Collective Singulars A Reinterpretation NIKOLAY KOPOSOV
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
ABSTRACT
Te article proposes a semantic theory o collective singulars, or singular singular collective names, designating basic historical concepts, which came into being in the period o the Enlightenment. Teir logical structure seems to be internally contradictory, or they reer at the same time to universal values and ideas and to concrete historical occurrences. Tey also entail two diferent principles o category-ormation—the logic o general names and that o proper names. Te two logics are equally rooted in our cognitive makeup; however, diferent cultures avor either one or the other. Te article examines the transormation o the balance balanc e o the two logics in European thought rom the Middle Ages to the present. Te ormation o the idea o universal history has brought about an equilibrium o the two logics, while the contemporary “crisis o the uture” is accompanied by the rise o the logic o proper names. KEYWORDS
categorization, cognitive, collective singulars, ideal types, proper names, prototype, Sattelzeit in Sattelzeit in reverse, William Whewell
Te notion o collective singulars, or singular collective names, is one o the central concepts o Begrifsgeschichte o Begrifsgeschichte (the history o concepts). concepts). Tough the expression “collective singulars” is not equivalent to Reinhart Koselleck’s “basic historical concepts” ( geschich ( geschichtliche tliche Grundbegrife Grundbegrife), ),1 basic historical concepts are oen characterized as collective singulars. Tus, according to Koselleck, our modern concept o history o history emerged emerged in the eighteenth century, when History with tory with capital H (or more exactly Geschichte exactly Geschichte with capital G) became a collective name or all the t he stories that had ever happened to humankind. Much in the same way, the state came to be seen, around 1800, as a moral person and the collective name or a broad spectrum o public institutions. 2 1. Geschichtliche Grundbegrife: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds. (Stuttgart: E. Klett and J. G. Cotta, 1972–93), hereaer cited as GG. 2. Reinhart Koselleck, “Historie/Geschichte,” GG 2: 649–53; Koselleck, Conze, et al., “Staat und Souveränität,” GG 6: 2. Contributions to the History of Concepts doi:10.3167/choc.2011.06 doi:10.3167/choc.2011.060103 0103
Volume 6, Issue 1, 1, Summer 2011: 39–64 ISSN 1807-9326 (Print), ISSN 1874-656X (Online)
Nikolay Koposov
However, to the best o my knowledge, the theory o collective singulars has not been developed in any detail. Te term is most oen understood understoo d within the context o the theory o basic historical terms as ormulated by Koselleck. 3 According to him, the conceptual revolution o the Sattelzeit (th Sattelzeit (thee “saddle “sadd le time time”, the period o transition transiti on to Modernity Modernity)) and the emergence o the contemporary contemporary system o social and political concepts were determined by the changing perception o historical time, tim e, which came to be dominated by the idea o progress. Instead o describing the domain o experience, the newly emerging concepts became oriented towards a horizon o expectations. Tey became necessarily less descriptive, and more general and abstract than the old notions. It seems that collective collecti ve singulars are usually thought thoug ht o as an instrument o generalizing about history, by bringing under the same label a variety o phenomena that beore the eighteenth century had not been viewed as parts o a single whole. Some historians believe that nowadays we are living through through a kind o “ Sattelzeit in telzeit in reverse,” reverse,” because becaus e the collapse coll apse o uture-oriented thi thinking nking has brought about a sort o present-mindedness, or présentisme, présentisme, as François Hartog calls it.4 Hartog’s analysis o contemporary time-consciousness is undamental or the hypothesis o Sattelzeit o Sattelzeit in in reverse. Te theory o presentism presentism has emerged at the conuence o two intellectual traditions: the history o memory o Pierre Nora and the history o concepts o Reinhart Koselleck. Hartog’s main tool or the analysis o contemporary historical consciousness is his notion o régime d’historicité, by which he means a particular orm o understanding the relationship between past, present, and uture that is typical or a given culture. According to him, the conceptual revolution o the Enlightenment was also the birthplace o the modern régime d’historicité characterized d’historicité characterized by the domination o the uture over the present and the past. Tis régime has now come to its end and is being replaced by a new perception o historical time, where a kind o “eternal present” denes an extremely narrow horizon o expectations 3. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukun: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten [Future past: On the semantics o historical times] (Frankurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). On Koselleck’s theory o basic historical terms, see Melvin Richter, Te History o Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxord University Press, 1995); Kari Palonen, “An Application o Conceptual History to Itsel: From Method to Teory in Reinhart Koselleck’s Begrifsgeschichte,” Begrifsgeschichte, ” Redescriptions: Yearbook o Political Tought and Conceptual History 1 History 1 (1997): 39–69; Hans Erich Bödeker, “Concept – Meaning – Discourse: Begrifsgeschichte Reconsidered,” in History o Concepts: Comparative Perspectives, Iain Hampsher-Monk, Karin ilmans, and Frank Van Vree, eds. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni versity Press, Press, 1998), 51–64. 4. François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris: Seuil, 2003). For a similar interpretation o the contemporary sense o the past, see Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926. Living on the Edge o ime (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). On the growing importance o the domain o experience, see Pierre-André aguief, L’efacement de l’avenir (Paris: l’avenir (Paris: Galilée, 2000), 474.
40
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
and shapes the past, which by the same token is transormed into an incoherent body o memories. I am largely sympathetic with this argument, though we need perhaps a more detailed picture o our current time-consciousness. In Russia, the theory o Sattelzeit in reverse has been developed by Dina Khapaeva, who has studied the impact o current changes in historical temporality on the conceptual apparatus o the social sciences.5 My ocus in this article is more technical: what are the particular eatures o the semantic structures o collective singulars, and what transormations (i any) are these structures undergoing today? Other scholars have also suggested that there may be a link between the semantic structures o collective singulars and the current régime d’historicité. Tus, Javier Fernández Sebastián and Juan Francisco Fuentes have proposed this hypothesis in their interview with Reinhart Koselleck shortly beore his death. According to them, “the balance between experience and expectation has been disturbed” in recent years, because “it has become progressively harder to see the uture as an extension o the present.” As a result o the current ragmentation o history, they say, basic historical concepts “are no longer singular collective names and are returning to their pre -Sattelzeit origin.”6 In other words, basic historical concepts are losing their generalizing potential due to the decomposition o the “great narratives.” Tus, even though we recognize progressive changes in various segments o contemporary lie, we are now less condent than beore in placing them under the collective name o progress. Again, I tend to agree with this argument, though with some reser vations, to which I will return later. But in order to understand what is happening now with collective singulars, it is worth developing a little urther the theory o their semantic structures. Let us start with some elementary acts about collective singulars, having John Stuart Mill, a classic in the eld, as our guide (though I am not going to ollow him on several important points). 7 As the term suggests, collective singulars are collective names that can be attributed to groups o individual occurrences taken together, but not to each o these occurrences taken separately. aken separately, these occurrences can be also subsumed under a single name, but this will be a common or general name. Tus the word nobles is a general or common name, while nobility is a collective name or the same 5. Dina Khapaeva, Герцоги республики в эпоху переводов: Гуманитарные науки и революция понятий [Te dukes o the republic in the age o translation: Humanities and the conceptual revolution] , (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2005), 214–17. 6. Javier Fernández Sebastián and Juan Francisco Fuentes, “Conceptual History, Memory, and Identity: An Interview with Reinhart Koselleck,” Contributions to the History o Concepts 1, no. 2 (2006): 119–20. Interestingly, Koselleck in the interview seems skeptical about this idea. 7. John Stuart Mill, A System o Logic (London: J. W. Parker, 1843), 1: 33–34.
summer 2011
41
Nikolay Koposov
group o individuals, though this word can also reer to the state o being noble and to the quality o nobles. In the latter case, it is an abstract name (according to Mill, “abstract names” are the names o attributes, while concrete names are those o objects). Now let us consider the adjective singular. Only some collective names are singular. Tere also exist general (or common) collective names. ake the word regiment. It is certainly a collective name, or it reers to many individuals taken together. But there are many regiments, and insoar as it reers to many collective individuals that can be subsumed under the same concept o regiment, the word regiment is a general collective name. However, i we make our concept o regiment more precise by adding, say, a number, we will transorm this concept into a collective singular. ake or example, the 76 th regiment o oot. It is a singular collective name. But in our everyday speech we oen use abridged ormulas instead o long ones, so that we can imagine myriads o situations when speaking about the 76 th regiment o oot, one could simply say, the regiment. In all such cases, the general collective name regiment was used as a singular collective name. Now let us consider a more complex case. ake, or example, the concept o nobility, considered as a concrete name. How do we decide whether it is a singular or a common collective name? Is there a unique historical phenomenon that we identiy by attributing this name to it, or are there many diferent “nobilities” that we can compare to each other? Tere are some languages that prevent us rom putting this word into plural, but there are also some that allow or that. But whether we can use the word in the plural or not, the problem persists, or in any case we can think o diferent kinds o nobility, groups o nobility, types o nobility, and so on. So is nobility a general or a singular name? I think that it can be both, and what it is depends on the context. o use it as a singular name, we do not even have to advance the risky hypothesis o a spiritual entity that emerged in immemorial times and has embraced every single noble on the earth. We can simply suppose that in a given place at a given time there existed only one social group corresponding to the name “nobility,” and limit our investigation to this ramework. However, it would be a totally articial situation, because our decision to use this word consistently as a singular name cannot prevent others rom using it as a common name, so that the meaning o the term or most o the language’s users (including ourselves) will always be quite ambivalent. Tis sort o transitivity characterizes our actual use o language, when one and the same word can mean logically diferent things. We can take it one step urther. A concept can be used as a singular or as a general name depending on the context. I we use it as a singular name, does this mean that all the elements o a common name are completely absent rom the message we convey? Or alternatively, when we use it as a general name, 42
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
does it completely erase all traces o a singular name in our message? I think that it does not, so that we can expect to nd some elements o a singular name in a general one, and some aspects o a general name in a singular one (though it can also happen that a word is used as a purely common or a purely proper name). In other words, what matters is not only the grammatical type o name, but also the way a name is used in a given context. However, the main ways o using a concept, taken together, orm its meaning. Tis meaning does not have to be—and most oen is not—evoked in all o its aspects every time we use the concept. Usually, to understand a sentence, only some aspects o the meaning o the terms used in it are relevant. But other aspects o the meaning are nevertheless—to some extent—also present in the mind, though not “actualized” by a concrete context. I diferent ways o using one and the same notion are logically incompatible with each other, the semantic structure o the concept can be considered as internally contradictory. Being internally contradictory is not uncommon or many concepts we use, in both our everyday and our scholarly communication. It seems, though, that it is less typical or the natural sciences, whose terminology tends to be more abstract and ormalized, than or social and human sciences that are more dependent on commonsense knowledge and ordinary language. Philosophers o history, especially o neo-Kantian vintage, have persistently emphasized this particularity o the social sciences’ vocabulary. Tus, building upon Heinrich Rickert’s distinction between generalizing concepts used by natural sciences and individualizing historical concepts, Max Weber proposed the theory o ideal types. Most oen Weber’s commentators consider ideal types as “research utopias” which do not exist in reality, but allow or understanding it. But this is true o any kind o concept. However, according to a recent interpretation, Weber saw ideal types as logically diferent rom the natural sciences’ concepts: having abstract general meanings, they also contain reerences to concrete historical phenomena. Te French sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron has convincingly argued that some names which by their grammatical type are general oen unction as “semi-proper names” ( semi-noms pro pres) in the discourse o social sciences. 8 I do not think that this is an exclusive property o terminology in the social and human sciences. Rather, it is typical o our everyday use o language, and insoar as some natural sciences (like botany or zoology) use terms rom ordinary language they cannot altogether 8. See Max Weber, “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschalicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” in Max Weber, Gesammelte Ausätze zur Wissenschaslehre (übingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1968), 190–191; Jean-Claude Passeron, Le raisonnement sociologique: L’espace non popperien du raisonnement naturel (Paris: Nathan, 1991), 60–61. For more details, see Nikolay Koposov, De l’imagination historique (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2009), 183–184.
summer 2011
43
Nikolay Koposov
escape this ambiguity either. But it is likely that this ambiguity is more usual or the vocabulary o the social and human sciences. ake, or example, the concept o absolutism. We can dene absolutism as “unlimited monarchy,” so that any kind o state with the strong power o a monarch could be called absolutist. But this concept so obviously reers to early modern Europe that we normally avoid using it, say, or the Roman or Byzantine empires, not to speak o the state o the Great Mongols or the Ottoman Empire, which were traditionally seen by early modern European political theorists as cases o oriental despotism, as opposed to the absolute monarchies. Te applicability o the term absolutism even to Ivan the errible’s government has oen been called into question, the Byzantine word autocracy being usually perceived as a more appropriate name or the unlimited monarchy in Russia, at least or the period beore Peter the Great, whose reorms made Western terms more usable in the Russian context. Te term absolutism, then, can potentially have a universal meaning. But it also reers to a concrete historical phenomenon. Te same is true or many other historical concepts, or example Renaissance or Enlightenment. We can speak o a renaissance in medieval Japan, but most o us would eel that this would be rather in a metaphorical sense. o sum up: there is no absolute boundary between singular and general collective names. Tis allows or a kind o transitivity in the use o concepts that can in some contexts appear as general and in some contexts as singular names. Tis conceptual structure is particularly typical or the vocabulary o social and human sciences. “Historical” concepts may have universal meaning and reer to individual historical phenomena, limited in space and time. Even when designated by general names, these concepts oen unction as “semiproper names.” So ar we have been discussing common and singular names. What about proper names? Do they have meaning? Tis would contradict Mill’s theory. o be sure, he distinguishes two kinds o singular names. Some o them consist o multiple general names combined in such a way as to describe a unique individual (“the rst emperor o Rome”). Tese names do have meaning, while names like John, London, or England (proper names stricto sensu) do not. Meaning, according to Mill, is the sum o the connotations reerring to the attributes o the objects denoted by a word. But “proper names are attached to the objects themselves,”9 and do not immediately “arm” any o the properties o the objects they denote. Facts known about an individual designated by a proper name can turn out to be untrue o him, and consequently are not “necessary” to his identity. In other words, general names have both meaning 9. Mill, System o Logic, 1: 40.
44
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
and reerence (or connotation and denotation, in Mill’s terms), while proper names have only reerence. However, other philosophers (beginning with Gottlob Frege 10) believe that everything which is known about an individual can be considered the meaning o his name. I would tend to agree with them. It is extremely dicult to distinguish between what is “armed” by a name and what is simply “associated” with it. Tis is true or general names as well. Is there anything in the word noble that would make it “arm,” say, the idea o landed property, which is an important aspect o our notion o nobility? What this word (derived rom the Latin adjective nobilis) literally “means” is that a person to whom it is applied is “widely known” and nothing more. And or someone whose Latin is not so good it does not mean even this. Everything else that might be considered the word’s meaning is associated with it thanks to our knowledge o the world. Tus in eenth-century France, being “noble” meant “living rom one’s own lands without doing anything” (vivre de ses terres sans rien aire).11 Tere are numerous ways in which purely linguistic mechanisms (lexical connections, grammar, etc.) contribute to the ormation o the word’s meaning. However, a part—I would say the most essential part—o the meaning comes rom our knowledge o the world, not “rom within” the language. It goes without saying that the acts known about, say, social groups can turn out to be alse, and hence not “necessary” to the meaning o their names. Does it ollow that general names have no meaning either? I it does not, why should we consider the acts known about individuals as having nothing to do with the meaning o their names? o conclude, we can say that proper names can have meaning. I am not suggesting that they always have it. John may certainly mean nothing, as well as Alexander (the avorite example o philosophers since Frege). But Alexander’s ull name was Alexandros tou Philippou tōn Makedonōn, and this meant a lot. Te diference between singular names and proper names which was important or Mill does not look so undamental, or both kinds o words can have meaning. Proper names denote diferent kinds o individuals, including the collective ones which interest us here. We can saely conclude that proper names o collective individuals may have meaning as well. Such concepts orm a part o the category o collective singulars (proper names in Mill’s scheme are a kind o singular name). Tus, contrary to what Mill thought, England does not have to be an empty sign serving only to x a reerence. It can be a concept, a collec10. Gottlob Frege, “Über Sinn und Bedeutung,” Zeitschri ür Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100 (1892): 25–50. For more details about this debate, see Koposov, De l’imagination historique. 11. Jacques Mourier, “Nobilitas, quid est? Un procès à ain-l’Hermitage en 1408,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 142, no. 2 (1984): 255–69.
summer 2011
45
Nikolay Koposov
tive singular whose logical status is not altogether diferent rom that o bour geoisie, though the grammatical status o the two names is not equivalent. o be clear, the grammatical type o a name is important or its meaning, and collective singulars designated by general names tend to be more “general” than those designated by proper names. But the degree to which the meaning o a concept is general also depends on the tradition o its use, and rst o all on the strength o its association with other general concepts. ake, or example, Mill’s compatriot and riend Henry Tomas Buckle. 12 For him, England was by no means an empty sign (or a “rigid designator,” to use Saul Kripke’s term13), but one o the most important concepts on which his understanding o history heavily depended. Tis was due to the intimate connection between the proper name o England and the idea o civilization. Te concept o civilization contained a reerence to England, which was considered the clearest case o humankind’s development toward reedom and prosperity. But the concept o civilization, in its turn, was a part o Buckle’s idea o England. As a result, England could “stand or” civilization, in the same way as or François Guizot France stood or it.14 Te countries’ proper names, then, acquired general meaning and became historical concepts. In the previous section, my emphasis was on the act that general names can become semi-proper names. Now, let me underline that, in their turn, proper names can unction as “semi-general” names, to revert to Passeron’s ormula. Equating England or France with civilization was not an extravagant idea that came only to Buckle or Guizot. It was widely shared by their readers and numerous imitators—and even opponents. Te idea o civilization became strongly associated with England and France in other countries as well. Tus many German or Russian thinkers o the mid-nineteenth century used it to conceptualize the historical destinies o their respective countries in terms o a Sonderweg, that is, as alternatives to the model set up by the “leaders” o the world’s development—England and France, a model that was oen reerred to as civilization. Te capacity o proper names to express universal ideas (without ceasing to reer to concrete historical individuals) becomes even more obvious i we consider the names o the larger cultural units like Europe, Eastern Europe, the West, or the East. Excellent studies have documented how the concepts o Eastern Europe or the East had been orged in the “Enlightenment Mind” (exactly in the same period as other geschichtliche Grundbegrife) to express 12. Henry Tomas Buckle, History o Civilization in England (London: J. W. Parker & Son, 1857–61), 1–2. 13. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxord: Blackwell, 1980), 48. 14. François Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828– 32), 1–6.
46
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
the conception o universal history seen as the progression rom barbarism to civilization.15 More recently, in the Cold War period, the concept o the West (which had existed long beore it) became central to the renewed version o the liberal “master narrative.” o be sure, both Europe and the West are, grammatically speaking, proper names, just like England and France. But logically they oen unction as semi-general names, though perhaps o somewhat diferent degree o generality, the West being more “general” than Europe, and Europe more general than France or England. Geschichtliche Grundbegrife should perhaps be complemented by another volume dealing with notions like England, France, Europe, Eastern Europe, the West, or the Orient. It would not be an easy task to identiy those concepts designated by proper names which belong to the category o basic historical concepts, but it was not an easy task with respect to the concepts designated by general names either. I the main criterion is whether a concept relates to our idea o history (or more exactly to the conception o world history as it was ormed in the Sattelzeit and has been urther developed since then), then clearly the proper names just quoted deserve to be included in the Geschichtliche Grundbegrife. We can hardly imagine a “master narrative” that would not use the names o at least some nations, countries, or regions which—rom the narrative’s vantage point—have played a crucial role in history. o sum up, every name has a meaning and a reerence (or intention and extension, or else connotation and denotation). Meaning is a concept that the word connotes. Reerence is a thing or a group o things in the world that it denotes. Meaning is essentially general, or it consists o attributes o a potentially unlimited number o occurrences that we can subsume under the concept. o be sure, the meaning o singular names can be structured in such a way as to “capture” the individuality o the corresponding phenomena by combining general names. Partly or this reason, the meaning o singular names can include universal aspects. But even proper names can to some extent acquire universal meaning, i they become closely associated with this or that general concept. While meaning is potentially universal, reerence, on the contrary, is more concrete, or it consists o concrete objects, and the uniqueness o some o these objects can matter or us. When we use a term, we most oen reer both to the corresponding concept and the category o things in the world. But this can imply an internal logical contradiction, or we reer at the same time to something abstract and universal and something concrete and historical.
15. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1977); Larry Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe: Te Map o Civilization on the Mind o the Enlightenment (Stanord: Stanord University Press, 1994).
summer 2011
47
Nikolay Koposov
o be sure, most o the concepts we use (at least most o the ordinarylanguage notions as well as terms rom the social and human sciences) share this property o internal contradiction. But they share it to a diferent degree. Both the word nobles and the word nobility reer to an abstract and potentially universal idea o nobility. But nobles can also be used in the same sense as nobility, understood as a collective name. In act, by saying “Russian nobles o the eighteenth century” and “Russian nobility o the eighteenth century” we reer to one and the same group o physical individuals. However, the word nobles by its grammatical orm does not suggest the idea o collective individuality which is so strongly present in the concept o nobility (used as a collective name). Tat is why collective names are the preerred linguistic device o thinking in terms o collective individuals (though we can designate collective concepts by general and proper names as well). So ar I have been discussing mostly social terms, or the names o social categories, because these terms are the most obvious example o the idea o the collective individual. However, many other basic historical terms have also an aspect o collective name. Tus, according to Jean Starobinski, the word civilization in the eighteenth century became a collective name or many singular developments like the improvement o mores, the progress o science, or the development o the arts. 16 Or, i one would ollow the analysis o Raymond Williams, the words industry and art, which beore the mid-eighteenth century had meant qualities o industrious or artistic people, became collective names or the corresponding sets o practices, objects, and institutions. 17 It is important to underline that collective names can reer to various assortments o concrete phenomena, both static and dynamic, not only to multitudes o things but also to multitudes o processes. In the eighteenth century, the world seen in terms o multitudes and processes came to replace the Aristotelian cosmos o static, perennial essences (we shall return to this later). Te rise o collective names o multitudes and processes was one o the most characteristic aspects o the intellectual revolution o the Sattelzeit.18 o be sure, they were not invented in the Sattelzeit period. Te capacity to orm collective concepts and to consider collectivities as individuals is a property o our minds. However, the mind has a history, and some o its capacities seem to have been more developed than others in some epochs. Te capacity to orm collective singulars seems to have grown in importance in the decades around the French Revolution. 16. Jean Starobinski, “Le mot civilization,” in idem, Le remède dans le mal (Paris: Gallimard, 1989). 17. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). xiii, xv. 18. See Koposov, Imagination historique, 135–36; and idem, “Te Logic o Democracy,” Le Banquet 27 (2010), 101–21.
48
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
Tere is one more thing that has to be said about the connection between multitudes and processes. It is important to realize that processes were seen as multitudes, and were designated by collective names reerring to assortments o singular developments. But even more important is the act that the idea o process was the only way to make multitudes intelligible. Tis is the connection I shall explore in the rest o the article. However, beore doing this we have to consider still another aspect o the semantic structure o concepts. A concept can entail, simultaneously, mutually exclusive hypotheses about the structure o the group o objects to which it reers. Tis is particularly important or collective (or group) concepts that are undamentally classicatory notions, allowing or ordering multitudes o individual occurrences. Recent research in linguistics and psychology suggests that humans orm categories according to several kinds o logic at the same time: in particular the logic o necessary and sucient conditions, as well as the logic o prototypes (when members o a given category possess no single common property but are grouped around the prototypes or good examples on the basis o a vague “amily resemblance”).19 Te latter logic draws essentially on the experience o empirical ordering o synthetically perceived objects in a mental space, while Aristotelian logic relies rst and oremost on an analytical intuition rooted in the experience o interpreting the meaning o words. Te logic o necessary and sucient conditions is essentially deductive, while the logic o prototype essentially inductive. Empirical classication operates with unnamed objects that precede the categories o language, and produces groups o objects that need not coincide with those or which language has names. Tat is why we oen do not have general names or empirical categories. Empirical ordering o proper names produces categories that are to be designated by collective proper names. Although both logics are equally rooted in our cognitive makeup, the proportion in which they mix to produce diferent world views changes rom one culture to another. And the change in their respective roles in thinking paral-
19. Eleanor Rosch, “Human Categorization ,” in Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology, Neil Warren, ed. (London: Academic Press, 1977), 1–49; eadem, “Principles o Categorization,” in Cognition and Caregorization, Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd, eds. (Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum, 1978), 28–48; George Lakof, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Tings: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1987); Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence, eds., Concepts: Core Readings (Cambridge, Mass.: MI Press, 1999); Gregory L. Murphy, Te Big Book o Concepts (Cambridge, Mass.: MI Press, 2004). See also Rodney Needham, “Polithetic Classication: Convergence and Consequences,” Man, 10, no. 3 (1975): 349–69; Luc Boltanski, Laurent Tévenot, “Finding One’s Way in Social Space: A Study Based on Games,” Social Science Inormation, 22, no. 4–5 (1983): 631–79
summer 2011
49
Nikolay Koposov
leled the ormation o the contemporary vocabulary o social terms and the rise o the collective singulars. We can now consider in more detail some o the historical transormations that occurred in the semantic structures o collective singulars and their role in Western thought. Te medieval world view is sometimes described as an Aristotelian cosmos o static essences. 20 Within this world view, things were held in order because they were seen to some extent as the maniestation o essences which were considered logically anterior to them. Essentialism was typical o the medieval style o thinking. Categories were seen as orming a coherent, logical structure, so that each o them could be dened in terms o genus proximus, diferentia specica. However, in spite o its predilection or deductive reasoning (or rather because o it), the medieval mind was not suciently trained to orm complex, abstract concepts or entities. Te medieval system o grammatical categories, substantially diferent rom our own, reveals this intellectual diculty. It was a verb-dominated system, adapted to describing the actions o concrete subjects.21 Te vocabulary o abstract categories remained rudimentary, and those terms that did exist were understood in such a way that their abstract meaning and their reerence to concrete phenomena almost used. Tis corresponds to the tendency o medieval logic not to distinguish clearly between sense and reerence, or both “meanings o meaning ” were equally covered by the word signicare. And to the extent that the logicians distinguished between them, sense (understood as “essence”) was perceived as the primary and direct meaning (signicatum primarium) o common names, while reerence was the secondary and indirect meaning (signicatum secundarium or suppositum).22 In particular, the medieval vocabulary o collective historical concepts reects a style o thinking that was at once more deductive and more concrete than our own. Medieval terms or human collectivities—imperium (Romanum), communitas (christiana, ecclesiae, or regni), regnum (Francorum), etc.—unctioned as quasi-proper names reerring to concrete “historical individuals,” so that their meaning, which in principle covered the attributes o all empires, communities, and so on, was necessarily less general than that o a “normal” common name. In particular, the ontological status o these entities was very loosely specied, i at all, by their names. Rather, they were appre20. Alexandre Koyré, Du monde clos à l’univers inni, trans. Raissa arr (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). See also Ernst Cassirer, Substanzbegrif und Funktionsbegrif: Untersuchungen über die Grundragen der Erkenntniskritik (1910), (Darmstadt, 1994). 21. Lucien Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance au XVIe siècle: La religion de Rabelais (Paris: A. Michel, 1962), 331. 22. E. J. Ashworth, Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974), 47, 72.
50
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
hended in a syncretic way, in accordance with what can be called the model o politeia that goes back to the ancient Greek concept o polis. Te latter concept, paradigmatic or premodern political thought, is untranslatable in the modern languages, or it reerred simultaneously to what we now distinguish as state and society (not to mention its economic, legal, moral, and religious connotations).23 No wonder then that ecclesia, or example, was a normal term or what we now call society, and clearly reerred not to “society in general,” but to the concrete “community o Christians” who inhabited medieval Europe. Apparently, in contradistinction to our own mental habits, medieval thinkers did not see this syncretic and concrete understanding o entities as incompatible with the idea o essence (and hence with deductive reasoning), partly because sense was not clearly distinguished rom reerence, and partly because essences themselves were oen represented syncretically. Tus, according to a widespread ormula going back to the end o the tenth century, medieval society consisted o three orders (ordines) o people: priests, warriors, and laborers (oratores, bellatores or pugnatores, and laboratores), or even, as it was stated by Adalberon, Bishop o Laon, o those who preach, who make war, and who labor (orant, pugnant, and laborant ). Te centrality o verbs is evident in this terminology. aken together, the three orders orm the “House o God” (domus Dei) or the highest entity.24 According to Otto Brunner, these categories were invented by theologians exclusively or the needs o moral philosophy and had nothing to do with the way medieval people actually thought about society (which they did in terms o “concrete orders”). 25 However, O. G. Oexle has convincingly demonstrated that this model was meant, rst and oremost, to describe a changing medieval society. 26 In compliance with a tradition going back to St. Augustine, these orders were thought o not so much as groups o people but as syncretic metaphysical substances, within whose ramework the ideas o social unction and corresponding moral value could hardly be separated. In the same way, the Latin word militia could be understood both as a group o milites and as their service (servitium) or nature.27 Te essentialist vision o society is thus maniest in medieval social vocabulary. In the same way, the word nobility (nobilitas, noblesse, Adel ) was understood primarily as an abstract name designating the 23. Manred Riedel, “Gesellscha, bürgerliche,” GG 2: 719–800. 24. Georges Duby, Les trois orders ou l’imaginaire du éodalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978); Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Die unktionale Dreiteilung der “Gesellscha” bei Adalbero von Laon. Deutungsschemata der sozialen Wirklichkeit im rüheren Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 12 (1978): 1–54. 25. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrscha: Grundragen der territorialen Verassungsgeschichte Südostdeutschlands im Mittelalter, third ed. (Brunn: R. M. Rohrer, 1943), 456, 460. 26. Oexle, “Funktionale Dreiteilung.” 27. Ibid.
summer 2011
51
Nikolay Koposov
quality, or essence, o a social category, not as its collective name; 28 and the word bourgeoisie reerred not so much to the class o bourgeois, but rst and oremost to their rights and privileges. Correspondingly, the status o a person was perceived as nothing else but his essence, given that individuals were not yet clearly emancipated rom the social groups they belonged to. 29 In other words, individuals were thought o as logically posterior in relation to orders. Despite the nominalistic uprising o the late Middle Ages, which emphasized that individual things alone had real existence, and despite the anti-Aristotelian mood o some sixteenth-century logicians (above all Peter Ramus), early modern logic was dominated by the Aristotelian school at least up to the mid-seventeenth century, i not later. 30 It was not until the second hal o the century that empiricist, inductive logic (oreshadowed, though by no means created, by Francis Bacon, whose thought had been too dependent on the Aristotelian ramework) started to emerge, 31 reecting the ormation o a new, atomistic world view in which things came to be seen as logically anterior to categories. By the same token, categories became much more problematic, or they could no longer be viewed as an emanation o divine reason. As late as the beginning o the seventeenth century, the medieval, hierarchical vision o society still largely dominated social thought. 32 On the contrary, the eighteenth century saw the emergence o the theory o the society o classes. Te rst signs o this transition became maniest in the midseventeenth century. At rst glance, the theory o classes and that o orders look similar. In both cases, society is divided into a limited number o social groups, dened on the basis o their social unctions. However, the similarity is misleading. Te transition rom the theory o orders to that o classes entailed a proound logical change. Recent research on the genesis o the concept o class has revealed important diferences in the logical status o orders and classes. It has been shown that in the course o the seventeenth century the word class came to be understood 28. Werner Conze, “Adel, Aristokratie,” GG 1: 6. 29. Aaron Gurevich, Категории средневековой культуры [Categories o medieval culture] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972). 30. On the importance o the “nominalistic turn” in William o Occam’s philosophy, seen as a premise o the modern style o thinking (including modern theories o society), see Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Deutungsschemata der sozialen Wirklichkeit im rühen und hohen Mittelalter: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Wissens,” in Mentalitäten im Mittelalter: Methodische und inhaltliche Probleme, Frantisek Graus, ed. (Sigmaringen, 1987), 65–117. 31. William Kneale and Martha Kneale, Te Development o Logic (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1962), 309–10, 318; see also Robert Blanché and Jacques Dubucs, La logique et son histoire (Paris: A. Colin, 1996), 173; Wilbur S. Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 259–437. 32. See Koposov, Imagination historique, 118–21.
52
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
as (a) a general term or a category, and (b) a term or the social groups seen as a result o inductive classication; while estates were considered as (a) essences and (b) elements o a preestablished social order. 33 Te theory o the society o orders corresponded to the Aristotelian kosmos, or the image o the “closed world,” seen as a hierarchy o ideal essences with an all-inclusive genus ( ta panta) at its summit. In such a universe, knowledge was thought o as existing beore the knowing subject, and disclosing itsel through syllogistic, deductive reasoning. In contrast, the theory o the society o classes corresponded to the model o the “innite universe,” or the atomistic and nominalistic world view. In such a world, knowledge has to result essentially rom inductive inerence. In the closed world, estates were seen as logically anterior to individuals. In the innite universe, individuals have appeared as anterior to classes. I the notion o essence was the key idea o medieval thought, the notion o the individual has become that o the modern age. Tis change, brought about by the ormation o the modern scientic outlook, was in turn prepared by the invention o perspective and the revolution in spatial perception that had originated in Renaissance Italy and reached its highest point in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. 34 A multitude o objects, liberated rom the power o essences, had now to be arranged in the rational, three-dimensional mental space that had become the preerred system o logical reerence. Qualitatively heterogeneous, symbolically meaningul, and hierarchically structured “medieval space” 35 corresponded to the concept o the society o orders seen as a hierarchy o essences; the empty space o the innite universe required a totally diferent logic o empirical ordering, which in the long run has brought about a new understanding o category structures. It was not beore the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the contemporary system o grammatical categories came into being, ensuring the transition rom verb-dominated to noun-dominated thinking. Te birth o basic historical concepts was a part o this transormation. wo aspects o the new system o grammatical categories should be emphasized here: the special role played by the adverbs, reerring in particular to what came to be distinguished as diferent ontological levels (social, political, religious, etc.); and the 33. Dallas L. Clouatre, “Te Concept o Class in French Culture Prior to the Revolution,” Journal o the History o Ideas 45, no. 2 (1984): 219–44; Marie-France Piguet, Classe: Histoire du mot et genèse du concept des Physiocrates aux Historiens de la Restauration (Lyon: Presses de l’Université de Lyon, 1996); Otto Gerhard Oexle, Werner Conze, and Rudol Walther, “Stand, Klasse,” GG 6: 155–284. 34. Erwin Panosky, La perspective comme orme symbolique (Paris: Minuit, 1975); Hubert Damisch, L’origine de la perspective (Paris: Flammarion, 1987); Svetlana Alpers, Te Art o Describing: Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century (London/New York: Penguin Books, 1989). 35. On the medieval concept o space, see Gurevich, Categories o Medieval Culture.
summer 2011
53
Nikolay Koposov
emergence o new types o nouns: alongside common names reerring to categories o objects (or example, nobles) and abstract names reerring to their qualities (nobility used as an abstract name), names or processes (or example, civilization), multitudes (nobility used as a collective name), and systems o relations ( eudalism), which either had not existed at all or had played only a marginal role in the medieval languages, became central to the new conceptual system, including the vocabulary o social and political categories. Tus nobility, whose primary meaning in the medieval period had been that o essence, came to be seen rst and oremost as a collective name or a group o individuals. And the new concept o working class, or proletariat, that in the nineteenth century became one o the central notions o social thought, was a pure collective singular and not an abstract name o essence at all. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there also emerged a new object-oriented logic, laying emphasis on the empirical approaches to the problem o categories. Te distinction between sense and reerence that had been clearly established by the Logic o Port Royal (1662) contributed to the liberation o things rom the power o essences. Tings ormed multitudes to be ordered empirically, be it nature (a multitude o atoms) or society (a multitude o individuals). Te idea o multitude was a logically inevitable consequence o the idea o the individual. With the decay o the Aristotelian cosmos, essences lost the power to put things in order. In innite empty space, individual bodies could be empirically grouped together in clusters whose origins could be accounted or only by the history o their individual processes o ormation. Te idea o the individual also entailed that o process. Collective singulars reerring to historically ormed entities, which consisted o individuals, became the preerred linguistic expression o this new style o thinking. Te eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed a real boom in the domain o the theory o classication. Te science o this period was essentially about classication, or empirical ordering o things liberated rom the realm o essences. Te new theory o classication was largely rooted in the intellectual experience o what came to be known as classicatory sciences—botany, zoology, mineralogy, and so on. 36 Elements o this theory can be detected in the work o natural scientists like Bufon, who questioned the validity o the principle o hard and ast dividing lines between classes. Te idea that classes are strictly separate rom each other is indeed undamental or Aristotelian logic. According to the principle o necessary and sucient conditions, an object can either belong to a category or not belong to it, and all objects that a category includes have equal rights to be its members. Challenging this view, Bufon wrote: 36. William Whewell, History o the Inductive Sciences, third ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1859), 1–2.
54
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
Nature … passes rom one species to another, and oen even rom one genus to another, by invisible shadings; so that there exists a great number o intermediary species and divided objects that we do not know where to place.…37
In other words, a category is best represented by its better examples, but can also include marginal ones. Tis clearly anticipates the prototypical theory o classication. At the same time, eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century philosophers, largely under John Locke’s inuence, came to be interested in language, and in particular in the variety o linguistic mechanisms that come into play in human categorization. Te philosophical analysis o common language proposed by Tomas Reed was crucial or urther shaping this interest. Te idea that words are not names o essences, that “genera and species are merely arbitrary creations which the human mind orms,” 38 and that the meaning o words was ormed historically in the process o the development o language was undamental or this new approach. Tis led to the theory o the transitive use o words, according to which the meaning o a concept oen cannot be dened in terms o necessary and sucient conditions because historically a name could come to signiy various groups o things, and there could be no single property common to all o them. 39 In both cases, the idea o history was vital to the new approaches to classication. Tey presupposed historical development o both natural kinds and categories o language. As Dugald Stewart put it, discussing the meaning o the word beauty: Instead o searching or the common idea or essence which the word Beauty denotes, when applied to colors, to orms, to sounds, to compositions in verse and prose, to mathematical theorems, and to moral qualities, our atten37. “La nature … passe d’une espèce à une autre espèce, et souvent d’un genre à un autre genre, par des nuances imperceptibles; de sorte qu’il se trouve un grand nombre d’espèces moyennes et d’objets mi-partis qu’on ne sait où placer.…” (G. L. Bufon, “De la manière d’étudier et de traiter l’histoire naturelle,” Œuvres complètes [Paris: Pourrat, 1835], 1: 44 [my translation]). 38. Dugald Stewart, Elements o the Philosophy o the Human Mind, sixth ed. (London: . Cadell and W. Davies, 1818), 1: 216. 39. Te theory o the transitive use o words was rst developed by d’Alambert and Richard Payne Knight. See J.-B. d’Alambert, “Essai sur les éléments de philosophie, ou sur les principes des connaissances humaines, avec les éclaircissements,” Œuvres (Paris: A. Belin, Bossange, 1821–22), 1: 238 ; Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles o aste, 2nd ed. (London: . Payne and J. White, 1805), 11, 233. Dugald Stewart developed this idea with respect to the theory o classication; see Dugald Stewart, Philosophical Essays, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1818), 262.
summer 2011
55
Nikolay Koposov
tion is directed to the natural history o the Human Mind, and to its natural progress in the employment o speech. 40
Te world came to be seen not as a preestablished system o categories but as a universal process o becoming, an assortment o historically developed “living things” that our minds reected in historically ormed concepts. In 1840, already at the end o the Sattelzeit period, the new theory o classication based on the achievements o the “classicatory sciences” and the philosophy o language ound its systematic elaboration in the works o William Whewell. He wrote: Tough in a natural group o objects a denition can no longer be o any use as a regulative principle, classes are not, thereore, le quite loose, without any certain standard or guide. Te class is steadily xed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead o Denition, we have a ype or our director. 41
Tis is an eloquent statement o the theory o prototype. What Whewell had in mind was a historical development that was bringing about loosely cohesive classes springing out o common ancestors. Whewell’s approach to the philosophy o science was, in many respects, a continuation o the historicist revolution. It was strongly inuenced by German thought and largely similar to the discoveries o the German historical school. 42 Historically ormed categories do not have to care about necessary and sucient conditions and other articial devices o schoolmen. Hal a century later, Nietzsche ormulated this 40. Stewart, Philosophical Essays, 342–43. 41. William Whewell, Te Philosophy o the Inductive Sciences (London, 1847), 1: 494. Laura J. Snyder has recently claimed that according to Whewell, “kinds have rigorous denitions, even though we do not know what they are,” because he believed that “God knows the essences o kinds.” See Laura J. Snyder, Reorming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 2006), 160–61. However, the act that kinds “in themselves” might have essences cannot prevent human categorization rom being prototypical. C. Michael Ruse, “Te Scientic Methodology o William Whewell,” Centaurus 20, no. 3 (1976): 156–57. 42. On Whewell’s philosophy see Yehuda Elkana, “Editor’s Introduction,” in William Whewell, Selected Writings on the History o Science, Yehuda Elkana, ed. (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1984); William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, Menachem Fisch and Simon Schefer, eds. (Oxord: Clarendon Press, 1991); Menachem Fisch, William Whewell: Philosopher o Science (Oxord: Clarendon Press, 1991); Richard Yeo, Dening Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Snyder, Reorming Philosophy.
56
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
in his usual aphoristic way: “What has history, escapes denition.” 43 Whether it be minerals, plants, languages, or nations, all classes o things are but historical occurrences. Te whole o lie—both natural and cultural—came to be seen as a process o historical development. It is not by chance that classicatory sciences were then called “natural history.” Te idea o history as an almighty powerul orce that carries within it the reason o its own development was in vented in the eighteenth century, largely to explain the empirical clustering o things into categories. History is the way the world is, be it nature or society— such was the most proound claim o the historicist intellectual revolution. 44 o complete the picture, one has to return to one o the main ideas o Friedrich Meinecke, one o those historians who have ully appreciated the importance o historicism as the birthplace o modernity. Meinecke wrote: Te ways o thinking laying emphasis on the ideas o development and individuality are closely tied together. o maniest itsel only in development belongs to the essence o individuality, whether it be that o a separate man or o an ideal or real collectivity. 45
I we now return to collective singulars, we shall better understand the problem: the historicist intellectual revolution avored not only the idea o historically ormed entities, but also that o the unique character o these entities. In a way, collective singulars can be seen as the key device o eighteenthcentury thought. It would be helpul to compare this analysis with Hannah Arendt’s understanding o the genesis o the modern idea o history. According to her, “the modern concept o process pervading history and nature alike separates the modern age rom the past more prooundly than any other single idea.” And she continues: What the concept o process implies is that the concrete and the general, the single thing or event and the universal meaning have parted company. Te 43. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy o Morals (1887), transl. by Douglas Smith (Oxord, Oxord University Press, 1996), 60 – the exact quotation is “only that which is without history can be dened”). 44. Robert J. Richards, Te Romantic Conception o Lie: Science and Philosophy in the Age o Goethe (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 2002). 45. “Entwickelnde und individualisierende Denkweise gehören unmittelbar zusammen. In Wesen der Individualität, der des Einzelmenschen wie der ideellen und realen Kollectivgebilde, liegt es, daß sie sich nur durch Entwicklung ofenbart” (Friedrich Meinecke, Die Entstehung des Historismus [Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 1965], 5 [my translation]). On the role o historicism as the “constitutive moment o modernity” see Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Krise des Historismus—Krise der Wirklichkeit: Eine Problemgeschichte der Moderne,” in Krise des Historismus—Krise der Wirklichkeit: Wissenscha, Kunst und Literatur 1880–1932, Otto Gerhard Oexle, ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007), 26.
summer 2011
57
Nikolay Koposov
process, which alone makes meaningul whatever it happens to carry along, has thus acquired a monopoly o universality and signicance. 46
Arendt considers the ormation o the idea o history to have led directly to Hegel’s philosophy, which sought to overcome dialectically the opposition between the universal and the particular, seen as the aspects o the process o development. However, it was by no means the only problem that historicism could help to resolve. As I hope to have shown, the idea o history was born out o the spirit o empirical classication. Meinecke was certainly right in pointing out not only the German, but also the Italian, English, and French origins o the historicist revolution. In act, too many conventional oppositions partly inherited rom nineteenthcentury thought obscure or us the meaning o this proound intellectual change. Te rst o these is that between Sattelzeit and the period o the emergence o modern science in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It is a largely Germany-based chronology that separates the birth o the basic historical concepts rom that o modern science. It prevents us rom understanding the role o the atomistic world view that emerged in the seventeenth century in the ormation o the idea o history, which I see as the logically unavoidable explanatory principle o the atomistic universe. Te second opposition is that between “German” historicism and “French” Enlightenment, or in other terms between Enlightenment and Romanticism. Within this opposition, historicism tends to be seen as a prooundly German, Romantic, and anti-Enlightenment phenomenon. Tis was not exactly the case in the eighteenth century, when the idea o history was emerging within the ramework o Enlightenment thought. Te universal and the particular had not yet been separated by the unbridgeable gap that became so typical o late nineteenth-century intellectual culture. It is not by chance that Koselleck speaks o the universal meaning o collective singulars—pure nonsense rom the point o view o the aorementioned opposition. However, as we have seen, general meaning and reerence to particulars do not exclude each other in our actual thinking, so that to some extent collective singulars can have universal meaning. Tis was precisely the act that characterized the mental universe o the Enlightenment. When the modern idea o history came into being, the historicist emphasis on individuality was not yet opposed to the universalistic tendencies o rationalism. Finally, the third inherited opposition is that between nature and society, seen as the two domains o experience having opposite logical structures. Nature is about universal laws, while history is about individual occurrences. In 46. Hannah Arendt, “Te Concept o History: Ancient and Modern in Between Past and Future,” in Hannah Arendt, Eight Exercises in Political Tought (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 63, 64.
58
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
reality, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that nature started to be consistently seen as the residue o uniormity, and could thus be opposed to culture, considered as the reuge o individuality, as it was amously ormulated by neo-Kantian philosophers o the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 47 o return to collective singulars, which I have characterized as the preerred intellectual tool o the historicist revolution o the Enlightenment, I would like to suggest that they express a kind o balance between the two equally undamental principles o our thinking—abstract universal meaning and reerence to particular occurrences—and hence between the logic o general names and that o proper names. o be sure, our intellect is so equipped that we always think both ways, and cannot separate the universal and the particular save analytically. And we most oen think in terms o both logics at the same time. o sum up, collective singulars are one o the main devices o thought. Tere always have been collective singulars, and there always will be. However, the role they play in this or that concrete system o thought may vary considerably. Within the bipolar semantic structure o meaning and reerence, the prevailing emphasis may be laid either on meaning or on reerence, and hence on the logic o either general names or proper names. Tus, as we have seen, medieval thought was characterized by a peculiar combination o uni versalism and particularism. Te gap between them was bridged by means o metaphorical thinking, which was acilitated by the act that both essences and individual occurrences were seen syncretistically. Analytical and empirical classicatory procedures were not typical o this style o thinking. Medieval thought could make little use o collective singulars, though it was certainly not completely ignorant o them. o the contrary, with the birth o the atomistic universe collective singulars saw their day o glory, because they had an aspect o classicatory devices and were quite suitable both or expressing uni versal meaning and or emphasizing the uniqueness o historical phenomena. Te new balance between the universal and the particular, however, was not so easy to sustain. Te situation was quite ambiguous. On the one hand, the ormation o the uture-oriented style o thought contributed to the emphasis on the universal aspects o historical concepts. On the other hand, urther development o the prototype theory o classication could produce an image o the world as an assortment o individual phenomena that escaped denition in universal terms. And this could present a real danger or the project o liberal democracy that was in the process o ormation in the Sattelzeit and its aermath. 47. See Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschalichen Begrifsbildung (Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1902).
summer 2011
59
Nikolay Koposov
Te combination o individualism and empiricism with universalism and uture-oriented thinking created a world view in which liberal democracy was the most logical solution to the problem o social organization. Liberalism was unthinkable without abstract individuals, and hence without an atomistic world view. But it was also not possible without universal values and general truths, and hence without a theory o classication that would not reduce collective concepts to proper names. Further atomization o the world view and the shi o the logical balance towards the logic o proper names could result in the destruction o universalism and the rise o particularism. Whewell’s thought is an interesting marginal case demonstrating this potential danger. He was a conservative who dared to draw radical logical conclusions rom the experience o modern science in order to restore the religious world view. Te idea o classes that escape denition was or him an argument in avor o the hypothesis that they had originated rom the archetypes in the mind o God. Te ramework o Whewell’s reasoning was essentially atomistic. But the notion o types that he sought to make central or the natural sciences had an undeniable anity with the organicist metaphor o the world. And the world o organic entities designated by proper names was certainly not the one in which liberal democracy would appear to be the most natural orm o society. Te conservative criticism o the Enlightenment was largely inspired by this vision o the world. Te danger o the prototype theory o categorization avant la lettre consisted in the act that it was exploring the organicist structures underlying the atomistic universe. Whewell pushed the theory o empirical classication to its limits, where it risked undermining the oundations o the project o liberal democracy. Nineteenth-century thought had thus to reestablish the value o general names, without abandoning the idea o the individual character o reality. John Stuart Mill was quite central to this new intellectual project. In his System o Logic, in 1843, he proposed a theory o classication that accounted or prototypical efects, but marginalized their role. Mill’s theory was heavily dependent on that o Whewell. But he reinterpreted Whewell’s prototype theory in such a way as to undermine its radical conservative implications. Te act that some categories are actually structured in terms o prototypes does not mean, or Mill, that eature analysis has nothing to do with empirical classication. An object can be apprehended as a whole, but also described as a list o properties. However, these properties are no longer seen as necessary, but only as likely or the members o the category. 48 Tis is the position that in recent debates about human categorization has become known as probabilism. Tanks to Mill’s eforts, atomism had been saely complemented by a nominalism that allowed or universal truths about the atomistic universe. Interestingly, a kind 48. Mill, A System o Logic, II: 314. See also Koposov, Logic o Democracy.
60
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
o conspiracy o silence caused the name and the theories o William Whewell to be largely orgotten almost until the end o the twentieth century. 49 oday’s proponents o the prototype theory are oen unaware o their orerunner in the early Victorian period.50 Mill’s thought had a powerul stabilizing efect on the development o logical theories in the nineteenth century, and more broadly on the modern style o thinking. However, there was a price to be paid, namely the marginalization o experimenting with the logic o proper names. As a result, instead o being considered a moment o synthesis, and o a productive tension, particularistic thinking has become a stronghold o the anti-Enlightenment historicism o the second hal o the nineteenth century, as well as o nationalist ideologies o the twentieth century. An emphasis on the “singularity” o collective singulars, oen accompanied by an organicist reduction o their classicatory unction, became typical or radical conservatives like Carl Schmitt and the ounder o Begrifsgeschichte, Otto Brunner, whose notion o “relatively universal type concepts” (relativ allgemeine ypenbegrife) was but a variation o the theory o collective singulars.51 Let me now return to current intellectual transormations. I do not think that social and political concepts can stop being collective singulars. Collective singulars are by no means an invention o the Sattelzeit, though they became central or Western thought as a result o the historicist intellectual revolution. What is likely to happen, however, is that their role can change, as well as their semantic structure, or in other words the balance between universalistic and particularistic tendencies in our thinking. My hypothesis is that with the collapse o the great narratives and the decline o uture-oriented thinking, a “historical turn” is happening in contemporary culture. It is maniest in the changes in method and approache o the social and human sciences, as has been documented in particular by errence McDonald and his colleagues. 52 It is even more visible in the rise o historical memory, the heritage industry, the politics o memory, and the “memory wars” that are so typical o the present-day political and intellectual climate. 53 raditional political ideologies 49. John Wettersten, Whewell’s Critics: Have Tey Prevented Him rom Doing Good? (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). 50. Tey usually trace this theory back to Ludwig Wittgenstein. See Lakof, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Tings, 16. 51. Otto Brunner, Land und Herrscha, 129. See also Gadi Algazi, “Otto Brunner—‘Konkrete Ordnung’ und die Sprache der Zeit,” in Geschichtsschreibung als Legitimationswissenscha, 1918–1945, Peter Schöttler, ed. (Frankurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 166–203. 52. errence J. McDonald, “Introduction,” Te Historic urn in the Human Sciences, errence J. McDonald, ed. (Ann Arbor: Te University o Michigan Press, 1996), 1. 53. On the rise o historical memory, see Pierre Nora, ed. Lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92), vols. 1–7. See also David Lowenthal, Te Past is a Foreign Country (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords o Memory:
summer 2011
61
Nikolay Koposov
were largely based on this or that version o global history. Due to the current decay o ideologies and the crisis o master narratives, contemporary politics has become heavily dependent on the past, but on a “new past,” or the past whose structures are undergoing considerable change. What was at stake in the ideological battles o the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were rst o all conceptions o history, be it world history or national history, because the latter was dependent on the understanding o the ormer. Certainly there were also conicts between countries over concrete episodes o the past. oday’s politics o history is mostly about such conicts. With the end o the Cold War the battles o the master narratives seem to have come to an end. Mutual accusations o misdeeds committed by the nations against each other have taken the oreront o the scene. o be sure, there are attempts (especially in Eastern Europe, which is now living through a belated process o orming national states) to recreate national narratives. But writing a new roman national (Pierre Nora) at the turn o the twenty-rst century is intellectually problematic, precisely because the “classical” national narratives o the nineteenth century presupposed a conception o universal history which they sought either to exempliy (as was the case in France or England) or to negate (as most oen happened in Germany or Russia) by telling a national story. oday’s past, which has been decomposed into ragments as a result o the crisis o the uture, resists reshaping in terms o national narratives as well. Or more exactly, the past can exist now either as a labyrinth o “lieux de mémoire” or as a catalogue o national insults. Tat is why some scholars speak about “history-less elites” now governing Eastern European countries (including Russia). 54 It would perhaps be more exact to say that these are elites without a vision o history, but trying hard to exploit the ragments o the past. Eastern Europe seems an extreme case o a broader transormation. In other words, what is happening now in contemporary thought is a historical turn aer the end o global history. In these conicts, entities designated by collective singulars are the main actors. However, the way in which collective singulars are used today seems to be undergoing changes. As we know, there are various types o collective singulars. Tose o them that are linked to the class vision o society have beTe ransormation o radition in American Culture (New York: Alred A. Knop, 1991); Raphael Samuel, Teatres o Memory (vol. 1): Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994); Michael S. Roth, Te Ironist’s Cage: Memory, rauma, and the Construction o History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Kerwin L. Klein, “On the Emergence o Memory in Historical Discourse,” Representations 69, no. 1 (2000): 127–50 ; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Memory and History: Liturgical ime and Historical ime,” History and Teory 41, no. 2 (2002): 149–62. 54. Shari J. Cohen, Politics Without a Past: Te Absence o History in Postcommunist Nationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 4–7.
62
contributions to the history of concepts
Collective Singulars: A Reinterpretation
come less important now. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are no longer categories o actual political thought. o the contrary, the concepts o nations or ethnic and religious groups have become more important, even central. And notwithstanding the heroic eforts that sociologists and anthropologists have undertaken to “deconstruct” them, they are most oen perceived as primordial entities, ollowing the organicist metaphor o the world. But names o social groups are more general and less singular than names o countries or nations. Indeed, social groups are designated by common nouns, while nation-states have proper names. We know that the type o name is not the only actor determining its meaning. But it is not irrelevant either. Te “typical” proportion in which elements o proper name and elements o general name combine to orm the meaning o this or that collective singular is also gradually changing today. ake or example the concept o Europe, which expresses what can perhaps be seen as today’s most ambitious project or the uture. It is a proper name. Tirty years ago, main projects or the uture (like communism or democracy ) were designated by more “general” names. But the concept o Europe has a strong general component as well, because it can stand or civilization, in the same way as the concept o the West , the latter being a more “general” concept than Europe. What seems to be happening now is that the notion o the West is gradually splitting into the two more concrete concepts o Europe and the U.S.A., and that these concepts tend to be understood less with reerence to the universal idea o civilization and more with reerence to the individual processes o ormation that have brought these entities into being. I even those collective singulars that stood or the “main road o civilization” are now becoming more “proper” names, it is no wonder that this is also true o other collective names. Putin’s Russia is an interesting case here. 55 Te concept o sovereign democracy, which or several years served as its ocial sel-description, reects the search or a more proper name than that o democracy, which alongside its universal meaning also contains a reerence to a part o the world, the West. It was precisely in order to distinguish Russia rom the West within the broadly understood category o “democratic countries” that the concept o sovereign democracy was coined. Compare this concept to the one that was widely used to reer to the U.S.S.R.—the “rst country o socialism.” Formally, the two expressions look similar—they subsume the country under a generic name and indicate its “diferentia specica.” But the logical status o the entities that they presuppose is quite diferent. Being the rst country o socialism meant leading humankind on its common way to 55. For more details, see Nikolay Koposov, Память строгого режима: История и по литика в России [Strict security memory: History and politics in Russia], (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2011).
summer 2011
63
Nikolay Koposov
the happy uture. Te universal component o this concept was rather strong. Being a sovereign democracy means just being diferent, without even speciying the way in which it is diferent. Tis is, thereore, much more a proper name. It is oen said that contemporary societies are ar more complex than those o the past, which inevitably leads to their ragmentation, and hence to the impossibility o relying on general concepts or their understanding. Tis may be true, so that the ragmentation o our vocabulary and the rise o proper names can to some extent be seen as a result o the ragmentation o society. But it is also possible to turn this argument another way around. Nineteenth-century society, though perhaps less complex than our own, was ar more complex than its image as reected in basic historical terms. All historians know that their terminology simplies reality, and that basic historical terms in particular are not very useul or the description o “what actually happened.” Tis is not what they were coined or. Teir unction was, rst and oremost, to ormulate projects or the uture. oday they are losing their attractiveness because o the evaporation o these projects. Te domain o experience starts to prevail over the horizon o expectations. In the light o this new experience, the complexity o the present is becoming more evident than ever. Te world is being seen as more particularistic because o the ragmentation o our world view. However, I do not think that this is a return to premodern habits o thought. Rather, we are conronted with a new shi toward the atomization o our world view and the decline o thinking in terms o universal values. In the conditions o decline o universalistic uture-oriented ideologies, the crisis o the master narratives, and the rise o memory, there is a tendency to shi the balance toward the logic o proper names. Collective singulars are losing their connection to the wider history that bestowed on them their universal meaning, and are becoming more “singular” than they have ever been since the Sattelzeit.
64
contributions to the history of concepts
