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Toynbee Arnold Joseph
Comprehension of history (collection)

Toynbee A.J.

COMPREHENSION OF HISTORY (Collection)

Per. from English/Comp. Ogurtsov A.P.; Entry Art. Ukolova V.I.;

Closing Art. Rashkovsky E.B.

Pages 320 and 321 are missing!

Arnold Toynbee and the comprehension of history. . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The relativity of historical thinking. . . . . . . . 14

Field of historical research. . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Comparative study of civilizations. . . . . . . 42

Part one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The problem of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The nature of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . 93

The reason for the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Call-and-Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Six outposts in the history of Western Europe. . . . . . 142

Part two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The growth of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The process of growth of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Growth analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Care-and-Return. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Fractures of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Part three. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Collapses of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Movement of Schism-and-Palingenesis. . . . . . . . . . 338

A split in the social system. . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

A split in the soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Archaism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Futurism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Detachment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Transfiguration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Decay analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Rhythms of decay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Part four. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Universal states. . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Universal states as goals. . . . . . . . . 486

Universal states as means. . . . . . . 499

Provinces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

Capital Cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Part five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Universal churches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Civilization as regression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Part six. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Heroic Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Contacts between civilizations in space. . . . . 555

Social consequences of contacts between modern 577

each other's civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Psychological consequences of contacts between 587

civilizations contemporary to each other. . . . . . . . . .

Contacts of civilizations in time. . . . . . . . . . . 599

Part seven. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Inspiration from historians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Reading Toynbee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

Scientific commentary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

The end of a century, and even more so the end of a millennium, invites reflection on the meaning of history. Humanity looks into the past to find signs of the future. There are quite loud voices predicting the end of history, be it about the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecies or about its achievement of a certain stable state generated by the successes of Western liberalism and democracy and capable of substantivizing the present, discarding the eternal flow of history from the past into the future (let us at least recall the sensational concept American scientist Francis Fukuyama, behind which the shadow of the great Hegel appears). However, in the end, a close, one might say convulsive, look into the past is a necessary element of self-affirmation of humanity in its newfound hope, almost lost in the twentieth century, which brought unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and bloody wars, genocide and environmental crisis, which put peoples and every person on the brink of survival, but at its end still extracted from the flames of destruction the warmth of humanism, the light of insight, the foreknowledge of the possibility of the continuation of life and the movement of history, but no longer as the chariot of Vishnu, mercilessly destroying everything in its path, but as a field for the realization of the phenomenon of man in the spiritual and a socially converging world, becoming a factor in truly cosmic evolution.

What place in this look into history can be occupied by the reflections of the English thinker Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), long recognized as one of the “pillars” of the philosophy of history, exalted and ridiculed, and today seeming almost old-fashioned in his academic respectability? Unfortunately, the Russian translation of Toynbee’s main work “A Study of History” (more precisely, extracts from it) comes out very late, although the name of the English thinker has occupied a strong place for many decades in courses on the history of philosophy taught in our universities, where it was considered good in a tone of scolding him as (a representative of bourgeois history and sociology), following Spengler, striving to “rethink the entire socio-historical development of mankind in the spirit of the theory of the circulation of local civilizations,” while emphasizing that

5 he "sought to provide an idealistic answer to positivist evolutionism" and also had a great influence on the philosophical and historical thought of the West. In a word, we treated Toynbee almost well, given the context of the ever-increasing and intensified criticism of “bourgeois consciousness” and “bourgeois science.”

By the way, Toynbee’s concept, which was striking in its grandeur of concept and inconsistency of execution, was by no means perceived ambiguously in the West. For example, the leading French historian Lucien Febvre, one of the founders of the most influential school of historical science, sometimes called the “Annals school,” wrote, not without mockery, about a “seductive historian-essayist,” whose work generates “a feeling of sensation evoked in the gullible reader by an impressive overview of all these carefully numbered civilizations, which, like scenes of melodrama, replace one another before his admiring gaze; the genuine delight inspired by this magician who juggles with such dexterity the peoples, societies and civilizations of the past and present, shuffling and shuffling Europe and Africa, Asia and America. But if we do not succumb to tempting spells, if we reject the sentimental position of the believer present at the service, if we impartially look at Toynbee’s ideas and the conclusions from them, what new will we, historians, see in all this? .. Toynbee simply adds the voice of England to the French voices. And we have the right to judge to what extent this voice stands out in the British world against the background of other voices. In our world, its owner can expect only a place among the choristers." This statement serves as another evidence of how biased outstanding scientists can be in assessing each other and their national historical schools. However, if some saw in Arnold Toynbee only an ordinary interpreter of well-known truths, then others proclaimed him the prophet of a new vision of history, but in essence, in both cases the main thing eluded - the real understanding of history in the interpretation of the English historian. However, in fairness it should be noted that Toynbee did not try to cast his understanding in chased form. It rather shines through the interweaving of concepts and approaches, running into each other and “darkening” the base of the channel along which the scientist’s thought rushes.

So, Toynbee called his main work “A Study of History.” The easiest way is to give it a school meaning and translate it as “The Study of History” or, slightly academicizing it, as “The Study of History.” But from the very first pages it becomes clear that any study based on detailed analysis, or research in the usual sense, can only be spoken of in very relative terms. Thoughts, concepts, definitions, facts, countries

6 and peoples, past and future merge into a complex pattern, more likely indicating the presence of mystery than giving clarity and consistency to the presentation of past events. Starting with 21 civilizations, Toynbee, by the end of his multi-volume work, loses 8 along the way, but, it seems, does not bother to notice the loss, carried away by the flow of understanding the movement or immobility of history. It is obvious that such work is almost impossible to call scientific research in the classical version. However, the more the reader delves into it, the stronger the feeling that in this case we are talking not so much about rational knowledge, but about comprehension, combining logical comprehension, intuition and even insight. Toynbee himself remarks, as if in passing: “Why should we believe that the scientific method, created for the analysis of inanimate nature, can be transferred to historical thinking, which involves considering people in the process of their activities? When a history professor calls his seminar a “laboratory”, does does he not thereby fence himself off from the natural environment? Both names are metaphors, but each of them is appropriate only in its own field. A historian’s seminar is a nursery in which the living learn to speak a living word about the living... We know quite well, and we always We remember the so-called "pathetic fallacy", which spiritualizes and gives life to inanimate objects. However, now we are more likely to become victims of the opposite - the "apathetic fallacy", according to which living beings are treated as if they were inanimate objects. So, Toynbee is a supporter of intuitionism ? If so, then not in the sense that is familiar to us, but in the same sense in which it was Aurelius Augustine, the creator of the European, Christian philosophy of history, which was based on the original method of rationalistic intuitionism, later used by such great systematizing philosophers , like Thomas Aquinas or Hegel, although they are more commonly counted among rationalists of a predominantly (if not exclusively) logical kind.

Today, many are looking for the truth of history; the best religious thinkers have strived to comprehend the truth, for which truth was only a guise. For secularized, and even more so for materialistic consciousness, the impossibility of achieving absolute truth was so obvious that sometimes the bearers of these forms of consciousness completely abandoned the search for truth, replacing it with mental stereotypes, as a result of which the “demythologized” history turned into an illustration of a dogmatized scheme. This does not mean that adequate knowledge of history is impossible along the lines of its materialistic understanding, but indicates that this understanding itself should not be linear and unambiguous, claiming exclusivity.

Toynbee is a religious thinker, or rather a Christian thinker. For religious consciousness, truth could be given in Revelation or comprehended by reason, but the best was a combination of these two possibilities. History is the work of the Creator, carried out through the existence of man and humanity, but by comprehending it, the historian also becomes involved in the process of creation. Just as divine providence (and even predestination) for a Christian does not exclude the freedom of human will, for Toynbee the recognition of the divine creation of history does not destroy the role of the historian as a co-creator of the past, for only in the process of co-creation can the moment of truth be revealed. Hence the predominance of synthesis over analysis, so indicative of Toynbee, hence his craving for universalism (although, paradoxically, he was more often reproached for fragmenting and localizing history). The latter, it seems to us, is due to the reluctance or inability to see the true dialectic in the combination of what seems incompatible, characteristic of Toynbee’s method. Indeed, he is an opponent of the interpretation of history as a process of movement in its classical version. It is no coincidence that he rejects the continuity of history, built by analogy with the ideas of classical physics. For him, another analogy, the continuity of history as the continuity of Life, is not so convincing, although it seems more organic to Toynbee.

In essence, the existence of society for Toynbee is a manifestation of Life as an element of the existence of the universe. He, however, does not stoop to a banal reference in this regard to the complexity of social life. His thought makes a movement, on the one hand, returning us to the classical philosophy of antiquity, and on the other, rushing towards modern relativistic theory. The continuity of history, like the continuity of space-time, is for Toynbee a “flowing over” of the discreteness of human existence. Each moment of movement represents the generative beginning of the next and at the same time a certain self-determining, internally completed integrity. Toynbee reflects: “We are unlikely to understand the nature of Life if we do not learn to identify the boundaries of the relative discreteness of the ever-running stream - the bends of its living streams, rapids and quiet pools, rearing crests of waves and the peaceful surface of the ebb, sparkling crystal hummocks and bizarre flows of ice, when in myriads forms, water freezes in the crevices of glaciers. In other words, the concept of continuity has meaning only as a symbolic mental image on which we draw the perception of continuity in all real diversity and complexity. Let us try to apply this general observation to the comprehension of history. Does the term "continuity of history" imply in generally accepted sense that the mass, momentum, volume, speed and direction of the flow of human life are constant or, if not literally constant, then vary within such narrow limits that the correction can be neglected? If this term implies an implication

8 tions of this kind, then, no matter how attractive it may be, we will end up making serious mistakes."

From this kind of methodological reasoning, Toynbee assumes that the categories of space-time are of decisive importance for the historical study. However, having flashed a brilliant guess, it suddenly disintegrates into a tangle of rather banal concepts. Having imagined time as a space of historical life, Toynbee seems to feel timid before this thought. He splits history-path, history-life, and, consequently, the truth of history into local (in the most immediate meaning of this term) civilizations and societies, thereby falling into disunity with the object of knowledge, making impossible what he himself proclaimed in as the main goal - to comprehend the secrets of world history, becoming a prisoner of the rationalistic abstraction he condemns and ontologizing his own epistemological models.

History exists there, and only where there is time. Let us remember, for example, that, according to Christian ideas, human history itself did not begin from the moment of the creation of man, for his heavenly existence took place without essential changes, i.e. outside of history, but from the moment of the Fall, disobedience to the divine will, after which a person is cast into the stream of time and becomes mortal. It is no coincidence that the church fathers identified the measure of time “seculum” (century) with the concept of the world, worldly existence. Time is the field in which and thanks to which a change of states occurs human society, but it is through it that the content of history is revealed. For the historian, these different states are not only connected, but also combined; the past and the present turn out to actually coexist. Remaining motionless in space, it accumulates historical time, accommodating moments, centuries, millennia in its temporal reality. It is no coincidence that the ancients called the historian a “transmitter of time” (translator temporis), for he was not only a keeper, but also an organizer of time as a conditional historical space. In this process of “transferring” time, Toynbee assigns exceptional importance to memory, thereby pointing to the deepest naturalness of the connection between history as the sphere of accumulation and development of human experience and memory as a means of ordering time. In this, the English thinker acts as a successor to a very ancient European intellectual tradition; let us remember that the functions of the goddess of memory Mnemosyne included time management. At the same time, Toynbee supported the idea, so characteristic of the thinking of the twentieth century, reflecting an awareness of the relationship of time to biological and then social evolution, an idea, one of the modifications of which is the 9th hypothesis about the replacement of the biosphere by the noosphere, presented by Vernadsky, Le Roy and Teilhard de Chardin.

Local civilizations are milestones of time, and not islands of history closed in on itself. Opened History is an analogue of an open Universe. It is open to ever-expanding and deepening comprehension. In this regard, Toynbee develops the concept of an “intelligible field” of historical knowledge. He carries out the conjugation of the ontological and epistemological, asserting the knowability of the essential aspects of history through their manifestation in the existence of various societies, “the boundaries of which were approximately established taking into account the historical context of a given country, and now represent societies with a wider extent both in space and in time than nation-states, city-states or any other political unions... In the light of these conclusions, a number of further conclusions can be drawn, approaching history as a study of human relations. Its true subject is the life of society, taken both internally and in its external aspects. The internal side is the expression of the life of any given society in the sequence of chapters of its history, in the totality of all its constituent communities. The external aspect is the relations between individual societies, unfolded in time and space."

By delving into the concrete, the essential in history is cognized, which is based on the universal mind, the divine law - the Logos. The truth is revealed in the dialogue of humanity with it, or more precisely, in the Answer to its Challenge. This point of Toynbee's concept has sometimes been subject to ironic criticism, especially in terms of the specific historical "garments" of the Challenge. For example, the famous Soviet historian L.N. Gumilyov wrote in his monograph “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of the Earth”: “...according to A. Toynbee, Austria surpassed Bavaria and Badei in development because it was attacked by the Turks. However, the Turks first attacked Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, and they responded to the challenge of capitulation, and Austria was defended by the hussars of Jan Sobieski. The example speaks not in favor of the concept, but against it." We agree that the carelessness with which Toynbee illustrates Challenges and Responses on specific historical grounds can give rise to irony. However, to understand the concept of the English philosopher, it is very important to try to understand what is hidden behind each specific manifestation of the Challenge. To do this, we will again have to return to the starting points of the Christian philosophy of history.

Before the Fall, that is. Before the first act of free choice by man, the world was ahistorical. Man was not separated from God, and therefore he did not need either the manifestation or awareness of his own essence. From the moment of his free choice, he loses his natural unity with God, and separation arises between God and man. God abides

10 in the unchanging sphere of eternity, man is thrown into a constantly changing world where time rules. Thus, the first act of a person’s free choice opens the path of history and puts him in a situation of dialogue with God. This dialogue was originally captured in the Old Testament, which also contains prophecies regarding the future. The incarnation of the divine Logos in the person of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the early promise. From this moment on, history unfolds as a process of salvation of humanity, which is at the same time an ever more complete revelation of human essence. Thus, according to Toynbee, the basis of history is the interaction of the world law - the divine Logos and humanity, which each time gives an Answer to the divine Question, expressed in the form of a natural or some other Challenge. Comprehension of history is humanity’s comprehension of itself and within itself the divine Law and the highest destiny. Can humanity give one single Answer to the divine Question, or does it continually give different Answers? Thus, using specific terminology, Toynbee raises the question of the alternative nature of historical development.

The author of “Comprehension of History” believed that the Challenge and the Answer can be manifested in various forms, but all the Answers, in essence, merge into one: “Trusting the call of the Lord, “feel and find after him” (Acts VP, 27).. “Perhaps the author’s view of history may seem inaccurate or even incorrect to some, but he dares to assure the reader that through comprehension of reality he tried to comprehend God, who reveals Himself through the movement of souls who sincerely believe in Him.” History, which on the surface of phenomena promises a variety of options, at the level of its true content turns out to be unidirectional, focused on comprehending God through human self-disclosure. Thus, the Toyibian concept of history acquires a moral interpretation. And if Reason compensated man for his dependence on nature, then the moral law gave hope for harmonizing the interaction of history and personality. The establishment and dissemination of morality is possible through tradition and through mimesis (imitation).

The movement of history is determined by the completeness and intensity of the Response to the Challenge, the power of the Impulse directed towards the divine Call. A leap forward can be made by a creative minority, carrying along an inert mass, capable of transferring “the divine law from one soul to another.” However, Toynbee warns that the responsibility for the breakdown of civilizations lies with the conscience of their leaders: “Creative individuals at the forefront of civilization, influencing the uncreative majority through the mechanism of mimesis, can fail for two reasons. One of them can be called negative, and the other positive.

A possible “negative” failure is that leaders unexpectedly fall under the hypnosis they used to influence their followers. This led to a catastrophic loss of initiative “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. XV, 14).

Power is strength, and strength is difficult to keep within certain limits. And when these frameworks collapse, management ceases to be an art. Stopping the column halfway is fraught with relapses of disobedience on the part of the simple majority and fear of the commanders. And fear pushes commanders to use brute force to maintain their own authority, since they are already deprived of trust. The result is absolute hell. The once clear formation falls into anarchy. This is an example of "positive" failure resulting from the rejection of mimesis." Many historical dramas and tragedies of the twentieth century provide evidence of Toynbee's observation.

A call that remains unanswered is repeated again and again. The inability of a particular society, due to the loss of creative forces and energy, to respond to the Challenge deprives it of its viability and ultimately predetermines its disappearance from the historical arena. The collapse of society is accompanied by a growing sense of uncontrollability of the flow of life, the movement of history. At such moments, the action of historical determinism appears with sobering clarity, and Nemesis administers its historical judgment. The tragedy of collapse can lead to a social revolution, which, “not achieving its goal, then turns into reaction.” However, Toynbee believed that there are ways out of the dead ends of history: “...in our age, the main thing in the consciousness of societies is to understand themselves as part of a wider universe, while a feature of the social consciousness of the last century was the claim to consider oneself, one’s society, as a closed universe.” The search for a way out requires coordinated decisions based on a consistent moral position of all humanity, or at least a large part of it. This idea remains relevant on the eve of the third millennium.

The historical identity of Responses to Challenges is most fully revealed in the phenomenon of civilizations - closed societies, characterized by a set of defining features that allow them to be classified. Toynbee's scale of criteria is very flexible, although two of them remain stable - religion and the forms of its organization, as well as “the degree of distance from the place where a given society originally arose.” An attempt to classify according to the criterion of religion built the following series: “firstly, societies that are in no way connected with either subsequent or previous societies; secondly, societies that are in no way connected with previous ones, but connected with subsequent societies; thirdly , societies connected with previous ones, but less direct, less intimate connection than filial kinship, through the universal

Every society goes through stages of genesis, growth, breakdown and decay; the rise and fall of universal states, universal churches, heroic eras; contacts between civilizations in time and space. The viability of civilization is determined by the possibility of consistent development of the living environment and the development of the spiritual principle in all types of human activity, the transfer of Challenges and Answers from the external environment into society. And since the Challenges and Answers to them are of a different nature, civilizations turn out to be different from one another, but the main Answer to the Challenge of the Logos determines the essence of a single human civilization.

The significance of Toynbee’s conceptual constructions, which are very consonant with the thoughts of Spengler or Sorokin, of course, does not lie in their specific historical content, which turns out to be very conditional and schematized. A comparative method in which Sparta is compared with Germany in the 30s. twentieth century, and Ashurbanipal with Saint Louis, may cause quite reasonable objections from a professional historian. But no one before Toynbee, perhaps, attached such importance to the category “civilization,” a category that last years is acquiring increasing epistemological significance and is confidently included not only in the research tools of philosophers, sociologists and historians, but also in the spiritual arsenal of humanity.

Today it has become quite obvious that Toynbee's philosophy is neither prophetic nor flawless, but without it it is impossible to imagine the mentality of the twentieth century. Toynbee's contemporary, the German philosopher Jaspers, argued: “History has a deep meaning, but it is inaccessible to human knowledge.” Toynbee tried to show by the means available to him that history is open to comprehension and that humanity is capable of giving a worthy Answer to the universal Challenge.

IN AND. Ukolova

INTRODUCTION

RELATIVITY OF HISTORICAL THINKING

In every era and in every society, the study and knowledge of history, like any other social activities, subject to the prevailing trends of a given time and place. At the moment, the life of the Western world is determined by two institutions: the industrial economic system and the equally complex and intricate political system that we call “democracy”, meaning responsible parliamentary representative government of a sovereign nation-state. These two institutions - economic and political - became dominant in the Western world at the end of the last century and provided, albeit temporary, but still a solution to the main problems of that period. The last century sought and found salvation, bequeathing its findings to us. And the fact that the institutions developed in the last century are preserved to this day speaks primarily of the creative power of our predecessors. We live and reproduce our existence in an industrial system and a parliamentary nation-state, and it is quite natural that these two institutions have significant power over our imagination and the real fruits of it.

The humanitarian aspect of the industrial system is directly related to man and the division of labor; its other aspect is addressed to the physical environment of man. The task of the industrial system is to maximize its productive capacity by man-made processing of raw materials into specific products and engaging in mechanically organized labor. a large number of of people. This feature of the industrial system was recognized by Western thought back in the first half of the last century. Since the development of the industrial system is based on the successes of the physical sciences, it is quite natural to assume that there was some kind of “pre-established harmony” between industry and science (1). If this is so, then we should not be surprised that scientific thinking began to be organized in an industrial manner. In any case, this is quite legitimate for science at its early stages - and modern science very young even compared to Western society - since for discursive thinking it is necessary to first accumulate enough empirical

14 data. However, the same method has recently found distribution in many areas of knowledge and outside a purely scientific environment - in thinking that is turned to Life, and not to inanimate nature, and, moreover, even in thinking that studies various forms of human activity. Historical thinking has also been captured by an alien industrial system, and it is in this area where relationships between people are explored that the modern Western industrial system demonstrates that it is hardly a regime in which one would like to live and work.

The example of the life and work of Theodor Mommsen is indicative here. Young Mommsen created a voluminous work, which, of course, will forever remain a masterpiece of Western historical literature. His History of the Roman Republic was published in 1854-1856. But as soon as the book saw the light, the author began to be ashamed of his work and tried to direct his energy in a completely different direction. Mommsen spent the rest of his life compiling a complete collection of Latin inscriptions and publishing an encyclopedic collection of Roman constitutional law. In this, Mommsen showed himself to be a typical Western historian of his generation, a generation that, for the sake of the prestige of the industrial system, was ready to turn itself into “intellectual workers.” Since the times of Mommsen and Ranke, historians began to spend most of their efforts collecting raw material - inscriptions, documents, etc. – and publishing them in the form of anthologies or private notes for periodicals. When processing collected materials, scientists often resorted to division of labor. As a result, extensive research appeared, which was published in a series of volumes, which is still practiced by the University of Cambridge. Such series are monuments to human hard work, “factuality” and the organizational power of our society. They will take their place along with amazing tunnels, bridges and dams, liners, cruisers and skyscrapers, and their creators will be remembered among the famous engineers of the West. Conquering the realm of historical thought, the industrial system gave birth to outstanding strategists and, having won, obtained considerable trophies. However, a thoughtful observer has the right to doubt the scale of what has been achieved, and the victory itself may seem like a delusion born of a false analogy.

Toynbee A.J.

COMPREHENSION OF HISTORY (Collection)

Per. from English/Comp. Ogurtsov A.P.; Entry Art. Ukolova V.I.;

Closing Art. Rashkovsky E.B.

Pages 320 and 321 are missing!

Arnold Toynbee and the comprehension of history. . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The relativity of historical thinking. . . . . . . . 14

Field of historical research. . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Comparative study of civilizations. . . . . . . 42

Part one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The problem of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The nature of the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . 93

The reason for the genesis of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Call-and-Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Six outposts in the history of Western Europe. . . . . . 142

Part two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The growth of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

The process of growth of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Growth analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Care-and-Return. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Fractures of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Part three. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Collapses of civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Movement of Schism-and-Palingenesis. . . . . . . . . . 338

A split in the social system. . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

A split in the soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

Archaism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Futurism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Detachment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438

Transfiguration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Decay analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Rhythms of decay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

Part four. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Universal states. . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Universal states as goals. . . . . . . . . 486

Universal states as means. . . . . . . 499

Provinces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

Capital Cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509

Part five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Universal churches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Civilization as regression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Part six. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Heroic Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Contacts between civilizations in space. . . . . 555

Social consequences of contacts between modern 577

each other's civilizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Psychological consequences of contacts between 587

civilizations contemporary to each other. . . . . . . . . .

Contacts of civilizations in time. . . . . . . . . . . 599

Part seven. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Inspiration from historians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

Reading Toynbee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

Scientific commentary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

The end of a century, and even more so the end of a millennium, invites reflection on the meaning of history. Humanity looks into the past to find signs of the future. There are quite loud voices predicting the end of history, be it about the fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecies or about its achievement of a certain stable state generated by the successes of Western liberalism and democracy and capable of substantivizing the present, discarding the eternal flow of history from the past into the future (let us at least remember the sensational concept American scientist Francis Fukuyama, behind which the shadow of the great Hegel appears). However, in the end, a close, one might say convulsive, look into the past is a necessary element of self-affirmation of humanity in its newfound hope, almost lost in the twentieth century, which brought unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and bloody wars, genocide and environmental crisis, which put peoples and every person on the brink of survival, but at its end still extracted from the flames of destruction the warmth of humanism, the light of insight, the foreknowledge of the possibility of the continuation of life and the movement of history, but no longer as the chariot of Vishnu, mercilessly destroying everything in its path, but as a field for the realization of the phenomenon of man in the spiritual and a socially converging world, becoming a factor in truly cosmic evolution.

What place in this peering into history can be occupied by the reflections of the English thinker Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), who has long been recognized as one of the “pillars” of the philosophy of history, exalted and ridiculed, and today seeming almost old-fashioned in his academic respectability? Unfortunately, the Russian translation of Toynbee’s main work “A Study of History” (more precisely, extracts from it) comes out very late, although the name of the English thinker has occupied a strong place for many decades in courses on the history of philosophy taught in our universities, where it was considered good in a tone of scolding him as (a representative of bourgeois history and sociology), following Spengler, striving to “rethink the entire socio-historical development of mankind in the spirit of the theory of the circulation of local civilizations,” while emphasizing that

Arnold Toynbee

Comprehension of history

Introduction

The Relativity of Historical Thinking

In every era and in every society, the study and knowledge of history, like any other social activity, is subject to the prevailing trends of a given time and place. At the moment, the life of the Western world is determined by two institutions: the industrial system of economics and the equally complex and intricate political system that we call “democracy”, meaning responsible parliamentary representative government of a sovereign nation-state. These two institutions - economic and political - became dominant in the Western world at the end of the last century and provided, albeit temporary, but still a solution to the main problems of that period. The last century sought and found salvation, bequeathing its findings to us. And the fact that the institutions developed in the last century are preserved to this day speaks primarily of the creative power of our predecessors. We live and reproduce our existence in an industrial system and a parliamentary nation-state, and it is quite natural that these two institutions have significant power over our imagination and the real fruits of it.

The humanitarian aspect of the industrial system is directly related to man, the division of labor: its other aspect is addressed to the physical environment of man. The task of the industrial system is to maximize its productive capacity by man-made processing of raw materials into specific products and involving large numbers of people in this mechanically organized labor. This feature of the industrial system was recognized by Western thought back in the first half of the last century. Since the development of the industrial system is based on the successes of the physical sciences, it is quite natural to assume that there was some kind of “pre-established harmony” between industry and science.

If this is so, then we should not be surprised that scientific thinking began to be organized in an industrial manner. In any case, this is quite legitimate for science in its early stages - and modern science is very young even compared to Western society - since for discursive thinking it is necessary first to accumulate enough empirical data. However, the same method has recently found distribution in many areas of knowledge and outside a purely scientific environment - in thinking that is turned to Life, and not to inanimate nature, and, moreover, even in thinking that studies various forms of human activity. Historical thinking has also been captured by an alien industrial system, and it is in this area where relationships between people are explored that the modern Western industrial system demonstrates that it is hardly a regime in which one would like to live and work.

The example of the life and work of Theodor Mommsen is indicative here. Young Mommsen created a voluminous work, which, of course, will forever remain a masterpiece of Western historical literature. His History of the Roman Republic was published in 1854-1856. But as soon as the book saw the light, the author began to be ashamed of his work and tried to direct his energy in a completely different direction. Mommsen spent the rest of his life compiling a complete collection of Latin inscriptions and publishing an encyclopedic collection of Roman constitutional law. In this, Mommsen showed himself to be a typical Western historian of his generation, a generation that, for the sake of the prestige of the industrial system, was ready to turn itself into “intellectual workers.” Since the time of Mommsen and Ranke, historians have spent most of their efforts collecting the raw material of inscriptions, documents, etc., and publishing them in the form of anthologies or private notes for periodicals. When processing collected materials, scientists often resorted to division of labor. As a result, extensive research appeared, which was published in a series of volumes, which is still practiced by the University of Cambridge. Such series are monuments to human hard work, “factuality” and the organizational power of our society. They will take their place along with amazing tunnels, bridges and dams, liners, cruisers and skyscrapers, and their creators will be remembered among the famous engineers of the West. Conquering the realm of historical thought, the industrial system gave birth to outstanding strategists and, having won, obtained considerable trophies. However, a thoughtful observer has the right to doubt the scale of what has been achieved, and the victory itself may seem like a delusion born of a false analogy.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to encounter history teachers who define their seminars as “laboratories” and, perhaps without realizing it, firmly limit the concept of “original research” to the discovery or verification of some facts not previously established. Moreover, this concept began to extend to reviews of historical articles published in periodicals and collections. There is a clear tendency to underestimate historical works written by one person, and this underestimation is especially noticeable when it comes to works dealing with general history. For example, H. G. Wells's Outline of History was received with undisguised hostility by a number of specialists. They mercilessly criticized all the inaccuracies made by the author, his conscious departure from facts. It is unlikely that they were able to understand that, recreating the history of mankind in their imagination, G. Wells achieved something inaccessible to them, which they did not even dare to think about. In fact, the significance of H. Wells' book was more or less fully appreciated by the general reading public, but not by a narrow group of specialists of that time.

The industrialization of historical thinking has gone so far that in some of its manifestations it has begun to achieve pathological forms of hypertrophy of the industrial spirit. It is widely known that those individuals and groups whose efforts are entirely focused on converting raw materials into light, heat, motion and various consumer goods tend to think that the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is an activity that is valuable in itself, no matter how valuable for humanity the results of these processes. For Europeans, this mentality characterizes a certain type of American businessman, but this type, in fact, is an extreme expression of a tendency inherent in the entire Western world. Modern European historians try not to notice that at present this disease, which is the result of an imbalance in proportions, is also inherent in their consciousness.

This willingness of the potter to become a slave to his clay is such an obvious aberration that, in looking for an appropriate corrective for it, one need not resort to the fashionable comparison of the process of historical research with the processes of industrial production. In the end, in industry too, the obsession with the raw material base is fruitless. A successful industrialist is a person who is the first to foresee the economic demand for a particular product or service and, in connection with this, begins to intensively process raw materials using labor. Moreover, neither raw materials nor labor in themselves are of any interest to him. In other words, he is the master, not the slave, of natural resources; he is the captain of an industrial ship paving the way to the future.

It is known that treating people or animals as inanimate objects can have disastrous consequences. Why is it not possible to assume that such a course of action is no less erroneous in the world of ideas? Why should we think that the scientific method, designed to analyze inanimate nature, can be transferred to historical thinking, which involves the study of people and their activities? When a history professor calls his seminar a “laboratory,” is he not thereby cutting himself off from his natural environment? Both names are metaphors, but each of them is appropriate only in its own area. The historian's seminar is a nursery in which the living learn to speak a living word about the living. A physicist’s laboratory is—or was until a certain time—a workshop in which artificial or semi-artificial objects are made from inanimate natural raw materials. Not a single practitioner, however, would agree to organize a nursery on the principles of a factory, as well as a factory on the principles of a nursery. In the world of ideas, scientists must also avoid misuse of method. We know quite well and we always remember the so-called “pathetic delusion” that spiritualizes and gives life to inanimate objects. However, we are now more likely to fall victim to the opposite - the “apathetic fallacy”, according to which living beings are treated as if they were inanimate objects.

Comprehension of history. A.J. Toynbee

Per. from English - M.: Progress, 1991.- 736 p.

The collection represents the first attempt at a consistent presentation in Russian of the world-famous theory of historical development by A. J. Toynbee (Toynbee, Arnold Joseph, 1889-1975). The collection is based on a 12-volume work by a famous British scientist. In Soviet historiography, this work was traditionally called “Study of History.”

Volumes I-III were published by Oxford University Press in 1934. The last, XII volume was released in 1961.

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CONTENT
Introduction 10
RELATIVITY OF HISTORICAL THINKING 10
Notes 16
Comments 16
FIELD OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH 18
Spatial expansion of the field of our research. 26
Expansion of the field in time. 31
Notes 37
Comments 37
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CIVILIZATIONS REVIEW OF SOCIETIES OF THE SAME KIND 43
Orthodox Christian Society 43
Iranian and Arab societies 45
Syrian Society 47
Notes 52
Comments 53
Indian Society 61
Ancient Chinese Society 62
Relic societies 63
Minoan Society 64
Notes 68
Comments 68
Sumerian society 76
Hittite Society 79
Babylonian Society 81
Andean Society 83
Yucatan, Mexican and Mayan societies 85
Egyptian Society 86
Notes 87
Comments 87
PRELIMINARY CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIETIES OF THIS TYPE 92
Table 1 93
COMPARABILITY OF THIS TYPE 95
The falsity of the concept of "unity of civilization." 96
The philosophical aspect of the time coordinates of societies of this type. 99
Philosophical aspect of the equivalence of societies of this type 100
Comparability of “facts” in the study of civilizations. 101
Notes 103
Comments 103

Part 1. THE PROBLEM OF THE GENESIS OF CIVILIZATIONS 104
Table 2 104
Notes 105
Comments 105
THE NATURE OF THE GENESIS OF CIVILIZATIONS 106
Comments 107
REASON FOR THE GENESIS OF CIVILIZATIONS 107
Negative factor 107
Positive factors: race and environment 107
Race 108
"Nordic Man" 109
Race and Civilization 110
Table 3 111
Wednesday 112
Notes 116
Comments 116
CALL-AND-RESPONSE 119
Call-and-response action. 119
Challenges and responses in the genesis of civilizations 124
Genesis of Egyptian civilization 124
Genesis of Sumerian civilization 125
Genesis of Chinese civilization 125
Genesis of the Mayan and Andean civilizations 126
Genesis of the Minoan civilization 126
CALL-AND-RESPONSE AREA 128
"Full Sails" or "Too Good Land" 128
Return of nature 129
Central America 130
Ceylon 130
North Arabian Desert 130
Easter Island 131
Notes 133
Comments 133
STIMULUS OF HARSH COUNTRIES 137
The Aegean coasts and their continental hinterlands 137
Attica and Boeotia 138
Aegina and Argos 139
NEW LAND STIMULUS 140
SPECIAL INCENTIVE FOR OVERSEAS MIGRATION 142
STROKE STIMULUS 146
PRESSURE STIMULUS 148
Russian Orthodoxy. 148
Notes 150
Comments 150
SIX OUTPOSTS IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN EUROPE 153
Western world against continental European barbarians. 153
The Western world against Muscovy. 157
Western World vs. Ottoman Empire 158
Notes 164
Comments 164
Western World versus Far Western Christianity 169
Western world versus Scandinavia. 170
Western world versus Syrian world on the Iberian Peninsula 173
STIMULUS OF INFRINGEMENT 175
The nature of the stimulus 175
Migration 176
Slavery 176
Caste 178
Religious discrimination. 179
Comments 180
GOLDEN MEAN 182
Law of compensation. 182
What makes a challenge excessive? 185
Comparison by three parameters 189
Comments 189

Part 2. GROWTH OF CIVILIZATIONS 191
THE PROBLEM OF THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATIONS 191
THE NATURE OF THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATIONS 215
THE PROCESS OF GROWTH OF CIVILIZATIONS 220
GROWTH CRITERIA 220
GROWTH ANALYSIS 251
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GROWING CIVILIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS 251
CARE-AND-RETURN 260
INTERACTION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS IN GROWING CIVILIZATIONS 265
DIFFERENTIATION DURING GROWTH 282
BREAKS OF CIVILIZATIONS 288
IS DETERMINISM CONVINCING? 288

Part 3. COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATIONS 325
DECAY CRITERION 325
THE SPLITTING-AND-PALINGENESIS MOVEMENT 328
SCHIVAL IN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 331
INTERNAL PROLETARIAT 333
EXTERNAL PROLETARIAT 339
A SPLIT IN THE SOUL 344
ARCHAISM 393
FUTURISM 404
BREAK FROM THE PRESENT 405
RESOLUTION 413
TRANSFORMATION 417
PALINGENESIS 421
DECAY ANALYSIS 422
RHYTHMS OF DECAY 443

Part 4. UNIVERSAL STATES 451
GOAL OR MEANS? 451
UNIVERSAL STATES AS OBJECTIVES 453
MIRAGE OF IMMORTALITY 453
UNIVERSAL STATES AS MEANS 465
PRICE OF EUTHANASIA [+1] 465
PROVINCES 470
CAPITAL 473

Part 5. UNIVERSAL CHURCHES 478
THE CHURCH AS A "CANCER" 478
CHURCH AS A "DOLL" 480
CHURCH AS THE HIGHEST KIND OF SOCIETY 483
CIVILIZATION AS REGRESSION 489
CHALLENGING MILITARY ON EARTH 491