Sagan’s Application of Private History to Human History

The length of humanity’s existence in comparison with the length of life on earth, of earth’s won existence, of the star which is our sun, or of our galaxy, is indeed small. What is more to the point in thinking about Sagan’s essay is to note how brief a time we have had humanistic histories of universal humanity, of humankind as such, histories not grounded in theology, not “poetic” nor “symbolic.” That is histories based on the hard evidence of how we have lived, seeing ourselves as the makers of our own history. This enterprise has, shockingly, only been undertaken since the Renaissance, and its empirical and humanistic orientation is still very much under attack, sometimes from those who insist on religious readings of human history, sometimes from those who, for egotistical reasons, make sure that their own nation or people occupies a special place in humankind’s story. Therefore, should it be surprising that the discipline which Sagan has done so much to advance

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has progressed so little in comparison, say, with the highly refined and remarkable histories we have of specific civilizations, culture, people, and states?

Scholars and intellectuals are no better than others in combating the parochial, but powerful, collective identifies which inhabit them. It is not lamentable, but human, to experience one’s history almost exclusively as civilizational, cultural, national, or local. Who finds it easy to experience the history which defines him—or her—as the history of all humankind, from its beginnings, making its own history? How courageous of Sagan to make this supremely humane task his life’s work!

Is it not deceitful on the part of these historians to say that Sagan and the few who join with him in constructing humanity’s “psychohistory” have overreached, bit off too much, engaged in an enterprise not yet to be attempted? For, in this case, “not yet to be attempted” is equal to “never to be attempted.” Sagan is not reluctant to admit his debt to what was once called “scientific socialism,” although his conception of humanity’s history is hardly Marxist. Could this origin of his work account for some of the reluctance of “professional historians” to engage in a similar enterprise? It would be unlikely that Sagan could have accomplished so much had he not began with Marx and Engels, and a motivation for this persistent hostility may lie in Sagan’s affinities for Marx and Engels. Much of it, however, has its origins elsewhere—in opposition to Sagan the historian having an “existential” relation to history of his own humanity, an existential relation not only to the history of his individual humanity, but to the history of his species.

Once again, we must thank Marx and Engels for advocating a history of humans as “species beings,” as having a collective history as a species. From their point of view, while acknowledging the variety within one species, we can be seen to have a unique history, one history. Sagan has, throughout his work, experienced this one history, as he sees it, in an existential, personal way. How could most academics not resist this? Professional identities, nec-

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essary for the existence of the personal collectivities, require a subordination of existential realities and anxieties to agreed-upon “professional” concerns. Whatever the benefits of such professional definition to the historian—and they are genuine—the intellectual costs are substantial. From the point of view of its costs, the resistance of historians (who are, after all, human beings!) to a personal, existential relation to humanity’s history as a species is what Kenneth Burke might have called, with only slight exaggeration, historians’ “occupational psychosis.”

How did Sagan escape this? A youthful commitment to Communism alone would not have provided a way for him to go forward, as many a Marxist historian’s work reveals. The answer is clear: it is Eli’s own psychoanalytic experience, which never became solely professional, which always remained existential. What Sagan has done—extraordinary!—is to extend the existential relation of a successful patient in psychoanalysis to his own individual history, to the history of his humanity—his species history. He not only extended psychoanalytic insights about individual psychic histories to our collective history (as Freud had done), but he formed a relation to that collective history like that of a good patient to his own private history. This is a remarkable achievement. About the differences in perspective between Sagan, Parsons, Bellah, and deMause, I have nothing useful to say, save that we need to make sure an emphasis on “theoretical” differences does not overwhelm a clear and anxious, personal, relation to our past.

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