Effective History: On Critical Practice Under Historical Conditions

Introduction

3 Introduction Prologues are a form of magic, mixing bias with tact. —Joseph Margolis To begin a book on effective history is to be already deprived of, because already furnished with, one’s beginning. The possibility of a grand opening , with a ceremonious placing of the foundation stone, is removed. There is a sense of having arrived too late, to find that a stone is already there in the spot one had thought to lay the founding one. There is a sense, in short, that one is not, after all, the mistress of ceremonies but a mere participant in an event over which one cannot establish total control . Happily, in this case thwarted introductory formalities provide illuminating introductory content; the difficulty of introducing the concept of effective history, the difficulty of knowing how or where to start, is in fact a promising place to start. For, given that one’s role here is more as a player than as a playmaster, one’s task is less to set down the rules within which the ensuing game will unfold than it is to demonstrate the manner in which there are always at least some rules in operation even before one begins the work of determining the rules. Hence, unease with introducing effective history is itself an introduction to effective history; interruptions in the usual format are themselves enlightening. One’s hesitation to begin, then, is no indication of one’s lack of understanding; it results, rather, from an awareness of the conditions of understanding. For understanding, at least within the “human sciences” as we know them,1 just is not the kind of thing that traditional accounts of understanding, swayed by enthusiasm for reason and objectivity, say it is. There is no weakness implied by awkwardness in beginning to write on a concept like effective history, because it is in the nature of concepts that are not rigidly determined, that they emerge differently within different frames, that they imply differently within different agenda, that they are always being constructed and not simply reconstructed. Understanding , then, is not something one achieves solely through the initial 4 E F F E C T I V E H I S T O R Y nomination, and subsequent conscious and careful application, of fixed precepts. It is also an event one undergoes. It always involves an element that is beyond one’s control, an element that is already in place before one begins. This element is, in general terms, history; it determines that even the most careful exposition of an idea that has a history will itself have a history or bias. As such, the subject who writes and the object that is written of emerge only after, and only then tenuously, the writing has already begun. The experience of introducing effective history, then, is nothing more or less than the experience of human historicity and the consequent importance of context and contingency for human understanding . Since one must begin, however, one begins in a manner that has two key features: one begins somewhere—with an author, a tradition, an event, a body of work—that promises rich and productive insights; and one begins in the expectation that one will keep in more or less constant view that which was set down before one began—the tradition from which one’s subject matter, and the critical approach one brings to bear on it, arise. And so, I begin with the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose understanding of “Wirkungsgeschichte” functions here less as a focal point in its own right (I am not centrally concerned with offering a critique of Gadamer’s thought, although this is certainly available from what follows) than as a fulcrum around which a better understanding of the nature and possibility of critical practice under historical conditions can, I believe, unfold. Indeed, already, in the translation into English of that term, Wirkungsgeschichte, there are insights to be had. Rendered as “history of effect” in the second edition of Truth and Method, the edition to which I shall be referring almost exclusively,2 it is given as “effective history” only in the first edition;3 but, taken together, these terms provide an illuminating starting point to our discussion. The term “history of effect” communicates the importance that the history of a given concept ’s consequences has in the past, present, and future implications of that concept. However, the term “effective history” supplements “history of effect” in its more precise suggestion of the...