The Arcades Project - Operi

tdalterliche Zeitanschauungen in ilzrem Eirifluss a,!/ Pol£tik und Geschichtsschreibung
(Tiibingen, 1918), p. 8. [NI4,1]
'''The logical category of time does not govern the verb as much as one might
expect.' Strange as it may seem, the expression of the future does not appear to be
situated on the same level of the human mind as the expression of' the past and of
the present . ... 'The future often has no expression of its own; or if it has one, it is
a complicated expression without parallel to that of the present or the past.' ...
'There is no reason to believe that prehistoric Indo-European ever possessed a
true future tense' (Meillet)." Jean-Richard Bloch, '"Langage d'utilite, langage
poetique" (Encyclopediefranqaise, vol. 16 [16-50], 10). [NI4,2]
Simmel touches on a very important matter with the distinction between the
concept of culture and the spheres of autonomy in classical Idealism. The separa­
tion of the three autonomous domains from one another preserved classical
Idealism from the concept of culture that has so favored the cause of barbarism.
Simmel says of the cultural ideal: "It is essential that the independent values of
aesthetic, scientific, ethical, ... and even religious achievements be transcended,
so that they can alI be integrated as elements in the development of human
nature beyond its natural state." Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes (Leipzig,
1900), pp. 476-477.42 [N14,3]
·''There has never been a period of history in which the culture peculiar to it has
leavened the whole of humanity, or even the whole of that one nation which was
specially distinguished by it. All degrees and shades of moral barbarism, of mental
obtuseness, and of physical wretchedness have always been found ill juxtaposition
with cultured refinement of life . .. and free participation in the benefits of civil
order." Hermann Lotze, Mik,.okosmos, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1864), pp. 23-24.4:1
[NI4a,l]
To the view that "there is progress enough if, . . . while the mass of mankind
remains mired in an uncivilized condition, the civilization of a small minority is
constantly struggling upward to greater and greater heights," Lotze responds with
the question: "How, upon such assumptions, can we be entitled to speak of one
history of mankind?" Lotze, Mikrokosmos, vol. 3, p. 25. ,14 [N14a,2]
"The way in which the culture of' past times is for the most part handed down,"
Lotze says, " leads directly hack to the very opposite of that at which historical
development should aim; it leads, that is, to the formation of an instinct of culture,
which continually takes up more and more of the elements of civilization, thus
making them a lifeless possession, and withdrawing them from the sphere of that
conscious activity hy the efforts of which they were at first obtained" (p. 28).
Accordingly: "The progress of science is not . . . , directly, human progress; it
would be this if, in proportion to the increase in accumulated truths, there were