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The inventory of differences

Paul Veyne
Published online: 24 May 2006.

To cite this article: Paul Veyne (1982) The inventory of differences, Economy and Society, 11:2, 173-198, DOI:
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The inventory of differences

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Paul Veyne

Men and women who have better reasons than I for being undaunted
are, I'm told, terrified in the hours and days preceding their
inaugural lecture.' And there are, of course, so many reasons why
anyone might be terrified in front of any of you that I shall not
bore you by inflicting on you the detailed account of the reasons
for being terrified which may be peculiar to me. I shall ask for
mercy only on account of one of these reasons. You, my dear
colleagues, have appointed me to a chair in Roman history. Now I
am quite convinced that history exists, sociological history at any
rate. Sociological history is restricted neither to recounting nor
Rather, sociological history structures
even to c~mprehension.~
its subject-matter through recourse to the conceptualisation of the
human sciences, also called the moral and political sciences. I am
no less convinced that the Romans existed really; that is, that they
existed at one and the same time in just as exotic and just as everyday a manner as the Tibetans, for example, or the Nambikwara, no
more and no less. In this way it is no longer possible to think of
them as a sort of people-value [peuple-valeur].So, if both history
and the Romans exist, does a Roman history exist? Does history
consist in the narration of histories according to temporal order?
The answer, to give it immediately, will be formally, no, and
materially, yes. Yes, because historical events exist; no, because no
historical explanation exists. Like many other sciences, history
informs its materials through recourse to another science, sociology.
In the same way, there do exist astronomical phenomena but,
unless I am mistaken, there exists no astronomical explanation.
The explanation of astronomical facts is physics. But a course in
astronomy is not a course in physics.
When you entrusted this Chair of Roman History to a stranger
whose birthplace was the school of historical sociology, I imagine,
my dear colleagues, that you wanted to respect one of your traditions. For this Chair has traditionally had an interest in the human
sciences. Keen to present himself in his best light, your servant will
therefore refer to what might be called the second moment of the
Aronian philosophy of history. The first moment of that philosophy
Economy and Society Volume 1 1 Number 2 May 1982
O R.K.P. 1982 0308-5147/8211102-0173

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Paul Veyne

was the critique of the notion of a historical fact - 'facts do not

exist.' That is, facts do not exist in a separate state, except through
abstraction. Concretely, they exist only under a concept which
informs them. Or, if you prefer, history exists only in relation to
the questions we put to it. Materially, history is written with facts;
formally, it is written with a problematic and with concepts.
But what questions should we be putting to history? And what
is the source of the concepts which structure it? Every historian is
implicitly a philosopher, since he decides what he will take to be
anthropologically interesting. He has to decide if he will attach
importance to postage stamps throughout history, or indeed to
social classes, or to nations, or to the sexes and to their political,
material and imaginary (in the psychoanalysts' sense of imago)
relations. As we have seen, when Fran~oisChatelet found the neoKantian critique slightly limited and in the name of Hegel called
for a less formalist and more substantial conception of historical
objectivity, he could not foresee that his wishes would be gratified
so fully and so quickly.
And since facts are only the subject-matter of history, a historian
must have recourse to political and social theory in order to inform
those facts. My programme will be the passage Aron wrote in 197 1:
The ambition of the historian qua historian is still the account
of the adventure men live. But this account requires all the
resources of the social sciences, including the resources which
are desirable but not yet available. How can we narrate the
future of a partial sector - diplomacy or ideology - or the
future of a global entity - nation or empire - without a theory
of the sector or of the entity? To be different from the economist or the sociologist does not mean that the historian should
not be capable of discussion with them on an equal footing. I
even wonder if, going against the grain of the empirical vocation
normally attributed to him, the historian ought not t o flirt with
philosophy. A person who does not look for meaning in existence
will find no meaning in the diversity of societies and beliefs.
This is the second moment of the philosophy of history. As we
shall see, it leads to the central problem of historical practice,
namely, the determination of invariants beyond modifications. A
physicist would put it in these terms: the determination of the
formula beyond the different problems whose solution it permits.
It is a question of actuality. The true subject of Aron's Clausewitz
is to put the invariant within the historian's reach.
The long and the short of it is that a historian has t o decide
what he ought to talk about and he has to know what he is talking
about. It is not a question of an interdisciplinary approach, but of
much more than that. The moral and political sciences (we shall

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follow convention and call them 'sociology' for short) are not the
territory of the neighbour with whom one might establish points
of contact or whom one might raid for useful objects. They bring
nothing to history, because they do much more than that. They
inform it: they constitute it. Otherwise, one would have t o suppose
that historians were the sole members of their species t o have the
right to talk about certain things - peace, wars, nations, administrations or customs - without knowing what these things are and
without starting to learn what they are through the study of the
sciences which deal with them.
Even if the historians want t o be positivists, they would not
succeed. Even if they do not want to acknowledge it, they do have
a sociology, since they cannot open their mouth without uttering
the words 'war' or 'city' and without relying on, for want of a
theory worthy of the name, the wisdom of nations or on false
concepts, such as 'feudality' or 'redistribution'. Erudition, the
serious part of the job of history, is therefore only half the task.
And nowadays the formation of a historian is double. It is erudite
but, in addition, it is sociological. That gives us twice as much
work, for science makes progress, and every day sees a furious
advance in the world's loss of innocence.
The human sciences are fashionable, as it is said. In other words,
our epoch is more profoundly cultivated than others. It no longer
learns much Latin but, to make up for it, it understands more
things about its own world. Now it is undeniable that our epoch is
turning away from classical studies. I can see only two possible
explanations for that. If the cultivated public is no longer much
interested in antiquity, it is either because antiquity is not interesting or because we analysts of antiquity have been unable t o interest
people in it. Which? Not that it's a matter of begging for the votes
of opinion - history is done to amuse historians, that's all. It's just
that it would be more fun to be amused in the company of more
people. Here I am, then, doing a bit of proselytising. So, if we have
to play recruitment officers, we might as well do it with some
chance of success. I shall not, therefore, talk about humanism and
I shall not defend culture. Culture is well and truly dead when it is
defended rather than invented.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a matter of conceptualising - on the
basis of simple ethnographic or sociological curiosity - the history
of an old empire, the main debris of which is called Digeste or
Lucretius and Virgil, this Dante in two persons. There is a poetry
of remoteness. Nothing is further from us than this civilisation of
antiquity. It is exotic, or rather it is over, and the objects which
our excavations bring forth are as surprising as meteorites. Little
of Rome's heritage has entered into us and even that is in us in
greatly diluted doses and at the cost of considerable reinterpreta-

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Paul Veyne

tions. Between the Romans and us ap abyss has been hollowed out
by Christianity, by German philosophy, by technological, scientific
and economic revolutions, by everything that comprises our civilisation. And that is why Roman history is interesting. It takes us out
of ourselves and forces u s to make explicit the differences separating us from it. A civilisation less distant from our own would not
have that virtue. We would have a common language with it, so
that the greater part of what the historian would have to say could
go without saying. Historiography could then be delayed longer in
the penumbra of the only vaguely conceived.
A second reason, which will appear strange, is that Roman
history is a sharper incitement than others t o the business of making explicit the non-thought, a sharper incitement t o conceptualisation. This histary is poorly documented, more poorly documented,
at any rate, than a good part of medieval history. Now this poor
documentation, this poverty, instigates ingenuity, and that in turn
engenders a new richness. All historiography depends in part on
the problematic it adopts and in part on the documents it has at
its disposal. And if a historiography is blocked, it will be due now
to the lack of documents, now to a sclerosed problematic. Now
experience shows that the sclerosis of the problematic always
occurs much earlier than the exhaustion of documents. Even when
documentation is poor, there are always problems which it does
not occur to us to pose. This is also the case, a fortiori, when
documentation is rich. For when sources are abundant, it is possible
to practise an extensive exploitation of them for a long time, without modifying the problematic. We are satisfied with the exploitation of new sectors of the soil. When political history approaches
marginally zero yields because its technology is antiquated, then,
without upsetting the technology, we set about nonevent-based
history and we replace the dates of treaties and battles with curves
of long duration. That is the advantage of inhabiting the richest
plains of the country of history. Hence the unbounded admiration
earned by two discoverers, Philippe Ariks and Michel Foucault,
who, as true entrepreneurs in the manner of Schumpeter, have
been innovators without being constrained by poverty.
When the apparent exhaustion of documents compels the modification of the problematic, it emerges that new questions become
exploitable. It even happens that traditional questions approach
their solution thanks to the new technology. Here is an example
which permits the understanding of conceptualisation, of theory
and .of the invariant. This is the question of Roman imperialism.
This imperialism poses no problem so long as the historian remains
unquestioning and restricts himself t o recounting the Roman
Conquest. But if v e undertake to enquire why the Romans suddenly

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conquered or rather Finlandised the Hellenic world, we are faced

with an enigma. Why this sudden intervention in the international
system of Greek states from which Rome had for a long time kept
apart, in the same way that until 1917 the United States lived in
isolation from the international scene? It soon appears that discussion is blocked because unconsciously, or rather implicitly, many
historians conceived of the principles of Roman politics as they
had conceived of the principles of European equilibrium, as if that
were self-evident and as if there were no other principles of foreign
politics which were possible. These historians thought they had no
theory and that they were dealing with facts alone. But they had a
theory without knowing it, and it was false. It is not that the
politics of equilibrium, according to Vergennes and Bismarck,
were unknown t o antiquity. The Greek states practised it among
themselves. It was understood that there existed a plurality of
states which were equal in law, had the right to survive, defended
their interests and shared among themselves a common semisecurity from day to day. But these maxims were not exactly the
maxims of Roman politics, and that is why the brutality and pride
of the Roman intervention into the world of the Hellenic states
surprised and scandalised the Greeks. It was a tragic misunderstanding, each people attributing its own maxims to the other. Now
Rome's maxims are archaic; Rome incarnates an archaic form, not
of imperialism but of isolationism. She denies the pluralities of
nations; she behaves, as Mommsen said, as if she were the sole
State in the full meaning of the word. She does not seek a
common semi-security from day to day in equilibrium with other
cities, but wants to live in tranquillity and to obtain for herself
once and for all a whole and definitive security. What would be
the ideal outcome of such an ambition? It would be to conquer
the whole human horizon, t o its limits, to the sea or to the Barbarians, so as to be alone in the world at last, when all is conquered. In
those ancient times, when the planet was not completely mapped,
it was indeed possible to dream of the definitive liquidation of the
problem of security and foreign politics, as we dream of once and
for all finishing with the problem of hunger and cancer. I suppose
that Chinese imperialism also derived from the same dream of
occupying the entire human horizon. No doubt you will tell me if
1 am wrong.
We learn two things from this. First, we learn that the recognition
of the existence of other nations as subjects of international law is
not self-evident. The Romans are a case in point, as are the Europeans in the last century with respect to nonChristian peoples they were made t o be ignored or placed in subjection. Practically,
the existence of a plurality of states recognising each other as

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Paul Veyne

equals implies either a previous unity of culture - the Greek cities

were fragments of the Hellenic ethnic grouping - or a religious
unity - European equilibrium was constructed from the debris of
Christianity. Second, we learn that the opposition of the two conceptions of security reduces to the unity of a model, an invariant.
To share semi-security with another from day t o day, or to seize
a definitive whole security for oneself, by placing another in a
total insecurity, means that international security is a game of
strategy with a zero algebraic sum - these gain what the others
lose, and it is impossible for two neighbouring states each to be in
complete security. That is the invariant model to which we have
seen two historical modifications: the politics of equilibrium, and
archaic isolationism in the Roman or Chinese style.
So the conceptualisation of an invariant permits the explanation
of events. By operating on the variables, it is possible - starting
from the invariant - to recreate the diversity of historical modifications. In this way, the non-thought is made explicit, and light is
thrown on what was only vaguely conceived or scarcely intimated.
Last, and most important, however paradoxical this statement
may seem, only the invariant individualises, completely abstract
and general as it is. Roman imperialism is no longer the vague
imperialism of the saloon bar. It no longer has anything in common
with Pericles, Alexander or Hitler; it is no longer American
imperialism and isolationism. It has its own physiognomy. As the
well-known saying goes, the more ideas we have, the more we find
that people are original. What is individual is not what is inexhaustible, ineffable, or what, according to Michelet, is life itself. What is
individual is what is not blurred.
The invariant is at the very centre of historical practice, since
history explains and since it does so sociologically, scientifically.
For what is a science if not the determination of invariants which
permit the rediscovery of the diversity of phenomena? Must we
add that Roman imperialism does not reduce t o this prerty schema?
The second Macedonian War or the Conquest of Gaul are explained
differently and suppose a general theory of imperialism. I am not
forgetting the nuances, or rather the precisions, but I only have an
hour.
Nothing is being hidden. In the current state of historical work
(or rather the current state of the consciousness historians have of
their particular work), the idea of the invariant, or the word, will
be slightly misleading. Some will say that they do not see what it
contributes to their work and what utility it has, without noticing
that they themselves make use of the invariant without knowing
it - for today's historians do not in fact disdain ideas or theories
of human nature and history. Others will have prudish fears. Would

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not the invariant be the very negation of historical evolution and

would it not be a conservative ideology which states that 'human
nature' is immutable? Would it not be contempt for chronology,
the eye of history? Would it not be negation of chance and of the
role of individuals? Even worse, they will suspect that it all belongs
to comparative history, the bite noire which is actually a largely
mythical animal? (The truth is that comparative history is of small
importance. But since the question has come up, we shall take
advantage of it to point out that the verb 'to compare' syntactically comprises two constructions which have opposite meanings. A
poet compares the amorous passion to the flame in order to say
that they are comparable. But the historian compares Roman
imperialism with that of Athens in order to claim that they do not
resemble each other, in the way that a woman buying wool
compares two balls which she suspects are not the same shade.)
Perhaps there is a way of disarming this prudishness and this
weary indifference. It is to recall that there is a theory which is
very popular among historians, which is hardly suspected of lacking
historical sense or of being conservative, and which is very successful
because it permits or claims t o permit the constitution of history
as a science. Indeed, it provides professional historians with instruments of explanation, in other words invariants. This theory is
Marxism. Its invariants are class struggle, forces and relations of
production, infrastructures, ideologies, class interest, and State as
instrument of the dominant class. (In Marxist theory, domination
is the State's invariable function, beyond its historical variations,
and it is also the meaning, defined once and for all, of the concept
of the State.) Marxism is a theory, and it has a wide view. It permits
the explanation of the transformation of society and 'human
nature'. Behind the metamorphoses it discovers an invariable key,
namely, the dialectic of the forces and relations of production. (If
it were not an invariable key, it would not be a key, by definition.)
Behind the picturesque of history, the living iridescence of cultures
and individuals, Marxism discerns the great springs ceaselessly
engendering the variety of the historical kaleidoscope and explaining it. It has found, or claims to have found, the hard core of
history.
The need for invariants is quite simply the need for a theory
which furnishes history with its concepts and instruments of
explanation. Marxism sees itself as this theory. It is of small
importance here if its claim has little basis. What is important is
that its success with historians is a happy symptom indicative of
the fact that narration, understanding, impressionism, and the
taste for making things come alive are not enough to satisfy them.
Historians also have need of scientific intelligibility, although they

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would not on that account dream of denying the importance of

chronology, chance or great men! I can see here the frustration of
Marxist historians among my friends when people take it into their
head t o propound these tired objections, when in fact these objections are beside the point.
At the level of rigour, Marxism is not all that it claims to be. It
is Marxism, however, that provides us with the example of an
invariant that is the most appropriate for the dissipation of misunderstandings. 'The history of all hitherto existing society', to
quote from The Communist Manifesto, 'is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed.'
Beyond historical modifications, and beyond theoretical notknowings and ideological illusions, the spring of history is invariably class struggle. This is not to say that there will always be
classes - always, always - but that, beyond appearances and
illusions, the truth of millennia of prehistory which still continue
will have been class struggle. 'Invariant' does not mean that history
is made of invariable objects which will never change, but only
that it is possible to take a point of view about history which
remains invariable as the truth, a scientific point of view, which
escapes the not-knowings and the illusions of each epoch and
which is transhistorical. In a word, to determine the invariants is
to determine the true realities and the true mechanisms of historical
evolution. It is to explain this evolution scientifically, instead of
being restricted to recounting it in a superficial and illusory
manner. 'Invariants' therefore means 'history written in the light
of the sciences of man', because such a history will clearly make
use of these sciences when they exist or will contribute to bringing
them into existence. The invariant explains its own historical
modifications from the starting point of its internal complexity.
From the starting point of this very complexity, it also explains its
own eventual disappearance. The dialectic of class relations and
class struggles comprises the explanation of their disappearance
and of the advent of a classless society.
Even when they do not know it, historians make use of the
invariant, as they make use of prose. For they do in fact claim to
say what was the reality of former societies and they have no
interest in sharing, one after another, the not-knowings and illusions
which these various societies have imposed on each other. A
historian does not make the Romans, the Tibetans or the Nambikwara speak. He speaks for them, he tells us about them, and he
tells us what were the realities and the ideologies of these people.
He speaks his language, not theirs. If he speaks to us of the twentieth
century, he will claim to speak the truth of this century and not to

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share the delusions. He does not speak the erroneous language of

his heroes but he speaks to us about them in a metalanguage, that
of scientific truth. The Romans speak of the grandeur of Rome,
ancestral custom, and Senate wisdom. The historian translates it
into the transhistorical metalanguage of the political sciences. He
deciphers the text and finds invariants in it - imperialism or
isolationism, ideological overlay, class domination. He does not
share the erroneous language of the Romans. He explains the
Romans to us by speaking the language of scientific truth, by
bringing to light the mechanisms and realities of Roman history,
so making it intelligible.
This appetite for intelligibility is in its infancy but it is this
appetite which comprises the future of our science. We live in a
transitional epoch. Many minds are still satisfied with 'reconstructing the past' and with recounting it in a lifelike way. It is still not a
standard reflex to conceptualise, to be released from that exhaustion
of the intellect which is comparable to the effort of vision. It is
still not a deontologically obligatory reflex to say, in the face of
what is being studied (whether it is the Congress of Vienna, education in the age of Louis XIV, or attitudes towards death):
Right then, let's take a step back, let's try t o do sociology, the
theory of it all. For it has all got to be structured in terms of
five or six concepts, some variables, an interplay of some laws,
tendencies or contradictions, and until I've laid bare these articulations I shall not know the nature of my event.
Others will then put these concepts to the test against other periods
of history, will bring these variables into play to try to re-engender
other events, and will prove whether these laws or tendencies can
form a coherent discourse. That's it, a science.
Marxist historians apart, why is the idea that the essence of
history is the explanation of events through recourse to the sciences
of man accepted by so few? There are many reasons. One is the
belief that science, with its general ideas, would kill history, history
being the knowledge of individuality. The remainder of my discourse will be committed to showing that this fear is unfounded.
Another reason is that the sciences of man, which we have called
sociology, are in their infancy, although they are already 2,500
years old. But even if that were not the case, historians will still
not be able to do history without advancing those sciences. Another
reason is that these sciences are not always very familiar. 'Politology' is much less developed in France than in the United States or
in Germany, where Professor Christian Meier writes in turn books
on Roman history which draw on politological inspiration and
books on politology which are illustrated by examples drawn from

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Roman history, not t o mention his contributions to the great

dictionary of the fundamental concepts of history, the Historisches
Lexikon der geschichtlichen Gmndbegriffe. And then there is
Marxism, which produces only good results. It has convinced the
majority of historians, including economic historians, that political
economy is Marxism (which is not an economic theory but only a
fragment of economic history). It has also convinced them that
when they have become steeped in Marxism they are equipped to
do economic history. You may not believe me, but I would say
that some of them hardly recognise the existence of a true economic
theory; at any rate, they do not deign t o recognise it. Lastly, there
is the case of sociology. I have used the term in avery conventional
sense here. In homage to Max Weber, the term designates all the
human sciences, history being their application. But in received
current usage, sociology means something else, or rather nothing
at all, since it combines three different things: a non-event-based
history of the contemporary world, a number of techniques for
enquiry (Lazarsfeld, Raymond Boudon), and lastly political philosophy and the anthropology of poverty. When you engage in political theory not as a philosopher but as a sociologist, there are two
advantages. It can be done as if you were ignorant of everything
written on man and society for the last 2,000 years, and you can
also cover yourselves with the glory attaching t o 'positive'
researchers who are not just playing philosophers. None of this is
very attractive, ahd we can see why more than one historian has a
reflex of retreat in the face of what is called (but which I do not
call) sociology.
And yet . . . and yet all these reasons are not the main point. A
much more simple reason is one which too often produces the
failure to understand that history is the application of the moral
and political sciences. This is convention, tradition, 'discourse' in
Foucault's sense, with all the arbitrariness and incoherence contained in a convention. In fact, we should not imagine that there is .
a majestic logic t o it all, that it is a matter of the conflict between
two great options, a matter of an agonising choice, an eternal
dialogue. The detail of the frontiers is much more minuscule and
arbitrary than that. Demography is allowed, but not organisation
theory; econometrics, or at least quantitative series, is allowed but
not economic analysis. You are still a historian if you cite Polanyi,
but in contrast Jellinek has not received the freedom of the city.
If you mention Jellinek, you will be suspected of being no more
than a ratiocinator, worse still, a jurist. You can talk potlatch or
redistribution, but if you talk marginal calculus you become
suspect. You can talk about symbol but not about index or icon.
A Hellenist thinks he can remain within the limits of his job when

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he talks about the power equilibrium in Greece (even if he does

not know the meaning of the word very precisely) but if you talk
to him of isolationism, he looks askance and suspects you of doing
comparative history, a grave abuse. It is because the word 'isolationism' is not familiar in history. If you are a demographer, you
are allowed and encouraged to learn demography before applying
yourself t o the deSpoliation of documents. But if you do political
history, it is not well looked on to begin by learning political theory.
That's the way it is. Never mind - through these incoherences,
history nevertheless becomes more and more an application of the
sciences of man. It makes use of these sciences and more often
perhaps it helps them make progress.
I am not saying that the historical sciences disappear in favour
of theory, but that they make use of theory whilst staying as they.
are.
The movement pushing the sciences of inventory forward, be it
history, literary or aesthetic history, or geography, pushing them
towards theoretical explanation, is a general movement. The theory
of literature is in a period of gestation. Readers of Paul Clavel
know that a theory of geographical space has been developed since
the works of Christaller on central sites. In this context, they
conjugate the theory of information and spatial economy created
by Thiinen a century and a half ago. In spite of this reference to
mathematical economics, however, the human sciences more often
than not retain an originality in relation to the physical sciences.
They do not establish formulae, formal models. Their invariants
are types, architectures of concepts. The conventional model
would be the triple definition of war in Clausewitz. These invariants
may be called structures, if it is impossible to live without the word.
As soon as historical practice has finished with the fine harvests
of extensive exploitation, it is thrown on to what has always been
its real problem: how is it possible to talk about anything in history
without referring to a transhistorical invariant? I could take
Thucydides as an example, but you would suspect me of not being
at the frontier of pioneering history. So I shall take a less ancient
example. Think of a history of madness. How should it be written?
We have all understood that there was no madness in 'the state of
nature', beyond historical modifications, and that it is therefore
impossible t o talk of 'madness' across the centuries, without establishing a misleading continuity between unrelated maladies. What
would we say of the naive person who wrote a history of 'charity'
across different civilisations, from Sumer and the Pharaohs?
My audience will permit a digression. Two slightly different
ideas are joined together or confused here, and their conjunction is
called structuralism. Both ideas are interesting and both seem true;

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it remains only to separate them. On the one hand, all social reality
is objectively limited and, on the other, all social reality is confused in our representation and it is up t o us to conceptualise that
reality and see it clearly.
On the one hand, no madness is madness itself, no science is
science itself, no painting is the totality of painting, and no war is
absolute war. Everywhere there are frictions, in Clausewitz' and
Walras' sense, or rarefactions of the discourse in Foucault's sense.
Historical agents are subject to constraints, and in this sense it is
their epoch that is expressed through them. Consequently, it follows
that the expression is never perfectly glued to the expressed there is distortion. Rest assured, I am so far from taking Foucault
for a structuralist that my examples will be taken from Wolfflin,
whose work cannot be imputed t o structuralism, since it had not
then been born. On the one hand, at the level of the concept,
Wolfflin elaborates his fundamental concepts of the history of art.
These are five couples of two concepts: linear and pictorial, closed
form and open form, etc. On the other hand, at the level of the
real, Wolfflin shows that the evolution of pictorial vision is autonomous, or, if you prefer, that it is a sub-system with its own
temporality, an inertia which is not that of the artists. In this way,
artists are subject to the conventions, the pictorial 'discourse', of
their epoch. We must not draw the academic conclusion that every
artist expresses himself through the conventions of his century,
the happy constraint of which is a sort of defiance which he notes
and which allows him to elevate his expression even higher. What
Wolfflin shows, on the contrary, is that the artist is subject purely
and simply to those conventions which, without his knowing,
limit or distort his expression, so that the signifier is n o longer
everywhere glued to the signified. Here, as everywhere, the dualist
theory of reflection breaks down.
In his day, Wolfflin shocked people. He shocked Panofsky, but
Panofsky did not go so far as t o exclaim that Wolfflin wanted t o
assassinate the artist, t o suppress man and the human. We should
forget these empty fears. Wolfflin and Foucault have simply
reminded us that man is not entirely active and that it befalls him
to be subject. Do we cry murder when Catholic theology teaches
that the actions of a just man who receives co-operating grace has
two authors, God and himself? Or that when he submits to operating grace it is God who is working through him? But it is no
different when we realise that in Wolfflin's work the level of the
conceptual invariant and the level of the real remain distinct. On
the one hand, the ten fundamental concepts of the history of art
permit the conceptualisation of the artistic work through time. On
the other hand, the frameworks of vision had their autonomous
evolution and their own temporality.

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I said 'autonomous evolution'. Ladies and Gentlemen, the entire

course of history is made of sub-systems whose connections are
contingent. The autonomy of artistic conventions in relation to
artists, the autonomy of ideologies in relation to infrastructures,
of conduct in relation t o values, of words in relation t o things, are
particular cases. Only high-minded academicism or Marxist monothought could be shocked by this. We should leave autonomy and
return to Wolfflin's ten fundamental concepts. When we stand
before a painting in the Louvre, these concepts permit us to have
more ideas about the painting, to be more conscious of its originality and, literally, to see it better. As my friend Jean Pariente said
in his great work Le Langage et l'individuel, it is wrong t o oppose
the apprehension of individualities, in all their richness, to conceptualisation; that is twaddle, much too general. On the contrary,
each concept which we master refines and enriches our perception
of the world. Without concepts we see nothing. Without concepts
we do narrative history, which is not at all the same as event-based'
history, because it is perfectly possible to conceptualise events. A
physicist explains and, at the same time, individualises a concrete
phenomenon by applying the right formula to it and by replacing
the algebraic letters with figures which relate t o circumstance. In
the same way, historical explanation and, of course, sociological
explanation (they are the same) consists in relating an event to a
transhistorical model which is individualised by operating on the
variables. Pariente gives two examples, Montesquieu and Georges
DumCzil. For Montesquieu, the climate and other sociological
variables individualise the types of political regimes. The republics
of the north do not resemble those of the south. For Dumizil, the
word 'Rome' is not a proper name, despite appearances. Rather, it
is an operator of individualisation. Suppose that we come across a
mythical schema which the comparative analyst discovers in ten
different peoples in forms which are modified ten times. The
operator of individualisation is not aimed at the designation of
the Roman modification but at allowing it to be engendered from
the starting point of the schema. The name 'Rome' means:

Bring the schema down, not to the level of fable, as in Greece,

not to the level of religion, as in India, but to the level of the
historico-political thought of Rome. In this way you will discover that original modification of our schema that belonged
to Rome.
In other words, faced with all historical facts, whether events or
periods of long duration, we have a choice between two very different attitudes. One is narrative and somewhat passive. It is the
attitude of common sense, and it is concerned with events as we

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read about them in the newspapers and even, at bottom, in

Michelet. The other attitude is scientific, and it is both explanatory
and individualising. We shall analyse both these attitudes. We shall
see that the second, that of the human sciences, is not something
to be feared, as if it were a hailstorm beating down on the human
harvest, but on the contrary that it is the only attitude which
assures and accomplishes what we are committed to as historians.
Now, we are committed t o two things: first, that history is not
confused with sociology and that we continue to give an account
of the past, the whole past, to make a complete inventory of it,
and secondly, that the original flavour of each fact be safeguarded.
Our favourite myth is that of the period, the period and its ineffable
originality. In its way, this myth expresses our double claim: an
inventory of all events and an individualisation of each event. No
event is duplicated, and no event is reducible to an abstraction.
Individualisation is a task which we have in common with the
human sciences, since individualisation means making explicit and
explaining. On the other hand, the claim of a complete inventory
is particular to us but it is still perfectly legitimate for all that. It
is this claim that ensures that history is not the same thing as
sociology or, if you prefer, that history remains an account. In
the same way, astronomers have in common with physicists the
explanation of each phenomenon through the application of the
general formula, but they also have a claim which is peculiar t o
their professional category - they want the stars to be studied for
themselves. I understand that they go to the trouble of listing the
stars in catalogues and that their taste for complete inventory
would not tolerate the loss of the smallest galaxy. Their aim is to
explain but also to take a census. There is the same requirement
for historians. It is enough that a civilisation has existed for it t o
have to feature in the inventory, even when it is possible t o find
only two or three indecipherable texts belonging to it and the
name of one of its kings. In the work of one scholar for whom I
want to express my veneration, Louis Robert, I have read the
opinion that history is the entire memory of the world.
Our myth of the historical period is overdetermined; indeed, it
has no fewer than three roots. The first is the corporate defence,
the safeguarding of the hunting ground (or more often the ground
of domination) or the garden of happy sleepiness. The second root
is that of the conventions of the job. To be taken seriously, t o be
'right', every historical proposition must exhibit certain external
signs. If it does not exhibit them, it is suspect. The most important
of these external signs is that the proposition must not depart
from its period. Anyone who compares a Roman fact and a
Chinese fact, even if it is to oppose them, will be suspected of

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engaging in a flight of fancy. Why? Because he knows Latin but

not Chinese, or vice versa. And in particular because, according to
a strange illusion, it is thought that history does not repeat itself.
On the pretext that a historical fact is individual, it is supposed
that it is also singular. But many historical facts are almost identical
twins; they resemble each other as drops of water. They are nevertheless two distinct individuals and when the historian takes the
census they count as two. It is only for a sociologist that they fall
under one and the same category. We should not say that history
consists in a liking for what will never be seen twice. Rather it
consists in twice liking what is on occasion seen again.
It should be pointed out now that this is the reason why the
word 'inventory' which I provisionally adopted for the characterisation of history turns out to be inadequate. We will have to resume
the old word 'account' now that we should no longer be suspected
of shameful sympathies for traditionalist historiography. Why use
'account' and not 'inventory'? Because historical facts are individualised by time. Let me explain. Researchers other than astronomers and historians cultivate sciences which make an inventory
of their materials. Zoologists, for example, do not want to let the
smallest living species be lost; they describe them all. Can one then
imagine two living species which were perfectly identical and
which despite that were distinct and counted for two? Clearly not:
species are individualised by their description, by their essence.
And events count for two, even if they are repeated, because they
will occur at two different moments in time. Here we discover the
truth in the comforting myth of the incomparable period. It is the
individuality of events, and the myth seeks to safeguard that. That
is its authentic root.
Only the myth cannot handle this very well. It does not even
succeed in saying what this originality consists in or finding the
words needed to express that. It is confined to designating it and
giving confidence to the reader's instinct - the reader will have to
feel the type of individuality at issue.
Let's get under the skin of a narrative historian who believes in
the period. He undertakes t o recount the history of Rome to his
reader. He talks of conquest, imperial power, and Roman law. He
gives dates, proper names, institutions - narrative precisions. In
short, he sticks soberly t o the 'positive' facts. The reader is a bit
confused, because he sees clearly that Roman law or Roman
imperialism are not the same as the Code Napolkon or Athenian
imperialism, since the dates and the facts are not the same. And
yet it occurs to him obscurely that the originality of Roman events
goes further than these not very subtle differences. The reader
feels obscurely that the Roman Conquest, which goes to the limits

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of the human horizon without being projected by an ideology, nor

by the love of fierce fighting or glory, is something which is strange
and which resembles nothing else. The reader feels no less obscurely
that the attitude of the Roman jurist interpreting law resembles
only externally that of a modern jurist doing the same thing. And
he is right - the two attitudes have nothing in common. A modern
jurist does not claim t o posit the legal rules; he is not a legislator.
He is restricted to discharging his office, which is to interpret the
rules. For example, he will ask what the intention of the legislator
was. Certainly, the classical Roman jurist does not consider himself
to be a legislator either, at Ieast not intentionally. When he explains
that a legal rule means this or that 'fundamentally', he believes he
is doing no more than interpret it. He is persuaded in advance that
the rules are truth incarnate. Consequently, everything which he
considers to be true will be none other than what the rule says. His
attitude towards the law is identical to Vaugelas's attitude towards
'good usage': he is incapable of distinguishing descriptive grammar
and normative grammar.
The gulf between these two attitudes was felt obscurely by the
reader of our narrative historian. And the historian feels it too,
and again, he is well aware that the reader feels it. Indeed, only
this presentiment can rescue the reader from falling into the gulf
which the historian is incapable of making explicit in words. Only
this presentiment can rescue him from the anachronisms of
atmosphere, the errors of nuance, that are so many traps for the
beginner. What narrative history says is surrounded by a large zone
of the unexpressed, in which false steps are avoided only by familiarisation without concepts. Moreover, we recognise from afar the
great analysts of antiquity - Pierre Boyance, Ronald Syme, Louis
Robert - by the things which they do not write, as we recognise
great writers by the platitudes which they do not write. A sure
instinct guides them through the fog, so we follow in their footsteps. Every great historian is guided by a theoretical knowledge
which he prerends he does not know, by deliberate avoidance.
This tacit knowledge leads him infallibly, and it is quite comparable to the tacit knowledge employed by a man in his actions.
The effect of this in some people is a misplaced rigour, a rigour
which emphasises the serious element of erudition only t o forget
that theory exists too and that theory has its own serious element.
A Sinology colleague remarked t o me:
It is classic t o explain the diffusion of sects in ancient China by
means of the dryness of traditional ritualism and its inability to
meet spiritual needs. But what does ritualism mean and what is
the origin of our conviction that it has that effect? Is it just a

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phrase from the wisdom of nations or is it a reflective statement

on which we can rely? It is curious that these same wise men,
who are so beetle-browed on a point of chronology, do not even
ask this question and use these false items of evidence without
the slightest misgivings.
It is too true that ritualism and its effects are an idea which ought
to be defined, verified and systematised. If ritualism is something,
and if it was as dry as it's said, if it made other fountains spring up
in compensation, then it must have had the same effect in other
times and places. If it constitutes an explanation which is discovered
to be the same behind more than one evolution, then this invariant
must be capable of systematisation with other theoretical propositions; it must take its place in a coherent conception of homo
religiosus. After all, nothing distinguishes the propositions of
common sense from those of science if not that scientific propositions are systematised and verified.
To summarise,. two attitudes are possible towards the individualities which are historical facts. The first is that we designate
them and describe them - such was the law of ancient Rome that
it prescribed this or that, and such was the imperialism of Rome
that it conquered this or that province. In this case, the incomparable originality of this law or of this imperialism escapes us. It is
only vaguely felt. But this does not stop us dealing with it infallibly,
if we have at least become familiar with it. It is as if someone
introduced us to a stranger by telling us only his name and occupation - it is for us to feel, according to his physiognomy, the
language we must adopt in relation to him, and it is for us to feel
how not to drop a brick. That is the first historical attitude.
The second consists in trying to explain the originality of the
stranger, t o find the words and concepts to talk about him, and to
mark it in relation to the study of character - to mark it, in other
words, in relation to the invariants which are character types.
Why two such different attitudes in the face of individualities?
Here again, Pariente will be our guide. We can individualise in two
ways: by using the notions of common sense or by appealing to
scientific models. To designate an individual, ordinary language
makes use of notions - this is a table, a god, a system of law and to them it joins non-conceptual indicators - the corner table,
the god Vulcan, the law of ancient Rome. Unfortunately, the
notions in question allow the originality of things to slip through
the net - nothing resembles a law more than another law. This
originality, however, will escape us no longer if we have at our
disposal a set of invariants which we can bring into play to the
point of reproducing the particularities of our individual. In the

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gamut of possible behaviours in the face of juridical rules, Roman

law is distinguished by its behaviour 'a la Vaugelas' [sc. correctness].
It is also distinguished, of course, by a great number of other
differences. We see that all history, at once and unintentionally,
becomes comparative history, that is, a history which separates
things and knows why it does so. Roman law takes its place in a
typology of different laws and is distinguished from them by
original variants which, this time, we know how to express in full.
It follows that explaining events scientifically is the same as individualising them. History will succeed in making the originality of
facts explicit only by applying to them the human sciences, whether
these are already in existence or are yet t o be.
If history takes conceptualisation as its task in this way, with a
view to discerning the originality of things, then, my dear colleagues,
I am seized with a double despair. Everything, or practically
everything, has yet to be done. Roman history has still to be
written, and you must not count on me t o do it. I can see some
trees but I can't see a wood anywhere. I confess myself incapable
of situating the Roman state, its administration, its religion, and
who knows what else, in a general problematic of the functioning
of the state and administrative organisations, in a typology of
religious phenomena. But that is the true proof that at last we
know what an individuality is. We see the original place it occupies
among its siblings and we also see which interplay of variables
permits the reengendering of the siblings together with their
differences. It is easier said than done, of course, and where shall
we turn for help? To sociology, sociology as I defined it? Clausewitz
spent thirty years on the formulation of his conceptual model of
the war phenomenon. The great German theoreticians of the State,
up t o Jellinek, devoted a century to defining the modern State.
So, should we really try to say at a moment's notice, what this
thing called State is, or, more simply, the thing described as national
territory, when it required half a century of debate? Teaching the
relations between the sexes are certainly live questions which fill
the showcases of our libraries, but to my knowledge there is no
utilisable theory of such matters, no conceptualisation which, put
to the test of history, bites on the facts.
But, finally, since this is the last time in my life that I shall
receive an honour before I am at leisure, permit me, to finish, to
dwell on two consequences of the conceptualising and individualising conception of history. The first is that it cuts short the myth of
the period, and the second is that it brings t o light the difference
between history and sociology.
The myth of the period is born of a practical difficulty and an
impotence. The difficulty is the domination of the *documents-

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tion, languages and bibliography of more than one civilisation, and

even though the consequences are a little exaggerated, the difficulty
is insurmountable. The impotence is the discernment of the
individual only by means of too blurred a notion and by means of
a temporal indicator: 'The imperialism of Rome is an imperialism.'
At this degree of generality, this imperialism resembles all others.
To put individual facts in series, there is only the temporal indicator.
Events will be ranked and studied according to temporal order,
and what is Roman will be put with what is Roman. Practically
speaking, this means that quite heterogeneous facts will be debited
according to a scholarly plan: Roman institutions, Roman law,
economy, arts, culture, daily life. Everything in this lumber-room
can pass as having the atmosphere of the same household, even
though care is taken to make things precise. Even the lumber-room
takes on a well-known name, civilisation. One successful author,
Toynbee, has pushed this enthusiasm to the point of undertaking
a count of how many civilisations there have been in history.
If I'm not mistaken, he has found twenty-three, not one more or
less.
Let's drop periods, civilisations, and national histories once and
for all, or rather let's concede to them only what the constraints
of documentation, languages, and bibliography demand. Historical
facts can be individualised without being put in their place in a
spatio-temporal complex. Roman law does not take its place in a
box called Rome; it takes its place with other laws. In the past, the
University made life miserable for my friend Le Roy Ladurie, then
Faculty Professor, for having put this simple but difficult idea into
practice. No doubt men will probably never lose the desire to hear
their history recounted. But I ask you to consider the table of
contents of an ideal history of humanity. Imagine that the chapter
headings are, not 'The Orient', 'Greece', 'Rome', 'The Middle Ages',
but, for example, 'From power by subjective right t o power by
delegation', 'From economy as nonessential activity t o the professionalisation of economy', or 'Isolationism and pluralism in
international relations'. Wouldn't that produce a greater desire t o
buy the book, because people would in the end hope to understand something of the human adventure? Such a book might be
written in a few centuries' time.
Briefly, we must have done with continuous accounts. As for
the laws of the genre - too bad. Let's take the risk of mixing up
the genres in a romantic way. The spatio-temporal continuum is
no more than a didactic framework perpetuating the lazily narrative tradition. Historical facts are not organised by periods and
peoples, but by notions. They do not have t o be returned to their
respective periods in time; they have to put under their concept.

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Then, at the same time, facts no longer have individuality except

in relation t o the concept. According t o the problematic chosen,
individuality will be now a ministerial crisis under the Third
Republic, now ministerial instability itself, that is, all the crises
together. To repeat, concretely, 'facts do not exist'. It follows that
their individuality is a relative thing, like the scale of geographical
maps. At the same time, the notion of nonevent-based history is
clarified, and so is the difference between history and the human
sciences. It is said that history is concerned with individual facts,
in contrast with science which is concerned with what is general.
'John Lackland went there in 1215.' That, it is said, is history - a
monad or individual substance, a point in space, a point in time.
If that is what is meant by individuality, then we must reply
that history is concerned with such individualities only in exceptional cases. We must reply even that it is never concerned with
them, despite certain appearances, such as Louis XIV or 14 July
1789 in Paris. More often, history speaks of institutions, customs,
societies, economies, systems of law, and facts of mentality. These
are individualities only in the relative sense of the term; they are
aggregates or entities. History does not study man in his time; it
studies human materials subsumed under concepts. Since these
materials are human, they do, of course, admit of temporality;
history is not the study of eternal truths. But would astronomy
have to be defined as the science of the heavenly bodies in extension, on the pretext that we do not see clearly where t o find these
bodies if not in extension? Actually, t o invoke time is in this
context only a clumsy way of stating that history must be the
complete inventory of events which are individuated by time.
Further, history is not the science of human individuals or of
societies. If it were the science of individuals in the ultimate rather
than in the relative sense of the word, history would recount the
life of peasants under Louis XIV one by one - it would talk about
the marriage of Gros-Jean, of Toinon, of Pierrot. It has nothing to
do with that, but it does take as its object this paradoxical individuality - marriage in the peasant class under Louis XIV. It is true
that history will also take as its object the marriage of Louis XIV
alone, but this is not a historical object by virtue of human substance, of ultimate and absolute individuality. It is a historical
object by virtue of individuality relative to the chosen problematic,
namely political history - by virtue of king and not of individual.
We must get used to the idea that the notion of individuality is
relative. As Pariente says, the notion of individuality does have
an ultimate degree, namely, persons or even spatio-temporal
givens. But history is never concerned with this ultimate degree.
If it does speak of a royal personality or of a battle which took

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place in a certain place and on a certain day, it is because, relative

to political history, certain men have been of decisive importance
and certain instants have colossal and irreversible effects. These
instants are called 'events', in the sense the word has in newspapers
and in the sense it has for traditionalist historians. These very
eventful events are a false exception which proves the rule. History
makes us think about the geographical maps in which France
under Louis XIV is represented to the scale of a millionth - only
in a corner of the page the plan of Versailles and its environs has
been magnified to the scale of a thousandth in a small frame. But
history never draws in the true magnitude which is told in a story
by Borgks and which occupies a surface equal to that of the country
it represents. History is not the science of the concrete. A battle, a
king as king, are already abstractions, and so is a society - it is
impossible t o photograph a society the way one photographs a
landscape.
History can be defined as the explanatory inventory, not of
men or of societies, but of the social in man, or, to be more
precise, the differences exhibited by this social aspect. For
example, it is enough that the perception of colours is different
from one society to another - in the eyes of the Greeks, for
example, the sea was violet. Zpso facto, colours will belong to
history just as much as t o psychological science. Sometimes these
differences are events, in the ordinary sense of the word, and they
are called Virgil, Augustus or Actium. That is a particular consequence rather than the rule.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let us recapitulate and conclude. History
is congenitally scientific. It cannot be pure erudition. There are
naive accounts but there is no pure account. To say that the Punic
War was a war is already to take an imprudent step on to a minefield, the minefield of the theory of international relations.
Besides, history is the science of differences, individualities, but
this individuation is relative to the type chosen; it oscillates
between 'Athens' and the 'Greek city', indeed the 'city of antiquity' in general.
In this way, then, neither the individual nor the general are
absolutes. So, how can history, as knowledge of the particular in a
relative sense, still be opposed to sociology, the science of the
general in no less relative a sense? When you study the city of
antiquity, are you doing history or sociology? I shall try to answer
this question. There exist several levels of generality. To each of
these levels there corresponds a science, and the objects of that
science are particular cases only relative t o the science of the higher
level.
Accordingly, there is history and there is sociology. For example,

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for a historian, the Punic War, as explained by the theory of war,

constitutes one of the objects peculiar t o historical science. For a
sociologist, on the other hand, the same war, explained in exactly
the same way, will be only an example; it will serve as an illustration of what is an object peculiar t o sociology, namely, theory
itself. Note it well: in both cases the explanation of the war is
identical. There is no historical explanation which is different
from sociological explanation. There is only one and the same
explanation, namely the truth, that is, scientific explanation. The
historian and the sociologist will write exactly the same thing, but
they will make use of two different usages. For the historian, what
is written is the aim of his work. For the sociologist, it is only a
means of illustrating with an example the theory of war, which is
his aim. The fundamental consequence of this is that the sociologist
is not concerned with citing all the examples; he will cite two or
three at most. The historian, however, has the job of drawing up
the complete inventory. For him, two wars are not duplicates,
even if they are conceptually identical. If, with five or six variables,
he makes a model of monarchy by subjective right, it is not
enough for him to give Rome and the royalty of the Ancien Rkgime
as examples. He will also have to talk about Ethiopia, since the
Ethiopian monarchy has existed. Accordingly, Ethiopian history
will be written, and it will have its specialists. They will discuss it
in order to say exactly the same thing that a sociologist would
have said, if he took it on himself to discuss it, but the historians
certainly will discuss it.
This has an amusing consequence. It is easy to distinguish history
and sociology. On the other hand, it is often impossible t o distinguish a work of history and a work of sociology. It is just this
impossibility that permits recognition of a good historical monograph such as Michel Crozier's Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Is this
book a sociology of bureaucracy, illustrated by means of a historical
example, that of French bureaucrats? Or is it a history of French
bureaucrats, explained by means of the sociology of bureaucracy?
It's very wicked to say so, but I'd bet that the author himself has
no idea; there is no better praise. That also suggests that a historian
can have the chance of making sociological discoveries himself. He
himself makes the sociology he needs, unless he finds that it has
already been discovered.
There is something funnier still. If history and sociology remain
distinct, the reason is not that the latter speaks of generalities
while the former would be the science of the singular and never
repeats itself. The real reason is the exact opposite. For suppose
that history does not repeat itself and that each event is a type on
its own, like each of St Thomas' angels4 In that case, history and

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sociology would have the same table of contents and would be

confused. There would have existed in the world only one monarchy
by subjective right, for example, Ethiopia. Consider the type
called 'localised preventive war which it is enough not to lose in
order to wrench from the hardship a rectification of frontiers t o
create an isolationism, thereby avoiding a non-localised conflict
which it would be necessary to win by positive knock-out.' This
type would be represented by a single war across the centuries, for
example the first Punic War. Consider the phenomenon of 'the
town as means of maximalising the interrelations of a class of
influential people with estate income'. This phenomenon would
exist only as a single example, namely China (unless it were Rome
or contemporary England). In that case, one could equally well
expose these phenomena according t o the order of reasons,
according to temporal order . . . or according to the order of the
alphabet. If history never repeated itself, history and sociology
would coincide in scope as well as in comprehension, which is to
say that the historical 'performance' would have no greater scope
than theoretical 'competence'. Nothing would be duplicated,
because everything would be hapax [aaat, once only]. But that is
not the case. It appears then that history differs from sociology
for the simple reason that history repeats itself.
We can therefore call history science. History, as we said, is the
complete explanatory inventory of the individualities of its level,
there being several levels of individuation. But then the same can
be said of any science at all, starting with physics. For physics too
implies the explanation of the facts of its level; to explain 'the
facts' means to explain them all. Can one imagine a physicist
decreeing that his science will not be concerned with this or that
phenomenon?
A particular epistemology has clouded over two ideas. The first
is that science is a body of laws, or that it tends t o be that, and the
second is that historical facts are singularities opposed to the
general. But it is not true that physics is a body of laws, or, at
least, that it is only a body of laws. And to the extent that it is a
body of laws, that is not due to its nature as a science but to a
particularity of the individualities of its level, namely that physical
phenomena can form closed systems. It is true that, qua science,
physics is the explanatory inventory of these phenomena and that
for physics two phenomena cannot be duplicated simply on the
pretext that they fall under one and the same law. For example,
physics is not reducible to knowledge of Maxwell's equations. It
also consists of knowing the existence of different phenomena
such as electricity, magnetism and light, even though these various
phenomena all fall under those equations. They are not thereby

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duplicated, and, after all, magnetism might not exist. Being knowledge of physical differences does not make physics any less of a
science. In the same way, history, the explanatory inventory of
social differences, is thereby the science of social differences.
For we must not follow Rickert or Windelband. We must not
oppose the particular and the general in an absolute way and
proceed to a dichotomy between the sciences of laws or nomography on the one hand and knowledge of individualities or
ideography [idiographic] on the other. This binary classification
might usefully be succeeded by a classification according t o levels,
since at its own level each science has the two principles at once:
explanation, explanation of everything. Differences become a
matter of indifference only to the higher level. It is said that
physics is concerned with the fall of bodies and scorns the falling
of singular bodies, the fall of each leaf each autumn, whilst history
is concerned with singular facts. That is a mistake. What corresponds to the fall of each leaf is not the historical event, such as
marriage in the seventeenth century and in each of the other
centuries, but the marriage of each and every one of Louis XIV's
subjects. History is no more concerned with those marriages than
physics is concerned with the fall of bodies one by one.
What has thrown everything into confusion is the fact that the
individualisation of historical facts is sui generis. It is due to a
certain abstract temporality which has wrongly led people to
believe that history is the knowledge of spatio-temporal individuations - to all intents and purposes knowledge of the concrete, the
flux of perceptions! People have not recognised that historical
temporality is a construction according to a variable scale which
functions as a filter. Each problematic has its temporality, whether
concerned with ministerial crises or ministerial instability as a
whole.
Whether it is a matter of phenomena, types or events, the question is the same, and it is a live one: what is an individual? Is it the
fall of bodies and marriage under Louis XIV, or falls and marriages
one by one? This is a major problem for epistemology ('science is
only concerned with the general') and for the status of history, at
least if history stops seeing itself as the account of the evolution of
peoples or civilisations and recognises itself as the application of
the moral sciences. It is also a sociological problem. Here the
problem is the ontology of collectives: does the French bourgeoisie
exist or are there only the bourgeois and the French? This is what
people call structuralism: is man anything other than the intersection of the networks constructing him? Is he an arbitrarily
marked out object, like constellations on the campus of the stars?
All these dilemmas cease to be a constraint if it is admitted that

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the individual and the general do not exist objectively and that
there are no individuals in an absolute sense but only individuals
relative to the level adopted.
It follows that the relation between sciences of different levels
itself varies in extent and comprehension. Between biology and
zoology the relation is probably not the same as between physics
and astronomy. Biology, it seems to me, deals with certain
characteristics of single living beings, whilst physics does not deal
with the characteristics of single celestial bodies but of all bodies,
stars or pendula. Everything that belongs to history also belongs
to the moral and political sciences, but that is not reciprocally
true. The perception of colours is of interest to these scientific
levels under various headings, while the Asch effect or the Sherif
effect will belong only to the moral science called psychosociology,
at least so long as it is not found that these effects vary socially,
culturally, as can be expected in the case of the others.
Finally, if you will allow me t o make a spontaneous confession,
I cannot help thinking that in history the questions, which are
sociological, are more important than the answers, which are fact.
It is true that it would be important to know, for example, if
growth in the Roman Empire is explained by the economic model
of Harrod and Domar, or by a better marginal allocation of
resources, or quite simply by fiscal relief. But whatever the answer,
isn't the main thing the very idea of putting the question? In other
words, it is more important to have ideas than t o know truths.
And it is because of that that the great philosophical works remain
significant and classic, even if they have been invalidated. Now,
having ideas is also called dealing with a topic, acquiring consciousness of what is, making it explicit, conceptualising it, wrenching it
from what goes without saying, from Fraglosigkeit [unquestioningness] and from Selbstandigkeit [autonomy]. That amounts to not
being naive any longer but becoming aware that what is might not
be. The real is surrounded by an undefined zone of com-possibles
which are not realised. Truth is not the highest of the knowledge
values.

Translated b y Elizabeth Kingdom

Notes
1. This is the text of Veyne's inaugural lecture at the Collige de France,
published by Editions du Seuil, Paris 1976 under the title 'L'inventaire des
diffirences'.
2. Veyne uses a number of closely related terms to characterise different
types -of history. Here the verbs raconter and narrer have been translated as
'to recount' and 'to narrate' respectively. Recit has been translated as 'account'.
[Trans.]

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3 . Edited by 0.Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart

1972-; Economy and Society published the article 'Polizei' from this Lexikon
in May 1980. [Ed.]
4. For Aquinas, each angel was a unique member of differing species, whereas
two human beings were different members of the same species. [Trans.]