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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Hegel vs the neocons « Previous | |Next »
March 18, 2003

I have been wandering in cyberspace late at night and I came across an entry by Jim at Philosoblog on Hegel, which had been posted about a month ago. Jim says:

"Eddie and Aaron have Hegel on tap. I wouldn't go with Aaron's line that all of Hegel is gibberish; Philosophy of Right says something. But I've read The Phenomenology of Spirit twice, and it's mad. Yet, Eddie's batting for Hegel. He's right about one thing: Schopenhauer was just bitter. I heard that the poor bastard had to lecture to only one or two students while Hegel's lectures were standing room only."

Eddie has effectively dealt with Aaron's claim that Hegel is gibberish, the various remarks in the comment boxes and the post by Arthur Silber over at Cold Fury called The Importance of Understanding Hegel. Eddie did a good job in highlighting the standard cliched interpretations of Hegel's texts.

I will address Jim's claim that Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit mad since this was left to one side by Eddie?

The Phenomonology of Spirit is not mad---it is a very different way of writing philosophy to that of philosophy as a part of science. It is a hermeneutical, interpretive kind of philosophy that critically reflects on human history. Hegel's text traces the historical forms of consciousness and culture in terms of the movement of spirit.

The Phenomonology of Spirit is based on a rejection of the discredited transcendental universalism, a view from nowhere that enables reason to gain an objective knowledge which can then be used to inform rational social and political decisions.

Hegel's text replaces this with a historically-informed reason.

Hegel does so without embracing the other extreme of relativising of all views as mere expressions of a concrete cultural particularity: of a local place in a world of incommensurable, partial perspectives that do not have sufficient critical purchase to address the pressing problems of the day.

This, I take it, is what many dismiss as postmodernism in the Oz blog world.

Hegel's historical reason is a developing one that transforms itself through dialectial opposition. You may want to say that the dialectical bit is mad if you are enamoured of analytic reason; but surely not the historicity of reason?

Hegel then read history as the progress of freedom. This points to the open-ended movement of history and to future tasks of freedom for everyone. A dinky-die Bushie neo-con can't knock this one---after all its one of the reasons for going to war with Iraq: to bring freedom to a world that is unfree. Hence the utopian undercurrent.

The reflexive reaction to reason in history is to assert the primacy of the individual in order to displace Hegel's objective spirit or what we today would call culture. This both forms a historical background to what we currently do and moves in and through us---eg. consider the way that the US is such an individualist society. Their very understanding of what it is to be a person is informed by their historical culture of possessive (Lockean) individualism. that recoils from a dampening down of subjectivity. It is the way the individuals in this historical culture make themselves at home in the world.

Ironic, isn't it, the way the hard men of the neo-con Bush administration are the heirs of Hegel. Their actions are showing the way that Hegel is dead right---- human history is about the freedom for all.

Of course though they talk the talk of freedom, they won't walk the walk of freedom.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:48 PM | | Comments (4)
Comments

Comments

Thanks for the kind words. I was surprised when I got into that debate how many people had such hostile reactions to Hegel. I just assumed people had no opinion at all. And to think that people are still reading Popper's _The Open Society and Its Enemies_!

A couple of thoughts:
1. I do think that Hegel's thought calls for an individualism that is robust, even if it isn't Lockean. Culture transcends the individual in that no individual understands as much as is understoond by the culture collectively, yet culture exists only insofar as each individual takes it up and develops himself through it. It is incumbent then that each individual have an intense drive for self-development; the heighths of culture can be sustained by nothing less.

2. While I don't consider Hegel genuinely mad, Jim does have a point, if we take madness to be a kind of self-absorption that makes it difficult to live in the same world as others. Hegel's writing places impossible demands upon the reader to follow every turn in his thinking, and many of those turns do not strike me as essential as they seem to him. He could do a lot better in letting the reader know where he is and why he is there, and he could be more honest about the possibility of alternative routes. This is not the madness of Nietzsche in the street with the horse, but it is a lesser variety.

The Neo-cons are the hiers of Hegel because they are advancing history and freedom in Iraq ? Not so if you believe that the US has only it's own interests at heart and not Universal interests. Just as the US was built on Lockean individualism and liberalism, the US arguably acts as an individual self interested state. Not necessarily for the universal good. This is not Hegelian atall is it ?

I am in the midst of reading phenomonology of spirit and I haven't one clue as to what he is talking about. I'd have to go with the madness diagnosis. What is sense certainty? perrception is a series of Here's, and Also's? The properties pointed out seem to be a linguistic critique rather than that of perception. Any words? set me straight please. I have never been so frustrated reading a philosopher.

I think 1st Lt. Mark V. Shaney USMC said it best when he said:

"...this is not defined as an absence of war. It is the presence of liberty, stability, and prosperity. In the face of the enemy. Don't buy into the pessimism and apathy that says, "It's hopeless," "They hate us too much," "That part of the men and women serving here in Iraq the enemy wherever you are. You are a mighty force for good, because truth is on your side. Together we will ultimately fail. That is why I am asking for your support. Become a voice of truth in your community. Wherever you are fight the lies of the men and women serving here in Iraq the enemy wherever you are. You are the soldiers at home fighting the war of perception with the media and American people. Our enemy has learned that the people in the highest regard. We love to criticize ourselves almost to an endless degree, because we care what others think. "

Raymond Onar
And as always: "Quidquid excusatio prandium pro!