19th Century Philosophy — Period of Systems (1800-1850) (2)

It is visible that there is, looking at things broadly, a reduction in the taste and the power of analysis which had marked the eighteenth century; from the end of the 18th century, we noticed in Rousseau and many illuminists this sort of fatigue of the intelligence which decomposes; we appeal to means of investigation that go beyond it, to faith, to instinct, to consciousness, to feeling, to intellectual intuition, to the intuition of historical development. For to understand the real unity of this vast movement, whose representatives are often unaware of each other, we must insist on the connection between the renewal of religious philosophy and the metaphysical scope that we attribute to history: I have already had the opportunity to notice that Christian dogma contains an essentially historical view of the Universe, in the sense that it marks critical points in the course of time which fundamentally transform the meaning of human destiny, creation, fall, redemption, resurrection; around these dogmas apocalypses, revelations concerning the reign of ends were formed early on; many heresies from the Middle Ages and the Reformation, with social tendencies, on the reign of the Spirit are linked to it: a deep, interior story, known only by revelation and by faith, and which goes beyond the human means of control. This sort of historical view of human nature can naturally be considered from two sides: on the one hand we can see that the individual and social destiny of man has its mysterious reason in a historical development which exceeds his intelligence. ; and this is the point of view of Maistre and the traditionalists who return from the Essay on Morals to the Discourse on Universal History -, on the one hand we can see that the individual and social destiny of man has its mysterious reason in a historical development which exceeds his intelligence; there is a sort of framework there which can serve as support for a history and for predictions which will present themselves as entirely positive and which will join, but with a very new messianic accent, the rationalist theses of the eighteenth century on progress, distinguishing themselves in fact essentially of these because they all admit, like the Apocalypse, a final state where humanity will rest. In this second aspect of Christian dogma, we have all kinds of nuances, from the doctrines which believe to be the most intimately faithful to it, such as those of Ballanche, Schelling or Hegel, to those which knowingly deviate from it while keeping the general inspiration and the notion of an effective future, like those of Saint-Simon, Fourier or Auguste Comte.

Thus, at this time, the sense of history and development, which transforms all philosophical problems, is linked to a faith in a mysterious spring of history, a spring transcendent to human reflection, laws of repair of Maistre, of Hegel’s Self-realizing Spirit, or of Comte’s humanity. Historians themselves, like Michelet or E. Quinet, consider it their task to reach these mysterious and uncontrollable forces; and it is from this period above all that the feeling of nationality or race as guiding forces of events dates, forces that each person finds in himself as constituting his own essence. History becomes a faith more than a science, a source of energy more than a curiosity; a Hegel or a Count were quick to dismiss as not belonging to history all events which do not fit into the line of development as they conceive it, for example prehistory or the empires of Far East.