On the mighty oak

An oak in its prime is a marvel of nature. Throughout history, oak trees have contributed to human history in the form of material for artefacts such as the Bronze Age oak-coffins in Denmark, the Iron Age Nydam Boat, the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, countless beams in medieval cathedrals and Elizabethan housing, and picture frames.

Today, dendrochronology can provide some answers to how oak was used throughout the ages. Thus, Aoife Daly who wrote her PhD thesis on oak ship timber in northern Europe is now beginning to combine dendochronological analyses with archive material in order to determine the geographical area from which the timber originated, as well as to pinpoint the age of the tree, and when it was felled.

Oaks feature in history, myths, legends and fairy tales. Tales abound of the sacred oak of Zeus in Dodona; Thor’s oak in Gaesmaer; of how Robin Hood and his Merry men cavorted among the oaks of Sherwood Forest; or of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree that starts off as an oak tree with acorns.

The future King Charles II is said to have hidden himself in an oak tree after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 in Boscobel Wood and after the Restoration, the 29th May was celebrated as Royal Oak or Oak Apple Day for about two hundred years. Obtaining enough supplies of oak for the sailing ships of the British navy meant that oak figured in the foreign policy of the British Empire. And the walls of the House of Commons are panelled in oak.

Here in Denmark, too, the oak tree was once revered until  a few centuries ago when the beech tree became the focus of poetical imagination. For instance, Hans Christian Andersen once wrote a tale about the last dream of an old oak tree.

Oaks were felled in their hundreds of thousands to build ships for the powerful Danish navy over the centuries. Apparently it took about 2000 oak trees to build a single ship of the line leading to the decimation of huge amounts of oak trees in the 18th century.

Today, a highly symbolic oak is found in the Folketinget, the Danish Parliament, in the form of its rostrum. A huge tree trunk, which once had been the fundament of Lendemarke windmill, was presented in 1916 by its new owner, the Liberal politician Frede Bojsen to the Folketinget, and craftswoman Anny Berntsen Bure, one of Denmark’s first female cabinetmakers was given the honour of making the rostrum, which she did beautifully without the use of a single screw or seam.*

An act of enormous symbolism, as just a year earlier, in 1915, women had finally gained the right to vote in Denmark.

* Kvinden med kævlen

 

On Historic Curtains

Curtains can be flimsy things. Or as in old theatres, heavy items to prevent fires. The other day, rereading a book by John Grenville, I came across the phrase, “The curtain of the Holocaust”.  My thoughts immediately turned to the more familiar expression from the Cold War, the ”Iron Curtain”. And Grenville who, in the mid-1970s, taught us Contemporary History at Birmingham University, may have had this metaphor in mind when he wrote these concluding sentences of his (posthumous) book:

”The curtain of the Holocaust lies between the past and the present, impeding easy relationships. What has gone, the death of a civilisation cannot be replaced. A new civilisation has to be rebuilt on the foundations of understanding the past.*

Understanding the past and explaining it is what historians do, in turn enabling others to understand history. Thus, historian Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer, explained in a speech in 1981 the background to Churchill’s speech in Fulton, USA which contained the metaphor of the Iron Curtain symbolizing the divided world of the Cold War. 

Grenville certainly knew what he was speaking about when using this metaphor, as the curtain of the Shoah separated him, the successful professor of modern and international history, from his 11-year-old self, the boy Hans Jurgen Guhrauer from Berlin, who experienced the destruction of his family and all that he held dear.

He witnessed the humiliation of his father, Adolf Abraham Guhrauer, a Landgerichtsdirektor (presiding judge of a state, regional or district court) who lost his job as a result of the anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi state, and who was incarcerated in a concentration camp after Kristalnacht, coming home a  few weeks later a broken man, obtaining a visa and leaving the land of his birth to become a factory worker in a munitions factory in England for the duration of WWII, but who was unable to save the life of his wife.

Grenville’s  mother, Charlotte Guhrauer, née Sandberg last figures in a deportation list on a freight train from Berlin-Moabit station to Riga, Sonderzug Da 401 (18. Osttransport) on the 15th August 1942.  And the boy himself, was sent away with his 2 older brothers in the spring of 1939 on a Kindertransport to England, there to be separated on arrival.**

The contemporary history course taught us by Grenville and Jonathan Haslam took place in the backdrop of the Helsinki Accords, and Charter 77, when the Cold War was beginning to thaw and informal contacts were being made across the divide.

Among the many who thus made contact was Paul Ricoeur who was in touch with Czech intellectuals involved in Charter 77, like Jan Patocka and Vaclav Havel. That the thaw was only a beginning can be seen in the obituaries Ricoeur wrote  on the untimely death of Jan Patoka, who was mistreated by the Czech police and died shortly after in March 1977.***

It took 12 years more for the Iron Curtain to fall in November 1989. But fall it did.

*The Jews and Germans of Hamburg (Routledge, 2012), 270.

** John Grenville’s interview with Bea Lewkowicz, Refugee Voices, AJR Audio-Visual Testimony Archive, interview no. 150, 19th March 2007, London; John Grenville, From Gardner to Historian, in Peter Alter (ed.) Out of the Third Reich. Refugee historians in post-war Britain. London,1998, 57-72.

*** Paul Ricoeur, Jan Patocka: A Philosopher of Resistance, The Crane Bag, Vol. 7, No. 1, Socialism & Culture (1983), 116-118; Ricouer, Patocka, philosopher and resister, Telos, 31, Spring 1977, 152-155.

On a fascinating book

Seeing a review of Shmuel Feiner’s biography of Moses Mendelssohn uploaded on academia.edu reminded me of my first encounter with the book, several years ago.

Our university library, in the good old days it could afford to buy print books, had a shelf or two of the latest week’s acquisitions, an area of the library I used to frequent in my lunch hour, just to see what goodies had appeared. Partly out of curiosity. Partly out of a professional desire to keep up to date with my English, as one of my copyediting clients once complained that my English was too old-fashioned.

Feiner’s biography was so engaging that I almost couldn’t put it down. It really was a joy to read. A book I recommended to many others. And even gave away as a gift. It was partly the man himself who interested me, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), an enlightenment philosopher who worked as a bookkeeper in a silk factory; and an ancestor of one of my favourite historians, Felix Gilbert, and partly the way Feiner writes about him.

Moses Mendelssohn proved by thought and deed that one could be a good citizen, while being a member of a minority religion, a topic that resonates to today.

My fascination with the book was so great, that I even found an acquaintance who was keen on translating the book into Danish, and I contacted a local publisher. His basic question, if I knew of 400-500 people who would buy the book, was one I sadly couldn’t answer in the affirmative.  A shame really. A missed opportunity. As I truly believe that the book would contribute to and enrich the political debate of today.

On making and crafting history with Paul Ricoeur

This semester I am presented with a unique opportunity – an offer of a desk and computer as a guest scholar (from August–December 2016) at my previous place of employment, CTR, the Centre for Textile Research (SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen). This enables me to work on my long term independent research project enquring into how Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) can enhance our understanding of history.

Working as a copyeditor over the decades for academics has given me insight into the methodical and logical thought processes of highly intelligent human beings as well as to the craft of writing. What this new opportunity gives me is the possibility to discuss with researchers and museum personnel and weavers what the verbs making and crafting means to them.

For sometime now I have been reflecting and writing, or rather attempting to write, about Ricoeur’s conceptual network, mainly using his two works on Time and Narrative and Memory, History, Forgetting. Now I can also gain some practical insight into the processes that lie behind the making and crafting of history.

On enigmatic traces

Marc Bloch states in The Historian’s Craft that the primary characteristic of historical observation lies in the reconstructing of knowledge from tracks or traces:

Whether it is the bones immured in the Syrian fortifications, a word whose form or use reveals a custom, a narrative written by the witness of some scene, ancient or modern, what do we really mean by document, if it is not a “track”, as it were – the mark, perceptible to the senses, which some phenomenon, in itself inaccessible, has left behind? (1953,54-55).

Thus, the trace stands for or takes the place of the past. An indirectness, which according to Ricoeur gives an enigmatic character to history from a philosophical point of view. Something that does not concern historians much, as their priority lies in their engagment with verifying the value of a documentary trace to a past event (TNIII, 143; MHF, 278).

Yet, history based on documents is meaningful, according to Ricoeur, so long as historians, in contrast to collectors of mass data banks, hold on to the idea of a debt “to people of flesh and blood to whom something really happened in the past” (TNIII, 118).  He sees the historian as providing a useful and nuanced corrective to collective memory, the final result of mass data collection. In view of today’s huge collections of big data and data mining, it is salutary to remember Ricoeur’s reflections from the mid-1980s.

The concept of traces was something Ricoeur reflected a great deal over in both Time and Narrative as well as Memory, History, Forgetting with the help of the writings of, among others, Bloch, Le Goff, Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Bergson and Lévinas.  In his notion of historical time, as a connecting bridge between phenomenological time and ordinary time, he sees time as being refigured by historians through reflective instruments, such as calendars, generations, and archives, documents and traces.*

Of these, a trace is accepted as one, only when historians can recognize it as such, by rethinking, re-enacting, and retracing its significance, thus enabling a return to the past (TNIII, 146, 183, 77).

Traces are fragile. They may be altered, effaced, destroyed, made inaccessible or forgotten (MHF, 415-416, 472, 284). They indicate a here and now – of past events or activities of human beings. They mark the passage of time;  give a temporal distance. They are datable, and thus inscribed in time (TNIII, 229).

Ricoeur identifies 3 types of traces: the physical, material trace, which along with archived documents and the questions of historians constitute the basis of historical knowledge (MHF,177); the affective, the existential that we experience as impressions through encountering traces; and the cerebral, cognitive traces of memory (MHF, 415, 427).

Traces disturb, by their very presence. With Lévinas**, Ricoeur believes that traces imply an Other, a historical Other (TNIII, 124-126), thus attesting to Bloch’s “evidence of witnesses in spite of themselves” (Bloch, 61).

*See also my previous posts: On Calendars and Historical Time, and On intertwining history and the Other.

**Levinas, “La Trace”, in Humanisme de l’autre homme, 1972,  57-63.

On a moment in history

As historians, we look backwards, as human beings, we live life forwards, but sometimes we hold our breath, for a long moment in the present.

Who forgets the first time one casts one’s vote? The very first time I used my vote was as an 18-year old in 1975, more precisely the 5th June as Wikipedia reminds me, in the UK referendum to remain in what was then called the European Community or Common Market. As part of a voter turnout of ca. 64%, and as one of the 67% who overwhelmingly voted yes: 17,378,580 others + me.

It was perhaps another Britain 41 years ago, but some of the arguments were the same as now, and as a brand new voter, though I knew in my heart and head how I would vote, I still reflected over the arguments of the other side and admitted that one or two  of their points did make sense. However, my decision to vote yes then was made with a look at history, geography and politics: Britain has always been part of Europe both historically (and archaeologically), as well as geographically. And the best way for Britain to maintain its influence in the world  was, I believed, through its membership of the EU.*

Today this first referendum is part of history. Just as the results of the referendum of the 23rd June will be. How will this decision be seen in a year’s time? In 10 years? In 41 years? And thereafter? How will its impact influence events in time to come? In the UK? In Europe? In the world?

No one knows. A moment can seem a long time. The moment a politician was tragically murdered in her constituency; the moment a sitting prime minister gave his notice to resign; the moment a vote was cast – history is made of such moments.

Change is part and parcel of being human, as Ricoeur** reminds us. Our personal histories are entangled with those of others. As individuals we have the capacity to say, to engage in conversation with others; we have the capacity to act; we have the capacity to recount our histories and those of others in ever changing ways; we are able to take responsibility for our actions, when others are harmed by our actions, we have the capacity to make reparations; and we are able to make and keep promises about the future. All this we do in the company of others.

For we need the recognition and good will of others to function as human beings in society. To continuously negotiate our differences of opinions, to generously concede a point when we have a difference of opinion, and equally generously hold out a helping hand. In the face of the other, we see our fragile selves. Without the other, we cannot be in this moment in history.

*Four decades later, I’m still of the same opinion and would have voted to remain, if I had been eligible to vote this time.

**In its original French, this speech was more elegantly titled Devenir capable, être reconnu.

 

On intertwining history and the Other

Who is our other? In Time and Narrative, vol. 3, ch. 4, 109-116,  Ricoeur seems to give a surprising answer. At least that’s how I understand it. Here, he examines historians’ use of time. He discusses how they bridge the lived time of human beings and cosmic time through three different reflective instruments: calendars, the succession of generations and archive traces; with the caveat that it is not the historian who spends much time reflecting on these instruments, but the philosopher of history.

While his reflections on calendars, archives, documents and traces are fairly straightforward, Ricoeur’s meditation on the succession of generations is less easy to fathom at first glance.

We certainly do know what is meant when we speak of generations, such as the Victorians, the Edwardians, the Baby Boomers, the ‘68ers, the Millennials and others, and ascribe certain general attitudes to them. Attitudes deriving from common influences and shared experiences.

According to Ricoeur’s reading of, among others, Alfred Schutz, Karl Mannheim and Dilthey, a generation is a combination of biological and social time, hence birth, ageing and death, along with the social activities of individuals. A generation has certain traditions from the previous one, i.e. continuity, yet at the same time, is defined by the acquisition of the new, which marks it as different from the parent generation. Thus, Ricoeur understands Dilthey’s concept of generation as being both open and closed, tradition and innovation, something acquired and yet having a common orientation (p. 111).

When time is added to this mixture of influences received and influences exercised, according to Ricoeur, it helps us to understand the idea of a succession of generations. He sees it as a chain arising from the intertwining of new possibilities and transmission of that which is already acquired. In other words, the passing generations carry traditions with them, while at the same time being open to new innovations, with the dead being replaced by the living.

Ricoeur discusses (p.110) how the idea of a generation, according to Kant, in the 3^rd proposition of his Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitan Plan, is the interweaving of human history and the human species in the ethical task of creating a civil society, where the previous generation makes huge efforts and sacrifices not for their own well-being, but that of succeeding generations.

Historians use the idea of the succession of generations in a more practical sense.* Thus, for instance, in terms of history’s outermost limits in the relations between the self and the other, the Shoah or Holocaust, historians such as Saul Friedlander, enquire into how it is perceived by succeeding generations (e.g. Introduction to Friedlander (ed.), Probing the limits of representation (1992).  And archive collections around the world, whether witness testimonies from the Holocaust and 20^th century genocides, or, e.g. on World War I enable succeeding generations to obtain a glimpse of the lives of previous generations in times of strife.

It took me a while to understand Ricoeur’s thoughts on the succession of generations, but upon long reflection, I believe, that he illustrates how our other is none other than past and future generations, in other words, our predecessors and our successors, thus implying that we who are alive today belong together as a generation.

*cf Wulf Kansteiner, Moral pitfalls of memory studies:The concept of political generations (Memory Studies, 5(2) 2012, 111–113, ) for a critical view of use of the term generation.

Performing in historic spaces: an interview with Patricia Halverson, Chatham Baroque

(Patricia Halverson DMA has a doctorate in Early Music Performance Practice from Stanford University)

How were you inspired to study music? And make it your profession?

Music was important to my parents and consequently, my siblings and I were exposed to music (classical, primarily) and encouraged to take music lessons as a means of education and enrichment, not necessarily towards the goal of making music a career.

As a high school student I was interested in either pursuing music or in becoming an occupational therapist. Certain opportunities in music came my way—stimulating workshops, travel, and encouragement from musician friends—leading me to pursue music studies in college and later, in graduate school, at Stanford.

Why Early Music?

It was a case of being in the right place at the right time in terms of opportunities that presented themselves. For instance, while in high school I had the opportunity to tour with an early music collegium at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. One of the attractions of music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods is the explorative and flexible nature of music. I attended my first year of college at the College of St. Scholastica. I spent the remaining three years of undergraduate study at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. Both schools are liberal arts schools, meaning that students develop a major area of focus but are also required to have a number of credits outside of the primary discipline.

And approximately what centuries are we speaking of here?

Much of the music I studied and performed while in college was music from the 16^th century. Currently, I perform regularly with a group called Chatham Baroque. Our focus is 17^th century and early 18^th century repertory.

Do you also think about the historical context of your music? What sources do you use, apart from musical scores?

We love to perform in historic spaces. It is inspiring to us and it also informs our approach. This does not happen terribly frequently but we have had this experience in Latin America, Mexico and in historic churches in South Carolina, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In terms of historical context and sources, it is important for players of early music to be well versed in historical performance practices. This knowledge informs programming choices, ornamentation styles, the arranging of music, to name just a few examples. In Chatham Baroque we try always to have access to facsimiles of the music we play or to use clean modern editions.

You play on an authentic instrument from those times? What difference does it make?

The instruments I own are copies of original instruments. I use strings made of pure sheep gut or gut core covered with silver. Gut strings as opposed to nylon or steel strings have a significantly different sound. The bows used by players of early music are quite different from modern bows Since much of the music has references to dance, the bows make a big difference in playing stylistically.

Does it sound different to playing on a modern reconstruction?

That is a question which is impossible to answer simply because it depends on the builder and the overall condition of the instrument. Original instruments, especially members of the viola da gamba family, are not very common and are expensive to purchase and maintain. There are countless examples of original instruments in excellent condition, most likely with some restoration needed at various times. I have never had the opportunity to purchase an original instrument nor have I been in the market for such an instrument. I would be delighted if one were to fall into my lap!

How about costumes, have you ever performed your music wearing costumes from that time?

Occasionally, but the costumes were modelled on appropriated dress from the time, not authentically produced. Performing in costume is not something I would pursue. In general, I would say that playing in costume is something that amateur musicians are more likely to do.

Would the costume affect the playing? And how about your audience, would they experience the music differently? Am asking because of a weird experience: I once listened to an ensemble playing wonderful music, Renaissance I think it was, but suddenly I felt their sober dark suits were incongruous with the sounds emanating from their instruments.

It is likely that costumes would affect the playing. As for the audience’s experience, it depends a good deal on their expectation.  I believe that audience members may enjoy costumes because they can provide a visual enhancement of a purely musical experience. But I would guess that most musicians are not happy performing in costume.

What is the best performance your ensemble has given?

That is a challenging question. It is fun to perform concerts and I feel extremely fortunate to have wonderful and talented colleagues with whom I perform on a regular basis. When things go well in a live performance, it can be a thrilling experience. The other side of the spectrum are those concerts that are deflating. It’s like a bad day at the office. What keeps me going are the performing experiences that go beyond the “normal.” This can result with a particularly moving piece, or if the effort of the performers aligns in a special way.  The involvement or response of an audience or the treat of performing in an acoustic perfect for the repertory can also bring on one of these “magical moments.”

Or the best CD you’ve made? Can readers listen to some of your music online?

Espanoleta on the Dorian label (no longer in print but on iTunes). Henry Purcell: Sonatas and Theatre Music, also on the Dorian label. Bach & Before, on Chatham Baroque’s own label. Chatham Baroque’s music can be heard online by searching for Chatham Baroque on YouTube.

Music touches something deep within us, when I listen to music from earlier times, I feel we’re sharing something authentic with human beings in the past who heard the same music. As a performer, when you play, do you ever feel the frisson of history?

As I mentioned earlier, it is essential to be familiar with the history and have a knowledge of performance practices from the period during which the music was composed. For me, performing live does not involve or require a connection to the past. Rather, it is more about the moment—the music, the performers and what happens spontaneously on stage as a response to the connections between the performers and hopefully, with the audience.

How about other Early music ensembles? Who do you feel has particularly contributed to the field?

Important pioneers in the field include Gustav Leonhart, Frans Bruggen, members of the Kuijken family. They are all European. It is the case that teachers and performers from western Europe have led the way as leading performers and teachers in the early music movement. In today’s world there are an incredible number of important ensembles and orchestras to list and many ensembles evolving in the States and beyond that I have not yet heard or know.

What are you reading at present? Have you a favourite author, book, film, play, painting or building that you find inspirational?

I read a mix of things, mostly fiction. Nothing of great note lately, though I greatly enjoyed David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers.

And music? Who are the composers, perhaps from other historical periods, who inspire or fascinate you?

I attend many live performances each month. It is a necessary part of the continuing education in the life of a professional musician. I really enjoy hearing music totally unrelated to early music. My husband and I attend several concerts performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra each year. It is broadening and moving to learn new works and hear their programs in a live setting.  Nearly all of the PSO’s repertory is music that I will never have the opportunity to perform.  I am a big fan of the music of Mahler, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, and Verdi.

Humanity and history: what do these terms mean to you as a musician? And what do the present day migrations signify to you?

Regarding humanity and history, we live in a conflicted world filled with inequalities. More often than not, technology offers a distracting palate and trumps face-to-face conversation. I would like to think that the arts and music in particular have the potential to inspire and move viewers and listeners in a way that is new and healing.

On history and the fabric of life

Paul Ricoeur ends his magisterial work on history philosophy, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli with a reference to Søren Kierkegaard’s discourse on the biblical birds in the air and lilies in the field (2000, p. 656). Why does he do so?

The works of his compatriot, Albert Camus, may hold a clue. Camus, too, similarly to Ricoeur endeavoured to make sense of the history of the 20^th century which they were born into. While their beliefs were unalike, Camus contrasts the fates of his characters against the sun, the light, and the sea.

What does this have to do with history philosophy, one may wonder. Many years ago, I followed a university course on history philosophy with a brilliant teacher, where we read the classical 19^th and 20^th century works of history philosophers. While I failed the actual exam, my readings and reflections left me with a vague glimpse into how human beings considered their relationships to the divine and to nature. Over the course of history up until today, it is our changing views of this threefold relationship that constitutes our thoughts on history. At times, we treated the forces of nature with awe, as being divine. At other times, we have believed that the divine had given us lordship over nature or that we had raised ourselves above nature. That humankind was progressing to a higher form of development.

It took a Freud to remind ourselves that we too are a part of nature. The muddy trenches of WWI shattered forever our dreams and visions of mastery. In the Shoah or Holocaust of WWII, we tasted its bitter dregs. In the Cold War threats of nuclear annihilation, very much current in Camus’ lifetime (he died on the 4^th January 1960), we foresaw what destruction humanity was capable of. Ricoeur who lived into the 21st century and had time to reflect on both the Truth and Reconciliation commission at the end of Apartheid and the wars in ex-Yugoslavia before his death on the 20^th May 2005, endeavored to find a way for human beings to live together with truth, justice and reconciliation.

What our present generation of human beings can leave to the future generation is thus, according to Ricoeur, in Kierkegaard’s words, for the human in distress to contemplate the birds and lilies, and see how glorious it is to be a human being, thereby releasing their worldly cares. Ricoeur proposes: “…in opposition to this ruinous competition … the possibility of a work of forgetting, interweaving among all the fibres that connect us to time: memory of the past, expectations of the future, and attention to the present.” (Memory, History, Forgetting, 2004, p. 504; á l’inverse de cette ruineuse compétition…le possible travail de l’oubli, tissé entre toutes les fibres qui nous rattachent au temps: mémoires du passé, attente du futur et attention au présnt-original French version, 2000, p. 654-655).

Flying the flag in faraway places or the history of foreign policy

Listening to a radio interview with Ambassador Peter Taksøe Jensen on his recently published report on Danish foreign policy (see English summary) reminded me that diplomatic history is one of the foundation stones of history.

Today, when we study history from many different perspectives, all of which enrich the discipline, enabling us to see the manifold expressions of humanity over the ages, we almost forget that the activities of statesmen, generals and diplomats and the paper they generated in the pursuit of relations between states constituted the bread and butter of professional historians. Not least, in the work of Leopold Ranke (1795-1886), who was highly influential in turning history into a professional discipline.

In recent decades, foreign policy has perhaps been more the purvey of political scientists studying international relations. Here, the realist and idealist ways of doing foreign policy provide a useful tool of analysis. Yet the fundamental division between the realist vs. idealist form of foreign policy, dealing with things as they are or how they ought to be, is not always so clear cut.

Historian Felix Gilbert (1905-1991), who began his working life in the German foreign ministry’s archives in 1923-1925, and who was a student of Ranke’s disciple Friedrich Meinecke, many years later in the USA made a study of the Enlightenment’s influence on the Founding Fathers’ foreign policy. In his To the Farewell Address (1961), he demonstrates how their foreign policy doctrine was just as much based on realism as idealism. *

Henry Kissinger, who wrote his doctoral thesis in 1954 on diplomatic history, describes in World Order (2014) how the history of US foreign policy is a balance between the two poles. He explains how most US foreign policy from its outset to today is a mixture. Whether policy is pragmatic or idealistic is not always so clear cut and depends on whose perspective we’re considering.

Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace: a philosophical Sketch (1795) may perhaps be said to be the most ideal of idealistic thoughts on how nations ought to act. Yet, can it not be argued that this idealism was based on the most pragmatic of reasons?

Ricoeur having the experience of two bloody world wars behind him, starts from a different time and place: “to live well, with and for others, in just institutions” (Reflections on the Just, p. 233), a prescription that can just as well apply to states as to individuals. His idealism is based on the practical wisdom that, in the last analysis, it is the most amount of unjustness or unfairness we’re willing to tolerate for ourselves in order to live in the world that is of the essence.

Thus, feelings of injustice or unfairness in receiving populations need to be addressed at the same time as helping human beings fleeing death and destruction in their own lands, as the President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim agrees in a recent interview.

Peter Taksøe Jensen, in speaking of the cornerstone of Danish foreign policy today, says in the interview that his report is based on the assumption that Denmark would maintain its freedom and welfare, continuing the values that Danish society was built on. The report reflects both aspects: the pragmatic and the ideal, and only future generations of historians in decades or centuries hence, can evaluate which of the two aspects weighed more heavily in Danish foreign policy in the coming times…

* Gordon A. Craig, “Insight and Energy: Reflections on the Work of Felix Gilbert” 17-28, p. 25, in Hartmut Lehmann (ed.), Felix Gilbert as Scholar and Teacher. Occasional Paper No. 6, 1992, German Historical Institute, Washington.