Zaide’s Life of Jose Rizal and R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History

Zaide’s Life of Jose Rizal and R. G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History

Gregorio Zaide’s book on Jose Rizal entitled “Jose Rizal: Life, works, and writings of a genuis, writer, scientist, and national hero” was probably Zaide’s finer works about our national hero. Zaide was known in the history circle as a meticulous and free-flowing writer of history. He doesn’t compromise his ideas in the mainstream historicism but this was also his downside. One example was on the issue of the infamous fraud of Jose E. Marco and the Code of Kalantiaw that was already proven a hoax; Zaide continued to believe in him and even included him in his textbooks! It will be only in 1998 when the National Historical Institute will accept the fraud of Jose E. Marco.

Nevertheless, Zaide is not all bad. In fact, his book about Rizal was so well written, as if he was telling a bedtime story, you can never help but be amazed by Rizal and Zaide’s presentation of Rizal. One thing I noticed on this work of Zaide is that as if he’s putting the shoes of Rizal. Zaide’s colorful description on each chapter and the mood of the chapter was very well captured and works your imagination.

If Zaide will be compared with another historian, that will be R. G. Collingwood. Collingwood is most famous for The Idea of History, a work collated soon after his death from various sources by his pupil, T. M. Knox. The book came to be a major inspiration for postwar philosophy of history in the English-speaking world. It is extensively cited in works on historiography. Someone remarked that Collingwood was one of the century's best-known "neglected" thinkers.

Collingwood held that historical understanding occurs when an Historian undergoes the very same thought processes as did the historical personage whom he or she is studying and that in some sense, "recollection" of past thought by an Historian is the very same "thinking" as that of the historical personage. This doctrine, presented in the section of "The Idea of History" entitled "History as the Recollection of Past Experience" invites examination of the act/object distinction for thought. That is, Collingwood considered whether two different people can have the same thought qua act of thinking and not just qua content, writing that "there is no tenable theory of personal identity" preventing such a doctrine.

Zaide and Collingwood have both something in common. One of which is they both sense and recollect their ideas and put their selves in the shoes of their subjects. Zaide’s fluidity in writing & his vivid descriptions and Collingwood’s idea on history make sense. However, Zaide keeps on standing his ground thus refusing any neither conformity nor compromise. This proves his undoing like in the example of the Kalantiaw Code and also a proof that Zaide lacks some rigid framework that will focus a specific main idea on his work. Collingwood stated that such subjects should be examined further so it can have distinction for such.

This comparison between Zaide and Collingwood doesn’t mean to compare who is greater between the two historians. This can help us on how historian’s mind on writing and their understanding on history. We can learn from both of them like Zaide’s “storytelling” method of history that makes history not a boring matter and that can be enjoyed. Collingwood suggest us that history should be taken into the shoes of the subject to a deeper and more critical historiography.

Three Philosophers, One Concept

Three Philosophers, One Concept: A comparison of St. Augustine, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler on their Philosophy of History

Saint Augustine, Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler are 3 great philosophers of history who contributed to our better understanding of history. Although the 3 philosophers are different in their philosophical approach on history, they share the same common concept. The concept was the same: that history has a beginning and has an end. Saint Augustine’s concept of history was linear and comparative.

In his work, “City of God” he compared two developments of two cities; the city of Man and the city of God. The importance of history is largely in the cyclical patterns that forge the past, present, and future into a continuous whole, emphasizing what is repeated and common over what is idiosyncratic and unique. In Augustine, we find a conception of human history that in effect reverses this schema by providing a linear account that presents history as the dramatic unfolding of a morally decisive set of non-repeatable events.

Approached from this angle, what wants an explanation is why one would subordinate indispensable patterns and regularities in order to emphasize what is idiosyncratic and unique. Here, as in the case of the will, it is important to understand that Augustine is bringing together two quite disparate traditions, and here again one needs to take note of his efforts to capture the data of revelation he sees embedded in Judeo-Christian scripture.

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler’s "The Decline of the West" focused on the cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations. When Decline came out in 1917, it was a wild success because of the perceived national humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and economic depression fueled by hyperinflation seemed to prove Spengler right (Spengler had in fact believed that Germany would win while he was writing the book).

It comforted Germans because it seemingly rationalized their downfall as part of larger world-historical processes. But it was widely successful outside of Germany as well, and by 1919 was translated into several other languages. He rejected a subsequent offer to become Professor of Philosophy at the University of Goettingen, saying he needed time to focus on writing. It is now a truism that Spengler's "pessimism" and "fatalism" was an unbearable shock to minds nurtured in the Nineteenth-century illusion that everything would get better and better forever and ever.

Spengler's cyclic interpretation of history stated that a civilization was an organism having a definite and fixed life span and moving from infancy to senescence and death by an internal necessity comparable to the biological necessity that decrees the development of the human organism from infantile imbecility to senile decrepitude. Napoleon, for example, was the counterpart of Alexander in the ancient world.

Lastly, Arnold Joseph Toynbee’s “A Study of History” was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline. This kind of philosophy of history was unheard of during Toynbee’s time. Toynbee was interested in the seeming repetition of patterns in history and, later, in the origins of civilization. It was in this context that he read Spengler’s Decline of the West and although there is some superficial similarity, both men describe the rise, flowering and decline of civilizations, their work moved in different directions.

Toynbee agreed with Spengler that there were strong parallels between their situation in Europe and the ancient Greco-Roman civilization. Toynbee saw his own views as being more scientific and empirical than Spengler's, he described himself as a "meta historian" whose "intelligible field of study" was civilization. In his “Study of History”, Toynbee describes the rise and decline of 23 civilizations. His over-arching analysis was the place of moral and religious challenge, and response to such challenge, as the reason for the robustness or decline of a civilization. He described parallel life cycles of growth, dissolution, a "time of troubles," a universal state, and a final collapse leading to a new genesis.

Although he found the uniformity of the patterns, particularly of disintegration, sufficiently regular to reduce to graphs, and even though he formulated definite laws of development such as "challenge and response," Toynbee insisted that the cyclical pattern could, and should, be broken. In conclusion, these three philosophers share common concept in their philosophy of history; a somewhat linear and a cycle of rise and fall of history. Yet in contrast, one is more spiritual, one is pessimistic and one saw an endless loop of patterns. Yet despite these, all are in synthesis of what history for them. All of them contributed to our deeper understanding and knowledge of history.

In Memoriam: Fr. Domingo Moraleda CMF (1942-2008)

We will miss you Fr. Moraleda. You will be missed dearly by the Claretian community and by the people you love so much.

Eternal rest grant unto Fr. Domingo Moraleda, Oh Lord. Let the perpetual light shines upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen