IDEAS IN HISTORY

Why Brutus tabbed

"The key to every man is his thought," wrote Emerson. But how should the historian approach that most characteristic of human activities? And what is the relationship of the history of ideas to the history of events? Elie Kedourie here ponders one of the cen- tral problems of the historian's craft.

by Elie Kedourie

he study of history assumes fects, but rather that it is a complex of time and place, without choices that are by definition unpredict- which a past event cannot be able-and to say choice is necessarily to understood. Both are neces- imply mind and will. sary, but are they sufficient? If choice, mind, and will are the hall- The question arises because marks of human action, and if history there are often inquiries that are clearly not proper is concerned with human activity, couched, as the physical sciences are, in then a description of the historian's busi- terms of timeless causes and effects but that ness such as that offered by the English phi- we do not consider to be history-inquiries losopher R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of relating to geology, botany, and zoology, in History (1946) would seem at first sight to which it is necessary to specify time and be reasonable and convincing. "Historical place. Such inquiries have indeed been knowledge," Collingwood says, "is the sometimes described as history. Thus the knowledge of what mind has done in the author of a book on ornithology dating past." He says, further, that the "historian of from the end of the 18th century could title politics or warfare, presented with an ac- his book A History of British Birds, and count of certain actions done by Julius Cae- French schoolchildren have long had to sar, tries to understand these actions, that is study a subject called histoire naturelle. to discover what thoughts in Caesar's mind Natural history, however, is clearly not determined him to do them." This implies history, and we may distinguish between the historian's envisaging for himself the the two by saying that, unlike natural his- situation in which Caesar stood and think- tory, history proper is concerned with hu- ing for himself what Caesar thought about man activity, to understand which we must the situation and the possible ways of deal- indeed see it as taking place at a particular ing with it. This activity Collingwood calls time and in a specific place. But of human "the reenactment of past thought in the his- activity we also predicate that it is coherent torian's mind." Can one speak in this way? and purposive, that it is not a sequence of Can one "reenact" past thought? The histo- (changeless) causes issuing in (uniform) ef- rian, after all, is someone who, having

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present to him certain objects, documents, offered, then there can be no question of etc., which he comes to consider as "evi- the historian "reenacting" past politics or dence," proceeds to compose a narrative past warfare as conducted by Caesar or Na- that accounts satisfactorily for, and is seen poleon or Churchill. Ten or 20 historians, to remain within, the four comers of the each giving a different account of some "evidence." This is what distinguishes his- past action or event, cannot possibly all be torical from fictional narrative. reenacting the same event. Again, to men- tion these examples, widely separated in vidence, however, is neither fixed time, is to make the point that the nearness nor univocal. New evidence is al- or remoteness of the past does not affect ways cropping up; indeed, anything their argument. Furthermore, the historian to a historian's eye can suddenly and un- has the privilege-his only privilege-of predictably become evidence. Further, all hindsight. He knows more than Churchill evidence is equivocal: The historian has to or Napoleon can have known about their account satisfactorily for all the evidence, own situation. If nothing else, the existence and there can be more than one way of do- of this knowledge must forbid any talk of ing so. Consider for instance what the his- reenactment. torians reviewed in Pieter Geyl's Napoleon The way in which Collingwood envis- For and Against (1944) have done in their ages the historian's activity, as a reenact- diverse ways with the evidence relating to ment of past thought, leads him to his well- Napoleon, or again how other historians known and striking definition of history: have tried, each in his own particular way, "All history," he asserts, "is the history of to identify Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the thought." If this means that all history ex- Sonnets. If so many different accounts are hibits the presence of purpose and choice,

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and therefore of mind, then no possible dence. When we hear that "Brutus" objection can be made. But Collingwood stabbed "Caesar," if we are to go beyond does mean something more by this defini- this bare, sterile, and meaningless record- tion. In order to illustrate his meaning, he and it is not always possible to do so, as the goes on to describe the historian's activity great number of unsolved murders testi- in this way: fies-we have to provide a coherent ac- count of the situation, an account that will The historian of philosophy, reading make comprehensible the incident of , is trying to know what Plato Brutus's stabbing of Caesar. If we uossess thought when he expressed himself in sufficient evidence, and if we have industry certain words. The only way in which he and imagination, we will proceed to exhibit can do this is by thinking it for him- Marcus Julius Brutus in his antecedents, self.. . . So the historian of politics or his character, his associations, and his po- warfare, presented with an account of litical activities. We will describe the politi- certain actions done by Julius Caesar, that is, tries to discover what thoughts in cal situation he confronted, what we may Caesar's mind determined him to do call the decay of the traditional republican them. This implies envisaging for himself institutions, and Caesar's roughly getting what Caesar thought about the situation hold of power. We will show Caesar's politi- in which Caesar stood, and thinking for cal and military activities, we will trace his himself what Caesar thought about the dealings with Brutus, and we will try to situation and the possible ways of dealing show if these dealings can have led to the with it. stabbing. What we may possibly say goes something like this: Thinking for himself what Caesar thought? Marcus Junius Brutus was a descendant As is well-known, the novelist Flaubert said, of Lucius Junius Brutus, the nephew of Madame Bovary c'est moi. Madame Bovary Tarquinus Superbus, the last king of Rome, is Flaubert simply because she is entirely against whom Lucius Junius Brutus is said his creation, but Martin Gilbert cannot say, to have led the uprising that ended kingship Churchill c'est moi, John Morley cannot in Rome and established republican institu- say, Gladstone c'est moi. tions. This Lucius Junius Brutus became Collingwood's definition, again, leads one of the first two consuls under the Re- him to put on the same footing an account public, and he is said to have put to death of Caesar's wars and an account of Plato's his own sons, who had attempted to restore philosophy, and thus to refuse to make a the Tarquins. Marcus Junius Brutus was distinction between what may be called the also the son of a half-sister of Cato of Utica history of events and what may be called and married to Porcia, Cato's daughter. the history of ideas. Is this distinction really This Cato of Utica was the great-grandson superfluous? Let us again borrow a state- of Cato the Censor, who in his time ment of Collingwood's: "When an historian preached a return to the simple virtues of asks, 'Why did Brutus stab Caesar?' he the early Republic, and who was a man means, 'What did Brutus think, which given to the uncompromising assertion of made him decide to stab Caesar?'" History, political principles. We will also say that in we have said, is concerned with giving an the civil war between and Caesar, account of past human activity, an account Brutus was on Pompey's side but that after guided and delimited by the available evi- the in which Pompey

Elie Kedourie, a Wilson Center Fellow, died in Washington, D.C. on June 29, 1992, only days after completing this essay. Born in 1926 in Baghdad, Iraq, he was educated in England, where he lived and wrote for most of his life. Kedourie, who taught at the London School of Economics, was a well- known authority on the modem history of the Middle East, but his interests extended to the history of European political thought. The recipient of many honors, he was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Kedourie founded the journal Middle Eastern Studies and was the a~lthoror editor of 19 books, among them Nationalism (1960), The Chatham House Version (1984), and Politics in the Middle East (1992). Copyright @ 1992 by Elie Kedourie.

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was defeated, he was pardoned by Caesar, accidents, coincidences, and unpremedi- who made him first governor of Cisalpine tated and unregarded happenings issuing in Gaul and then praetor. We will argue that a prodigious and unexpected events. We re- man of this character-an unbending char- call Pascal's observation that if Cleopatra's acter (the 48 percent interest he charged nose had been a shade longer the history of on money lent to Salamis in Cyprus, to col- the world would have been different. We lect which his agent shut several prominent recall also the meteorological conditions in Salaminians in the Senate House and kept the Mediterranean in the year 1798 which them there without food until some of facilitated Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt them died, may illustrate this aspect of his and his later escape to France which, had character)-also aware and proud of his these conditions been different, would have ancestors and what he believed they stood put out of the question the 18th Brumaire for, mistrustful of Caesar and his appetite and all that followed. Again, if after the first for power, fearful of betraying his principles sustained bombardment of Gallipoli in and his ancestors out of gratitude to Caesar, March 1915, the British command could determines-and Caesar's benefits make have known that the Ottoman troops had him all the more determined-to kill the exhausted their ammunition, the Darda- usurper and save republican institutions. nelles expedition could have had quite a This is a very short abridgement of what different outcome, with far-reaching conse- a historian would say in answer to quences for Russia and the Middle East. Collingwood's question, Why did Brutus stab Caesar? The answer goes far beyond hese are not a matter of thought in what could be an answer-if an answer the literal and precise sense. were possible-to the question as T Thought is, of course, involved in Collingwood reformulates it, namely, What the decisionto cope with the situation in did Brutus think which made him decide to this way rather than that, but it does not, all stab Caesar? The answer to this particular the same, make Collingwood's language question understood literally and precisely any more satisfactory. Even taken figura- is, in the absence of evidence about it, that tively, Collingwood's language is still not God alone knows-the All-seeing and All- satisfactory. Whatever such figurative lan- knowing, as Muslims describe him. guage is intended to convey, it does in fact Brutus's stabbing of Caesar-or rather obscure, indeed obliterate, differences be- an account, having regard to the evidence, tween the historian's activity when he is of how it could possibly have happened-it elucidating the fortunes of a particular no- always being remembered that it need tion used and modified by successive gen- never have happened, either at all or in the erations, and when he is dealing with a way in which it did happen-is the kind of statesman's character and career, or the thing one means by a history of events. It is ups and downs of a firm, or the course of a an account of men in the peculiarity, idio- military campaign. There is a difference be- syncrasy, and specificity of their personal- tween having to cope with winds and tides, ities, outlooks, capacities, and positions, and having to examine, scrutinize, and confronting or dealing with other men dif- bring out the implications of an idea or an ferently placed in respect to these things, argument. The aim in the criticism of ideas and confronting or dealing with them in is to effect the utmost transparency of un- situations different from one another at derstanding, which no admiral could ap- least in respect of time and place, initiating, proach, desire, or comprehend. originating, taking measures, parrying, re- A question, or an objection, may arise. sponding, reacting-the vocabulary we use History, it might be said, is a seamless robe. to describe all this amply indicating that The past contains no obviously necessary here are present an involved purpose and boundary shutting off one event from an- choice, mind and will. other: For the All-knowing, history is a We may then say that there are many chain linking every happening to all the objections to describing all history as the other happenings in the world. As Leibnitz history of thought. Taken literally and pre- put it: Tout est conspirant, all things work cisely, it is not true, since history includes together, so that a division of history into

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"periods" or "areas" or "subjects" has al- tory. They believe that somehow the latter ways something arbitrary and temporary is deeper, more important, more funda- about it, and we could say that any event in mental than the former: that the study of the past implies in principle the whole past, "feudal society," to take the title of Marc that the historian is led by the very logic of Bloch's well-known work, is more impor- his activity to look upon history as universal tant than the study of the Hundred Years' histo*. War, that the study of inflation in the 16th However, even in the writing of univer- century should somehow take precedence sal history, the historian cannot treat events over the study of the so-called wars of reli- as an undifferentiated and uniform body of gion in that century. If it is taken seriously, water flowing under the bridge. The evi- the metaphor "structure" would mean the dence (by which he is bound) will seem to transformation of history into sociology, disclose highlights and obscurities, ups and and "feudalism," "capitalism," etc., would downs. If only because of this, the historian become changeless ideal types. The distinc- will be led to enhance or emphasize here tion between structural and event-centered and pass over in silence there. But the history is, however, fallacious, since so- record of historiography shows that "Dark called structures are also events continu- Ages" can suddenly become illuminated ously changing into other structures, that and take on the strong hues of a distinctive is, into other events, through the mediation character. This is the case of the Dark Ages of events. The change in the ties of feudal of Europe, consigned for so long to dark- dependence may be so gradual as to be al- ness by a Renaissance periodization that most imperceptible, but it is change of the considered nothing to be worthwhile in the same character as something more spec- interval between classical antiquity and its tacular-such as a change of dynasty or the own day. It is only yesterday, in the last 150 outbreak of a war, or a nose job for Cleopa- years or so, that historians have begun to tra. Histoire structurale is histoire seek for and examine the evidence pertain- hv6nementielle, and feudalism is no more ing to the Dark Ages of Europe. Sometimes, important or fundamental than the Hun- again, dark ages can stay obstinately dark. dred Years' War. It all depends on the ques- Thus, the couple of centuries of British his- tion you ask, on the seam you decide to tory following the Roman evacuation of the make in the seamless fabric of history. island have remained dark because, though Because it is incontrovertibly true that there is a "past" there, no one has been history is a seamless robe, it is no less true able to describe its particular contours and that the historian's activity seems to involve specific anfractuosities. the making of seams-which are, however, highly provisional, being continuously f the historian does not, and cannot, made and unmade, and this not only when look upon the past as placid and uni- he is dealing with a "period," a "subject," formly flowing water, he is not obliged or an "area," but also when he forswears to look upon it as a wild and romantic such delimitation and proclaims the inten- "English garden." He may even consider tion to write a universal history. Arnold such a picture highly misleading. He would Toynbee's Study of History (1946-61) is the say: I do not see any Niagaras here, but I do most ambitious attempt so far to write a see water slowly, imperceptibly flowing and universal history. Toynbee articulates this meandering over the centuries. This is the history in terms of what he calls "civiliza- picture called to mind by H. S. Maine's tions," which he considers (arbitrarily) to work on ancient law, or by Fustel de be the only "intelligible" objects of histori- Coulanges's on the polis and the civitas. cal study. In his first volume Toynbee The picture is given a theoretical defense, thought he had identified 20 of the then- indeed argued to be the only true likeness, "intelligible" civilizations. At the end of his by the school of history associated with the life some four decades later, he increased French journal Annales. The founders and these to 28. leaders of this school distinguish between If, then, the historian's activity is quite histoire &v2nementielle, event-centered his- impracticable without the making of seams tory, and histoire structurale, structural his- (even if they are made only to be unmade),

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if an historian is to distinguish and discrimi- self to such a general proposition, he still nate within the historical past, then the has to elucidate what "republic" meant to question will always arise concerning any Brutus and in his time. The historian's in- particular distinction or delimitation quiry would be one into linguistic usage ob- whether it is at all, or more, or less appro- taining at a particular time and place. If he priate.- If so, we can examine whether the were to extend his inquiry into the meaning distinction between a history of ideas and a of the term from its first appearance in the history of events is appropriate, and the evidence at his disposal, to follow and ac- manner in which it is appropriate. count for the changes in meaning which it underwent from res publica through to res et us consider Brutus once again. publica christiana, and then from "republi- The historian's account of Brutus's can virtue" and "republican legality" to L stabbing Caesar dwelt on his con- "republic" as contrasted to "monarchy," he cern that the traditional republican institu- would then be doing a kind of history of tions of Rome be defended against Caesar's ideas. The first thing to be said here is that ambition and restored to their original con- the history of ideas arises because human dition. When we speak of "republic" and thought is expressed, communicated, and "republican institutions," the expressions handed down in words. As Genesis 2:20 denote a cluster of ideas which we think puts it: "And Adam gave names to all cattle, the evidence warrants us in asserting that and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast they were present to Brutus, that they con- in the field." stituted some of the ways in which Brutus "Adam gave names to all cattle": If that articulated his objections to Caesar and jus- had remained the extent of the human tified the conspiracy and the assassination. vocabulary, the activity of the historian of We might be tempted to take this for a jus- ideas would have been extremely re- tification of Collingwood's assertion that all stricted, and its interest very small indeed. history is the history of thought. We would However, the ostensive function of lan- then be understanding the assertion in a guage-the naming of cattle-is not its way different from Collingwood's. We most significant one. In a celebrated essay would be committing ourselves to the gen- on the origin of language, J. G. Herder ar- eral proposition that "ideas govern events" gued that language can never have been, or that "ideas move men": a proposition even at the origin, purely ostensive, be- both current and popular, exemplified in, cause man as active mind never merely cat- say, the conclusions of John Maynard alogues the things surrounding him but is Keynes's General Theory of Employment, always simultaneously expressing his atti- Interest and Money, where he says that tude toward them.

Practical men, who believe themselves f man, then, is a self-conscious creature, quite exempt from any intellectual influ- feeling a need to represent his experi- ences, are usually the slaves of some de- ence in a fabulatory, symbolical, or rati- funct economist. Madmen in authority, ocinative manner. then words acauire from who hear voices in the air, are distilling use in human intercourse a burden of nu- their frenzy from some academic scrib- ances, associations, meanings, and over- bler of a few years back. tones which are both implicit and continu- ously changing. This is why, as Francis Whatever the exact significance of this Bacon said, words shoot back upon the un- general proposition, it is clearly incompati- derstandings of the mightiest; the reason ble with the historical mode of thought. In why, as the poet T. S. Eliot puts it, historical understanding, events have to be Words strain, understood as mediated by other events, al- Crack and sometimes break under the ways in a context of time and place. In his- burden, tory, an event cannot be directly caused in Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, the same way that pushing a button causes Decay with imprecision, will not stay in an engine to start. place, If the historian refuses to commit him- Will not stay still.

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The historian of ideas has, in a manner in what the maxim came to mean in the transcending lexicography, to exhibit the usage of successive statesmen, diplomats, character and progression of this continu- and writers, according to their changing ous change. views about the Ottoman Empire and the Take as an example the maxim of Brit- possibility of its reform and also according ish foreign policy in the 19th century, that to the states against whom it was directed, British' interests required the maintenance the earnestness with which it was accepted, of the independence and integrity of the Ot- and the manner in which it became, to- toman Empire. The maxim occurs in state ward the end of its history, a meaningless papers, speeches, and official and unofficial and convenient cliche. As it happens, just discussions from about 1830. At its origin, it as it has a particular beginning, the history was a practical rule of thumb, formulated of this maxim also has an end, for in No- in the course of coping with a situation in vember 1914 Britain and the Ottoman Em- which Britain was a powerful state with pire went to war. Ironically, for a year or so means such as to endow this maxim with thereafter, the maxim carried on a kind of more than academic significance; a state, ghostly existence, for we see an official in- moreover, which had substantial interests terdepartmental committee in 19 15 laying in regions whose safety would be affected it down that the independence and integrity by a change in the control of Ottoman terri- of the Ottoman Empire remained a British tory, to the benefit of powerful European interest. To write the history of this maxim rivals tempted by Ottoman weakness into is to do the history of ideas. trying to annex some of that empire's do- mains. This state of affairs underlay the Near Eastern crisis of the 1830s involving Britain, France, and Russia. The maxim was formulated during this crisis and in the historian's eye is inseparable from it. To write the history of the Near Eastern crisis like in the life of mankind and in is to write a history of events, and this his- the development of the individual," torv will of course include this narticular A writes the philosopher F. H. Brad- event, namely the formulation of the ley, "the deed comes first, and later the re- maxim concerning the independence and flection." More gnomically, the poet Paul integrity of the Ottoman Empire, which is Valhry, echoing and emendating Descartes, inseparable from these events. wrote: "Tantot je pense et tantot je suif- Is it really inseparable? We have reason now I think and now I am. This is another to think the contrary, for the maxim, once way of making the distinction among formulated, begins a life of its own which events, ideas, and their respective history. If may have little connection with the circum- the deed comes first and the reflection af- stances of its coming to be. Such a maxim terward, yet the reflection, which takes one can have a life of its own because states are specific form of words, owing to its elo- generally stable entities, as are, also gener- quence, to its evocative power, or to some ally, international alignments and rivalries; other reason, may come to have significant as are, similarly, the traditions of depart- connections with subsequent action. Con- ments of state. Distinct from the history of sider Don Quixote, who immersed himself the Eastern Question, which is a history of in romances of chivalry; Madame Bovary, diplomatic and military transactions, there who read too many sentimental novels; or is the history of the maxim itself. This his- Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, of tory may be elucidated under two distinct whom the chronicler Commines writes: but related aspects. There is, first, the char- 'Covetous he was of glory, which was the acter of the maxim as a maxim, i.e. as a chief cause that made him move so many general rule, and its influence as such on wars. For he desired to imitate those an- the actions of statesmen at different points cient Princes whose fame continueth till in the history of the Eastern Question or as this present." For, says another chronicler, a justification given for these actions. And Charles "delighted only in romantic histor- there is, second, the elucidation of changes ies and the feats of Julius Caesar, Pompey,

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Hannibal, Alexander the Great and many scribes what he is doing: other great and high men whom he wished to follow or imitate." We shall now look at another spectacle There is, thus, a continuous mutual in- which will show us, in the coherent ob- fluence of action upon reflection, and fur- jectives which we have studied, the ther action following the preceding reflec- incoherency which will partially change tion, giving rise to yet further reflection, in them. We have, in fact, to examine how an endless gallery of (distorting) mirrors. one of the transitions, which make the history of ideas a perpetual change, has From this is apparent the particular diffi- taken place; how a doctrine was dis- culty of doing the history of ideas-a diffi- solved, not through the intervention of culty further complicated by the fact that outside enemies, but from the inside; words over time acquire a miscellaneous how obscurities subsisted in a theory burden of meanings that do not obviously which seemed most lucid, contradictions or necessarily cohere with one another in a system which seemed most logical; (e.g., Whig, Tory, Conservative, Liberal); or how a proclaimed victory was yet prema- else that words used, to start with, in a tech- ture; and how an immense effort to attain nical sense, come to acquire a common human happiness was once again to fail. currency: enthusiasm (which was once strictly part of the vocabulary of Christian In the same chapter he poses questions theology), establishment (which had to do which the book purports to answer: with the position of the Anglican Church within the state), melancholy (which Through what psychological necessities, formed part of the classification of "hu- through what subtle operations which, to mors" in ancient Greek medicine), trau- start with, were almost invisible; not only matic (which comes to us from the science through what estrangements, but rather through what help, through what com- of psychiatry). The difficulty is akin to what promises, through what misunderstand- is involved in trying to use a gun whose ings did the philosophe set free the anti- bore is subject to continual and unpredict- philosophe and let loose the man of able change. feeling? The maxim relating to the indepen- dence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire To exhibit these transitions and their is an example of an idea whose history is mediations is finicky and difficult work. It intimately tied to the history of events, to can be made even more difficult. not to sav wars, changes in alliances, in the balance of impossible, if we allow ourselves to fall power, etc. There are ideas not so, or not so prey to two prevalent and powerful tempta- intimately, connected: the idea of the Trin- tions. The first I have mentioned earlier, ity, or of happiness, or of natural law. These namely the assumption that ideas govern are really clusters of ideas more or less events. John Milton in Areopagitica gives a transparent, more or less coherent. If we striking example of this belief. "For Books," were to do the history of these clusters of he says, "are not absolutely dead things, but ideas, we would see that this means tracing doe contain a potencie of life in them to be how the "more or less" of transparency or as active as that soule whose progeny they coherence gives rise to successive objec- are.. . . I know they are as lively, and as tions, rejoinders, changes of emphasis and vigorously productive as those fabulous reformulations, such that through a process Dragons teeth; and being sown up and of continuous internal change a particular down, may chance to spring up armed cluster of ideas ends by looking like an en- men." Thomas Hobbes. too. in Leviathan. tirely different cluster. In his European is extremely vehement' about the subver- Thought in the 18th Century (1954) Paul sion and disorder which the reading of clas- Hazard examines how, by this process of sical literature and philosophy caused in his internal change, a cluster of ideas roughly own day. The picture that Milton and described as classical becomes the cluster Hobbes paint is of a special situation that of ideas we loosely describe as romantic. frequently is taken to be generally true of This is how Hazard, in the first paragraph of all politics. The situation that both depict is the first chapter of his second volume, de- one that obtains when an ideological style

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of politics, in which great importance is at- live. This, however, is untenable, since con- tached to general formulations and bookish temporaries of the same class so-called,are knowledge, has taken hold. Milton and found again and again to hold very differ- Hobbes of course lived through a period ent, not to say irreconcilable ideas: Con- when this ideological style waxed very sider Thomas Hobbes and Lord Clarendon, strong. -Even so, contrary to their belief, it is who belonged to the same intellectual set not possible to establish a direct, causal before the English Civil Wars, the second of connection between Lenin's What Is To Be whom vehemently attacked the political Done? and the liquidation of the kulaks, be- doctrine which the first was to set out in tween Mein Kampf and Auschwitz. Leviathan, or Jean-Paul Marat and Joseph The second, even more prevalent temp- de Maistre, the one a revolutionary and the tation is to believe that ideas are "pro- other a reactionary. The sociology of duced by, are a "reflection" of, events, knowledge, further, finds itself in a vicious that they are a "superstructure" resting on circle: The sociologist accounts for men's some "substructure" somehow more fun- ideas by their social circumstances, and the damental, more real than the "superstruc- cogency of these ideas, the pursuit of truth ture." Such a view, held by Marxism, and or coherence which they embody, cease to more generally, by the sociology of knowl- matter. If he is right, the sociologist finds edge, makes impossible the pursuit of the himself in the same boat, obliging us to dis- history of ideas. It is pointless to bother count wholly what he says about the sub- about the ideas in men's heads since we jects of his study as being the mere reflec- know that they are the reflection of their tion of his own circumstances and class class interests or the time in which they interests: the biter bit.

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