Meaning in History by Karl Löwith: Introduction

Meaning in History
Karl Löwith
University of Chicago Press, 1949

Löwith begins his book, sensibly enough, by defining his topic. He is writing about the philosophy of history by which he means, "a systematic interpretation of universal history in accordance with a principle by which historical events and successions are unified and directed toward an ultimate meaning." (MiH: pg. 1) This definition has a noteworthy benefit for us, the readers. It narrows the field of inquiry considerably. We need not concern ourselves with either the voluminous content of history, nor with the techniques or methodologies of the historian. Only those, blissfully rare, attempts to construct universal historical meaning need be considered.

Löwith's approach, however, is broad enough to encompass ancient and medieval thought as well as modern approaches. Indeed, the entire premise of the book is to show how the attempts to construct universal historical meaning have their roots in the theological constructs of the Judeo-Christian worldview. The religious idea of salvation as a worldly reality (as opposed to an other-worldly fulfillment) is the point of origin for all attempts to find meaning in history. So, in a very Nietzchean manner, Löwith proposes to sketch a genealogy of the idea of universal history, tracing it backwards through time from more recent incarnations to its earliest manifestations in the ancient world.

That we would need to undertake such a work seems obvious to Löwith. As a German writing in the aftermath of the Second World War it is easy to understand how he views the world as "at the end of the modern rope." (MiH: pg. 3) The easy faith in reason and progress which dominated the modern mind in the 18th Century has been eroded by the actual path history has taken. If the idea of meaning in history is not to devolve into a impotent lament of "one damn thing after another," breaking the complex of ideas that is the philosophy of history might allow us to recover something helpful that had become obscured during the transition from a religious past to a secular present. Löwith suggests there is something within the Christian conception of history that makes a more compelling argument about the reality of evil and suffering in the world than in "the modern illusion that history... solves the problem of evil by way of elimination." (MiH: pg. 3) However, Löwith is not encouraging us to recover the philosophy of history inherent in ancient Christian or Judaic thought and make it our own. Instead he wants us to recognize that the manner in which human beings attempt to make sense of the world they live in will of necessity be religious and philosophic. It will not afford us the possibility to give a final and ultimate answer in the manner of working through a algebraic formula. It will always allow for further questioning.

It is this eternal questioning which the ancient pagan world did not allow. For them the world had known boundaries and was marked by the regular procession of moments: season followed season, death followed life, decay followed growth. The sheer regularity of these "movements" allowed for the ancient pagan to think of the world as filled with ends that could be rationally explained and planned for by people. However, none of these ends were ultimate. They simply were someplace on the cycle of existence, a someplace that is of no special significance. As such, history itself could not be meaningful for the ancient mind because there was no telos, no end to which historical existence was pointing.

Löwith sees a kind of neo-paganism at work in the attempts by writers such a Tocqueville, Spengler and Toynbee to prognosticate the future. As such they too do not represent a real attempt to provide meaning to history and, thus, fall outside the defined realms of the philosophy of history, as do their ancient predecessors.