|
April 27, 2007
For liberals the embodiment of the Hegelian state was not Wilhelmine Germany but the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. It is the state reified.The liberal rejection of the Hegelian theory of political agency sought to emphasize spontaneous order at the expense of the unified will.
Hegel's theory of the state consciously worked with a double inheritance. On one hand, a conception of the state as the united will of the multitude, on the other, an account of civil society in which society is governed not by the will, but the rationality of the invisible hand. On Hegel’s account, the limitation inherent in the rationality of the invisible hand is its unintended, unwilled emergence, while the problem with the unity of the will is its arbitrary nature and potentially destructive consequences. Both are overcome in the fusion of the two in the state.
Hegel’s theory of the state acknowledges that there is frequently a disjunction between the aggregated outcomes of our individual actions, and the objectives for which we collectively strive. The collective product of civil society, brought about through ‘the complex interdependence of each on all’ is not the same as the general will, as expressed in a social contract. So, instead of wills being united by their own volition, the invisible hand creates a unity which is then consciously willed. In effect, the state is the ‘general intellect’ become conscious of itself as the general will.
So the arbitrariness of the general will is steadied by the rationality of the invisible hand, and the spontaneous order of society is infused with the patriotism of the state.
The conservative response to Hegel has been to try to preserve the integrity of the state from the contamination of individual action in civil society. Civil society only generates consumer interest groups—‘customers purchasing gas from the same utility company, or passengers travelling on the same bus’
|
