Fallacy of Sociological Determinism

Meanwhile new and unsuspected imbalances and evils have sneaked into the socialist system, which Marxist thinkers supposed to be proof against the temptations and corruptions inherent in a profit seeking highly competitive society. Such developments or changes in the historical process, specially the recent changes in Chinese society, point out the mechanistic fallacy of reducing the essential openness of history to sociological determinism. We would commit the same fallacy in a different garb, if we reduced the openness of history to say, theological or geographical or any other form of determinism. No goal or end is pre-determined or inevitable.    Historical change is the outcome of complex causes, including striving by individuals and groups.

Man's potential freedom to choose goals and his actual striving to realise them always keeps history an open process with plural possibilities. Each historical outcome is the product of man's variable responses to an invariable or unchangeable past. No theological or speculative projection of an inevitable ‘telos’ or end, no dialectical prediction of a final synthesis, no anthropological generalization, in short, no conceptual formula can extinguish the essential contingency, opaqueness and tragic brittleness of the human story. In other words, history can never be reduced to sociology or philosophy, though these disciplines are essential for mature historical understanding.

Divine Purpose of history

Let us now turn to the question of an over-arching purpose of history, apart from the purposes of individuals and groups, whose interactions constitute the concrete course of events. The word 'purpose', as ordinarily used, implies a mind or person, who is aware of values and goals and understands the connection between ends and means or cause and effect. Thus the expressions, 'purpose of history' or 'purpose of the cosmos' imply the concept of a Super Mind, in some sense or the other, which the philosopher or theologian seeks to unravel. The philosophical historian is only concerned with the question whether or not the course of history, as distinct from the course of nature, is characterized by features which prove, or at least, suggest any over-arching Divine purpose? If we claim that the answer is 'yes', we must be able to understand and identify the said super-purpose and also to point out the ways and means actually found in history for realizing the above purpose.

It is precisely at this point that all our attempts to identify the super-purpose of God and His ways and means of realizing it breakdown. We think we have grasped the purpose only to find that some event or set of events in history defy the putative purpose and remain inexplicable brute facts, suggesting some other purpose or rather none at all, in the course of history. It is like finding a succession of numbers, which appear to conform to a mathematical formula long enough to make us believe we have correctly identified it, only to discover, moments later, that the next actual number or numbers fail to conform to the predicted number in the series. To give another illustration, when we think we have identified both the super-purpose and the method of its realization, the supposed purpose or the means or both give us the dodge, and, like Falstaff, escape through the key hole.

No Super-Purpose of History

The validity of the teleological argument for God's existence is a philosophical and not a historical issue. But even if we antecedently accept on faith or on philosophical theological grounds that God exists, the question, whether or not the course of history is guided by God, and, if so, in what way and to what extent, cannot be given any conclusive answer on the basis of empirical history. The complexity of the human story, with its myriad plots and sub-plots in space-time in a bewildering variety cannot be fitted into any definite master-rhythm or super-pattern of history, despite the genius of an Ibn Khaldun, Vicco, Hegel, Marx, Spengler or Toynbee No matter what super-purpose we may identify, the actual historical process does not show any evidence of being a purposeful, rational or systematic movement towards a goal. So great and glaring are the vicissitudes, convolutions, reversals of trends, tragedies and destruction of values that history appears to be devoid of any super-purpose or cosmic meaning.