"We interpret history through people's intentions" - Weekend - Kommersant

"We interpret history through people's intentions" - Weekend - Kommersant


British scientist Richard Watmore's book What is Intellectual History? has been published by UFO Publishing. — a short introduction to the theory and practice of the so-called Cambridge School. Igor Gulin spoke with Timur Atnashev and Mikhail Velizhev, editors of the Intellectual History series and popularizers of this trend in Russia, about the peculiarities of the method, the opportunity to understand what people of past eras thought, and the benefits of these investigations for today.

Watmore's book has a seductive title, so I'll just ask: what is intellectual history?

Mikhail Velizhev: This is a scientific direction widespread in the English-speaking world and until recently practically unknown in Russia, but in recent years it has been gaining popularity. Watmore belongs to the Cambridge School of Intellectual History, although he says the label can be dropped. Nevertheless, his entire book is connected in one way or another with this approach. And its meaning is very simple: as intellectual historians, we can deal with the most diverse material related to everything that a person says, thinks, writes, but we are limited to a specific point of view, which can be called historicist. The task is to show how this or that text was perceived in the era when it was created. The book is not large in volume, which is its absolute advantage, and at the same time very rich and saturated.

Timur Atnashev: The book itself gives two descriptions of intellectual history. One belongs to Robert Darnton, who lists its sections: the history of ideas, the history of emotions, and so on. And there is a shorter definition in terms of which Watmore proposes to think of intellectual history: "What people in the past meant when they said what they said, and what they said meant to them." The important premise here is that people in the past, as well as people in the present, belonging to different cultural groups or simply living in different countries, may not understand each other. We can perceive what has been said, we have a feeling of understanding, but in order to be sure of it, special efforts are needed.

MW: Here it is appropriate to recall the famous example of Pushkin's language and the Chinese language. What is easier for a modern person to master? The answer is that it is undoubtedly Chinese, because we understand in advance that the Chinese language has nothing to do with ours, but about Pushkin's language it seems to us that we understand it. However, in reality there is a huge distance between us and Pushkin. The imaginary similarity encourages us to try on individual statements of the same Pushkin to today's situations. Here one can point to the popular tendency to read the entire history of Russian culture through the prism of modernity, which was especially actualized in the controversy after February 24th. The intellectual history of the Cambridge tradition teaches the opposite, that is, a more complex and nuanced dealing with the past in its own terms.

What, in fact, is the Cambridge School, how did it arise and what did it do?

MW: The Cambridge School arose immediately after the Second World War - in Cambridge, as its name implies. Four key names are worth mentioning. They are Peter Laslett, Quentin Skinner, John Pocock and John Dunn. All of them were engaged in political philosophy - from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the 19th century. The essence of their innovation was a rigorous study of the context. The texts do not exist in a vacuum, they are tied to the political circumstances in which they arose - the year of writing itself is of great importance. This understanding of context goes back to another figure whose name is associated with Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He believed that the meaning of a word is determined by the usage, that is, the situation in which it is expressed. The Cambridges made the transfer of this thought from analytic philosophy to historical research. It was a revolution in the study of political thought: it turned out that there are no timeless truths that are broadcast by philosophers, that we cannot today read Plato as if Plato wrote for us.

TA: It is difficult for us to believe that the concepts of "state", "republic", "sovereignty" do not have an objective meaning, the same at all times. When we think of, for example, conservatism, we imagine some kind of conservatism "in general". The historian of the Cambridge School would not agree that such an abstract concept exists—there are certain meanings accepted in certain communities. We can reconstruct what was meant by "conservatism" at one time or another when this concept was used. If people did not use the concept of “conservatism”, but it seems to us that this is conservatism, we can also say so, but with double caution. This is our historical assessment, and not the understanding that existed in a certain period for specific people. That is, on the one hand, there is a certain relativism in the approach to “concepts” in the Cambridge method, but, on the other hand, this is not a postmodern history in which any interpretations are equivalent. It is necessary to compare, show and prove the evolution and repertoire of meanings of key concepts in a historically given context.

In what intellectual climate and in response to what phenomena did the Cambridge School itself emerge?

TA: Early in their careers, both Skinner and Pocock were quite active in arguing against Marxist philosophy, which had a great influence in English-speaking universities. Marxism in its vulgar version reduces ideology to false consciousness. The Cambridge approach puts much more emphasis on creativity—how particular thinkers and actors make sense of history and how that make sense influences subsequent tradition. We interpret history through people's intentions, not through the socioeconomic structures that manipulated them. To understand the motives and intentions of political and public figures of the past, it is important to take seriously the intellectual landscape in which they lived and acted. The new method was supposed to justify the autonomy of thinking in relation to the political and economic constructions of Marxism, while avoiding the naive forms of interpretation of the thinkers of the past, characteristic of the traditional history of ideas.

But the Cambridge School has its own ideology. How to describe it?

TA: At one time, the position of these historians was perceived as evading any political agenda, but subsequently almost all of them formed their own programs, and Dunn even stopped doing historical research and became a political philosopher. Most notable here is the study of republicanism by Pocock and Skinner. The republican tradition just means the ability of people and society to control their own destiny, to establish institutions, to create a constitution. True, Pocock is wary of this doctrine and his sympathies on the side of liberal conservatism. Skinner, on the contrary, showed himself as a supporter of republicanism.

MW: Skinner's main contribution to modern political theory is the so-called "third concept of freedom." When do we consider ourselves free? When we are free not only according to arbitrary factors, but also according to the law. Let us imagine a slave to whom his master says: live as if you have become a free man. Will the slave be free in this case? Skinner's answer: Absolutely not. A person is not free when there is even a hypothetical possibility that he will again be not free. Suppose his master, for some reason, changes his mind and deprives him of his freedom. As long as such a threat exists, a person cannot be considered free, even if this threat is not activated.

TA: Skinner discovers this concept in medieval Italian thinkers, then it migrates to England, but then the tradition is lost. First, in the Hobbes project, for which freedom means the absence of a direct threat at the moment (if no one interferes with me now, then I am free), the right to restrict freedom is given to the sovereign, and this becomes a guarantee of security. Then comes the liberal tradition of the nineteenth century, which thinks of freedom in isolation from the political structure. In the republican idea, the emphasis is on the law - and at the same time on the source of the law, which are the very people who obey the law. Here the historian discovers something old as new, finds a set of forgotten arguments and returns them to the current circulation. Historical research may find something interesting for today, and maybe for the day after tomorrow - something that does not yet imply immediate use.

Tell us about your own work in this tradition of intellectual history.

Photo: UFO

TA: One example of the application of Cambridge methods to Russian material is Mikhail's recent book on the Chaadaev case, history, how Chaadaev was declared insane for publishing the first "Philosophical Letter", in which the author attacked the official ideology. A significant part of the scientific texts that have been written about this classic story before are actually aimed at a dialogue with Chaadaev, at turning to him for some kind of unmediated wisdom. Mikhail, on the other hand, offered a well-founded study that considers Chaadaev not as a source of prophecies about Russia, but as a historical figure who existed in his own intellectual context. He reconstructed many collisions that remained hidden under the influence of Chaadaev's myth. Such works do not stop the flow of mythological creativity, but they can correct it and stimulate a more meaningful dialogue between modernity and the original context.

Are there any cases of applying the method to more modern material?

TA: There is my project on the study of the political language of perestroika. When the era of glasnost begins, censorship is limited, a stream of publications of previously banned and new texts appears. All this produces a kind of communication revolution. Novy Mir had a circulation of 2 million copies, each copy was read by many people. And so the Soviet people were rediscovering for themselves what politics is, what history is. Historiosophical language was the language that determined the new political thinking and united the most diverse authors. This language has changed very quickly. If in 1988–1989 his main metaphor was the metaphor of choosing a historical path, then at the end of perestroika, in 1990–1991, a wide circle of authors tends to one “conservative” thought: human intervention in history is harmful, dangerous; it breeds revolutions and endless bloody consequences, so the wisest thing to do is to let history flow on its own. One of the perestroika authors had a metaphor to "let go of the reins of history." Let go of the reins, and the horse of history will find its own way. Today, we usually take this as a liberal view. But at that moment, similar thoughts were expressed by the authors of a variety of attitudes - both nationalists and leftists. This was the philosophical rationale for the rejection of joint political action, but also of violence. At first, we see the sublimation of the language of choice, subjectivity, and literally in two or three years, the political publicist switches to the language of necessity and trust in the natural course. Further we can trace how these two languages ​​interact. For example, in the legacy of Yegor Gaidar in the early 1990s, you can see both languages. He has a rather tragic look. Gaidar also writes about the possibility of choice, but he himself believes that the chances are very small. Natural development, evolution, as he believed, does not lead the country to modernization, but rather will return it to a new cycle of repetitions. In retrospect, we can say that he predicted the future quite accurately. Of course, intellectual history itself does not judge the accuracy of the forecast. She tries to reconstruct the meaning of the statement, but in doing so, we draw attention to texts that can provide an important perspective on today. We can expect this historiosophical language to return to public debate. When in the future there is a need for a new understanding of the country's trajectory, it is likely to be actively demanded. And now we can already see what this language has limitations and how exactly it works.


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