MC Philosophy

Hegel and the State

This is the fourth and final entry on Hegel's "Reason in History".  The first is Hegel: Reason in History, the second is Hegel and God, Spirit, Reason, Absolute, the third is Hegel and the Hero

-Up to this point, it has been shown how Hegel philosophized the idea of God, creating a new Trinity of concepts with a specific teleological end.  This idea of God was dependent on humans for its actualization, occurring in the major events in human history.  These events were spurred by Hegelian Heroes, men who were blank palettes for the Will of the Idea, sacrificing their own happiness and possibly that of others around them, for the progression of the actualized Idea: Freedom. 

-Hegel did not think that this actualization and Freedom would come about just by means of great Heroes conducting great deeds.  Instead, they had to be part of a greater system, one capable of providing the Freedom which should apply to all: the State. 

  Without a productive State, there is no possibility of spreading Freedom to the people.  In fact, as we will see, there is no possibility of realizing the World Spirit without the State.  It is this assemblage of peoples that is necessary to advance Freedom and the ends desired by God.  That humans should belong to States is the Will of God. 

State here should not be considered just any governance of people.  Hegel defines it thusly, "the union of the subjective with the rational will; it is the moral whole".  A State must be a Rational State.  If it is being run by people or ideas not progressing the Freedom of all, then it is necessarily anti-Rational, for the Idea is Reason and that Reason prescribes Freedom.  You can be the judge of whether those flags above represent States or dying, corrupt governments.

Morality

-The idea of an assemblage of Rational wills to make a State is dependent on the human Dialectic.  We are both personal beings and public beings, in a sense.  People make choices based on personal values that only affect their lives and then do actions towards the progression of the State, and thus, the Spirit. 

"action is always individual; it is always I who act.  It is my purpose which I want to fulfill.  This purpose may be a good one, a universal aim; on the other hand, the interest may be a particular, a private one.  This does not mean that it is necessarily opposed to the universal good.  On the contrary, the universal must be actualized through the particular."

-It is our particular actions that bring about changes and progress in the larger, universal aims.  These are the actions that are in accordance with the Spirit.  Of course, sometimes, it is inevitable that the decisions we want to keep personal become all mixed up in the Spirit ones

 

But these seemingly "personal" actions are really the Spirit's doing, for then God gets to place a real Hero in place

 

Of course, in this case, God had to influence the decisions of others to instill His Will

-The actions that we do for ourselves are nothing more than personal happiness contributors, according to Hegel, they do nothing to contribute to the Spirit through the State.  It is only those actions taken in accordance with the Spirit of Freedom that can be considered good.  Thus, our Morality is based upon acting in accordance with the State.  Fulfilling your position, with respect to the State, is the only way to act in a morally. 

"The morality of the individual, then, consists in his fulfilling the duties of his social position.  And it is an easy matter to know what these duties are; they are determined by this position.  The substantial content of such a relationship, its rationale, is known.  It is, precisely, what is called duty."

-This could be construed as a type of utilitarianism, but its not really.  For it doesn't apply to each decision you make being in accordance with what is best for the greater good.  It is only good to do actions which are in accordance with what is best for your State, your particular collection of Rational wills.

-Some people may seem like they are doing moral things; they may claim they are doing them for "humanity" or for the "sake of the world", but really they are only selfish actions to increase their own individual happiness. 

Selfish

Selfish (but hot)

Righteous

Necessity of State

-A fine question concerning Hegel's idea on the State is why there needs to be a State in order to align with the World Spirit.  If the Spirit is supposed to progress Freedom, doesn't the State take away many many freedoms?  Is it not the whole idea of a government to curtail the actions of humans?  No.

"This must not be understood as if the subjective will of the individual attained its gratification and enjoyment through the common will and the latter were a means for it - as if the individual limited his freedom among the other individuals, so that this common limitation, the mutual constraint of all, might secure a small space of liberty for each. (this would only be negative freedom.)  Rather, law, morality, the State, and they alone, are the positive reality and satisfaction of freedom.  The caprice of the individual is not freedom.  It is this caprice which is being limited, the license of particular desires." 

-Here we see the real Dialectic of individual and Spiritual Freedom.  The State is only concerned with progressing the latter.  It is not the State's duty to assure the freedom to engage in whatever acts you personally desire,

but create an organized liberty in which the State delineates rules in accordance with the Rational will of the people, and thus acts, through government, with the Will of God.

-It is only the collection of people, together, who can act as a common Spirit.  It is here that we come to the idea of a collective Will, that is, the spirit of a State.  This is much like what the later Heidegger stressed, a common will (what he called Being) of a group of people.  This is not an incomprehensible ideal, but an actual spirit or being of the time that moves people, a common inspiration.  The Germans were very heavy on this idea of Volkgeist; the volk, or the Germanic peoples, had a special role, and that role was determined by a communal spirit or will.  Hegel believed that 19th century Germany was a representative of his ideal State; Heidegger fell into Nazism.  To be fair, it is doubtful whether Hegel would have supported such a false-ideal State such as Hitler's Germany and there are many doubts about Heidegger's acceptance of the awful Nazi practices. 

-States can outlive their usefulness and use up their moral compass.  "The existence of a national spirit is broken when it has used up and exhausted itself."  A Rational State is a collection of free peoples who give up some personal freedoms in order to access Freedom in the artistic, socio-political, or religious sense. 

-It was for this reason that he thought that a Constitutional Monarchy was the ideal form of government.  Though many people think that a Republic is the best form, those in a Constitutional Monarchy "understand that such a constitution, though ideal, cannot be realized under all circumstances.  People being what they are, one has to be content with less freedom; so that the monarchical constitution, under the given circumstances and the moral condition of the people, is regarded the most useful."

MC - In the end, it was Hegel who was the idealist.  Even though he stressed the "realization" of God in the world, his ideas were some of the loftiest that philosophy could offer.  His stress on the "facts" and pages of history begot a philosophy riddled with loose conjectures.  Maybe this is the Dialectic of Hegel.  His influence, however, cannot be questioned.  In the world of Continental philosophy, Hegel was a catalyst; a great spark of Passion for the future of philosophy. 

Hegel and the Hero

This is the third entry on Hegel's "Reason in History", the first is Hegel: Reason in History, the second is Hegel and God, Spirit, Reason, Absolute

-We have already shown how the actuality of God in the world is not complete without the events of World History.  It is the Dialectic of the Idea (God) and the manifestation of His will through humans in the socio-political world that brings about the synthesis of Spirit.  Therefore humans hold an enlightened position in Hegel's philosophy.  They are greater than Nature. 

Much to the dismay of tree-huggers, especially one willing to hug bark against their naked inner thighs, this elevation of Man over Nature has been a hallmark of Western thought far before Hegel, and still is in many respects. 

-Hegel gave Humans a truly prime position in the world, however; they are literally the movers of History and therefore create the realization of God. 

The Nature of Man

"After the creation of nature appears Man.  He constitutes the antithesis to the natural world; he is the being that lifts itself up to the second world.  We have in our universal consciousness two realms, the realm of nature and the realm of Spirit.  The realm of Spirit consists in what is produced by man." 

Fuck yeah.  Rarely have we been empowered to actually create God's actualization.  You have the ability to not only shape history, but shape History, with a capital H, the History that includes God's Will as the driving force and as a piece of the Dialectic puzzle. 

Luckily for us, not everything is included in the shaping of History.  There is also a personal life for Humans, one where God isn't really involved. 

-We are free to pursue our personal lives.  Hegel believes that we have Free Will, insofar as we can choose what we do and when we do it.  But choosing to follow your own happiness in life has its costs.  For not all lives are equal, some are great and some are not.  Those who choose to follow their feelings and live according to them, well, they're pretty much worthless,

"Feeling is the lowest form in which any mental content can exist.  God is the Eternal Being in and for itself; and what is universal in and for itself is subject of thought, not of feeling.  It is true that everything spiritual, every content of consciousness...originally does exist in the mode of feeling.  But feeling is not the fount from which this content flows to man, but only a primal mode which exists in him.  It is indeed the worst mode, a mode which he has in common with the animal."

-This may remind you of some of our other Western philosophical friends, like Spinoza, who surely led glorious, fruitful and happy lives.  But Hegel doesn't seem to hold happiness in great regard.

-Humans have free will to decide the path of their lives and they can either use it for personal gain (happiness) or use if for the progression of Spirit. 

Human Dialectic

-Hegel firmly believed that we live in a world of dialectics, that is, opposing natures that must be synthesized to make any sense out of them.  Humans are no different.  We have in us the ability to be truly Authentic, in which case we become part of the World Spirit, or we can just settle for a personal life of happiness and waste ourselves away. 

The Great Achilles was given this option.  His goddess mother, Thetis, told him that he could either stay out of the war with the Trojans and live a fruitful and happy life, or he could slay many a man from Ilius and though his name would live on forever, he would never return.  You know what he chose. He certainly did kill a ton of Trojans, and his name lasted on for ages until, in his finest moment, Brad Pitt played him on the silver screen.

-The main difference between the happy life and the life akin to the World Spirit is the necessity for the progression of Freedom.  The nature of World Spirit is Freedom.  The Spirit works through humans to advance the Freedom of humans and essentially the world.  If you aren't advancing Freedom, then you aren't working in alignment with the World Spirit.  And unfortunately for us, the only time that Freedom is progressed is in times of strife.  As Hegel states,

"history is not the soil of happiness.  The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.  There is satisfaction in world history.  But it is not the kind that is called happiness, for it is satisfaction of purposes that are above personal interests."

-You can enjoy the happiness that others fought for, but you will not be a contributing member to History.  You are basically being selfish.  That's why the only pictures you see of Napoleon look like this:

  It ain't easy changing the world.  It ain't happy or fun neither.

Why Humans?

-Why does God need humans to fulfill his destiny of World History?  The answer is a rather inspiring one: Passion.   It is only through the passion of humans that great things can happen.  Since Hegel views History kind of like pages in a book, these pages are only filled with passionate men (usually only men) who took it upon themselves to progress Freedom. 

Hegel defines Passion thusly, "the particularity of a character insofar as its individual volitions not only have a particular content but also supply the impelling and actuating force for deeds of universal scope."

-The Idea (God) utilizes the Passion of individuals to bring His ends about.  It is this great inspiration in certain people that forces History to move ahead into greater Freedom.  These people sacrifice everything towards the aim of the World Spirit.  They realize their authenticity in the world and take advantage of it through ultimate passion (this idea was further developed by Martin Heidegger).  As Hegel inspirationally states,

"nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion."

Heroes

-These great men who push History, who have a great passion, who realize their place in History and take advantage of it, are labeled Heroes.  These are not necessarily well-liked men at the time, but they sacrifice everything for the Spirit, for Freedom.  It is their role in the World to do nothing but spread Freedom, no matter who they have to run over to get there.  Thus I give our modern Hegelian Hero:

  It is this man's sole responsibility to "advance the cause of Freedom."  He has said the word "Freedom" so many times that it is hard to believe that the World Spirit isn't whispering it in his ear.  In fact, that is a possibility.  For these great heroes are different from others.  They are blank canvases for the Will of God. 

"For Spirit...is the innermost soul of all individuals - but in a state of unconsciousness, which the great men arouse to consciousness.  For this reason their fellow men follow these soul-leaders (they stream to their banner).  For they feel the irresistible power of their own spirit embodied in them."

The fact that Bush hears the voice of God telling him to move forward the cause of Freedom is no accident.  It is the World Spirit that has become conscious in his great mind.  He will do as the Idea commands and advance Freedom against all opposition.

"The course of this conflict is not known, but the outcome is certain.  Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."(George W. Bush)

"The momentum of Freedom in our world is unmistakable - and its not carried forward by our power alone.  We can trust in a greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years.  And in all that is to come, we can know that his purposes are just and true." (George W. Bush)

-Though these Heroes will alter the course of History for the better, they will not be happy men themselves.  They may show it for the cameras, but they are merely vessels, and their happiness is quashed in the strive for freedom,

"they were not what is commonly called happy, nor did they want to be.  They wanted to achieve their aim, and they achieved it by their toil and labor.  They succeeded in finding their satisfaction in bringing about their purpose, the universal purpose."

-Nor do these Heroes need worry about the people they use in order to fulfill the Will.  This is another Dialectic of humans.  Even though Hegel says we are in part divine and should be treated as ends in ourselves for that reason, when it comes to the advancement of Freedom, we can and should be used in that cause. 

Used by God in his advancement of Freedom

Ditto

-There is little doubt that Bush can be considered a Hegelian Hero.  It is his job to be used by the higher power and he will never relent in that effort, polls or body bags be damned. 

-It is not however, solely the Hero's job to advance Freedom, for without any structure to the people that is impossible.  The Hero must be a part of a Free State and through that great State must spread Freedom.  As we will see in the next entry, there is no Freedom possible without the State and therefore, the State is the ultimate end of the World Spirit.

Up Next:  Hegel and the State

Hegel and God, Reason, Spirit, Absolute

This is the second entry on Hegel's "Reason in History", the first is Hegel: Reason in History

-Perhaps the most confusing aspect of Hegel's philosophy is his intertwining usage of words for seemingly the same thing.  This is clearly apparent in the terms he uses for God, "Reason", "Absolute", "Spirit", "Idea", even sometimes plain old "God". 

Hegel gives God as many names as P Diddy gives himself.  The difference is that there are slight variations in what each of the aforementioned terms means with respect to God.  Sean Combs uses a grip of names to describe exactly the same dude who takes crazy hits from the eighties but makes them so crazy. 

Hence, these will help immensely

Definitions:

God - The kind of active God that Judeo-Christians believe in, described philosophically
Idea - God and the nature of his will
Thought - The purest form in which the Idea manifests itself
Reason - God's logical manifestation and dominion
Nature - The antithesis of the Idea, the natural world
Spirit - The synthesis of the Idea and Nature into God's actualization through the events of history.  But should be considered a process, not an object.  We each have a spirit, a combination of imagination and reason, but there is a larger Absolute Spirit of the world as well, which could be called the autobiography of God (Thanks to Professor Steve Erickson's Teaching Company work on the Meaning of Life for this explanation)
Absolute - Another name for this philosophized God

-Before the relationship of these terms is fully fleshed out, it is necessary to stress where Hegel goes with his conception of God.  For Hegel, God is recognizable in the manifestations of human history.  Hegel was a self-proclaimed master historian, and through his studies, he found that the great movements and people in history were acting out the will of God, or the Idea.  But God cannot be fully realized until he is in Spirit form, that is, until his will is realized in the world and thus becomes chronicled in the annals of history.

-So History is "the autobiography of God"

God's tricky will

God's brutal will

God's gratuitous will

-As will be discussed at length elsewhere, God's will only really applies to the advancement of Freedom in history through great people and epic events.  Much of the rest is just human will.   So the last picture is, well, gratuitous.

Hegel's Triad

-Here we see Hegel's Dialectic.  There is the Thesis of God, His antithesis in material Nature, and the Synthesis of the two in Spirit.

-Space and Reason can be considered the physical ramifications of the existence of Nature and the Idea, respectively.  The reality of Nature can be found in Space (consider Space as space-time or the material world in which Nature exists) and the existence of the Idea is found in Reason. 

-Just like in the case of our old favorite Triad (the Father, Holy Spirit, and Son) we are pretty sure the Thesis (Father/Idea) and the Synthesis (Son/Spirit) are God, but the Antithesis (Nature/Holy Spirit) is much more vague. 

-The relations between the two Triads are made even more clear, "Hence it is of interest, in the course of history, to learn to know spiritual nature in its existence, that is, the point where Spirit and Nature unite, namely human nature."  Christians will recognize this idea, and as stated before, Rorty laughs his ass off (or LHAO) at the idea of an incredibly famous philosopher just changing an idea through new language. 

Hegel's Dialectic

The Idea affects, through Thought, the material world of Nature

"understanding in general or Reason, rules the world - but not an intelligence in the sense of an individual consciousness, not a spirit as such.  These two must be carefully distinguished.  The motion of the solar system proceeds according to immutable laws; these laws are its reason." 

-The difference in the way Thought affects Nature and the way it affects History is that Nature is not conscious of its effect, whereas Spirit is the conscious manifestation of the Idea.  Spirit has a desired end, the promotion of Freedom.  Nature has no desired end, nor a consciousness with which to conceive anything. 

Question: How does Hegel know this?

Answer: "What I have said here...is not a presupposition of study; it is a result which happens to be known to myself because I already know the whole."

-In his philosophizing of God, Hegel left open a great path for humans, they act as the inspiration, the passion through which the Idea can realize itself in History.  They are the glue that holds the Dialectic together. 

Up Next: Hegel and the Hero

Hegel: Reason in History

G.W.F. Hegel (1770 - 1831)

-Very influential philosopher on future political and philosophical thought
-His ideas have been taken by many different people to represent many different things, sometimes completely opposite positions
-German Idealist

Work to be Discussed - Reason in History
Positions Defended - Absolute Idealism, Teleological World, Advancement of Freedom
Those who are Definately Wrong - True Empiricists, Deconstructionists, Those opposed to logical Reason

MC - "Reason in History" is not actually a published work by Hegel.  It is instead an edited version of his ideas based on his own lecture notes and detailed notes of students.  His "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" was published posthumously in 1837.  Officially titled in English it is "Reason in History: A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History".  Therefore quotes of this work are not to be considered in the strictest sense.  It is a great work though, and an easy avenue into his thoughts on the effect of Reason in History, which, as we shall see, is rather important. 

Reason, Spirit, The Absolute

-These are all different ways that Hegel refers to the main thrust of this work - God.  In the translation most available for me, Reason is used almost interchangeably with "God", but in other readings, Spirit and The Absolute will be used instead, though in different capacities with reference to God, to be explained later.

-Hegel has a very interesting and unique view of what Reason is, "This good, this Reason, in its most concrete representation, is God.  God governs the world.  The actual working of His government, the carrying out of His plan is the history of the world."

-This is the heart of these lectures, that God is found in the History of the World.

If we were to take a survey of all the things that people did and clump them together into a single manifestation, that could be the actualization of God.  It should be noted, however, that Hegel does seem to believe that God exists independent of the machinations of the world, but there is no doubt that God only fully realizes himself through the actions of earthly creatures, mostly, humans.  Certain events in history are God's will, they are Reason's manifestation on earth

God's Will

God's Will

God's Will

Dialectic

-It is hard to find a more confusing word in the history of philosophy, and unfortunately this word is absolutely central to Hegel's work.  The word "dialectic" is like the teachings of Jesus

  They both have become so befuddled that nobody really knows what to believe or what is right, or how to use them correctly.  Instead we all just use it the way we want, taking certain aspects to make it fit what we want to say. 

-We will define it in Hegelian terms: "the development of one idea or condition into another by the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis".  Hegel thought Dialectic was the way our minds thought, in contradictions that had to be reconciled into a synthetic reality.  It took me 5 years to understand Dialectic, you can read the New Testament in that time.   

-In this work on Reason in History, Hegel uses dialectic to explain the trinity of God.  The 3 parts of God are 1. Idea (thesis)  2. Nature (antithesis)   3. Spirit (synthesis).  This idea is often associated with another very familiar dialectic

  Hegel has often been accused of just renaming the classic Trinity into philosophic terms.  Those fans of Rorty are giggling to themselves that all this famous philosopher did was change the way we talk about God.  In order to put God into better philosophic terms, he just had to rename His aspects and then the "new" idea can come in and fill out the terms to make sense of them. 

-The least Hegel could've done is made the whole clusterfuck of the Father Son and Holy Spirit a little clearer, but alas, it wasn't to be.  Finding where God lies in the Idea, Nature and Synthesis is equally as brutal.  We will see Hegel's rather coherent strategy to explain his Trinity, but determining whether it makes good sense is the real aim. 

-In the next entries we will see how Hegel places God into the earth.  It will become evident how strong a part human beings play in the unfolding of History.  And we will see how this man

just might be a great Hegelian Hero of Freedom.

Next Up: Hegel and God, Reason, Spirit, Absolute