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.