HISTORY AND IMMORTALITY
31
over, since history in its modem version was conceived primarily as
a process, it showed a peculiar and inspiring affinity to action, which,
indeed, in contrast to
all
other human activities, consists first of all
of starting processes-a fact of which human experience has of course
always been aware, even though the preoccupation of philosophy with
making as the most central human form of activity has prevented the
elaboration of an articulate terminology and precise description. The
very notion of process, which is so highly characteristic of modem
science, both natural and historical, probably had its origin in this
fundamental experience of action, to which secularization lent an
emphasis such as it had not known since the very early centuries
of Greek culture, before the rise of the
polis
and the victory of the
Socratic school. History in its modem version could come to terms
with this experience; and though it failed to save politics itself from
the old disgrace, it has at least bestowed upon the record of past
events that share of earthly immortality to which the modem age
necessarily aspired. Though the process itself was thus saved, the
single deeds and acts constituting the realm of politics, properly
speaking, were left in limbo. Men no longer dared to claim "immortal
glory" from posterity.
Today the Kantian and Hegelian way of becoming reconciled
to reality through understanding the innermost meaning of the entire
historical process seems to be quite as much refuted by our ex–
perience as the simultaneous attempt of pragmatism and utilitarian–
ism to "make history" and impose upon reality the preconceived
meaning and law of man. While trouble throughout the modem
age has as a rule started with the natural sciences and has been the
consequence of experience gained in the attempt to know the uni–
verse, this time the refutation rises simultaneously out of the physical
and political fields.
In a public discussion Heidegger once pointed to the weird fact
that one can prove everything by deduction from axioms, not only
in the field of mental constructions such as over-all interpretations
of the whole historical process, but in natural science as
well.~
We
may recall, in this context, Heisenberg's statement that man, when–
ever he tries to learn about things which are neither himself nor
owe their existence to him, will ultimately encounter nothing but
4 See p. 32 for note 4.
