Lecture 4: Hegel (cont) The Realisation of Freedom and Reason

8. According to Hegel, this process culminates in the then contemporary European society. Hegel’s system is supposed to express the truth and self-consciousness of the modern age. Hegel quite consciously articulates and answers the modern need for meaning beyond religion and tradition. Modernity is the “end of history’ in the sense of dramatic and conflictual discontinuity. The ‘end of history’ means (1) Freedom: the attainment of a qualitative plateau in the actualisation of freedom as a mode of human social interaction. Bourgeois society liberates the individual from the bonds of nature and tradition. They assume responsibility for their own life and shape its private dimension to their own personal tastes. This subjective autonomy is built into by a new institutional arrangement based on free contract and reciprocal recognition. This allows the freedom of the individual to harmonise with that of all others in a way that contributes to universal welfare and mutual respect. All this is achieved in a way that allows society to accept dynamism and a certain degree of conflict as a normal part of its functioning. As a result, for the first time society attains real internal flexibility commensurate with free individuality and rationality. (2) Reason: German possesses two words for “reason:” these are “Verstand” and “Vernünft”. While Hegel hierarchises these two terms he does not see them as distinct. “Vernünft” is simply the immanent movement of “Verstand” beyond the limits imposed by the latter. This latter connotes the reasoning associated with the everyday and the natural sciences that he calls “understanding”: this is a naïve notion of reason because it works with two heterogenous elements: the categories (form) and the raw data of sensation (content). It therefore makes sharp distinctions between things, which it regards as self-sufficient and independent. Thus understanding rests on what later philosophers would call the “myth of the given’, this assumes that that knowledge is either of the sort of entity naturally immediately present to consciousness or entities whose existence or properties are entailed by the former. This is compared to “Vernünft”, which is that same thinking having broken through such naïve presupposition. Hegel associates this more sophisticated reasoning with his own speculative reason. This notion is derived from the Greek ‘specto’ which means to look or scrutinise. This concept has a chequered historical in classical and Christian thought where is sometimes equivalent to the Greek notion of theoria ( a godlike contemplation or looking at the world) but also assuming a perjorative meaning of distortion or confused image associated with the mirror as against the real. Hegel wanted to preserve the mystical connotations of a vision that is partial but divinely inspired. Because Verstand thinks of objects as distinct and self-sufficient, it renders them abstractly and not determinant in the sense of showing the totality of relations that condition them; that every content is something that thought has given to itself. It therefore abstracts the object of knowledge from its interconnections, it is satisfied with the opposition of form and content and it does not pursue the truth that is signified by the totality of all determinants. For example, Kant was perfectly willing to point to certain antinomies in our use of reason (conditioned v’s unconditioned) but was unwilling to attribute contradiction to things themselves. His dualist separation of phenomena and noumena fails by not uniting the two and showing how both form parts of a single indivisible whole. As Verstand is focused on content alone as something discreet, it fails to recognise “mediation” (Vermittlung): the way in which each new content is itself a theoretical construct dependent upon a theoretical framework or perspective. What from a certain perspective appears as a contradiction can be eliminated by the recognition that knowledge is inseparable from the criteria by which we evaluate its claim; if we change these criteria by adopting a higher, more sophisticated theory construction the object of knowledge will itself undergo a change. Only this self-reflexive recognition makes thinking not abstract but concrete. This is why the Hegelian speculative cognition will insist on the unity of form and content. In fact, Hegel’s dialectical or speculative method operates dynamically. He maintains that locating the existence of contradictions is only the first task. The next is to show how these contradictions at a given level of self-consciousness are positively resolved at a new higher level that is the product of the new awareness resulting from the movement of thought itself in the course of its experience, from the compulsion to resolve the initial contradiction. The knowledge that thought is the universal that particularises and determines itself, is, for Hegel, the core of the philosophical perspective or speculative Vernünft. This means to have synthesised the opposites and understood thought (concept (Begriff)) as the dynamic principle of all reality. At this point it must be emphasised that spiritual activity is not merely a cognition process. It is also an active engagement with the social and natural world through social interaction and work. Not surprising, therefore, the concept itself is without truth or full development unless it gives reality and full existence to itself. If a concept is to be truly concrete it must be synthesised with a content that is not external to itself but its own self-determination. Hegel will call this concrete concept that gives reality and existence to itself the Idee. The rational only becomes actual (Wirklich), for Hegel, when it instantiates itself as real, when it assumes objective form. This is the ongoing activity of spirit in history as it constantly renovates and redefines itself. However, the role of philosophy is only to track the “inner impulse” of this development, to comprehend its immanent rational course without adding anything extra of its own. Hegel’s philosophy is a higher wisdom and the ultimate research program. Empirical knowledge will continue to accumulate but this philosophy has unveiled an essential philosophical truth about spirit.

9. This whole theoretical edifice rests on a positive assessment of the basic trends of emergent bourgeois society. On this basis Hegel abandons the old conceptual distinction between polis and oikos. The new political economy correctly perceived this new sphere (civil society) as the motor of the new bourgeois form of existence. New needs, mutual inter-dependence, in full a second “human nature” no longer confined by mere nature and tradition all emerge through markets, division of labour and recognitive, legal relations of contract. This key message is presented in the Philosophy of Right (1821). Behind revolutionary chaos of the times emerges a more fundamental and mediated unity. This is based on a complex and extended system of need satisfaction and mutual recognition. The isolated worker is not an atom but a contributor to a network of social inter-dependence, their striving is not merely selfish private interest but an instrument of an immanent social reason furthering the welfare of all individuals in the community. This is encapsulated in his famous idea of the “ruse of reason”. Historical action has its own objective result and meaning that is not identical to the intentions that motivated the multitude of particular, subjective actors.

10. Hegel introduces a tripartite model: family, civil society and the state. 1) Family. Immediate bourgeois family condensed from the late feudal extended household. Here is the “natural unity” of an organic community of particular and universal. Hegel calls this unreflected universality because these are natural relations built on spiritualised sexual union and familial love. 2) Civil society. This sphere is constituted by the system of needs and the administration of justice. Hegel also refers to this as the external State. Here the particular and the universal are found in opposition. This is a sphere of both formal legal equality and accentuated difference. Individuals pursue private interests and choose various careers. The only thing linking them is reciprocal needs and the mechanisms of the market underpinned by contractual relations and legal administration. Thus Hegel locates the individual within a system of need satisfaction. Their particularity drawn in and developed in a universal system that encompasses all. This system constitutes a framework that conditions all their actions and through which they develop their own particularity as well as becoming conscious of their own essential universality. This is the sphere of freedom and difference where universal interests are only implicit working behind the backs of individuals. This process of self-creation involves both knowledge/technical as well as social/moral dimensions. In work, universalisation accrues as a result of the expansion of needs. They are both multiplied and differentiated. At the same time, the particular participates in this sphere as a legal person. Personhood is a register of the social recognition and permission that signifies the legal certification of action and claims. Hegel also appreciates the inherent dynamism of this sphere. The difference between persons in the system of needs is expressed in the currency of market relations, in the shape of extremes of wealth and poverty. These are not accidents but structural features of the normal functioning of the system. Hegel’s generally positive assessment of bourgeois modernity is not uncritical. While he accepts the market can reconcile some contradictions, he concedes that it generates others. There is no definitive solution to the poverty that issues from these extremes. However, he envisages institutional adjuncts to ameliorate its worst excesses, to facilitate recognition and make implicit universality explicit. However, he envisages institutional adjuncts to ameliorate its worst excesses, to facilitate recognition and make implicit universality explicit. He mentions both guild-like organisations called Corporations and the Police. The former is supposed to represent the collective sectional interests of all those in a trade and protect individual welfare, while the latter is a public authority charged with controlling crime, regulating commercial activity and facilitating efficient supply of essential commodities. Both of these institutions act as essential mediating links between individual and common interests. They further the consciousness of universality within the domain of particularity.

Lecture 3/ Sem 1, 2016: Hegel (1770-1831)

1.    Hegel was the first philosopher to provide a comprehensive synthesis permeated with the new consciousness of modernity. He fully appreciated the emergence of the new social realm and also incorporated both political and culture responses to the crisis of his times. However, Hegel is a transitional figure. Its as if in him the entire inheritance of the old world gathers itself up for a comprehensive restatement that attempts to incorporate the challenge of the new without entirely giving way to it. Biography. Hegel lived through one of the most tumultuous periods of European history. As a school he was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. His last article was a critique of the first English Reform Bill intended to curb some of the horrible excesses of industrialisation. These events symbolise the enormous changes that Hegel attempted to express in his philosophy.

2. Hegel’s early works address the practical problem of “positivity” or “diremption”. In general these terms referred to the contemporary political fragmentation of Germany, increasing social divisions and the collapse of public life and public virtue. This was especially vivid for a young man viewing things from the perspective of an idealised antiquity where religion was vital and inter-woven with all the other institutions and practices of life. This critique implies a negative evaluation of Christianity especially focusing on the lifeless and merely ritualistic status of contemporary religious ceremony and belief. Hegel viewed Christianity as a set of dogmas that no longer inspired contemporary believers and was unable to galvanise a sense of community. It introduced a split between the secular and the spiritual and prioritised the immortal soul of the individual. This had encouraged a retreat into private life and undermined the previously enthusiastic ancient taste for public life and political freedom.

3. The young Hegel placed great hopes on the French Revolution and the later impact of Napoleon as a modernising force in Southern Germany. The dream was that the remnants of the Ancien regime in Germany might be swept away leading to a radical rebirth of republican politics and culture. However, this dream failed to materialise. Hegel’s response to this disappointment was one, albeit a very important, ingredient of his final synthesis. We cannot go into all the dimensions of this synthesis; however, Hegel also draws from a variety of other contemporary theoretical and cultural resources like theoretical philosophy, economics, and theology to produce his mature vision.

4. Perhaps the principal reason for commencing this course with Hegel is that he takes up the challenge of incorporating his interpretation of modernity within a philosophical system in the shape of a new metaphysics of reality and history. Hegel wants to reconcile history and the standpoint of philosophy sub specia aeternitartis. He takes up the problem of conceptualising modern dynamism. He reaffirms the Enlightenment critique of tradition and wants to view the world as a product of freedom and intelligence. Simultaneously, he also recognises that abstract rationality is not the highest embodiment of this insight. Reason is a product of history; it is always embedded in a world and complemented by other cultural forces. This claim is redeemed through a critique of Kantian philosophy.

5. Kant’s philosophy is a systematisation of the Enlightenment view of man. The thinking subject is an individual but the individual is modelled on mankind in general: the so-called transcendental subject. Hegel views Kant’s philosophy as limited: in viewing mind as consciousness, it was little more than psychology rather than philosophy of mind. As the Kantian subject is a finite being, knowledge can only be finite and subjective and the question of the truth can never be settled. This latter point derives from Kant’s revolutionary critique of traditional metaphysics. The crux of this critique is the claim that we do not have access to knowledge of being, to things in themselves. We apprehend the world only through our own categories of reason, which provide us with the world as it is know to us: the world of appearances. But the ultimate reality of objects (Ding an sich) is beyond the grasp of finite intellect. Kant’s critical philosophy is in part a logical inquiry into the nature of the subjective understanding and its conceptual categories. But the transcendental consciousness that Kant’s reconstructs is nothing more than an abstract epistemological subject. While Hegel accepts Kant’s discovery of the genuine contribution made by finite understanding (its active synthesising role in cognition), he argued that philosophy had to pass beyond this purely critical phase. The object that Kant has designated as unreachable can only be recovered if the object is a spiritual product from the start.

6. He wants to think subjectivity comprehensively: this means spelling out its social, historical and theological presuppositions. Hegel will call this new subject Geist. Geist is really both subject and object, a mobile and active oscillation that is alternatively now one and then the other. When it others itself or alienates itself, this externalisation or positing (Entausserung) is something determinate and finite, while Spirit remains what it is despite this alienated content. In fact, spirit is that pattern of activity that relates what has been alienated from itself back to itself and therefore this knowledge/experience is transformed as a result. It is important to stress that Spirit does not transcend this constant activity but is this activity through which it brings to fruition the freedom and self-sufficiency that is already implicit in it. This constant activity is the immanent dynamism of both nature and history yet is not separate from these two realms. Spirit is the infinite, the absolute or the divine that must assume a multitude of finite shapes in order to fully realise its own potential for rationality and freedom. In nature spirit assumes primarily the external form of space whereas in history it is time. In this medium it comes to the realisation of itself through self-creating action and interpretation. Rejecting classical metaphysics, Hegel views reality not as being but as a becoming wherein this absolute subject is engaged in an incessant process of movement and repose, of formation and renovation. Thus Hegel injects the very dynamism of modern social life into philosophy.

7. For Hegel, Geist manifests itself in history in three aspects or moments:

(a) Subjective Spirit.

Geist attains its highest subjective expression in human self-consciousness. The freedom of the subject and the full self-realisation of his/her spirituality is the great new task of modernity. While there is, as we will see, a very strong emphasis on conditionality and contextuality in Hegel’s social theory, it is just as true that he sees the individual subject playing a vital, if ambivalent, role. They are the bearer of supra individual spiritual purpose, the universal, the red thread of rationality in history, but also the particular who develops their own designs, will and aspirations and requires a social space in which these can be fully developed and realised. The modern subject is a legal personality characterised as the bearer of rights, But for Hegel subjective spirit also refers to the power of the intellect that has the power to structure the manifold of experience and abstract universal meanings. However, this connotation of subjective spirit is limited by its empty formalism that does not refer to any particular object. But the greatest limitation of subjective spirit is that it s also conditioned and finite; it must be socialised into the inter-subjective symbolic world of culture and it will die. Seen from the perspective of the Absolute, of the perpetual activity that is spirit, individual finite subjects are inconsequential, merely momentary instantiations or bearers of an incessant processuality.

(b) Objective Spirit.

As a supra-personal subject, Spirit expresses inter-subjective meanings. It must therefore widen its field of inclusivity to encompass all of historical experience: this means the inter-subjective symbolic medium of living culture (language, mores and institutions). This is the symbolic soil in and through which individuals are socialised and come to recognise both him/herself and other human beings as human subjects. Hegel sees this very broadly as an array of cultural institutions and practices that attain their pinnacle in the institutional realm of state. These give concrete form and stability to the more dynamic and shifting mores and customs of a particular form of life. This objective form is a more lasting configuration of spirit yet ultimately still finite. Each particular concrete form of objective spirit is born, will flower into some coherent, creative shape and unity before diremption (social conflict) and decay finally set in. However, the death or decline of particular cultures should not induce despair. As just mentioned, Hegel believes that Spirit as incessant activity never dies. Other locals and communities provide resources from which the inheritance of the past is absorbed and new achievements forged. He views this cultural vitality as a unified process where Geist is always being augmented and reconstituted on a higher historical, social and cultural plane. Hegel will call this series of ascending shapes of spirit Historical Spirit. In the course of this spiritual journey spirit comes to a clear self-consciousness and self-recognition in the realm of culture as it slowly actualises its full potential. However, Hegel’s historically understandable Eurocentric focus is evident in the fact that there are some societies that play no real historical role in the evolution of history proper, that do not contribute directly to the upward march of spirit and are therefore perpetually so to speak occupants of history’s waiting room. From a contemporary perspective, this obviously signifies a major historical distortion.

(c) Absolute Spirit.

When reflected upon in art, religion and philosophy this self-consciousness is called by Hegel Absolute Spirit. We have seen that Hegel understands this absolute in terms of self-sufficiency and self-transparency. If we try to think of what something that can be both embodied and have these qualities then clearly the great cultural works come to mind. The great works of high culture may be historical creations. We especially view them as the spiritual objectivations of concretely located individuals and cultures. However, in Hegel’s time the domain of culture has a timeless quality and value: once created, works appeared to have an independent, autonomous existence and a timeless validity expressive of their essential spiritual truth. Think of the great contemporary debates over the interpretation of the bible or the constitution. There is a fundamentalist or black letter understanding compared to another that requires a  more historicising attempt to interpret the essential truth of the source in the light of contemporary conditions and changing circumstances. But for Hegel these cultural forms are a reservoir of essential spiritual values that tell the story of human spirit’s increasing self-consciousness, of its journey to absolute self-knowledge.

Lecture 2: Historical and Conceptual Background (cont)

c. Political Centralisation: the Nation-State and Bureaucratisation. At the same time as the economy becomes an independent social subsystem political administration follows a similar logic. Under the influence of newspapers, and the increasing political and economic power of the state, allegiances shift from the local area to the political center. These changes bring about profound changes in personal identity and the character of citizenship. Individuals increasingly identify with their nation and citizenship loses its former participatory meaning and assumes its modern representative implications. The new association of citizenship with nationality engenders powerful new forces both for national unity and for national self-assertion as well as for discrimination, exclusion and racism. The new complexity and expansion of the tasks of central administration engenders the need for a new class of specialist officials (bureaucrats). Their expertise is the efficient administration and functioning of public business and state affairs. Administration becomes increasingly concentrated and centralised with the state controlling borders, customs and economic instruments like taxes, weights, measures and coinage.  Whatever the gains in administrative efficiency, the centralised, bureaucratic nation-state emerges as a new external power serving both public and its own interests. It possesses an unprecedented intrusive reach and power. These developments feed both pride and anxiety. It makes possible a greater capacity for collective political action and a new imagined sense of community. Simultaneously, it generates anxiety about the paternalistic colonization of the life-world. The question of bureaucratic power, its limits and control increasingly becomes be a hotter issue into our own time in the name of the critique of the state and the welfare state. The all-powerful state can juridify all formerly “natural relations” and transform citizens into clients. While these questions remain alive, they have also been augmented by others emerging with globalisation. Are we also witnesses to the death of the nation-state? Does the state have enough power to prosecute its own policies and protect its own citizens against the vagaries of international markets and global corporations whose bottom line is not the interests of state but the return to shareholders?

 d. Democracy. While state power was being centralised and concentrated, paradoxically, the bourgeois revolutions open the door to political equality and at least formally to the possibility of mass political participation. These revolutions institute equality before the law and a constitutionally acknowledged pluralism in terms of increasing access to political rights and publicity. Bourgeois institutions and ideology both responded to, and further opened the door to socio-political struggles extending access to these institutions and even internally transforming them. Today democracy is one of the universal value ideas of modernity. It is almost everywhere acclaimed even while in practice it is often flouted. It is always under the pressure of elites of power, knowledge and money and the growing organisational complexity of modernity. In this light, a pertinent question is the appropriate meaning of democracy in contemporary modernity. Is democracy an unambiguous good? To what extent is mass participation in dynamic, complex societies possible and or desirable? If not mass participation in politics, what can democracy mean today? Would radical democratisation become a fetter to modernity's capacity for innovation and cultural achievement?

e. Cultural Rationalisation In the place of tradition and religious belief, reason becomes the ultimate ground of cultural judgement. All beliefs, institutions and practices are submitted to this immanent "worldly" tribunal which judges only on the basis of whether the thing in question conforms to the standards of rationality. This involves two main issues:  a) the parcelization of meaning. The critique of tradition causes the collapse of the hegemonic value of religion. Today talk of ‘high culture’ would typically exclude religion and this is a historically unprecedented situation. This liberation allowed the various spheres of culture (theoretical, practical and aesthetic) to assert their own autonomous validity claims to truth, goodness and beauty. Modern cultural evolution has allowed us to become increasingly aware of the tensions between these values. Can the pursuit of truth or beauty have undesirable social consequences? How far can the autonomy of the cultural spheres be taken before negative societal impacts emerge? (b) The hegemony of reason. Today not even reason is without its critics. Is rationality a principle of emancipation or oppression? Does the hegemony of reason suppress the other vital human capacities and aspirations like creativity and emotion? Is it the unsullied universal or merely the expression of a particular cultural tradition that normalises and oppresses? Whether it can or should be modified, re-conceptualized or abandoned? These are all contemporary questions.

 f. Individualism and Subjectivity. These general secularising trends both liberate and deepen the modern notion of subjectivity. The pre-modern individual lacked all subjective depth. They are too closely embedded in the family, community and prescribed social roles to feel the sense of personal contingency that presses so much on the modern individual. The notion of modern subjectivity has a number of dimensions or connotations. (1) Individualism. The modern individual is increasingly liberated from naturalistic ties to the community. This produces a sense of contingency and the quest of the individual to create their own identity, to make good or to realise their unique singularity. (2) Critique. As mentioned the tribunal of individual rationality becomes the ultimate judge. Anything purporting to recognition has to submit itself to this tribunal and the test of the subjective right to criticize. (3) The autonomy of individual action and hence our responsibility for our actions. Modern morality emphasizes the subjective freedom of the individual to recognise what they are supposed to do. Is this increasing depth of subjectivity and its freedom of choice to be celebrated or deplored? Does it lead to real emancipation and responsibility or does it simply empty the individual of all real content and leave them bereft of moral codes, hostage to their own fickle and transient moods and impressions? 

 11. In nominating these six abstract features of the transformation we today call modernity, I only want signal some of the major themes and issues which will come up as issues and problems in the work of our four paradigmatic thinkers and subsequent discussion of these issues. It is possible to think of other dimensions of modernity and to re-conceptualize the ones I have noted in radically different ways. The aim of this course will not be to come down for or against modernity: that would be nonsensical. We cannot do anything else than deal with the cards we are dealt and the society that we find ourselves in. Nor is the concept modernity itself is beyond criticism. Some philosophers might say that the concept of modernity is too abstract to be of much use. The variables of modern societies are too great and the prospects of any single theorist being able to master the required knowledge of all these factors to required extent being out of question. While I agree that philosophical abstraction carries real dangers, I would also maintain it is a crucial ingredient of the cultural relevance of philosophy. To my mind, general visions or diagnosis is one of the essential elements of culture as a vehicle of meaning creation. Philosophy in particular has a special role to play because it combined general vision with both historical knowledge and conceptual analysis. But, to my mind, a philosophy that concentrates on these latter elements only to the exclusion of the former is poorer for it. In any case, however variable is the empirical diversity of modern societies, as mentioned, development and globalization seems to be imposing some common challenges on all of us.  Another danger of this concept is that it may create the impression that modern societies form perfectly coherent and integrated wholes. Of course, facing an uncertain world without clear orientation, it is a natural heuristic method that we should try to draw all the distinguishing features of modern life together in the attempt to make it meaningful and navigable and gain some sense of its immanent tendencies. However, this can only be done with great caution and skepticism. We do not want to replace opaque and unruly reality that pulls us in many inconsistent directions at the same time with an integral, but overly homogenised and simplified theoretical picture, that impairs our own sense of alternative possibilities of practical action and our room to move. Even if you finally disagree with all the views examined in the course, hopefully the course will not be in vain. You will at least have surveyed some of the most influential diagnoses of modernity, familiarized yourself with some key concepts and ways of thinking about it and clarified your own understanding or confusions about contemporary society, its tensions, emancipatory possibilities and dangers.