Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, 2020
2020 / 4. szám - György Geréby: The Changeability of the Past: Medieval and Modern. A Common Theme between Peter Damian and Hans Jonas
Tl IE CHANGEABILITY OF THE PAST: MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 183 data. History assumes propositions about these data to be starting points, or, to put it in another way, as premises for drawing inferences. The criteria of the verifiability of historical claims, then, depending on the available data, and the methods of inference. This can be called the empiricist view of the past. However, most such talk about the past reveals principled flaws affecting historical claims made by empirical propositions. First of all, Jonas reminds us that we are not in a Laplacean universe. Laplace, the great early 19th-century physicist, famously claimed that his equations could effectively describe not only all events in the past but in the future of the universe. He went on to claim that, provided we know all the deterministic laws of nature, one can produce an effectively complete snapshot of the values of every parameter at any given moment. For him, past, present and future mutually entail each other. The present would then hold the key for the past. This view would not do for Jonas. The assumption of absolute causal determinism is only part of the problem. Whether or not modern physics can accept this, can be set aside. The second, more significant issue is that a given event is not necessarily the result of one and only one unique set of causes. No proof has yet been offered for the strict unicity of antecedent causes for all present state of affairs. Therefore, arguing from presently available facts with the help of inferential methods is not sufficient to establish truth in history. Third, there can be truths in history that are not approachable by the causal determinism of Laplace. In fact, some facts of history are not approachable at all. Let us call this third problem the “problem of residual truths in history.” These are unapproachable by the sheer fact that they leave no trace, no identifiable residue that could serve as starting points for their reconstruction. There is nowhere from which to begin tracing them back to their past existence. An example of such a truth would be weather on a particular day in 500 BC. Or the price of an amphora of wine at the Megara market on that day. To be sure, there was the weather, and there was a price. However, there is no way to approach them, that is, to know the answer to these questions. This is the reason why Jonas differentiates between historical verifiability and truth. This distinction will be of crucial importance. We may not be in the position to verify any claim made about the thoughts of Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon, but one has to assume that indeed there were thoughts in his mind at that point. We don’t know the real physiognomy of the Egyptian pharaoh Echnaton, but it is not unreasonable to maintain that he had a particular physique: Stature, facial characteristics, weight, the colour of skin, and other properties. Answers to these questions may never be reached: Still, the possibility of their truth is undeniable. Caesar or Echnaton were not figments of imagination. They were not angels or ghosts. The unknowability of residual facts offers artists the freedom to portray and characterise such unknown faces, much as they do it in depicting St. George, or St. Catherine of Alexandria.