H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: RUGGIERO

 G.: Ruggiero again, and I had at first quite misread him, which is often the only honest way to begin. S.: You took Il concetto della storia to mean the longitudinal unity of philosophy. G.: I did. I imagined a great line running from the Presocratics to breakfast. S.: And then discovered that he meant history, not the history of philosophy. G.: Precisely. A disappointment, though a civilised one. S.: You sound as if you resent a man for writing the book he announced. G.: Only mildly. Titles ought occasionally to deceive, otherwise reading becomes administrative. S.: So you wanted a treatise on philosophy’s own continuity. G.: Yes. On how philosophy keeps being itself while changing costume, accent, and furniture. S.: Instead you got the concept of history in modern philosophy. G.: Which is no small matter, but less personally flattering. S.: Then where did you first go wrong? G.: At Clifton, naturally. Once one has endured History of England as a school subject, one assumes everyone else has suffered the corresponding burden. S.: You suppose Ruggiero had to sit through Storia dell’Italia at some collegio. G.: Or whatever Italian institution performed the equivalent with more professors and less playing field. S.: Usually with more professors indeed. G.: That is what strikes one at once about Italy. Even the schoolboy seems to be taught by someone who sounds like an underpaid university chair. S.: Whereas Clifton gave you Empire in instalments. G.: Yes. History of England with the occasional moral attached and no apology for the Tudors. S.: Then you thought Ruggiero was writing against that sort of thing. G.: I hoped so. I imagined him saying that philosophy possesses a history not as a heap of dates but as an internal continuity of problems. S.: Which would have pleased you. G.: Immensely. It would have saved many libraries and a fair number of dons. S.: But instead he is asking what modern philosophy means by history itself. G.: Yes. Not the chronicle of philosophers, but the plain concept of history. S.: Plain, you say, as though everyone knew it. G.: That is just the trouble. Who does know it? Everyone says history until one asks what sort of thing it is. S.: Story, perhaps. G.: There you are already being etymological in the wrong way. S.: But not uselessly. History and story are cousins in English, and sometimes inseparable at dinner. G.: True. Gardiner might have approved. S.: Ah, Gardiner. There is your discovery. G.: Yes. Hare did the language of morals, Hart did the language of law, and perhaps Gardiner did the language of history. S.: Or of story. G.: If you persist in that, I shall make you read chronicles. S.: I have read worse. G.: So have I. That is why I am severe. S.: Then do you mean that Gardiner, by asking what counts as historical explanation, was really doing the language of history? G.: In part, yes. He was asking what we do when we say that something happened historically, or that an explanation is historical rather than scientific or merely causal. S.: Which makes him less a philosopher of history in the large Hegelian style than an analyst of historical discourse. G.: Exactly. A much safer animal in Oxford, though not always recognised as such. S.: And Ruggiero is not doing that? G.: Not in the same manner. He belongs to the larger continental question of history as a category of spirit, culture, becoming, human world. S.: Which is what you first tried to shrink into the longitudinal unity of philosophy. G.: With some ingenuity, yes. S.: It was bound to fail. G.: Most ingenuity is. S.: Still, your complaint about the title remains. G.: Certainly. Il concetto della storia. Why della storia? S.: Because it is Italian. G.: That is no answer. Surely it ought to be il concetto di storia if one means history in general. S.: You are thinking like an irritated grammarian. G.: Which is often the only way to think clearly. S.: But perhaps della storia there means the concept of history as modern philosophy actually handles it, not merely history as an abstract possibility. G.: So the article would mark determination rather than accidental bulk. S.: Just so. The history modern philosophy has made into a concept. G.: Hm. That is more charitable than my first instinct. S.: Your first instinct was to say that the history of England is not the same as the history of Italy. G.: And it still is not. S.: No, but that does not settle the grammar. G.: Perhaps not. Yet I remain suspicious of articles in philosophical titles. They often pretend to precision when they merely announce a grand noun in formal dress. S.: Very Oxonian of you. G.: Oxford has its uses. One learns to distrust grandeur unless it has first passed a collections paper. S.: While Italy, and especially Bari with Laterza behind it, allows itself larger titles. G.: Yes. There one may write on history itself without at once being asked whether one means Roman history, church history, constitutional history, or the School’s syllabus. S.: Clifton would have asked only which king came next. G.: Quite. And whether the Armada ought to be admired for trying. S.: So your school experience keeps interfering with your reading of philosophical history. G.: Entirely. It has made me believe that “history” is what one is forced to remember when one would rather distinguish. S.: Whereas for Ruggiero history is a mode of human intelligibility. G.: Yes. Worse luck. It is never merely dates and succession; it is the self-understanding of spirit in time. S.: You say that as if it were a mild infection. G.: It usually is, especially once Hegel enters. S.: Ah yes, filosofia moderna. G.: Another phrase that carries too much luggage without paying excess fare. S.: Because modern philosophy in Italy does not mean quite what it would mean in Oxford. G.: Exactly. In Oxford one might let modern philosophy begin with Descartes and then spend the rest of the term pretending not to be historical. In Italy one says filosofia moderna and immediately hears a whole movement of spirit through crises, reformations, romanticisms, liberalisms, and catastrophes. S.: More atmospheric. G.: Far more. Oxford likes a concept with a narrow collar. Italy allows it a cape. S.: Then perhaps the title is honest by Italian standards and only guilty by Clifton standards. G.: That is uncomfortably possible. S.: Let us return to your mistaken reading. What did you hope to find in this longitudinal unity of philosophy? G.: I hoped to find that philosophy has one problem in many accents, and that its history is therefore internally knit rather than externally assembled. S.: A Gricean history of philosophy, then. G.: More or less. One in which the identity of the enterprise survives even when the vocabulary wanders. S.: And that is not wholly absent from Ruggiero, surely. G.: No, not wholly. Any serious philosophy of history must at least imply that thought has some continuity through its transformations. S.: So your mistake may have been less foolish than premature. G.: I shall adopt that as a self-flattering correction. S.: Please do. It suits the weather. G.: But one must distinguish. The history of philosophy is not the same as the concept of history. S.: No, though philosophers often use the one as camouflage for the other. G.: Indeed. They write histories of philosophy because philosophy itself becomes more respectable when laid out chronologically. S.: And less dangerous. G.: Quite. A dead philosopher is easier to examine than a live concept. S.: Which is why Ruggiero interests you after all. G.: Yes. Because he does not merely recount doctrines but asks what kind of object history becomes in modern thought. S.: And who in Oxford did that for history? G.: Gardiner, I think, more than is usually admitted. S.: Not Collingwood? G.: Collingwood too, but he moves more quickly into re-enactment, historical mind, and the internality of action. Gardiner feels nearer to the question what we mean by history when we invoke it in explanation. S.: So Gardiner becomes, by your neat taxonomy, the Hare or Hart of history. G.: With less publicity and more caution, yes. S.: That is already rather English. G.: It is. Oxford is full of men who invent a field and then politely refuse to look like they have done so. S.: Whereas Italy publishes the concept of history under a title large enough to shelter Europe. G.: Precisely. One sometimes envies the confidence while distrusting the syntax. S.: We have not yet settled della storia. G.: Nor shall we, unless one of us becomes a native speaker overnight. S.: I can still defend it. Il concetto di storia would sound more like a dictionary entry. Il concetto della storia sounds like a historical-philosophical problem already inhabited. G.: That is rather good. S.: Thank you. G.: Keep it, but do not quote me as convinced. S.: Never knowingly. G.: Still, there remains the comic national contrast. History of England at Clifton was a day-school subject with chalk and empire. Storia dell’Italia, when it occurred in Italy, seems always to hover nearer a public doctrine of formation. S.: Especially because Italian schools so often look university-adjacent from an English angle. G.: Yes. The liceo already sounds as if Aristotle is hiding in the corridor. The collegio sounds as if someone’s uncle is a canon. Even the schoolmaster seems to have read Croce against his will. S.: While Clifton produced proper nouns and prefects. G.: And a good deal of handwriting. S.: Which you still distrust as evidence of intellect. G.: Beautiful handwriting is often a cry for help. S.: You are incorrigible. G.: Only by profession. Now, the plain concept of history. Do you think anyone outside philosophy really thinks about it? S.: They think with it more than about it. Historians, schoolmasters, politicians, journalists, and even families all trade on some sense of what counts as a history. G.: Story again. S.: Narrative with credentials, if you prefer. G.: Better. History is story under public discipline. S.: That sounds almost Gardinerian. G.: Perhaps. Or perhaps only dry. S.: The two are not mutually exclusive. G.: Fair. Then perhaps Ruggiero’s title means: what has modern philosophy made of this disciplined narrative relation to human time? S.: Yes, and perhaps also: how has modern philosophy elevated it from record to principle? G.: Which is why your story correction matters. S.: I thought it might. G.: History is not mere story, but neither is it free of the narrative form story suggests. S.: And that is exactly where philosophers become nervous. G.: Because they want truth without plot. S.: Or plot without admission. G.: Quite. Historians at least are honest enough to string things together. Philosophers often do so while pretending not to. S.: Then perhaps the concept of history is not obvious at all. G.: No. It is only obvious until one asks whether history is event, record, narrative, understanding, explanation, memory, destiny, or some vicious combination. S.: Ruggiero would presumably say a rather large combination. G.: Very likely. Italians dislike a small concept when a generous one can be made to carry civilisation. S.: And you, being English, prefer the concept thinner. G.: I prefer it answerable. S.: That is the difference between a title and a tutorial. G.: Very good. A title may announce the concept of history; a tutorial must still ask what on earth one means by it. S.: And a public class? G.: A public class says something large enough to gather a room, then spends the hour reducing the damage. S.: You do realise you are again preparing a class. G.: I am always preparing a class when a title annoys me. S.: Then how would you present Ruggiero in the Hall? G.: I should begin by confessing my intentional misreading. “I first thought this promised the unity of philosophy across time; instead it asks the more troublesome question what history itself is for modern philosophy.” S.: That would wake them up. G.: At least the ones not already lost in the article. S.: Then you would bring in Hare, Hart, and Gardiner. G.: Yes. Hare for morals, Hart for law, Gardiner for history. It gives the English audience a set of reassuring pegs. S.: And then remove the reassurance by saying that Ruggiero is doing something larger. G.: Precisely. He is not merely analysing the use of “history” but treating history as a constitutive category of modern self-understanding. S.: Which makes the Oxford analogue only partial. G.: Exactly. Oxford gives tools; Italy gives climate. S.: That is almost too balanced. G.: I am occasionally fair by mistake. S.: Then let us have one more round on the article. If someone in the discussion period asks whether you really want il concetto di storia instead, what will you say? G.: I shall say that my grammatical irritation was Englishly literal, and that the Italian title probably means not the concept of this or that national history, but the concept of history as historically elaborated within modern philosophy. S.: Which sounds very much like surrender. G.: It is tactical withdrawal. S.: Roman or English? G.: Oxonian. We retreat only after footnoting. S.: Good. Then perhaps the true joke is that you wanted the book to be about the history of philosophy because you distrust history unless it is already philosophical. G.: There is something in that. S.: And Ruggiero forces you to admit that even plain history has philosophical teeth. G.: Yes. Which is why Clifton never quite succeeded in killing it. S.: History of England failed, then. G.: As pedagogy perhaps, but not as provocation. It left me with a permanent suspicion that whenever someone says history one ought to ask whether they mean a syllabus, a story, a structure, a nation, a method, or a metaphysics. S.: That sounds like an improvement. G.: It is at least a use for Clifton. S.: And the final verdict on Ruggiero? G.: That he is not writing the history of philosophy, still less my cherished longitudinal unity, but the concept of history as modern philosophy makes and inherits it; and that my complaint about della storia was less a grammatical discovery than a schoolboy’s revenge on History of England. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Cliftonesque, with one concession to Bari. S.: And the punchline? G.: If Clifton taught me History of England and Ruggiero teaches the concept of history, the difference is simply that one made kings memorable, while the other makes memory dangerous.