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Two Poles Within Historicism: Croce and MeineckeAuthor(s): Robert A. PoisReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1970), pp. 253-272Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708548 .

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TWO POLES WITHIN HISTORICISM: CROCEAND MEINECKEBY ROBERTA. Pois

In History As The Story of Liberty, Benedetto Croce defined his-toricism as "the affirmation that life and reality are history and historyalone."' Friedrich Meinecke, in his Die Entstehung des Historismus,defined the "core" of historicism as "compensation, through individual-izing reflection, for a generalizing view of historical-human forces.This does not in any way mean that Historicism absolutely precludessearching after general lawfulness and types of human life. It must[do] this and simultaneously blend it with its sense for the individ-ual."2 It would appear that Croce and Meinecke had two rather dif-ferent conceptions of the nature of historicism. Nevertheless, theirpositions on the matter were more similar than not. Both Croce andMeinecke eschewed transcendentalism in history, Croce going so faras to condemn formal doctrines of philosophy of history altogether.3Both Croce and Meinecke thus attempted to treat history as itselfrepresenting, or embodying, a closed totality within which universal(or "general") forces manifested themselves in individual forms.Meinecke's consideration of the particular/general problem was ob-viously tinctured with strong Rankean overtones. Croce, on the otherhand, as a philosopher, carried over elements of his neo-Hegeliancritique of empiricism and transcendency into his considerations ofhistoriography:But the really efficaciousnegationof empiricismand transcendency in his-tory], their positive negation,is broughtabout not by means of mysticism,butof idealism;not in the immediate,butin the mediated onsciousness; ot inthe indistinctunity, but in the unity that is distinction,and as such trulythought.4Specifically, Croce's method provided for a more rigorously mo-nistic fusion of general and particular than Meinecke's. Nevertheless,the conclusions obtained within the contours of Croce's neo-Hegelian

' Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, trans. S. Sprigge (New York,1941), 65. Croce identifies historicism with humanism: "historicism is the truehumanism, that is the truth of humanism" (315). This, it would appear, gave Croce'shistoricismmore rationalisticovertones than that of Meinecke's.2 FriedrichMeinecke, Die Entstehungdes Historismus(Munich, 1936), I, 2.3 Croce, 140-46; also History: Its Theory and Practice, trans. D. Ainslie (NewYork, 1960),64-68.4 History. Its Theoryand Practice, 118.Croce's emphasis.

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254 ROBERT A. POISIdealism approximated those attained by Meinecke: "that history isalways particular and always special, and that these two determinationsconstitute precisely concrete and effective unity."5Thus, surface differences between Croce's and Meinecke's defini-tions of historicism were apparently negated by their shared concernabout relating universal to particular and thus negating a dualism thatcould only have been pernicious to historical methodology. However,it is important to note that Croce and Meinecke began their respectivetreks from different, one would have to say, almost opposite, poles.Although he was quite conscious of their weaknesses, as will be shownbelow, Croce found spiritual guidance in the line of what Meineckecalled "developmental" thinkers, especially Vico and Hegel. This, ofcourse, brought Croce into sharp intellectual confrontation withMeinecke, inasmuch as fairly consistent adherence to Hegelian mo-nism necessitated a distinctly negative attitude towards Ranke on thepart of Croce.This apparent confrontation between Croce and Meinecke stemmedfrom a fundamental difference between the respective approaches ofHegel and Ranke. Hegel's adherence to a doctrine which saw subjectand object as dialectically reconciled through awareness of the for-mer's concretization in the realm of the objective-this realizationbeing the content of Absolute Spirit-necessitated at least a theoret-ical adherence to monism. The goal of human history, Freedom, wasattained when Objective Spirit, the stolid march of God on earth, wasreflected upon and thereby grasped by Absolute Spirit (philosophy).The agents of Objective Spirit, the states and political giants of his-tory, acted unreflectively, their often morbid passions serving as thevehicles for the realization of the divine plan on earth. Hegelian in-dividuality, then, was coextensive with general force-ObjectiveSpirit-the grasping of which was reflected in Absolute Spirit. At thesame time, however, there could be little doubt that individuality wassubordinate to that scheme which was being worked out through it.It was the "cunning of reason" which served to mold the often inchoateamalgam of passions and ambitions into the progressive objectificationof World Spirit; while reflection upon this objectification, i.e., AbsoluteSpirit, made men free.As is well known, Ranke took serious issue with Hegel. Indeed, inhis Uber die Epochen der neueren Geschichte Ranke assailed theHegelian monism for several reasons: through the "cunning of reason"human freedom would be abolished; through adhering to a doctrinethat assumes an indwelling spiritual essence propelling man towardssome definite goal, man himself "would either have to be God or

5 Ibid., 141.Croce's emphasis.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 255nothing at all"; progress itself was not monolithic and (here, Rankebears a marked similarity to Comte) different branches of humanlife advance and retrogress at different times. It was in this context,that Ranke made his famous defense of individuality by stating thatevery epoch was "immediate to God and its worth does not reside atall in what emanates from it but rather in its own existence, its ownidentity." As Georg Iggers has pointed out in his recent work, TheGerman Conception of History, the Rankean system of individualities,each of which embodies a general force or "tendency", is based uponrather abstruse metaphysical presuppositions and that "perhaps noGerman historian of the nineteenth century (with the possible ex-ception of Droysen) paid as much attention to the theoretical founda-tions of his historical practice as did Ranke."6 Nevertheless, by es-chewing the "cunning of reason" inherent in Hegelian monism, Rankeseemed to be exalting the spiritual inviolability of, if not the empiricalindividual of Anglo-Saxon historical parlance, then at least the indi-viduality, the intrinsic historical phenomenon by and through whichthe unfathomable potentialities, spiritual and daemonic, were revealed.As we shall see, Meinecke derived his particular brand of historicismfrom the Rankean heritage-one which preserved an essentially Ju-daeo-Christian dualism in the forms of historical individualities andthe God before which each of them was immediate.

Despite sporadic efforts at open-mindedness, Croce consideredRanke as being the archetypal representative of his bete noire, "con-ciliatory" historiography. In History: Its Theory and PracticeCroce ridiculed Ranke's tendency to substitute a sort of transcendentpositivism for philosophy; "but, he [Ranke] did this decorously,carefully avoiding the use of any word that might sound too rough ortoo strong, professing the firm conviction that the hand of Godshows itself in history, a hand that we cannot grasp with ours, butwhich touches our face and informs us of its action."7 Ranke's effortsto bind disparate events together through a more-or-less orthodoxProtestant theology only revealed "his slight coherence of ideas" anddid not call attention away from his tendency towards "the pragmaticmethod."8 Later, in History As The Story of Liberty, Croce indicatedthat various deficiencies in Meinecke's historicism could perhaps beattributed to his slavish worship of Ranke; Croce almost playfullychided Meinecke for believing that "a thought [historicism] firstconceived by the weighty mind of a Vico, then accepted by the sover-eign mind of a Hegel, should attain its perfect form in such a minor and

6 Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History (Middletown, Conn., 1968),64-65.7History:Its Theoryand Practice, 291. 8Ibid., 300-01.



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256 ROBERT A. POISphilosophically indifferent and inexpert mind as that of Leopold vonRanke."9 Croce's opposition to Ranke is understandable when werealize that, although the former was opposed to philosophies of his-tory as representing various forms of antihistorical transcendentalism(i.e., seeking the justification of history in extrinsic ends), he was never-theless convinced of the "identity" of philosophy and history, or, moreprecisely, that philosophy represents the "methodological moment"of history.?1What Croce meant is this: the story of philosophy is the story ofthe self-consciousness of the human spirit. Each moment of this self-consciousness represents a synthesis of problems and solutions em-bodied in a particular philosophy. Thus, if the philosopher is concernedwith a given philosophy, he is concerned with a specific, time-condi-tioned synthesis. This synthesis represents a particular concretizationof the Universal Spirit (for Croce, as we have seen, the Universal couldonly be apprehended in the concrete); an individualization of this spiritin time. A philosophy therefore is a particular consciousness of an "his-torical situation" of the Universal Spirit.11For Croce, then, philoso-phy represented the "methodological moment" of history. There neverhas been, nor will there ever be, one "true" philosophy. Rather, phi-losophy and history were bound together through the mediation of be-coming.12 We can understand why the halfhearted teleology impliedby Ranke's pious dualism must have proved particularly irritatingto Croce.

Meinecke, on the other hand, attacked Hegel with the vehemencewhich Croce reserved for Ranke. For Meinecke, Hegel representedthat daemon peculiar to German historiography: the tendencytowards a pernicious monism which completes itself in worship of thehistorically sanctified state.13 In Meinecke's eyes, the Hegeliansynthesis sacrificed the individual on the altar of universal necessity.History had been converted into a grim Schauspiel and raison d'etatenshrined as a monument to the stolid march of the World Spirit. It

9Historyas the Story of Liberty, 78.'?History: Its Theory and Practice, 151. Croce, Logic as the Science of The Pure

Concept, trans. D. Ainslie (London, 1917),310-18. Hereafter referredto as Logic."Croce, Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic, trans. D. Ainslie(London, 1913),241, 588.'2ForCroce, every human activity was historical. We base our actions on knowledgeof conditions at a given moment, and the judgment involved is not future directed, i.e.,we do not foresee results. Rather, judgment follows the completion of an act and pro-vides the basis for further action. Hence, practical activity was set within a theoretical,and hence historical, framework.Philosophy of the Practical, 39-45.

'3Meinecke, Machiavellism, trans. from German by D. Scott (London, 1962),367-68;also Walther Hofer's discussion of Meinecke's attack on Hegelian monism in GeschichtezwischenPhilosophie undPolitik (Basel, 1956),85-86.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 257was "the legitimization of a bastard."4 For Meinecke, Ranke had at-tained the greatest success "in the marriage of Idea and Reality."'5The Rankean Idee, the intrinsic spiritual core which subsisted in thelife and action of each state, represented, for Meinecke, the infusion ofa timeless spiritual verity, needing only the proper amalgamation ofexternal forces to bring it into life.16Thus, starting from diametrically distinct poles, both Croce andMeinecke evinced strong concerns for the historical individual;the oneattaining these concerns from the point of view of Hegelian imma-nency (while eschewing Hegelian eschatological considerations), theother, from the point of view of the Rankean approach. It would ap-pear, however, that two such radically different approaches (or pointsof departure) could and should have brought Croce and Meinecke intosharp opposition. As a matter of fact, Croce did criticize Meinecke'sDie Entstehung des Historismus for a certain intellectual sloppi-ness.'7 Moreover, Croce's Hegelian ancestry caused him to recoil fromMeinecke's efforts to somehow incorporate the "irrational" into his-tory.'8 As Carlo Antoni, a student of Croce, has pointed out, this ledMeinecke to have a "dualistic vision of life and the world with the twopoles consisting of Kantian spiritualism and naturalistic philosophy."''Nevertheless, it must be seen that, despite their rather different pointsof departure, Croce and Meinecke often displayed the same penetrat-ing insights and, unfortunately, ran afoul of some of the sameproblems.As we have seen, Croce's considerations of the relationship be-tween universal and particular were tinctured with strong idealisticovertones. Indeed, his historiographical considerations as a whole re-veal the efforts made by Croce to place philosophy in a temporal con-text, and hence to historicize it. As we have seen, philosophy for Croceis spirit, and spirit discovers itself in infinite forms. Thus, knowledgeof philosophy as a discipline entails a knowledge of it in its temporalmoments.20 Moreover, Croce maintains, each aspect of human life-aesthetics, formal philosophy, statecraft, economics, etc.-representsa particular aspect of the moment of spirit (although the concept, as

'4Machiavellism,350.'5DieEntstehungdes Historismus, II, 650.'6Ibid.,II 639-41; also I, 171.'7Hofer,Geschichtschreibungund Weltanschauung Munich, 1950),478-92.'8History as the Story of Liberty, 66. By "irrational" Croce was referring both toMeinecke's emphasis upon the daemonic and to his exaltation of the Kulturindi-vidualitdaen.'9Carlo Antoni, From History, to Sociology: The Transition in German Historical

Thinking,trans. H. V. White (Detroit, 1959), 107.20Logic,319, 324;History. Its Theoryand Practice, 154-55.



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258 ROBERT A. POISutilized by Croce-the mediation between individual and universalor in logical terms, the merging of subject and predicate-played atimeless role in philosophy, the matter which was its object, changed incontent and shape, i.e., it was temporal).2' History and philosophywere one: Indeed, philosophy, inasmuch as it was ideally concernednot with logical nit-picking but with spirit in toto, i.e., with spiritas living concreteness, was indeed the "methodological moment ofhistory." Naturally, Croce, inasmuch as he considered spirit to be,in its particular moments, unity, did not consider periodization, numer-ical classification and chronology to serve any functions other thanthose mnemonic and epistemological ones dictated by the practical as-pects of history. However, leaving aside methodological issues for themoment, it is'obvious that Croce had succeeded, at least in his owvnmind, in establishing the spiritual union of philosophy and historythrough the above-mentioned mediation of universal and particular.For Croce, then, the identification of the individual and the uni-versal in history was necessary inasmuch as spirit unfolds itself in par-ticular forms. The Hegelian overtones of this are obvious. Neverthe-less, it is well to point out that Croce rejected Hegel on several points:(1) he overthrew the Hegelian concern for a transcendental justifica-tion of history, and (2) he attacked Hegel's emphasis upon a "cunningof reason" in history. (Croce's attacks upon Hegel for his mistakenassumption that he had synthesized opposites rather than distinctsin his dialectic does not directly concern us here.)22Were this form [cunningof reason]exact or were it necessaryto take itliterally(andnot simplyas an imaginativeand provisionalexpressionof thetruth),I greatlyfear that a shadowof dualismandtranscendencywouldap-pear in the heart of the idealisticconception.For in this positionof theirs[Vicoand Hegel] toward the Idea or Providence, ndividualswouldhave tobe considered, f not as deluded(satisfiedindeed beyondtheir desires andhopes),thencertainlyas illuded,eventhoughbenevolentlylluded.IndividualsandProvidence, r individuals ndReason,wouldnot makeone, buttwo;andthe individualwouldbe inferiorand the Ideasuperior-that is to say,dualismandthe reciprocal ranscendencyf God and heworldwouldpersist.23Thus, for Croce, Hegel's insistence upon recognizable goals in historyand upon the prominence of the "cunning of reason" served simply toreintroduce elements of transcendentalism and dualism which Hegelhad attempted to avoid through his rigorous monistic approach. Bydiscarding these elements, Croce felt that he had preserved: (1) both

2'Logic,40-57, 156-57.22Croce, What Is Living and What Is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel, trans. D.Ainslie (London, 1915),82-89, 95.23History: ts Theoryand Practice, 102. Croce's emphasis.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 259history and philosophy, since each gained meaning through the other,and (2) the historical individual, since it participated in the embodieduniversality.Meinecke's approach to the individual/universal problem was con-ditioned, as mentioned above, by his admiration for Leopold vonRanke and, in a negative sense, by his deep-seated reaction againstHegelian monism. However, while adhering to the Rankean methodin a rather broad fashion, Meinecke did make certain alterations of hisown. First of all, Meinecke, in his work, Machiavellism, sensed a cer-tain naivete on Ranke's part in regard to power. In this regard, Mein-ecke attacked Ranke for his overly optimistic view of the state and ofits ability to synthesize power and spiritual values (Kultur). Ranke'slinking of power/political drives to a sort of religious teleology had tobe exposed and the basically daemonic nature of power "stripped of itsveil."24 Briefly, Meinecke turned against the statist aspect ofRankean historiography; and this rejection necessitated a redefinition,on Meinecke's part, of what the historical individual in fact repre-sented. This was necessary because of the "positive" emphasis whichMeinecke had placed upon the individual as opposed to the implicitlynegative judgment which he made upon the general forces surroundingthe individual's emergence. Here, Meinecke differed both from Rankeand Croce. Ranke's teleology prohibited him from establishing aspiritual dichotomy between the historical individual and the generalenvironmental forces conditioning its development. Croce, as wehave seen, saw general and particular as being, in effect, the samething, both heuristically and ontologically. His adherence to Hegelianmonism, of course, necessitated this approach. Meinecke, on theother hand (particularly after World War I), broke rather sharply withthe Rankean teleology and rejected the Hegelian approach out of hand.Nevertheless, he adhered to Ranke's emphasis upon the historicalindividual.Meinecke thus drew a rather sharp line (at least in cultural matters)between the historical individual and causal conditions. This division ismost clearly expressed in his Historische Zeitschrift essay of 1928,"Kausalitaten und Werte in der Geschichte," where he made therather interesting and well-known statement that "history is nothingelse but Kulturgeschichte."25 What Kultur in fact represented forMeinecke was also explicitly stated:. . . behindall searchingafter causalitystands,conditionally r uncondition-ally, the searchingafter values, after that which men call Kultur in the

24Machiavellism,428.25Meinecke, "Kausal:taten und Werte in der Geschichte," Historische Zeitschrift,137(1928), 23.



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260 ROBERT A. POIShighest sense, i.e., breakthroughs, manifestations of the spiritual in the midstof the networkof causality.26

In the same article, Meinecke placed renewed emphasis on theRankean dictum that history was "only a great individual filled bycountless [numbers] of great and small individuals."27 In this re-gard, Meinecke defined historical individuals as being "only suchphenomena which have intrinsic to them various tendencies in thedirection of the good, beautiful or true and [which] therefore havebecome meaningful or possessed of value for us."28 In other words,the historical individuals had been transformed into virtually super-rational Kulturindividualitaten, and hence history was, as Meineckesaw it, "nothing else but Kulturgeschichte." The historian was not tobe concerned with the network of causality through which these mani-festations, i.e., historical individuals, broke; but, rather, he was toaddress himself to the task of establishing a "geistig-sittlichen"pattern, in which historical individuals would yet preserve their re-spective intrinsic values. It is obvious that Meinecke was not using theterm "value" in a purely heuristic or methodological sense a la Rickert,but that in fact he attached an ethical meaning to it as well. This, aswe shall soon establish, was tied to Meinecke's very real concern overthe problem of good and evil in history and in historical judgment.Meinecke thus resolved the particular/general dilemma infavor ofthe particular--a result of ethical as well as metaphysical motives. Inthis regard at least, he differed considerably from Croce. History wasthus seen by Meinecke as essentially concerned with historical indi-viduals (in both a methodological and ontological sense).

On the surface of it, at least, Croce's and Meinecke's respectivetreatments of the particular/general problem would appear to be insharp opposition. Croce attacked Ranke, while Meinecke adhered tothe Rankean scheme, albeit modified to suit his purposes. Meinecke,on the other hand, attacked Hegel, while Croce adhered to the Hegel-ian scheme, again modified to suit his purposes. Croce was almostaggressively monistic; while Meinecke was not. For Croce, history was"everything," i.e., every moment-and every face of every moment-of spirit, as spirit reflects upon itself. Meinecke, on the contrary, wasdualistic in this regard, sharply differentiating between spirit in theform of Kultur and naked causal forces, among them, power.Yet, in a curious fashion, undoubtedly unsuspected by Croce orMeinecke, the two representatives of apparently diametrically opposedvarieties of historicism arrived at fairly similar positions in regard tothe problem of the historical individual's relation to general causal

26Ibid.,8.27Ibid.,18. 28id., 17.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 261conditions. The most obvious similarity is the common effort of Croceand Meinecke to "individualize" history; to transform it into a nexusof spiritual individualities and to thus combat efforts to impose anyvariety of extrinsic pattern upon it. However, besides this one ratherobvious similarity, there are others of equal significance. Perhaps themost important of these common traits is the shared concern of placinga sort of "positive" stamp upon history.Both Croce and Meinecke felt that they had succeeded in makinghistory "meaningful." Neither of them claimed to have discoveredany transcendental justification for history (indeed, both would haverejected such a justification as being extrinsic to the historical process).Rather, Croce and Meinecke shared the belief that history as historywas meaningful. History was, after all, spirit in its various concreteforms. For Meinecke, as we have seen, spirit, in the form of Kultur,was possessed both of heuristic and ethical value. For Croce, spiritwas the unfolding of universality in the individualities which com-posed human activity. Thus, both Meinecke and Croce saw history asspirit assuming the form of individuality. Croce, as we have seen,arrived at this point of view through his application of an interestingform of nonteleological Hegelianism. History was the UniversalSpirit unfolding in the manifold individualities which composedhuman thought and activity. Meinecke, through his creation ofKulturindividualitaten, arrived at somewhat the same position. Forthe historian, according to Meinecke, should be concerned only withthe Kultur-laden historical individuals. Forces of naked causality, suchas power, were implicitly precluded from the historian's purview.Thus for Meinecke, as well as for Croce, history was given a stamp thathad both strong melioristic and strong spiritual overtones. Moreover,both sought to preserve the spiritual integrity of the historicalindividual by rejecting causality-Croce on philosophical grounds;Meinecke perhaps for more blatantly moral reasons.29 As we shallsee, these respective approaches would lead to trouble for both Croceand Meinecke.It is true that Meinecke attempted to expel general forces fromhistory, or at least to circumscribe their influence, by sharply differ-entiating between them and historical individuals. Although, in DieEntstehung des Historismus, Meinecke attempted to bind general andparticular together in time by linking developmental processes tospiritual spontaneity through the concept of "inborn tendency,"Meinecke always insisted on the elevation of the historical individual

290n Croce's rejection of causality, see History: Its Theory and Practice, 64-68,where this is blendedwith a brilliantattack on Taine. Meinecke never claimed that ques-tions of causality were nonsensical or out-and-out unhistorical. He simply viewedcausalityas the enemy of the historical individual.



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262 ROBERT A. POISat the expense of general causal forces.30 Croce, of course, could neverhave accepted the superiority of individual over general implied byMeinecke. Moreover, Meinecke's occasional emphasis upon the super-rational nature of Kultur was also unacceptable to him. Nevertheless,despite this apparent clash, it is obvious that Meinecke and Crocehad succeeded in accomplishing much the same end in regard totheir respective philosophies of history. Croce had fused universalityand individuality and had thus eliminated extrinsic transcendency inthe name of neo-Hegelian monism. Meinecke had in reality depre-cated universality by divorcing it from Kultur, renaming it the "causalnexus" and by placing it under the rubric of the elemental. Neverthe-less, Meinecke in fact drew fairly close to Croce's monistic approachby virtue of his emphasis on Kulturgeschichte, i.e., on the study ofhistorical individuals. By demanding that the historian focus upon thegood, the true, and the beautiful, Meinecke approximated the positionof Croce, who also insisted on the necessity of individualizing and,at the same time, universalizing all aspects of the moments of spirit.As we have seen, for Meinecke, as well as for Croce, true history waspositive history and, despite the former's concerns over good and evil,he had shut out the "negative" in history just as decisively through hisefforts to escape monism as Croce had through his Hegelian tendencytowards individualizing historical phenomena.

Closely tied up with the distinctions between the neo-HegelianCroce and the neo-Rankean Meinecke, is the problem of good andevil, upon which we have touched parenthetically. In History as theStory of Liberty, Croce makes the very definite statement that "his-tory is about the positive and not about the negative, about .whatman does and not what he suffers."31 Croce defends this point ofview by stating further on:That which seems irrational and therefore an object of regret is, when con-sidered in itself, fully rational, as may be seen by the following: no sooner isthe historical point of view shifted from moral or civil subjects to strictlymilitary, economic, natural, and vital subjects, than the shadow becomes solidand the negative takes on the positive character, in other words it receivesthat positive treatment which historical thought always gives.3230DieEntstehungdes Historismus, I, 171. Antoni makes a most cogent criticism ofMeinecke's efforts in Die Entstehung des Historismus to bind general and particulartogether: "Meinecke thought to mediate the dangers of individualismby refusingto con-ceive of the individual as a monad and by linking its development to the processes of theexternal world. The resultant relationship is therefore conceived as an intermixture orinterweaving, a reciprocal determination of two entities, remains, that is, an extrinsicand, in the last analysis, purely mechanical relationship," From History to Sociology,116.

3'Historyas the Story of Liberty, 161;History: Its Theoryand Practice, 91-92.3"History s the Story of Liberty, 163-64.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 263Croce did not claim that "negative" moments were nonexistent.In the Philosophy of the Practical, he had faced the problem of

negativity in a thoroughgoing fashion. In this work, Croce maintainedthat the negative, i.e., "evil" was "antifreedom." Antifreedom, hesaid, "aims at making liberty fall into nothingness, by compelling it tothe inertia of the fact, and ... [by compelling it] to make a leap intothe void, by impelling it to will ... "33 Briefly, antifreedom sought toshatter that "indissoluble nexus" of necessity and freedom of whichfreedom was composed. It sought either to paralyze liberty by forcingit to conform, i.e., by forcing it to adhere "to the inertia of the fact,"or by compelling it to will arbitrarily, to make a definite but unreflec-tive choice or action. In other words, radical emphasis of either of thetwo components of freedom-necessity and freedom-constitutedantifreedom and this, for Croce, was evil. However, such an entity asantifreedom bore a flagrant contradiction in its breast: development ofa fact, i.e., recognition either of an isolated fact or of an existingsituation, depended upon an act of will, while only by "persistence inthat fact" could the form of will obtain content.34 For Croce, lifeitself, in both its theoretical and practical aspects was freedom. Life,after all, was a synthesis of passivity and activity, and each of theseterms obviously gained meaning only through the other.Croce was not denying that there was evil. Indeed, he maintainedquite logically that it was "truly the original sin of reality."35Goodand evil were thus bound together. Nevertheless, even though evilcould assume palpable form, it could not be, i.e., its contradictoryform did not allow it to partake of substance. Evil was, as Croce put it,"irreal."36Croce's view of reality as being development, "becoming,"allowed him to impose his brilliant solution to the question of good vs.evil onto history. History was thus the "continuous triumph of Lifeover Death," i.e., "cosmic progress."37There are several concrete examples in which the Crocean idea of"cosmic progress" manifested itself. First of all, in Philosophy of thePractical, Croce sharply differentiated between what was "truly real"in history and "that which improperly assumes this name."It will then be immediately een that ancientcivilization n whatit possessedof truly real, did not die, but was transmittedas thought, institutions,andeven as acquiredaptitudes;hence it kept reappearingn the course of thecenturiesand still keepsreappearing:t certainlydied in whatit hadof unreal,that is to say,.in its contradictions,or instance, n its incapacity o findpoli-tical and economicformsanswering o the changedconditionsof spirits.Inlike manner, he MiddleAges, whichwas evidently n partprogress,because

33Philosophyof the Practical, 195. 34Ibid.,196. 351bid., 51.36Ibid.,253. 37bid., 252.



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264 ROBERT A. POISit solved problems left unsolved by the preceding civilization, posed othersthat it did not solve and then were solved in the succeeding centuries.... 38Even if nineteenth-century positivism seemed to be "so greatly in-ferior" to the idealism that preceded it, this was only due to the factthat it was really not a philosophy at all, but a "hybrid jumble ofnatural sciences and metaphysics."39As such, it was serving to carryout that error which had already existed "in germ" in idealism, andwas thus "fecundating the problem for a better solution." The samepositivistic process is revealed in Croce's A History of Italy, 1871-1915, where Croce asserted that the fall of the Italian "Right"--withwhich he identified cultured and individualistic liberalism (as embodiedin such men as Ricasoli, Sella, Minghetti, and Spaventa)-in 1876did not mean that the "idea of liberalism was lost thereby":for it lived not only in those of the Right who still took part in publiclife,wherethey at timesactedas a brake andat timescontributedo the creationof good laws;it lived also in their formeropponents,who were constrained,now that they had assumed he responsibilities f government, o keep theireyes upon iberalism s upona lodestar....40Here, Croce mentions such men as De Sanctis and Depritis. Ideas,men, and governments might fall; but philosophy and the history ofwhich it was "moment" always strove forward. As in Hegel's AbsoluteSpirit, "cosmic progress" appeared for man in reflection upon objec-tive phenomena.Furthermore, as we have seen, history was also the "story ofliberty" for Croce. Liberty, he admitted, could be stifled but even instifling it the tyrannies could only admit their fear of it and establishit as a palpable antithesis.4' Croce's adherence to monism logicallyprohibited him from recognizing the "negative" in history except asit was "correlated" with the positive.42Meinecke, on the other hand,was almost morbidly concerned with the presence of evil or the dae-monic. Such concerns, developing particularly after the German defeatin World War I, were crowned by his Die Idee der Staatsrtion andwere also reflected in his rejection of the optimistic statism of Ranke.Croce's approach precluded any sort of emphasis upon the "negative"in history and in fact led him, as mentioned previously, to regard evilas being present but "irreal." However, Meinecke's strong reactionsagainst casuistic raison d'etat and the Hegelianism which sanctifiedit forced him to confront what was for him the very real issue of goodand evil.

38Ibid.,254-55. 39Ibid.,256.40Croce, A Historr of Italy, 1871-1915, trans. C. M. Ady (Oxford, 1929), 11-12.41Historyas the Story of Liberty,59-62. 42Ibid.,161.



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Meinecke's confrontation of the good/evil problem in history ledhim in the direction of abandoning those elemental forces which bothconditioned and, from time to time, threatened historical individuals(Kulturindividualitaten). This caused him to give history an almostsanctified character-it was now the study of eternal verities as thesewere embodied in historical individuals. This post-World War I con-cern of his was eloquently reflected in Die Entstehung des Historismus,where Meinecke revealed a newfound admiration for the deliberationsof Goethe over the relationship between individuality and develop-mental processes.43 In a curious fashion, though, Meinecke tended,as mentioned above, to separate general from particular in an ethicalsense, while transforming history into a positive nexus of historicalindividuals, each of which retained intrinsic value by being a mani-festation of an element or elements of the eternal. Hence, Meinecketended to approach a nebulous Rankean teleology, but through theback door. At the same time he relegated evil to a kind of nether-worldwhich could be either irrational or mechanistic. The historian coulddeal with this world but he could never understand it in an historicalfashion. In this respect, Meinecke and Croce were extremely close, atleast hypothetically: the "negative" in history could only be considered(except, as we shall see, when Croce was willing to make concessionsto "practical" history) inasmuch as it was somehow correlated withall the positive movements of spirit which, taken together, can becalled history as lived and thought.

Unfortunately, Meinecke was forced to confuse the issue (at leastthat of his own precise position in regard to causality, the historicalindividual, and "accident"-Zufall-in history). In Aphorismen undSkizzen zur Geschichte, he indicated that historical "accident" (aphenomenon whose efficacy in history Croce's monistic approachprecluded altogether)44 and the "typical" could and did often play arole in the life of a Kultur.45Inasmuch as "accident" and the "typical"logically seem to be related to elemental forces, it is difficult to see howsuch phenomena could effect a substantial change in a spiritual entity.Meinecke's pre-World War I concern over the issue of good andevil was the motivating factor which led him in the direction of hisown efforts to individualize history. This raised rather disturbingproblems for his historiography: (1) the apparent contradiction inattempting to establish a pattern (geistig-sittlichen) of urfique andeternally conditioned historical individuals; (2) his later efforts, asrevealed in Aphorismen und Skizzen zur Geschichte, to reintroduce

43DieEntstehungdes Historismus II, 480-631, esp. 540-42.44History: ts Theoryand Practice, 94-95.45Meinecke, Aphorismen und Skizzen zur Geschichte (Leipzig, 1942), 39; also,172-75 for his discussionof the role played by the "tragic"in history.



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accident (Zufall) and the "typical" into history and thus to justifyintellectually his own conception of history as being both positive(good) and negative (evil). On the other hand, the very Kulturindivi-dualitaten themselves partook of the superrational, being spiritualizedentities. (In this regard, Meinecke, of course, felt that he was draw-ing upon deeper spiritual wellsprings than was Croce.)46 In a sense,Meinecke wanted to have it both ways-as an historian, and thus astudent of disaster and tragedy as well as of the good, and as a philoso-pher and thus a student of the manifestations of spirit. It was thisdichotomy which Croce sensed when he attacked Meinecke's efforts toincorporate the irrational into history.Because Meinecke was admittedly not as systematic as Croce, itis not easy to find concrete examples of his "positivizing" of history-in the name of Kultur. However, Meinecke's post-World War IIwritings clearly reveal those consequences for historical analysis thathad to follow from his earlier polarization: "historical" Kulturindi-vidualitdten vs. demonic "natural" patterns of causality. One obviousconsequence was the following: Meinecke could avoid condemning therole of German Kultur inasmuch as this phenomenon emerged onlywhen man wished to concretize himself in the true, the good, or thebeautiful. In his 1948 essay, Ranke und Burckhardt, Meinecke wasable to place the burden of blame for recent unhappy events upon amaterialistic and selfish civilization, while preserving the spiritual in-tegrity of the Kulturmensch.47 Furthermore, through his previoustying together of nature-bound elemental drives and demonic accident,Meinecke was able to view Nazism itself as a product of both. Thus,in his 1948 essay, "Zusammenarbeit," Meinecke could declare that theactual ideology of Nazism was unimportant:The ideology . . . [volkisches Deutschtum] ... the new religion of race, was inessence nothing else but a means to power for a thoroughly nihilistic tendency,for which each ideology was correct only if it broughtquick power.48In Die deutsche Katastrophe, Meinecke sought solace in the capri-cious role of Zufall. If a few anti-Nazi Nationalists had been presentat the June 30, 1930 meeting of the German National People's Party,then perhaps the pernicious alliance with Hitler could have beenavoided.49The accidental also raised its ugly head in the form of Hin-denburg's senile weakness at a time when strength of resolve was mostneeded.50 If Nazism could be viewed as resulting from unhistorical

46Hofer,Geschichtschreibungund Weltanschauung,480.47Meinecke,Ranke und Burckhardt(Berlin, 1948),29-31.48Meinecke, Politische Schriften und Reden, ed. G. Kotowski (Darmstadt, 1958),488.49Meinecke,Die deutsche Katastrophe(Wiesbaden, 1949),93. 50Ibid.,95.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 267"nihilistic' tendencies and an amalgam of "accidents" dialecticallyrelated to these tendencies, the eternal truths of history, the Kultur-individualitiaten,could be preserved intact-and unquestioned. It wasin this context, of course, that Meinecke advised his countrymen torecapture the spirit of Goethe's age: "In the age of Goethe, the ex-ternal was in the background, thus allowing the internal to developfreely."" Indeed, inasmuch as Goethe was an embodiment of theuniquely German Kulturmensch, recapturing his spirit would allowGermany to preserve her uniqueness even while seeking to establishspiritual bonds with other nations. "Cosmopolitanism and nationalspirits are not . . . in fixed opposition, but are inextricably inter-twined."52 History had been sacrificed to a mystical permutation ofit, and the validity of Croce's earlier critique of Meinecke's approachto historicism established.Croce himself, however, in his sacrificing of ethical judgment tohistorical (or "philosophical") judgment, raised some rather profoundproblems for his own variety of historiography. Croce, of course, in-sisted that history as history is contemporary.53This indeed is one ofhis very well-known statements and, in an often rather general fashion,is seen as representing one of the substantial differences between his-tory and "chronicle." Briefly, Croce maintained throughout his careerthat history can only be history to the degree that it lives, i.e., parti-cipates in concerns and issues of the present. In his sharp divisionbetween nonhistorical moral judgments and genuinely historical,i.e., philosophical, judgments, Croce appears to have sacrificed a vitalaspect of the historical mode of thought in the name of philosophy:the participation of moral interests in history. For, as Croce himselfadmitted, moral or perhaps even ethical concerns, inextricably inter-twined with more concrete philosophical concerns, often are of vitalimportance in determining just what aspects of the past are to bebrought forward into life and thus become history.The historian, perhaps unlike the philosopher, cannot alwayssharply differentiate between value in a heuristic 'sense and valuein an ethical or moral sense. In a word, moraljudgment cannot be soeasily relegated to the realm of the practical as can such mnemonicdevices as classification, enumeration, and periodization. In almostcasually divorcing moral concerns and involvement from questions ofright and wrong as discovered and resolved in an historical context,Croce appears to have divorced subject from object, or perhaps he wasmaintaining that morality as a category-and hence, a time-conditionedaspect of history as philosophy-had little to do with resolving ques-

51Ibid.,169. 52Ibid.,172-73.53History: ts Theoryand Practice, 11-15.



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tions of right or wrong. If the latter were indeed the case, it wouldappear that Croce's treatment of the problem was resolved in more ofa semantic than a logical (and hence historical) fashion. At any rate,there can be little doubt that he felt a vague uneasiness about hissolution, an uneasiness, as we shall see, reflected in his willingness toallow the question to come in through the back door.In the Philosophy of the Practical, however, Croce certainly seemedto be aware of this problem. In this work he attempted to resolve theissue by differentiating between judging individual works and judgingso-called "historical" facts. Here, Croce maintained that we canapply a utilitarian or "moral" critique to a work of Kant or to Napo-leon's unfortunate execution of the Duc d'Enghien. "When we narrateartistic or philosophical, economic or ethical history, we place our-selves at the point of view of the individual activity."54 However,"facts that have happened," things which Croce says are works "notof the individual, but of the Whole," are not to be judged, and in factcannot be judged.55 Here, Croce fell back rather heavily upon hisHegelian ancestry. To contemplate history is the same as to judge it.Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. The judgment of the world isits history, and the only judgment that can be applied is thus the oneof necessity and reality. In a word, the historian can judge volitiononly in a utilitarian or moral fashion. Once volition is translated intoresult, the action of the Individual is no longer the issue, but, rather,the action of the Whole.56 History was progress, if not in an ethicalsense, then certainly in itself, i.e., history implied development.What Croce had done was to impose his separation of practicaljudgment, i.e., judgment of individual volition, from historical judg-ment, history as being itself judgment, upon the historical nexus ofindividuality and universality, and in reality had polarized history.The way in which Croce resolved this problem was purely Hegelian:"History is happening, which, as has been seen, is not to be judgedpractically, because it always transcends individuals, and to these andnot to history is the practical judgment applicable."57This statementpoints to Croce's awareness of some very serious problems: How canone separate individual volition from result in history? In fact, howcan one judge (in a utilitarian sense) the volition without judgingideological or philosophical origins? Further, how can one judgevolition, e.g., Stalin's purging of the kulaks for political reasons, with-out judging the result? The only way Croce was able to solve theproblem, was to reintroduce transcendency. As can be seen, this wasnot done in any sort of eschatological sense. Rather, what we are con-

54Philosophyof the Practical,94. 55Ibid.,96.56Ibid.,97-98. 571bid., 56-57.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 269fronted with is a curious transcendentalizing of the immanent,transcendency in a perhaps horizontal rather than a vertical sense. Inconfronting the issue of judgment in history, Croce had introduced anondivine cunning of reason. The individuals, whose wills were beingjudged morally, in fact were being "illuded" not by a World Spirit,but by the sum total of historical events for which their wills were notresponsible.Perhaps suffering from an inner uneasiness, Croce did maintainthat the more purely spiritual histories of civilization and culture wereon a higher plane than histories of the state.58 He made this judg-ment despite his efforts to bridge the gap, between Kulturgeschichteand political history, artificially created by German historiography.59However, in his effort to expunge the irrational or the negative fromhistory, Croce, as seen above, took a curious position: things irrationalor unfortunate became rational and perhaps even positive when thehistorian shifts his emphasis from the higher-i.e., moral or civilaspects of spirit-to lower aspects of spirit. In other words, events orentities apparently possessed of little spiritual significance, e.g., theplunder and slaughter perpetrated by the legions of Ghengis Khan,regained their spirituality, albeit on a lower level, i.e., on that levelconcerned with thirteenth-century military technology.60 The impli-cations of this, if Croce was indeed eager to preserve his unification ofhistory and philosophy, are shattering. For now, Croce had admittedthe existence of historical phenomena, the positive nature of which canonly be grasped as one descends from the higher levels of the momentsof spirit to the lower. Croce did not and could not establish a dialecticbetween the various levels of spirit. Indeed, the only way out of thisdilemma would have been for him to have reintroduced the "List derVernunft" back into his historical approach. As we have seen above,he in fact partially did this in his effort to preserve the vital distinctionbetween practicaljudgment and historicaljudgment.What Croce actually succeeded in doing was to provide a place forphenomena which were irrational when viewed philosophically. Hedid this by extricating strands of "special" histories (as opposed touniversal history) and then rejoining them, in a rather external andmechanical fashion, to the higher strands of history. He hoped,perhaps, to allow these phenomena to receive rationality from thehigher levels or moments of spirit with which they came in contact.However, the only means by which the unified nature of history couldhave been preserved would have been for Croce to reintroduce the

58Historyas the Story of Liberty, 167, 173.59Ibid.,172-73; History: Its Theoryand Practice, 150fn.60History as the Story of Liberty, 164.



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270 ROBERT A. POIS"cunning of reason" (and thus, according to him, an unwanteddualism)which would have bound the mundane to the supramundane by im-pregnating it with the immanency of spirit realizing itself at themoment for itself. Croce, in view of his rejection of the Hegeliansacrifice of history in the name of philosophy, did not want to do this,but virtually did so anyway, albeit in a different context. Anotherpossible alternative for Croce would have been for him to accept some-thing akin to Dilthey's "Objective Spirit," i.e., an intuitively graspedconcept of the totality of experience of a given epoch.61 However,Croce, while not rejecting the role of intuition in history, was adamantin maintaining that such a role had to be as limited as possible if historywas not to partake of the characteristics of aesthetics.62Meinecke, as we have seen, allowed his concern over the problemof good and evil to drive him into a peculiar variety of purely "positive"history, Kulturgeschichte, with emphasis upon Kultur-bearing his-torical individuals which are in essence distinct from the patterns ofcausality which condition and oppose their development. We havealready discussed the problems which this raised for Meinecke: thecontradiction implied in attempting to somehow link together histori-cal individuals into a coherent pattern (something that Meineckesought to do); the problems involved in his reintroducing the elementalinto Kulturgeschichte in the form of accident and the typical; andthe very introduction of the superrational Kulturindividualitaten.Meinecke, as we have said, wanted very much to have it both ways-asa student of history and as a student of Kultur; and, in view of thisdilemma, his efforts in the direction of a positive historical individualwere bound to break down. Croce was confronted with much the sameproblem, one from which his monism ostensibly should have shieldedhim. Croce did not recognize the good/evil dichotomy as being vitalto historical investigation. Everything that had been was rational to theextent that it was spirit, not manifesting itself, but spirit in itself, aparticular form. Yet, both logic and conscience led him to differentiatebetween the various aspects of spirit and to see one as substantially ona higher level than the other. Furthermore, Croce's attempt to providea niche for practical judgment in historical investigation led him to-wards that illusive aspect of Hegel which he disliked most.Croce had sought to individualize, i.e., to rationalize, the object ofthe historian's task. Like Meinecke-only in spite, rather than becauseof, a morbid concern for good and evil-he attempted to transformhistory into a "positive" and therefore rational entity--a totality initself, filled with a number of individuals. Yet, Croce was bound to be

'Wilhelm Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning In History, ed. H. P. Rickman (NewYork, 1962), 122-27. 62Logic, 283-88.



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HISTORICISM: CROCE AND MEINECKE 271as unsuccessful as Meinecke in his effort. First of all, intellectualhonesty had to readmit the irrational in history. He did this, as wehave seen, by allowing such things to be reabsorbed at the level ofmilitary, economic, or "natural" history. This closely paralleled hisbrilliant division of "practical activity" into logically united "ethical"and "economic" forms.63 However, in regard to history, Croceseemed less sure of himself. In this regard he relegated specializedhistory to "histories of vitality as of the so-called inferior or naturalreality of the human species. .... He thus indicated that these werequalitatively different from history per se.64 Yet, here again, Crocefailed to be consistent. For, while he regarded such elements as ob-stacles to "civil history," or as means to the ends of civil or ethico-political history, he had to admit that vitality was the element whichgave moral and civil aspects of spirit "form and direction"; "withoutit ethico-political history would come to lack its proper object."65 Ina word, the elemental, for Croce, proved to be as troublesome as it wasfor Meinecke. Meinecke had placed it under the rubric of externalforces of causality, yet, he had to admit it back into history in theform of the accidental and tragic. Croce had expelled it from historyaltogether, yet, he had to bring it back at the lowest moments ofspirit. He attempted to reject the histories concerned with thesemoments, only to have to admit the importance of the vitality dwellingat these levels.Historicism itself proved to be a jealous god. One had to take itwhole or not at all. As simplistic or pious as it may have sounded, theRankean dictum, "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" had to remain the un-congenial if stolid companion of those who sought to comprehendhistory in all its amoral individuality. Croce, in fact, tried to expungethe practical judgment altogether, yet his very unwillingness tosuccumb to the temptations of transcendency forced him to confrontnegativity, and to make it the extrinsic catalyst of spiritual progress.Meinecke capitulated to twentieth-century horrors altogether, ex-tracted the particular from the Rankean synthesis of general andparticular, and consecrated it upon the altar of the rationally unknow-able. He fragmented history in the name of Kultur and then sacri-ficed Kultur to the emotions which called for its preservation. Theprofound yet brutal nature of historical fact proved too tough for theneo-Hegelianism of Croce or the desperate mysticism of Meinecke.Croce's rationalism had caused him to reject Hegel; and thestatism of German historiography-a factor which was due in no smallmeasure to Hegel-alternately infuriated and disgusted him.66

63History: ts Theoryand Fractice, 150ftn.64Historyas the Story of Liberty, 165;Philosophy of the Practical, 27-28. 65Ibid.66Historyas the Story of Liberty,53, 84, 167-68; Philosophy of the Practical, 477.



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Hegel had to be brought down to earth. History had to stand on itsown and no longer be the casuistic protector of national policy or thepallid shadow of the Absolute. Yet, Croce's own sensitivity forbadehim from following through to the end the consequences of hisdivision between moral judgment and historical judgment.Meinecke's reasons for abandoning himself to an historicalmysticism in the name of individuality were more obvious thanCroce's, although perhaps less profound. As we have seen, Meineckesought to preserve the hallowed respectability of Kultur and yetpreserve the historical individual. So, the two became one and thezeitgebunden individual of Ranke became transformed into thetimeless individuality of Meinecke. One could argue that this hardlyconstituted history, much less historicism; but, Meinecke had suc-ceeded, at least in his own mind, in preserving Kultur, particularlyGerman Kultur, from the vulgar forces of militarism and misusedRealpolitik. If history consisted of Kulturindividualititen and if theseentities were immune from rational investigation, the national heri-tage was secure. The apotheosis of Meinecke's approach was attained,of course, in his post-World War II work, Die deutsche Katastrophe,in which the role of Germany's cultural heritage in relation to theorigin of Nazi barbarismwas hardly even considered.For reasons both personal and cultural, the two greatest twen-tieth-century representatives of historicism, Benedetto Croce andFriedrich Meinecke, could not remain within its sharply definedboundaries, and the challenge posed by a sanguine nineteenth-centuryhistorian went unanswered.

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