Pluralistic and Antinomian Views.
Ideas like those
of Buckle and Marx brought to the fore issues that
have
not always been clearly distinguished. Thus the ques-
tion of whether history is interpretable by reference
to some
unitary principle (whether teleological or
causal in character) has
sometimes been identified with
the question of whether history can be said
to form
an intelligible field of study, susceptible to rational
understanding and elucidation. The twentieth-century
historian Arnold
Toynbee has, for example, suggested
that in the absence of such a
principle, history would
amount to no more than a “chaotic,
fortuitous, dis-
orderly flux”;
while others have spoken as if the sole
alternative to regarding historical
phenomena as ulti-
mately determined by some
specific set of material or
social forces was to relegate them to the
sphere of the
merely random and contingent. Alleged dilemmas of
this
kind may be challenged, however, on the grounds
both that they exploit
ambiguities inherent in such
notions as
intelligibility and
contingency and that at
the same time they presuppose a too restricted model
of acceptable
explanation. It can be maintained, for
instance, that a pluralistic
conception of historical
causation—one, that is, which ascribes
causal efficacy
to a variety of independent factors without according
paramount status to those of any single type—is in no
way
incompatible with the belief that historical events
and developments can be
rendered intelligible in a
perfectly straightforward sense; it has, indeed,
been
argued that such a conception accurately reflects the
practice of
the majority of working historians, few of
whom would admit that they were
thereby committed
to the view that their subject matter was in some
fashion radically incoherent or intractable. Nor, like-
wise, need a historian think that history is the
product
of arbitrary caprice, or even that it is essentially (in
Carlyle's famous phrase) “the biography of great
men,”
if he subscribes to the opinion that the characters
and
decisions of individual figures often play a central and
irreducible role in determining what occurs. In this
connection it is
interesting to observe that the Marxian
theorist G. V. Plekhanov
(1857-1918), himself an
avowed adherent to the “monist view of
history” and
insistent upon the stringent limits that social
conditions
and “general causes” imposed upon the
capacity of
individuals to affect the course of events, was none-
theless prepared to allow that personal
disposition and
talent, as expressed in the activities of individuals,
could make a real difference to what happened in
certain historical
contexts. Any theory (he held) which
tried wholly to dispense with a
consideration of indi-
vidual factors would
assume an implausible “fatalistic”
appearance, just
as one that by contrast attributed
everything to these would end, absurdly,
by depicting
history as an inconsequential and wholly fortuitous
series of happenings.
A further source of difficulty and confusion has been
the tendency to
conflate issues of the kind discussed
with others relating to the place of freedom in history
and to
the general status of determinism. As Buckle
correctly noted, a powerful
motive for resisting deter-
ministic or
scientifically orientated conceptions of his-
torical development has been the conviction that their
acceptance is inconsistent with a belief in human free
will and
responsibility. One characteristic reaction to
such theories has
accordingly taken the form of em-
phasizing
the decisive contributions made by out-
standing individuals and of arguing that if, for example,
Napoleon
or Lenin had not been born, European his-
tory
might have followed a markedly different course.
But the claim that the
deeds of particular personalities
have often had profound long-term effects
does not by
itself entail that the historical process cannot be re-
garded as constituting a causally determined
sequence.
All that the determinist postulates (it may be objected)
is
that, given any historical event, an explanation of
the occurrence of that
event could in principle be
provided in terms of causally sufficient
conditions. And
this in no sense contradicts the contention that
“great
men” or “world-historical
individuals” sometimes ex-
ercise a
decisive influence upon what happens; what
it states is that, if and when
they do, their choices and
actions must themselves always be susceptible to
a
complete causal explanation.
Somewhat similar considerations apply to the claim
that the obtrusion of
accidental or chance happenings
into history represents a refutation of
deterministic
assumptions. It is, of course, quite true that
historians
are apt to employ the notions of chance
or accident
in the course of unfolding their
narratives and explana-
tions: this was a
feature strongly underlined by the
British historian J. B. Bury. However,
as Bury himself
pointed out in a well-known essay entitled
“Cleopatra's
Nose,” it is a mistake to conclude from
that that the
use of such concepts presupposes “the intrusion of
a
lawless element” into history. It would appear rather
that, when a historian refers to something as having
happened by chance, he
implies that its explanation
lies—in a manner admittedly not
easy to characterize
with precision—off the main track of his
enquiry or
concern. An event that is described as fortuitous or
accidental in the context of one set of interests may
take on a different
aspect when it is surveyed from
another standpoint, being seen there as
intrinsically
related to the historian's principal theme or subject:
in neither case, though, need the suggestion that it has
no causal
explanation be present. Bury himself, echoing
the account provided by A.
Cournot in his Considéra-
tions sur la marche des idées
et des événements dans
les temps modernes
(1872), referred to chance as in-
volving the
“valuable collision of two or more inde-
pendent chains of causes.” As a definition this may
not
be impeccable, but it at least avoids the pitfall of
presuming that, in talking of chance occurrences, the
historian
is irrevocably committed to some form of
indeterminism.
