George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH  HEGEL (1770-1831) George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and all the other important German thinkers, Kant, Fichte etc were the children of the French Revolution. Compared to both England and France, Germany was much more backward and feudal, consisting of more than 300 states linked to the Holly Roman Empire, with leadership provided by Francis I of Austria. It came to an end when Napoleon defeated this 1000 years old empire and subsequently in 1806 defeated another powerful German state, Prussia. Hegel was a resident of Prussia at the time of the defeat.

Hegel is the most methodologically self conscious of all philosophers in the western tradition His system encompasses philosophy, metaphysics, religion art, ethics, history and politics- In its range alone his work is impressive and of a truly encyclopaedic character. His position in Germany was so powerful that even the most ferocious attack against orthodox German philosophy that of Karl Marx, sprang largely form Hegelian assumptions.

Hegel was born in Stuttagar on 27 August 1770, the eldest son of a middle class family. His father was a civil servant, and most of his relatives were either teachers or Lutheran ministers. As a student , Hegel’s major interest was theology But he soon gravitated towards philosophy. After completing his studies he accepted the position of a family tutor with a wealthy family in Switzerland from 1793-1796. This was followed by a similar position at Bern and Frankfurt from 1797 to 1800. In 1806 the French armies defeated Prussia at the decisive battle of Jena and Hegel saw Napoleon ride through Jena. During the French revolution he was an ardent sympathiser of Jacobin radicalism. As Napoleon’s star rose, Hegel profoundly admired him for his genius and power. IN 1818, three years after the defeat of Napoleon, Hegel was invited to come to the university of Berlin, and he stayed there until his death in 1831. He became the dominant figure at the university, and his influence extended over all Germany. In the last phase of his life, Hegel was a follower and admirer of the Prussian police state, just as he had previously admired Jacobinism and Napoleon.

Hegel was the founder of modern idealism and the greatest influence in the first half of the 18th century, when the entire academic community in Germany was divided between the Hegelians the left Hegelians and the right Hegelians. He innovated the dialectic and the theory of self- realisation. Hegel wrote extensively on various aspects of political philosophy. The major works of Hegel include the Phenomenology of Spirit. (1807) Science of Logic (1812-1816) Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817) Philosophy of Right (1812), Philosophy of History (1837), Philosophy of Law (1821).

The best statement of Hegel’s political ideas is to be found in his Philosophy of Law. It expresses his conception of freedom, natural and social, which provides the key to an understanding of his political thought. In his writings, Hegel combined the historical sense of Vico and Montesquieu with the philosophical eminence of Kant and Fichte. He was also influenced by the writing of Plato and Aristotle. The Keynote of the Hegelian system is evolution, the evolution of Idea by a dialectical process.

IDEALISM

In the history of political ideas there are two major schools of thought about at he nature of reality - idealism and naturally, rationalism and empiricism. According to the idealist school, of which Hegel is a major exponent, true knowledge of every thing in the world - material and non material is deduced from the idea of the thing. In other world, according to idealist thinkers the idea of the thing is more important than the thing itself. Therefore, what is real and permanent is the idea of the thing not the thing as such. This is because that physical world is constantly in a state of flux and change but the idea is permanent. The knowledge of actually existing thing is relative and hence imperfect.

Hegel starts with the assumption that the universe is a coherent whole. In this organic unity what he variously calls the Idea or Spirit or Reason or the Divine Mind, is the only reality. Every thing, including matter and the external world, is the creations of the Idea or Spirit or Reason. Hence it is true to say that Reason is the sovereign of the world’ It is the nature of this Spirit or Reason, Hegel tells us to know all things. At the beginning of the world - process the spirit or reason does not, in fact, know anything; its nature is as little achieved as is the nature of Aristotle’s man before he enters the polis. As Hegel puts it: The truth is the whole The whole, however, is merely essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development’ .

According to Hegel , history is the process by which the spirit passes from knowing nothing to full knowledge of itself, is the increasing revelation of the purposes of the Rational Mind. “The history of the world therefore, says Hegel, presents us with a rational process”. The spirit on the way to its goal makes many experiments. According to Hegel, the rational is real and the real is rational. It is to be noted that he is using real here in the sense of the important or the fundamental. In his theory of state he rejects Fichte’s teaching that only the ideal state is rational whereas existing states are irrational, and he maintains on the countrary that actual existing states are rational and are accordingly to be treated with all reverence.

Hegelian idealism is often referred to as absolute idealism because it provided us with a set of categories in terms of which all human experiences of the past and the present can be understood. There is another dimension of Hegelian idealism. This may be called idealist

interpretation of History. Hegel believes that all changes in society, economy, polity and culture take place because of development of ideas. Thus Hegelian idealism sees a close relationship between subject and the object.

DIALECTICS

The distinctive feature of Hegel’s philosophical system is his dialectical method which he described as the logic of passion. Hegel borrowed this method from Socrates who is the first exponent of this method The word ‘ dialectic’ is derived from the Greek word dialego which means to discuss or debate. Dialectic simply means to discuss or conversation. Socrates believed that one can arrive at the truth only by constant questioning. So dialectics was the process of exposing contradictions by discussion so as ultimately to arrive at truth.

Hegel’s dialectic method played major role in this political philosophy. By applying the principles of a thesis, anti-thesis and a synthesis, Hegel’s major thrust was to solve the problem of contradiction . It attempted to reconcile the many apparent contradictory positions and theorems developed by earlier thinkers, As a method of interpretation, it attempted to reconcile the various different traits developed in the past.

Having taken a clue from Socrates, Hegel argued that absolute idea or the spirit, in search of self- realisation moves from being to non being to becoming. In other words, an idea move from a thesis to anti thesis until a synthesis of the two is found As Prof. C.l. Wayper has rightly pointed out “in the Hegelian dialectics there will be a struggle between thesis and anti thesis until such time as a synthesis is found which will preserve what is true in both thesis an anti thesis until such time as a synthesis is found which will preserve what is true in both thesis an antithesis, the synthesis in this turn, becoming a new thesis and so on until the Idea is at last enthroned in perfection”. ‘The thesis’ ‘Despotism’ for instance, will call into being ‘ democracy’, the antithesis and from the clash between them the synthesis’ Constitutional Monarchy’ which contains the best of both results. Or the thesis family produces its antithesis, bourgeois society, and from the resultant clash the synthesis, the state emerges in which thesis and antithesis are raised to a higher power and reconciled.

The synthesis will not, Hegel insists, be in any sense a compromise between thesis and anti thesis. Both thesis and anti thesis are fully present in the synthesis, but in a more perfect form in which their temporary opposition has been perfectly reconciled. Thus the dialectic can never admit that anything that is true can never be lost. It goes on being expressed, but in ever new and more perfect ways. Contradiction or the dialectic, is therefore a self generating process - it is very moving principle of the world’.

According to Hegel, dialectics is the only true method’ for comprehending pure thought. He described dialectics as the indwelling tendency towards by which the one sidedness and limitation of the predicates of understanding is seen in its true light --- the dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connect and necessity to the body of sciences.

In the Phenomenology, Hegel gave an example of its use in human consciousness, but a more comprehensive political use was found in the Philosophy of Right in which the dialectical process reflected the evolution of world history from the Greek world to Hegel’s time. For Hegel, there was a dialectical pattern in history, with the state representing the ultimate body, highly complex formed as a result of synthesis of contradictory elements at different levels of social life..

However, the relationship between contradiction and synthesis was within concepts shaped by human practices. Marx too discerned a dialectical pattern in history but then understood contradictions between the means and relations of production at different stages of history.

STATE

The most important contribution of Hegel to political philosophy is his theory of state. Hegel regarded the state as the embodiment of the Giest or the Universal Mind. The state was the representative of the Divine Idea. His theory of state is rooted in the axiom: what is rational is real and what is real is rational. For Hegel, all states are rational in so far as they represent the various states of unfolding of Reason. He considered the state as march of God on earth or the ultimate embodiment of reason.

State, for Hegel, is the highest manifestation of reason because it emerges as a synthesis of family (thesis) and civil society or bourgeois society ( antithesis). The family is too small for the adequate satisfaction of man’s wants, and as children grow up they leave it for a wider world. That world is what Hegel calls the world of bourgeois society and it is the antithesis which is called into being by the original thesis, the family. Unlike the family, which is a unity regarded by its very members as being more real than themselves, bourgeois society is a host of independent men and women held together only by ties of contract and self-interest. Whereas the characteristic of the family is mutual love, the characteristic of bourgeois society is universal competition. The thesis, the family, a unity held together by love, knowing no differences, is thus confronted by the antithesis, bourgeois society, an aggregate of individuals held apart by competition knowing no vanity, even though it is manifestly struggling towards a greater unity which it has nevertheless not yet attained. The synthesis, which preserves what is best in thesis and antithesis, which swallows up neither family nor bourgeois society, but which gives unity and harmony to them is the state. The essence of modern state, according to Hegel, “is that universal is bound up with the full freedom of particularity and the welfare of individuals, that to interest of the family and of bourgeois society must connect itself with the state, but also universality of the state’s purpose cannot advance without the specific knowledge and will of the particular, which must maintain its rights.

FEATURES OF HEGELIAN STATE

There are several characteristics of Hegelian state. To begin with it is no exaggeration to say that it is divine. It is the highest embodiment that the spirit has reached in its progress through the ages. It is the ‘divide Idea as it exists on earth’ It can be called the march of God on earth’ It follows that Hegel makes no attempt, as does Rousseau, to square the circle and admit the possibility of a social contract.

The state also is an end in itself It is not only the highest expression to which the spirit has yet attained, it is the final embodiment of spirit on earth’ There can thus be no spiritual evolution beyond the state, any more than there can be any physical evolution beyond.

The state, too, is a whole which is far greater than the parts which compose it and which have significance only in it. “All the worth which the human being possess”, Hegel writes in the Philosophy of History, “all spiritual reality, he possess” only through the state”. Individuals, therefore, must obviously be completely subordinated to the state. It has the highest right over thebindividual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the state In the words of Prof. Sabine, if the individuals in Hegel’s world is nothing the state is all. In his Philosophy of History (published posthumously in 1837) Hegel defines the state as the ‘realisation of freedom’.

The state is the actually existing, realised moral life and all the worth which the human being possesses- all spiritual reality he possesses only through the state. The individual has moral value only because he is part of the state, which is the complete actualisation or reason because the state is actualised reason and spirit, Hegel says, the law of the state is a manifestation of objective spirit, and only that which obeys law is free’, for it obeys itself.

The state, moreover, is unchecked by any moral law, for it itself is the creator of morality. This can be seen clearly in its internal affairs and in its external relations. Firstly it lays down what shall be the standard of morality for its individual citizens. Secondly, the state can recognise no obligation other than its own safety in its relations with other states. In the Ethics he writes categorically: The state is the self- certain, absolute mind which acknowledges no abstract rules of good and bad, shameful and mean, craft and deception’. The state, according to Hegel, is the truest interpreter of the tradition of the community.

The state, Hegel insists, is a means of enlarging not restricting freedom; Freedom, he adds is the outstanding characteristics of modern state. He criticises the Greeks because they did not recognise that the state must rest on respect for personality. He believes that the state will help men to fulfill themselves’.

According to Hegel, rights are derived from the state and therefore no man can have any right against the state. The state has an absolute end itself. Prof. L.T. Hobhouse has beautifully summed up the Hegelian concept of state when he wrote that the state “as a greater being, a spirit, a supper personality entity, in which the individuals with their private conscience or claims of right, their happiness or misery are merely subordinate elements’. As Prof. C.E.M. Joad has rightly pointed out, just as the personal abilities of all its individuals in the state are transcended by and merged in the personality of the state. So the moral relations which each citizen has to each other citizen are merged in or transcended by the social morality which is vested in the state. Hegel regarded the state as a mystic transcendental unity the mysterious union of all with the greater whole which embraces all other institutions of social life.

The fundamental law of the state is the constitution. He opposes the democratic idea of the constitution as an instrument of government a charter and compact consciously framed for desired ends. The constitution should not be regarded as something made, even though it has come into being in time. Because the state is “the march of God through the world”, the constitution of the state is not something to be tampered with by ordinary mortals. Going back to the history of the state, Hegel finds that its origin “involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other”. This leadership principle, so characteristic of fascism, is also stressed by Hegel in his discussion on the merits of the different types of constitution- democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Because of his preference for monarchy, Hegel rejects the sovereignty of the people, especially if the term implies opposition to the sovereignty of the monarchy. In the words of Prof. William Ebenstein, Hegel anticipates the corporate organisation of the modern fascist state by his emphasis that the individuals should be politically articulate only as a member of a social group or class, and not just a a citizen as in the liberal democracies’.

FREEDOM

The concept of freedom occupies a prominent place in the political philosophy of Hegel. According to Hegel, ‘the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom’. The spirit, he says, is free, for it has its centre in itself and self- containedness is the very essence of freedom. Matter, on the other hand, is not free, for it is subject to the law of gravity and always tends to a point outside itself. Therefore the development of history is thus the history of freedom. Human history culminates in the state in which the spirit finds its final embodiment. Therefore, the perfect state is the truly free state and the citizen who gives perfect willing obedience to the perfect laws of the perfect state has perfect freedom. The individual is also an embodiment of the spirit, though not of course as perfect an embodiment as the state.

Hegel’s doctrine of freedom was based on the old Greek notion of an individual finding his true personality and his freedom in the state. This represents a reaction against the notion of freedom born of natural rights which characterised the revolutionary era. Man had no inalienable rights and his freedom was a gift of the state. The state not only secures the freedom of the individual but enlarges it. For Hegel, freedom of the individual is a social phenomenon and there can be no freedom in the pre- social state of nature. Freedom is self realisation which is possible only in the state through the media and institutions maintained by the state True freedom is determined by reason, not the reason of the individual as with Kant but the reason of the community as embodied in the laws of the state.

Because the state is actualised reason and spirit, Hegel says, the law of the state is manifestation of objective spirit, and “only that which obeys law is free”, for it obeys itself. Hegel rejects the liberal concept of freedom as absence of restraints and call such freedom formal, subjective, abstracted from its essential objects and constraints or restrictions put on the impulses, desires and passions of the individual are not, Hegel maintains, a limitation of freedom but its indispensable conditions because such compulsion forces man to adjust his behaviour to the higher reason of the state. According to Hegel, man’s real, substantive freedom (as distinct from mere formal freedom) thus consists in his submitting to and identifying himself with the higher rationality of state and law.

Whether man submits voluntarily to the state or has to be constrained, makes little difference, as the Hegelian concept of freedom refers, not to the mode of action - free personal choice between existing alternatives, or forcible adaptation of conduct to prescribed rules- but to the object of action. As Prof. William Ebenstein has rightly pointed out’ “if man acts in harmony with the goals of the state regardless how the harmony is attained, he is free, because his action partakes of the highest form of actualised freedom- the state”. ‘On the basis of this assumption when the subjective will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes.’

Hegel believes that freedom for the individual can never be the abstract and uneducated power of choice, but only the willing of what is rational, of what the spirit would desire and the power to perform it. His real will impels him to identify himself with the spirit. The spirit is embodied in the state. Therefore it is his real will to obey the commands and dictates of the state. Indeed the dictates of the state are his real will. Thus the commands of the state give man his only opportunity to find freedom. He may obey the state because he is afraid of the consequences of disobedience. If he obeys because of fear he is not free he is still subject to alien force. But if he obeys because he wishes to, because he has consciously identified himself with the will of the state, because he has convinced himself that what the state demands he would also desire if he knew all the facts, then he is subject only to his own will and he is truly free. The state, Hegel says, is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom provided he recognises, believes in and wills what is common to the whole..”,

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel formulates positive freedom in terms of self- determination. Self- determination essentially means two things;

1. That the self and not force out side itself determines its actions and

2. In determining itself it makes itself determinate, turning what is merely potential intended into something actual realised and organised. Self - determination is closely connected with autonomy. Hegel thinks that the very essence of the self consists in freedom. Like Rousseau and Kant, he maintains that the distinctive feature of a rational being is its freedom, more specifically, its autonomy; its power to act on universal principles.

ASSESSMENT

Karl Popper, in his major work “Open Society and its Enemies” has launched a frontal attack on Hegel as a major enemy of open society along with Plato and Karl Marx. He stressed the origins of Hegel’s historicism to three ideas developed by Aristotle:

a. Linking individual or state development to a historical evolution;

b. A theory of change that accepted concepts like an undeveloped essence or potentiality; and

c. The reality or actuality of any object was reflected by change. The first one led to the historicist method, which in Hegel assumed a form of ‘ Worship of history”; the second are linked the underdeveloped essence of destiny, and the third helped to formulate his theory of domination and submission, justifying the master slave relationship . As Popper has rightly pointed out, Hegel’s principle aim was “ to fight against the open society, and thus to serve his employer, Frederick William of Prussia. Popper also argued that Hegel’s identification of the rational with the actual inevitably led to a philosophy of the pure politics of power, where might was right. The irrational forms of “State worship” led to the renaissance of tribalism. In the entire tradition of western political theory of over 2000 years, no other thinker aroused as much controversy about the meaning of his discourse as Hegel did Marx realized the formidable dominance of Hegelian philosophy, and compared it with the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. He stressed that Hegel’s philosophy could be attacked only from within and not from outside. Because of this reason Marxian materialism was dialectically linked to Hegelian idealism.

Hegel’s teaching is valuable because it insists on man’s dependence on society. He is right in showing how much man is influenced by society. He made the idea of liberty richer by showing that man’s conception of it largely depends upon the institutions which have trained him and given him his education. In this his idealism is thoroughly realistic, and has been confirmed by recent psychology, which has proved how the early impressions made on our minds always remain. As C.L. Wayper has pointed out, Hegel “ made politics something more than a mere compromise of interests, and that he made law something more than mere command.” His whole work is valuable reminder that we would do well not to minimize the importance of natural growth of a community.

It is beyond dispute that Hegel is one of the greatest political thinkers of modern times. He exerted considerable influence on subsequent political theory, particularly Marxism and Existentialism. He has been claimed as the philosophical inspiration by both Communists and Fascists. The British idealist T. H. Green adapted Hegelianism to revise liberalism in the late 19th century.