Arizona State University

History and Destiny

Author(s): Massimo Cacciari and Thomas Behr
Source: Annali d'Italianistica, Vol. 29, Italian Critical Theory (2011), pp. 59-68
Published by: Arizona State University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24016412
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 Massimo Cacciari

History and Destiny

The awareness that history — Wilhelm Dilthey writes — occurs only beca
"we are historical beings," the awareness that the historical world is n
external "object" but the product of the spirit, or rather its uninterrupted
production, is the "intuition" which lies at the foundation of every critiq
historical reason, from Dilthey onward.1 And it is easy to discover the ance
(often tacit or ignored) it shares with the Vichian "new science." In any c
when we depart from "the pure air" of Kantian criticism "to render its due
nature that is altogether different from historical objects," we must admit
the principles at our disposal do not enable us to fashion a structural conne
of the totality of the experiences that form an historical situation (Dilthey
der Forsetzung 282).2 A "scientific" approach will certainly reject any reli
or ideological presupposition, no matter how well camouflaged. No
camouflaged theodicy here (to paraphrase Nietzsche); history "proves" nothing
with regard to hierarchies of value. Every phenomenon has "a place in the
world, its own reality, which must be justified in the connection" (291); no
pretences "aw/weltgeschichtlichen Ideen," to ideas capable of comprehending in
themselves the "global" (Burckhardt 225); essentially, no philosophy of history,
where philosophy equals an exposition of immanent laws of becoming, of a
logic of becoming, from which particular facts "emanate." The philosophy of
history is indeed a centaur (Burckhardt again), for historical can be only the
finished connection between facts accurately proven, while philosophy is
judgment that must formulate itself on the basis of universally valid principles.
But even historical knowledge is in need of principles. For even if we admit
that historical knowledge is founded only on Wahrnehmungen,3 an element is
already present in that expression that goes beyond the simple act of perceiving
and the simple account of what has been perceived. Wahrnehmungen means
"holding the 'thing,'" "experiencing it" for real (Wahr)\ an experiencing,
therefore, that is conducive to conceptual understanding. Dilthey also moved in
this direction in his struggle to overcome any relativistic foundering of historical
conscience. In this way, the spirit would not lose itself in the "ocean of

1 "Because man is an historical being" (Dilthey, Plan der Forsetzung 291). The text
quoted by the author is also in Dilthey, Critica della ragione storica 372-84 (Editor's
note).
2 All translations are the author's {Editor's note).
3 "Perceptions of which we are fully aware," in Jacob Burckhardt's terminology (Editor's
note).

Annali d'Italianistica 29 (2011). Italian Critical Theory

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60 Massimo Cacciari

inequalities" of the Erlebnisse4 but, on the contrary, knowing how to connect

them, recognizing "scientifically" the psychological constants, it would perceive
the "continuity of the creative force," the sovereign spirit that frees itself ever
time from the very finiteness of the each diverse situation, just as "from the
spider webs of dogmatic thought" (Burckhardt 225). Thus, the spirit that
always "embodied" in determinate forms, is constantly reborn from them to
create new forms.
But is this not a philosophy? Certainly. The anti-metaphysical attitude (the
connection is always finite and the multiplicity of Wahrnehmungen will not lead
us back to the Mothers of Faust!) is here expressed as the beginning of a new
philosophical approach. This approach turns to historical facts, "scientifically"
treated and to the question around the subject that considers them. The
connection worked by the historian sends us back, then, to the "who" who
operates such connection. Historical knowledge appears possible because the
subject that "makes" it, in every sense, is "historical." Only when we no longer
think of the subject as an "axiom for deduction" (Heidegger 144), but as the real
"thrown-ness"5 of the being which is, contemporaneously, sensibility and
intellect, reason and passion; only when the Cartesian Ego, abstracted from its
being-in-the-world is replaced by the living being that is not in the world as in a
container, but has the world in itself; only when, in conclusion, the essence of
being-there is understood as Mit-sein, "being together," is there a possibility for
the disclosure of an authentic historical knowledge.6
Heidegger, in the years of Sein und Zeit and of his parting company with
Husserl, offers us, to my mind, the most radical interpretive key to Diltheyan
historicism. His approach is more dislocating than necessary, dislocating
precisely because it is an expression of a philosophy: the essence of being-there
is historical. Here is precisely where the knowledge of history is grounded, and
it is for that reason that historical knowledge ends up determining the entire
conception of the world and of man. That such essence can only manifest itself
historically, by means of facts, situations, epochs, does not change its absolutely
unconditioned character. A similar conclusion could not have been drawn from
the Diltheyan historical conscience on the irreducibility of every epochal
connection. In any case, Dilthey's idea of a higher "conversation" between the

4 In the language of the Geisteswissenschaften at the turn of nineteenth century ("sciences

of mind," although in English they would be called "social sciences,") Erlebnis is "lived
experience." Husserl, however, will give the term a different meaning, emphasizing the
"intentional" side of it and stripping the "lived experience" of its casualness (Editor's
note).
5 In Heidegger's lexicon, "throwness" (Geworfenheit) describes how one is always being
"thrown" in a situation before becoming aware of it (Editor's note).
6 "Being-there" (Da-sein, or Dasein), used in German philosophy since Ludwig
Feuerbach, means "individual existence" in general. In Heidegger's lexicon is a synonym
of "human entity" (Editor's note).

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 History and Destiny 61

"universal individualities" of diverse epochs and, above all, of his idea of the
continuity between them, supported, again, by a sort of "weak teleology," finds
in Heidegger an improvement of its equivocal or "incomplete" formulation and
a coherent philosophical explanation. Conscience and historical knowledge are
possible because we are not "psychic entities" (res cogitans) except as first
speakers, and speakers in as much as we are in-the-world and in-language. This
does not mean being-in-time, but being-time. The past ceases to appear as a
determination of the already-been and becomes involved in the essence (ousia)
signifying live presence, of the being-there that is time. Being-there discloses its
own essence, that is, it makes itself phenomenally a presence, even when it
presents itself here-and-now as being-past.
We can perform the historical connections, "construct" epochs, and analyze
the pólemos-encounter only because we are the connections between different
phenomena.7 Time signifies temporality of the being-there in the totality of its
manifestations. The distinction among temporal, extra-temporal, and supra
temporal reality stops having value and comes down to an academic idle talk
that would like to do away with the "care" that seizes the being-time of being
there, meaning his being-toward-death.
Historical knowledge cannot proceed other than by defining connections
and continuities. The possibility of "relating oneself' to the past must reside
either in the character of the mind of the man who makes history, or, more
profoundly, in the essence itself of his being-there. Or rather, that possibility
must be explained on the basis of a Design or providential Order revealed to us
— an idea secularized by the various philosophies of history and which finds its
perfected form in Hegel. In Hegel, history is a movement of the spirit towards
self-consciousness, the progressive story of its knowing itself, that is, of its
becoming conscious of the infinity of its own being. When Husserl speaks of
history he still speaks of it exactly in these terms which are altogether
incompatible with Dilthey as well as with Heidegger. For the latter two, in fact,
historical knowledge refers back to the painful acknowledgement of the finitude
of every phenomenon of being-there, of every situation and of every value.
Nonetheless, for Dilthey, the various epochs whose order is immanent to the
events which make them up must share a relationship. These events, to be sure,
will never be known in their totality. They are not Goethe's Gleichnisse — that
is, images referring beyond themselves, reflections of superior Forms. Without a
relationship among the epochs, we would not even be able to enter into a
relation with them. Now, either this relationship must be shown each time
through evidence as we attempt to establish it exclusively on the basis of the
wealth of our documentation and on the sympathetic force of our examination,
or it is transcendentally explainable on the basis of the essence of being-there.

"ftj/emcw-encounter" refers to a conflict ("pólemos") which is also an "encounter" of

different civilizations (Editor's note).

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62 Massimo Cacciari

But what is it that that essence properly explains? What is it that such a
judgment permits us to formulate with respect to the living concreteness of th
individuality of this epoch in its conflict (pólemos) with the others? What is th
effectuality of the "opening-up" of an essence that affirms the historicity of
being-there, and, moreover, that history is nothing other than the form of bein
there as related to Being? With such a statement are not we going back, albeit
via a different route and discussing an altogether different matter, to the Kantia
problem of the Obergang, that is, of the passage between the legislation of th
intellect and the pretence of the law to have universal value and the infinity of
beings and of connections of nature? Dilthey is aware of this problem; the proo
is the incompleteness of his work, and in his attempt to overcome the problem
by fulfilling it, Heidegger ends by eliminating it.
There seem to be two possible approaches to the question about the
principles of a critique of historical reason. They are quite different ye
interconnected because of historical consciousness: on the one hand, a
"psychology" or a "science of elements" (Vico, again, docet) that plays a role in
the making of history on the part of man, and on the other hand, the statement
(altogether philosophical though anti-metaphysical) on the essential historicity
of being-there. The critique has, above all, to highlight the premises of such
historical research with respect to the naivety of believing that the continuity and
connections revealed thereby are linear expressions of the facts themselves. The
finite character of historical knowledge is a priori noticeable from the fact that
we necessarily transform Burckhardt's Wahrnehmungen (that is, those events
that we are able to "perceive" extracting them from the flow of the past) at the
very moment we try to order them in some fashion. The event "placed back" in
an epoch so fashioned by the historian is no longer "itself." And in any case we
have at our disposal only events-as-parts-of-a-whole; the event alone does not
"signify," does not speak to us. The historian constructs the discourse of history,
and it is this that we hear and to which we relate. But such a discourse is not
simply "more" than the sum of its parts; the discourse transforms each part, each
element, placing each of them back in itself. It is necessary to know that the
unrepeatable singularity of the event is lost. And yet, historical knowledge is
borne of our awareness of such a loss.
The historian always turns to "life," to that which "gives life" to an event, a
situation, and even more, to man who suffers in it and acts in it. Without such
"sympathy" (sympâtheia) there could only be sedentary erudition. In that Jacob
Burckhardt, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel (respectively, the historian who
believes himself "free" from presuppositions of value, the historicist heroically
in search of the impossible system, and the disenchanted essayist) are in
agreement. But the form of the epoch nourishes itself from the life of the
individual; it does not save it, as such, at all. This is the reason for the
Kierkegaardian aut-aut between historical consciousness and faith. In history the
life of the individual is at the service of the continuity of the historical process

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 History and Destiny 63

itself. The individual cannot emerge, cannot free himself from it. In history the
individual is unredeemable. Only faith can save him, for thanks to its energy,
which is not historical, faith can leap outside of the network of connections and
of the continuity of becoming. To be sure, Burckhardt's man, too, is able to
decide and is willing to run a risk or to bet, but, nevertheless, he is always
included in the totality of the process. The gaze of the historian cannot penetrate
his most intimate Erlebnis. His life is a priori considered at the service of the
continuity of the process, without rhetoric, without sacrificial emphases, alas, to
rationalize his loss. Nothing redeems it, but this loss is necessary. The individual
in history is exclusively "towards" his own death, and this is exactly what the
historian represents while he fashions the whole of an epoch or of an event, even
when the historian is not aware of it. The individual decides—but he decides
within his own historical being, whatever the values he considers himself
witness of. Hence, the completely different meaning of the term "decision" in
Kierkegaard and in Heidegger—and the affinity of the former with Walter
Benjamin in his criticism of historicism.
Nietzsche, after all, had understood right away the consequences of the
ordering principles of connection and continuity not only on our actions, but
also on the very notion of man itself. This idolatrous "respect" for history, our
becoming "historians from head to toe" (durch und durch) would have brought
about a loss of courage to make history.8 The load of historical knowledge with
which we are increasingly burdened would end up condemning us to impotence.
Dilthey, too, warned of the danger of "venerating" history, of remaining chained
to its representations made of "contexts" and reciprocal conditionings. Historical
time, too, is rupture. Time is a labyrinth of times; it does not go down one path,
along which the past is but a step for arriving to us (Burckhardt); diverse
temporalities may be in conflict in a given event. The historian is aware of it and
recognizes it in his materials. But never will any Erlebnis be able to de-cide
itself (to cut itself away, that is)) from its historical being; whatever the decision,
it will be relative only. Even "novitas" is a regulating idea that can only affirm
itself historically; it will never be an energy breaking into the historical
"discourse" to transcend it.9
Does Nietzsche's over-man (Ûbermensch), in its most discordant analogy
with Kierkegaard's thought, point to an ulterior dimension with respect to the
historical essence of being-there? This fundamental question can only be left
unanswered here, but we can confidently state that the comprehensive trajectory
of Nietzschean thought points to an idea of Being as Liberty, more radical than

Here the author paraphrases Nietzsche's posthumous fragments (Nachgelassene

Fragmenté) on history (summer-fall 1873, 29 [32]) and others (238-39 of the Italian
edition; Editor's note).
9 The concept of "novitas" refers to the "universe's novelty" theme (novitas mundi), or
the creation of the universe by God's act (Editor's note).

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64 Massimo Cacciari

any form of the will to power, that expresses itself as potential liberty of
same being historically defined (definitimi) and to be defined (definiendum
This idea anticipates a philosophy that has nothing more to do with historici
except in so far as it has gone beyond it, in its great, dramatic declinations f
Dilthey to Max Weber.
Critically aware historicism knows that being-there lives its own historic
finitude in a way that always transcends it. It lives it, that is to say, ec-static
outside of itself. And not only because it continually "anticipates" its own de
or lives its own dying (mors as nomen agentis). We have already seen that w
we limit ourselves to this general determination-destination, we are missing
"frame" that connects it to the effectuality of this being-there in this situat
thus concretely determined. It is in the network of being-there and wo
defined historically from one moment to the next, that behaviors, actions
plans in their own pre-theoretical "originarity" show their own irreducibilit
deterministic-mechanistic considerations. Nothing disposes itself according
the models of an "a priori history"; nothing allows setting laws on which t
build the inexorable development of civilizations (this is the criticism of Osw
Spengler's outstanding pupil, Arnold Toynbee to his teacher and, above
Robert Musil's criticism in his 1921 essay, "Geist und Ehrfarung"). Historic
knowledge does not trace horoscopes; the connections that it must estab
underline, at the most, patterns (Vico's recurring cycles, too, should
understood this way). All this may be true, but it still does not tackle
problem: is there a clue in the labyrinth of times and decisions that w
together an epoch of the fact that the historical essence of being-there is
itself nothing else but historical? That is to say: nothing else but characteriz
an epoch of history that comprehends an opening up of the being-th
questioning itself?
Does the history of which we have knowledge, con-science, make it
known, by means of some of its traces, as part of a further destination? D
history -Historié, i.e., the search for causes and actual connections, lead us
that which is not effectively knowable in them, as if to an actually necessary
immanent dimension? Historié, that is, must also be Geschichte, but not in
sense of already-sent (ge-schickt) but rather in that of still-to-come (ad-venie
This is the problem at play in the term "destiny."
Authentic historical knowledge, at the very moment it shows how langua
work, and struggle make history, is also aware that the resulting situa
forever contradicts the motivations, aspirations, and plans of those who ha
produced it. Yet history would not be, were it not for all those wills, consid
both individually and collectively. These wills claim for themselves the powe
determine. This power is always denied them but this denial is nothing oth
than the result of their being-there and of their self-expression. We can read
contradiction within the frame of ancient wisdom: symphoré is man, whol

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 History and Destiny 65

the totality of his being.10 Symphoré is the useful, as misfortune is fate, event,
chance in the totality of its meanings. But we can also say that man is sophós
(and it was exactly a sophós — Sophocles — who pronounced these terrifying
words!). He can indeed think, plan, act; the outcome of his actions, however, is
not left up to him (Sophocles, Antigones, first stasim). Nor can he, no matter
how wise, foresee it. Historical knowledge is precisely the "knowledge" of such
contradictions; the histór is he who investigates, examines, and questions the
Erlebnis of that being-there that has inscribed in its essence the capability of
"making history" and that never knows the history that it makes (all true
historians from Vico to Raymond Aron know this).
Such awareness is, as we have just seen, rather ancient. Its consequences
are, however, also of the greatest import for our present discussion. The law of
unintended consequences or "heterogeneity of ends" (eterogenesi dei fini) does
not simply point to the necessary unforeseeability of the outcomes of my acting,
and therefore to the equally necessary finiteness of historical consciousness; it
also opens up to the idea of exceeding for the spirit who knows, wants, hopes,
and suffers with regard to every given situation and connection. The spirit does
not find "satisfaction" in these. It is never "contained" or "content"; it exceeds
them, precisely, and for that reason it "fails." But "excess" is the name itself of
Agathón, of the Good. Being-there overlaps with it inasmuch as its "plan" to
find satisfaction in the finiteness of its own historical being fails. In this failure
being-there discovers that "its reign is not of this world." In the concreteness of
its own acting and in the determinateness of the contexts in which it operates
and by which it is always conditioned, being-there discovers the sign of its
essential non-belonging. Out of this suffering for not belonging, it learns not
only its radical limits, but also the pure possibility of a further destination. Or, if
one prefers, exactly because man (or his spirit) becomes conscious of his own
limit and because he assumes it radically in himself, he makes the limit his, he
ceases to merely endure it, he comprehends it in its gaze, as if already
transcended.
This process does not redeem from defeat at all. The "filthy river" of
history, mentioned by Nietzsche, does not get redeemed by the good ocean into
which it should flow. No superior theory (theoria) rationalizes it. But the fact
that we feel responsible for it, the fact that we are aware of our impotence to
answer questions, indicates here-and-now that that river "does not possess us." It
indicates that we, in our being time and history, are an inextinguishable
"eschatological reserve" in regard to any statement on the essence of being-there
that does not consider it on the "groundless background" (s-fondo) of original
Liberty.
We say "destiny" when the unforeseeable catches us by surprise. But the

"Pan esti anthrópos symphoré" ("hence man is wholly accident"); Herodotus I, 32

(Editor's note).

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66 Massimo Cacciari

unforeseeable is the result of our every action, if the term is understood in its
ultimate meaning: the "fulfillment" of being-there in the realization of its own
"plan." An effectual historical consideration cannot fail to take into account thi
dimension of the historical process; all connections demonstrate and yet escap
all a priori principles. But we also use the word "destiny" when we believe we
know that to which we are destined. Although this face of destiny will g
constantly contradicted by the former, it must play a part in historic
consciousness, for historical consciousness must take into account also the
motivations, the aspirations and even the illusions of those who make history.
And "destiny," lastly, is the self-disclosure of the conscience to that which
escapes, in principle, causal connection: the self-opening of a "destination" that
cannot be historically determinable, and that nods to us precisely in the un
satisfiability of our planning {pro-gettare).
No historical analysis can therefore reject the term "destiny," so long as one
understands it cannot be reduced to Necessity or Ananke, to the Unremovable
that moves everything, to the Inevitable, but even to a simple ensemble of norms
or rules verifiable in the facts. Destiny implies will to "destine oneself'; destiny
implies "heterogeneity of ends"; destiny implies meta-historical destination of
historically determined being-there. Far from representing the inexorable
concatenation of human facts, destiny defines the historical consciousness which
opens itself to pure Possibility. But this Possibility embodies itself in the very
meaning that being-there attributes to its own acting, better still: precisely in the
"defeat" that being-there experiences because of its obligation to achieve its
perceived end. History is a repetition of this motto: "I shipwrecked; I steered my
ship well" ("Naufragium feci, bene navigavi").
Far from being a term that encapsulates the historical process in a higher
unity (as happens to the current idea, of Hegelian origin, of the unification of the
world as a system governed immanentistically by techno-scientific reason),
"destiny" becomes the sign of the "coming one" {adveniens) always "lying in
ambush" for our historical essence. God is a subverter, Herodotus said." The
spirit is a subversive towards those who trust their ability to escape their
historical being, towards those who trust their ability to calculate, to dominate,
to foresee it, and eventually also towards those who idolatrize it. To decide
between staying open to the "subversive" or "destine oneself' to the
consummation est is the systole and diastole of history.12 We take part in it, no
matter what. We must be aware of it if we want to have historical knowledge.
But what shall be the history we make, we are in no position to know. The more
we claim to be subjects of history, the more we will experience the failure of our
desire to control and to know. The more we are aware of the finiteness and

"7b theion pan eon phthoneron te kai tarachddes" ("The Deity is altogether envious
and apt to disturb our lot." Herodotus I, 32) (Editor's note).
12 "It is finished" John 19.30 (Editor's note).

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 History and Destiny 67

relativity of our being-there, the more we will perceive our destination as

impossible to be captured within the net of conditions that determine it
historically — destination, still, here-and-now and active, essence (ousia) of
being-there.

Università Vita-Salute San Raffele, Milano

(Translated by Thomas Behr)

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68 Massimo Cacciari

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Dilthey, Wilhelm. Critica della ragione storica. Trans, and Introd. Pietro Rossi. Torino:
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