ABSTRACT
To perceive the past of one's own consciousness, to perceive other lives, and to perceive the relations between minds as they occur at the moment or are reflected in institutions, each of these endeavors contains an element of the problem of historical intelligibility. The intelligibility of the whole does not imply a determinism other than the one we have called probabilistic. The relationship between two events, fragmentary or total, remains equally comprehensible if it appears, on the causal level, contingent or necessary. The development of a doctrine or school and the transition from one style to another have their own intelligibility perceptible only to those who grasp the specific meaning of the works. At most, this specific intelligibility finds its way to the rational necessity of truth. The search for an intelligibility higher than comprehension or probabilistic determinism, equivalent at the most generalized level to the intelligibility inherent in the development of works of art, remains legitimate.
