, 94, 112, 192 n.4 Thucydides 29–30, 34–6, 44–5, 56, 68, 70, 101–2, 170, 183 n.53 time xii, 2, 4, 32, 41, 48–9, 53, 60, 78, 126, 128, 158–9, 169

Wachtel, Nathan 147 war 8, 10, 22, 39, 41, 48, 52, 113, 138 White, Hayden xi, 137 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 128, 191 n.54 writing x, 8, 10, 25–6, 73, 86–90, 92–4, 96, 110, 116 and memory 120, 124, 128, 130–1, 136, 138–9 see also prose

Valerius Maximus 112 Veyne, Paul xi, 197 n.45 Vico, Giambattista x, 5, 16 Virgil 44, 50, 78, 84 Voltaire 18, 167, 171

Xenophon 94, 180 n.10