The light of culture

“The historical world stands before us darker [...] and more uncertain and dangerous than Ranke, and the generations [of historians] who believed in the victory of reason in history saw it. Because its natural and dark side has shown itself to be more powerful to our thinking and our experience ». Thus, in 1924, the great German historian Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954) pessimistically reflected on the cognitive possibilities of history.

Unlike Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), also an eminent historian of a couple of previous generations and father of the historical method, Meinecke abandons the optimism which, among other things, also characterized the first phase of his reflection and was based on the conviction of being able to fully understand the past with documentary rigor. But Meinecke, unlike Ranke, had experienced a world war that had prostrated Germany causing unprecedented economic and social crises. The extent of those events had led Meinecke himself to hardly recognize the historical world that he had studied so much. Everything seemed to evolve towards a mere politics of power in which it was possible to use infamous violence and immoral means in order to conquer power. For him, an intellectual of the late nineteenth century, it was impossible to conceive. In reality, while finding many aspects of his time aberrant, Meinecke wrote some enlightening pages that are still valid today to understand the present time and understand which paths to take and which ones to avoid.

For example, Meinecke wrote of the "Machiavellianism of the masses" or the erroneous but widespread interpretation of the doctrine of the Florentine genius used to justify every abomination by the state (what we have rendered almost like a proverb: the end justifies the means). In some way, Meinecke advocated some specific aspects of totalitarian phenomena such as Nazism (which he also knew very well) in which the aggressive politics of power unrelated to any ethical content justified any type of atrocity in the name of the people or the nation . If we pay attention, we still hear seemingly harmless and fascinating slogans like America First today. In America, a particular nationalist and chauvinist political current of the nineteenth century used to repeat "Right or wrong, my country": right or wrong is my nation. In our opinion, in the light of what Meinecke has written and what has happened in the last century, it is appropriate to think that right or wrong have no color or particular national belonging but must be considered the common heritage of humanity ... otherwise it will be trouble for everyone.

Renato Bonomo

NP november 2020