International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

The Phenomenological Approach to History

Author(s): Fritz Kaufmann
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec., 1941), pp. 159-172
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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 THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO HISTORY
y
I. THE EIDETIC REDUCTION FROM HISTORICAL FACT TO HISTORICAL
ESSENCE

The attempt to formulate the phenomenological approach to history

confronts one with a paradoxical and confusing difficulty. One must
first restore the concrete meaning of phenomenology by removing the
one-sided emphasis laid upon those very features of phenomenology
which once made it a success.
After i900 phenomenology, with its emphasis upon the intrinsic
being and the irreducible structure of phenomena over and above their
causal relationships, was favored by current tendencies. It became the
natural ally and the methodological resource of the general reaction
that set in against late nineteenth century positivism. It proved con-
genial to the rise of expressionism in the European world. It was
accompanied by the development of Gestaltpsychologie and followed
by new morphological trends in biology. It operated in favor of a
monumental historiography such as was launched by the friends of
the German poet, Stefan George-a history in praise of the great man
as a world unto himself. It even seemed in accord with Spengler's
exclusively morphological interpretation of history-which exaggerated
the partly similar tendencies in Herder and Hegel, Nietzsche, Burck-
hardt, and Lamprecht.
The intuition of essences, their recognition, and their phenomeno-
logical description, have been considered the most conspicuous, original,
and productive contributions of phenomenology to philosophy and to
our whole intellectual life. Husserl's eidetic reduction, which showed
the way from perception of matters of fact to the intuition of essences,
prevailed over the transcendental reduction, which opened the horizon
of philosophical understanding proper. Because in phenomenology this
understanding gives its life and light to intuition, phenomenological
description is no mere representation of autochthonic essences, real
universals, by means of appropriate and evocative terms. Intuitive
knowledge is deepened and completed by descriptive analysis and genu-
ine understanding. Each type of objects is revealed through phenom-
enological reflection to be the objective correlate of a specific synthesis
in transcendental consciousness. To philosophy proper formal and
material ontologies (Gegenstandstheorien) have only the subservient
function of clues for an analysis of consciousness in all its dimensions."

1. This summary description follows (so far) the line of Husserl's own methodical
approach. Moreover, as this article refers to recent philosophical discussions which have
their origin in tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, it is befitting to speak largely in Hus-

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i6o PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

These preliminary remarks will suffice to answer the f requent

objection that phenomenology is merely a new edition of so-called
Platonic idealism, that phenomenology is a theory of rigid and isolated
ideal entities. Thanks to the sensational effect of (only) the first vol-
ume of the Logische Untersuchunigenthis objectivistic interpretation of
phenomenology has become the communis opinion. In so competent a
work as Mandelbaum's The Problem of Historical Knowledge this
aspect is emphasized to the exclusion of all else. But even if we adopt
this standpoint as a starting-point for our discussion, it can be shown
that the phenomenological theory does not result in a hopeless dualism
of essence and historical existence. This is the task to which I shall
restrict myself in the present issue.
Mandelbaum argues2 that the phenomenological essence as a pri-
mary, self-contained unit establishes no temporal context and is not
analyzable in phenomenological terms "with reference to the nature of
specific historical events." "The tendency among phenomenologists to
treat every object as representing an ideal essence has had unfortunate
consequences in the realm of historical inquiry. For it has too often
been assumed that historical entities are simple, directly apprehensible
entities, which are capable of being termed essences." Such an essence
is no organ of genuine historical understanding.
Without denying that the phenomenological method has been fre-
quently misused in the sense mentioned, Mandelbaum's objection never-
theless may be answered by referring to the fact that, at least in Hus-
serl's phenomenology, each and every objective essence is considered
as an abstraction in two ways: as an object and, again, as an essence.
First, it is considered as an object taken separately, i. e., without
regard to the context of consciousness within which it appears. The
phenomenological emphasis upon the irreducibility of objective mean-
ing, its irreducibility to the stream of conscious acts, does not exclude
an understanding of this meaning as somebody's meaning. The object
thus is "reduced" to an objective pole of my experience-or rather, to
an objective pole common to the consciousness of an indefinite number
of selves, to their "transcendental intersubjectivity" which is consti-
tuted, however, within myself as transcendental ego.
I shall not pursue at this time the productive and ultimately deci-
sive view of phenomenology as the self-interpretation of this ego in its
constitutive functions. I shall restrict myself to the more obvious

serlian terms-terms which have their right even if the stream of transcendentalconscious-
ness is considered to have its source in a more comprehensive dynamic. Cf. the present
writer's "Art and Phenomenology" in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl
1940.
2. The Problem of Historical Knowledge, pp. 278 if.

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 THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO HISTORY i6i

statement that apart from their status as objects, essences are abstrac-
tions by virtue of their very character as essences. General essences,
being the proper subjects of phenomenological description,3 are the
result of what Husserl called ideational abstraction, as distinguished
from inductive abstraction. Ideational abstraction does not give the
average of cumulative experience. It explores the essential quality, the
inner form, and the general possibilities implied in the unity of a given
experience. In this way it anticipates and delineates the course of future
experience, or, on the highest level, of experiencing as such.
Phenomenology must be understood by following its concrete pro-
cedure, not by regarding its abstract results exclusively. While local
and temporal conditions are eliminated more and more in distilling pure
essences from the stuff of experience, the latter is still acknowledged
as the proper source of the whole process.4 As all intention springs
from individual awareness, all objects of ideational abstraction have
the center of their constitution in the very facts which brought them to
light; and the different adumbrations of a general essence, down to
eidetic singularities,5 figure as variations of the very variety that was
originally shown through individual experience. This experience, for
its part, must be recognized in its concrete historical meaning, as given
and revised in the horizon and from the perspective of the actual
moment.
Thus phenomenology is far from presenting a mere collection of
curious non-temporal types whose application to historical reality is
always questionable. Every thing and every essence has its constitutive
basis in the originality of actual experience and conveys its concrete
meaning when the inner depths of the present moment are sounded.
This methodological observation will become still more evident by
considering essences not in their specific experiential setting, but in
their internal ontological character. The alleged heterogeneousness
between the "nature of specific historical events" and ideal phenomeno-
logical essences is the more astonishing since the very term "nature,"
as used in this context, is cognate with the term "essence-" The
semblance of discrepancy apparently derives from the prejudice that
an essence, being a timeless universal, has no proper relation to the
"specific," the particular facts of history.
The identification between the ideal and the universal has always
been denied in phenomenological literature. Hlusserl distinguishes cul-

3. Cf. Husserl, Ideen, pp. 139 f.

4. Cf. Husserl, Ideen, p. 12; Formale und transcendentaleLogik, pp. 150 f.
5. Cf. Husserl, Ideen, pp. 27 ff.-An eidetic singularity, admitting of no further speci-
fication, is the concrete qualitative determination of a "this," a -o6e rt, apart from its
determination in space and time. The examples of an eidetic singularity are identical in
quality, though different in number.

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162 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

tural products, such as a language, a scientific or artistic work, as ideal

individuals (which have their tempo-spatial embodiments, adventures,
and changes) from ideal universals, like the triangle as such or color
as such (which are only exemplified in time and space by certain indi-
vidual entities.) The Critique of Pure Reason can be printed in many
copies and read many times, and the Ninth Symphony performed by
many orchestras without being multiplied in these manifold repro-
diuctions.6
As they are grasped and kept in actual understanding, these cul-
tural products are essential parts of a historical world whose proper
actuality consists, however, in the lives of the personal agents from
which they grow and in which their genuine (i. e., original and relevant)
meaning is always to be restored. The inner form, the constitutive
nature of these works and the inner form, the constitutive nature of
these lives coincide to the extent that life finds its form in its very
expression, i. e., to the extent that this cultural expression proves to
be pure, comprehensive, and radical. The life in question is, of course,
not that of isolated individual beings, but the common life as repre-
sented by individual beings according to their having and taking their
share in it; the unity and unities of life are established through living
communion - comradeship (shoulder-to-shoulder relation), follower-
ship ("face-to-back" relation7), and responsiveness (a face-to-face
relation), in changing proportions.
To the different aspects under which such a community may be
realized, correspond different dimensions of characterizations: the
unity of a family or a people, unity of faith, unity of a generation or
an epoch, etc.
The inner form of these unities determines the range of what is
essential in a historical phenomenon, so in historical life, its events and
its achievements. "Essence" applies equally to real (or possibly real)
individual entities, such as a historical process or a historical person, or
to ideal individuals such as a work of art, or to ideal universals such
as "the" triangle. This is a more cautious statement than Max Scheler's
peremptory declaration that essences may refer to individuals or uni-
versals, but are neither individual nor universal themselves.8 They may
prove individuating principles and may be individuated themselves by
an individual context. Such an individuation affects their inner being
and is different from the mere fact of their occurring, perhaps, only in
one single case.

6. Cf. Formale und Transcendentale Logik (1929), pp. 17 ff. Cf. Dorion Cairns,
"The Ideality of Verbal Expression," this journal, vol. I, pp. 453 ff.
7. Cf. Old Testament, Book IT, ch. 33, 12-23.
8. "Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die material Wertethik," Jahrbuch fluer
Philosophie und PhaenomenologischeForschung, vol. II, pp. 366.

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 TIHE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO HISTORY I 63

A thoroughgoing description of the precise state of these essences

would lead into the thorny thicket of discussions as ventilated by Jean
Hering9 and Roman Ingarden,10 after the example of Husserl and
Reinach. This is a realm of complicated and subtle problems which
have not yet been settled at all. They are rather neglected today; but
while their perspective has chanced, their importance is not annihilated
by the change of the philosophical situation.
I must restrict myself, at this point, to the distinction between
Husserl's eidetic singularity and an individual essence. The eidetic
singularity is "the quiddity which belongs to the proper being of an
individual;"" it is the essence of an individual, which this individual
The term "individual essence" rmaybe taken in a broader or in a
stricter sense. It is the latter which I prefer in the present context.
According to it an individual being is endowed with an individual
essence if it satisfies the principiuin identitatis indiscernibiliumt not only
in virtue of its accidental circumstances, but also in virtue of a principle
which is constitutive of its inner form, its intrinsic nature. In this case
it is either toto genere different from any other being, as are God and
creature, or it is distinguished from any other being by an essential
difference, as are a man and even his fellowman. This definition implies,
of course, that not each individual being makes its appearance as the
outgrowth of an individual essence. Characters which do not properly
belong to a thing's individual essence may be, nevertheless, of a more
than accidental status if they are founded upon this very essence. In
may have in common with an indefinite number of other beings; while
an individual essence"2 is quasi-solidary with its possessor.
this way even the accidental may rise above the level of mere chance:
the part which it plays in the life of an individual may be determined
by the inner form of this being which proves selective of the nature
and of the extent of these happenings.13
These statements concerning "individual essence" must be care-
fully delimited against the naivete of a dogmatic objectivism and an
equally dogmatic "sceptical" subjectivism. We concede to the latter

9. "Bemerkungen ueber das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee," Jahrbuch, vol. IV,
pp. 495 ff.
10. "EssentialeFragen," Jahrbruch,vol. VII, pp. 125 ff.
11. Husserl, Ideen, p. 10.
12. Cf. Scheler, loc. cit.-The individual essence has the same kind of actuality
though not the same metaphysicalbackground as has "real essence" in Whitehead's Process
and Reality: "There is nothing self-contradictoryin the thought of many actual entities
with the same abstractessence; but there can only be one actual entity with the same real
essence. For the real essence indicates 'where' the entity is, that is to say, its status in the
real world; the abstract essence omits the particularityof the status" (op. cit., vol. I, pp.
82 f.).
13. The various and fatal accidents in Romeo and Juliet, e. g., belong to the individual
form of Shakespeare'stragedy, because they are provoked by the passionate, venturesome
nature of the lovers and their being absolute for love.

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i64 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

that in concrete understanding the essence of a thing cannot be de-

tached from the specific aspect under which it happens to be discovered;
we admit even that this perspective is not only personally conditioned,
but also personally qualified: it expresses the existential position and
attitude of the inquirer. We assert, however, with the objectivist, that
this aspect has also its funidarnet'wmtnizn re. The different aspects are
not equally relevant (or irrelevant) to the thing itself. They differ not
only in their way, but also in their power of disclosing the depths of
being. While they may be relative to a certain given situation, they are
so in a sense complementary to that in which this situation is relative
to the phenomenon in question; this situation itself is under the verdict
of whether and to what extent it provides for a position of facing
things and doing justice to them.
To clarify this, we may point to the correlation between individual
essence and a specific type of Husserl's "isolating abstraction." In the
second of his Logische Unitersuchunigent, in the course of his famous
repudiation of empiristic confusions, Husserl contrasts this isolating
abstraction (which brings into relief some feature, or objects, in "ab-
straction" from others) with "ideational or generalizing abstraction"
(which provides for the intuition of abstract entities like the "ideal
unity of the species"). The intuition of an individual essence, while
refraining from any act of generalization, is based on an act of isolating
abstraction. It sets aside the "unessential" features of the phenomenon
and focuses the attention upon such features as represent the individual
essence in a more adequate and convincing manner.
This description may be suspected to imply a hysteron proteron:
does not the process of abstraction presuppose the very knowledge
which it is supposed to achieve? It should be emphasized, however, that
the aspect under which such an essence appears is taken and given at
once; the attention paid to certain features will also be attracted by
them; and the relief into which they are brought, is at the same time
the relief in which they stand (although this relief may change in the
course of life).' In our way of determining things we seem to be
guided by the determination in which they are given to us.
An objectivistic explanation in the usual sense is not the only
possibility left. The objectivity which the individual inquirer is con-
fronted with may very well be the product of tradition, the claims of
which impose themselves upon his mind. Our knowledge of a historical
essence is partly an acknowledgment, partly a revision of a traditional
interpretation in which things are handed over to 'us. Thus it is dictated
neither by the things in themselves nor by individual arbitrariness or

14. It is obvious that this relief is determined not so much by the conspicuousness
and even the expanse of some charactersas by their objective and cognitive bearing.

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 APPROACHTO HISTORY
THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL i65
compulsion. It shows an aspect of things which has been developed in
common life and which we are privileged to share and called on to
renew.
This is an attempt to justify the claims of intuition by tracing them
back to their origin in life. Still, the reference even to the most compre-
hensive life resembles too much a relativistic reduction of objective
insight to subjective necessity. What seemed to disclose the intrinsic
essence of a thing itself, now appears to indicate only the points of rele-
vance in its relation to us. But does this alternative between what is
essential in the constitution of a thing and what is important with regard
to us prove to be a final and absolute disjunction?
As we are concerned here with the problem of the individual
essence, we need not discuss to its full extent the question of whether
and to what extent, the quality which gives to a thing a permanent
interest may be considered an index of its constitutive nature (though
even then it may point only to one constituent of this essence without
disclosing it in its entirety). It may be that we could not even live in
this world without experiencing and utilizing some contact with the
true essence of things.
In any case we should have proper access to individual essences,.
in the sense in which we defined them above, since individual beings in
this strict sense are of a peculiar concern to us. They are endowed
with, and constituted by, a principle of individuality which gives them a
kind of uniqueness, a uniqueness, however, through which they are not
estranged, but related to each other.
Their indizvidualitv is achieved by means of their individuation.
The individual distinction has at least one of its sources in the different
modes of individuation. But its inner necessity originates in the very
task which has to be fulfilled in this process of individuation.
The task is different according to the different position which an
individual being possesses and realizes in historical time and historical
space; it is different without detracting from the substantial solidarity
in the common cause and mission of a people, a congregation, a gener-
ation, etc. The individual relates itself to its past and its present world
and has its proper being in the selective appropriation of, and resolute
reply to, historical reality.
This reality thus embodies possibilities of life which are constitu-
tive of an individual being to the extent that it either grasps or rejects
them. They have their actuality in this actualization. i. e., as long as
they are actual possibilities in the light of which life may decide upon
its future. The relation and reply to them is, therefore, a responsible
relation and reply. This is in a certain way a correlation as, thanks to
this reply and appropriation, the given possibilities are renewed and

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I66 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

determined in their own concrete and living meaning. This meaning is

open toward the future in virtue of the same process which opens the
present to the past. The past can be determined scientifically because,
and as far as, it still determines itself in an existential relation and
actual understanding. And actual life can determine (and even choose)
its past as it accepts true determination from it.
The intuition of individual essences depends on this community
and communication of individual beings. Only beings which have the
principle of individuation at their personal disposal (as they are aware
of their proper task), have their very essence in this individiuation and
are able either to hide or to disclose their inner nature. In this way they
either provide or inhibit an intimacy of knowledge that far surpasses
any other kind of our knowledge.
The constitutive nature of an individual being is the objective
correlate of isolating abstraction and not a product of generalization.
But it is not isolated in the sense of having once for all a fixed being
and character apart from the stream of historical existence. As life
constitutes itself in communication with life, the inner form of life is
not self-contained; it cannot be understood in separation from other
life. The meaning which a historical phenomenon acquires in the change
-of its concrete understanding is itself a constituent of its essence.
The relief in which the inner form of such a phenomenon stands
out against the background of less essential features, is certainly due
to our relation to it and will change with this more or less continuous
relation. It comes to light with the first original appearance and aware-
ness of a fact or being, is modelled and re-modelled in historical remem-
brance and critically revised by the historian, whose work proves a late
outgrowth of this historical process and has its very function in its
-productive intercourse with historical life.
What appears essential to us is prima facie that which attracts our
attention and appeals to us in a peculiar way. What we thus notice will
be really noticeable, however, and may communicate the essence of a
thing in a true and actual aspect if only we approach it with the proper
respect. Then we will not be cheated by a superficial attractiveness of
a thing which startles our attention, but will be attracted by the features
which make its physiognomy the expression of its very being; we will
face it as it faces us.
And we will realize in what appeals to us, the appeal and the
claim of a true Being as it asks for our own responsible reply. We will
see it in its own horizon by enlarging the horizon of our life to com-
prise and comprehend the other one in its own setting.
We recognize in the being of the phenomenon in question the
Being, the Self, the principle of individuation which it represents, and

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 APPROACHTO HISTORY
THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL 167

of which we know in virtue of being ourselves a self like it (in principle

and, again, not like it in the enactment of this principle).
The individual essence, the proper selfhood of a being, discloses
itself only in a double respect which is, however, fundamentally one: in
our attitude toward the other being both as a factor in our life, with
respect to ourselves, not in mere selfishness, but in proper self-concern;
and in our attitude toward the other being with respect to himself, i. e.,
with due respect for the fellow being as an end in himself.15
The individual essence may apply equally to the life of a people or
a generation, etc., as to that of a single person. As Mandelbaum16 re-
fers especially to the problem of a historical epoch, some remarks may
be added in order to show by way of illustration how the historicity of
an epoch may be envisaged with the help of the phenomenological
method.
Essences like that of an epoch are, first of all, not accidentally
realized in or applied to time: they are temporally conditioned and
unfolded in a certain temporal span. They are individuated as expres-
sing the attitude of a certain phase in historical life. They give the
tenor of the life of historical individuals in their personal cooperation,
in their way of facing and coming to grips with the basic experiences
and vital necessities of man. Thus the pervasive essence of an epoch is
just the pervasiveness of a common mood that animates and directs
human beings in a particular situation. It is a concrete historical essence
belonging to a concrete historical context, a context constituted by a
unity of feeling from which the manifestations of life radiate and
toward which they converge. A form of historical life gets shape in
the form of a historical world; both are originally built up in time, not
merely exemplified in it and are brought into relief by an alliance of
historical self-knowledge, historical remembrance, and historical re-
search.
Quality thus being based on function, the characteristic quality of
an age results from, and refers to, this process of its constitution. The
awareness of such a historical essence therefore is not an intuition
Uno intUitu, but one that takes time as it covers time in a synthetic and
synoptic action. In this mental action the different historical coeffi-
cients are represented and evaluated according to their respective
achievements. They contribute to and bring out the unity of being that
rises from their concurrence and determines their specific values.
Though accessible only in its expression through external appearances,
this entity belongs to a different level of being. It stands out even
against their very contradictions of it just as the fundamental charac-

15. Cf. Karl L6with, Das Individttumin der Rolle des Mitmenschen (1928), pp. 71 if.
16. Loc. cit.

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i6(8 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ter of a person may persist and shine through his protracted misconduct
or distorted self-representation.
This concrete historical essence figuring as the inner form of a
historical phenomenon, accounts for the meaningful ambiguity of the
English term "being" or the German term "f'Vesen-."The concrete his-
torical essence represents above all the being that one is au fond; it
does not merely mean general being as an essence that one has and
shares with other beings.
Phenomenology recognizes these individual essences that have
their proper place, range, and manifestation in time and space. Not
being itself a historical science in the usual sense, however, the proper
business of phenomenology is to cognize the pure and general essences
which arise through ideation and depersonalization, i. e., through ab-
straction from the hic et nunc and the personal flavor of a phenomenon
and through such abstraction from, or variation of, its content as still
retains its categorial or general meaning.
Thus phenomenology can proceed either in the way of "formali-
zation" or in that of "generalization," both terms being taken in the
sense of ? 13 of Husserl's Jdeet.z7 Formalization, abstracting from
each material qualifications of a given entity, would reach the realm of
pure, but empty categoreal forms.
As a matter of fact our whole discussion from pp. I6i-I68 has been
a modest exercise in this way: an attempt to elaborate the mere form
of an individual essence as such, regardless of its specific fulfilment.
A complementary section will deal with applying the method of gener-
alization which gives a more and more general material meaning to a
term that first represents an individual being in the very concreteness
of its actual haecceity.
With the help of this procedure. the concrete historical essences
turn first into instances of general and real possibilities, representations
of a character compatible with the general style, the mode of being,
that belongs to our actual historical world; finally they are used as
examples of essential constituents or, at least, of general and pure
possibilities pertaining to any possible world. In this way ideational
abstraction, while being based on concrete historical experience. per-
forms the transition from individual historical structures to specific
types of our historical life, from there to general anthropological cate-
gories and, ultimately, to possible modes of interpersonal life as such.
Freed from exclusive reference to a certain point in space and

17. It may be mentioned, at least, that this distinction between the two procedures,
while being quite legitimate and even decisive otherwise, becomes somewhat labile in the
final analysis as given in Husserl's constitutive phenomenology. Husserl's "formal" phenom-
enology proved to be capable of giving an account of many determinationsand differences
which first appear to be of the material order and belong to a specific region of being.

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 THIE PHENOMIENOLOGICAL
APPROACHTO HISTORY I69

time, these essences may be realized at any place and any time. Their
actual realization, however, depends on their being favored by a, per-
haps, permanent human tendency: the stronger this tendency proves at
a given time, the more likely is their realization. A general potency of
historical life thus appears in the form of a general potentiality.
Consequently, to use Mandelbaum's own example as an illustra-
tion, romanticism's is, to the phenomenologist, not merely an atemporal
type suspended in the void, but, primarily, the fundamental character
of the mood, the attitude, and the productive utterances of a certain his-
torical period. As such, it becomes the basis for an ideational abstrac-
tion which discovers in it a pure and substantial possibility of life
reacting upon our world.
The atemporal type is, therefore, related from the outset to what,
on a new level, appears to be its temporal realization. This type may
become the gauge of reality and be in tension with it. The distance be-
tween, romanticism qua historical essence and qua pure idea is bridged,
however, by acknowledging it as a real possibility: a possible and, per-
haps, an adequate response not just to a world as such on the part of a
life in general, but to ourt world by human life, this life that never
wholly transcends its finiteness. Such a possibility will prove a perennial
one, if it is nourished by one of the constitutive functions of human be-
ing. So far as this is a question of fact, phenomenology is not qualified to
answer it in a given case. Phenomenology is competent however to
show the essential relations between a historical essence like romanti-
cism (I) as the inner form of life towards the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, (2) as, perhaps, a permanent, though not always visible
or dominant, historical trend, and finally as either a real (3) or a purely
ideal (4) possibility and quality of life, a quality that may be capable
of being exemplified at any point of time and space. A few words may
therefore be devoted to the further elucidation of the inner relations
which prevail among these types of essences and their actualization.

18. As this paper deals only with the methodological function of such a concept as
romanticism,the much disputed question of its material content is beyond its scope. I want
to say, however, that phenomenology does not pretend to end this dispute by an absolute
decree. This is no argument, of course, against applying "intuition" to the realm of history.
Phenomenologicalintuition is no coup de force nor is it a hiding place of inertia. It does not
insist on an alleged absolute evidence that cuts short the needs and claims of progressive
investigation. Wesensschaudoes not enjoy the privilege of an immediate and, at the same
time, final experience. Its use implies the same dynamics and, perhaps, the same pains-
taking process as clarifying our perception of individual things does, i. e., the concrete ful-
filment of formerly empty intentions.
With this reservation,I take it that the essence of the romantic movement will be best
understood by reference to its reacting against the age of enlightenment and the emanci-
pation of the individual reasonable being. This reaction expresses a feeling of human life
as having its roots in spheres deeper and darker than reason. While feeling superior to
each of its actual states, the romanticistseeks the origins of life-life as a child of nature, of
historical tradition and, perhaps, of a God who is more than the summum bonunmof Deism.

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I 70 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

If romanticism can be considered as typical human behavior, a

certain plausibility will be granted to the assumption that its display
may be both permanent and universal. As a permanent warp in the
fabric of history, it lies sometimes on the underside while it appears at
other times on the surface, thus co-determining- in one way or the
other, the actual pattern in the texture of history as a whole. Conse-
quently the thread of romanticism may be variously realized in different
historical periods, according to their affinity to that epoch to which
romanticism first gave its name and to which it may belong in a peculiar
and unique sense. In this original sense romanticism includes the per-
sonal note of its actual formation, the inimitable way in which, since
the end of the eighteenth century, people reacted to the given historical
situation. Such a personal essence is not reducible to mere exemplifica-
tion of a general essence.'9 The genuine meaning of a historical context
may be compared with that of a musical composition. A composition
is not as a matter of intention and understanding what it would be as
a matter of fact to the statistician. It is not the choice and purposive
realization within the scale of tones of one among their possible com-
binations. Similarly the peculiar spirit, the original essence of an age,
is neither derivative in fact nor derivable in phenomenological theory
from any general possibility which it may bring to light.
Romanticism as a general essence shows the abstract generality
under which historical appearances may be subsumed as distinguished
from the concrete generality in which they are contained. Yet this
essence is neither originally alien to the historical concretion nor finally
alienated from it. As a general essence it still reflects historical experi-
ence and is able therefore to cast light upon it. Though it is no mere
operative symbol or rational construction, like Max Weber's "Ideal-
typen,"-but, on the contrary, a true discovery, it serves as a back-
ground against which the individual character and merit of the epoch
in question stands out in relief.
The general essence as well as the individual one, besides being a
ratio cognoscendi of facts may also prove in certain more reflective
developments to be a ratio essendi, a final cause of the historical process.
It may work as an ideal that moulds the minds of persons individually
or collectively and in a way that is more or less conscious. For the rest
it is only from the retrospective point of view of subsequent abstrac-
tion, that general essences seem to be "adopted," "realized," "individu-
ated," in the actions of personal life. In the present context these

19. The very essence of love, e. g., is never exhausted by its general features and
never manifest apart from its personal fulfilment and its reformatorypower over the lives
and the world of the persons affected. Thus love besides having a being, i. e., a general
nature, may appear quasi-personallyin the image of an individual being.

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 THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO HISTORY I7I

words should not suggest the purposive activity which they imply when
used strictly.
The problem of the duration of a historical tendency, its span or
boundlessness in time, is closely related to the problems of its qualitative
reach and the pace of its cultural spread. Its universal extent in either
dimension, in the length and breadth of historical life, depends upon
the inner universality and depth of the attitude in question. By the
inner universality of an attitude I mean its being rooted in a substratum
of life that underlies and promotes each of its utterances and may there-
fore be reflected in every realm of human expression "at once."
If romanticism, e. g., turns back to or rises from such a funda-
mental state and mood of life, it may have the universal scope that
characterizes the style of an entire period.20 Thus eighteenth and nine-
teenth century romanticism showed itself as productive simultaneously
in literature, the fine arts, music, philosophy, politics, even in the
natural sciences; in medicine, e. g., in the case of physicians like Carus,
Schubert, Mesmer, Kerner, and many others.21
Stylistic simultaneity, of course, should not be taken in the rigid
"calendar" sense. Historical periods are not static entities, they are
characterized by active movement; it is not by chance that we speak of
the romantic movement.
This temporal span implies, first, the total or partial unfolding of
the intrinsic possibilities of the style in question, an unfolding that, as
such, proceeds according to an immanent developmental logic. The
principles and tendencies of motion in the different fields of civilization
are the content of more or less comprehensive material ontologies.
While they cannot be formulated within the limits of this essay, I may
be allowed to point to some factors which must be taken into consider-
ation.
Only the whole wealth of inner possibilities as manifested by both
the growth and the range of a style gives the concrete essence of a
historical period. Each of its documents (each Gothic cathedral for
instance) is not only an example of a style, but also a formative contri-
bution to that style and to its life. The end of a period (so far as the
cause lies within it) may be attributed to the exhaustion of these possi-
bilities, the real possibilities accessible and attractive to a given age.
With the decrease of this suggestive power and the drying up of this
source of original inspiration, some other fundamental attitude having

20. For the sake of expediency the term "style" is used here in a very comprehensive
sense, though in truth it is not equally applicable to all products of human civilization. It
refers to their expressional coefficient which may prove more or less important for their
true meaning.
21. This remark refers to Mandelbaum, op. cit., p. 281.

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1 72 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

always been present but temporarily in the background, will push forth,
gain the ascendency, and inaugurate a new era.
The other dimension is the gradual spreading of a style from one
realm of life to another. This extension may follow the line of least
resistance or highest affinity to the leading impetus, either as a whole
or in one of its successive manifestations.
This, however, is only one of the circumstances that may account
for the rapidity or a temporal lag in the transmission and appearance
of such a formative impulse. The difference between calendar simul-
taneity and stylistic contemporaneousness may be due also to the
peculiar genius of a nation and to its traditional reluctance to adopt
and express the attitude in question. This difference may increase with
the growing emancipation of one realm of civilization from the others;
it may be diminished by decisive impressions that give a certain turn to
the mind of a whole generation and prepare it for a certain form. The
tempo of this expansion depends, furthermore, upon the central posi-
tion, the irradiating power of the sphere of life from which the move-
ment started; upon the appearance, the relationship, the resolute activ-
ity, the representative character, and the universal gifts of men able to
lead it and, of course, upon the greatness and popularity of the works
which they produce. These are some of the factors that determine the
pace at which a human attitude asserts its universal range and the
timeliness of its formative power.
Thus the general phenomenological types of historical possibilities
are legitimate abstractions, but mere abstractions, illuminating the essen-
tial structure and nexus of concrete phenomena. The general essences
lead back to the individual ones which personal beings not only have
and show, but are and enact.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
FRITZ KAUFMANN.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY.

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