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
GYÖRGY GERÉBY So again, the opinions we hold about the past are subject to personal perceptions and interests. Rarely do two eye-witnesses tell of an event in precisely the same way. The judge, however, ought to assume that there is a common reality behind the different testimonies, which can be concluded on the basis of evidence, even if the judgement eludes being logically indisputable. The arbitration assumes existential import: The assumption that the event did happen in a particular way. Our access to historical facts can be changed, by accident, or even intentionally, when political powers set out to alter the evidence about the past, for example by annihilating documents. However powerful these forces may be, and whatever success they may achieve in eradicating memories, or documents of the past, one thing they cannot do. None can eradicate the difference between true and false, truth and lies. Hence we find, if one maintains the need for the truth value of statements about the past, then the past ought to contain unchangeable facts. One can doubt the truth of a particular statement, but that it ought to be bivalent. This methodical principle cannot be held in doubt. To illustrate his point, Jonas offers the case of an infamous document forgery, the Donation of Constantine.7 Throughout many centuries, it was considered to be genuine; that is, its claims were held to be true. After the forgery has been revealed in the fifteenth century, it became clear that the donation never happened, and that throughout those centuries it was a falsehood. It was a falsehood, though, says Jonas, even in the period when everybody thought it was genuine. No one knew the truth - but the truth was there (Jonas 1972a. 175). In his analysis Jonas is clearly committed, therefore, to two assumptions: (7) The reality of time. (8) The correspondence theory of truth with respect to past events. If these two assumptions are granted, concludes Jonas, the past must exist in some sense. This mode of existence cannot be “real,” but they still must be guaranteed. At this point he makes a daring suggestion. The guarantee for the existence of the past truth is the existence of a great intellect, which ought to be postulated in order to retain the meaning of all statements about the past. This is an immense mind, in which all past events persevere. This mind or intellect is not like Laplace’s infinitely powerful calculator of causal chains, but rather a mind retaining all individual events of the past in his universal memory. It is neither the realm of ideal Platonic existence since events are not copies of the paradigms of this mind; nor is it the universal intellect of Plotinus, which timelessly guarantees the existence of the realm of events, that is, of the cosmos; nor 7 The Donation of Constantine is a forged medieval document granting land and the imperial insignia to the bishops of Rome, that is, the Popes.