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The Sense of History: On the Political Implications of Karl Lwith's Concept of

Secularization

Jeffrey Andrew Barash

History and Theory, Vol. 37, No. 1. (Feb., 1998), pp. 69-82.

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THE SENSE OF HISTORY: ON T HE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF K A RL LOWITH'S CONCEPT OF SECULARIZATION

JEFFREY ANDREW BARASH

ABSTRACTWritten du ring the period of his emigra tion to the United States, during and just afterWorld War 11, the originality of Karl Low ith's book Meatlirlg in Hi.c.tor:\~ ies in its reso lutecritique of all forms of philosophy of history. This critique is based on the now famousidea that modern philosoph ies of history have only extende d and deep ened an illusion fab-ricated by a long tradition of Christian historical reflection: the illusion that history itselfhas an intrinsic go al. Th is modern exten sion and deepen ing of the chim era propagated byChristian historical reflection is what Lowith terms "secularization." Drawing on thearguments in M e ~ r ~ ir zgll Hislor y as well as those proposed in other contem porane ous a ndearlier writings, including Lowith's heretofore unpublished correspondence with LeoStrauss, this article attemp ts to set in relief the frequ ently neglected, yet em inently politi-cal implication s of Lowith's idea of secularization. Am ong the problem s implicitly con -sidered in relation to the theory of secularization in Menrzirlg irz History is a theme fre-quently addressed in earlier writings: the motives that led German intellectuals likeFriedrich Gogarten. Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt to adhere to the Nazi movement.

In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Karl LowithIn the preface to his book Menlzir~gi l l History, written during the period of hisemigration to the United States durin g and just following W orld War I1 and pub-lished in 1949, Karl Lowith described the main theine of his work in the follow-ing terms:After I had finished this small study of the large topic of Weltge.schichte nrzrlHeil.sgr.sclzel~erz[world history an d the advent of salvation], I began to wonder wh ether thereader might not be disappointed by the lack of "co nst r~~ ctiv e"esults. This ap parent lackis, however, a real gain if it is true that truth is more de sirab le than il lusio n. As sum ing thata single grain of truth is preferable to a vast construct of illusions, I have tried to be hon-est with myself and, co ns eq ~~ en tly ,lso with my reader a bout the possibility, or rather theimpossibility, of imposing on history a reasoned order or of drawing out the working ofG o d . '

In view of the interpretation of the history of Western thought proposed in thiswork, these introductory remarks only serve to underscore the paradoxical char-

1 . Karl Lowith, "P~.eface,"Meorti~tg ll Hixtor:\> Chicago, 1949), v ; Weltge.~c.l~icl~tetrrdHeil.sges-chelrerl. Z u , Kritil; tier Ge s c h i c l r t s ~ ~ / ~ i l o , ~ o ~ ~ I t i e ~ Schrftteri (Stuttgart, 1983), 11 , 608.iir~rtlicl~e


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70 J E FF R E Y A N D R E W B A R A S Hacter of the task that Lowith set out to accomplish in it. Indeed, in M eai~illg izHistory Lowith intended to demonstrate not only the illusory character of pastattempts to impose a reasoned order on history or to grasp in it the hidden workof God ; his purpose was to show that all of these different attem pts to make senseof history thei~zselvesconstitute an ordered pattern. If Lowith consistently resist-ed any temptation to interpret this order in terms of a philosophy of history, henonetheless assumed that the great attempts to make sense of historical develop-ment configure a single coherent movement. For Lowith, the tacit meaning ofthis historical movement, although hidden to those thinkers who traditionallysought a Divine or reasoned order in history, became identifiable only at themoment of its completion in the twentieth century. It is precisely this tacit pat-tern, as i t emerged in the historicity of Western thought about history, that Lowithinterpreted in relation to an age-old process of seculnrizritioll. What had aboveall become secularized since the beginning of the Christian era was the quest forhistorical meaning in the form of a final historical purpose.

In the pages that follow I will examine Lowith's paradoxical claim to havegrasped a "historical pattern" or, in othe r words, a connecting link between thepredominant conceptions of history in different periods which, from Antiquityonward, constitute a coherent movement in the general interpretation of history.If i t can no longer be a question of a "divine" or "reasoned" teleological order,but of a hidden tendency toward secularization which first became intelligible inthe twentieth century, what exactly could have been Karl Lowith's intention inseeking to identify this tendency?

In regard to the possibility of deriving a "constructive" result from his analy -ses, Low ith confessed that his ambition was quite modest-to the point that heeven feared "disappointing" his reader. To my mind, this same modesty in theattempt to produce constructive results accounts for his hesitancy to buttress hiscon clusio ns by draw ing Inore explicitly on the political assumption s of this work,which are either kept in the background or are not submitted to examination.'Nevertheless, these same political assumptions are clearly expressed in other ear-lier or contemporary works.

In the analysis of Karl Lowith's thought which I will undertake in the follow-ing essay, my main p urpose w ill be less to impute a philosophy of history to himthan to place in relief, in relation to the political assumptions of his concept ofsecularization, the profound quest which may already be gleaned from the para-

2. In niy opir iio~ i t is precisely Low ith's discretio ti co~ ice rnit ig he political ratiiifications of hisidea of secularization that accoutits for a certain cotifirsion i l l Hans Blu~iiet iberg 'sanalysis. inLqyitiiiiitiit tier N e r l ~ e i t ,of Lowith's interpretation of this Iiisto~.ical phen ome non. S itice enipliasisplaced 011 the role of secularization w ould s eem to presunie that ~ iio de rn imes are nierely at1 offshootof Christiatiity, Bl u~i ien be rg riticized tlie Ilse of this conce pt by Lowitli and otlier authors for plac ingil l doubt tl ie leg it i~i iacy f ~i io dern i~i ie s n their own tert iis. A ~ n o ~ i ghe authors criticized for theiruse of the concept of secularization, B lu~iie nberg iticludes C arl Sc li~ nit twho. wliile voicing the"strotigest exp res sioti ot' sec ular iza tion tlieoretii," tionethelesc repres erits a sitiiilar ten den cy. On tliecontrary, Lowith's concept of secularization, as I will have occasion to de~iiotist~-ateelow, engages aparticularly sharp CI-itique f the decisionist theory of Carl Sc h~ iiit t . ee Hans B lumenberg. Le~iriiiririitder Neu-eit (Frankfurt atn Main, 1983), 35-41, 102.


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KARL LOW ITH'S CONCEPT O F SECULARlZATlON 7 1doxical title of the work. "the search for lines of continuity between the past andthe present which permit us to elucidate, in the context of the twentieth century,the contours of our own identity. In adumbrating the political implications ofLowith's historical thought, I will attempt to show the way in which his thoughtmight provide insight into our own situation in the aftermath of the ideological-ly-charged clashes of twentieth-century philosophies of history.

My analysis will be divided into two parts. The first part will foc us directly onthe idea of a historical pattern that emerges in the midst of the historicity ofWestern ideas of history and that leads, in the modern period, to an increasingsecularization of thought. My analysis in the second part will draw out the polit-ical presuppositions of Lowith's reflection in order to examine the implicationsof this reflection in its twentieth-century context.

An yone who has read Mearzirlg irl History will recognize the broad lines of inter-pretation of Western h istorical thought that are developed in this work. Accord ingto this book, Western historical thought is rooted in the original Christian expe-rience of time, which distinguished itself from the type of cosmological inter-pretation of historical time, modeled on the cyclical ebb and flow of naturalevents, that characterized anc ient Greek sp ecu lation . Th e shift inaugurated by theearly Christians in relation to this ancient experience of historical time occurredwith the emergence of Christian eschatological faith for which history, far fromturning eternally in a circle, opens out to the future and orients itself in terms ofa goal: toward the esc,haton in the guise of the end of the world and of the lastjudgment.'

According to Lowith's well-known argument in Meclrlirzg in Histor-jl, the mod-ern idea of history extends this original Christian exp erien ce of historical time byits tacit assimilation of the idea of an orientation in the lines of continuitybetween different historical epochs. Th is assimilation becomes manifest throughthe profound affinity in the interpretation of historical time as developmenttoward a goal that persists anid all the changes in Christian thought and thendo mina tes the modern idea of history. 111 his moveme nt, how ever, it is less a mat-ter of a simple prolongation of the Christian idea of historical titlie than of itsreconfiguration: while the Christian idea of historical time is the source of themodern conce ption of progress, this modern concep tion could only co me to pre-dominance by undennining its original Christian inspiration. It is this tendency

3. Wilhelm Dilthey advances a similar argument il l Eiirleitlorg ill rlir Geistec~~~irse~rrclrrfteir,Ga.\ct~rr~rrelrrch~.;fteir(Stuttga rt, 19 73). 1, 254-2 67, 334, 349. Dilthey's interpretation of the contsi-bution of Christianity to the dev elo p~ nent f Western historical conscious ness, above all through SaintAugustine's idea of the advent of salvation, provided a target for sharp criticism by the young MartinHeidegges in his course lecture s of Heidegger,92 1, Artgrtrti111t5 orrl t l e ~ .Ne~tplt~to~ri.s irrr~s.Ge.\c~rritc~~ts,qc~DrFrank fi~ rt ln Main. 1995 ). LX. 159.173. Altllough Lowith attended these lectures.the critical analysis of Western historical thought that he developed in Mmirbrg i~rHistoi? had a verydifferent aim.


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72 J E F F R E Y A N D R E W B A R AS Hto assimilate the Christian orientation toward historical time while renderingobsolete its initial religious source that Lowith designates under the heading"secularization."

The originality of Lowith's analysis stems less from his general notion of thedevelopment of Western historical reflection than from his interpretation of theprecise implications of this development. As Lowith himself was the first to rec-ognize, the idea of an "Auflzebung" of the Christian religion, through whichmodernity drew its inspiration fro m the Christian wellspring while obturating itsoriginal religious source, has since Hegel served as one of the principal modelsof European historical reflection. The Enlightenment had already tacitly adoptedthe teleological Christian view of history while questioning its supernatural, tran-scendent assumptions. Hegel radicalized this movement of secularization of theChristian view of history, since he did not simply reject the Christian faith, butclaimed to envisage the way toward its fulfillment. Hence, after 1500 years ofWestern thought, Hegel, according to Lowith, was the first thinker who venturedto "translate the eyes of faith into the eyes of reason and the theology of historyas established by Augustine into a philosophy of history which is neither sacredn o r p r ~ f a n e . " ~s I shall illustrate in Part 11, this "translation" of the theology ofhistory into the philosophy of history, reformulated in the framework of the mostdiverse philosophical positions in the post-Hegelian world, would have particu-larly fateful consequences for Germ any and for Europe.

Lowith's principal task in Menrzirzg in Histoty was not only to reveal the whol-ly illusory nature of these Enlightenment and Hegelian attempts to confer mean-ing on history, but above all to show that such secularized ideas of historicaldevelopment propagated a chimera initially rooted in the Christian tradition ofhistorical reflection itself. In this vein, the modern illusion concerning historicaldevelopment only extended and deepened a fiction fabricated by ancient andmedieval Chr istians. Hen ce, if a profound line of continuity unites all of the greatexprebsions of Western historical reflection since the end of Antiquity, this con-tinuity stems above all from the tendency of each of these expre ssions to emb odyan illusion. T he binding link through which L owith im posed an ord er on Westerninterpretations of history turns out to be a long series of illusions which contin-ually deepene d as the idea of prog ress toward a goal-the heritage ofChristianity-became an affair of this world.

On e might be tempted to interpret Low ith's conce ption of history as justanother expression of the history of decline (Ve$allsgeschichte) of the Westwhich, in inverting the Hegelian interpretation of history, depicts the idea of his-torical progress as a mask which a civilization adorns to hide the advent of itsown decline. Had Heidegger not already portrayed the connection between theepochs of history since Antiquity as a movement toward decline occasioned, notby the comin g of secula rizatio n, but by a deepen ing forgetfulness of B eing? Didthe modern philosophies of progress since Hegel not represent, for Heidegger,the most extreme expression of this forgetfulness? I will postpone consideration

4. Lowith, Met ~r~ iii, yii Hi st or y, 59


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of the interpretation of decline among Lowith's contemporaries until part I1 inorder to examine more closely the notion of a line of continuity between theChristian an d the secularized ideas of history.

At the end of the fourth chapter of Mecining cznrl History, entitled "Progressversus Providence," Lowith explains that the implications of the illusory inter-pretation of meaning in history were of a different chara cter in the Christian andin the modern secularized philosophies. In the Christian philosophies this inter-pretation was "two-dimensional," whereas the secularized philosophies of histo-ry leveled it down to a single dimension.' In what sense is this leveling down tobe understood? Sinlply in the sense that the traditional Christian distinctionbetween profane world history and the supernatural advent of salvation collaps-es under the impact of the secularized philosophies of history. Where theChristian interpretations of history presupposed a fundamental distinctionbetween human history and the opacity of a historical advent directed by God'sinscrutable will, the secularized philosophies, in transferring the Christian ideaof Divine providence into the world, proposed to render the advent of salvationan object of human previ~ion .~hus, the illusion that history embodies an ulti-mate, albeit hidden, "meaning" only intensifies when it fuels the assumption thatthis sense can be foreseen, or even produced, by humanity.An attem pt to provide a detailed recapitulation of Lowith's idea of this move-ment would reach beyond the framework of the present brief analysis of histhought. I will hence not deal with the long preparation of modern secularizedideas of history, from S t. Augustine and Joach im of Floris to Bossuet, ma rked byan ever more resolute projection of eschatological hope in the advent of salvationonto human secular history. I will focus on one sole aspect of Lowith's interpre-tation, which provides particularly clear insight into the connection that hesought to establish between the Christian and secularized ideas of history: theportrayal of Joachim of Floris. It is in relation to this particular connection that,for Lo with , a theologically inspired doctr ine surprisingly-even disco ncer ting-ly-transformed itself into a radically political problem.

The chapter on Joachim of Floris in Mealzing in History challenges the cus-tomary renditions of historical understanding current among Lowith's contem-poraries. Lowith's thought places in question above all the assumptions of thepredom inant historicist tradition, stem ming from Hege l, for which the historicalworldview represents a fundamentally modern ach ievement. Wh ile purifying thisworldview of its underpinnings in the m etaphysics of the absolute spirit, histori-cism-after the fashion of Wilhelm Dilthey or of Friedr ich Meinecke-heldmod ern secularized con sciou sness of the essential historicity of truth to be a signof mo dern superiority-and hence of a relative progression in relation to all ea r-lier traditions. Lowith, however, aimed to demonstrate that precisely this idea ofthe essential historicity of truth, far from being particular to modernity, alreadyemerged in the "theological historism" of Joachim of Floris. With Joachim, as

5 . Ibirl., 1036 . Ib id .


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74 J E F F R E Y A N D R E W B A R A S HLowith writes, "the Christian truth itself has, like the logos of Hegel, a temporalsetting in its successive developments. With Augustine and Thomas, theChristian truth rests, once and fo r all, on certain historical facts; with Joach im thetruth itself has an op en horizon and a history which is essen tial to it."' M oreover,far from indicating a "prog ression" of the human spirit, the later receptioii of thisidea of the advent of the epochs of Christian truth provided the surest evidenceof the decline of Christian spirituality toward the modern philosophies of histo-ry.The future reception of Joachim's "theological historism" would propel thisdecline by representing the advent of salvation in terms of a periodization ofworld history. Here the supernatural intervenes directly in the field of hum an his-tory, as the advent of salvation develops in the midst of three great historicalepo chs : the Age of the Father, of the So n, and of the Holy S pirit. Th is brings anentirely new mode of historical interpretation to the fore, namely in relation tothe sharp doctrinal distinction between the citlitas (lei and the civitns terrella inthe thought of St. Augustine. Joach im 's followers and interpreters projected theearly Christian nzotij'of the coming of salvation, subsequent to the overthrow ofthe order of this world, directly onto the developnlent of human secular h i ~ t o r y ; ~in this manner they intended to turn a critical eye toward the worldly power ofthe medieval Church. Claiming to extrapolate from the teachings of Joachim aswell as of St. Francis of Assisi, this movemen t mixed messianic C hristianity w iththe radicalism of political dem ands that the Church cond em ned as heretical.

Yet, to Lowith's mind, the heritage of this movement was particularly fateful.In a footnote Lowith recalls the fascination it elicited throughout the centu ries upuntil the contemporary period. This fascination was reflected by the enormousinfluence of the book of Ernst K antorowicz, Frieclrich 11,with its theme of a mes-sianic mission bequeathed to a "secret Germ any" by the strugg les of the four-teenth century-until the utter profanation of this mission by Adolf Hitler."Ano ther footnote recalls the persistence anlong the fascist ideologues of them esborrowed from this movement.") In an astonishing passage at the very end of thecha pter in Mealzil~g ll History dealing with Joach im, Low ith included the fol-lowing lines which, in a book so politically discreet, are surprisingly chargedwith political significance:The revolution which had been proclai~nedwithin the framework of an eschatologicalfaith an d w ith reference t o a perfect mo nastic life was taken ove r, five centuries Inter, bya philosophical priesthoo d, which interpreted the process of sec ul ar i~ at io n n terms of a"spiritual" realization of the K ingdom of God on earth. As an attempt at realization, the

7. Ibid., 156. Th e Ger man translation, which L owith supervised, reinforces this interpretation byreferring not to a "history" whic h is essential to truth but to truth's essen tial /risto~.icir!. \~,ere~rtliclreGesclrichtlic~lrkrit).Weltgesc~l~ichte11rdHrilsjirschelrerr. 170.

8. Low ith refers here to the interpretation and distortion of Joa chi m's theolo:ical doc trin e to polit-ical ends in the fourteenth century, notably by Cola di Rienzo. As Lowith explains, this later inter-pretation goes far beyond Joaclii~n 'sol.iginal theological intentions.

9. Ibid.. 245.10 . Ibitl.


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75ARL LOW ITH'S C ONCEPT O F SECULARIZATIONspiritual pattern of Lessing , Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel could be transposed into the pos-itivistic and materialistic schemes of Comte and Marx. The third dispensation of theJoachites reappeared as a third International and a third Reich, inaugurated by a dux or aFiihser who was acclaimed as a savior and greeted by millions with Heil! The source ofall these formidable attempts to fulfill history by and within itself is the passionate, butfearful and hum ble, expectation of the Franciscan S pirituals that a last conflict will bringhistory to its climax and end."

This surprising conclusion to the chapter in Merrrling irl Histot;~ ealing withJoachim of Floris brings us back to the paradox that we encountered at the out-set of this analysis: if Lowith seeks to overcome the il lusory attempts by tradi-tional philosoph ies of history to inlpose a Divine or a reasone d order o n history,his attemp t paradoxically depends o n the identification of an ordered historicalmovement encompassing the great interpretations of history throughout theWestern tradition.

O ne m ight try to m inimize the acuity of this paradox by recalling that Low ith'schief target w as the que st for salvation in world history, the attem pt to "fulfill his-tory by and within itself." However, the critique of this quest was hardly partic-ular to Low ith: i t wa s shared by the proponents of historicism themselves, mostnotably by Dilthey. While Dilthey considered the emergence of historical con-sciousness to represent progress for humanity, he never attributed an absolutesignificance to this progress, nor did he consider it to be a source of salvation.Indeed, Dilthey's critique of historical reason, which historicized all values byrelating them to worldview s, aimed abo ve all to discredit any c laim, as he wrotein his Ei~zleit~lrzg to unearth the "ultimate secret" ofn (lie Geis te sn~i sse~~sc l~c f t e r l ,history as of nature.I2 And yet Low ith's criticism w as turned as sharply againstDilthey's historicism as against such all-encompas sing philosoph ies of history asthat of Hegel or of Marx.

In another perspective, o ne might attem pt to resolve this paradox by bringingto mind the fact that Lowith, in contrast to the predom inant G erm an philosophi-cal orientations sinc e Hegel-both of prog ress and of decline-did not seek todevelop a new type of historical reflection, but to overcorne this reflection as thecharacteristic mode of analysis of the human world. Lowith adopts this criticalattitude toward historical reflection per se in the epilogue to Merirzir~g ll H isto~:,i,while calling for a renewal of the model of cyclical t ime characteristic of ancientGree k thought patterned on natural phenomena.I7 Since Lowith proposed thisidea m ore as a portent fo r the future than as a definite philosophical p rogram , itremaine d quite vague. As early as 1933, Low ith had w ritten to Leo Stra uss thathis aim was to think, on the basis of a radically historical consciousness ( a ~ fGrlltzcl eirles e,utrenl kistorisckerl Bervusstsei~~s),n an entirely unhistorical man-

1 I . Ihitl., 159.12. Dilthey, Ei~rleitrr~r~ Gesc11i7117elterr tlie Ge i . ~ t e .~ \~~ i sse~ rsc I r t i f t e r r , Scl7rifie1r.I , 9 1-9213.Lowith, Me ~~ rirr ,y~ rHi.F/ot?., 207.


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76 JEFFREY A N D R E W B A R A SHner (gnnz ur7lzistorisch); this critique of historical modes of reflection did not,however, warrant for him the positing of a huma n "nature" in the Straussiansense, patterned on a given idea of this nature a s it had fi~nctio iied n ancien tGreek philosophy. As L owith wrote in this same let ter com posed o n the eve ofHitler's accession to power, which is of great help in clarifying his philosophicalorientation well beyond the year 1933:I thus think in a rnore I~istoricrilmanner than you do, since the historicity of reason hasbecom e s elf-evident for me, and at the sam e time. on that very g round , in a less I~istoricrilmanner, since I constantly accord to the preserzt, in the perspective of the future, anabsolute historical right. You, however, abso lutize a history that is n o lon ger our history,atzd s~~bsrirlrtt. rr11 nbsollrte Clzr-istintzity Yo~r sk: what is 111r171ritl-I I C I D S O I L I I CAt~tiq~rih,forirl\l and what has becom e of it-I begin by form ulati ng the que stion in this sa m e way.arrive however at the factical (fr~ktisclie)onclusion: "that is not the way we ore" and"what can s till become o f h ~ m a n i t y " ! ' ~

In my opinion, if Lowith's conception of the lines of continuity between dif-ferent historical epochs distinguish es itself fr om the post-Hegelian philosoph iesboth of progres s and of decline, this is du e less to a precise m odel of cos molog -ical t ime than to another concern, directly related to the dilemma of Lowith'sown present t ime. It is this dilem ma which , since the period of his em igration in1934, he cons tantly had to face. If Low ith sou ght a line of continuity between theChristian qu est for salvation and the m odern philosop hies of history, i t was abov eall in order to comprehend the link between historical ideas and totalitarianmovements-principally Naz ism . Fo r this reason, in a num ber of writings priorto and contemporaneo us w ith Mennir7g irz History, reflection concerning this l inkserves as a means for understanding the human situation in the twentieth centu-ry. Directly in relation to this link to the present time, Lowith engages the "radi-cally historical" conscious ness aim ing toward the future overcom ing of the pre-sent .

This aspect of Lowith's work comes to light above all in his writings on theposterity of the Hegelian projection of salvation onto the secula r historical world.In Mennirzg irz History, as in other contemporaneous essays such as "TheDynamics of History and Historicism" ("Die Dyrzanzik cler Geschichte ~~r7dler-Historismus"), Lowith extended his analysis of Hegelian philosophy as the cul-mination of a tendency tacitly present in the age-old Christian tradition. Thisanalysis focused on Hegel 's famo us words : "World history is the tribunal of theworld" (Die Weltgeschiclzte ist dc~sWeltgericht).IsAs Hegel himself wrote, thisjudgm ent represented a transposition of the Christian last judgm ent (jiingsterGericht) into the secula r sph ere. In this sense, "world history is the tribunal of theworld" e mb odi es the mov ement of secularization that the Hegelian philosophy ofhistory brings to fulfillment. Yet it is not only due to the line of continuity it

14. Unpublished letter from Karl Lowith to Leo Strauss, 8 January, 1933, Leo Strauss archive,University of Chicago. I would like to thank Professor Joseph Cropsey for perrnission to quote frornthis letter.

15. Lowith, Merrrrirrfi irl His/oly; "Die Dyna~nik er Geschichte und der Historismus" [1952].S


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77ARL LOWITH'S CONC EPT O F SECULARIZATIONreveals in the movement of world history that this phrase proves especiallyimportant for Lowith. Beyond the shift it indicates in the passage from the opac-ity of divine judgm ent ushering in the end of history to the rationalization ofhuman history, this phrase is of decisive significance for Lowith because of thecritical perspective it lays bare. This perspective most concerns contemporaryGerm an assuniptions about historicity-particularly fateful in their con se-quences-which constitute the principal legacy of Hege l's thought.

In his commentary on this legacy, in "The Dynamics of History andHistoricism" and several years later, in "Man and History" ("Mensch ulltlGeschichte"), Lowith focused his criticism on Wilhel~nDilthey, noting that forhim, even more directly than for Hegel, "world history is the tribunal of theworld."l(' History is the "tribunal" of the world in the sense that succes s in thesphere of world history is the ultimate criterion of truth. Viability in historybecomes the principle that decides the leg iti~n acy f all truth claim s as such. Thisis the ultimate result of the millennia1 march of secularization, which tends todisregard all supernatural claims to truth, since the validity of such claims, intheir indepen den ce of this world, cannot be judged in terms of the values that pre-dom inate in it.

In the essay "Man and History" Lowith once again cited the phrase of Hegel,"world history is the tribunal of the world," but this time in relation to a critiqueaddressed both against Dilthey and, even more fundamentally, against Marx.According to Lowith's argument, the Marxian theory of ideologies inauguratedthe tendency to evaluate truth solely in terms of its historical efficacy (a tenden-cy which would p redom inate, albeit for a very different purpose, in Dilthey's his-toricism)." For the Marxian theory of ideology, there are no criteria of truth inde-pendent of the historical process, since all truth criteria are expressions of a his-torical context configu red by the material conditions of production. As ideolog iestacitly express the particular interests of given classes , only the proletarian revo-lution capable of abolishing classes and the particularity of their interests wou ld,through the process of history, overco me this particularity in establishing univer-sally valid criteria of truth. In presupposing that this outcome is the necessaryresult of the historical process, the M arxian theo ry of ideolog ies tacitly extendedthe Hegelian assumption that "world history is the tribunal of the world," whiletransforming the very notion of philosophical truth itself. Where Hegel presup-posed the absolute character of such truth, the Marxian notion of ideology, inderiving truth criteria from material conditions of production, reduced all truthclaims advanced in a class society to mere instruments of political action to beevaluated in light of their relation to the ultimate revolutionary goal.

Even more prominently than to Dilthey's historicism, Lowith assigned anespecially important role to this Marxian transformation of Hegel's philosophyof history into an instrument of political action. In writings of the 1930s written

16. Lowitli, "Die Dynalnik der Geschichte ulid der H istori% ~nu s," ~iirrt l ic~lrechrif iei i . 11, 308:Lowith, "Mensch und Geschichte" [ 19601. Si iii ~/ li c.l rc ~c,hrjfteri. 11, 368.

17. Lowith. "Mensch ulid Geschichte," Siirirtlic.he Schi.jftcvr. 11. 368.


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78 JEFFREY ANDREW BARASHmuch earlier than "M an and History" and even than M eaizir~g r ~History, Lowitliconsidered the tacit extension and distortion of this Marxian theory to underliethe decisionist theories of Carl Schmitt, Friedrich Gogarten, and MartinHeidegg er. All three of these authors-the jurist, the theologian, and the philoso-pher-acting on the conviction that all past historica l traditions were in dec lineand could no longer be considered to be a source of truth, identified resolute deci-sion in the face of nothingness as the sole foundation of tlie legitimacy of truth.And, after 1933, the call fo r resolute decision in the theories of all three of theseauthors led to political activisni in favor of the Nazi movement.

But how can decisionisni be a development of the Marxian idea that truth cri-teria are historically configured? That is, what allows us to situate tlie respectivepositions of these three authors in tlie move~iientof historical reflection asLowith conceived of it? Clearly, as witnessed by the accent placed on individualdecision in the context of cultural de cline , the political orien tation s of Heidegger,Schmitt, or Gogarten radically opposed tlie liberalism of Dilthey and Marxiancommunism. It is true, of course, that fascism and Nazism both tacitly appropri-ated certain aspects of the Marxist legacy: Mussolini began his political career asa socialist before World War I and, as Ernst Bloch was one of tlie first to note,fascism and Nazism attempted to combat Marxism by co-opting certain of itsc la ims and sym bols .~W onet l ie less ,his in itself would hardly provide sufficientsupport for the assertion that tlie decisionist theories are an ultimate outcome ofa long tradition of secularization of the Christian sources of historical thought.Indeed , the decision co ncernin g the criteria of political sovereignty acco rding toSchmitt, of the sense of being of Daseiil for Heidegger, or of Christian faith "outof nothingness" for Gogarten would seem to derive from anything but tradition-al Christian eschatology or from Lowith's notion of its secularized expressiontacitly e~ iibo died n M arxian o r liberal assum ptions concerning history as amovement toward an ultimate goal. Th is is a crucial and adm ittedly difficult pointin Lowith's analysis. It is rendered still more problematic by the paucity ofexplicit analysis of this theme, to which Lowith ~iierely lludes in Meatzing inHisto1:\1.~Vet I believe that it is in interpreting the striking affinities betweenLo with 's analysis of the movemen t of historical reflection in this work in relationto his analysis in an earlier article of the 1930s , entitled "The OccasionalDecisionisni of Carl Schmitt," that the profoundly political implications ofLowith's interpretation of secularization come to light.

The early but seminal article entitled "The Occasional Decisionisni of CarlSchniitt" w as initially published in 1935 as a critique of Carl S c h ~ n it t nd laterrewritten and expanded to include critical analysis of Heidegger and Gogarten.Wh ere in Meaning ill History Lowith attempted to link the perverse niessianismof twentieth-century fascist movements with a distortion of earlier historicalreflection that had found one of its culminating points in tlie Marxist theory of

18. Ernst Blocli. E~.l>scl~qfil ies e , Zeit 119.151 (Frankfur t an1 Main , 1985). 70-75: translated asHerito~yeof 0111. Tiirles by N. and S. Plaice (Berkeley. 1990). 64-69.

19. See below.


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79ARL LOWITH'S CONCEPT O F SECULARIZATIONhistory, this earlier article attempted to tie decisionism, as he conceived of it, toa tacit extension and d istortion of tlie Marx ian con cept of ideo logy. W hat appe arsin Menr~irzg n Histor:\. as a leveling out of two-dimensional Christian eschatol-ogy to produce a one-dimensional schema assimilating all truths to secularizedhistorical truth c riteria, finds a parallel m ovem ent in this earlier essa y: before anyexplicit reference to the phenomenon of secularization in Lowith's work, analy-sis is centered in this earlier essay on the eradication of the autonomy of all tra-ditional truth criteria capable of transcending historical contingency that theMarxian concept of ideology inaugurated and decisionism distorted and extend-ed in the context of a radically d ifferent political orientation. Whac would app earin Me or li~ zg rz Histor ;),as the most fateful consequence of the "leveling out" ofChristian historical reflection through elimination of its absolute otherworldlyreference-a "leveling out" already epito mized , as we have seen. in the Hege liandic tum "world history is the tribunal of the worlds-was clearly foresh adowedin this earlier article of 1935 in relation to the reorientation brought about by thedecisionist appropriation of Marx's concept of ideology.'(' Let us pursue this lat-ter analysis more closely for the light it sheds on Lowith's assuniptions.

The Marxian concept of ideology presupposed that values, far from possess-ing autonomous truth, draw their significance according to their place in theobjective historical process in relation to the i~ ltin iat e evolutionary goal of over-com ing the merely partial perspectives enge ndered by class society. In this sense ,one could say that values, rather than absolute in a Platonic or traditionalChristian sense, are always relative to their historical context in view of the ulti-mate revolutionary goal. What Schmitt, like Heidegger and Gogarten, shareswith the shift in philosophical perspective inaugurated by Marx is obviously nei-ther the specific notion of ideology determined by a material infrastructure nortliat of a dialectic movement of history toward co nim unis t revolution. Rather, thedecisionist theories tacitly extended another aspect of the Marxian theory of ide-ology, while shedding its initial dialectical structure: the assiunption concerningtlie "facticity" of all values that em erge in the historical world, signify ing theirrelativity to an existential situation in which truth is bereft of any autonomousstatus. Hence, Carl Schmitt postulated that the criteria governing political deci-sions are not determined on the basis of ally supreme truth content, but on an

20. 111 regard to the decision ism of Car l Sch mit t, Lowith wrote: "This deviation of philosophica linsight conce rning the e\\elice of politics into an i~ itellectual nstrument of political ac ti o~ i ccurredconsciously and volu ntarily for the first time in tlie deb ate that Marx en gaged with Hegel." Cf . "DerOkkasionnelle De zis ion isli i~~ s VIII, 57: for an Englishon Carl Schlnitt" [ 19351. Siii~itliclre ~111.1fieii .translation of this text, see Karl Lowitli. "The Occasional Decisionism of Carl Schmitt" in Mtr~.tirrHrirlr,y,yei, c~rrd E/ o. op ro i~N i l i i l i ~ i ~ i .d. R. Wolin. transl. G . Steiner (Ne w York, 1995). 137.169.Regarding tlie tlevelop ~nelit f later ideologies. Lowitli e ~iipliasiz ed lie fu nda~ii ental ole of Marx 'sthought rather that1 tliat of Hegel since, i l l his perspective, Hegel was a "greater realist" than Marx.Mnrx was less of a realist-ill oth er words. Inore of an idealist-not because of principles he ado pt-ed, hut because of their applicatioli. Hence Marx a dopted all "eschatologicnl" poal. albeit i l l secular-ized form, which. in its will to overcome this world by tlnnsforliiing it. showed itself to be far Inoreradical than Hegel's i~ite llectualism . owith'\ assum ption that the com mu ~ii st aith is "a p \eudom eta-morphosis of Judeo-CIiri\tia~imessianism" drew the critical tire of Er~ is tBloch in D C I TPi.iir;ip Hof f -


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80 JEFFREY A N D R E W B A R A S Hexistential situation stemming from the mere "factical" (fnktische) alliances offriend or foe in war; Heidegger sought to found all determinate contents or val-ues on decision in light of the factical exis tenc e of Dasein as being-toward-death;Gogarten's "religious decision" subordinates all determinate "worldly" values toprimordial choice in the face of nothingness. Once the historical process offersno hope of overcoming the historical contingency of ideology to encompass auniversal perspective, this contingency becom es the mark of truth itself which, inthe context of the human historical world, can provide nothing more than a mereoccasion for the realization of existential decision.

In stipulating that such decision emerges out of a confrontation with nothing-ness rather than in relation to specific, historically determined norms, each ofthese thinkers at the same time apparently broke with both Marxian and liberalassum ptions concernin g the historical process as movem ent toward a final goal,constituting for Lowith the tacit sign of secularization of traditional Christianeschatology. Indeed, for these three authors the decline of the historical processdisqualified it as a source of normative values, necessitating radical decision inthe face of nothingness. And yet it is precisely in their attempts to break withMarxian and liberal assumptions concerning the movement of history that thedecisionist theories show their profound dependence on these assumptions and,from Low ith's stand poin t, on a long heritage of reflection on historical meaningoriginating in Christian eschatology, of which these assumptions are the secular-ized expression. In Lowith's perspective, as I interpret it, this dependence hastwo aspects, showing decisionism to be both an outcome of secularization and,at the sam e time, like the predominant secularized theories of history in the Westof which it is an ultimate, if pale expression, the tacit reflection of an age-oldeschatological orientation.

The first aspect concerns the tendency to interpret all norms manifested in thehuman historical world as merely relative to that world and thus bereft of any-t ~ ~ o z gGeso ir lr t~elte chrifret l, Band V, 2 [Frankfurt aln Main, 19591, 1612). It is tempting to interpretthe idea of history presented in Mecitzit~g rl His tot;i> s a reaction to Bloch's portrayal of the relationbetween Marxism and Christianity in his earlier work Erl~scl ic! f id ieser Zei t [ 19351 (Her. itcrge oj '0 1r t.Titlres). 111 this work, Bloch had alrea dy underline d the cen tral role of the his torical m essianis m ofJoachim of Floris for the development of later social movetnents. Bloch's analyses are of particularinterest in relation to Lowitli 's theories, since they develop a nu mbe r of assum ptions which, in mod -ifying orthodox Marxist doct rines, elaborated an idea of history diametrically opposed to that ofLow ith. Indeed , wher e for Bloch fascism incorporated-and perverted-certain aspec ts of Mar xistphilosophy that were in themselves legitimate, the major mistake of orthodox M arxis m arose from itsinability to integrate and demystify the religious aspirations that, over the past centuries, have con-stantly nourished social demands. Thu\, after praising the role of Joachim of Floris, Bloch wrote thefollowing passage in which h e e~iipli asize d or the succes s of the Marxist program the imp ortanc e ofappro priatin g the religious heritage : "There will be no suc ce ss fi~ l ttack on the irrational front with-out dialectical intervention, no rat i o~ia l izat io~itid conquest o f these areas without its own ' theology,'adjusted to the alwa ys still irrational revolu tio~ia ry ontent." (ErD.~cl lc! f idic~sei.Zei t , 154; English trans-lation. 139). For Low ith, completely to the contrary, the "idealistn" of Ma rxism results from the factthat the aspirations of faith tacitly orient its social program. It is this secularization of an earlier reli-gious promise-one that was doo me d to be betrayed-which for Lowith exhibits the hidden affinitybetween Marxism and the Fascist programs which distort its fundamental principles.


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validity beyond mere "factical" validity. As Low ith wrote in "The O ccasionalDecisionis~nof Carl Schniitt," the coninion root of the respective positions ofthese three auth ors appe ars in their "decisive conviction that every heritage-theproducts and tlie institutions, as much as the con tents and the criteria-has col-lapsed into nothingness. This conviction establishes an implicit equivalencebetween tlie 'world ' and the huma n historical world."" Th is is the extreme limitof a millennia1 niovenient of secularization on ce this Inovenlent was stripped notonly of its absolute Hegelian underpinnings and liberal theories of historicalprogress, but also of the Marxian conviction of its ultimate outconie in commu-nist revolution. All that remained was an "occasionalist" relativism of valuesadapted to a given factical situation." This relativism provides for Lowith theclue to explain how each of these authors, after a period of great political ambi-guity in the context of tlie Wei~nar epublic, could so readily rally to Nazism inaccord with the new factical situation presented by Hitler's absolute dominationof Germany. Rather than fundamental principles capable of evaluating the his-torical process, decision in the case of each of these authors was made merely inrelation to the facticity of a national context as tlie standard of historical judg-ment.

The second line of dependence of tlie decisionist theories on the historicalassumptions of the orientations that they brought into question lies in theirrespective ideas of history as a process-even where, prior to their com mitm entto the Nazi program, this process was conceived in terms of decline rather thanas forward movement toward a goal. Hence, the decisionist theories retained tliecruc ial assum ption that history as a global proc ess has a meaning-even if a neg-ative one-and that it is wi thin history that the meaning of history is to be sought.Precisely this assuniption concerning the overarching significance of historyfueled the conviction among each of the decisionist theorists of the possibility oforienting the course of this process through historically effective action. Afterresolutely breaking with the Hegelian and post-Hegelian philosophies of history,the presupposition that world history has ultimate meaning or, still more pre-cisely, that "world history is the tribunal of tlie world," continued tacitly to ori-ent their theories, since each of them, with an eye turned exclusively toward thecriteria of this world and toward the efficacy of decision in accord with these cri-teria, continued to pursue an ultimate meaning in history by means of resolutepolitical action. Th is is why juridical, theolog ical, and philosophical d ecisionism ,even after having definitively broken with the conviction of world-historicalprogress predominant in the post-Hegelian world. could so willingly endorse a

21. Karl Lowith, "Der Okkasionnelle Dezisionismus von Carl Schmitt " (19351. it1 Sii~rrtlic~hrSc,hrifierr.V111. 70.

22. Low itli allude s to this idea in Meclrrirrg c111c1is to^:\^, for exam ple in the coticlusion of this work.wh ere lie tiiakes the following a rgu me nt in regard to Heideg ger: "If the univ erse is tieither eternal a nddivine, as it was for the ancients, nor transient but created, as it is for the Christians, there retiininsonly one aspect: the she er contitigeticy of its mere 'ex istence '," Low ith. Mec~rrirr,qor7cl Histo,?,,201. Itis precisely this pos sibility that, accol.ditig to tlie earlier artic le. "The Occ asiona l Decisiotiistii of CarlSchtnitt," Schm itt. Gogarteti, and H eidegger thought to its nihilistic conc lusion .


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82 JEFFREY A N D R E W B A R A S Hperverse messianic movement seeking salvation in the advent of a national andracial history.

Recall, by way of conclusion, the preliminary remark that Carl Schmitt addedto the second edition of his book Political Tl~eology ublished in 1933 severalnionths after Hitler's rise to power. In this remark S c h ~ n it t eferred to theProtestant pastor, Friedrich Gogarten, who had just proclaimed his alle,'Olance tothe German Christians faithful to Hitler, thereby renouncing the fundamentalprinciple that had inspired his theological position a decade earlier: the principleof an absolute distinction between God and the world, between theology and pol-itics. Th e jurist Sch mitt, who ostentatiously proclaimed his adhesion to"Catholicism," offered the followin g com menta ry on the earlier, so-called apolit-ical position of the Protestant pastor:Surely. in Protestant theology, another so-called apolitical theory represents God as the"wholly other," in the sam e way a s for political liberalism , which co rrespond s to this the-ology, the State and politics are the "w holly other." In the meantime we have recognizedthat the political is the total (rlrrs To trrle), and for this reason we also know that to decidethat something is apolitical is itself always a political decision, regardless of who il~akesthe decision and of the justifications in which it is cloth ed. Th is is just as true of the qu es -tion as to whether a given theology is a political or an apolitical theology."

Neither truly political, nor authentically theological, such a position expressesfor Lowith nothing more than the ultimate advent of a millennia1 tendencywhich, in promising salvation on this earth, leaps toward nothingness. It is thisultimate advent of "secularization" which, from Lowith's vantage point, revealsthe bankruptcy both of the ideologies of progress and of dec line. At the sametime, this ultimate moment of a millennia1 tradition assigns to contemporaryhumanity a new task: that of casting off the burden of "faith" in the possibility ofsalvation in this world which, in a great variety of ways, propelled such a fatefulhistorical movement. Inspired by Lowith's own assumptions, such liberationfrom the burden of eschatological faith in history aims primarily toward demys-tification of all cla im s derived-either ope nly or tacitly-from a "po litical theol-ogy" which confuses the two realms of faith and of history that i t is of utmostimportance to distinguish. This task calls for a re-examination of the notion ofthe political an d, along with this, a rethinking of hum an identity itself as we drawtoward the end of the twentieth century.

23. Carl Schmitt. "Vorbemerkung zur zweiten Ausgabe" Politirclre Tlieologie 119331 (Berlin,1985),7.

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