philosophy of history emerges in the eighteenth century. The wor!d.historical subject then becomes the theoretical quantum by means of which the crisis-ridden flux of history and the progressive autonomy of action can
be thought together in a process of emancipation which encompasses all parochial and social indeterminaciesY H. J. SandkUhler sees the fiction -of the species-subject, by dint of which historical events can be assigned ro a common history, as the pressure for legitimation which arises when the bourgeoisie insists that its particular class interests, as opposed to the feudal claim ro domination, are the universal interests of the human species. 'The consciousness of "history" in the singular is not, in the final analysis, a result of the dispute between the revolutionary bourgeoisie and the feudal ideology of legitimation, for it is not simply mankind, but rather mankind as the bearer of the mandate of divine rule, which is empowered to make history.'16
The A!thusser school implicitly endorses considerations of this kind when
it tries to show that historicist versions of Marxism rely on patterns of thought which are invariably congruent with the philosophy of history. In his dispute with John Lewis Althusser ·ex:plains the theoretlCal presuppo sitions of the bourgeois philosophy of history as the bourgeoisie's interest in self-legitimation. He claims that in the assumption of a macro-subject in control of history the revolutionary bourgeoisie recasts its own rol.e as
that of the rational subject of action. The concomitant concept of history
only made sense insofar as 'the revolutionary bourgeoisie was struggling against the feud3.l regime. which was then dominant, To proclaim
at that
time,
as the great bourgeois Humanists did, that it' isman
who makes history, was to struggle,f
rom the bourgeois point of view
(which was then revolutionary), against the religious Thesis of feudal ideology: it isGod
who makes history.'17 Althusser concludes that1 with the· break-up of the political constellations of the bourgeois revolution. the theoretiCal grounds of its conception. of history also vanish: namely, the assumption of a universal centre of action, which reduces the complexity of history to a linear temporal development. The unification of history in the positing of an historical macro·subfect seems to Althusser to be a legitimate theoret� ical move, only insofar as tlu! politically progressive (but still partial) inter· ests of the. bourgeoisie require the cloakqf
univ!!rsalism agamst the feudal claim to power. From this point of view the. historical-materialist versions of the modern concept of history, which presuppose. the macro-subject either qua class-consciousness (in the philosophy of consciousness), or substantiallyqua
the forces of production, can only be regarded as bourgeois relics in the tradition of Marxism, In fact these Versions of Marxism share with bourgeois philosophies of history not only the sameconception of history, but also the same interest in legitimation.
Althusser attempts to show that 'economism' and 'humanism' share. the ideological ambition to locate the politically authoritative unity of action
HISTORY At\10 INTERACTION "
in.the centre which they each assign ro history. What Althusser means by the 'economism' of the Second International, or of Stalinism, is concep tions of Marxism which try, in a self.-legitimiz.ing gambit, to reduce the domain of political action to the progress of the system, which is autono mous with respect to theory and merely instrumental in character. In the 'humanism' of Hegelian Marxism or existentialism Althusser is pointing to
conceptions which philosophically mask thetr political impotence vis-3.-vis the organization. of the labour movement, with the concept of a class or species-subject in control of history. Althusser contends that 'humanist historicism may, for example, serve as a theoretical warning to intellectuals of bourgeois or ,petty-bourgeois origin, who ask themselves, sometimes in genuinely tragic terms, whether they reatly have a right to be members of a history, which is made, as they know or fear, ourside them.'18 Thus far these lines of argument have been pursued no further in structural Marxism. Althusset himself has only briefly sketched his own thoughts on the matter. H. M. Baumgartner's worlc; can help us to demonstrate the liecond area
in which Wesr German theon�tical discussions complement the Althusserian reflections on historicism.1, Drawing on the work of A. C Danto, Baumgartner has produced a philosophkal reconstruction of the notion of continuity in the philosophy of history. He undertakes an epistemological inspection of rhe various conceptions of a unified history, in order to make clear the outline of a new historicism. His criticism is levelled ar those versions of cr!tical theories of history which seck to overcome the onto logical conceptions o.f continuity in metaphysical history, by exposing them as reifications. He sets out to prove that even the post-Hegelian attempts to think the continuity of history as the unifying achievement of a cogni tive subject are tied to the onrological presupposition that history provide!> an objective context of meaning, Baumgartner argues that it is impossible to construct a systematically representative relation between the multiplic
ity of historical events and the notion of historical continuity, since the historical language of the objecr fails in principle to reproduce the whole 'factical' course. of history. Therefore the expressions employed by the critical theory of history ought not to be asso·ciated with any ontological notions of continui'ty. However, Baumgartner finds just such associations in concepts like .life, development and formation
(Bildungsprouss)
which are used in the tradition of the epistemological philosophy of history.Baumgartner draws some radical conclusions from his analysis: 'If the continuity of history is neither the tranquil certainty of continual change, nor the task of creating a nexus of events, to be accomplished by intellect, action or self-reilecrion, then histozry in general is not to be understood as
a process, bur only as a phenomenon of consciousness, namely man's mastery of the past with respect to its possible interpretation now and in the future.'20 Baumgartner no longer values continuity as a fearure of the historical object domain in;elf, bur as rhe mere formal principle of every
82 AXEL HONNETH
historical proposition. The Wli6cation of historic events to historical con� tinuity according to interests now necessarily belongs to the transcendental structure of nart<�.tive formation, within which alone we may experience historical events as 'history', There is no longer a straight path from this
result of Baumgartner's investigations to the critique of historicism in -rhe Althusserian school. However, from his critique of the ontological notion. of continuity we can begin to show what theor,etical path must be taken
by structural Marxism, if it is to redeem its promise to reject objective notions of historical continuity, and at the same time to avoid Baumgartner's transcendental philosophical solution.21
Like Baumgartner Althusser criticizes concepts of history which harbo�r the notion of historical continuity as an ontological presupposition. In some
places he traces the historicist versions of Marxism back to the Hegelia-n
conception according to which historical time can be thought as a homo geneous continuum of history. History can be read as the process in which
spirit comes to itself in a dialectical self-identification.22 Althusser rightly
sees a characteristic weakness of traditional Marxism in this trope, an insight which holds independently of the material content of his critique of Hegel. The question of the conditions of the theoretical unification of history-a question posed by the disintegration of the idealistic philosophy of history - is dogmatically prejudged by the very fact that history is
represented as a process of self-realization. If history can be thought as a
process of the internal clevelopment of a supra-individual systematic unity
or unity of ·action, to which all historical events may be ascribed, then the self-realizing macro-subject must already be p�:esupposed. This relic of the
metaphysics of history has assumed the form of a dehistoricization of the concept of the proletariat in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. Lukacs has taken the category of the proletariat so . .far beyond any historical _and empirical determination that he ultimately depicts the emancipation of the proletariat as the
formation (Bildungsprozess)
of the subject of history . . ForLukiics the actl.lality of history in historical materialism can orily come to self-knowledge because the pr-oletariat recognizes this actuality as its own
creation. The idea. of self-knowledge then contains the notion of historical
continuity, since it grasps all historic events as objectivations of a single
identical subjecr.n In the tradition of th� $!;cond International the relic of the metaphysics of history assumes the form of an economistic ideology- of history. Here the dialectic between the forces and the relations of production
has been so narrowly circumscribed to the role. of the instruments of pro
duction that historical changes have to be interpreted as causal conse
quences of the development of production. History is understood in sum as an autonomous progression, the locomotive of which is the unfolding of the techniques of production,24 The development of productive forces
which has sh�nk
to a mere vector thus purports to provide the meaningHISTORY AND INTERACTION "