1

The Fundamental Notions
in Schelling’s and Habermas’s
Conceptions of History

I

THIS SECTION is intended as a portrayal and an analysis of the “concept of history,” which the young Schelling developed in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). In his development of this concept, Schelling was the first to introduce history as the pivotal issue in German Idealism.

Such an effort to reconsider a traditional philosophy of history is immediately confronted with the objection that it cannot help but be irrelevant to a philosophical interpretation of history that could be convincing in the modern age, and it seems impossible that it could be considered relevant to current historiography. It would indeed be a mistake if one failed to recognize that the traditional foundation on which Schelling’s entire enterprise is based can no longer correspond to our modern historical consciousness or to our conception of man and the world, for they have been too greatly transformed in our technological age. But which foundation is it then that sets the standards for current philosophical and scientific thought and for our ordinary conduct? Do we have any conception at all of such a foundation? It is the particular fate of our generation to live between tradition and another beginning with a new foundation.¹ We live in an age in which the previous categories of knowledge and the traditional standards of ethical conduct have been called into question or have even begun to disappear, although no new ones have arisen to take their place. We can bear our fate in full consciousness only if we recognize that the task of philosophy today consists in keeping the traditional foundations in view from the vantage point of the present when considering any new philosophical conceptions. We must examine whether and to what extent these new conceptions, if they are consistent in themselves, are only operatively applying traditional categories or whether they exhibit something that might lead to a new foundation.

Accordingly, I have selected the earlier Schelling’s concept of history as opposed to his later ones simply because it lends itself more easily to the exposition of various traditional basic ideas on the matter. I have also chosen it as opposed to Hegel’s concept, even though the latter was more significant in terms of historical influence, because an examination of Schelling’s concept can show how the influence of certain modern tendencies led to a fundamental difficulty within the traditional framework. And this difficulty can be taken as an indication of certain inadequacies within the traditional framework. I shall then examine a contemporary concept of history in light of the fundamental categories and basic ideas that we are able to discover in Schelling’s concept of history. The contemporary concept of history to be analysed is that developed by Jürgen Habermas, because it is in our opinion characteristic of the current discussion regarding history.

It may seem surprising that it was Schelling, a student of Fichte, who was the first in German Idealism to make history a theme of transcendental philosophy. Fichte, however, had spoken of history only in a sense that has nothing to do with the usual one, in the sense of a logical genesis that proceeds from the principle of self-consciousness and unfolds all the possibilities for thought contained in the principle, as demonstrated in his Science of Knowledge (1794). Subsequently in the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), the younger Schelling also made use of such a genesis in order to develop the theoretical and practical faculties of the subject, more specifically, in order to trace the manner in which they take shape for the subject outside of itself, the manner in which they become “objective.” In so doing, he reached the point where he was confronted with the task of showing how the subject’s will becomes objective. One such objectivation then turned out to be history. This fact, and probably also a strong historical, even eschatological consciousness that he shared with his closest friends, prompted Schelling to inquire into the “concept of history” and to determine its various moments.

Which concept of history did Schelling initially develop? History “is only there,” he wrote, “where One Ideal among endlessly many deviations is so realized that, though the particular individual does not congrue with it, the whole certainly does” (III, 588). Such a “realization” of the One Ideal is possible only for man. For man is a creature whose being, like that of animals, has the character of a species [Gattüngs-wesen], but in contrast to animals, man is capable of remaining conscious of One Ideal, One Purpose in history. The element of continuity necessary for any concept of history was supposed to be guaranteed by man’s capability for tradition: individuals are able to hand down the Ideal to one another. More precisely, each succeeding individual was supposed to be able to commence where the previous individual left off. And therefore, for Schelling, the course of history proceeded not only continuously, but also progressively. The species mankind gradually approached the Ideal, although one could prove that the Ideal finally would be attained neither by means of experience nor by means of a theoretical a priori. For Schelling, this was an “eternal article of faith for the active and effective human being” (593), (cf. below p. 59).

What was this “One Ideal?” Or, we might ask with Schelling, what is the “only true object of history” (592)? His answer was that it is the gradual formation of a cosmopolitan legal constitution, of a legal order that would be valid not only for small groups or for a particular state. This legal order would rather unite the sovereign states, each of which would be organized according to the principle of the division of powers, into an international federation of cultured nations. And these cultured nations would have all subjected themselves to laws that guaranteed the existence of all states. Such a universal cosmopolitan constitution was considered “the only basis for history” (ibid.). It is well known that this ideal, dominant in the age of Enlightenment, had already been proposed by others before Schelling, in particular by Kant. Schelling’s system, however, presented itself as the genesis of the principle of self-consciousness in its process of objectivation. Why, then, did Schelling view the cosmopolitan constitution as the One Ideal that must be realized?

The preceding deductions in part 4 of Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, the system of practical philosophy, demonstrated that the faculty of self-determination or freedom constitutes the essence of self-consciousness. If this is its essence, Schelling concluded, then no individual could continue to exist without a guarantee of freedom. Therefore, in order to maintain this “holiest of all things,” individual freedom, the species was constrained to organize itself, to construct an order that was governed by laws. It was necessary to introduce the “constraint of an inviolable law, so that collective interaction cannot possibly abolish the individual’s freedom” (582). Schelling called this organization according to legal constitution a “second and higher” nature. He called it a “nature” because, at least externally, it was thought of as determined by the same category that rules visible nature: the category of necessity, a point that will be very important in the subsequent investigations. Just as Descartes had been the first to consider nature as an order that fulfills itself according to blind and unconscious mechanical laws not dependent on some mind, so for Schelling, a legal order had to function “like a machine.” From the very outset, it had to be constructed for certain cases and then function blindly as soon as these cases arose. Nevertheless, the legal order was of course considered “superior” to visible nature because it had been constituted by the species “on the behalf of freedom.”

Schelling asked whether we can at least “believe” (cf. p. 592) that this One Ideal of a cosmopolitan constitution will ever be realized. Can we believe that universal history leads to the complete assurance of individual freedom? His answer was that we can believe this only if we think that “a blind necessity dominates which objectively confers to freedom that which never would have been possible through freedom alone” (597). The blind necessity to which Schelling refers here is the necessity of a lawfulness, a necessity that determines the course of history and proceeds completely independently of individuals and states—over their heads, so to speak. Schelling thus saw two aspects in the concept of history that were independent of one another: on the one hand, the play of freedom, and on the other, the necessity in history’s occurrence that binds its beginning and its end. Schelling, however, was not content with a mere description of this state of affairs. Rather, he referred it back to its conceptual elements in order to show them in their contradiction, and he then searched until a possibility for the resolution of this contradiction could be found. Before we further discuss how Schelling developed this problem within a transcendental philosophical framework, however, the basic ideas involved in the issues discussed up to this point should be presented, and an attempt should be made to determine their “meaning.” For, from this vantage point the domain and the limits of the traditional foundation show themselves quite clearly.

Telos was one of the basic ideas involved here. This notion served as the background against which Schelling had conceived of the previously mentioned contradiction in the concept of history. Telos was taken here in the sense that it had gained in the history of Western thought by being translated as “causa finalis,” and later, under the influence of eschatological ideas, into the German “Ziel” (goal), “Zweck” (purpose), and “Sinn” (meaning).² An end—understood as “a goal that has been reached,” “a purpose that has been fulfilled,” or as “the meaning”—determines the beginning and all stages in the development of a process that leads up to the end. An end, when taken as a cause, implies that something is predisposed in the initial and in each subsequent stage and presupposed as a real possibility. This form then proceeds to present itself, to become increasingly effective, and thus to become actually existent. In this manner, the end acts as the highest point that draws the beginning and all lower stages up into itself as stages of development. At the same time, it returns back into the beginning, from whence the presupposed conditions of the development strove, by “acting purposefully” toward completion, that is toward its purposeful, completely realized goal. Telos thus has the structure of a continual movement that realizes and completes itself in the form of a circle.

Schelling’s notion of history was conceived of in accordance with the Greek conception of telos insofar as its “realization” is indeed a movement that proceeds from a beginning toward a goal and purpose. This goal was thought of as that highest point that determines and directs each stage of development from the very beginning, and compels each of these initial presuppositions to complete and fulfill itself purposefully in this goal. Later, of course, we shall have to deal with the influences in the history of thought that led telos to be transformed into an eschaton, since the notion of “progress,” which characterized Schelling’s concept of history, was not thought of as a movement proceeding circularly within itself, but rather in terms of an irreversible, nonrepeatable movement toward a point that lies in the future, an eschaton.

We should recall, first of all, that Aristotle introduced the concept of telos in his attempt to determine the essence of physis, of nature.³ From the outset, however, nature was not for him matter without any soul, as it had been for Democritus. It was rather the living entelechia of an organism through which this organism develops its predisposed possibility, dynamis, to its determinant limits and thus renders this possibility manifest in its completion. The compelling force active in the movement of telos was viewed as having the character of an event, in that it asserts itself independently of, and often in opposition to, the conscious freedom of human beings in guiding this movement toward its telos, its goal. This characteristic was one of the elements that entered into the meaning of the determination “necessity.”

It is important here to remain conscious of the fact that in Greek thought the determination of telos emerged in unity with two other key thoughts in our tradition, namely nous and logos. The pre-Socratics understood them as the illuminating and ordering powers. Plato and Aristotle conceived of them through the notion of the “idea” or “form,” eidos. For them, nous and logos were the foundation for the predominance of the ideal over the material in the universe. Because nous and logos can be thought of as self-developing, insofar as the meaning of a whole gradually brings itself forth and fulfills itself through its parts, they have always been conceived of together with the determination of telos. One must, however, be mindful of the fact that the character of the constraint which resides in mental, logical acts, is of a different sort from that which is based on a development determined solely by telos. The stringency of logos, of thought, lies in its property of organizing an event so that hierarchy, divisions, and combinations result, and in the fact that it does this with complete transparency. This characteristic feature was also included in the meaning of “necessity.”

It is well established that in the development of Western thought, it is the modern age that first witnessed the emergence of logos as the principle of self-consciousness, of subjectivity. Logos is no longer seen as reigning over the whole of the universe, nor is it, as it had been for the Scholastics, the divine law. It is now seen as “residing” in the “I,” the conscious subject that attains indubitable certainty with regard to its own being, and thus with regard to its conceptual knowing. This rational subject is able to determine itself as effecting general laws through logos. Logos comes to denote a principle that makes possible and provides the foundation for all experiences. It becomes the founding principle of subjectivity that shows itself on the one hand in concepts, and on the other hand in freedom: not merely in freedom from the constraints of nature, but rather in the freedom of self-determination, autonomy. If this is taken to be the case, then what happens to the character of the constraining force, which we have said is proper to logos; a force that we determined to be the stringency of a directing and ordering necessity; a force that, when conceived of together with telos, takes on the character of an “irresistible urge” [Drang]? How can both freedom and necessity be contained in logos, not to mention in teleologos? Is this not a contradiction? It is indeed, and this is precisely the contradiction with which Schelling was confronted when he attempted to develop a concept of history based on “teleo-logical” subjectivity.

II

HOW DID Schelling conceive of the resolution of this contradiction? He himself termed the solution to this question the “supreme” problem of transcendental philosophy (594). We must remember that for Schelling the determinations within a transcendental framework were always just the foundation for more general convictions that are presupposed and adopted apart from philosophy. He presented the relationship between freedom and necessity as an example. Generally and unphilosophically, people speak of a “hidden necessity” that is given different names, “sometimes fate, sometimes providence” (ibid.). People think they feel the intervention of fate in their actions, in the success or failure of their enterprises. They think they notice a special relationship between fate and their freedom, especially when they become aware that their presumably free actions effect something that they did not want at all, or when they experience the failure of precisely that which they had planned, intended, and willed with all their might.

In any case, the general understanding of things is that the intentions that various individuals have in their actions tend toward something that cannot be realized by them alone, but only by the whole species. This would mean that the success of an individual’s actions is dependent on the wills of all other individuals. Is it not necessary to disregard all individual plans and actions completely, as well as the effects of these actions, if we want to become conscious of the enigma that in history something comes to be that results without regard or even in opposition to the wills of those who act? According to the general understanding of things it indeed appears as if there were something that, without the assistance of individuals, slowly and steadily emerges out of a “hidden necessity” according to a “natural law,” something that could never have been realized through the willing of individuals. In spite of this experience of a hidden necessity, the individual who is about to act retains a steadfast conviction of the freedom of his actions since this conviction is in fact the condition for the possibility of the action itself. As Schelling ascertained in the introduction to his System of Transcendental Idealism, in reference to the two “absolute prejudices” (344), both of these convictions, the conviction in the necessary determination of the ideal as well as the conviction in the free ability to realize it, are “deeply embedded in human understanding” (346). From this contradiction it follows that the historically active individual’s consciousness, which is the object of transcendental reflection, is determined at one and the same time by the consciousness of necessity and the consciousness of freedom.

Transcendental philosophy is thus presented with the task of explaining the coexistence of such a development according to “natural law” (necessity) with the unrestricted expression of freedom. It has to answer the question of how something absolutely objective and common to all intelligent beings, something that arises without the assistance of anything subjective, can be conceived of together with the realization of freedom. A transcendental philosophy that proceeds from the principle of a self-determining self-consciousness, and that sets itself the task of presenting the genesis of this self-consciousness such that all of the “possibilities for thought” [Denkmöglichkeiten] lying within it can be unfolded, must explain how there can be something objective for this self-consciousness, something that is not constituted by freely determining, conscious actions.

It is precisely Schelling’s philosophy, however, that is able to conceive how something “without consciousness” [Bewusstloses] constitutes itself for the philosopher’s consciousness. The constitution of visible nature, especially of matter, shows itself to the philosopher as being “without consciousness.” The philosopher then raises these products of unconscious “intuition” to the level of concept. He thus demonstrates how the unconscious execution of the species’ intuition constitutes the objective side of history. The transcendental philosopher, who is able to reconstruct the genesis of objectivity, recognizes that all supposedly free actions that by nature are contradictory, are synthesized into something objective. This “objectivity” is that which appears to all individuals as “common to everyone,” that which guides “all human actions to One harmonic Goal.” Schelling determined this unconscious, self-fulfilling production as an “absolute synthesis.” It denotes the lawfulness, the necessity that unphilosophical, general consciousness has traditionally understood as a hidden necessity—as fate, as the plan of nature, or the plan of “providence.” Philosophers conceive of it in the notion of “predetermination.” The transcendental philosopher, however, cannot remain content with having conceptualized this lawfulness as an absolute “synthesis,” for the fact still must be explained “how the harmony is established between the objective element, which in complete independence from freedom brings forth its products, and the freely determining element ” (599). Above all, there is no explanation for the fact that a lasting correspondence obtains between that which is absolutely free and that which, realizing itself wholly independently of freedom, is lawful. How can this be explained?

This is the point where Schelling began to think “speculatively.” He realized that a kind of thinking must be employed here that does not orient itself toward that which is already given, but that rather takes its direction from the consistency that rules in the domain of thought. This thought experiences the necessity to develop the meaningful contents lying in the determinations of thought, and to take these alone as its guide. Hegel later developed the dialectical method in this manner, especially in his presentation of it in the Science of Logic. He demonstrated once and for all that, quite independently of any sort of given objects, thought can disclose the contents of meaning that “in themselves” [an sich] lie in the determinations of thought (the thesis). Furthermore, the meanings thus disclosed present a contradiction (antithesis) to the undisclosed meanings. If thinking pursues this contradiction to the utmost, this leads to a reconciliation, a synthesis.

Schelling’s transcendental philosophical thought did not explicitly understand itself as being dialectical in a methodological sense. But within the realm of thought, it did already seek to reconcile the one side, absolute freedom, with the other side, absolute lawfulness. Leibniz had speculatively employed the same idea in reference to Geulincx’s example of different clocks running parallel to one another as the “preestablished harmony” of independently existing substances or monads. Schelling reconciled both sides and explained them to be “identical” in this sense of a pre-established harmony, and thereby sought to preserve their independence. “Identity” was one of the determinations introduced here that belongs to the dimension of speculative thought. With the aid of this determination Schelling attempted to grasp that which lies beyond finite appearances. And it was exactly at this point and with the help of this determination that the transition was made from the sphere of finitude, within which the concept of history interacts with the elements of necessity and freedom, to the infinite sphere that lies beyond consciousness. Schelling recognized that freedom and necessity (lawfulness) would remain in an unbearable contradiction in spite of their identity as a pre-established harmony if they were not derived from an “absolute identity,” and if they had not been grounded in such an identity as their first principle or “ground” [Grund].

He tried to illustrate this ground by means of the metaphors “source” [Quelle] and invisible “root” [Wurzel] (600). “Absolute identity” was posited as the “condition for all consciousness” and for the inherent duplicity between knowing and the known. Absolute identity itself lay beyond all duplicity as its condition. A year later Schelling termed this absolute identity “indifference,”⁴ on account of its independence from the sphere of finitude. Whereas Hegel conceived of an identity that is not beyond finitude, but that rather mediated itself into the sphere of finitude, into the sphere of the nonidentity of knowledge, in order to become a synthetic unity by emerging out of this sphere and by being fulfilled by it (see below pp. 35, 44-45).

Schelling thought the “ground” of lawfulness was freedom, and that the freedom of objectivity’s lawfulness was the ground of the harmony between the two sides. For religious thought, however, this had been nothing other than God. Thus, it was the plan of providence that philosophy conceived of in history’s lawfulness. Divine providence was said to show itself in traces “which, like the weavings of an unknown hand, permeate the free play of willful choice [Willkür] in history” (III, 601).

We have seen that the constraint of necessity has a twofold character that lies in the modern comprehension of logos, of subjectivity in its traditional connection with telos. At the same time, it also contains the opposite of this constraint in total autonomy, freedom. Recently, philosophy is repeatedly confronted with the task of reconciling this opposition if the subject is not to perish in the face of its own contradiction. As long as contemporary philosophy still thinks “theologically,” it seems that it can indeed resolve this contradiction. This can be accomplished by demonstrating how these determinations manifest themselves in history when set in reference to God. Logos is then traced back into theos. This is the Aristotelian tradition: where the “ontological” question was posed for the first time, the logos of beings as beings already had a “theological character.”⁵

Here I would like to interrupt these investigations briefly in order to show that the epoch in which Schelling philosophized was also decisively determined by “theo-logical” presuppositions, and that the fundamental determinations that he operatively employed have a theological character.

III

WE HAVE determined logos and telos, the foundations of Greek thought, to be the basic notions that, together with the modern fundamental idea of subjectivity, formed the basis for Schelling’s “Philosophy of History.” At this point, however, it should be emphasized that the Greeks themselves never wrote philosophies of history. They inquired into the logos of the cosmos. They recognized, of course, that all bodies in the sublunar realm are perishable. The fact that everything worldly—people, animals, things—“come to be and perish” [genesis et pthora]—was a fundamental experience for them, and this explains their inquiry into the essence of movement, matter, and time. Their thought was, however, also motivated by a second, much stronger fundamental experience, namely that in spite of all perishableness, chaos does not dominate, but rather all being is ordered (taxis). There is a beautiful structuredness, and this is the cosmos, the world. This experience probably arose due to the sight of the uranos, the starry firmament that overarches the islands of Greece. It presents itself to the eye as immutably bound (peras), as something without beginning and imperishable (aidiai, aei), and as a true illustration of order. More importantly, this perceptible order is not something inflexible and immobile, but is rather a manifestly dynamic order. The great heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, the stars—in their rhythmic revolutions are the source of the yearly cycles on earth and manifest the recurrence of the seasons and the alternation from day to night.

Through this perceptible paradigm of the unity of order and movement, the Greeks conceived of the ideal of being as a synthesis of being and becoming, and they thought of this synthesis as an eternal recurrence of sameness in which everything that emerges reverts back to its beginnings. This cosmic view of the world did not allow the thought of a “philosophy of history.” As Karl Löwith in particular has shown, the occasion for the beginning of a philosophy of history can be found in the development of monotheism into messianism as found in Jewish prophecy and in the Christian idea of a final goal in the history of redemption.⁶ The passionate expectation of a kingdom in which the divine moral law would be reality and the Christian hope of a final judgment and a second coming of Christ were directed toward a future and final goal and borne by an unconditioned faith. These were the ideas that served as the foundations of a “philosophy of history” that inquired into the meaning of history, a meaning that for the church fathers was guaranteed by the revealed plan of providence. In its recent development, the philosophy of history was supported by the optimistic world view of the Renaissance and post-Renaissance. Vico’s Scienzia Nuova initiated a transformation in the speculative theological presuppositions that continued throughout the Enlightenment with its faith in progress. The time became ripe for Ideas Concerning the Philosophy of a History of Mankind [Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit] . Under this title in 1774 Herder—in accordance with Lessing’s earlier observations—posited his basic tenet that it is not only the world of nature that fulfills itself truly and necessarily in conformity to eternal laws, but that history also fulfills itself in this manner and leads humanity to a predetermined perfection. The Greek, or Platonic-Aristotelian, tradition of thought that we have sketched, was invoked here. It must be stressed in this case, however, that it was on the basis of the Scholastic tradition’s understanding of nous and logos that the Christian God was conceived as mind. It was this God, thought of as mind, who, in creating the world, released from himself those ideas that previously had found their essence in him, and in so doing they became the real powers out of which being emerged. Being was revelation, the revelation of God; the world was explicatio Dei. The most important aspect of this process of the idea’s self-realization was now seen in history, but history was conceived as operating in accordance with the basic theological ideas adopted from Greek thought, because their determination involved a kind of necessity suited to the Christian religious view. All of this was then taken up into the transcendental conception of a logic of the subject. Providence’s plan was to be deduced from the transcendental logic of the subject, a logic that demanded the absence of contradiction in spite of the empirical, contradictory course of history. The opinion that Hegel expressed on this matter in all of his lectures on the philosophy of history is well known. He rejected as a contemptible oriental idea the view that history is a “slaughterhouse” where “the happiness of nations, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed.”⁷ He pointed instead to the Western idea that one should not merely be resigned to one’s fate, but rather that history is a history of spirit or mind, Geist. This mental or rational conception of history had to assume the task of Christian religion in portraying history’s progressive, self-completing process toward a final purpose as a “theodicy” (IX, 24ff.). In order to be able to consistently present such a conception of necessity dominant in the rational plan of the “world spirit,” Weltgeist, Hegel even resorted to the idea of the “cunning of reason” [List der Vernuft] (83, 33).

The character of the necessity dominant here can be adequately understood only if one is mindful of the fact that for Hegel the whole event of history was concerned with the pathway of divine self-revelation working in divine ideas. The constraint inherent in logos was thus endowed with a particular fundamental trait in addition to those we have already discussed. This trait had its origin in the sphere of the “holy,” a sphere that lies beyond any constraint that can be humanly understood. It is obvious that such a conception of necessity also led to a transformation in the concept of “freedom.” Freedom no longer referred to decision, choice, or the proposal of something individual or even new, but to the voluntary acceptance of necessity. A freedom that acknowledges the lawfulness inherent in the development of logos, which devotes itself to “the issue” [der Sache] is in reality no longer a freedom opposed to necessity. It is interesting for our problem here to note that Hegel never really solved the problem of the contradiction between necessity and freedom. One might say that instead he “eliminated” it. By contrast, Schelling, in his major work, Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809), truly posed the question concerning the contradiction between freedom and necessity. In this treatise it becomes clear that Schelling viewed the essence of freedom as residing in finite human freedom that must choose between good and evil (cf. pp. 78— 79). Since this present study is devoted to Schelling’s concept of history, however, we must now return to our original topic.

IV

IT CAN be said that from beginning to end, Schelling’s philosophical thought revolved around the problem of the relationship between freedom and necessity. It is certain that this question became more pressing for him after he composed those pages in the System of Transcendental Idealism dealt with above. The problem was still so predominant in his later philosophy that he considered this philosophy a “system of freedom,” which was to take up the struggle against Hegel’s “system of necessity.”

As was just noted, Schelling, in contrast to Hegel, was disturbed by the question of freedom only in regard to the freedom of finite, that is, human beings, which he viewed in relationship to divine being. In determining this relationship he was influenced at first by Spinoza, then by Böhme, and finally by the entire tradition of theosophic and cabbalistic thought (cf. below, p. 61). We have already seen that in the concept of history the problem of the relationship between freedom and necessity was posed in reference to “absolute identity,” the Godhead, whose workings can never rationally be known, but only accepted through faith. The occurrence of the world and of man—history—could be explained in the end only by reference to the history of revelation, the occurrence of divine revelation. It may seem at first that history as universal history, which was supposed to guarantee individual freedom, had been conceived of only in a secular political-utopian way. It may seem that it referred to nothing other than the “successive realization of the One Ideal, the institution of a general legal constitution.” But already in the later stages of the genesis described in the System of Transcendental Idealism, history was thought of in a religious and philosophical manner so that it became the “continuing revelation of the absolute in its gradual self-manifestation” (III, 603). This relationship to God, as seen from the human perspective, implied that man “in his history gives a continuing proof of the existence of God” (ibid.).

Thus, the following question arises: What is the meaning of the two terms employed to determine the concept of history, freedom and necessity, if history is conceived of in reference to God as an occurrence of revelation? The answer seems to be easy as far as one side of the concept—necessity—is concerned. That which general, unphilosophical opinion regards as “fate” or “the laws of nature” and that passes for “predetermination” in philosophy and religion is then endowed with the sense of a “revelation of the divine plan of providence.”

It is precisely from the standpoint of transcendental philosophy, however, that an insurmountable conceptual difficulty arises if necessity is given such a meaning. We have seen that in transcendental philosophy the constitution of a necessary occurrence was explained by means of an “absolute synthesis” that proceeds unconsciously, a synthesis that unites the contradictory free actions of intelligent beings in that which is “objective” within them. Should this objectivity then be taken as God’s complete revelation, as a complete enactment of the providential plan? That would mean that there would be nothing other than this occurrence that unconsciously realizes itself, and this in turn would imply that conscious free activity does not exist. Yet this was precisely what transcendental philosophy had set out to prove, that conscious, free activity is the presupposition for the activity of unconscious constitution, and thus a presupposition for the absolute synthesis itself. If the opposition between conscious and unconscious activity were negated, then there could also be no absolute synthesis. Schelling argued here without referring to transcendental philosophy: Does the supposition of a perfect revelation not imply that the world is a perfect presentation of God? And does this not mean that it cannot be other than it is? Nevertheless, he noted, there are changes, and these are instances of freedom. Hence the world is not a perfect presentation of God; it is not the perfect revelation of divinity. Only by means of this premise can the other side of the concept of history—freedom—be rescued. At an earlier stage in transcendental philosophy, Schelling had demonstrated that finite human freedom, the human will, presupposes an “absolute” freedom and an “absolute” will, even though within the bounds of finitude, freedom and free will exist only in their internal appearance to us. As an “internal appearance” we believe “that we are always internally free” (602), that we have a free will that can choose among the various possibilities that present themselves to us. We believe in “voluntary choice” [Willkür] in precisely this sense (cf. 573ff.).Schelling’s concern here was to rescue freedom “for the sake of appearance” (577, 603) and not to rescue absolute freedom and the absolute will that constitute the “play of freedom” for individuals and states. But how could internal freedom be rescued? The only way was to presuppose that the self-manifesting revelation of the absolute is never fully enacted; by supposing that—to speak transcendentally—the absolute synthesis never constitutes itself completely or—to speak empirically—that the plan of providence is never fully developed. The one side of the concept of history, necessity, may never be granted complete predominance. This implies that the other side, freedom, can still play an important part in the whole occurrence of history even though history is still considered to be an occurrence of revelation.

We have seen that teleo-logical necessity was bestowed with the character of an irresistible urge and constraint but that it was also said to be “sacred.” What then was its relationship to finite human freedom? The answer turns out to be that in the System of Transcendental Idealism Schelling was not able to describe it in rigid conceptual terms. He merely sought to illustrate it through an expansive image. He wrote:

We can think of history as a play in which everyone involved plays his role in complete freedom and according to his own fancy. A reasonable development in this confused play can be envisioned only if we conceive of there being One Spirit [Ein Geist] who acts as the playwright in all the individual players. Furthermore, we must think of the playwright in whom the individual actors are mere fragments (disjecti membra poetae), as already having harmonized the objective outcome of the whole with the free play of all individuals beforehand in such a way that something reasonable has to result. But in the end, if the playwright existed independently of his drama, then we would only be actors who performed what he has written. If he does not exist independently of us but rather reveals and successively manifests himself only in the very play of our freedom, so that he himself would not exist without this freedom, then we are poetic coauthors of the whole play and improvisors of the particular roles which we play. (602) (cf. below p. 82).

Let us take this vivid illustration of historical occurrence as a whole seriously and reflect on the meanings that necessity, on the one hand, and finite human freedom, on the other, are given within this framework. To begin with, the plan of providence itself, and not merely its revelation or presentation, is considered “incomplete.” Even if this plan could be thought of as having One Spirit, or God, as its playwright, man is nevertheless defined not only as an actor who performs this plan or play, but also as a poetic “coauthor.” If man is continually coauthoring the drama, then this means that the plan of divine providence is not yet completed. A contingency is thus introduced into self-fulfilling necessity. This is further reinforced by the fact that man as fellow actor in the playing out of the divine drama, the providential plan, is granted the status of a “self-improvisor of his own role.” Man is given the possibility of performing in one way or another the drama he coauthors. But this does not go far enough. It is explicitly stated that not only the plan of providence, but also the poetic author himself, God, is “not independent” of the human play of freedom. The statement that God “would not exist at all” without this finite freedom follows as a necessary consequence from the preceding suppositions. Let us at this point disregard the thought, so enormous and frightful for traditional religion and philosophy, that God could become dependent on man: It suffices here to note that within the relationship of freedom and necessity it is freedom that is granted primacy.

What does this mean for Schelling’s concept of history? Evidently we must make a distinction according to the period in which the revelation occurs. At the end of the second section of his System of Transcendental Idealism, the distinction is made between “three periods of revelation,” which correspond to the division between fate, the plan of nature, and providence. Indeed, for Schelling, the whole occurrence shows itself as the event of a gradually self-revealing providence. According to the general understanding of his age, however, and we might include ours as well, history’s lawfulness is attributed to the plan of nature, if no longer to fate. As noted, Schelling had earlier envisaged this plan’s complete development in the genesis of a universal federation of nations, in the gradual self-development of mankind’s legal constitution. If, however, the “only true” idea of history is now said to be the one in which the occurrence of an “incompletely self-revealing providence” (604) in a play presented for everyone, then we must take this as our point of departure and ask how the third historical period could be more precisely conceived of as the interplay between freedom and necessity. We have seen that Schelling determined the coexistence of freedom and necessity as a pre-established harmony (cf. above p. 8) founded in the “absolute identity” of a first principle or ground [Grund], that cannot be grasped in concepts. But what happens when human freedom is given a primacy such that it not only renders lawfulness— necessity—contingent, but the ground itself comes to be dependent on human freedom? Does that not imply the dissolution of the whole construction of a pre-established harmony that maintains two independent aspects in identity with one another, and sets them in a ground that is independent of the sphere of finitude and freedom? It does indeed. We thus come to the conclusion that Schelling was not able to grant human freedom a meaningful conceptual role in the teleological course of history without endangering the consistency of the whole framework that he had erected on the traditional foundation of a teleological subjectivity. It is here that we see why Schelling resorted to an image. In his later efforts to determine history, Schelling attempted to master this difficulty from various standpoints, but, for our particular purposes, we can reserve judgment as to whether or not he was successful in his efforts. Schelling was no doubt influenced by certain modern tendencies in his attempt to unite the primacy of human freedom with the absolute synthesis between freedom and necessity. But I am convinced that in any case his attempt in the System of Transcendental Idealism to unite them in an internally consistent concept did not succeed.

How consistent are contemporary conceptions that grant human freedom an even greater role than Schelling did and that nevertheless operate within a teleological framework, although the necessity for the realization of the development toward a telos is no longer guaranteed by divine providence? I shall attempt to answer this question by discussing the theory of history developed by Jürgen Habermas, as presented in his book Knowledge and Human Interest and in his inaugural lecture by the same name.

It may seem surprising that I contrast this theory of history to that of the young Schelling in view of the fact that in earlier works Habermas deals with the later Schelling’s view of history,⁸ and that the works dealt with here orient themselves toward Hegel, and not Schelling. Nevertheless, the methodological considerations involved in the selection of this particular theory of history were concerned solely with the constellation of unresolved contradictions between “freedom and necessity” as it has just been described. Habermas’s theory renders the determining categories in the traditional foundation and problems implicit therein so distinctly visible that it is especially well suited as an illustration of the dilemma involved in many contemporary proposals.

V

EVEN AT first glance one is struck by the fact that Habermas’s conception of history resembles Schelling’s in that both of them considered history the process of the human species’ self-constitution. Habermas seems to have shared Schelling’s view that history is “only there” insofar as the “realization of One Ideal” through the species is concerned. For all appearances, this realization also assumes the form of a “progressive” movement toward a telos. This obvious agreement may then serve as justification for an examination as to whether and to what extent Habermas’s notion of history is still conceived of on the basis of a traditional foundation of teleological subjectivity. If it is, then one should also consider the question as to whether and how the problem of the contradiction between “freedom and necessity” poses itself within this conception, and, if possible, how the problem is solved.

In order to characterize the position taken by Habermas as a whole, it should be noted that in his book Knowledge and Human Interest Habermas was primarily oriented toward Karl Marx. It seems at first that he adopted Marx’s fundamental doctrines without any alterations: the mechanism of the development of the species’ history is a “naturally formed” [naturwüchsiger] process, it fulfills itself in the natural reproduction of life. The human species, which in turn is natural and concrete, mediates itself through real labor with objective nature. This activity, directed toward objects and founded in the “history of nature,” plays the decisive role in the species’ self-production, which Marx in Das Kapital had defined as a “process of metabolism.” In addition, it appears that Habermas adopted Marx’s view that labor, on the one hand, is posited in natural history, and, on the other, is socially organized. He furthermore accepted the thesis that the power of disposition over external nature, which immediately confronts man and is processed through labor, is dependent on the particular level of the productive forces. And finally, Habermas seems to have shared Marx’s view concerning the central role of the category of class conflicts: He, too, was convinced that the production of the social forms of cooperation and the division of labor, as well as the acquisition of socially produced goods, are the result of class conflict.

Has Habermas’s orientation on Marx then led him to overcome the traditional guiding thought expressed in the term “logos?” That this is not the case is indicated already by the very fact that he operatively employed many fundamental concepts that have their origin in the philosophy of logos. Habermas undertook to represent many of Marx’s aforementioned positions as if they had been thought of not only “epistemologically,”⁹ but also “transcendentally” (39, 28; 57, 41). He even characterized the economic mechanism of the species’ historical development as an element in the “history of transcendental consciousness” (58, 41; 65, 48). Thus he declared that Marx’s characterization of man as an objective being was not meant anthropologically but rather epistemologically (38, 26). The “objective activity” of which Marx spoke had the specific meaning of a “constitution of objects;” Marx understood it as a “transcendental achievement,” Habermas said, since it corresponds to the constitution of a world in which reality is subjected to the conditions for the objectivity of possible objects. Labor and class conflict in particular are subsumed under the concept of “synthesis,” a concept that is admittedly one of the most important terms in transcendental logic.

In introducing these traditional logical determinations, Habermas, of course, repeatedly emphasized that he wished them to be understood “at once” “empirically” and “materialistically,” or “naturalistically.” Knowing and acting have a “basis in nature.”¹⁰ The subject of world constitution is not “transcendental consciousness in general” but rather the “concrete human species which reproduces its life under natural conditions.”¹¹ The species is the contingent product of its and of nature’s history; and the “synthesis” of the labor process is “ to the same extent an empirical and a transcendental achievement of a species that produces itself in history” (43, 31). This synthesis does not produce an “absolute synthesis of mind and nature;” the unity to be envisaged here is rather “imposed upon nature by the subject, so to speak” (45, 32).

In spite of his efforts to alter the original meanings of these concepts derived from the traditional foundation, Habermas’s thought appears to remain thoroughly caught up in them.¹² This is confirmed above all by the fact that, in complete contrast with Marx, he granted spirit or mind, Geist,¹³ almost the same power given it traditionally. Through the mind’s ability to reflect the “cultural break with nature” (107) and to “become aware of the transcendental boundaries of possible conceptions of the world” (100), “a part of nature gains autonomy in nature through us” (ibid.). The mind is capable of becoming aware of its basis in nature. This is the crucial point in his entire doctrine: the mind has the power of reflection.¹⁴ Habermas’s conviction concerning the power of logos forced him to “revise” Marx. According to Habermas, Marx had not admitted the validity of reflection as such, although he had employed it in his “critique of ideology.” In principle, however, Marx “deceived himself into ignoring reflection”; it “escapes him” as the form of historical movement, especially in his conception of class conflict.¹⁵ Marx ignored the “dimension of self-reflection,” and for this reason he falsely determined the science of man in analogy to natural science.¹⁶ Habermas, however, contended that the species’ process of self-production is a process of oppression and self-liberation and that for this very reason it must be conceived of at the same time as the pathway of a process toward “social cultivation” [Bildung] by means of an appropriate category here: reflection. “The course of the process of social cultivation, by contrast, is marked not by new technologies, but by stages of reflection . . .” (76, 55). Accordingly, the concept of “synthesis” that Habermas introduced must refer not only to self-production through labor, but also to self-production as improvement through social practice, and that means through reflection and self-reflection.

In the traditional philosophy of logos, particularly during the age of Enlightenment, the view obtained that conduct and hence voluntary action can and must be rational. Furthermore, Kant had demonstrated in the Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals¹⁷ that freedom must be presupposed as a “property of the will of all rational beings.” Habermas seldom made use of the traditional category of freedom. Nevertheless, as far as the issue at hand is concerned, social action as the propagation of enlightening reflection is a form of rational freedom. And from the point of view of Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism, it already progressed beyond mere “voluntary choice” [Willkür] that chooses between various possibilities according to its own advantage. We have seen in Schelling’s case that freedom as voluntary choice, such as it appears in the “selfish desires of individuals and states,” did not lead to social action. Thus the decisive question for Schelling in his philosophy of history was how, in spite of voluntary choice on the part of individuals and nations, all endeavors could still be brought together under a goal of the species as a whole. As we have seen, Schelling attempted to solve this problem, on the one hand, by means of the conception of an unconsciously self-fulfilling transcendental synthesis, and, on the other hand, by including divine providence and the occurrence of revelation in the transcendental genesis as the guarantee for the necessity of the fulfillment of telos.

Habermas, however, seems to have seen no problem in the fact that in spite of individuals’ selfish desires, “social” action comes about at the level of the species. He also seems to have found just as little difficulty in the fact that this action unites itself under one goal in opposition to all individuals’ endeavors. Is our supposition thus confirmed that his theory of history is a teleological conception? In fact, in his inaugural lecture an “idea” [Idee] in the sense of an “ideal” is spoken of—an “idea” that the “human species” must “realize.”¹⁸ For Habermas, this idea, the “only one which we are capable of according to the philosophical tradition” (163), is “mature responsibility” [Mündigkeit]. The human species has to “realize” this “responsibility” by means of a “progression” toward it (164). It would be fully realized in an “emancipated society” (ibid.), in which “communication is raised to the level of a dialogue, free of domination, between one and all” (ibid.). An emancipated society that has realized the domination—free dialogue among all of its members is the final stage of a “successful life” that each society “imagines” (ibid.).¹⁹ These statements are unequivocal verification that Habermas’s theory is “teleological.”

In accordance with Habermas’s own presuppositions of the species’ “social practice” as a “rational freedom” one might then ask: Had he conceived of a “necessity” governing the course by which the species approaches its goal, and had the contradiction between this necessity and the freedom of social action emerged for him as a problem? If it had, how had he tried to solve it?

At this point we have to recall the development, the first indications of which we recognized so graphically in that image in which the young Schelling, under the domination of religious ideas, granted finite human freedom such a broad latitude. This development toward an emphasis on human freedom has continued, though in a new direction. It was Feuerbach, Marx, and his successors, as well as the “philosophers of life,” Nietzsche and Dilthey, contemporary philosophers of anthropology such as Scheler, existentialists such as Sartre, and many other contemporary philosophers, especially Heidegger and Löwith, who have, as we mentioned, called into question the theological presuppositions of a philosophy of history. Furthermore, empiricism and analytic and linguistic trends have mounted attacks on every sort of speculatively presented, logically constructed philosophy. These and other factors have led to the conviction dominant today that man “makes his history” all by himself. The dictum of Vico’s Scienza Nuova, “verum et factum convertuntur,” has long since been interpreted in this sense. It is obvious that Habermas’s stance is completely within the compass of the modern view that history can be produced even though he was aware that this view itself has historical origins, as indicated especially in his essays in Theory and Practice. For this reason alone, the problem of a teleological history of the species and the problem of freedom and necessity within the framework of history must pose themselves differently for him than for Schelling. Telos is no longer an eschaton in the history of salvation; the “emancipated” society is its “secularized” form. Habermas could not then conceive of the necessity of the teleological course of history as being guaranteed by divine providence. This does not mean, however, that no “necessity” at all can be postulated in a concept of history that would determine why the telos will be reached. One can only suppose a telos under the presupposition that it is possible to prove that the species can realize or at least approach this telos. If the intention of the theory of history presented in Knowledge and Human Interest is to secure reflection, then we can see that the species’ fulfillment of freedom is supposed to be the proper instrument for this goal. Nonetheless, we must inquire whether Habermas had determined “reflection” to be that power that, along with the pressure of the “forces of production,”²⁰ acts as the “motor” in history and guides it to its telos.²¹

VI

THE DETERMINATION “reflection” has its origins in the philosophy of logos, of reason, which established itself in the modern age as the philosophy of subjectivity. “Re-flection,” the form of a self turning back toward itself, Descartes’s cogito me cogitare, allowed the essence of an ego that can be characterized as a self, the essence of a res cogitans, to emerge for the first time. In the experiment of doubting, this self maintains its independence from the givenness of immediately presented “reality.” The ego possesses the unfathomable power to direct itself toward everything possible through representations [Vorstellungen]. By means of a cohibere assensionem, it can suspend the immediacy of the merely sensual reference to being as a “reality” that is given sensually, and can thus persevere in a self-established reflective relation toward itself.

In the course of subsequent history this power was raised to a “principle.” For Kant reflection was above all the method for the discovery of the transcendental subject as this principle. Among the sources of knowledge, transcendental investigation discovered this principle to be the condition for the possibility of all theoretical knowledge; with reference to the good, it was transcendental subjectivity in the form of the rational will’s power to establish moral laws that was discovered as the foundation for all moral action. For Fichte, reflection was not only a method, but it also constituted the essence of the ego conceived as a principle. Hegel, too, saw it in this manner, specifically under the form of “absolute reflection” that immersed itself in the dialectical movement of the determinations of thought. In addition to this sort of reflection, however, Hegel discerned two others: the methodological reflection that was presented in the Phenomenology as “phenomenological” and works its way up to “absolute reflection” together with a second type of reflection, the reflection of “mere understanding” [verständige Reflexion], which is employed by “natural consciousness.”

It is especially important to note that, instead of presenting a determination of reflection on his own, Habermas took two concepts of reflection from Hegel’s Phenomenology as his model in Knowledge and Human Interest. This book, which sets out to present a social theory in the form of a “reconstruction of recent positivism’s prehistory” (9, vii), begins with an interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology that remains decisive for his entire line of thought. Habermas expressly stated: “Social theory thus remains caught up in the framework of the Phenomenology.”²² This implies the following: If we want to find out what reflection means in Habermas’s work and whether—as the fulfillment of freedom—it also has the power to guarantee teleological necessity, then we must investigate how and why his theory of history attempts to model itself on that “method” that in the Phenomenology was indeed capable of bringing “history” to its telos.

In investigating this question, we should pay special attention to one point in particular:²³ In Hegel’s view, the “method,” the Phenomenology’s law of movement that leads to the telos, is prescribed entirely by his point of departure in the nature of universal self-consciousness as concept. The decisive statement in the introduction to the Phenomenology is that consciousness is “for itself its concept.”²⁴ For this reason alone could “phenomenological reflection” set out to transform the mere reflection of understanding into something higher: the reflection of understanding was seen to be bogged down by fixations and dichotomy in its basic determinations at first, but by means of an exhibition [Darstellung] phenomenological consciousness is said to be capable of demonstrating a “history of cultivation or education” [Bildungs-geschichte]. And since the reflection of mere understanding could subsequently retrace this history, this history must lead to the telos whose “time has come,” “absolute reflection.” Only by taking the nature of self-consciousness as concept for its point of departure was it possible for phenomenological reflection to “gather” [versammeln] (ibid., 556, 485) the forms of knowledge lying in this concept together in a history of experience such that its “result” necessarily leads to its “final form,”— “absolute knowledge.” Only those forms of knowledge that lay in the concept and accompanied phenomenological reflection in its presentation along the pathway of experience were given the name “phenomenological knowledge” [erscheinendes Wissen] by Hegel, who carefully distinguished such knowledge, as a qualified form of “natural consciousness,” from natural consciousness itself, which was considered contingently historical.²⁵

From the very outset, his orientation toward Marx precluded Habermas from interpreting his own theory of history as a history of cultivation that has absolute knowledge as its goal.²⁶ It is simply impossible that Hegel’s point of departure in the nature of general self-consciousness as concept could serve the same purpose in Habermas’s theory of history. Nevertheless, it should still be noted that Habermas obviously constructed his theory of history in Knowledge and Human Interest with conscious reference to the Phenomenology. Just as Hegel distinguished between phenomenological reflection and that of consciousness that is “involved in the process of experience,” and just as the latter is tied to the former, so too did Habermas distinguish between the reflection of the social theorist and the species’ “process of reflection as a whole.”²⁷ The former sort of reflection is in turn tied to the latter, whereby the issue in this “reconstruction” is every bit as much a “history of cultivation” as the Hegelian Phenomenology purports to be. Habermas’s reconstructed history of cultivation, however, is intended as a history of the conflicts inherent in “class consciousness” that lead to the telos of an “emancipated society.” “Class-consciousness” is by no means an “idealistically” conceived form of “phenomenal knowledge,” but is rather materialistic (83, 61) and thus contingently historical. Habermas himself determined it as a consciousness that has cultivated itself “on the basis of the objectivized forms in which external nature is appropriated.” It is contingent in every way. Why did he nevertheless term this contingently historical “natural” consciousness “phenomenal” without referring back to that fundamental distinction in the Phenomenology? Here we see that Habermas’s intention was to correct the onesided materialistic and economic interpretation of the species’ history presented in “Technology and Science as Ideology.” Furthermore, it becomes plain that Habermas sought to utilize the Phenomenology’s method as a “motor” for a “further process of determination” that would necessarily lead history to its telos.

The reflection of “phenomenal knowledge” is driven restlessly by the power of thought that is inherent in phenomenal knowledge “in itself’ due to its nature as a concept. It is driven to overcome itself and all limitations alien to the concept, and to conduct itself “sceptically” toward all natural presuppositions alien to the concept.²⁸ It is driven to pursue this self-liberation until it finds its way back to its true nature, its nature as concept (75)—until it becomes “in and for itself” [an und für sich] (see below, p. 54). If it were not “in itself” concept, this movement of reflection would not be induced. But how is reflection supposed to come about in the case of contingent class-consciousness? How is the transition made from the materialistic basis to thought? Habermas assured us that the reflection of class-consciousness is “induced [ausgelöst] due to the growing potential to regulate the processes in nature which are objectified by labor.”²⁹ He did not show, however, how such an “inducement” occurs.³⁰ According to the Phenomenology’s method,³¹ further progress in the determination of “phenomenal knowledge” results from the fact that consciousness compares its changing shapes to a standard that lies in its own nature as concept.³² It examines whether each particular instance of knowledge is “true” and whether each particular content corresponds to consciousness as “true.” By means of this examining movement consciousness can proceed on its own from one object of experience to a new one. Class-consciousness, which does not have its origins in the nature of self-consciousness as concept, is incapable of such self-examination and self-correction. Since he proceeded from the supposition that even here the issue is that of a history of cultivation that passes through “stages of reflection,”³³ however, Habermas still declared that “phenomenal class-consciousness” can recognize “existing untruth” in the “discrepancy between institutionally demanded and objectively necessary repression.” He claimed that it has the critical ability to “unmask each existing form of life as an abstraction and thereby revolutionize it” (pp. 83, 61ff.). But, Habermas did not prove this either, he only attempted to make it plausible by referring to Hegel’s “method.”

Perhaps Habermas’s intention was less to determine the species’ reflection than to determine the “cognitive consciousness” of the historical theorist so that his consciousness would have the power to approach the species’ telos. But he did not systematically determine this reflection either. Instead, its role is compared to the role that the phenomenologist plays in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Habermas’s view of this role is correct insofar as he stressed that the phenomenologist is “involved” (84, 61) in the process of the cultivation of consciousness and insofar as he emphasized this dependence in order to explain how the phenomenologist “recognizes himself as the result of the history of phenomenal class-consciousness” (ibid.). On the other hand, it must still be recalled that the Phenomenology is an “emerging and phenomenal science” only because absolute knowledge has autonomously “separated itself into powers” [sich depotenziert] in order to fulfill the task characterized above. It is quite simply impossible for the historical theoretician to play the same role as the phenomenologist in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The phenomenologist is able to recognize a “chain” that has constituted itself behind “phenomenal knowledge’s” back—a chain that lends the teleological process exactly that “necessity” with which it develops up to the last shape in the pathway to cultivation. This chain, however, is constituted only through the examining movement of “phenomenal knowledge.” “Phenomenal knowledge” experiences at every stage of the way that it does not correspond to its particular object, that it is a “nothing.” It is thus prompted to pass over to the new object that—this is precisely what the phenomenologist recognizes—contains the experience of the previous object, and thus it is determined by its insight into the nothingness of the previous object.³⁴ The theorist of history has as his object “class-consciousness” that, because it lacks a conceptual nature, does not undergo an examining movement and thus does not experience the “nothingness” of its previous object. There is then no chain of “determinate nothingness” [bestimmte Nichts] for him, and it is impossible for the role of the critical theorist of history to coincide with that of the phenomenologist.

The decisive reason why neither the consciousness of phenomenal knowledge nor that of the phenomenologist can coincide with that of the historical theorist is above all the fact that only the former are both guided by “categories” (ibid.). As opposed to the categories in the Logic, these categories appear in the Phenomenology “for consciousness” as “shapes of consciousness.” They are “moments” that constitute the “standard” for the self-examination of phenomenal knowledge (see below p. 54), a standard that is “present in consciousness itself” (75, 57; 72, 54). The fact that the categories ultimately guide this whole movement in the Phenomenology explains the primacy of “necessity,” by means of which Hegel resolved the contradiction between “freedom and necessity” in this “philosophy of history.” For the reasons mentioned above, this necessity is “divine” for him (see above p. 13). No further proof is required to ascertain that neither the reflection of the theorist of history nor that of class-consciousness is comprehended as being guided by “divine” thoughts. It can be clearly seen at this point that the Phenomenology’s method, resting as it does on the primacy of necessity, is not at all suited to proving that reflection in the form of social practice possesses the power to act as the exclusive guarantor for the telos of an emancipated society.

I shall not here deal with the question as to whether or not in the course of his investigations Habermas himself realized how problematic his attempt to simulate the method of the Phenomenology really was.³⁵ In any case, in the last chapter of his book Habermas no longer tried to determine reflection on the basis of Hegel, but on the basis of the later Freud’s writings on a theory of culture. By reading Freud together with Marx, Habermas declared that Freud had developed metapsychological theories in which institutions recognized as the powers that legitimize domination, as the powers from which “ideologically captive consciousness can be liberated through self-reflection if a new potential in the domination of nature makes previous legitimations implausible.”³⁶ Freud is also supposed to have clearly stated the direction of the species’ history: “The development of the productive forces demonstrates at every stage anew the objective possibilities of relaxing the social framework and of replacing the affective foundations of cultural obedience with rational ones” (344, 283). Here, too, just as in the essay on technology, which Habermas published at the same time, it is the economic foundations that set free the “objective possibilities” of history’s further course and that thus determine the particular direction of historical development. The “goal” of history, according to a quotation from Freud, is “the rational foundation of cultural prescriptions.” Habermas attempted to determine “social reflection” here after the model of a neurotic patient’s reflective activity, but still to retain the notion of “stages of reflection” (which has its origins in Hegel’s history of cultivation) as well as the Marxist notion of class-conflict. He transposed the interaction between the therapist and the patient, who is motivated by the desire to recover, into the strategic conflicts of class struggle. Self-reflection is now said to be capable of discerning all that which obscurely determines us in the politically and institutionally organized world. It is said to be capable of changing the real political conditions by inducing political interaction.

Ever since the age of Greek philosophy, tradition has proceeded from the assumption that the universe is fundamentally intelligible and that human reason is designed to realize this intelligibility of the universe. Traditionally, the notion of “enlightenment” has also involved the possibility of changing the state of society. But does this not imply that Habermas’s attempt to orient social reflection on the model of a neurotic patient is an extension of the power of reflection as it has been traditionally viewed? The reflective experience of “pseudo-praxis” is, at least in the case of the patient, “tied to the act of overcoming pseudo-natural compulsions” (401). Did Habermas think that this model could be carried over and applied to large groups so that the enlightenment of social consciousness, at the very moment it becomes internalized, not only supersedes “false consciousness” but also eliminates repression and the compulsion that accompanies it?³⁷ Instead of extending the power of reflection, and thus of freedom, so that they could be the “motor” of his teleological construction of history, Habermas shared the reservations concerning the power of reflection that Freud expressed in his theoretical considerations of culture. In the chapter on Freud in Knowledge and Human Interest, the logic in the movement of reflection directed against repression and ideology is said to be a mere “logic of trial and error” (344, 284). There is said to be no “promise” at all that the development of the productive forces will ever bring about the objective possibility of a complete liberation of the institutional framework from repression. The actions of enlightenment can only be understood as an attempt to “test the bounds for the possibility of realizing the utopian context in the cultural tradition under given conditions” (ibid.). Such a cautiously determined freedom in the form of social reflection can no longer be said to be capable of guaranteeing teleological necessity in the manner that would be required for the general conception of a theory of history.

We thus come to the following conclusion: In his efforts to resolve the contradiction between freedom and necessity on the basis of the traditional foundation, Schelling reached the limits of what can be grasped in strictly logical concepts when he tried to grant human freedom a broader role than divine providence. Habermas’s thought, however, is just as much based on a traditional notion of teleological subjectivity. His secularized version of a final goal in the history of the species led him to construct his theory of history teleologically. His belief in the power of enlightenment and social practice explains his attempt at the same time to rescue reflection, and thus to rescue a form of that which is termed reason and freedom in the tradition. This attempt, however, entangled him in the traditional contradiction between freedom and necessity, although he did not consciously confront the problem of this contradiction. A certain inconsistency becomes apparent: For a theory of history that does not refer to God, human freedom or reflection by means of social action is the only possible guarantee that a certain telos will of necessity be fulfilled. It must provide for the necessity in history. But under the influence of certain modern trends of thought (especially Freud), Habermas determined human freedom or reflection by means of social action so weakly that it cannot possibly provide for the necessity of a telos. This teleological theory of history thus lacks inner consistency. In accordance with the Marxist maxim that philosophy has been overcome [aufgehoben],³⁸ Habermas no longer accepted the traditional philosophical task of “thinking categories”; he employed them “operatively” without an awareness of the context in which they belong. This context, however, would provide the only possible basis for the decision as to whether and how they presuppose one another.

Could it be that Habermas in the meanwhile came to recognize this? In the discussion of his theory of history, we have neglected the fact that for him emancipation implied the possibility of rationally making oneself understood through communication free of repression.³⁹ This idea, which in his inaugural address he had already derived from the structure of language, plays an important role in many of his later endeavors. Hence, Habermas reiterated in the preface to “Theory and Praxis” (23—24) that “mature responsibility” [Mündigkeit] is the only idea “which we are capable of . . . according to the tradition,” and that “in one’s very first sentence . . . the intention of a general consensus without compulsion [is] expressed unmistakably.” In his most recent publications concerning a theory of communicative competence, he tried to determine this idea—which as a form of social life is the goal for the species’ emancipatory development—more closely by means of a universal pragmatics. Referring to Searle’s theory of speech acts, Habermas constructed an ideal situation for dialogue in which an ideal distribution of the speakers’ roles is pre-established. This construction is no mere fiction for him; it is rather a “contrafactual anticipation” that every speaker and listener must intend if communication is to be at all possible, and that can thus be derived quasi-analytically from the “meta-communication” inherent in every dialogue.

Habermas attempted to grasp traditional categories such as truth, freedom, and justice in a new way through a theory of language,⁴⁰ but that attempt does not imply that any progress has been made in relation to the difficulties that we have demonstrated in his theory of history. For, in the first place, universal pragmatics is concerned only with a “logic” of speech, with performances that result from the status of universals (or the relationship of performatory phrases to propositional ones). It concerns itself with the rules for speech competence that are determined without any reference to life-worlds [Lebenswelten] of a historical kind. The rules for communication processes are completely ahistorical and do not contain a “motor” for emancipatory progress. Furthermore, the theory of contrafactual anticipation does not constitute a solution to the problem concerning the philosophy of history. Although this anticipation is also supposed to have constitutive significance for factually existent communication, it is no more than an imperative with reference to the human species’ future development. This might lead to the conclusion that Habermas had clearly turned away from teleological thought once and for all. This is refuted, however, by the fact that his philosophy of history still remains oriented toward Hegel and Marx. His Grundannahmen einer historischen Materialismus (285ff.) [Basic Suppositions for Historical Materialism] demonstrates that progress and necessity are still the decisive categories in his interpretation of history; and in his recent book⁴¹ he outlined the much more extensive project of a “logic of moral systems” or “world views” [Weltbilder], projects that transcend the economic realm. Even if there were still a logic immanent in the development of history today, it still remains an open question what the motor of this development would be in the future, and what kind of necessity history would possess in its future course. Habermas’s notion of “a contrafactual anticipation” is interesting, even though—as he himself admitted—it is “unclear.” But in spite of this notion, his most recent studies have still failed to resolve the dilemma in his philosophy of history. For this dilemma is prompted by the implicitly teleological conception that he himself would like to overcome.