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Elie Halévy: Philosopher as Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Christopher Bone
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Type
Review Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , November 1973 , pp. 151 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1973

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References

1. Hobsbawm, E. J., “The British Secret,” New Statesman, LXI (1961), 548Google Scholar.

2. See Semmel, Bernard, “Elie Halévy, Methodism, and Revolution,” in Halévy, Elie, The Birth of Methodism in England (Chicago, 1971), pp. 1–29Google Scholar.

3. Barker, Ernest, “Elie Halévy,” English Historical Review, LIII (1938), 79–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Smith, Catherine Haugh, “Elie Halévy,” in Some Historians of Modern Britain, ed. Schmitt, Bernadotte E. (Chicago, 1942), pp. 152–66Google Scholar; Gillispie, Charles, “The Work of Elie Halévy: A Critical Appreciation,” Journal of Modern History, XXIII (1950), 232–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brebner, J. Bartlet, “Elie Halévy,” in Some Modern Historians of Britain, ed. Ausubel, Herman, Brebner, J. B. and Hunt, Erling (New York, 1951), pp. 235–54Google Scholar; Richrer, Melvin, “A Bibliography of Signed Works by Elie Halévy,” History and Theory (Beiheft 7, 1967), 47–71Google Scholar; “Elie Halévy,” International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences VI (1968), 307–10Google Scholar, and Bramsen, Michele, Contribution à une biographie intellectuelle d'Elie Halévy (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar.

5. Even Halévy's close friend, philosopher Dominique Parodi, was unsure how to characterize him. Parodi suggested that one of the things which made Halévy unique was his emphasis upon psychology. See Parodi, , La Philosophie contemporaine en France: essai de classification des doctrines (Paris, 1919), p. 102Google Scholar.

6. Silvera, Alain, Daniel Halévy and His Times (Ithaca, 1966), p. 27Google Scholar.

7. Brunschvicg, Léon, “Elie Halévy,” Revue métaphysique et de morale, XLIV (1937), 680Google Scholar.

8. Silvera, , Daniel Halévy, p. 28Google Scholar.

9. See ibid., pp. 33-40.

10. Brebner, , “Elie Halévy,” in Ausubel, , Brebner, , Hunt, , Some Historians of Britain, p. 238Google Scholar.

11. LeSage, Laurent, “Marcel Proust and His Literary Friends,” Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XLV (1958), 2Google Scholar.

12. Halévy, Elie, La Théorie platonicienne des sciences (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar.

13. Halévy, Elie, La Formation du radicalisme philosophique (Paris, 1904)Google Scholar. Quotations hereafter will refer to the English translation by Morris, Mary, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

14. The École Libre des Sciences Politiques and its goals are discussed in the introduction by Bodley, J. E. C. to Emile Boutmy's The English People: A Study in Political Psychology, trans. English, E. (London, 1904), pp. viii–xGoogle Scholar.

15. Halévy, Elie, England in 1815 (London, 1924)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1913; The Liberal Awakening (London, 1926)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1923; The Triumph of Reform (London, 1927)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1923. A fourth volume was published posthumously after editing by Mme.Halévy, and Vaucher, Paul, The Age of Peel and Cobden (London, 1947)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1947. Quotations will refer to the English translation by Watkin, E. I. as History I, II, III, or IVGoogle Scholar.

16. Halévy, Elie, Imperialism and the Rise of Labour, 1895-1905 (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1926; The Rule of Democracy, 1905-1914 (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; original French edition, 1934. Quotations will refer to the English translations by E. I. Watkin.

17. Halévy, Elie, The Era of Tyrannies (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, original French edition, 1938. Quotations will refer to the English translation by R. K. Webb.

18. Benda, Julien, “Elie Halévy,” La Nouvelle revue françarse, XLIX (1937), 840Google Scholar.

19. Halévy, , La Théorie platonicienne, pp. xv., 376–78Google Scholar.

20. Brunschvicg, , “Elie Halévy,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, XLIV, 680Google Scholar. I am in debt to Professor Richter for the translation of this passage.

21. Ibid. It is not within the scope of this study to assess the influence of Brunschvicg's philosophy upon Halévy's historical method. However, in fairness to both men, it must be pointed out that while Halévy's method has its philosophical roots in Plato, its general presuppositions are the same as those codified in Brunschvicg's epistemology, La Modalité du jugement (1897). Indeed one cannot help but be struck by the similarity of the two men's philosophies.

22. Quoted in Digeon, Claude, La Crise allemande de la pensée française, 1870-1914 (Paris, 1959), p. 273Google Scholar.

23. Ibid.

24. But it should be pointed out that French admiration for German historical methods pre-dated the Franco-Prussian War. The Revue des questions historiques, founded in 1866, was an advocate of German methodology.

25. See de Jubainville, Henri d'Arbois, Deux manières d'écrire l'histore (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar.

26. Revue historique, I (1876), 1-2.

27. Ibid., pp. 26 ff.

28. Langlois himself was trained at the École des Chartes as were several of the other leading scientific historians, among them Gaston Paris and Léopold Delisle. See Prou, Maurice, L'École des Chartes (Paris, 1923)Google Scholar, and Pfister, Charles, Histoire el historiens depuis cinquante ans (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar.

29. See the highly favorable review by Monod, in the Revue historique, LXVII (1889), 129–34Google Scholar. Marc Bloch, a student of Seignobos, recalls the influence of the manual and its author in The Historian's Craft, trans. Putnam, Peter (New York, 1961), pp. 3–4Google Scholar. Seignobos followed up the manual with an inquiry into the applicability of social-scientific methods to history in his La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales (Paris, 1901)Google Scholar. By 1906 he was convinced that the scientific historians had consummated a revolution in techniques of historical research. Hence, his manual for secondary school teachers, L'Hisloire dans l'enseignement secondaire (Paris, 1906)Google Scholar, devoted its first part to the “new history.”

30. The position of Fustel de Coulanges in the development of French historiography is difficult to determine. For while he inspired social scientists such as Durkheim and generally seems to have approved of the scientific spirit and methods of Monod and Lavisse, he was nevertheless of the school of Michelet and Renan. His rather ambiguous relations with Durkheim are discussed in Alpert, L., Emile Durkheim and His Sociology (New York, 1941), p. 18Google Scholar and passim. But Monod, while grateful to Fustel de Coulanges for his assistance and support of reforms in historical method, never accepted him as a scientific historian. He criticized him for his “exaggerated love of unity and simplicity” and for his proclivity to suppose that “the clarity of a theory is proof of its truth.” Monod concluded somewhat disparagingly that “Fustel was of the same family of Tocqueville and of Montesquieu.” See Revue historique, XLI (1889), 284–85Google Scholar.

31. For an assessment of this influence, see Guerlac, Othon, “Ernest Lavisse—French Historian and Educator,” South Atlantic Quarterly, XXII (1923), 23–42Google Scholar.

32. See “Ouverture des Conferences à la Faculté des lettres de Paris: Discours de M. Petit de Julleville et Lavisse,” Revue Internationale de l'enseignement, XXV (1893), 398Google Scholar.

33. Richter, , “Elie Halévy,” International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, VI, 309Google Scholar.

34. Siegel, Martin, “Science and the Historical Imagination: Patterns in French Historiographical Thought 1866-1914” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965), p. 129Google Scholar.

35. Benda, Julien, La Jeunesse d'un clerc (Paris, 1936), pp. 181–83Google Scholar.

36. See Marrou, Henri-Irénée, De la connaissance historique (Paris, 1955), p. 22Google Scholar.

37. See Halévy's comment on the paper presented by Seignobos, Charles entitled “Les conditions pratiques de la recherche des causes dans le travail historique,” in Bulletin de la société française de la philosophie, VII (1907), 308–09Google Scholar.

38. I do not wish to suggest that Halévy stood alone in his resistance to scientific history or in his insistence that careful scrutiny of evidence could yield a synthetic unity in history. Certainly another normalien, Henri Berr, (1863-1954) sought to put the synthesizing capabilities of philosophy back into historical method. This was the project of Berr's journal, Revue de synthèse historique founded in 1900. But for Berr (and his teacher Émile Boutroux) the synthesis was to be a scientific one, not a philosophical one—there were to be no à priori notions behind it. “Sur notre programme,” Revue de synthèse historique I (1900), 1–2Google Scholar. Furthermore, Berr believed that a synthetic method could be forged which would unravel the mysteries of all genres of history—intellectual, political, economic, etc. See his Vie et science: lettres d'un vieux philosophe strasbourgeois et d'un étudiant parisien (Paris, 1894)Google Scholar and his L'Avenir de la philosophies esquisse d'une synthèse des connaissances fondées sur l'histoire (Paris 1899)Google Scholar. But Halévy never believed that science could synthesize the facts of history. For Halévy, it was philosophy, using an abstract working conception of a progressive dialectic, from which synthesis in history could be made. Moreover, it is doubtful that Halévy would have claimed that such a dialectical approach was applicable to all genres of history. Among historians, Berr was more influential than Halévy—as were most of the historians in the scientific school. But Berr was a theoretician of historical method; Halévy was a practicing historian. Halévy's method was tested in the actual writing of history; Berr's methodological notions were tested largely within the realm of theoretical consistency.

39. Halévy, , History, II, vGoogle Scholar.

40. Halévy, , History, I, 335Google Scholar.

41. Ibid., p. 514. It should be noted that the crux of Halévy's thesis was apparent earlier in his article entitled “La naissanoe du Méthodisme en Angleterre” published in the Revue de Paris (1906)Google Scholar.

42. Halévy, , History, III. 166Google Scholar.

43. E. J. Hobsbawm has suggested that Halévy exaggerated the positive political influence of Methodism. See Hobsbawm, E. J., “Methodism and the Threat of Revolution in Britain,” History Today, VII (1957), 115–24Google Scholar. However, it seems to me that Halévy was not primarily concerned with the positive political influence of Methodism. Rather he was concerned to demonstrate that Methodism exercised an influence against all politics.

44. Halévy, , History, IV, 336–37Google Scholar.

45. Ibid., p. 335.

46. Halévy, , History I, xiGoogle Scholar.

47. Halévy, , The Rule of Democracy 1905-1914, p. viGoogle Scholar.

48. Quoted in Halévy, , The Era of Tyrannies, p. xixGoogle Scholar.

49. Halévy, , The Era of Tyrannies, p. 267Google Scholar. I do not suggest Halévy saw no difference between Nazism and Marxism; he did. However, he correctly saw Nazism as less durable than Marxism and he did not apply his historical method of analysis to it in their brief “communication.”

50. Ibid., p. 266.

51. Curtis, Michael, Three Against the Third Republic (Princeton, 1959), p. 34Google Scholar, and passim.

52. Halévy, , The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, p. 154Google Scholar.

53. Halévy, Elie, “La Philosophic au Collège de France,” Revue métaphysique et de morale, I (1893), 376Google Scholar.

54. Brunschvicg discussed this article in his “Elie Halévy,” Revue métaphysique et de morale, XLIV (1937), 681–82Google Scholar.

55. Gillispie, Charles, “The Work of Elie Halévy,” Journal of Modern History, XXII (1950), 241Google Scholar.

56. Halévy, Elie, The World Crisis of 1914-18: An Interpretation (Oxford, 1930), p. 55Google Scholar. These lectures, originally published in a single volume, are now also available in Halévy, , The Era of Tyrannies, pp. 209–85Google Scholar.

57. Ibid., p. 57.

58. Ibid., p. 30.