28
PARTISAN REVIEW
as Goethe once defined history. Yet Kant also saw, what others had
seen before
him,
that once you look at history in its entirety (
im
Crossen),
rather than at single events and the ever-frustrated inten–
tions of human agents, everything suddenly makes sense, because there
is always at least a story to tell. The process as a whole appears to be
guided by an "intention of nature" unknown to acting men, but
comprehensible to those who come after them. By pursuing their own
aims
without rhyme or reason men seem to be led by "the guiding
thread of reason"
(Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in welt–
buergerlicher Absicht).
It is of some importance to remember that Kant, like Vico
before him, was already aware of what Hegel later called "the cun–
ning of reason" (Kant occasionally called it "the ruse of nature" ) .
He even had some rudimentary insight into historical dialectics, as
when he pointed out that nature pursues its over-all aims through
"the antagonism of men in society . . . without which men, good–
natured like the sheep they tend, would hardly know how to give a
higher value to their own existence than is possessed by their cattle."
This shows to what extent the very idea of history as a process
suggests that in their actions men are led by something of which
they are not necessarily conscious and which finds no direct expres–
sion in the action itself. Or, to put it another way, it shows how
extremely useful the modern concept of history proved to be in
giving the secular political realm a meaning which it otherwise seemed
to be devoid of. In Kant, in contrast to Hegel, the motive for the
modern escape from politics into history is still quite clear. It is the
escape into the "whole," and the escape is prompted by the mean–
inglessness of the particular. And since Kant's primary interest was
still in the nature and principles of political (or as he would say,
moral) action, he was able to perceive the crucial drawback of the
new approach, the one great stumbling block which no philosophy of
history and no concept of progress can ever remove. In Kant's own
words: "It will always remain bewildering ... that the earlier gen–
erations seem to carry on their burdensome business only for the
sake of the later . . . and that only the last should have the good
fortune to dwell in the [completed] building"
(Ibid.).
The bewildered regret and great diffidence with which Kant re–
signed himself to introducing a concept of history into his political
