Hegel

1. Hegel 1 October 2008

2. Hegel • History as the unfolding of “spirit” (Geist) in human cultural forms • Philosophy as the retrospective description of the rationality of this unfolding

3. Progress? • Is there moral progress? • Rousseau: There is moral decline • Kant: we cannot prove that there is, but the assumption of moral progress makes sense of our duties towards perpetual peace • Mill: we cannot prove it, but there are strong grounds for assuming some form of moral progress

4. Progress? • Spirit unfolds towards greater rationality and freedom : there is moral progress for Hegel • In the movement from family to state • In the movement from ancient forms of the state to modern forms of the state

5. Progress? • The historical process unfolds dialectically, through the tensions among contradictory ideas and the resolution of these tensions in higher forms • Personal and cultural growth, in particular, depends in part on the struggle for recognition: people define themselves in opposition to others

6. The forms of community • The family: the realm of unconditional love • No struggle for recognition within the family: the individual is absorbed within the family • Civil society: the realm of self-interested individual interactions • The struggle for recognition in civil society gives rise to the free but disconnected individual (he is alienated, as Marx says later) • The state: the ethical realm • The individual is reconciled to the community in the state, while maintaining his status as a free being

7. The Family • Human beings are members of families unconditionally; membership does not depend on free activity • Individuality requires the possibility of negation, and is sustained by struggle • Hence the family cannot provide a context of recognition necessary for a person to become a free and rational individual

8. Civil Society • In civil society, human beings appear as possessors of individual rights which they can assert against others • Civil society makes possible individuality through the mutual recognition that conflict and opposition bring; membership depends on free activity, and can be negated

9. Civil society • Is civil society enough? • The social contract tradition says yes: the state is simply the agency that protects these individual rights

10. The State • What is the essence of the state? • It can ask you to die for it • Because it embodies the shared values of a people in a rational form (law): it gives rational shape to a cultural identity • The state reconciles the individual to the community without destroying his/her individuality, and gives ethical content to his/her freedom

11. The state as an ethical community • An “organic” community composed of classes with a specific purpose • The monarch: represents the “unity” and “individuality” of the state • The military: sacrifices itself for the state • The civil servants: embody the “universality” of the values of the state in their concern for the rule of law • The bourgeoisie

12. The nation-state • The nation-state is the self-conscious form of the “spirit” as a purposely cultivated cultural life in rational form • Hegel makes no assumption that there must be one state per nation, however • Each nation-state a distinct manifestation of spirit and so a form of right: each state is sovereign with respect to every other • Some states are “higher” manifestations of spirit than others, and have the right to treat the lower manifestations as “barbarians”

13. The nation-state • Like individuals, the state requires recognition by other states in order to attain its self-consciousness and individuality, its “identity” • Recognition demands plurality and conflict

14. Hegel’s critique of Kant • War is part of the rational process of history • The “purpose” of war is not to lead to perpetual peace, but to preserve and enhance a particular manifestation of spirit, a cultural identity in rational form • Without the possibility of war (of existential conflict), the state would disintegrate into civil society

15. Hegel’s Critique of Kant • The possibility of war is preserved by the sovereignty of states • A federation of states could not eliminate this possibility without also eliminating sovereignty

16. War and the state • War results from the concern of each state for its own welfare and recognition • War enhances shared values – the unity of the state • Lifts people out of their concern with material possessions characteristic of civil society: promotes civic virtue (as “selflessness”) • Enhances the unity of the state which is likely to fragment by prolonged peace

17. Limits on war • War should be limited by the fact of mutual recognition: it ought to come to an end in a way that preserves the possibility of peace • Hostility in modern war should be abstract, not individualized • War is a conflict between states, and hence militaries as the class of people who have the function of warmaking in the state and embody its courage • Yet war can always devolve into a war of survival; this is necessary for war to serve its function

18. Limits on war • The treatment of soldiers, etc. depends merely on customs, but these customs embody valid conceptions of right in a historical time period • In modern times war is limited in the European context through common customs, etc.

19. Limits on war • War is not to be justified with reference to its general salutary effects in any particular case • The justification of any particular war will always have to do with the specific “welfare” of a state, but not with the abstract preservation of a state’s unity

20. The historical process • War is the World’s Court of Judgment: the rise and fall of states in history reveals the judgment of spirit • In every age, certain states rise to be the representatives of dominant cultural forms that embody certain moments of the historical process • Hegel identifies “Oriental” states, Greece, Rome, and the German states as important stages

21. Some problems • Hegel predicts that modern warfare will be more “rational” because more abstract and less individualized • The “individuality” or “sovereignty” of the state is in tension with the idea that war must, and can, be limited • The idea of a historical unfolding of the spirit leading to the ethical state seems to lead to perpetual peace anyway (“The End of History”)

22. Marx • Marx “inverts” Hegel • Existing states do not embody any special values; they represent dominant classes • History unfolds in a rational process towards greater freedom and rationality, but through a conflict of classes over resources rather than a conflict of ideas over recognition

23. The individual and society • In all hitherto existing forms of society (including Hegel’s rational state), the individual is alienated from his social existence • Only in communist society can the individual be reconciled to the community without losing his or her individuality