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 II. THE RECONSTRUCTED ARGUMENT OF HANS JONAS As it was suggested above, Jonas’ position is implied by two of his independently formulated views.5 The first position, or idea I would like to present as a premiss, was born out from Hans Jonas’ reflection on historical knowledge. Against the backdrop delineated above, Jonas claims that, while we understand that history is about the past, we do not understand the nature of that past and do not know what history is about. History claims to know about the past. Modern history, as Leopold von Ranke’s program famously declared, aspires to inquire and to reach conclusions about “how things really happened.” Therefore, it sets out to speak about facts in history, that is, past facts. If there cannot be (cannot exist) past facts - how does his approach help us to know the facts of the past? The discipline of history assumes that there is something which lies there objectively. Facts are supposed to be objective, things that are “out there” waiting for being discovered. Considering, however, that the past does not exist anymore, how could one say that there are past facts? How can there be objective facts? Where can those facts be found? How is the past knowable at all? Jonas begins his inquiry by pointing out the obvious need for the truth-conditions of (present) statements about past facts. If the historian says that an event happened in such-and-such a way, the historian claims that the sentence describing the fact is true.6 Thus we come to (6) If a proposition about the past claims to be true, that is, it claims that an event happened in the past, then it is implied that the event must have existed at that time. I Iowever, the event cannot exist, since the past does not exist, as we have seen. How then can the historian claim truth for his statements? Does it make any sense to state, or deny the truth about a non-existent event? To say so would be similar to making a claim about how fast Pegasus flies. Since Pegasus does not exist, it is totally moot to ask whether Pegasus flies faster or slower than the speed of sound. Phis is not the case, however, with history. Jonas points out that history is not entirely fiction. Our life is based on history with its claims about past events, and they form part of our basic discourse. The present is a result of past events. A preponderance of talk about past events is necessarily based on or associated with presently available evidence: Such things as archaeological finds, records, documents, inscriptions, charters, and objects of art, buildings or other 5 The two articles are Jonas 1972a and 1972b. 6 Jonas did not consider the option that history is narrative, in the sense of Hayden-White, because if the past is rhetoric, fiction, or narrative, it cannot lay claim on truth.