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History in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Donald J. Maletz
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Extract

Hegel's Philosophy of Right is the first work to make a doctrine of progress in history conceived as an organized whole into an integral, even culminating, part of a systematic, philosophic political teaching. Certainly Kant and Rousseau, at the least, preceded Hegel in giving history an emphasis soon to be seen as characteristically modern; yet Hegel nevertheless transformed and deepened their rather tentative approaches into something more solid and comprehensive, perhaps also more grandiose, speculative and questionable. In establishing the view that history could be made theoretically intelligible, and an essential element of political philosophy, he produced a concept of historical progress which is free of utopian idealism, distinguishable from theologically inspired precursors, compatible with freedom (indeed, history becomes the story of the realization of freedom), and an alternative to a quite different form of historicism which thought insight into history would justify anti-rationalist realism or subjectivism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , April 1983 , pp. 209 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1983

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References

1 Hegel, in the words of Manfred Riedel, completed the “copernican revolution” initiated by Kant and Rousseau in the discussion of the theme of history (Riedel, Manfred, System und Geschichte [Frankfurt, 1973], p. 58)Google Scholar. Arendt calls him the first great thinker “to take history seriously, that is, as yielding truth” (Arendt, Hannah, Willing, vol. 2 of The Life of the Mind [New York, 1978], p. 45).Google Scholar

2 The importance of Rousseau and Kant is noted by Riedel, as cited in note 1. For an understanding of the opening to a philosophic-political doctrine of history, see Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men: “O man, whatever country you may come from … here is your history,” which initiates an account, meant to be paradigmatic, of human development (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The First and Second Discourses, trans. Masters, Roger D. [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964], pp. 103–104 ff)Google Scholar. See further Kant's “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent” (Kant, Immanuel, On History, ed. Beck, Lewis White [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1963], pp. 11–26)Google Scholar. I would not deny that some of the roots of a specifically modern interest in the problem of history go back further. See Löwith's chapters on Vico and Voltaire and on medieval and biblical influences (Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History [Chicago, 1949], chaps. 5–6, 8–11Google Scholar; cf. Löwith, Karl, Nature, History and Existentialism, ed. Levison, Arnold [Evanston, 1966] chap. 2)Google Scholar. Löwith holds, in a still controversial thesis, that there are theological premises behind this entire line of thought; his view is supported by Danto (Danto, Arthur, Analytical Philosophy of History [Cambridge, 1965], 7–9)Google Scholar, and criticized by Gadamer (Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, trans, and ed. Burden, Garrett and Cumming, John [New York, 1975], pp. 481–482)Google Scholar. For a critical view of Löwith's thesis, see Dove, Kenley, “Hegel and the Secularization Hypothesis,” in The Legacy of Hegel, ed. O'Malley, J. J. et al. (The Hague, 1973), pp. 144–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Isaiah Berlin suggests that the specifically modern sense of history (understood as historical diversity) commenced in the Renaissance but led to a “revolution promoted by Herder and Hegel” (in Yovel, Yirmiahu, ed., Philosophy of History and Action [Dordrecht and Boston, 1978], p. 40)Google Scholar. According to Leo Strauss, all of modern political philosophy is concerned with a new and emphatic attention to history (Strauss, Leo, What Is Political Philosophy? [New York, 1959], p. 58).Google Scholar

3 On antiphilosophic historicism, see Hegel's Philosophy of Right (henceforth cited as PR), § 3 Remark; § 211 Remark; and Knox's translation (Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox, T. M. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952], pp. 307 nn. 17 and 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 357 n. 58; 358 n. 62). Cf. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 13 ff, 311–13, 316Google Scholar. On the many aspects of the sense for history in forms not connected with Hegel, see Meinecke, Friedrich, Historism, trans. Anderson, J. E. (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and Reill, Peter Hanns, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley, 1975).Google Scholar

4 For a recent treatment of Hegel's philosophy of history, see Wilkins, Burleigh Taylor, Hegel's Philosophy of History (Ithaca, 1974)Google Scholar and O'Brien, George Dennis, Hegel on Reason and History (Chicago, 1975)Google Scholar; and for views which attend more fully to the political aspects of this theme, Kelly, George Armstrong, Idealism, Politics and History (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar and Hegel's Retreat from Eleusis (Princeton, 1978).Google Scholar

5 There is still a direct link to Hegel's form of historicism in European thought, as is lucidly shown in Raymond Polin's “Farewell to the Philosophy of History” (in Yovel, Philosophy of History and Action, pp. 201–18). An influential critique of Hegel comes from Karl Popper's work (Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. [London, 1947]Google Scholar and The Poverty of Historicism [Boston, 1957])Google Scholar. Wilkins has shown that Popper's thought leads to what is, in its own way, a kind of affirmative doctrine of history, namely the view that there are “an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life”; the number is indefinite because we cannot know a “whole,” since “all description is necessarily selective.” Consequently, “There cannot be a criterion of absolute rightness,” according to Popper, a doctrine which Wilkins calls a “conventionalist account of ethics” (Wilkins, , Has History Any Meaning? [Ithaca, 1978], pp. 125, 214, 228)Google Scholar. I would follow Eugene Miller's emphasis on the connections between this kind of view and “historicism” in the sense that suggests the historical relativity of truth. (Miller, Eugene, “Positivism, Historicism and Political Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 66 [09 1972], 797, 800–801)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Miller's account is an excellent overview of the development and recent influence of historicism.

6 See Miller, “Positivism, Historicism and Political Inquiry.” For an account of the recent revival of interest in Hegel's political philosophy, see Riedel, Manfred, Materialien zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1975), 1:32–40Google Scholar. Charles Taylor has recently made a strong case for the contemporary importance of Hegelian political thought (Hegel and Modern Society [Cambridge, 1978]).Google Scholar

7 Hegel held that the term natural right was only “traditional” and no longer fully correct (Hegel, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, ed. Ilting, Karl-Heinz [Stuttgart — Bad Canstatt: Friedrich Froman Verlag Günther Holzboog, 1973–1774], I: 239–40)Google Scholar. He argued that “… nature is not free and therefore is neither just nor unjust” (PR § 49 Remark). Right can have its source only in the free will (PR § 4 Remark). At one point he refers to his own study in PR as “natural right or philosophic right” (PR § 3 Remark), but on the whole would emphasize the latter term and drop the reference to nature.

8 Isaiah Berlin, “Comment” on Kaplan's “Historical Interpretation” (in Yovel, Philosophy of History and Action, pp. 38–40). Berlin here gives an example of a type of study which is not “historical” (the Renaissance interest in classical antiquity, which treated antiquity as a source of truth), but he apparently thinks this kind of view cannot be sustained in the face of the experience of diversity across history.

9 Thus Hegel still uses the term nature (e.g, in PR § 4 Remark — the “nature of spirit [or mind]”), but it means not a permanent condition or situation but an “essence” that is historical, that develops only through being situated in and finally ordering the realm of history (Cf. Hegel, , Vorlesungen, I: 239–240).Google Scholar

10 In Yovel, Philosophy of History and Action, p. 22 (emphasis in the original). Cf. the essay by Charles Taylor, “Hegel's Sittlichkeit and the Crisis of Representative Institutions” (1ibid., pp. 133–54) and the critical remarks of Shlomo Avineri (ibid., pp. 155–58, especially 157, which agrees with Taylor on the importance of the historical sense). See also Löwith, Nature, History and Existentialism, pp. 142–43.

11 References in parentheses in the text refer to pages or paragraphs of Hegel, G. W. F., Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, vol. 7 of Sämtliche Werke, 20 vols., ed. Glockner, Hermann (Stuttgart: Fr. Fromanns Verlag, 1928)Google Scholar; this edition is abbreviated as SW. The second reference, labelled K, refers to the translation of the PR by T. M. Knox. While I have usually followed Knox's version, some alterations have been made in order to achieve a more literal rendering.

12 Hegel's critical views concerning the early modern natural right tradition and the objections made to it in the eighteenth century are treated by Norberto Bobbio (in Riedel, , Materialien, 2: 81–108)Google Scholar and by Riedel, Manfred, Studien zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie (Frankfurt, 1969), pp. 42–74Google Scholar. See also Hegel's early essay, Über die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts (1802–3), published recently in an English translation by Knox, T. M. as Natural Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975).Google Scholar

13 Shklar, Judith, Freedom and Independence (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 134, 136; cf. 173–78.Google Scholar

14 PR § 258 Remark, § 29 Remark (emphasizing here also the importance of Rousseau's contribution to these events); cf. § 5 Remark. For the criticism of Kant, see PR §§ 139–40, in which context Hegel also refers to his own more elaborate discussions of Kantianism in the Phenomenology.

15 See Hegel's emphasis on the new readiness to indulge “heart, emotion and inspiration about ethical institutions” (SW 26; K 5). Cf. Shklar, Freedom and Independence, pp. 112 ff; and Berlin, Isaiah, “Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism,” in Against the Current, ed. Hardy, Henry (New York, 1982), pp. 162–187.Google Scholar

16 See Hegel's first thorough consideration of the problem of history in PR § 3 Remark, where he discusses his differences with the historical school of jurists and, as well, deprecates the “merely” historical. In the context, he is attacking those who find an excuse in historical study for holding that philosophy is incompatible with the understanding of positive law or politics generally. Cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 316.

17 Avineri, Shlomo, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1972), p. 194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Hegel's use of the term natural condition (“Naturzustand”) to describe the scene of international affairs recalls the liberal tradition and its “state of nature.” Hegel holds that there is no “state of nature”; for the “state” requires overcoming “natural simplicity” (PR § 187 Remark; cf. § 93 Remark; § 168 Remark; cf. also Hegel, , Vorlesungen, I: 231–232, 239–40)Google Scholar and the “natural condition.” In the movement out of the “natural condition” resides the meaning of history; history has an order which is more than a permanent barbarism reenacting the state of nature in the sense of the war of all against all, but it is less than perpetual peace. Cf. Riedel, System and Geschichte, pp. 61–2, and Henrich, Dieter, Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt, 1975), pp. 170ffGoogle Scholar. I would not deny that Hegel fails to anticipate the character of war in the twentieth century.

19 Cf. the transition from domestic to international affairs in theses 5–7 of Kant's “Idea for a Universal History” in On History, pp. 16–21.

20 By knowing it as a whole is meant knowing it as an organized structure, not a disorderly heap of unrelated things; it does not mean knowing it in the impossible sense of knowing all the particulars, for this kind of knowledge would be infinite in scope. For this distinction, see Wilkins, Has History Any Meaning? pp. 125–26; and Wilkins, Hegel's Philosophy of History, pp. 171–77. Cf. also PR § 3 Remark and also Hegel's treatment of his dependence on “original history” in Hegel, G. W. F., Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Hoffmeister, Johannes, vol. 1 in Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1955), pp. 4 ffGoogle Scholar; Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975), 12 ff.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Avineri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 131–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Riedel, Manfred, Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und Staat bei Hegel (Berlin, 1970), pp. 7 ff.Google Scholar

22 On the idea of a “second nature,” cf. the critical remarks of Nietzsche (Nietzsche, Friedrich, Werke, 3 vols., ed. Schlechta, Karl [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966], 1:231–232Google Scholar. See also Kant, On History, p. 63.

23 Ricoeur suggests that, without such a unifying concept, it is possible to “slip into fascism and into a kind of dispersion of human reality” in which it will be easier to “treat some part of humanity as non-human.” (Comments on the question, “Is a Philosophy of History Possible?”, in Yovel, Philosophy of History and Action, p. 230). Others, such as Berlin, find the notion that the last word is the plurality of histories and civilizations more benign (ibid., p. 40).

24 For the premodern consideration of the mutability of states and history, by contrast, see Löwith's remark on Polybius (Meaning in History, pp. 8–9).

25 On what is “universal,” see PR §§ 21–24.

26 See Scholem, Gershom, Walter Benjamin — Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt, 1975), p. 79Google Scholar, who reports the view of Benjamin that Nietzsche is the only thinker in the nineteenth century to see what the “experience of history” is; others taught or exemplified the “humanistic” contemplation (Betrachtung) of history. His comment is born out by the manner in which Hegel uses the term “die Erfahrung der Geschichte” (Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, p. 19).

27 On “ideal,” see Knox's translation of the PR, p. 311 n. 36. Hegel's concentration on the “ideal” significance of events and institutions is what renders his view distinct from deterministic or materialistic interpretations of history. Löwith, contrasting Hegel's view with that of Comte, compares it to the Greek “dream of a metaphysical theocracy” which is “called the reign of mind” (Meaning in History, p. 82).

28 Cf. PR § 150.

29 Cf. Hegel's reflections on the problem of evil in Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, pp. 48–9, and in PR §§ 139–40. Cf. also the comment of Nietzsche: “The meaning of German philosophy (Hegel): to think out a pantheism in which evil, error and suffering are not perceived as arguments against divinity” (Werke, III: 496).

30 Riedel, System und Geschichte, p. 51; Kant, On History, pp. 12–14; PR § 44.

31 One would look first to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of World History for his own elaboration of the extremely laconic synopsis in the PR. In a larger sense, of course, all of his works are affected by his concern for the meaning of history as a whole; one would emphasize particularly the importance of the Phenomenology.

32 Kelly suggests that Hegel saw himself as a “philosopher of the Napoleonic era” or of “the modern European world” and that he tried to articulate the “essential features of political and social organization that he saw coming into being in Western Europe as a whole.” (Kelly, Hegel's Retreat, pp. 12, 15, 16; cf. Löwith, Meaning in History, pp. 56–57).

33 See Shklar, Freedom and Independence, pp. 73–95.

34 Cf. PR § 185 Remark.

35 Cf. PR § 279 Remark.

36 Cf. PR § 194 Remark.

37 Hegel recognizes a distinction between the ancient and the modern, but locates the beginning of the modern in the world which replaced the Roman Empire. PR § 185 Remark, § 206 Remark, § 124 Remark. Christianity plays an essential role in initiating the modern world (§ 125 Remark, § 185 Remark; cf. § 358, where the role of Christianity seems to be implied, even though it is not, strangely, explicitly mentioned in his overview of history, even at the point where he links the Jews to the “Germanic realm”).

38 See Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 447Google Scholar; Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (vol. 11 in Sämtliche Werke), p. 557; Arendt, Willing, pp. 45–46.

39 Cf. Kant's doctrine of “reconciliation” (Kant, On History, pp. 63–68). See also PR (SW, p. 35; K, p. 12) and, further, Hegel's discussion of the modern world in the concluding section of his Philosophy of History. Shklar suggests that there is such a thing as an “ethical reconciliation” that is not a “Christian act of salvation” (Shklar, Freedom and Independence, p. 71 n. 31; and cf. the argument of 71ff.). An illuminating account of Hegel's thoughts on the problem of “reconciliation” is found in Kelly, Hegel's Retreat, chap. 3. Cf. also Arendt, Willing, p. 157.

40 Note also the discussion of the relationship between thought and politics in the “Preface” to the PR (SW, p. 29ff; K, p. 7ff.).

41 Cf. Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy, p. 74ff., and the references cited in his note 4, p. 75.

42 The best discussion of this issue, from a Hegelian point of view, is in Alexandre Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom” (in Strauss, Leo, On Tyranny [New York, 1963], pp. 143–188).Google Scholar

43 Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 481; 537 n. 55. See also Hegel's attempts to rescue Platonic “idealism” from its critics by interpreting it historically: PR “Preface” and § 185 Remark.

44 The idealism is found strikingly in his claim that “things” are subordinate to the “person,” who has “the right of putting his will into any and every thing” (PR § 44). The realism is most emphatic in the teaching that thought must be reconciled to the world as it is; he speaks of the lowering of heaven to earth, which means thought's self-conscious willingness to adapt itself to the conditions of the mundane world. This is no actualization of heaven on earth but rather a critique of the idea of heaven, a critique of those who reject the mundane world in the name of a purely spiritual heaven. Cf. Löwith's only apparently paradoxical assertion that Hegel is, compared to Marx, the greater realist (Meaning in History, p. 51).