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References
Martin Heidegger,Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, 1963, p. 20: “...Historizität ist als Seinsart des fragenden Daseins nur möglich, weil es im Grunde seines Seins durch die Geschichtlichkeit bestimmt ist.”
Martin Heidegger,Die Frage nach dem Ding, Tübingen, 1962, p. 30: “Was ‘natürlich’ sei, ist ganz und garnicht ‘naturlich,’ d.h. hier: selbstverständlich für jeden beliegigen je existierenden Menschen. Das ‘Natürliche’ ist immer geschichtlich.”
John Lukacs,Historical Consciousness or the Remembered Past, New York, 1968, p. 22.
Heidegger refers specifically to Descartes' ontology of the world as comprised ofres extensa as well as to the scientific mathematical projection of nature. I am taking some liberties with this notion since I believe it could be used to refer to any general, implicitly accepted, ontology of the world and man including Heidegger's phenomenological ontology ofDasein. Many of Lukacs' insights and philosophical asides concerning the historicity of man's being, the importance of the prevalent conception of time in terms of an understanding of history, the dynamic structure of history and human existence, man's projection of meaning into the world, and many other similar notions are echoes of Heidegger'sSein und Zeit. It is both surprising and disappointing that Heidegger's name does not even appear in the index to Lukacs' study.
John Lukacs,op. cit., p. 59.
Cf. W. B. Macomber,The Anatomy of Dissillusion: Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth, Evanston, 1967, p. 204.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Paris, 1960, Livre II, pp. 381–755.
John Lukacs,op. cit. p. 53.
Ibid. op. cit. p. 69.
Ibid. op. cit. p. 75.
G. W. F. Hegel,The Philosophy of History, trans. C. J. Friedrich, New York, 1956, p. 21. InHumanisme et terreur Merleau-Ponty maintains that it is the contingencies of history which entail the possibility of terror and violence.
John Lukacs,op. cit., p. 234.
Ibid., p. 140.
Ibid., p. 105.
Ibid., p. 247.
Ibid., p. 153. Because Lukacs is sensitive to what he calls the microscopic details of history, the unique character of particular events, he conceives of history as problematic, as shot through with unpredictable contingencies. Thus, he maintains that the historian, unlike the physicist who deals with macrophysical phenomena, is better able to predict what is not going to happen rather than what is going to happen. Lukacs occasionally seems to be unaware of his tendency to stress the unintelligibility of historical phenomena and thereby to preclude the understanding of history he prescribes.
Ibid., p. 159. Lukacs claims that human purposes are more important than motives in effecting historical events. But surely one may argue that in some cases purposes do function as motives. Thus, for example, we may assume that President Roosevelt's motive for inaugurating ‘pump priming’ during the depression was to stimulate the economy and to provide employment for a large number of people. The purpose of bringing some of the New Deal legislation to fruition was clearly coincident with his motives. In regard to the general notion that purposes can be causes Lukacs is clearly mistaken, I believe, in his view that certain effectsprecede causes insofar as human beings do make choices or decisions in terms of a final cause. For surely the anticipation of a future possibility affects present behavior sincesoi-disant “final causes” act upon the individuala tergo, at present. Unless one holds that there is a transcendent ground of a cosmic nisus immanent in nature and history one cannot hold that final causes are operative in the way in which Lukacs thinks they are. The end for the sake of which an individual chooses or acts has causal efficacy insofar as it is a possibility which is presently apprehended.
Jean-Paul Sartre,Being and Nothingness, trnas. H. Barnes, New York, 1956, p. 489.
John Lukacs,op. cit., p. 260.
Ibid., p. 221.
Reuben Guilead, Êtreet Liberté: Une Etude sur le dernier Heidegger, Paris, 1965, p. 105: “[Pour Heidegger] l'histoire comme révélation de l'Être est à la fois la source de la grandeur de l'homme et de sa chute. Cette tragédie est encore grandie par le fait que c'est l'Être seul qui determine ce double caractère, et que ce n'est pas du tout la faute de l'homme... Le destin de l'Être n'est cependant rien que l'Être lui-meme, c'est-à-dire la façon dont l'Être s'exprime dans l'histoire.”
John Lukacs,op. cit., p. 173. Lukacs avers that the condition for the possibility of history is man's implicit knowledge of himself. Like Hegel and Marx, Lukacs suggests that, properly speaking, only man has ahistory. Sartre, of course, has reiterated this recently in hisCritique de la raison dialectique.
Dilthey's Philosophy of Existence: Introduction to Weltanschauungslehre, trans. W. Kluback and M. Weinbaum, New York, 1957, pp. 19–20.
Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, Leipzig and Berlin, 1927, Vol. VII, p. 135.
Ibid. pp. 290–291.
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McBride, W.L., Stack, G.J. Book reviews. Man and World 2, 613–636 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249076
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249076