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PARTISAN REVIEW
as periods of stability. Historical continuity is not a norm but a
method of cognition.
An
event is perceived as historical
if
it is dem–
onstrated as a continuation of the historical process. Thus, gradual–
ness is a category of cognition through which an event is seen as
historical. Therefore, any event which is historical (even the most
revolutionary and untraditional) may be shown to have its roots in
the social and historical past. But to apply history as a norm and to
demand that in politics actors must regard themselves as bound by
history brings history itself to a standstill. "The error of all histori–
cism, then, rests on elevating a category of historical cognition to a
norm of political action.
mo
Political problems are problems of value, and history by itself
gives no answer to these problems. To affirm all of history is to af–
firm the evil that is mixed with the good. To find an answer to po–
litical problems from an examination of history is actually to go
beyond history to ethics, perhaps to a concealed crypto-ethic. To
select facts from history implies a principle of selection which in
turn is based on a value system. In some cases values are selected
from the golden age of some idealized version of a pre-industrial
period. Thus there are utopian conservatives as well as utopian
radicals. But nothing is gained by attacking utopian visions of the
future and replacing them with fantasies about the past.
Iron-clad traditionalism and historicism raise the question of
human freedom, which leads to the conservative view of man and
society. In many forms of conservative thought
(mutatis mutandis,
in ancient Hellenic writings as well as those of contemporaries like
Ortega) the individual is conceived as the representative of a type.
He is considered free to develop only according to the potential and
the limits the law of his type determines for him. But it would be
dangerous to the security of institutions, the conservative believes, to
allow individuals themselves to interpret and determine what con–
stitutes their own inner law of development. Therefore, the inner
law is objectified and its locus is found in the existing structure of
social orders and classes. In order to prevent conflict between the
individual principles of development of the various classes and com-
10 Ibid.
