Hegel and History

HEGEL
AND
HISTORY
Karin de Boer
Andrew Buchwalter
Pierre Chételat
Jason J. Howard
Allegra de Laurentiis
Glenn Magee
William Maker
John McCumber
Sûrya Parekh
Nathan Ross
Mark Tunick
Mario Wenning
Edited by
WILL DUDLEY
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Hegel and History
Hegel and History
Edited by
WILL DUDLEY
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2009 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hegel and history / edited by Will Dudley.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-2909-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. 2. History—Philosophy
I. Dudley, Will, 1967–
D16.8.H454 2009
901—dc22 2009007384
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Will Dudley
I PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
1 The End of History and the Nihilism of Becoming 15

William Maker
2 Hegel, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History 35

Mario Wenning
3 Hegel’s Account of the Present: An Open-Ended History 51

Karin de Boer
4 Hegel and the Logics of History 69

John McCumber
II HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND RACE
5 Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History Eurocentric? 87

Andrew Buchwalter
6 Hegel’s New World: History, Freedom, and Race 111

Sûrya Parekh
vi Contents
III THE HISTORICITY OF MORALITY,

ETHICAL LIFE, AND POLITICS
7 Spirit without the Form of Self: On Hegel’s Reading of

Greek Antiquity 135
8 The Historicity of Ethical Categories: The Dynamic of

Moral Imputation in Hegel’s Account of History 155
Jason Howard
9 The Mechanization of Labor and the Birth of Modern

Ethicality in Hegel’s Jena Political Writings 177
Nathan Ross
10 Hegel’s Claim about Democracy and His Philosophy

of History 195
Mark Tunick
IV THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND RELIGION
11 Hegel’s Philosophy of World History as Theodicy:

On Evil and Freedom 215
Pierre Chételat
12 Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Kabbalist Eschatology 231

Glenn Magee
Contributors 247
Index 249
Acknowledgments
The original versions of the essays collected in this volume were presented
at the nineteenth biennial meeting of the Hegel Society of America,
held at DePaul University, October 6–8, 2006. I wish to thank Kevin
Thompson and the Philosophy Department for organizing and hosting
the conference. Portions of the essay contributed by Allegra de Laurentiis
appeared in her book, Subjects in the Ancient and Modern World: On
Hegel’s Theory of Subjectivity (2005) and are reproduced with the per-
mission of Palgrave Macmillan.
vii
Introduction
Will Dudley
“History,” Hegel emphasizes, has a double meaning: it refers both to the

course of human events, and to the writing that strives to comprehend
those events and impress their significance upon human consciousness.
These two senses of “history” are necessarily linked, according to Hegel,
for the course of events transforms human consciousness—our under-
standing of the world and ourselves—and human consciousness informs
the contributions we make to the ongoing course of events.
Hegel thus regards human beings as thoroughly historical creatures.
What we are is determined by what we do; what we do is determined
by what we understand ourselves to be; and what we understand our-
selves to be is determined by what we have been. Our history—the
events that have led to our present condition, and our awareness of
those events—generates the possibilities we envision for that which we
might become.
Our historical nature is manifest, Hegel thinks, in all of our
endeavors. We actualize our self-understanding (“objectify our spirit”)
in our legal, moral, social, economic, and political practices and institu-
tions. At the same time, we express our self-understanding in aesthetic,
religious, and philosophical forms. Our appreciation of the truths pre-
sented in art, religion, and philosophy makes our self-understanding
increasingly explicit, which hastens its transformation. Our transformed
self-understanding motivates further upheavals in the practical arenas of
law, morality, social custom, economics, and politics. These intertwined
developments of human self-understanding and its worldly objectifica-
tions are the stuff of history.
1
2 Will Dudley
Hegel’s philosophy of history aims to comprehend the trajectory

and most important moments of human development. The key to such
comprehension, Hegel claims, is the concept of freedom. Hegel believes
that the capacity and desire for freedom are definitive of humanity, and
that all humans therefore seek to establish the conditions in which they
can be free. Because freedom can be understood in many different ways,
however, people have produced a great variety of cultures, despite sharing
the same ultimate goal. Hegel attempts to make sense of this cultural
variety by ordering the possible understandings of freedom from the
least to the most adequate, from those that grasp the truth only partially
(or abstractly) to those that grasp it most fully (or concretely). He then
identifies cultures that have actualized these understandings of freedom
in their legal, moral, social, economic, political, aesthetic, religious, and
philosophical endeavors. Hegel employs the resulting mapping of cul-
tures onto understandings of freedom to define historical epochs. These
epochs, he concludes, are constitutive of the historical process through
which human beings have gradually come to understand the freedom
that is their own defining characteristic, and in so doing have been able
to achieve an increasingly complete liberation.
Hegel’s account of history contains some of his most famous claims
and formulations, almost all of which remain controversial. It is in history,
for example, that the equivalence of the rational and the actual—which
Hegel notoriously asserts in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right—is
said to emerge. History reveals the actualization of freedom and, Hegel
contends, everything that actualizes freedom is “rational” (despite the
fact that the proximate causes of liberation are often accidental, violent,
and even immoral). Hegel recognizes that human endeavors frequently
make no contribution to freedom, and are sometimes positively detri-
mental to it, but he refuses to grant that such undertakings, though
undeniably real, deserve to be called “actual” in the proper sense of the
term. “History,” in other words, does not include everything that hap-
pens (no matter how important such happenings may be to the people
who experience them) but is limited to those events that play a part in
the actualization of freedom.
The fact that human development and freedom have been advanced
by events causing intense and widespread suffering leads Hegel to refer
to history as a “slaughter bench.” Within the apparently meaningless
slaughter, however, Hegel discerns the “cunning of reason,” a colorful
personification of the idea that actions often serve the rational end of
freedom even when the people carrying them out have no intention of
doing so. The cunning of reason is a secular version of the religious myth
of divine providence, according to which the apparently incomprehensible
Introduction 3
and painful course of events is in fact accomplishing the plan of God. By

comprehending and bringing to consciousness the necessary operation
of reason within the world, the philosophy of history functions, accord-
ing to Hegel, as a theodicy, an account that reconciles the existence of
suffering and evil with the ultimate goodness of the world.
The agents of reason, those whose deeds do the most to further
the actualization of freedom, Hegel calls “world historical” individuals
and peoples. In the course of time, they have inspired and led humanity
to fulfill its potential for self-determination. Hegel traces the path of
this fulfillment from East to West, asserting that the consciousness of
freedom and its objectification in the world first appeared in Asia and
then spread to Europe, intensifying in ancient Greece before culminat-
ing in modern Germany. Hegel refers to humanity’s achievement of an
adequate understanding and actualization of freedom as “the end of
history,” and the claim that history has such an end—in the dual sense
of both a goal toward which it aims, and a moment in time at which
it accomplishes that goal—is among his most controversial of all.
The chapters in this volume represent the very best in contempo-
rary scholarship on Hegel and history, and collectively they address all
of the important and disputed topics in the field. They are organized
thematically into four groups, each of which concentrates on a particular
constellation of questions and problems.
Part I: Past, Present, and Future
The four chapters in the first section of the volume engage, in differ-
ent ways, the various interpretations and implications of Hegel’s claim
that history has an end, toward which it necessarily progresses, and at
which it has already arrived. This claim immediately calls into ques-
tion the status of the present and the future in Hegel’s philosophy
of history. If the actualization of freedom brought history to an end
in the nineteenth century, what is the significance of that which has
since transpired, is currently transpiring, or has yet to transpire? What,
if anything, can Hegel contribute to the comprehension of ongoing
human events and development?
William Maker, in “The End of History and the Nihilism of Becom-
ing,” argues that a proper interpretation of Hegel’s claim that history has
been completed leads not to nihilistic resignation in the face of closure
and stasis, but rather to an appreciation of the openness and dynamism
of the modern era. The end of history coincides with the beginning of
modernity, with the insight that freedom involves radical self-criticism
4 Will Dudley
and the rejection of unjustified authority. The implication of this insight

for modern philosophy is that it must proceed without accepting as
given any foundational presuppositions, which is what Hegel claims to
have undertaken and accomplished in his own system. The correlative
implication for modern life is that it must proceed without accepting
as given any traditional prescriptions. Modernity demands a radical
self-legitimation of the norms that justify thinking and action. The end
of history thus marks, Maker contends, the onset of self-determination,
genuine freedom, in both theoretical and practical endeavors.
Maker draws upon his interpretation of the end of history to make
a case that it is Hegel, rather than Nietzsche, who offers a postfounda-
tionalist philosophy that can account for both the becoming intrinsic to
being (successfully responding to the challenge posed by Parmenides)
and the norms intrinsic to freedom (successfully responding to the chal-
lenge posed by nihilism). Maker’s view is that although Nietzsche is
often celebrated as the thinker of postfoundational becoming, the will to
power functions as an implicit foundation in his thought, and one that
makes nihilism inevitable by undermining the possibility of legitimate
norms. In contrast, Hegel’s systematic philosophy and the end of his-
tory that it announces herald the onset of a truly modern epoch, one
that secures normativity precisely by insisting that thinking and living
be self-determining.
The relationship between Hegel’s modern demand for the justifica-
tion of norms and utopianism is the subject of Mario Wenning’s essay,
“Hegel, Utopia and the Philosophy of History.” Wenning argues that
Hegel appropriates utopian thinking selectively, by rejecting the longing
for a transcendent escape from actuality while incorporating the con-
ception of humanity as progressively transforming and improving itself.
Wenning attributes Hegel’s rejection of transcendence to his analysis of
the French Revolution, which he saw as destroying traditional authority
in the name of abstract ideals that proved incapable of regenerating and
sustaining a concrete alternative.
Hegel responded to the failure of transcendent ideals, according
to Wenning, by undertaking a “historical genealogy” of normativity,
and ultimately locating the source of norms in the concept of freedom.
Hegel then adopted the regulative hypothesis, Wenning contends, that
history itself exhibits tendencies toward the actualization of freedom,
which is what Hegel means when he says there is “reason in history.”
Wenning reads Hegel’s philosophy of history as testing this hypothesis
by tracing the progressive emergence of the tendencies toward freedom
in particular human cultures. The resulting narrative then sanctions
retrospective judgments that certain moments in the progression were
Introduction 5
“necessary,” given the context established by the moments that came

before. Wenning intriguingly compares such historical necessity to the
necessity we often attribute to the progression of elements in a good
piece of music, which he points out is compatible with the music (or
history) containing surprising developments.
Wenning concludes that Hegel’s attempt to identify rational tenden-
cies in history aims at enabling us to reconcile ourselves with it. Such
reconciliation leads neither to happiness nor to quietism, in Wenning’s
view, but rather to taking responsibility for history as our own, and
so to a critical comprehension of the present that can give impetus to
future reforms.
Karin de Boer agrees that Hegel is optimistic about our prospects
of reconciling with the past, and that such reconciliation depends upon
comprehending the historical moments in which the actualization of
freedom has been advanced. In “Hegel’s Account of the Present: An
Open-Ended History,” she argues, however, that Hegel is much less
optimistic about the possibility of achieving reconciliation with the mod-
ern world. This is because Hegel acknowledges, according to de Boer,
that modernity confronts us with economic and political conditions that
might prove impossible to comprehend. Indeed, these conditions give
rise to conflicts—especially those between poverty and wealth, individual
citizens and the state—that threaten freedom with destruction.
Hegel calls for the development of institutions capable of mediating
these conflicts, but acknowledges that their successful mediation cannot
be guaranteed. Consequently, de Boer encourages us to understand
Hegel’s stance toward the modern world as tragic: the institutions of
modernity have actualized freedom as fully as possible, and yet they
generate unavoidable conflicts capable of destroying both freedom and
the institutions themselves. There is no escape from this predicament,
de Boer concludes, because Hegel has demonstrated that no dialectical
improvement upon the modern conception of freedom is possible. To
be free, we must be modern, but being modern, we are always a threat
to our own liberation.
John McCumber suggests that Hegel can comprehend some of
the most pressing modern threats to freedom—including the cold war
and religious fundamentalism—but only if we learn to employ Hegel’s
approach to the philosophy of history independently of the particular
master narrative that he used it to develop. In “Hegel and the Logics
of History,” McCumber emphasizes that Hegel’s philosophy of history
is intended to offer not an explanation of the mechanisms by which
things have come to be, but rather a schema for understanding what
things are. When successful, it enables us discriminate between those
6 Will Dudley
features of phenomena that are merely contingent and inconsequential,

and those that are basic and effective.
McCumber argues, however, that no single schema can be adequate
for understanding historical agents and events, because such agents and
events are always transformed by their encounters with that which they
are not. Some of these transformations are sufficiently fundamental
that they require us to change the categories we use in our attempts
to understand the newly arisen phenomena. Consequently, the compre-
hension of history requires multiple logics, rather than a single logical
narrative. Hegel’s system nonetheless remains of value, in McCumber’s
view, because it offers us a rich and powerful set of categories, which
we can deploy piecemeal to illuminate the events with which we are
confronted.
McCumber proceeds to practice the method he recommends,
demonstrating how the logical categories Hegel used to criticize Fichte’s
social theory can also be used to reveal the falsity of the alternatives that
defined the cold war in the twentieth century. He then uses Hegel’s
logical concept of the “excluding one” to analyze the contemporary
conflict between decisive individualism and submissive fundamentalism.
McCumber’s conclusion is that the future belongs to neither of these,
but rather to the infrastructure upon which the preservation and expan-
sion of freedom depends.
Part II: History, Geography, and Race
The two papers in this section of the volume undertake to determine

whether Hegel’s philosophy of history, which proclaims that the goal
of humanity has been achieved with the actualization of self-conscious
freedom in nineteenth-century Germany, is either Eurocentric, or rac-
ist, or both.
Andrew Buchwalter answers negatively the question posed in the title
of his essay: “Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History Eurocentric?” Buchwalter
argues that Hegel offers a normative reconstruction of history, which
evaluates cultures and events according to the extent to which they actual-
ize freedom, and in doing so aims to cultivate an ongoing commitment
to the practical project of liberation. This project, so defined, cannot
accord special status to the modern West, or to any other particular
time or place, because the only legitimate criterion of distinction is the
degree to which freedom has been actualized. Hegel’s reconstructive
account of history thus attempts to identify the rational and irrational
Introduction 7
aspects of each culture, those aspects that are in accordance with, and
those that are contrary to, the requirements of freedom.
Although Hegel’s philosophy of history cannot presuppose the
superiority of Europe, it does of course conclude that European
modernity actualizes freedom more fully than any other historical
culture. Buchwalter points out, however, that Hegel regards freedom
as universally and essentially human, not as the special prerogative of
Europe. Moreover, Hegel remains critical of European societies, none
of which is perfectly rational, and all of which pose economic and
political challenges that threaten the freedom of their people. Finally,
Buchwalter adds, Hegel understands freedom, at both the individual
and the cultural level, to require recognition of the autonomy of others,
and so to be a principle that demands mutual respect and openness,
while precluding unilateral domination.
Sûrya Parekh grants that Hegel claims his philosophy of history is
governed by impartial norms of rationality and freedom, but wonders
whether geography and race are in fact merely contingent factors in
the narrative. More generally, he challenges us to consider whether it
is possible for philosophy to distinguish between those factors to which
it attributes historical necessity, and those that it relegates to the sphere
of contingency. In “Hegel’s New World: History, Freedom, and Race,”
Parekh focuses on two particular ways in which Hegel appears to vio-
late his own claim to impartiality by grounding historical judgments on
considerations of race.
First, Parekh argues, Hegel denies to inhabitants of the New World
the rationality that he purportedly regards as universally human. This
is indicative, Parekh contends, of a metaphysical distinction Hegel pre-
supposes between the Old and New Worlds, and upon which he bases
his belief in the intrinsic inferiority of the inhabitants of the latter. This
inferiority includes, on Parekh’s reading, an incapacity for education,
which makes it impossible for Hegel to believe that those born and
raised in the New World could ever be rational or free.
Second, Parekh turns to two passages in which Hegel links freedom
to blood. In the first of these, Hegel ascribes the impulse to freedom
only to those native Americans who have at least some European blood.
In the second, Hegel connects the failure of Catholic lands in Europe
to accept the Reformation to the Roman blood of their inhabitants.
By bringing these issues to our attention, Parekh aims to place
the burden on those who defend Hegel’s impartiality to explain the
passages in question. If Hegel’s philosophy of history is neither racist
nor Eurocentric, then how, Parekh forces us to ask, can it link ancestral
8 Will Dudley
blood to freedom, or draw metaphysical distinctions between the Old

World and the New?
Part III: The Historicity of Morality, Ethical Life, and Politics
The third section of the volume contains four chapters, all of which are
concerned with Hegel’s accounts of the ways in which the elements of
“subjective spirit” and “objective spirit” undergo, and contribute to,
historical development. The essays treat, respectively, the historicity of
selfhood, moral imputation, ethical life, and political organization.
Allegra de Laurentiis, in “Spirit without the Form of Self: On
Hegel’s Reading of Greek Antiquity,” traces the evolution of self-knowl-
edge and subjectivity from ancient Greece to the Medieval and Modern
eras. She argues both that the transformation of subjectivity is linked to
advances in self-knowledge, and that it was just such an advancement
and transformation of selfhood that led to the downfall of the Greek
way of life.
The primary deficiency in the ancient Greek self-understanding,
as de Laurentiis reads Hegel, was ignorance of subjective freedom and
the ethical institutions appropriate to it. The Greeks therefore had only
limited knowledge, based on intuition rather than concepts, of the truth
of what it is to be human, and so failed to attain selfhood in the full-
est sense.
This failure of the ancient Greeks is understandable, de Laurentiis
argues, for Hegel demonstrates that truly adequate self-knowledge and
subjectivity are intrinsically historical achievements, which could not
emerge at such an early stage of human development. The consequences
of this failure are therefore also understandable: Greek society made sharp
distinctions of caste and class, on the basis of which it enslaved some
and denied property rights to others, because it failed to recognize the
universality of free human subjectivity. The ancient Greeks, and their
chief philosophical representative, Plato, could see such freedom only
as a threat to the success and happiness of their communities. This
insight proved to be correct, de Laurentiis concludes, for the emerging
awareness of, and insistence upon, the universal freedom of individual
subjects proved to be incompatible with, and so helped bring to an end,
the form of life in ancient Greece.
In “The Historicity of Ethical Categories: The Dynamic of Moral
Imputation in Hegel’s Account of History,” Jason Howard attempts
to determine exactly how Hegel understands the development of
self-knowledge and subjectivity to take place. In particular, Howard is
Introduction 9
interested in the role that moral imputation—the experience of being

expected to fulfill ethical obligations, and of feeling guilt when one fails
to meet these expectations—plays in these developments. Howard seeks
to explain how ethical obligations and moral imputation contribute to
the actualization of freedom, and so to the accomplishment of the goal
of history.
Howard argues that, for Hegel, the conflicts individuals experience
between their own identities and the norms that define their culture
drive the transformation of self-consciousness, which in turn is the motor
of historical change. Individuals experience these conflicts in the form
of guilt, the feeling that results from self-consciously violating cultural
norms. Guilt, Howard contends, can be sufficiently powerful to lead
individuals to revise their self-understanding in ways that then generate
widespread and fundamental change in the culture.
Howard supports his argument by considering two particular histori-
cal transformations that Hegel analyzes as having been driven by conflicts
between individual identities and the prevailing cultural norms. The first
of these is the demise of ancient Greek ethical life, which was catalyzed in
part by the conflicts individuals experienced between obligations to their
families and obligations to the state—most famously discussed by Hegel
in the section of the Phenomenology devoted to Antigone. The second
case considered by Howard is the rise of Europe, which was precipitated
by the erosion of formerly stable traditional norms. What these two very
different historical developments have in common, Howard argues, is a
general dynamic, according to which moral imputation and guilt cause
identity change, which causes cultural change, which ultimately advances
the actualization of freedom, bringing history closer to its goal.
Nathan Ross, in “The Mechanization of Labor and the Birth of
Modern Ethicality in Hegel’s Jena Political Writings,” examines the
importance of economic processes to the historical transformation of
self-consciousness and ethical life. The early Jena writings offer Hegel’s
richest account of these issues and, Ross claims, the conclusions they
draw are consistent with the later treatment of civil society in the Phi-
losophy of Right.
Hegel understands labor, according to Ross, as a mechanistic force
within the organic social whole. Civil society is a like a machine in the
sense that it is composed of individual working parts that interact to
produce results at which none of those parts intentionally aims. Each
free agent laborer seeks to serve his or her own particular interests,
and only incidentally does such self-serving behavior contribute to the
functioning of the larger economy. Labor thus isolates individuals from
the common goals and universal interests of society.
10 Will Dudley
Paradoxically, however, Hegel regards the mechanism of civil soci-

ety as strengthening the social organism within which it operates, Ross
argues. This is because certain processes intrinsic to a healthy economy
also prove to enhance the ethical bonds of the community. For example,
economic interaction teaches people to relate to each other as equals,
qua producers and consumers. Such recognition of mutual equality then
provides the basis for the emergence of the relations of right that are
the core of ethical life. Economic activity also binds individuals together
in virtue of the common interests that it generates: the satisfaction of
each agent comes to depend upon the conditions that make possible
the satisfaction of the others, since no one can labor and consume suc-
cessfully unless the whole economy thrives.
Ross cautions that the mechanism of civil society is not always
conducive to the health of the social organism, which is the reason
Hegel advocates careful economic regulation. If the economy is allowed
to become an independent sphere, treated as an end in itself, rather
than as a component organ that exists to enable the flourishing of
a free community, then economic rights and interests become falsely
regarded as the ultimate social goal. Making such rights and interests
absolute, on Ross’s reading of Hegel, fosters and entrenches class dif-
ferentiation, which undermines consciousness of the organic nature of
the community.
Mark Tunick explores the relationship between Hegel’s claims that
the most rational form of political organization is hereditary monarchy
and that his philosophy of history proceeds empirically. In “Hegel’s
Claim about Democracy and His Philosophy of History,” Tunick ques-
tions whether Hegel’s defense of monarchy and critique of democracy
are in fact based upon, or are even compatible with, a careful empirical
study of history.
Tunick notes first that Hegel deems democracy to be more appropri-
ate for some peoples than for others. Indeed, Hegel regards democracy
as having been necessary for the ancient Greeks, but as unsuitable for
the modern era, in which a strong sense of individual interest has taken
root. Such individual interest, Hegel worries, needs to be mediated by
a concern for the universal good, which he believes democracy to be
incapable of fostering. Consequently, Hegel concludes, a democracy
of people concerned primarily with their own individual interests will
fail to care adequately for the needs of the whole (and thus, ironically,
will ultimately fail to care adequately for the very individuals who are
attempting to care for themselves).
Tunick analyzes Hegel’s conclusion concerning the incompatibility
of democracy and modernity as resting upon two premises. The first
Introduction 11
is that individualism fails to actualize the truth of freedom as fully as

possible, which Hegel attempts to establish on metaphysical or concep-
tual grounds. The second premise is that modern democracies make
individualism absolute, and therefore actualize freedom imperfectly.
The grounds for this second claim are purportedly empirical, however,
Tunick argues, Hegel’s evidence is much too weak to support his case.
Tunick therefore concludes that Hegel simply presupposes that modern
democracy is based upon the principle of sovereign individualism, and
fails to consider alternative forms of modern democracy that incorporate
interests representing social groups of various types.
Part IV: The Philosophy of History and Religion
The two chapters in the fourth and final section of the volume inves-
tigate, in quite different ways, the relationship between religion and
Hegel’s philosophy of history.
In “Hegel’s Philosophy of World History as Theodicy: On Evil and
Freedom,” Pierre Chételat evaluates alternative interpretations of Hegel’s
claim that the philosophy of history is also theodicy. Chételat argues
that Hegel does not claim to have solved the classical problem of evil
in the monotheistic tradition—that of explaining how evil is compatible
with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent deity—but rather to
have shown how evil can be reconciled with the goodness of the world.
Hegel does this, according to Chételat, by demonstrating that the world
is governed by reason, and thus that history is not a merely contingent
series of events, but a necessary development toward the actualization
of freedom, which is the ultimate good. “God,” on Chételat’s reading
of Hegel, is a religious term intended to personify the idea that reason
is at work in history, and that the goodness of freedom can enable the
transcendence of evil.
Chételat emphasizes, however, that transcending evil is not the
same thing as justifying it. Hegel does not, on his view, believe that evil
is justified in virtue of being a necessary means to the end of freedom.
This position, Chételat points out, is neither philosophically compel-
ling—because much of the evil in the world clearly fails to advance
freedom at all—nor proposed in Hegel’s texts.
Freedom can transcend evil without justifying it, Chételat con-
tends, by enabling us to rise above our own particularity, and thereby
to overcome suffering by accepting its necessity. Chételat distinguishes
this position, which he attributes to Hegel, from Stoic resignation. The
chief difference, on Chételat’s reading, is that Hegel holds that the
12 Will Dudley
blessedness of freedom, which is enjoyed through participation in ethical

life, actually reduces the suffering we experience in the world.
Glenn Magee argues that Hegel’s philosophy of history is deeply
indebted to religious sources. More specifically, contends Magee, the
central theses in Hegel’s philosophy of history can all be found in the
“irrationalist” tradition of Jewish mysticism. In “Hegel’s Philosophy of
History and Kabbalist Eschatology,” Magee makes the case that important
elements of the mystical Jewish tradition were inherited and adapted by
Swabian “speculative pietism,” which then had a significant, if largely
indirect, influence on Hegel.
Magee traces the fundamental ideas common to the Kabbalah and
Hegel’s philosophy of history, and the intellectual path by means of which
the former could have influenced the latter. The three most important
shared theses identified by Magee are: (1) History has a knowable order
with an endpoint; (2) The endpoint of history occurs in time; and, (3) At
the endpoint of history, God is objectified in human institutions. These
principles of the Jewish Kabbalah were incorporated in the Christian
mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and then in seventeenth-century Swabian
pietism, especially through the work of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger.
Magee emphasizes the importance of Oetinger to the development of
Schelling, who borrowed from the ideas of his pietist predecessor in both
his System of Transcendental Idealism and The Ages of the World. Hegel’s
awareness of this influence on Schelling is most clearly evident, Magee
believes, in his famous declaration that “the truth is the whole,” which
is nearly a quotation from Oetinger, and is strategically placed in the
Phenomenology to ensure that Schelling would get the reference.
Magee cautions that he does not intend to claim that the Jewish
Kabbalah, by way of Swabian pietism, was the sole influence that gave
impetus and direction to Hegel’s philosophy of history. His goal is
rather to demonstrate that these religious traditions were an important
factor in Hegel’s intellectual development, and that as such they are
deserving of greater attention than they have so far received in philo-
sophical scholarship.
Nearly two centuries after declaring “the end of history,” Hegel
remains a rich source of insights into our historical nature and its
manifestations in every domain of human endeavor. The essays collected
here interpret and develop those insights, while also challenging Hegel’s
philosophical approach to comprehend present and future phenomena
that he could neither experience nor imagine. The importance of that
open challenge ensures that it will be many years before the discussion
of Hegel and history reaches its own end.
PART I
Past, Present, and Future

1
The End of History

and the Nihilism of Becoming
William Maker
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on

the brain of the living.
—Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to

awake.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
Hegel’s claim that history has ended and that he has comprehended
this ending has generated considerable discussion. It is also among
his more notorious assertions. For some, to hold that history is over
and that final philosophical truth has been achieved must mean that
a radical transcendence of human finitude had been attained; that
we and the world are beyond time and change, and that Hegel, the
Great Comprehender, stands omniscient as the individualized telos of
history. According to Alexander Kojeve, only when “the real dialectic
of History is truly completed” with the “”end of time’ ” and “the
definitive stopping of history” can “a Wise Man . . . named Hegel” lay
claim to “Absolute Knowledge” which consists in revealing “being in
the completed totality of its spatial-temporal existence.”1 Barry Cooper
contends that Hegel’s idea of “a perfected knowledge” necessitates “an
end to the tiresome business of living as a human being.” It is only
achievable in an inalterable homogeneous state where there is nothing
15
16 William Maker
significant left to achieve, where all desires are fulfilled, all possibilities
are exhausted, and nothing can be gone beyond. The whole idea con-
stitutes “an aggressive attack on human dignity.”2 Stanley Rosen puts it
bluntly: in offering us a “science of totality,” Hegel made the mistake
of “confusing himself with God.”3 It would seem that nothing could
be more arrogant, blasphemous, absurd, and indicative of the totalizing,
authoritarian—and erroneous—nature of Hegel’s thought, then his claim
to have articulated the unconditional comprehension of time, being, and
truth. In opposition to this reading, my exploration of Hegel’s linking
of the end of history and the completion of philosophy aims to show
that his notion of history’s end and philosophy’s completion present
closure and completion not as terminal finality but as inseparable from
dynamic openness.
Part I outlines the interpretive problems associated with Hegel’s
idea that history ends in modernity’s attainment of freedom. Part II
argues that this attainment is linked with Hegel’s completion of philoso-
phy in that both require a transformation of our relation to the past as
what is given. To flesh this out, Part III presents Hegel’s completion
of philosophy as a resolution of the problem philosophy inherited from
Parmenides: what to do about nothingness as that which disrupts the
given. This leads to my key claim in Part IV: Hegel succeeds in intel-
ligibly reincorporating nothingness and completes philosophy by conceiv-
ing being and truth dynamically, as the becoming of self-determining
freedom. The end of history is not a termination of our relation to
the past, but a transformative reconfiguration of it. History ends as
the new beginning of freedom. Part V critiques Nietzsche’s alternative
posthistorical philosophy of becoming as will to power.
Part I. Historicizing the Eternal:

The Confluence of Philosophy and the World
In history, we are concerned with what has been and what

is; in philosophy however we are concerned not with what
belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that
which is, both now and eternally—in short, with reason.4
Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result,

that only in the end is it truly what it is; and that precisely
in this consists its nature, viz., to be actual, subject, the
spontaneous becoming of itself.5
The End of History and the Nihilism of Becoming 17
How are we to understand Hegel’s claim that history has ended and
that his system has comprehended this?6 This much is clear: according
to Hegel reason and the real have come to coincide in modernity in
that the world of historical becoming has been brought finally into
accord with the absolute being of reason, and history, the succession of
events involved in the struggle to overcome their separation, is over. The
confluence of timeless philosophical truth and worldly events has been
attained.7 The rational is now real and the real is now rational, and thus
Parmenides’ insight, that logos and being are one, is vindicated.
What does this mean? With some exceptions the prevailing approach
has been to read the end of history and the completion of philosophy
in a postdialectical fashion as predominantly signifying closure, termina-
tion, finality; it means the abrogation of the future and the inception
of decline and decay. For, if the history of the world and of philosophy
have culminated in the coincident attainment of humanity’s practical
and conceptual goals, must not this entail stasis, the end of all change
and development, both in action and thought? It would seem that an
end to change is necessary if absolute, complete, and final truth is to
be attained, and further, that future change must be precluded if abso-
lute truth is not to be relativized. Complicating matters is the fact that
the completion Hegel envisions consists in the realization of freedom.8
How can the closure of a final resolutive ending be reconciled with the
openness of the human prospect and the potential for development and
change which seem inseparable from freedom? G. A Kelly, Raymond
Plant,9 and Daniel Berthold-Bond find the completeness of history’s end
incompatible with the openness crucial for both dialectic and freedom.
According to Berthold-Bond this incompatibilty “cannot plausibly be
swept away or ‘aufgehoben’ by Hegel’s notorious synthetic method of
unifying opposites.”10
Pace Berthold-Bond I will show how to reconcile the openness of
dialectic and freedom with the systemic completeness that grasps how
being and logos are one at the end of history. When we understand
just how modernity marks the end of history and the opening for the
completion of philosophy, we will see that Hegel’s conception of abso-
lute being and truth as self-determining concept means that systematic
completeness is linked, not with the foreclosure of the future, but with
a historically unprecedented conceptual and practical openness. In taking
this view I am in general agreement with and have profited from the
work of Richard Winfield, Stephen Houlgate, and Will Dudley.11 What
I will present here is intended to complement their efforts by indicating
how openness is fundamental to systematic thought.
18 William Maker
Part II. Freedom as Eternity: Historicizing Philosophy
Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by

which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by
another epoch; it has to create its normativity out of itself.
Modernity sees itself cast back upon itself without any pos-
sibility of escape.12
Free, philosophic thought has this direct connection with

practical freedom, that as the former supplies thought about
the absolute, universal and real object; the latter, because it
thinks itself, gives itself the character of universality.13
Hegel regards modernity as distinctly philosophical and sees modernity

and philosophy as intimately interconnected. Basic to their involvement
is that both make the same claim to effective self-legitimation and pre-
suppose what is essentially the same condition for their self-realization,
a break from the past as an other-determining foundation.
According to Hegel, the modern world is uniquely philosophical
in two respects. First, this world actualizes timeless philosophical truth
in a manner distinctly different from, and superior to, other earlier
approximations. Second, the modern world makes possible philosophy’s
completion of its own long-delayed task of articulating eternal truth.
So the eternally true has now emerged, setting in motion the ending
of history, thereby enabling philosophy to complete the emergence
by demonstrating that and how modernity embodies the truth.14 The
first step in that demonstration is Hegel’s aligning of philosophy with
modernity’s completion of history. Understanding what Hegel thought
philosophy had to do to effect the alignment will clarify what he means
by the end of history.
According to Hegel “our age” marks the completion of history
as the struggle for, and the gradual attainment and coming to full
consciousness of our being as free. But as Hegel noted, work remained
to be done to secure this achievement.15 Mundane events in the world
had transpired in advance of philosophical logos (a view consistent with
the Philosophy of Right’s assertion that philosophy comes on the scene
only to comprehend.)16 Aligning philosophy with the age meant appre-
ciating that modernity’s achievement of practical freedom also calls
philosophy to achieve its own freedom by establishing from out of its
own resources its rightful authority to speak the truth without qualifica-
tion. Self-determination must be recognized not only as the hallmark
of the achieved practical truth of modern society, it must also be real-
ized within philosophy as definitive of philosophical thought.17 When

philosophy’s realization of the truth of self-determination enables it to
at last legitimate itself, philosophy will then be able to return the favor
to modernity by showing that freedom is constitutive of both philoso-
phy and modernity; that freedom is the essence of truth and reality.18
Before considering how it is that the truth of being and philosophy
emerge as open self-determining, we need to see why both modernity
and philosophy need an unprecedented self-legitimation, and how the
legitimation involves philosophy’s incorporation of the lesson of the
end of history.
Both modernity’s claim that justice is freedom, and philosophy’s
ancient claim to wisdom presuppose and require radical self-legitimation.
Hegel’s insightful linking of modernity and philosophy involved seeing
that, for both, achieving self-legitimation involves a break from the past
in the sense of rejecting the unquestioned determining authority of what
is found already given to us: self-legitimation necessarily involves breaking
from the past as a given determinative ground that can challenge the
freedom of both practical and conceptual self-determination. In practical
terms, the burden of history is the presence of the continuing authority of
tradition, where tradition is the other-determining ground challenging the
freedom of self-determination. The nightmare of history until modernity
is the struggle against the heteronomy of the past. And since past history
had yet to effectively acknowledge a right to self-determination, the right
to challenge traditional social authorities and practices finally amounts to
the right to challenge the authority of history itself. For freedom to be
achieved what must be brought to an end is the historical tradition of taking
history—anything found given to us from the past—as an unchallengeable
determining ground for the present and the future.
For Hegel, modernity’s need for liberation intersects with philosophy
since philosophy too can only establish its ancient claim to articulate
absolute, unconditional, truth if it rejects “the past,” understood in the
broad sense, as anything already found given as a determinative ground
for the truth. If philosophy begins with anything it finds present as always
already fully determinate, philosophy itself will not be able to speak for
the truth as such, since whatever it asserts on the basis of such a given
ground will be arbitrary. Philosophy will either have to simply assert
the truth of the determinate ground it takes as primal, or move to an
infinite regress of justifications.19 In either case, philosophy surrenders
to an other-determination that renders its claim to speak for the truth
incoherent, as relative to an unjustifiable ground. So philosophy and
modernity must both reject other-determination, and the completion of
philosophy conceptually coincides with the end of history.
20 William Maker
In sum, if freedom is not just the achieved spirit of the age, but
is more fundamentally the truth of reality, then only that which accords
with freedom can play a legitimate determining role in the (individual
and social) life of freedom. Freedom requires that we do not simply
accept that who and what we are can be unreflectively determined by
anything but the activity of freedom itself.20 In this sense, history must
be ended, for making freedom’s self-determination effective requires
a change in our active and interpretive relation to the past, in the
broadest since of what “the past” is, namely, whatever we find given
as always already fully determinate. Houlgate puts it succinctly: “Hegel
understands history precisely as the passage from determination by
given, external, i.e., natural forces, to free self-determination.”21 How
then does philosophy finally achieve self-legitimation and completion by
liberating itself from its past? More specifically, how is establishing the
truth of being as freedom the fulfillment of Parmenides’ insight that
logos and being are one?
Part III. Parmenides, Hegel, and the Problem of Philosophy
Parmenides began philosophy proper.22
For philosophy to attain self-legitimation and completion by properly

comprehending being and truth, what’s needed first is a demonstration
of the arbitrary character of beginning with determinate foundations,
the arbitrary character of exclusive other-determination. In Hegelian
shorthand, it requires us to move away from thinking being only as
substance and not also as subject.23 For, if no given can be shown to
be authoritatively determinative as the ground of being and truth, then
we may reject the historical predisposition to accept other-determination
as inevitable, and consider self-determination as an alternative.
Hegel considers and rejects the assumption that all determinacy
is foundational in the Phenomenology of 1807, the thinking through of
what the end of history signifies philosophically.24 Consciousness here
follows what Hegel calls a path of despair in striving to prove that what
it claims to have simply found being to be is just the same as what it is
as demonstrably known.25 When consciousness regards being as a given
object, its every attempt to fully articulate its determinate nature causes
this determinacy to fall outside of what consciousness had originally
fixed as present to itself. Consciousness consistently fails in this regard
because it unknowingly thematizes its act of bringing the object to
consciousness as a heretofore unrecognized constitutive feature of the
given object; and it must do this because it holds that being is just what
is found present as what is already fully determinate.26
Locating Parmenides in this format will show how he initiated
philosophy as the love of wisdom: a succession of failed attempts to
show that what we take the absolute to be is just what the absolute is.
This will also show why an overcoming of consciousness opens the way
to the completion of philosophy.
Note that Parmenides’ approach fits the framework of phenom-
enological consciousness. He too asserts the need to legitimate his
claim that being is what is knowable by further articulating what the
determinacy of being in accord with logos is, trying to show that being
in itself and being for consciousness are one.27 Whence the difficulty?
In Hegelian terms, Parmenides’ problem consists in construing the
demands of logos in terms of consciousness. Parmenides attempted to
think being minimally, and without further qualification, just in terms
of its sheer knowability as a given object. For Parmenides, nothing else
may constrain, qualify, or determine being save its being pure, complete,
and undifferentiated Gegenständlichkeit: absolute being must just be that
which can be construed purely and simply as what is already fully present
to awareness, that which totally occupies intentional space.28 Parmenides
construed logos’ constraint on what being can be precisely in terms of
consciousness’ understanding that being is a given object. He has the
simplest take on what always already present as fully determinate may
mean. For, when being means full presence to awareness, then being
cannot permit of anything not fully present. This is precisely how Par-
menides describes being: it does not permit of any break, disruption, or
fissure; being excludes all nonbeing, where nonbeing means the absence
or diminishment or interruption of all-encompassing, undifferentiated
presence. Parmenides’ problem emerges as he makes consciousness’ move
to demonstrate that what he takes being to be accords with logos: dem-
onstrating that being is nothing but full presence—what consciousness
takes it to be—involves articulating why nothing may be permitted to
disrupt being. This very act thereby brings nonbeing into the thinkable
and into being’s determinacy. In phenomenological parlance, Parmenides
compares two “moments,” what is “for it the in-itself, and knowledge,
or the being of the object for consciousness.”29 The latter moment is
the contribution of consciousness acting in accord with logos to specify
what logos demands of being as full presence through its active exclusion
of nonbeing from the presence of being. However, just this activity on
the part of consciousness thereby introduces nonbeing as the other which
it must, but cannot successfully exclude. Nonbeing as absence or void
must be excluded for being to truly be full presence, but it cannot be
22 William Maker
thoroughly or absolutely excluded. It cannot be thoroughly excluded

since philosophically demonstrating what being is as full presence, and
why it must be full presence to accord with logos, requires consciousness
thinking nonbeing as the excluded other, as that which logos excludes,
thereby bringing nonpresence into consciousness’ field of presence. This,
however, gives it some status as being according to Parmenides’ own
stricture that what is thinkable has being. Thus, nonbeing makes its pres-
ence felt as absence, voided presence, so that now what needs explaining
is this determinacy: the nonbeing that has some being, and that renders
being fully determinate by its contrastive exclusion. In phenomenologi-
cal terms we find that what Parmenidean consciousness originally took
being to be—full presence—is not what it now knows it to be as for
it, that is, as clarified by logos.30 As this thinking exclusion of nonbeing
constitutes Parmenides’ philosophical demonstration that what he said
being was is what it has to be, we see now that being is not what he
said it was—full presence simpliciter—but rather full presence, which is
full presence as the exclusion of nonbeing. As Parmendiean consciousness
effected the exclusion, being turns out to be, in Hegelian terminology,
the being for consciousness of the original in-itself.
The problem emerging out of Parmenides is this: when being and
nothing are thought as given, and as already fully determinate each in
its own right, and hence as absolutely mutually exclusive, neither is in
fact fully determinate, stable, and demonstrably distinguishable from the
other. Parmenides leaves us with a being infected with nonbeing and a
nonbeing infected with being. In short, he leaves us with the problem
of becoming.
Part IV. Openness and Closure
What has been said can also be expressed by saying that Rea-
son is purposive activity . . . purpose is what is immediate and
at rest, the unmoved which is also self-moving, and as such is
Subject. Its power to move, taken abstractly, is being-for-self
or pure negativity. . . . The realized purpose, or the existent
actuality, is movement and unfolded becoming31
To say that spirit exists would at first seem to imply that it

is a completed entity. On the contrary it is by nature active,
and activity is its essence; it is its own product, and therefore
its own beginning and its own end. Its freedom does not
consist in static being, but in a constant negation of all that
threatens to destroy [aufheben] freedom. The business of spirit

is to produce itself, to make itself its own object, and to gain
knowledge of itself; in this way, it exists for itself.32
How does the Phenomenology complete philosophy by solving Parmenides’

problem and enabling a discourse that is complete in its self-determining
while still capable of cognizing what lies outside of itself, thus involving
openness even in its closure?
Parmenidean consciousness invoked the presence of an absent or
not fully determinate other in its attempt to prove that being is already
fully given presence. Parmenides’ problem is an instantiation of what
unfolds in the Phenomenology and illuminates the insuperable difficulty
with foundationalism: the “foundation” of what is supposed to be the
fully present, truth-determining ground is not present as a feature of
what is given. Thus, as consciousness repeatedly discovers, an aspect of
what is not fully determinate enters into what is supposed to be the
fully determinate given. Every attempt by consciousness to bring the
other to given presence fails because absolute being (full, self-subsistent
determinacy) can never be reduced to a given determinate foundation
in which all other determinacy is founded and from out of which all
other determinacy is determined. Negatively, this demonstrates the
error of foundationalism, which denies the independence of thought’s
self-determining and demands thought’s subservience to some given
other-determination.
What follows from this liberation regarding both the completion
of philosophy and the end of history? (1) If logic completes itself as
thoroughly self-determining and hence self-grounding, philosophy’s goal
of providing complete justification for its claims will have been fulfilled.
This would show that only self-determining thought can establish its
legitimacy from out of itself and further specify the specifics of the
truth of freedom. (2) If this is achieved, the system is capable of speak-
ing truth without qualification and parts company with the history of
philosophy as the love of wisdom or the search for truth, by attaining
what past philosophy had sought but not achieved: absolute truth. (3)
As the system thinks what it means for something to be determined
by itself, free from external determination, it can articulate the nature
of what is, where this means that whose determinacy is fully accounted
for by and from out of itself alone: absolute, self-sufficient being. But
if absolute knowledge of absolute being has been attained, how does
openness come into play?
(4) Since whenever being is construed as substance—that which
stands already given in its self-sufficiency—its determinacy cannot be
24 William Maker
accounted for, being needs to be thought just as much as that which

only is as already other than itself, as subject.33 (5) When self-determining
thought has been freed from the predetermination that being exclu-
sively means presence, logic begins by construing what is just as much
as absence, or nonbeing, as presence or being. Presence always already
requires and involves negation, otherness, absence; nonbeing is implicated
in being; neither can be regarded as a given that is always already deter-
minate in its own right. Thus, Hegel reincorporates the nothingness that
Parmenides had tried to banish and whose shadow haunted the history
of philosophy’s attempts to finally fully grasp what being is. Giving
equal weight to the role of what is other than what is, to nothing,
in determining what is, is the key both to the completeness and the
openness of the system and the end of history.34 (6) As the beginning
of the logic of being shows, when we no longer predetermine being
by thinking it as what is already present, thinking being is immediately
the thinking of nothing, or of the vanishing of a difference between
being and nothing, in short, becoming. As logic and system are the
self-development of this becoming, being is fundamentally dynamic.35
(7) When this dynamic is thought through in the concept, we see the
truth already foreshadowed in the logic of being: fully determinate,
complete being is not exclusionary, all-determining presence, but just
as much involves relation to an other. It is not something fixed and
frozen beyond time, but the dynamic movement of a relating in which
the identity of being with itself comes not from excluding or reducing
its other, but by involving it as other in the mutually determining rela-
tion of simultaneous identification and differentiation.36 So for Hegel
absolute being and absolute knowledge consist in the active, ongoing
self-sufficiency of self-determining, which is what it is through an open,
nonreductive relation to its other. Full, self-subsistent determinacy is a
process, a relational activity of ungrounded (hence, self-) determination
in which presence and absence, what is and what is other, being and
nothing are mutually implicated and co-determinative.37
(8) Relation to other and openness are also crucial for completing
logic. Thought can complete its self-determination only by ensuring
that all conceptual determination is complete, and this requires think-
ing beyond logic to conceive that which is also determined in its own
right, but in a manner radically and irreducibly different from logical
self-determination: nature. Systematic thought must come to think that
which is radically different from itself, and must do so in a manner dif-
ferent from its thinking of itself, just in order to guarantee that it has
thought through and completely determined itself as thought. Our coming
through logic to move beyond logic per se by thinking nature as that
which logic cannot include in, or reduce to, itself, is precisely how logic
completes itself. Completed identity is attained through a nonreductive
relationship of differentiation. A general point for Hegel and his system
is that there is no completion that is not also an opening—to reach a
true limit we must think both sides of it—and no ending that is not
also a beginning. Reaching genuine completeness is inseparable from the
recognition of that which is not included, and attaining genuine closure
requires opening up to that which lies beyond and is other than that
which has reached closure.38 (9) The philosophical nature of truth can
be grasped since the concept of freedom is timeless as the self-grounding
truth about absolute being. But in the completion of conceiving truth
as the dynamic of freedom, thought opens up to and points beyond
itself. As Realphilosophie indicates, the content of the truth of freedom
is the reality of an activity that lies outside of thought, in the given
world. In addition, the actualization of freedom is not guaranteed by
thought but requires action that is open and subject to disruption, to
external necessities and contingencies beyond thought’s control.39 The
Realphilosophie’s conception of truth as freedom is at the same time
the articulation of the limits of it as concept; the very truth of what it
articulates as a concept points beyond the conceptual. What freedom
requires is necessary and unchanging, but that we will continue to be
aware of this, and that we will continue to will and act in accordance
with what freedom requires is and must be open just for the truth of
freedom to be actualized as freedom. The concept of freedom indicates
that openness and uncertainty must be present because—among other
things—free willing of freedom is required for actual freedom to accord
with its concept. (10) Since absolute, timeless truth as freedom is irre-
ducibly dynamic, the eternal emerges in time not as its end, but as a
present, ongoing activity that relates to the past as to the completed,
and to the future as the open condition of its possibility. As attained
truth, freedom is infinite because the ground of its activity lies within
itself, and because its self-constitutive activity continually actualizes
itself in reaching beyond itself. It is timeless because the determining
constitutive framework of the activity remains unchanging as the basis
for its outward extending activity in which change is the realization of
the unchanging. (11) The “absolute” of absolute knowledge does not
signify “complete and all-encompassing” in the sense of the full pres-
ence to awareness of the totality of objects. Correlatively, the end of
history does not signify the complete set of the totality of events, which
would require the end of all time and change. Rather, as the truth
of all genuine being is self-determination, history’s end as involving
this discovery means that for this dynamic truth to sustain itself, the
26 William Maker
future must be open. History ends insofar as we no longer acquiesce

to the necessity of heteronomy. From this vantage modernity may be
understood and legitimated as the actualization of the eternal truth of
self-determining in the active arena of worldly freedom. Modernity is
the stage upon which self-determining subjects engage in creating the
substance of their freedom, overcoming the heretofore unbridged gap
between subject and object by becoming the subjects and objects of a
new history, or story, of freedom.
Part V. The Nihilism of Becoming
Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legisla-

tors: they say, “thus it shall be! They first determine the
Wither and For What of man, and in so doing have at their
disposal the preliminary labor of all philosophical laborers,
all who have overcome the past. With a creative hand they
reach for the future, and all that is and has been becomes a
means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their ‘knowing’
is creating, their creating is a legislation, their will to truth
is—will to power.40
To impose upon becoming the character of being—that is

the supreme will to power.41
Nietzsche also saw beyond foundationalism, contending that there are

no given anchors in god, nature, or reason which may rightly determine
thought and action.42 Like Hegel, he regarded the emergence of this
discovery as an unprecedented turning point for humanity, marking off
the future from what had come before and opening the way to the
overcoming of history.43 Like Hegel, he saw the collapse of foundational-
ism as immanent in the philosophical impetus to secure truth; although
for him the impossibility of foundational truth marks the impossibility
of truth as such.44 Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s philosophical response to
foundationalism’s demise was also broadly similar to Hegel’s in that the
absence of any fixed given grounds means that thought and being need
to be conceived dynamically, as becoming.45
However, the specifics of Nietzsche’s philosophy of becoming as
will to power differ radically in several respects from Hegel’s notion of
becoming as self-development. I will trace the roots of their disagreement
about what follows after foundationalism, and also present an abbreviated
Hegelian critique of Nietzsche, by arguing that Nietzsche does not fully
overcome foundationalism. He fails to offer a consistent and coherent

alternative, falling back instead to postulate a new, quasi-foundation:
the will to power as the condition of the perpetual negation of founda-
tions. At its core, the philosophy of the will to power remains wedded
to foundationalism even as it strives to transcend it and this undercuts
Nietzsche’s efforts to overcome nihilism.
Nietzsche’s failure to escape foundationalism can be illuminated by
noting that his justification of the rejection of foundationalism inverts
Parmenides. Nietzsche’s discovery that being cannot be thought as the
fullness of presence leads him to think being as the presence of the absence
of presence; in short, Nietzsche still operates within the framework of
foundational consciousness. How so? According to Nietzsche, truth is
a lie because there is no substantial, fixed, coherent reality, no world of
given, knowable objects to which our ideas and terms refer.46 As he goes
to some pains to indicate, the reality of things—absolute being—is a
state that altogether precludes the possibility of any already given, filled,
stable presence. “The total character of the world, however, is in all
eternity chaos.”47 However, unlike Hegel, Nietzsche privileges nothing
over being, and in so doing falls into an inverted version of Parmenides’
difficulties. In fulfilling the logos of the will to truth by demonstrat-
ing that stable being as full presence is illusory, Nietzsche thinks the
truth of things as the presence of nothingness; that is, as absenting; the
unending destruction, disappearing, or falling away of presence.48 This
is the true nature of reality to which Nietzsche must refer just in order
to substantiate his denial of the apparent reality of a world of stable
things. Just as Parmenides could not fully exclude nothing, Nietzsche
cannot fully exclude being, precisely because, to think the presence of
nothingness (or nothingness as the true nature of what is present) being
must be excluded from that presence. Nothingness can only be thought as
present as that which excludes or negates being, a dynamic vacuum that
voids any enduring content of presence; the unending eternal dynamic
of the disappearing of being. As George Costanza might put it, “It’s a
show about nothing!”
This leads directly to the will to power as creative destruction. If
there are no true given beings to be negated, they must be created by
the same activity that then negates them. Furthermore, the aspect of the
will willing itself as power, as the growth or enhancement of its willing
appears, again, because of Nietzsche’s inability to escape from thinking
being as fullness of presence, even while rejecting that presence as stabile,
fixed, enduring: What must be brought to full presence to capture true
being is the unchanging—ceaseless—activity of the enhancement of the
will as an overcoming force. For, the more intense and powerful this
28 William Maker
activity, as constantly overreaching and expanding, the greater the voiding

presence is made present. This also brings us to the eternal return of
the same. Since nothing outside of this creative destruction may serve
as an enduring frame of reference without lapsing into a foundational
denial of chaos, every moment of the will to power is the same, as
indistinguishable from every other.49
True to his philosophical legacy, Nietzsche insists that we accord
our lives with the truth about being, by willing the will to power.50 But
in so doing so the abyss of eternally disappearing foundations becomes a
new foundation: to live the will to power is to willfully turn the disap-
pearance of foundations into the determinative ground of one’s being
by endlessly actualizing becoming as creative destruction. Thereby we
attain “the supreme will to power,” which is to “impose upon becoming
the character of being,” since the activity of creative destruction brings
nothingness into constant presence. Despite Nietzsche’s desire to avoid
nihilism, this leads directly to it since this activity cannot have any goal,
purpose, or meaning outside of itself.51 Nothing may be acknowledged
as a determinate, stabile frame of reference for the postulation of the
value distinctions Nietzsche aimed to create. Unlike Hegelian freedom,
there is neither need nor space for the recognition of a genuine other
to absolute, self-referential willing. The only guide—foundation—for this
willing is the will to power as the unending creating and voiding of
any permanence.52 Nihilism emerges not only because there can be no
goal, meaning, purpose, frame of reference, or guiding ground outside
of the will to power, but also because willing the will to power demands
the destructive rejection of any such guidelines. “There is nothing to
life that has value, except the degree of power.”53 Unlike Hegel, who
thought being as substance and subject, Nietzsche thinks being just as
subject, as the negativity of a consciousness whose being is defined by
reducing everything to being for self; his perspectivism is simply the
absolutizing of being for self. Neither any individual nor cultural past
has any meaning save as grist for endless reinterpretation and decon-
struction. The irony is that Nietzsche provides no coherent resources to
establish that his noble supermen are superior to the herd, the mindless
consumers of bourgeois society, caught up in perpetually attempting to
redefine themselves through an insatiable pursuit of endless stimulation
and novelty.54 Contrast Hegel’s practical conception of true being as
the activity of freedom. It achieves what Nietzsche sought but failed
to provide: ungrounded willing, where willing activity is determined by
nothing but the will and what it can establish. As Hegel shows, this
mode of willing consists in willing that is strictly self-determining because
both its form and content—how and what it wills—arise solely out of
the willing of freedom, so that freedom alone is determinative. While

Nietzsche’s attempt at ungrounded willing leads to nihilistic solipsism,
Hegel shows that the will wills itself as free only through the mutual
recognitive act of wills together willing property, and various other
relationships, structures, and institutions.55 These institutions only are
institutions of freedom as long as they are freely willed and sustained by
freely willed participation, but they are as such nonetheless determinate,
enduring, real entities, opening a space for freedom rather than involving
the self-referential closure of a will to power where the only meaning lies
in the perpetual postulation and negation of meaning, the foundationless
foundation endorsed by so many of Nietzsche’s postmodernist followers,
gripped by an unshakeable fear of the determinate.56
Notes
1. Alexander Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James

H. Nichols Jr. (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 191, 35.
2. Barry Cooper, The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 347, 67, 350.
3. Stanley Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 16, 130.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction,
Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975), 171.
5. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. H. V. Miller
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 11.
6. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Silbree (New York:
Dover Publications, 1956), 103.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans.
E. S. Haldane and F. H. Simson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,
1974) III, 551–52; Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction,
170–71.
8. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, 208; The
Philosophy of History, 456.
9. Raymond Plant, “Is There A Future in the Philosophy of History?”
in Hegel’s Philosophy of Action, ed. L. S. Stepelevich and D. Lamb, 93–102
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), 94, 95.
10. Daniel Berthold-Bond, “Hegel’s Eschatological Vision: Does History
Have a Future?” History and Theory 27, no. 1 (February 1988): 16.
11. Richard D. Winfield, “The Theory and Practice of the History of
Freedom: The Right of History in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Overcoming
Foundations, 271–93 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Stephen
Houlgate, “World History as Progress of Consciousness: An Interpretation of
30 William Maker
Hegel’s Philosophy of History,” The Owl of Minerva 22, no.1 (Fall 1990):
69–80; Will Dudley, “Freedom in and Through Hegel’s Philosophy,” Canadian
Philosophical Review 39, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 683–704. In “Circulation and
Constitution at the End of History,” David Kolb describes Hegel’s end as “an
unblocking of circulation. Barriers would have been removed that restricted the
movement of something whose flow creates society. . . . Hegel’s ‘end of history’
can be described as the unbinding of a circulation. In it, the movement of mutual
recognition and/as Spirit’s self-comprehension finally overcomes otherness and
completes the circle of Spirit’s becoming.” In Endings: Questions of Memory
in Hegel and Heidegger, ed. Rebecca Comay and John McCumber (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1999), 59. Unlike me, Kolb is skeptical about
Hegel’s success at marrying the unblocking with a philosophical completion.
While I concur in seeing Hegel’s end as an unblocking, I will argue that it
does not involve overcoming otherness in a reductive sense.
12. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans.
F. G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 7.
13. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, I, 95. See also 380.
14. Speaking of modern philosophy, Hegel wrote, “The principle is hereby
gained, but only the principle of freedom of spirit; and the greatness of our
time rests in the fact that freedom . . . is recognized. . . . This however is merely
abstract, for the next step is that the principle of freedom is again purified and
comes to its true objectivity.” Lectures on the History of Philosophy III, 423.
15. See especially the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit and to the
first edition of the Science of Logic.
16. “Besides it is not difficult to see that ours is a birth-time and a period
of transition to a new era. Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto
inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to submerge it in the past, and in the
labour of its own transformation. Spirit is indeed never at rest but engaged in
moving forward. . . . The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the
whole is cut short by a sunburst which, in one flash, illuminates the features
of the new world. But this new world is no more a complete actuality than is
a new-born child”Phenomenology, 6–7.
17. “The most perfect method of knowledge proceeds in the pure form
of thought: and here the attitude of man is one of entire freedom.” “In logic
a thought is understood to include nothing else but what depends on thinking
and what thinking has brought into existence.” G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Logic:
Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), trans.
William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), §24, Zusatz, 41–42, 39.
18. Insofar as both philosophy and modernity instantiate self-determination,
philosophy can illuminate how modernity constitutes its normativity out of
itself.
19. As I will discuss below, in the will to power Nietzsche explores
the former option of taking the structure of asserting or postulating as
foundational.
20. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1952), §27.
21. “World History as the Progress of Consciousness,” 77. I would add that
those given external forces may include established modes of understanding about
what makes us what we are, modes of understanding to which we have become
historically conditioned and which we accept as given and authoritative.
22. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, I, 254.
23. “[T]he living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what
is the same, is in truth actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing
itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself,” “the spontaneous
becoming of itself.” Phenomenology, 10, 11. Importantly, for Hegel this means
that even the nature of the subject cannot be taken as a given. Hence his many
cautionary remarks in the logic about the error of assuming we already know
and may begin with a determinate model of subjectivity.
24. In the Phenomenology the framework of heteronomous determination
is captured in terms of consciousness’ oppositional relation to being as an
object or Gegenstand: Consciousness captures the essence of heteronomy as
other-determining in that consciousness always understands being minimally and
irreducibly as what is always found already formed in its field of awareness as
the determining ground of truth.
25. Phenomenology, 49.
26. It cannot omit what it contributes, as that is part of what is present,
but it cannot fully thematize or incorporate it either. First, that requires
another contributory act. Second, such incorporation would deviate from the
assumption that being is what is found fully present as already given. Even when
consciousness does thematize its own activity, it never makes it fully present; and
when it is finally fully present in absolute knowing, consciousness disappears as
a determinate presencing framework.
27. Parmenides, Fragments # 342, 346, pp. 266–67, 271 in G. S. Kirk
and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1957.) “For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the
object, and on the other, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what for it is
the True, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth. Since both are for
the same consciousness, this consciousness is itself their comparison; it is for the
same consciousness to know whether its knowledge of the object corresponds
to the object or not.” Phenomenology, 54.
28. Parmenides, Fragments # 347 and 348, pp. 273, 275.
30. “Hence it comes to pass for consciousness that that what it previously
took to be the in-itself is not an in-itself, or that it was only an in-itself for
consciousness. . . . We see that consciousness now has two objects: one is the first
in-itself, the second is the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself. The latter appears
at first sight to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself, i.e., what
consciousness has in mind is not an object, but only its knowledge of that first
object. But . . . that first object, in being known, is altered for consciousness;
it ceases to be the in-itself, and becomes something that is the in-itself only
for consciousness. And this then is the True. . . . The new object contains the
nothingness of the first.” Phenomenology, 54.
32 William Maker

32. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, 48.
33. But importantly not as, or in terms of, some already given, determinate,
subjectivity. Were that the case the system of free self-determining thought would
be dependent upon and illicitly determined by an ungrounded determinacy.
Hegel’s point is that genuine free thought cannot begin with an already
determinate structure at all.
34. “But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and
keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and
maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it
finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to
the negative . . . on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative
in the face and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical
power that converts it into being.” Phenomenology, 19.
35. As Hegel indicates however, this being should not be confused with
the merely existent.
36. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New
York: Humanities Press, 1969), 581–82.
37. See Will Dudley, “Hegel on the Irrationality of the Rational,” The
Owl of Minerva 35, no. 1, 2 (2003–04): 25–48.
38. Important for Hegel is that the very recognition of the genuine other
involves thinking it as other; recognition does not entail the postulation of the
transcendent unintelligibility of the other, since for Hegel such unintelligibility
means we cannot finally distinguish the other as a genuine other. Paradoxically,
or dialectically, the infinity and eternality of systematic truth are marked by its
capacity to reach self-sufficiency and completeness by determining and recognizing
its own limits, and this always must involve a full acceptance of the otherness
of the other.
39. “Hegel also recognizes and accepts the fact that any worldly
manifestation or actualization of rational content must necessarily partake of
contingent particularity, and hence irrational positivity.” Dudley, “Hegel on the
Irrationality of the Rational,” 37.
40. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Vintage Books, 1966), §211.
41. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New
York: Vintage Books, 1967), §617.
42. For example, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Vintage Books, 1974), §57.
43. See “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” in Untimely
Mediatations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983).
44. The Gay Science, §344, cf. On the Genealogy of Morals, trans.W.
Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1989), III, §§ 23, 24.
45. “A world in a state of becoming could not, in a strict sense, be
‘comprehended’ or ‘known’ ” The Will to Power, §520. See also §§552, 12.
46. “The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not a fact
but a fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it
is ‘in flux,’ as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing
but never getting near the truth: for—there is no ‘truth.’ ” The Will to Power,
§616.
47. The Gay Science, §109.
48. “ ‘Truth’ is therefore not something there, that must be found or
discovered—but something that must be created and gives a name to a process,
or rather to a will to overcome that has in itself no end—introducing truth,
as a processus in infinitum, an active determining—not a becoming conscious
of something that is in itself firm and determined. It is a word for the ‘will to
power.’ ” The Will to Power, §552. So unlike Hegel’s becoming, Nietzsche’s
is weighted toward nothingness. This can be seen in Nietzsche’s repeated
assurance that becoming is devoid of order, structure, lawfulness, purpose, goal,
and meaning.
49. The very attempt to distinguish one from another, to create a coherent
framework of past, present, and future, would require lapsing to a foundational
postulation of some enduring being.
50. “[T]he basic fact of the human will, its horror vacui: it needs a
goal—and it will rather will nothingness than not will.” On the Genealogy of
Morals, III, §1, 97.
51. “[N]ow one realizes that becoming aims at nothing and achieves
nothing . . . that becoming has no goal and that underneath becoming there is
no grand unity.” The Will to Power, §12, see §§25, 55.
52. “It [nihilism] places the value of things precisely in the lack of any
reality corresponding to these values and in their being merely a symptom of
strength on the part of the value-positers.” “That it is the measure of strength
to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the merely
apparent character, the necessity of lies. To this extent nihilism, as the denial
of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking.” The Will to
Power, §§ 13. 15.
53. The Will to Power, §55.
54. “Capitalism . . . not only never is but never can be stationary. . . . [It]
incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly
destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative
Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists
in.” Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York:
Harper, 1975), 82. “The ‘eternal now’ of modern urban existence, for which
everything that happened more than ten minutes ago is ancient history, has
eroded that precious medium of experience, tradition.” Terry Eagleton, London
Review of Books, June 23, 2005, 23.
55. See R. D. Winfield, “Hegel’s Challenge to the Modern Economy,” in
Hegel On Economics and Freedom, ed. William Maker, 29–63 (Macon: Mercer
University Press, 1987) and R. D. Winfield, Reason and Justice (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1988), 160ff.
34 William Maker
56. See Richard Rorty, “Self-creation and affiliation: Proust, Nietzsche,

and Heidegger,” chapter 5 in Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). “For some postmodern thinkers,
we are clay in our own hands, free to mould our bodies and psyches into
whatever shapes we find most appealing. Behind a belief in the endless plasticity
of the world lies a rather less congenial faith in an iron will which stamps its
imprint on these shapes. Self-authorship is the bourgeois fantasy par excellence;
and even thought the bourgeoisie as Freud knew it has almost vanished from
Europe, this middle class myth is alive and well in the rugged individualism
of the United States. The American Dream acknowledges no limits. When the
ancient Greeks heard talk of such infinite striving, they looked fearfully to the
sky.” Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books, Jan. 24, 2008, 20.
2
Hegel, Utopia, and the

Philosophy of History
Mario Wenning
An engagement with utopian forms of consciousness is in the back-

ground of Hegel’s thinking. It influences his reception of the French
Revolution, his critique of the revolution’s continuation in German
Romanticism, as well as his project of reconciliation (Versöhnung) with
the present. Hegel specifically criticizes forms of utopian consciousness
in the Philosophy of Right and throughout the Phenomenology of Spirit.1
Yet, there is a marked ambivalence in Hegel’s relationship to utopian
reason. By “utopian reason” I mean reason’s ability to transcend any-
thing merely given with an eye to its perfectibility. His relationship is
ambivalent because it marks both an appropriation and a critique. It is
these conflicting dimensions I hope to disentangle. Hegel criticizes forms
of utopian longing as attempts to escape reality, while at the same time
incorporating what can be called a “utopian impulse.” This impulse is
revealed in his conception of spirit as essentially dynamic. By incorpo-
rating anti-utopian insights into a philosophy that clearly borrows from
the utopian tradition, Hegel sets up a yardstick for any sophisticated
self-reflective post-Hegelian form of utopian thinking and normative
theory more generally.
On the one hand, Hegel is dismissive of utopian consciousness and
unmasks it as rooted in an insatiable desire for a beyond, which, as a
form of infinite approximation to a distant postulate, can never reach any
form of satisfaction in the present. Utopian consciousness is an expression
of the all too solitary law of the heart, a vacuous longing, which tries
to escape the very reality it nevertheless remains a part of, and thereby
espousing an “atheism of the ethical world.” If followed through, it leads
35
36 Mario Wenning
to fanatic forms of consciousness and totalitarian practices, revealed by

the fury of destruction following the French Revolution. The critique
of the present from the vantage point of utopian projections in the
form of abstract normative ideals or inexpressible feelings has not yet
surpassed the stage of Moralität and inwardness to that of modern Sit-
tlichkeit. Such a critique longs for a paradisiacal state outside history. As
an unbounded subjective imagination it continues to dream the dream
of a constantly deferred fresh beginning. Because this beginning never
truly begins, it remains an unhappy consciousness, which is incapable
of overcoming the forms of alienation (Entzweiung) that characterize
modern life and philosophy, be it in the form of mind versus body
(Descartes), transcendental versus empirical self (Kant), citizen versus
private person (Marx), and so on.2 Utopian thought is divided between
a—usually miserable—here and a superior beyond. Being thus divided
it fails to acknowledge the substantive reality of which it nevertheless
remains a part. It misunderstands philosophy’s role by conceiving of it
as having access to a normative realm that has no manifestation in real-
ity. The capriciousness of the utopian eagle at daybreak is thus famously
dismissed by Hegel in favor of the wisdom of the owl at dusk.
However, there is also a different side to Hegel. He cannot be
understood, I want to argue, without acknowledging a utopian impulse
that is at work in his thinking. If we take his authorship to be authentic,
already in the “Oldest Program for a System of German Idealism” he
calls for the inauguration of a “sensuous religion” of the imagination,
a “mythology of reason,” for the sake of “exposing the whole miserable
human business of state, constitution, government and legislation.” This,
the programmatic fragment concludes, “will be the last, greatest task of
humanity.”3 His engagement with the watershed event of the French
Revolution and the demand for a new unity and the emancipation to
true, as opposed to merely abstract, forms of freedom are representative
of a normative commitment to a not yet (at least not yet fully) realized
utopian potential, a form of transcendence that is not of a different
world, but reveals itself immanently in this one. Hegel attempts to reveal
normative potentials for reconciling the opposing forces of the right of
subjectivity and objective spirit: only when our demand for justification
and the normativity, which is sedimented in the content of specifically
modern sociohistorical institutions and practices, can be reconciled can
modernity survive. Showing in what sense Hegel is a utopian thinker
(and in what sense he is not) brings to light an aspect of his thought,
which to my knowledge has not been adequately emphasized.4 The
utopian dimension of Hegel’s thought that will emerge consists in a
commitment to what I call a genealogy of rational tendencies aiming at
Hegel, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History 37
reconciliation. Utopia is thus not thought of in terms of some ahistori-

cal thought example as in Thomas More’s classic or Plato’s Republic.
Neither is it a rational procedure to determine normative contents as in
Habermas’s ideal speech situation, or Rawls’s original position. It is also
not to be confused with the stipulation of a natural state of bliss as in
Rousseau or as an imagined future indicative of most modern utopian
discourse (e.g., Marx’s communist society, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, etc.).
Rather, a utopian impulse is at work in Hegel’s conception of the specific
normativity of modernity, Neuzeit, which he characterizes as “a time of
birth and transition to a new era,” in which “Spirit has broken with the
previous world of its existence and imagination, and is about to submerge
it into the past. It is working on its own transformation.”5
The Normative Problem Raised by the French Revolution
Hegel’s engagement with utopian reason needs to be understood as

emerging out of his reception of the French Revolution. This event
initially seemed to be the realization of utopia. By way of trying to
institute universal and equal rights it promised the realization of the
essential ideals and aspirations of Enlightenment reason. In principle
everybody from now on could appeal to be recognized and treated as
a free and equal person with a sense of human dignity. What the course
of the revolutionary events also revealed was the failure of realizing these
universal aspirations through a radical overthrow. For the contemporaries
it revealed the inherent impossibility of every revolution to come. The
postrevolutionary time-consciousness radically changed through the revo-
lutionary experience in that the belief in inevitable progress, which had
replaced the medieval belief in a recurring history, was again shaken in
its foundation. The revolution devoured its children (strikingly depicted
in Büchner’s Danton’s Death) and reverted to the very acts of violence it
had before criticized. To alter the metaphor, the institution of universal
norms had devoured the particular content of what they were initially
designed for: the claims, passions, and interests of particular individuals.
The revolution did thus not only result in political despair but posed
a troubling normative problem. On the one hand it was necessary, but
on the other hand it showed itself to be impossible. Joachim Ritter’s
now classic article “Hegel and the French Revolution”6 emphasizes this
Janus-faced character and its consequences for Hegel’s thinking. Ritter
shows that despite Hegel’s criticism of its excesses he remained a defender
of the revolution and is said to have celebrated the anniversary of the
storming of the Bastille every year. The revolution brought the history
38 Mario Wenning
of the reign of particular interests to an end and started a new history

in the name of universal human rights and freedom. Yet, Hegel observed
that by way of denying the historical substance (which it relied on at
least by contrasting itself to it as a prehistory to be ended), the revolu-
tion lacked the normative resources to be recognized and recognize itself
as authoritative. Continuity could not be born out of an event, which
understood itself to be utterly discontinuous. Hegel thought the only
way possible to overcome this dilemma would be by way of legitimating
the historical rupture that the revolution embodied by providing it with
a prehistory. Doing so he hoped to reconcile the revolutionary aspira-
tions with the historical substance necessary to legitimize and stabilize
the claims set up by the revolution to prevent its relapse to forms of
prerevolutionary absolutism, arbitrariness, and violence. The normative
problem of instituting universal rights thus necessitates a turn to the
philosophy of history.
I will not address Hegel’s genealogical Bildungsroman of the
emergence of universal norms, in particular freedom, from its “Oriental”
childhood through its Greek and Roman youth, continuing in its Chris-
tian maturity and finally culminating in the French Revolution. Instead,
the focus is on the methodological idea of a historical genealogy and its
guiding normative ideal of reconciling the revolutionary prehistory with
its revolutionary present to secure for the realization of its potential.7
The philosophical historiography to fulfil this task is based on the
“simple thought of reason” (einfacher Gedanke der Vernunft) accord-
ing to which “reason guides the world and hence that world history
has as well proceeded reasonably.”8 It is the thought of reason in the
double sense of being a thought of reason and also a thought reflecting
on reason as it is manifested in history. The presupposition of reason
is the constitutive principle of investigating world history. Although
philosophical historiography presupposes the assumption or thought of
the existence of reason without truly justifying its validity, the efficacy
and thus “correctness” (Richtigkeit) of this assumption is redeemed by
way of the performative success of such a form of historiography: “Who
looks at the world with reason is in turn also looked at with reason,
both are reciprocal determinations,”9 Hegel writes.
The speculative idea that reason guides history sounds at least
awkward, if not downright apologetic. To make it intelligible it is neces-
sary to first dismiss the misunderstanding according to which reason is
some form of author of history in the sense of actually ruling history
according to transhistorical intentions. To assume that there is reason
in history is not an ontological statement about the fabric of history,
nor does it presuppose a magnificent mind which operates “behind the
backs” of historical events. Drawing on Anaxagoras, who is accredited

to first have conceived of the necessity to assume reason in history,
Hegel distinguishes the guiding idea of reason from the assumption
that a “self conscious reason” or a “spirit as such” governs the world.
Reason, rather than mere contingency, becomes manifest in the world
through the unfolding of historical or natural events without the neces-
sity of a conscious subject steering and understanding this development,
just as the solar movements are rule-governed without the necessity of
self-conscious stars and planets.
Every historical investigation “brings its categories”10 to the table.
In the Third Critique Kant shows that we necessarily apply regulative
ideals to our investigation of nature in order to understand organic life
as more than dead matter adhering to the laws of mechanical causation.
The necessity to adopt a regulative idea, Hegel argues, extends to the
philosophical investigation of history as well. To investigate history cannot
mean to passively record information concerning past events. The goal is
rather to concretely trace the manifestation of reason in the world.11
The presupposition of reason in history is initially a heuristic
assumption. Contrary to an abstract faith in religious providence (Vorse-
hung), which remains empty because it does not concretely uncover
reason in apparent disorder or the simplistic equation of reason and
history, critical philosophical historiography reinterprets the religious
belief concerning the revelation of divinity in concrete ways. It steers
its path between the Scylla of a superficial faith in divine providence
governing the course of the world and the Charybdis of taking reason
to be merely otherworldly. The expressed goal is to present a “concrete
theodicy” in order to “reconcile thinking spirit with evil.”12 History is
designated as the most important and most difficult domain to achieve
this project. Most important because it is the essential part of the overall
attempt of providing the resources for reconciling the prerevolutionary
past with the revolutionary present, our demands for justification with
the historically situated (and thus historically justifiable) institutions of
Sittlichkeit. It is the most difficult task, because history appears to be
anything but reasonable or open to reconciliation. “This reconciliation,”
Hegel contends, “can only be achieved through an understanding of
the affirmative in which the negative vanishes to the level of something
subordinated and overcome.”13
Contrary to a common legend of Hegel, however, he does not
dismiss or even ignore the horrors of history. Reconciliation is a critical
task in that it becomes effective only through a concrete understanding
of the unfolding of reason in rational tendencies. Measured against these
tendencies, certain negative characteristics, injustices, dissatisfactions, and
40 Mario Wenning
sufferings first appear as unnecessary and thus objectionable. In order to

achieve such a critical understanding, we first have to understand what
is meant by “reason.” In order to understand what reason in history
is, Hegel claims, we necessarily have to answer the question of what is
the “absolute aim of the world” (der Endzweck der Welt). This step is
necessary in order to be able to contrast and place different historical
events and tendencies into a common history, to distinguish rational from
irrational tendencies rather than treating everything as a matter of mere
contingency. In contemporary terms, we need to reveal the normative
basis of such a critical philosophy of history. This normative basis has to
be shown to be somehow manifest rather than a mere imposition to its
object. Only then does it become clear that it is not just the case that
every “ought” must be translatable into a “can” but, more importantly,
that every “ought” is to a certain extent already existing in tendencies
and is thus logically connected to an “is,” which then translates into
further “oughts.” The “final end” is thus not realized, verwirklicht, at
the end of a historical development. It is more appropriate to translate
Verwirklichung (sometimes Hegel also uses the term Vollführung) as
“becoming effective” rather than “realization” and translate Endzweck
as “absolute aim” rather than “final end” to emphasize the dynamic
character implied by Hegel’s idiosyncratic reinterpretation of the idea of
providence. The absolute aim is not a static entity outside or at the end
of history, but the becoming-effective of freedom in history. Contrary to
signalling a quasi-eschatological end to history as the utopian tradition
has done, Hegel interprets the idea of providence as the inner-worldy
becoming effective and unfolding of stages of the “development in the
consciousness of freedom,” the ability to say yes and no to whatever is
given based on self-reflective reasoning and evaluation.
While the prerevolutionary thinkers Lessing and Kant believed that
the education of humankind or the progress to eternal peace would take
thousands, if not indefinitely many years, the postrevolutionary Hegel
believed that there has been sufficient normative achievement. Then the
task is to trace the emergence of freedom and its manifestation in dif-
ferent constitutions, philosophical systems, and practices and use these
normative achievements as yardsticks. These yardsticks are not derived
from abstract claims but from historically specific and effective tendencies
from which it is no longer possible or at least not desirable to retreat.14
That the Endzweck is not a final but an absolute aim that guides the
philosophical investigation of history is supported by the claim that in
some sense it was present all along, if only latently. However, only when
the manifestation or actualization of reason’s becoming self-conscious
by way of historical actors increasingly understanding themselves as free
is “the absolute aim” manifesting itself. In this sense “world history is

progress in the consciousness of freedom.”15
The secularization of the idea of providence by Hegel also means
that it is no longer justified for serious scientific investigation (Wissen-
schaft) to make predictions or even educated guesses about the future.
Although the strong normative content of strong evaluative terms such
as “freedom,” “equality,” “right,” or “the idea of the state” bear a
utopian excess in that they never find full realization in any specific
historical tokens, this content is never detached from forms of historical
manifestation and potentials of realization. Those few passages where
Hegel oversteps the limits he erects for himself by making predictions,
which anticipated among other things the rise of Russia and the conflict
between North and South America, usually are qualified by statements
that really (eigentlich) prediction is not the business of the serious philo-
sophical scientist who has to stay agnostic with regard to potential future
developments of spirit. The only access to the normative potential the
future holds is through an investigation of progressive tendencies we
find in history and the present.
This agnosticism with regard to the future does not get acknowl-
edged when Hegel’s concept of the necessary development of reason is
criticized as an overflow of panlogism. All that the term necessary means
is that it is possible to trace the development of stages of cultural devel-
opment post factum. It is premised on the assumption that a “universal”
narrative, which situates the present in a historical development, can
be constructed retrospectively. Just as the first measure of a symphony
does not allow the prediction of what is to follow, we speak with good
reasons about a “necessary” progression of chords and a necessary devel-
opment of motifs when analyzing music. We might form expectations
with regard to the continuing “progression” of the melody, but we also
know from (at least good) music that its “success” consists precisely in
often “disappointing” set expectations. Effective experiences of music
open ourselves up to new possibilities without putting us into a position
of being able to predict in advance how they will play out. Similarly,
normative theory understood as a critical genealogy of rational tendencies
traces the emergence of norms and values such as freedom, justice, and
solidarity in their different historical shapes and treats them at the same
time not as fully given or realized, but as essentially incomplete.
Let us return to the question of the way in which Hegel connects
the idea of a philosophical historiography with his critique of utopian
thinking. The infamous proposition from the preface to the Philosophy of
Right, “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational”16 (Was
vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig),
42 Mario Wenning
perhaps best expresses Hegel’s ambiguous stand with regard to utopia. It

comes with no surprise that Hegel’s immediate successors have regarded
the first part of the proposition as expressing the need of reason to be
manifest, of reason to become actual, as much as the second part sounds
apologetic in assigning to actuality the status of exhibiting reason.
During the last decades the account of Hegel as the reactionary
Prussian state philosopher, an account usually epitomized by the Doppel-
satz, has been superseded by a more nuanced interpretation, which shows
that Hegel does not easily fit into either the left nor the right Hegelian
camps.17 In Hegel’s Logic it becomes clear that Wirklichkeit, actuality,
is a later and far advanced stage of reality, which is the culmination of
immediate being, appearance (Erscheinung), and existence. Actuality is
defined as the unity of essence and existence and is contrasted to mere
existence. For normative theory this means that norms are not to be
conceived of merely in terms of either their essence, what they mean
and how they can be justified, nor are they merely to be reduced to
their coming-into-being, their historical emergence and present facticity.
Rather, Hegel engages in a dialectics of genesis and validity, a form of
immanent critique that measures normative claims against their histori-
cal emergence and those practices they are supposed to account for.
Because these claims often do not “fit” what they are about when, let’s
say, a rhetoric of freedom is used to justify the waging of war, histori-
cal manifestations and their normative frameworks are shown to be in
need of change to bridge the gap. Reconciliation is another name for
an insight that the gap between claims and what they claim to be about
needs to be overcome historically.
These rational tendencies are the seeds of actuality as the unity of
essence and existence, which needs to become effective in concrete histori-
cal ways.18 Of course these tendencies do not guarantee their realization.
They are historical chances which can be forgotten and rediscovered.
They are real possibilities that can increase or decrease depending on a
variety of historical conditions and motivations of historical actors.
The Critique of Romantic Utopianism
We have seen that Hegel’s account of the emergence of reason in the

form of rational tendencies is his answer to the problem of instituting
absolute norms in light of the discontinuity of authority brought about
by the revolution. This account is further elaborated in Hegel’s criticism
of the utopian ideas of Romanticism, which he sees as the continuation
of the negative aspects of the French Revolution in Germany. Hegel
diagnoses that the Romantics are not committed enough (or at least not
in the correct way) to their normative ideals. They do not link them to
a critical understanding of the present and the past. Thus, they deprive
themselves from making these ideals historically effective. Apart from
some of his own early ideas, which drew on Schiller’s and Hölderlin’s
account of love and aesthetic unification, Hegel’s critique is addressed
at Friedrich Schlegel’s conception of irony and utopian novels such as
Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen.19 In Novalis’s Bildungsroman, contrary
to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, the protagonist strives for the fantastic and
structurally unreachable place of his dreams. Heinrich’s striving for the
blue flower, the symbol of a golden age, logically outrules the possibil-
ity of reconciliation through historical learning processes in favour of
a universal and ahistorical utopia that can only be conceived of as an
apocalyptic futural escape from history and thus a place outside imma-
nent historical horizons. The problem of such utopian depictions is not
so much their claims about the future or desirable states, but that they
do not have anything meaningful to contribute to the understanding
of the present and its past apart from the fact that it is miserable when
measured against the promise exerted by the “blue flower.”
More sophisticated normative theory with a utopian intent should
not just settle with an impotent ought, but needs to point out rational
tendencies within the present reality and its history.20 Hegel advocates
an ought, which like Kant’s good will, “shines like a jewel.” Contrary
to concretely and critically questioning reality by tracing normative ten-
dencies, the Romantics dreamed of a beyond that was a mere possibility
(ein nur Mögliches). On the Romantic account, possibility and actuality
are conceived as mere opposites with no living connection. Any chance
of change is denigrated to the status of an infinitely postponed ideal, a
postulate of reason, which can never be even remotely realized through
historical agents and actions. A goal that cannot be realized, however,
is no goal worth aspiring to at all. One easily succumbs to self-pity in
light of one’s distance to allegedly higher purposes. A pondering on
possibilities commits one to a form of inwardness of being locked in
one’s subjective will.
If abstract ratiocination treats possibility as detached and logically
prior to actuality, Hegel states in the Encyclopedia Logic,21 everything
becomes possible: “that tonight the moon will fall on the earth . . . [or]
that the Turkish Kaiser will become pope, because it is a human being
who can convert to Christianity and become a catholic Priest.”22 In
other words, all standards to measure the feasibility of one’s normative
aspirations are lost when one engages in pondering about possibility
detached from concrete, even if only rudimentary manifestations of this
44 Mario Wenning
possibility. Furthermore, a pondering on possibility serves as an excuse not

to become practical in engaging with the present: because this utopian
form of consciousness “regards the present as vain and looks beyond it
in a spirit of superior knowledge, it finds itself in a vain position; and
since it has actuality only in the present, it is itself mere vanity.”23 To
be utopian in the bad sense, to believe in possibility as an independent
reality detached from its historical realizability and partial realization in
tendencies, serves as an escape from sociopolitical engagement and the
history of which one nevertheless remains a part. Hegel’s criticism of
the Romantic conception of normativity can thus be summarized as fol-
lows: a certain discourse about ideals and norms, one that treats them
as detached and otherworldly because there are no corresponding social
practices whatsoever, is pointless or even dangerous.24
It is important to stress that what this critique is getting at is not
just future-oriented imagination but equally a naïve restoration. The
poetic version of restorative tendencies can be found in the Romantics’
idealization of the Middle Ages. Both, abstract imagination about the
future and a naïve hope for a restoration of an allegedly golden past,
represent hypocritical attempts to escape the present and its history by
either trying to engage in a questionable construction of the past or
move toward a paradise totally different from the here and now. Hegel
diagnoses that their inverted consciousness consists in a negation of the
ground they are standing on. In this sense the Romantics are u-topos or
no-where. In contrast, the task of a critical philosophical science consists
in revealing the normativity that has been historically achieved; it tries
to keep the present from regressing below or ignoring this achievement
either because of capricious longing or blind apologetics.
The practice of “contingent imagination” serves edification where
there is a need for critical comprehension (Begreifen) in the original sense
of krinein as a complex, concrete, and differentiated investigation of the
subject matter. If the utopian spirit of the imagination unleashes itself
to political action, it results in the blind fury of destruction. Escapism
and political radicalism thus do not exclude each other but are two sides
of the same precarious loss of actuality (Wirklichkeitsverlust) through
positing normativity as something detached from actuality and measure
a society by standards that are foreign, perhaps even incommensurable
to its normative framework.
Despite his emphasis on actuality Hegel does not dismiss the cat-
egory of possibility altogether. Neither does he reduce it to actuality.
Rather he introduces a different, richer conception of possibility than that
adopted by bad utopian consciousness. Contrary to mere possibility, it is
now thought of as existent (seined) and as such a condition for progress.
Only this conception can lead to change (Wechsel) and improvement.

He writes: “Indeed, immediate actuality bears the seed of something
totally different in itself. This different is initially only something pos-
sible whose form is then changed and translated into actuality.”25 The
role of the philosopher as investigating the manifestation of reason in
his time is thus to trace the mediations in what initially appears to be
immediate. Critical philosophy pursues rational tendencies, which qua
their connection to actuality as real tendencies, point beyond themselves
to, what Hegel calls in one of his more utopian moments, a “totally
different” state of affairs. These tendencies are the missing link that was
not available to the radical revolutionaries or the Romantics. Rational
tendencies rather than given or postulated norms are the mediating link
between a past and a sustainable future. Focusing on these tendencies
does precisely not entail to neglect what is but allows to understand it
as an appearance (Schein) pointing beyond itself. By way of measuring
norms against their sustaining practices, immediacy is unmasked as an
illusion. The task of philosophy is to be a midwife, which helps to bring
existing rational tendencies to light rather than “setting up a world
beyond which exists God knows where.”26
This conception of critical comprehension of the present has direct
consequences for what we may hope to achieve. Hegel does not deny
that his philosophical historiography of the self-cultivation of reason
in the form of rational tendencies faces enormous challenges. Not
only does it seem that the driving force of historical events consists
in particular and capricious interests and uneducated passions rather
than the increasing actualization of universal freedom. History itself
is characterized as the “slaughter bench [Schlachtbank] on which the
happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states and the virtue of individuals
has been sacrificed.” The result of this insight is “the augmentation to
the deepest sadness without consolation, which is not balanced by any
reconciling conclusion.”27
However, even this senseless history of catastrophes, Hegel argues,
necessarily raises the question of a hidden, subterranean meaning. Since
the satisfaction of individuals is an “infinite right” the justification cannot
just be one that denigrates individuals to the status of inessential accidents
of history or the state as Hegel does in the Philosophy of Right against
his better judgment,28 the mere instruments of a larger development, the
puppets of the slaughterhouse of world history. Periods of substantive
happiness (Glück) on a larger social scale are said to be “empty pages.”
Hegel’s concept of reconciliation thus needs to be distinguished from
absolute reconciliation or the desire for absolute happiness as cherished
by the romantics or absolute justice desired by the Jacobins.
46 Mario Wenning
The objection to the Romantic continuation of the revolutionary

radicalism in thought reflects an ethics calling for modest demands and
expectations, piecemeal reforms rather than absolute revolutions.29 Coming
to terms with the “seriousness of life” bears the potential of a deeper
mildness. Not even in his personal life did Hegel equate the possibil-
ity of reconciliation with happiness. In a letter from 1811 to his sister
Hegel acknowledges to have witnessed the realization of all his hopes
in marrying Marie von Tucher but adds the important proviso “to the
extent that happiness is part of my destiny (Bestimmung).” When Marie
was infuriated about the qualified tone of his statement, he responded:
“I do not mean that this should have hurt you!—I remind you, dear
Marie, that your deeper sense also has taught you that every affection
of happiness is also attached to a feeling of melancholy.”30 Happiness is
a dialectical moment that cannot exist without its other.
Outlook
Let me sum up. Drawing on Hegel’s engagement with utopian reason,

we have developed the following systematic points. First, the normative
problem raised by the rupture of the Revolution, namely, the problem
of instituting universal norms in history, necessitated a genealogy of
normative tendencies. Only by way of providing the revolution with a
prehistory does it became viable. The systematic consequences are, sec-
ondly, that a radical utopian rhetoric, as engaged in by the Romantics,
falsely conceives of norms as mere possibilities rather than actual historical
chances. Third, rather than positing such norms as mere possibilities, the
commitment to reconciliation thus becomes the background condition
of a critical philosophy of history. We have finally seen that reconcilia-
tion, just as the absolute end of the world, is not to be conceived of
as a final state, but rather as a background condition of our critical
engagement with the past and the present.
Let me conclude with two critical observations, one concerning the
proposed conception of reconciliation and one concerning the role of the
new in Hegel’s critical philosophy of history. Moments of happiness and
the experience of reconciliation are necessary, it seems, in order to give
meaning to one’s particular place in society and history. What Hegel has
to teach is that in order to strive toward being “at home in the world”
it is necessary to be at least minimally reconciled with the history one
is part of. This means to be able to see it as one’s history and not to
regard oneself as a subtenant of someone else’s home, a “stranger in
the world” that searches for an imaginary home in romantic fantasies
rather than in the available institutional and normative frameworks. To

achieve this act of taking responsibility it is not sufficient to provide a
mere historical narrative from the vantage point of the development
of reason or absolute spirit, as Hegel tends to do in his worked-out
system. It needs to be a meaningful narrative that is also addressed to
the perspectives and the concerns of historical individuals, not the least
the victims of history.
Secondly, to be truly meaningful such a narrative has to be
addressed to or at least speak to the first person perspective. It must
be existentially binding and exert a convincing justificatory as well as
motivational force. Hegel does not fully do justice to the problem of
rationally establishing the new from this first person perspective. He does
not tell us what is to be done in situations where rational tendencies have
become almost extinct, where we cannot rely on the potential stored
up in those tendencies or where, as Adorno and Foucault have taught
us, rational tendencies themselves cannot be categorically separated from
pathologies accompanying them. By way of adopting an Aristotelian
conception of a potentiality that realizes what was already there latent in
its beginning, Hegel conceives of the moment of individual spontaneity
and inventiveness as one of the realization of pre-given actual potentials.
Thus, the new is never the absolute new and the person at the moment
of decision is stripped of the burden of responsibility for the future and
becomes a carrier of a structurally independent logic of unfolding. In the
last instance Hegel wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants the
revolution without radical revolutionaries, utopian reason without utopian
projections.31 Hegel sets up a problem that is still with us: the problem
of how it is possible to conceptualize the inherent tension between the
demands of individual human autonomy (which calls for designing its
own self and conception of the future ever anew) and transsubjective
tendencies of history.32 While Hegel tells us a detailed story about the
latter, he is less concerned with the first person perspective.
The very starting point of wanting to construct a universal history
has become difficult to understand and appears to be doomed to failure.
We are utterly convinced of the ultimate contingency of historical proc-
esses. And even if we were to grant credence to the conviction that one
can make sense of a Weltendzweck, an absolute purpose of the world,
a nonarbitrary normative framework, we would hardly be content with
being mere tools for its becoming-effective. We would legitimately raise
the question, “What is rational about this reason?” I am hesitant to
believe that Hegel’s “solution” to the problem is ultimately satisfactory.
To assign to historical agents the double status of puppets on the stage
of world history yet at the same time autonomous agents with the ability
48 Mario Wenning
to “know, believe, and will the universal” is difficult to put together. I

argue elsewhere that a moral theory more in line with Adorno’s Nega-
tive Dialectics is a better candidate in accounting for the irresolvable
tension between the claims of particulars and the existence of historical
tendencies.33 Despite these concerns, it would be wrong to dismiss the
idea of a critical philosophy of history and the corresponding genealogy
of rational tendencies. Only an awareness of, and critical engagement
with real potentials constitutes the determinate horizon of possibility
necessary for responsible action and critique to take place.
Hegel has shown in his criticism of revolutionary consciousness and
its continuation in romantic longing that the only way to pursue the
task of the “becoming effective” of reconciliation consists in providing
a genealogical critique that shows why certain normative conceptions
speak to us, why others break down and become unliveable. It is our
ability to critique and point to inconsistencies in particular shapes of
consciousness and forms of life, which presupposes a weak form of
reconciliation as a tracing of the normative potentials and achievements
of modernity. This is premised on the proviso that regressions and
historical amnesia have been the norm rather than an exception. “To
recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby
to delight in the present,” Hegel famously writes in the preface to the
Rechtsphilosophie, “is the reconciliation with actuality.”34 This project is
not to be confused with an affirmation of what is given. Holding on to
the demand of reconciliation does not mean to ignore that this present,
including its history and potential futures, is for the most part a cross
bearing the marks of suffering and despair. What it does deny is that
romantic utopianism, a utopianism that searches the rose outside the
cross, could get us anywhere.
Notes
1. Cf. the chapters “Die absolute Freiheit und der Schrecken,” “Das Gewis-
sen. Die schöne Seele, das Böse und seine Verzeihung,” and “Das unglückliche
Bewußtsein.”
2. For an account of Hegel’s diagnosis of modernity cf. Michael N.
Forster’s account of the eight dualisms Hegel identified, largely in following
Schiller, as the major crises of modernity. Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of
Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 17–125.
3. In Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics, ed. J. M. Bernstein
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 186 ff.
4. The important exceptions proving the rule are Ernst Bloch, Subjekt und
Objekt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1962); Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1960); and Adrien Peperzak, Le jeune Hegel et la vision
morale du monde (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960). Contrary to these approaches

I do not belief in a clear distinction between a young, more utopian Hegel
(roughly up to the Phenomenology) and a middle-aged and old reactionary
thinker (most notably the Hegel of the Rechtsphilosophie). The utopian impulse
persists throughout his work but is increasingly refined by self-reflexivity and
certain anti-utopian insights.
5. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1989), 11.
6. Joachim Ritter, Hegel and the French Revolution (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1982): “There is no other philosophy that is a philosophy of revolution
to such a degree and so profoundly, in its innermost drive, as that of Hegel,”
43. Cf. also Jürgen Habermas,”Hegels Kritik der Französischen Revolution,” in
Theorie und Praxis (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt1978), 128–47.
7. Surprisingly, there have not been many attempts to address reconcili-
ation as Hegel’s major sociopolitical concern: Erzsébet Rózsa, Versöhnung und
System. Zu Grundmotiven von Hegels praktischer Philosophie (Munich: Wilhelm
Fink Verlag, 2005); Michael Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy. The Project of
Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
8. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frank-
furt: Suhrkamp, 1986), 20.
9. Ibid., 23.
10. Ibid.
11. Concerning the influence of Kant’s Third Critique on Hegel’s Philoso-
phy of History, cf. Ludwig Siep, “Das Recht als Ziel der Geschichte. Überlegungen
im Anschluß an Kant und Hegel,” in Das Recht der Vernunft, ed. Ch. Fricke
(Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1995), 355–79.
12. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 28.
13. Ibid.
14. Cf. Lucian Hölscher, “Hegel und die Zukunft,” in Die Weltgeschichte—
das Wetgericht? ed. Rüdiger Bubner and Walter Mesch (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
2001), 323–31.
15. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 32.
16. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1986), 30.
17. Cf. for example Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
18. Cf. Ernst Bloch, “Die Dialektik der Geschichte, worin jede Lösung
eine neue Aufgabe setzt, jede positive Bestimmtheit ihre Negation enthält
und dadurch den Motor zu einer neuen, positiveren Bestimmtheit,—dieser
wahre Krieg in Hegels ‘Frieden der Vernunft mit der Wirklichkeit’ hat das
Vernunftrecht aus der Abstraktion “Der Schwur auf den Styx. Der zweideutige
Kosmos der Rechtsphilosophie, “herausgenommen und schließlich in möglichen
Einklang mit der Tendenzwirklichkeit bringen lassen.” From in Materialien
zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Manfred Riedel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974),
439.
19. Novalis, Henry von Ofterdingen, trans. Palmer Hilty (New York:
Frederick Ungar, 1964).
50 Mario Wenning
20. Cf. Joachim Ritter, “Auseinandersetzung mit der kantischen Ethik,” in

Metaphysik und Politik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003); Odo Marquard, “Hegel und
das Sollen,” in Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1973), 37–51.
21. G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (Frank-
furt: Suhrkamp, 1986).
22. Ibid., 283.
23. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 20.
24. Joseph Raz, without mentioning Hegel, defends the same antiutopian
claim in The Practice of Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).
25. “In der Tat enthält aber solche unmittelbare Wirklichkeit den Keim
zu etwas ganz anderem in sich. Dieses Andere ist zunächst nur ein Mögliches,
welche Form sich dann aber aufhebt und in Wirklichkeit übersetzt.” G. W. F.
Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 287.
27. Ibid., 35.
28. Cf. paragraph 145.
29. Cf. also Bernard Yack, “The Longing Tamed,” in The Longing for
Total Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 185–223.
30. Cited in Dieter Thomä, Vom Glück in der Moderne (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2003), 24.
31. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “Im Weltgeist als dem Revolutionär, der es
doch nicht sein darf, fasst sich Hegels ambivalentes Verhältnis zur Franzö-
sischen Revolution noch einmal zusammen: Hegel will die Revolutionierung
der Wirklichkeit ohne Revolutionäre.” From “Hegels Kritik der Französischen
Revolution,” 144.
32. Cf. Emil Angehrn, Geschichtsphilosophie, Grundkurs Philosophie vol.
15 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991). “Die Autonomiebehauptung des Menschen,
der zur Selbstgestaltung seines Daseins aufgerufen ist, und die Behauptung
einer strikten Gesetzmößigkeit des historischen Verlaufs. Damit aber wird das
Verhältnis von Geschichtsautomatismus und verändernder Praxis zum ungelösten
Dauerproblem. Nicht zuletzt in der Unerledigtheit dieser Frage gründet die
Selbstauflösung der Geschichtsphilosophie” (101).
33. Mario Wenning, Critical Theory, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History,
manuscript.
3
Hegel’s Account of the Present
An Open-Ended History
Karin de Boer
Introduction
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Right

are among the texts that have met with the most vehement criticisms.
Such criticisms are often based on erroneous interpretations of concepts
such as reason, spirit, and world spirit, or on an erroneous identification
of Hegel’s conception of the modern state with the Prussian state dur-
ing the Restoration Era.1 There is, however, one kind of criticism that
cannot be as easily dismissed as these. For it seems justified to question
Hegel’s belief in the capacity of spirit increasingly to actualize itself in
the tortuous element of world history. Thus, he maintains in Reason in
History that his philosophy of world history aims at the reconciliation
of spirit with the negative aspects of existence. This reconciliation, he
adds, “can only be achieved through the knowledge of the affirma-
tive, in which the negative dissolves into something subordinate and
conquered.”2 Given the history of the twentieth century, it is quite
understandable that many contemporary philosophers—in the wake of
Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche—have turned against Hegel’s seem-
ingly unbridled optimism.
On closer inspection, however, even this criticism lacks sufficient
ground. As I will argue in this chapter, Hegel’s account of modern
civilizations is much less optimistic than his account of the past. His
philosophy of world history is optimistic about the past because it high-
lights only those moments that testify to the actualization of rational
51
52 Karin de Boer
freedom. Hegel is equally optimistic with regard to the philosophical

comprehension of this freedom, a comprehension preeminently achieved
in speculative science itself. Yet he seems to acknowledge, albeit hesi-
tantly, that his dialectical conception of world history might not suffice
to comprehend the sociopolitical collisions evolving out of the modern
determination of freedom. Thus, Hegel equally maintains in Reason in
History that the freedom of spirit consists “in a constant negation of
that which threatens to destroy freedom” (55/48). This latter passage
leaves open whether or not spirit will actually succeed in reducing the
negative to the necessary means of its self-actualization.
Hegel’s hesitation as to the capacity of modernity to resolve its
immanent conflicts preeminently emerges in his account of the opposi-
tions between poverty and wealth and between the state and its citizens.
In this chapter I will focus on passages from the Essay on Natural Law,
the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and the Philosophy of Right that
express this hesitation and, hence, complicate the prevailing view of
Hegel’s philosophy of world history. Several commentators have noted
that Hegel’s dialectics offers no solution to some of the problems to
which modernity gave birth.3 Yet if contemporary philosophy still faces
the task of grasping its own time in thought, as I think it does, then
it cannot leave it at that. It should rather attempt, in my view, to turn
Hegel’s hesitation into a philosophical principle of its own. Such a prin-
ciple would allow contemporary philosophy to comprehend its own age
as torn apart by tragic conflicts rather than by resolvable contradictions.4
Before turning to Hegel’s account of modernity I will briefly consider
the basic principles that it presupposes.
Hegel’s Conception of World History
Hegel’s views on world history and the modern state have often been
dismissed as uncritical defenses of a particular theological worldview or a
particular political system. I hold that neither of these claims is justified.
Although Hegel sometimes draws on religious images to clarify what he
means by the concept, the idea, or reason, he does not assume that a
divine power consciously governs the world. The subject of his philosophy
of world history—spirit—is neither a substance nor a subject in any current
sense of the terms. The concept of spirit rather refers, I would contend,
to the efforts of thought to comprehend itself.5 As far as its occurrence
in world history is concerned, the concept of spirit exclusively refers to
the mode of thought that underlies the efforts of successive civilizations
both to organize themselves in a rational way and to comprehend the
Hegel’s Account of the Present 53
principle of this self-organization. It refers, in other words, to the effort

of a particular civilization to become conscious of itself.6 On this view,
Hegel’s philosophy of world history is exclusively concerned with the
efforts of successive civilizations to organize themselves in a rational way
and to comprehend the principle of this self-organization. For Hegel,
any such organization relies on a particular determination of the principle
of freedom. Accordingly, the Philosophy of Right is exclusively concerned
with the sociopolitical structures of the modern state that follow from
this principle, that is, with the idea of the modern state.7 The principle
of freedom, in its turn, is nothing but a particular way in which the
absolute principle of self-determination, that is, the concept as such,
occurs within the finite element of world history.
The more a civilization has succeeded in organizing itself in
accordance with this principle, the more it has disentangled itself from
the arbitrariness and chaos proper to nature (The Philosophy of History,
58–59/40–41). The principle of freedom develops its inherent determina-
tions because civilizations at a certain point become aware—by means of
individuals or groups—that the particular determination of freedom on
which they relied is at odds with the principle of freedom as such. The
insight into this contradiction can only occur, according to Hegel, when
a civilization has exhausted the possibilities opened up by this particular
determination of freedom. The insight into the one-sidedness of its
determination of freedom necessarily yields a less one-sided determination
of freedom.8 Just as particular concepts such as “being” or “substance”
at a certain point turn out to prevent thought from achieving adequate
knowledge of the world, particular determinations of the principle
of freedom at a certain point turn out to prevent a civilization from
adequately maintaining itself as an organic totality. At this stage, such a
particular determination of freedom no longer enhances the well-being
of the civilization but rather causes its downfall. The insight into the
one-sidedness of this particular determination of freedom yields a less
one-sided determination of freedom.9 This new determination emerges
within the existing civilization, but as a germ that can only begin to
develop once the existing determination of freedom has been abolished.
As long as the absolute principle of freedom is determined in a one-sided
manner, a civilization will at some point become aware that its actual
determination of freedom falls short of this principle itself.
I would like to recall that Hegel never purports to construct
the successive stages of world history by means of reason alone. His
philosophy of world history is, on the one hand, exclusively concerned
with world history insofar as it testifies to the actualization of freedom.
Yet it must, on the other hand, always draw on empirical investigations
54 Karin de Boer
in order to lay bare the essential moments of this actualization.10 This

focus allows Hegel completely to discard certain aspects of world history,
such as the mere succession of events or the fate of individual citizens.
It equally allows him to discard views on world history informed by
morality, piety, or dread.11 By relegating these aspects to the realm of
mere contingency, only those aspects of world history that testify to the
increasing actualization of freedom emerge as essential to world history as
such.12 This entails, for Hegel, that moments of crisis necessarily announce
the birth of a less one-sided determination of freedom. However, since
modern societies are based on the idea that human beings as such are
free, they are supposed to have overcome, at least in principle, the lim-
ited conceptions of freedom inherent in premodern civilizations. Hegel
seems to be less certain, therefore, whether the collisions characteristic
of modern societies can be resolved in the same way as the collisions
that brought about the downfall of previous societies. In what follows
I will try to trace that hesitation.
Economy
In the Essay on Natural Law from 1802–03 Hegel draws on Plato’s

Republic to distinguish between the classes of free and unfree citizens.
Whereas the former class is immediately devoted to the community as
a whole, the latter is devoted to the sphere of labor and property. It
is imperative, Hegel holds, that these two spheres be clearly separated
from one another. The system of property
must constitute itself in a class of its own, and in that case

must be able to expand in its whole length and breadth, really
separate and isolated from the class of the nobility.13
Since citizens who pursue their private interests will contribute

to the well-being of the society as a whole, the society must allow the
realm of economic activity freely to expand. Although Hegel does not
explicitly refer to the modern world in this context, he seems to under-
stand modern civil society along the same lines:
[T]his class is determined by being at home in [the sphere

of] possession as such and the kind of justice that is possible
with regard to possession, and by constituting at the same
time a coherent system, such that the relation of possession
is taken up into a formal unity and each individual, being as
such capable of possession, is related to all others as a universal

being, that is, as burgher in the sense of bourgeois.14
Citizens that are tied to one another by economic interests must

be protected by a coherent system of civil law, regardless of their birth
and social position. Thus, the realm of private interests must, on the
one hand, be elevated above the random struggle for possession and,
on the other, remain separated from the realm of the state. Whereas a
society should profit from the positive effects of selfishness, the state
should not allow the destructive effects of this selfishness to endanger
its health. Hegel emphasizes that only by disentangling the realm of the
state and the realm of private interests, “each of them is done justice,
and that alone which ought to be is brought into existence” (494/104).
He leaves open, however, whether a society—by means of the state—is
always capable of subjugating the realm of economic interests to its
proper ends. The Jena System Draft from 1803–04 suggests that it is
particularly difficult for modern societies to control the destructive effects
of the economic realm:
When, within a large nation, need and labor are elevated into
this universality, they form on their own account a tremen-
dous system of communality and mutual interdependence, a
self-moving life of what is dead, a life which, in its motion,
blindly moves back and forth like the elements and, like a wild
beast, requires continual strict dominance and taming.15
Due to the random movements of the market, the coherence

of the singular kind of labor with the whole infinite mass of
needs becomes completely cluttered and a [matter of] blind
dependence, so that some far-off operation often suddenly
cuts off the labor of a whole class of men who were satisfying
their needs by it, making it superfluous and useless.16
These passages suggest that modern societies may not be able to

subjugate the “self-moving life” of the market to their proper end. This
issue recurs in the Philosophy of Right. Civil society, Hegel here argues,
facilitates the realization of selfish ends by means of
a system of all-encompassing dependence, so that the subsis-

tence, welfare, and rights of the individual . . . are interwoven
with, and grounded on, the subsistence, welfare, and rights
56 Karin de Boer
of all, and have actuality and security only in this context.

(Philosophy of Right, §183)
However, this passage concerns the principle of modern civil soci-

ety rather than its actual existence. For the system of interdependence
this society entails does not just create ever-new opportunities to satisfy
ever-new needs. Actually, it yields at once the increasing opposition
between a small group of property owners and a rabble deprived of the
possibility to subsist by means of labor and hence of participating in
the society as such.17 This problem cannot be solved, in Hegel’s view,
by public welfare or the artificial creation of jobs, for these solutions
contradict the very principle of civil society:
It thus emerges that civil society, despite an excess of wealth,

is not wealthy enough, that is, its own distinct resources are
not sufficient to control the excess of poverty and the forma-
tion of a rabble. (§245; translation modified)
If the principle of particularity constitutive of civil society posits

itself as an absolute principle, as it tends to do, then this society “affords
a spectacle of extravagance and misery as well as of the physical and
ethical corruption common to both” (§185). Hegel, affirming that the
problem of poverty “torments modern societies especially,” offers no
solution to this problem (§244, Addition).
In line with the first Jena System Draft, the Philosophy of Right here
refers to a mode of dialectic governed not so much by reason as by the
blind power of the market (§246). This negative dialectic, so to speak,
pertains to the increasing unfolding of the contradiction between the
principle of individual freedom and the actual lack of freedom. Hegel,
well aware that philosophy cannot predict the future (Philosophy of Right,
26/21–22), leaves open whether the modern state will actually be able
to resolve this contradiction. He might have argued that this question
falls outside the scope of philosophy because it is dependent on contin-
gent circumstances such as good government (The Philosophy of History,
539/456). Yet he may have had another reason for not suggesting a
solution. For the conflict between the modern principle of freedom and
the actual lack of freedom, a conflict created by the market, cannot be
resolved by the emergence of a civilization based on a less one-sided
determination of freedom. The modern determination of freedom sim-
ply cannot be surpassed. Yet Hegel seems to realize that the rational
institutions based on this determination do not in themselves guarantee
the actualization of freedom which constitutes the ultimate end of the
modern state. We will see that this state is not only vulnerable insofar
as its relation to the market is concerned, but also with regard to the
political realm itself.
Politics
Hegel, we have seen, considers the modern state to rest on the prin-
ciple that the human being as such is free. This means for Hegel that
the state should allow its citizens freely to develop their talents, yet
without therefore letting its ends be determined by their arbitrary will
(Philosophy of Right, §207). As I noted in the beginning, the Philosophy
of Right is exclusively concerned with the essential determinations that
follow from this basic principle, that is, with the idea of the modern
state. Precisely because Hegel’s account of the modern state is not
limited to this principle alone, but embraces its necessary moments, the
difference between the essential actuality of the state and its empirical
existence is not always easy to tell. Hence the deliberate ambiguity of
Hegel’s equation of actuality and rationality in the preface (Philosophy
of Right, 24/20).
I would like to emphasize that Hegel always attempts to expose
the implications of a particular mode of thought from within. In order
to articulate the “spirit” of the modern state, Hegel equally goes along
with the insight of the modern state into its proper principle. The Phi-
losophy of Right makes it clear that he holds this insight to have been
achieved primarily by the moderate reformers who between 1807 and
1815 attempted to emancipate the Prussian state from its feudal institu-
tions without, on the other hand, completely abolishing the traditional
forms of local and national political participation.18 Hegel draws on the
enlightened views of these thinkers, but he distinguishes itself from them
by comprehending their ideas in light of the actualization of freedom
at stake in the history of spirit as such. Since the principle of freedom
entails the urge to actualize itself, Hegel can maintain, following Rous-
seau, that these ideas respond to the universal or rational will:
The main point [Hauptsache] is that freedom, as determined

by the concept, is not grounded on the subjective will and
on arbitrariness, but on the insight of the universal will, and
that the system of freedom consists in the free development
of the various moments of this freedom. The subjective will
is a purely formal determination from which it does not fol-
low what it wills. The rational will alone is universal in the
58 Karin de Boer
sense that it determines and develops itself from within and

unfolds its moments as organic parts. (Reason in History,
144/121; translation modified)
It should be emphasized that this “rational will” is not to be

equated with the will of an actual head of state or legislator. Whereas
the individual will has no content of its own, the principle of rational
freedom entails the urge to actualize its immanent determinations. This
urge manifests itself whenever a mode of government is brought about
that accords with the principle of freedom to a larger extent than the
foregoing one, such as had happened in the various efforts to abolish
feudalism and slavery. Even though particular princes, governments, or
legislators may ground their decisions on a certain insight into what
is rational in and for itself, their insight cannot be identified with this
absolute rationality.
For Hegel, the modern state is primarily faced with the task of
resolving the collision between the government and those who are
governed (139–40/117). This means that it must, on the one hand,
allow the particular powers to develop into relative totalities and, on
the other, must guarantee that “they freely collaborate toward the real-
ization of a single purpose.”19 Only thus can the distinction between
the rational will of the society as a whole and the individual will of the
citizens be resolved:
What finally matters is that an infinite distinction has been

brought about and has been resolved into the insight of the
individuals that their freedom, independence, and essence
resides in their unity with that which is substantial, and that
their actions are shaped by the latter. (Reason in History,
Whenever Hegel refers to what finally matters, to the main point,

or to that which ought to be the case, he refers to the essential actual-
ity of the modern state rather than to its empirical existence, albeit not
always unambiguously. Other passages also make it clear that the organic
model which Hegel regards as essential to the modern determination of
freedom does not coincide with the Prussian state of his time. Thus, it
is pivotal for Hegel that the sphere of the government and the sphere of
the citizens be mediated by social estates and corporations representing
the particular interests of the various parts of the population (Philosophy
of Right, §302). In Prussia and elsewhere, these estates had tradition-
ally represented the interests of the nobility and, to a lesser extent, the
cities. Between 1807 and 1815, various efforts were made to abolish
the feudal structure of these estates and to transform them into modern
institutions representing the interests of citizens at the level of local,
regional, and national politics. Due to the resistance of the nobility and,
after 1816, the defeat of Napoleon, most of these efforts at reform were
never carried out or were quickly abandoned.20 The traditional system
of corporations, at odds with the idea of a free market, was dismantled
around the same time.21 According to an addition to the Philosophy of
Right, Hegel considers these developments a great loss:
For some time now, organization has only been directed

from above, and this kind of organization has been the main
concern [of the government]. The lower level, the mass-like
whole is easily left more or less inorganic. Yet it is extremely
important that it be organized, because only then does it con-
stitute a power, a force; otherwise it is merely an aggregate,
an amount of scattered atoms. Legitimate power only resides
in the organic existence of the particular spheres.22
Thus, Hegel holds that the collision between the government and
those who are governed must be resolved by mediating institutions
that represent the interests of particular groups, yet in such a way that
their “legitimate power” remains subordinated to the rational end of
the society as a whole. He does not suggest, however, that modern
societies will actually be able to organize themselves in accordance with
this essential actuality. Whereas “the rational concept of the state” has
overcome the opposition between government and people, actual states
continue to be defined by this very opposition. As long as this is the
case, Hegel notes, “it cannot be said that the state—which is the unity
of the universal and the particular will—has already become actual”
(Reason in History, 142/119).
According to Hegel, the participation of citizens in local and national
politics is to be achieved through estates and corporations rather than
through democracy.23 He would not oppose the view that democracy
is meant to protect a society against the arbitrary will of its monarch.
Hegel did not embrace democracy as the right way of achieving this aim,
however, because in his view it gives free rein to an arbitrariness even
more difficult to control than the one it was supposed to overcome:
Not satisfied with the establishment of rational rights . . . liber-

alism opposes to all this the atomistic principle of the individual
wills. . . . Due to this formal determination of freedom, to this
60 Karin de Boer
abstraction, these individual wills prevent the establishment of

a firm organization. Freedom forthwith opposes the particular
decisions of the government, for these are the result of a
particular will and hence of arbitrariness. The cabinet collapses
through the will of the many, and the former opposition takes
its place. Yet the latter, having become the government, is
in its turn opposed by the many. . . . It is this collision, this
tangle [Knoten], this problem, that now challenges history
and that it has to resolve in future times.24
Thus, the problem Hegel considers to be inherent in democracy is

not so much that a majority elects the government, but that an elected
government cannot, in the long run, represent the universal will. Such
a government is necessarily reduced to a particular will which, as such,
becomes opposed to another particular will. Again, Hegel leaves open
whether modern societies will actually be able to subordinate the spu-
rious infinity that haunts the succession of elected governments to its
proper ends.25 His remarks on democracy are, of course, not directed
against the state as such. They might be used, however, to argue that
any government—whether elected or not—seeks to establish itself as
the universal will of the society by effacing its proper particularity. If
this is the case, then its effort to extricate itself from this particularity
might well turn into the repression of modes of particularity it finds
over against itself. Upon this view, the endless succession of particular
wills that constitutes the inherent threat of democracy only manifests a
threat inherent in the political order as such.
For Hegel, we have seen, the modern state requires that the
universal will of the government and the individual wills of the citizens
be mediated by estates and corporations representing their particular
interests. It might be argued that in our age this mediating function
has been taken over by labor unions, political parties, nongovernmental
organizations, and a network of welfare provisions. A society is rational,
Hegel holds, insofar as its government succeeds in controlling the selfish
tendency of the mediating institutions on which its well-being depends.
He does not suggest, however, that modern states will actually be able
to control the proper force of such institutions. Hegel was aware that
modern societies suffer, first, from the tendency of particular wills to
isolate themselves from the whole and, second, from the incapacity of
democracy to bring about the unity of the universal and the particular
will. These problems undoubtedly continue to challenge the contem-
porary world.
Hegel’s Present
So far I have argued that Hegel’s unbridled optimism mainly concerns

the actualization of rational freedom such as it has occurred in the past.
We have also seen that Hegel is much more cautious with regard to
his present time. This caution tends to be neglected, however, because
he does not always clearly distinguish between the basic insight of the
modern world into its ultimate principle and the actualization of this
principle in the realm of temporal externality. Insofar as this basic insight
is concerned, Hegel is—at least according to his own standards—justified
to be as optimistic as he is about the past, for speculative science has, in
his view, achieved the most profound comprehension of this principle.
This does not imply, however, that “the fundamental reconciliation”
of the spiritual and the actual world (Reason in History, 256/208) has
already occurred in the element of world history, an element much
more obstinate than that of pure thought. Hegel’s remarks at the end
of Reason in History are utterly ambiguous in this respect:
Freedom finds its concept in the actual world and has trans-
formed the worldly sphere into an objective system that is
concrete and structured organically. . . . It is the goal of world
history that spirit create for itself a nature and world conform
to itself. (256–57/208; translation modified)
History, for Hegel, proves that this goal has been attained in
principle. That is why he relegates “the work which still needs to be
done” to “the empirical side.”26 Although the actualization of freedom
in the element of externality may still take time,
temporal duration is something entirely relative, and spirit

belongs to eternity. . . . The further work [of spirit] requires
that this principle [i.e., the unity of the rational and the
actual] develop itself, that spirit become actual, that it achieve
consciousness of itself in the actual world. (Reason in History,
These and other passages suggest that the reconciliation of the

rational and the actual has as yet become “for itself” in the element of
thought alone.27 Thus, Hegel acknowledges the tension between, on
the one hand, the essential actualization of rational freedom that has
manifested itself in the past and, on the other, the incapacity of the
62 Karin de Boer
modern world actually to conform to the rational freedom that consti-

tutes its ultimate principle. He attempts to resolve this tension, however,
by arguing that the further actualization of freedom is merely a matter
of time. Whereas the abstract negativity proper to time may slow down
the self-actualization of the concept, it must, in the long run, comply
with the absolute negativity proper to the latter.
I do not wish to suggest that time might turn out to be more
powerful than Hegel took it to be. I would rather maintain that Hegel
effaced the unsettling sway of the negative by framing negativity in terms
of the opposition between absolute and abstract negativity. His dialectical
determination of this opposition dissolves, in Hegel’s own words, the
negative into something subordinate and conquered (Reason in History,
48/42–43). Whereas Hegel, as I have argued, intimated the disruptive
implications of the modern conception of freedom, the principle of his
philosophy did not allow him to comprehend these implications in the
same way as it allowed him to comprehend the past. As I see it, Hegel’s
remarks on these implications do not anticipate an age that would no
longer be modern, but rather a mode of modernity that is impelled to
acknowledge the one-sidedness of its very principle.
The Preface to the Philosophy of Right suggests that Plato was aware
of the principle of individual freedom that began to emerge in Greek
culture, but was unable to incorporate this principle into his account
of Greek ethical life:
Plato, aware that the ethics of his time were being penetrated
by a deeper principle, which, within this context, could
appear . . . only as a destructive force, . . . imagined he could
counter [this] destructive force, and he thereby inflicted the
gravest damage on the deeper drive behind it, namely free
infinite personality.28
According to Hegel, Plato tried to counter the principle of individual

freedom. In the same vein, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right might be regarded
as an attempt to counter the destructive implications of this very principle.
As we have seen, Hegel did this by pleading for institutions capable of
bridging the gap between the state and its citizens. Ultimately, he pursued
the same end by distinguishing between absolute and abstract negativ-
ity and defining the latter as a subordinate moment of the former. This
allowed him, I have suggested, to hold that even modernity must, in the
end, be able to overcome the conflicts to which it gave birth.
Part of Hegel’s future has become our recent past. Although
societies plunged into social, political, and economical disintegration
have proved to be capable of evolving new modes of self-organization,
it can longer be taken for granted that the modern world will succeed
in reconciling such contrary moments as freedom and power, hospitality
and security, universality and particularity, the individual and the com-
munity, progress and tradition, prosperity and oppression, technology
and ethics, reason and faith. If such contrary moments do not neces-
sarily yield their reconciliation, and if contemporary philosophy is to
comprehend its own time, then it should attempt, in my view, to affirm
their tragic entanglement. Rather than opposing the tragic essence of
such conflicts as a destructive force, it should attempt to incorporate
this essence into its very principle. Whereas the principle of speculative
science did not allow Hegel to do this, it cannot be done, in my view,
without returning to Hegel.
Notes
1. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol. II: The High
Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1945), 27–80. Among the authors who have opposed this identification
I mention only T. M. Knox, “Hegel and Prussianism,” in Hegel’s Political Phi-
losophy, ed. W. Kaufmann (New York: Atherton, 1970), 13–29, and S. Avineri,
Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1972). See also A. Wood’s Introduction to Elements of the Philosophy of Right
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
2. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte Band I, Die Vernunft
in der Geschichte (1822/1831), ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner 1994) /
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History, trans.
H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975), 48/42–43, trans-
lation modified. Cf., Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (1822–31),
ed. E. Moldauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) /
The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991),
28/15.
3. See Avineri, 154; T. E. Wartenberg, “Poverty and Class Structure in
Hegel’s Theory of Civil Society,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 8 (1981):
169–82; John McCumber, “Contradiction and Resolution in the State: Hegel’s
Covert View,” in Clio 15, no.4 (1986): 379–90; A. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 237–55. Contrary to
McCumber, I will not consider the differences between Hegel’s published works
and the various lecture courses devoted to the philosophy of right.
4. I have argued elsewhere that Hegel’s own conception of tragic con-
flicts can be deployed for this purpose. K. de Boer, “Tragic Entanglements:
Between Hegel and Derrida,” in Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain
48 (2003): 33–48.
5. Spirit “makes itself into its own object and its own content. Knowl-
edge is its form and function, but its content is the spiritual itself.” Reason in
64 Karin de Boer
History, 54/47. “The essence of spirit, then, is self-consciousness.” Reason in

History, 59/51, cf. 74/64, 122/102. Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) interprets Hegel’s conception
of spirit along traditional lines, namely, as cosmic spirit (16), larger rational
plan (23), and a self-positing God (36) that embodies itself in certain parcels
of the universe (26). For this reason, he cannot but attempt to extricate those
elements of Hegel’s philosophy of right and world history he takes to be rel-
evant today from Hegel’s “ontology of Geist,” which he considers to be “close
to incredible”(69, cf. 111). Although this separation results in a lucid account
of Hegel’s conception of the modern state, it is to be regretted that Taylor
discards a conception of spirit that has very little to do with Hegel’s philosophy
of world history. In a similar vein, Wood (4–6) rejects Hegel’s dialectical logic
while defending his political philosophy.
6. “A nation [Volk] should therefore be regarded as a spiritual individual,
and we are not primarily concerned with its external side, but rather with . . . the
spirit of the nation, that is, its self-consciousness in respect of its own truth
and essence. . . . The universal which emerges and becomes conscious within
the state . . . is what we call in general the nation’s culture [Bildung]. But the
determinate content which this universal form acquires . . . is the spirit of the
nation itself.” Reason in History, 114–15/96–97; translation modified, cf. 59/51,
61/53, The Philosophy of History, 30–31/17–18.
7. Philosophy, according to Hegel, penetrates into the rational core
of the state “in order to find the inner pulse, and to feel its beat even in the
external forms” (PR, 25/20). He takes care to distinguish between these rational
forms, however, and “the infinitely varied circumstances which take shape within
this externality” (25/20). Cf. PR, §2, §258 Remark (400/276). On this see
Houlgate (2005, 182). As regards world history, Hegel distinguishes between
three basic determinations of the principle of freedom. In accordance with the
logical moments of the concept as such, this principle can be determined as the
principle that one is free, that several are free, or that the human being as such
is free. Hegel connects this logical distinction to (1) the Oriental world, (2)
the Greek and Roman world, and (3) the modern world (RH, 61–63/53–55,
cf. 155–57/129–31, LPH, 31–32/18–19).
8. The Philosophy of History, 96/71; Reason in History, 65/56.
9. Ibid.
10. Reason in History, 27/26, 30/29. Hegel notes in the Encyclopaedia
that the empirical sciences, discovering general determinations, species, and laws,
bring about the content that is subsequently taken up by philosophy. “The recep-
tion into philosophy of these materials . . . is at the same time a development
of thought out of itself. Whereas philosophy thus owes its development to the
empirical sciences, it gives their contents the form . . . of the a priori character
of thought, thus affirming their necessity.” Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wis-
senschaften im Grundrisse I (1817–30), ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) / Hegel’s Logic, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975) §12 Remark; translation modified.
11. Hegel refers in this respect to morality (The Philosophy of History,

17/6, 91/67; Reason in History, 18/21, 79–80/68–69), sadness (Reason in
History, 34/32), and piety (41/37).
12. On Hegel’s view, only the category of rational, self-conscious freedom
allows philosophy adequately to distinguish the essential from the nonessential:
“In order to be able to do this, one must know the essential, and, with regard
to world history as a whole, this essence is . . . the consciousness of freedom,
and the phases which this consciousness assumes in developing itself. Insofar
as thought is directed to this category it is directed to the truly essential.” The
Philosophy of History, 88/65; translation modified.
13. “Über die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine
Stelle in der praktische Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den positiven Wissen-
schaften,” in Jenaer Schriften 1801–1807, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) / Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of
Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Posi-
tive Sciences of Law, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1975), 492/102.
14. Natural Law, 494/103; translation modified; cf. Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts (1821), ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986) / Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §185.
15. Jenaer Systementwürfe I. Das System der spekulativen Philosophie (1803–
04), ed. K. Düsing and H. Kimmerle (Hamburg: Meiner 1986) / “Hegel’s First
Philosophy of Spirit,” in System of Ethical Life (1802/3) and First Philosophy of
Spirit, trans. H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1979), 230/249; translation modified. In the System of Ethical Life
(1802/03) Hegel refers to the system of need as “an alien power over which
[man] has no control.” The whole of needs and surplus “is a scarcely knowable,
invisible, and incalculable power,” System der Sittlichkeit (1802–03), ed. G. Lasson
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1967) / “The System of Ethical Life,” in System of Ethical
Life (1802/3) and First Philosophy of Spirit, 492/167. Hegel, like Marx, draws
at least on the work of Adam Smith, to which he refers explicitly (“Hegel’s First
Philosophy of Spirit,” 230/249) and implicitly (“The System of Ethical Life,”
492/167). As is well known, Marx had no access to these early texts.
16. “Hegel’s First Philosophy of Spirit,” 230/248; cf. Jenaer Systementwürfe
III. Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes (1805–06), ed. R.-P. Horstmann
(Hamburg: Meiner 1987) / Hegel and the Human Spirit. A Translation of the
Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), trans. L. Rauch (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1983), 222–24/138–40; see Avineri (87–98) for a clear
account of Hegel’s Jena texts on modern economy and civil society.
17. Philosophy of Right, §§241–45. On this issue see Avineri (47–54),
Wartenberg, McCumber, and Wood (247–55). I agree with Wood’s suggestion
that Hegel’s philosophy, since it has no answer to the problem of poverty and
oppression inherent in the modern state, here begins to reveals its limits (255).
However, Wood does not elaborate on the implications of this view. Wartenberg,
66 Karin de Boer
on the other hand, argues convincingly that Hegel’s explicit conception of the
threefold structure of civil society is at odds with his implicit acknowledgment of
the emerging opposition between owners and workers. I agree with Wartenberg
that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right could not incorporate this latter class structure
into his philosophical account of the modern state.
18. When the Philosophy of Right was published, the conservative reaction
against the reform movement was gaining the upper hand. Hegel, who was
indirectly involved with representatives of the reform movement, tried to get
round the censors—and to preserve his position at the university—by including
some ambiguous remarks on the modern state and an unambiguous attack of
Fries in its preface. During these years, Hegel received some protection from
the reformed minister of culture Von Altenstein, to whom he owed his appoint-
ment. For a detailed account see T. Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000) ch. 10–11, and G. Heiman, “The Sources
and Significance of Hegel’s Corporate Doctrine,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy:
Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z. A. Pelczinski (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1972), 111–35. H. Klenner, “Preussische Eule oder gallischer Hahn? Hegels
Rechtsphilosophie zwischen Revolution und Reform,” in Preussische Reformen: Wir-
kungen und Grenzen, Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR
(Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1982), 125–36, argues that Hegel’s ideas concerning
the rationally structured state are compatible with the constitution proposed
by the reformers Humboldt and Stein. He refers to many elements of Hegel’s
account that deviate from the effort to reinforce an absolutist organization of
the state. See also Avineri (70, 161–75) and Wood (12–14).
19. Reason in History, 147/123; cf. 143/119–20.
20. Hegel’s use of the term Stand (estate) covers various ways in which
people with particular interests might organize themselves and have their rights
represented in local, regional, or national politics. Whereas the term estate
traditionally referred to the representative organs of the nobility and the cities
of a particular province, reformers such as Stein tried to emancipate these rep-
resentative organs from their feudal origin. Stein also tried—unsuccessfully—to
extend this reformed system of political representation to national politics. See
R. Kosselleck, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution. Allgemeines Landrecht,
Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett
Verlag, 1975) for a detailed account of these developments. Hegel basically
distinguishes between the estates belonging to civil society (social classes) and
the estates participating in national politics (cf. Philosophy of Right, §298–315,
in particular §303 Remark; “The System of Ethical Life,” 495/170).
21. Hegel notes in an “addition” that in modern times the corporations
had been abolished, since everybody was now supposed to take care of him-
self. Hegel consents that the traditional system of self-contained guilds should
not be revived. He holds, however, that modern corporations, uniting citizens
according to their trade, profession, or confession, were a necessary means to
ward off the atomism promoted by modern liberal theories (Philosophy of Right,
§255 Addition). See Pinkard, 420.
22. Philosophy of Right, §290 Addition; translation modified. Needless to

say that Hegel considers an “organic” organization of the masses to imply their
subordination to the government; hence his critique of the notion of popular
sovereignty (cf. Philosophy of Right, §279).
23. Philosophy of Right, §279, 447/319; cf. §311 Remark. At this point
Hegel distances himself from the liberal reformers who pleaded for a democratic
constitution.
24. The Philosophy of History, 534–35/452; translation modified; cf. Reason
in History, 146/122.
25. Cf. Philosophy of Right, §311 Remark.
26. Reason in History, 257/209. Cf., “But if we say that universal reason
accomplishes itself, this has of course nothing to do with individual empirical
instances; the latter may fare either well or badly, as the case may be, for the
concept has granted contingency and particularity the power to exercise their
tremendous right in the empirical sphere” (76/66; translation modified).
27. Reason in History, 256/208. In the Lectures on the History of Phi-
losophy Hegel refers to speculative science as the mode of spirit in which spirit
comprehends itself as absolute spirit. He does not say, however, that this sci-
ence has become actual in all respects. He merely remarks that his lectures have
reached the present point of view, such that there remains, for the time being,
nothing more to tell: “[T]he series of spiritual forms is . . . for the present [für
jetzt] concluded. At this point I bring this history of philosophy to a close.”
Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie III (1805–31) / Lectures on the
History of Philosophy, Vol. 3, trans. E. S. Haldane and H. Simson (Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 1995), 460–61/552. However, this end at the same
time constitutes a beginning, for Hegel expresses the hope that his lectures will
encourage his students to grasp “the spirit of the time . . . and pull it out of its
natural state, that is, of its concealment and lifelessness into the light of day”
(462/533; translation modified). Much work therefore remains to be done.
28. Philosophy of Right, 24/20; cf. §46 Remark, §185 Remark.
4
Hegel and the Logics of History
John McCumber
Hegel taught us all that one of the most important things we have
to do in order to be rational animals—perhaps the most important
thing—is comprehend our own history. We cannot be truly human
unless we understand history, not merely “from outside,” but as our
history—as a series of developments from which we have resulted and
to which we must connect by seeking to carry some of them forward
and stymie others.
This lesson is now accepted to such a degree that the refusal to
examine one’s own history regularly turns out to have a pathological
basis, as in the case of mainstream American philosophy.1 It is, in other
words, not even normal, to say nothing of rational or decent. Such is
what we might call the post-Hegelian consensus in global culture.
But if Hegel taught us that we must comprehend our own history,
there is another lesson which many people think he did not teach us,
and that is how to go about doing so. Certainly Hegel’s own view of
history, as usually viewed, is hardly a model for such comprehension. It
is what Jean-François Lyotard called a “master narrative,”2 which begins
by rejecting Africa as, literally, prehistoric; thrusts something called “the
Orient” under the juggernaut of what can only be called “colonial rea-
son”; and disposes of Hellenic and post-Hellenic Western history, that is,
all of Western history, by burying it under reams of praise. Everything
finally comes to rest in the Rector’s Office of the University of Berlin,
inhabited by Herr Doktor Hegel, “secretary to the World-Spirit.”
We can all agree, I take it, that this is not the right way to under-
stand history. I believe as well that it is not the right way to understand
Hegel. In this chapter, I will sketch what I think is the right way and
then use it to try and illuminate something Hegel knew nothing about:
the contemporary world situation.
69
70 John McCumber
Part I: Hegel without a Master Narrative
Hegel’s philosophy of history, Karl Popper to the contrary never with-

standing, is not intended to provide us with explanations for histori-
cal events. Instead, it offers us a general schema into which historical
phenomena can be fitted. What this schema purports to tell us is not
how those phenomena came to be, but what they are: which of their
features are basic and historically effective and which are merely pass-
ing contingencies. It aims to answer what Socrates recurrently identi-
fies (e.g., at Republic 354b) as the most basic kind of question: ti esti
rather than dioti.
We are all familiar with Hegel’s basic schema, for his use of it is
not limited to his philosophy of history but runs through his entire
philosophy. It is a narrative structure and tells us that anything we wish
to understand philosophically (begreifen) must be viewed as developing
in three stages:
1. It exists in simple, undifferentiated form;

2. It passes over into opposition to other things;
3. It is transformed by that opposition and returns to the form
of simple immediacy having gained a richer content.
To exhibit this narrative structure—to go through this kind of

development, or to be reconstructable as having gone through this kind
of development—is what it is, then, to be historically real for Hegel.
This narrative structure is probably derived from the Neoplatonic
movement archê—proodos—epistrophê, or on-zôê-noêsis,3 which was the
overall pattern of development for any thing. In the Phenomenology,
it is called a development from Notion (Begriff) through Experience
(Erfahrung) and back to Notion. In a more subjective vein, it is also
called the passage from Certainty through Experience (again) to Truth.
In a more “logical” vein it is referred to as a passage from positivity
to negation to negation of negation. In the Science of Logic, it is the
passage from “formal’ to “real” to “absolute.”
It is when we apply this schema to history that its true twisted genius
becomes apparent. For the fact that 2 transforms 1, that is, produces
anomalies to 1 which require that 1 become 3, means that what Hegel
has come up with is most basically a schema for things-not-fitting-in-
to-schemata. Hegel’s basic logic of history is then ironic in nature. This
is presumably what he means by characterizing philosophy, in a letter to
von Sinclair, as “nothing but a struggle against its own beginning.”4 Even
Hegel and the Logics of History 71
philosophy’s own schemata, its concepts, must be continually transformed

and modified as time goes by. It’s never the same old story.
What renders historical events, like all “real” phenomena, forever
anomalous to the Concept is the way they exist:
[I]ndeed, the Concept, the truth in itself, is one thing, and

the existence which does or does not correspond to it is
another. In finite reality, the determinations which belong to
truth appear as an externality, as a separation of that which,
in its truth, is inseparable.5
The external separation here is ultimately that of space and time,

the two empty “containers” of all natural objects. Because space and
time are empty, there is no reason for a natural object to be located
at any particular place within either of them; the entire universe could
perfectly well be three feet to the left, and twenty years older. So could
the sun. So, then, could you, insofar as you are a purely material object
(as living, historical, or geistig, you could not).
Certain things in nature simply cannot be explained, and this is what
gives rise to what Hegel calls the “impotence of nature,” its incapacity
to display the concept.6 The irony of history may in turn be viewed
as a corollary of this impotence. Nature, after all, is in us as well as
out there. It is the weak, natural side of our humanity that continually
causes us to act in selfish, stupid, and shortsighted ways, which, the
Lectures on the Philosophy of History tells us, on rare occasions advance
the human cause.7
Insofar as “finite reality” exists as a succession of moments in time,
then, it is other than the Concept—and so nonrational. Because Hegel’s
Concept is narrative in structure—the schema I mentioned earlier—this
failure of rationality is not a static mismatch between Concept and reality,
as if they were two photographs taken from different angles. Rather, the
impotence of nature means that natural things do not develop the way
the Concept does—via a continuous movement from 1 to 2 to 3:
What conducts the forward development is the inner dia-

lectic of the thought-formations. . . . What has form is
determinate. . . . But then it is something finite; and what is
finite is not true, is not what it ought to be. It contradicts
its content, the Idea; it must perish. That it can exist, of
course, means that it has the idea in it. But because it is
determinate, its form is finite and its existence is one-sided
and limited.8
72 John McCumber
At best, then, the philosophical development and the real develop-

ment run parallel to one another, so to speak, for a stretch: real things,
as Hegel puts it, “exist.” But then history surprises us, and they “per-
ish”: the real state of things diverges from the Conceptual development.9
And when they diverge, our logic may have to be revised, to take into
account the new developments.10
Once we have made the simple statement that history is ironic, that
it surprises us, no further single characterization of history is possible.
This is not to say that history is wholly illogical, that it has nothing to
do with logic—that would make it an entirely random series of episodes
and would deprive everything of what Hegel calls “existence.” Rather, the
events of history exhibit logical development from time to time. Rather
than presenting us with a single logical progression, history presents us
with a plurality of logical developments, which in surprising us force us
to revise our logic itself. History follows logics—not a logic.
Hegel’s System, though he himself applied it to history in the
form of a single “metanarrative,” thus offers resources that are to be
used, not as Hegel used, them, but on a piecemeal basis. This is not a
new view of Hegel, for each of these resources—these little conceptual
genealogies—can be approximated to what my teacher, Emil Fackenheim,
called “partial mediations.” To paraphrase something Fackenheim once
said to me: “What has Hegel left us? He has left us a whole series of
partial mediations.”
Hegel, as we all know, cannot be expounded but only interpreted.
There are many criteria by which to judge an interpretation of Hegel.
This one, as Fackenheim implied, has the merit of being useful.
Part II: Hegel and the Cold War
As Hegel himself suggested (a suggestion I will discuss in Part IV), it is

impossible to use Hegel’s schema to predict. Now we see why, and that
this failure of prediction is central to Hegel’s philosophy of history. What
the irony of history is all about, in fact, is the failure of prediction.
It is therefore quite striking that Hegel, at the age of thirty-one,
should have predicted the cold war. He did it through his Jena critique
of Fichte.
Philosophy, for Fichte, is the carrying through of a principle whose
consequences are drawn but which, once established, is never challenged.
The consequences of such a “principled” approach are at their most
problematic, for Hegel, in Fichte’s social theory. Hegel draws them most
cleanly in The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Phi-
losophy of 1802, which leans in turn on Faith and Knowledge, published

the year before. I discussed them in the Introduction to my 1993 The
Company of Words, so I will briefly summarize what I said there.11
Philosophy’s basic principle, for Fichte, is of course “the ego pos-
its itself.” What is the ego? Since the principle stated is basic, the ego
must be defined entirely in terms of it—that is, as simply that which
posits itself. This is then an empty but absolute ego, formed by abstrac-
tion from all content—an abstraction that in fact is an absolutely free
self-positing.
Philosophy for Fichte also carries through its principle on another
level, however. This is the (hardly deniable) empirical level, on which we
experience ourselves not as absolutely free but as empirical individuals
at the mercy of others, inhabiting cultures and a universe that we have
not made and which to some degree make us.
Because the principles of these two levels are absolute, Fichte
never explains their unity. The fundamental, “all-dominating principle”
engaged here is just that each side is absolutely what the other is not.12
This means, Hegel claims, that each rational being exists for Fichte in
a twofold way: as a free and rational self-positing being, and as mere
matter to be manipulated and formed. This dichotomy in rational beings
such as ourselves is a corollary of the wider “all-dominating” principle
just mentioned, and so (Hegel tells us in the Differenzscrift) it too
is absolutized: each side of us is what the other side is not, and this
dichotomy in our nature cannot be transgressed.13
Because of the absoluteness of this dichotomy, society and in par-
ticular the political realm must be founded strictly on one principle or
the other: the individual must be either a free being of infinite worth,
or mere matter. To take the latter course is to locate rationality not in
the individual but above her, in the community—more specifically in the
rational community, the state. As Faith and Knowledge puts it,
According to the principle of the system, the lawful, and

the erection of the lawful as of the state, is a being-for-self,
absolutely opposed to liveliness and individuality . . . finds
itself under absolute tyranny. The law ought to prevail [das
Recht soll geschehen] not as inner but as external freedom
of individuals, which is just their being subsumed under a
completely alien concept.14
The individual thus sinks under a mass of laws and regulations,

each rationally enacted for the greater good of the whole. Such a state,
the Differenzschrift tells us, is a “machine.”15
74 John McCumber
Also countenanced by Fichte’s system, however, is the other side

of its basic opposition, in which the individual as such is immediately
accorded infinite worth. In such a state, according to Faith and Knowledge,
morality assumes the form of “raising all moral contingencies into the
form of the concept and giving immorality [Unsittlichkeit] justification
and a good conscience.”16
This kind of social order justifies immorality because on its principles,
the only reason for doing anything is the personal arbitrary insight of
individuals, in which I pick and choose my moral principles to coincide
with my own wishes:
So, if self-determination is to come about, everything depends

on reckoning out a verdict on the preferability of one duty
to another and choosing among these conditioned duties
according to one’s best insight. . . . In this way self-determination
passes over into the contingency of insight and, with that,
into unawareness of what it is that decides a contingent
insight.17
I, as an individual, am of infinite worth; all other things have worth

only if I choose them. And since my choice is the source of all value,
it can be subject to no higher standards: it is my arbitrary whim that
determines what is good and what is bad.
Hegel’s presentation of this alternative ought to be startlingly
familiar today. For the two societies that dominated the world in the
aftermath of World War II are easily recognizable as the two approaches
Hegel has contrasted here, though blown up to enormous size and
pushed to preposterous lengths.
One of these societies was dominated by a relentlessly “rational”
state structure, which exercised control over all expression and conduct.
This Rational State built up cities and factories in the wilderness, and
prison camps as well. It discharged pollutants in the air, poisoning those
nearby in the name of those far away who needed what the polluting
factories produce. It recognized no human needs beyond the material
or economic, and its leaders were proud to refer to their followers as
“the masses.”
The contrasting society granted to each individual, no matter how
childish, ignorant, ill, or depraved, the right to determine his or her own
life. This society could not, therefore, keep its criminals and insane off
its streets. It was unable, even, to educate its young, who as individu-
als had a spectrum of “rights.” Because individual insight was the only
criterion of right and wrong, this society was incapable of uniting for a
sustained attack on any social problem. Its leaders, secure in a well-paid

individuality which they sought at all costs to preserve, grew sleeker and
more self-satisfied as the chaos around them intensified.
Each approach eventually generated its own internal opposition. The
overwhelming disciplinary apparatus of the Rational State, says the Dif-
ferenzschrift, silenced and isolated its inhabitants, until the people became
“an atomistic multitude without life, elements . . . whose connection is
endless domination”: tyranny bred the emptiest kind of individualism.18
On the other hand, reliance on individual insight leads as we saw to
“unawareness” of moral criteria, and beyond that to atrophy of moral
and political argumentation. The clash of individual standpoints on the
other society thus became more and more superficial, relativism became
the universal norm, and the individuals themselves grew more and more
homogenous, their minds effectively identical in their closure.19
Isaiah Berlin has noted that none of the great social thinkers of
history, on whose intellectual capital we continue to draw, foresaw any
of the “great ideological storms” that raged through the first half of
the twentieth century.20 But it seems that Hegel, just past his thirtieth
birthday, foresaw with frightening accuracy the ideological rigidity that
marked the cold war.
This, I take it, is a stunning victory of Hegelian thought. Given a
particular state of affairs, Hegel has shown—more than a century avant
la réalité—what it is. And what it is, most basically, is a philosophical
failure—the failure to get beyond Fichte (or at least Hegel’s Fichte). The
whole logic of the postwar era was what Hegel would call Fichtean. He
uncovered that logic, showed it to be supported by and expressed in
a certain sort of philosophy, and proposed a remedy: himself. Thus, as
the twentieth century entered its final decade, the time seemed finally
ripe for Hegel. The Hegelian reconciliation of Spirit with Nature, mind
with matter, was, at long last, on history’s agenda.
And what did we get? We got a surprise: the Rational State col-
lapsed of its own weight, and only the individualistic one was left. What
would Hegel make of this? What underlying philosophical logic—or
logics—might he call into play?
Part III: Beyond Hegel
Hegel, to be sure, does not tell us. But his thought has resources that
enable us to understand what has happened since the fall of the wall in
1989. The basic principle of my reconstruction of this will be what I
call “minimal negation,” or what Hegel called “determinate negation”:
76 John McCumber
we make only the smallest possible change in the previous stage to get
to the next one.21
The problem with the 1989 victory of closed-minded, whimsical
individualism was that it had not overcome the Fichtean opposition that
defined it. It still needed to be what the other was not—only now, the
other really was not. This meant two things:
1. The surviving society, which we may as well call the “U.S.,”

became even more what it had been, for the only difference
as far as the U.S. was concerned between post-1989 and
pre-1989 was that the U.S. now had no enemy to oppose
it.22 Changing minimally, it therefore became even more a
congeries of whimsical individuals. Of course, some national
decisions still had to be made. They too became more and
more whimsically individualistic. Because they were individu-
alistic, they needed an individual to make them, so the gov-
ernment eventually fell, arbitrarily of course, into the hands
of one individual—the Decider.
The Decider’s decisions, being basic, were not conditioned by

anything. He therefore made no effort to inform himself of the realities
of the world; indulged in no reflection on them; betrayed no educated
awareness of his or his country’s own limitations. There was no thinking
through of goals, no discussion. The Decider looked into his heart and
accomplished his mission, which was not to achieve anything but merely
to produce pure, absolute decisions, one after another.
Since any national course of action had value solely because it
had been decided upon by the Decider, a decision, once made, could
not be criticized or rethought. Decisions could only be carried out and
maintained. All courses had to be stayed.
2. But this society was still subservient to Fichtean terms in

that it still needed to be what the other society was not. This,
after all, was what had provided to the society such social
coherence as it had had. It needed an Opponent in which
all value was not posited by the individual but by something
over and above her, on a higher plane. Only this could not be
a material plane, because that was what had failed: the state
rationality of the Soviet Union had led to material catastro-
phes of many sorts. Therefore, all value had to be located still
higher—on a spiritual plane. The Opponent took the form of

a rigid, fundamentalist religious community whose laws were
all-encompassing, absolute, and unchangeable.
What resources does Hegel give us to understand the nature of

this Opponent—ti esti? If we apply Hegelian categories on the piecemeal
basis I have advocated, we can call in, first, the “Unhappy Conscious-
ness” section of the Phenomenology,23 in which individual consciousness
tries to unite with an unchangeable supersensible realm.
The Opponent is thus not an individual, but a community whose
only desire is to unite with the Unchangeable. In this community, as in
the rational state, the individual is meaningless. Indeed, the Opponent
is founded on the concept of war against the self. It is a community
of ascetics, even cave dwellers, whose only activity is submission to the
Unchangeable law. Because the Unchangeable law is unchangeable, it
is not to be found on earth. Uniting with it therefore requires one’s
death, and the Opponent is not merely an ascetic community but a
death-worshiping one. The highest form of submission is then suicide
in the name of the Unchangeable.
But we must keep changes minimal. The Opponent has developed
out of the Rational State by shifting the source of all rational value from
the nation as a whole to a divine other world. The relation of individu-
als to that world is one of submission. But this imperative is phrased
without respect to any difference that might obtain among individuals.
It would be an extra move to differentiate among individuals and restrict
submission, say, just to members of the Opponent community. All human
beings, then, must submit. Like the Rational State, the Opponent thus
seeks to bring all humanity under its control; but unlike the Rational
State, which was a being of this earth, the Opponent seeks to perfect
their submission by bringing them death.
Only it cannot achieve universal submission, because its view of
individuals is incorrect. Since in its view the only activity of an individual
is submission, it views all individuals as exactly alike. Only they are not:
humans come in many shapes and backgrounds, and so there is more to
each of them than merely an activity of submission to divine law. This
means that even submission will be carried out differently by different
people. Since submission is absolute and that which is submitted to is
unchanging, the Opponent cannot tolerate this. Any submission that is
not exactly like the submission of the Opponent must then be rejected,
and the Opponent falls into the category of what the Science of Logic
calls the “excluding One.”24
78 John McCumber
This second Hegelian resource is a logic of exclusion which bars

from a given speech community anyone who disagrees with its basic
presuppositions. It is the logic that is in play in the Phenomenology
when Hegel writes of
this vanity, which understands how to frustrate every truth

and to return from truth to itself, and which revels in this
understanding; which always knows how to dissolve all
thoughts and, instead of any content, to find only [its own]
jejune ego; is a satisfaction which must be left to itself; for
it flees the universal and seeks only Being-for-self.25
Since such exclusion can never be rational, there is no good reason

for carrying it out—and so no bad reason either. Once it begins, then,
there is no place to end. It progresses down a slippery slope leading
to civil war and, beyond that, to fatal sectarianism. Its final result is a
single person, living alone and far away (perhaps in a distant mountain
cave), conducting his own virtually private religion, rejected by his
co-religionists, his family, and everyone else who really knows him. He
has only the most temporary of communities—people who come to him
for a few months or years, but then fall out with him and go their own
ways. This person, the counterpart to the Decider, is the Submitter.
We now have a fully developed example of the irony of history.
The Land of Individualism, the Home of the Free, has become a coun-
try whose inhabitants blindly support the whimsical decisions of their
Decider. The Opponent community, founded upon utter submission
to a universally valid religious law, has become a congeries of warring
troglodytes, like the Cyclopses of Homer: toisin d’out’ agorai boulêphoroi
oute themistes (Odyssey IX 112).
This is not, of course, the only possible account of the contem-
porary situation; it is not even the only possible Hegelian account. To
assert that would be to say that the account could not be overturned
on Hegelian premises, and would deny the most basic of those premises:
that history is ironical. Still, I think that it is a Hegelian account; and if
it illuminates certain features of the contemporary historical landscape,
that is another victory for Hegel. I sense him smiling, and hope that
the twinkle in his eye is not itself ironical.
Part IV: Resolution
If I have been right so far, Hegelian thought provides categories to

understand both the cold war and today’s struggle with terrorism. Can
it go beyond and offer a tentative prediction of what will come out

of this?
Hegel would not want us to do so. He has this to say about our
ultimate future (and the deepest desire of the Submitter), death:
Mere privation, which is what death is, is not to be confounded

with the feeling of being alive, which is positive; and there
is no reason for worrying oneself about it. It is no concern
of ours whether [the future] is or is not; we are to have no
uneasiness on that account. This is the correct way to think
about the future.26
Since the future is by definition mere privation, it is essentially a

mere empty spot in our knowledge. We cannot, therefore, fill it in: we
cannot use Hegelian thought to predict. So, at least, thinks Hegel. But
he goes too far here. He may be right about death, and even about the
future; but as Heidegger shows, our future is not merely privation. It
is a concrete impending something whose nature we do not yet know:
a specific, finite future.27 If we cannot predict it with certainty, we can
at least diagnose it by looking at the instabilities in the present (Hegel
would call them “contradictions”). What are they?
The Decider occupies a unique position: as an individual, he makes
decisions that are valid for an entire society. In and of itself, this is a
contradiction: in an absolutely individualistic society, a decision should
hold only for the person who makes it. In order for the decisions of
the Decider to be different, to be valid for an entire society, there must
exist something over and above himself which makes his decisions, unlike
yours or mine, the decisions of an entire nation. And what is this?
Obviously, it is the social vehicles of communication: roads, railroads,
airlines, telephones, televisions, newspapers, the Internet, etc. Without
these, there would be no society, not even the minimal kind the Decider
rules. There would be only a large vacant space with individuals wander-
ing independently around in it. There would be no one to follow the
Decider’s decisions, and he would lose his unique position.
The Submitter, too, needs such vehicles. His excluding oneness
has placed him in total isolation—but he cannot remain totally isolated,
for he must extend the imperative of submission, and eventually death,
to all humanity. He, too, is in contradiction, and he too must resolve
that contradiction by accepting the earthly vehicles of communication.
He must use cell phones and make videotapes, and his followers must
use cars, trains, and planes in order to get close enough to the enemy
to bomb them.
80 John McCumber
And so we turn to yet a third Hegelian resource: the logic of

Grenze, of the border zone that separates, yet connects, something and
its other—and becomes the basis for both of them.28 Let us call this
border zone the “communicative infrastructure” of the planet: the means
of transportation and communication. As a Grenze, it both connects
and separates the Decider and the Submitter. And it is more basic than
both of them—for since each must be what the other is not, they can
exist only insofar as they are somehow connected; the infrastructure is
what connects them.
It is, then, the infrastructure in which the Decider and the Sub-
mitter find their “common ground”—one side of our fourth Hegelian
resource, the logic of ground in the Science of Logic.29 But the other side
of that is also present: in this common ground they “go to ground” in
the German sense of zugrunde Gehen: they perish. For the infrastructure
is incompatible with both of them. It is at once the condition of their
possibility and their impossibility. They must use it—but they cannot
keep it.
Creating and maintaining the world’s communicative infrastruc-
ture is an enormous enterprise. It requires social cohesion, reflection,
information, and all the other things of which the Decider wants no
part at all. Hence, the Decider flies around and calls people up, he goes
on television to communicate his decisions to society; but all around
him the infrastructure is deteriorating. Roads are rotting, bridges are
collapsing, high-speed trains are unknown, the Internet is delivered far
more slowly than in other countries and in far fewer places. It all means
nothing to the Decider. Entire cities disappear under floodwaters, and
the Decider barely notices.
The Submitter has a different problem. It is not that the infra-
structure as it relates to him is rotting away beneath his feet, for that
would presuppose that he had accepted it in the first place. He cannot
do this, because the infrastructure is geared to the use of individuals.
This is what distinguishes it from the factories and show projects of the
Rational State. Instead of a factory to produce one predetermined kind
of good, or a “Palace of the People” to bring the prescribed culture to
the masses, the communicative infrastructure is set up for individuals to
use as they see fit: I can ride on the highway or take the train as I please;
I can dial any number I choose on the phone; and so on. The Submitter
cannot accept this at all; he rides on animals, lives in caves, and uses the
communicative infrastructure only to bring death to others.
In order to appropriate their own ground—in order to appropriate
the infrastructure—the Decider and the Submitter would have to be
other than they are: they would have to abandon their basic principles
of arbitrary decision and divine submission. Each of them, to resume a
quote from Part I, “is not what it ought to be. It contradicts its con-
tent, the Idea; it must perish.” Both the Decider and the Submitter are
doomed, over the long term, because they cannot be what they are and
still accommodate to what they both need. The future thus belongs to
their common ground, the infrastructure.
But according to a fifth Hegelian resource, the infrastructure will
at some point cease to be an “infra” structure, an undifferentiated and
indistinct background formation, and “pass forward into existence”: it
must come forward as a distinct entity, a Sache, in opposition to what
else is there.30 At that point, the infrastructure will show up as a cohe-
sive community of its own—with modern airports, high-speed trains,
cell phones, and superconnectivity. If the previous paragraph is correct
this cannot come to pass in the United States or in the Middle East as
they are now constituted, but there are two obvious candidates: Europe
and China.
Consider: an officer worker in Shanghai goes to the bathroom on
the eighty-fifth floor of an office tower, flushes the toilet, and washes
her hands. The water from the toilet and the water from the sink flow
into two different municipal sewage systems, one leading to a purification
plant and the other to a water system used for things such as watering
lawns and washing cars. For Shanghai has three different sewage systems;
no American city has more than two.
Or consider: a lawyer in Paris finishes work at five p.m. and heads
for the subway. She lives at the other end of France, in Aix-en-Provence,
but she will be home for supper; the subway goes direct to the bullet
train, which traverses the country in less than three hours.
Or consider: a businessman in Munich goes to the park to eat
his lunch. While eating his sandwich, he downloads some documents,
works on them, and e-mails them to his boss in Prague; his computer
is wirelessly linked to a satellite.
Such infrastructural developments, except perhaps for the final one,
are no more likely in the United States than they are in the mountains
of Afghanistan. But they exist today, along with many others like them,
in Europe and in China.
Hegel famously said that a Volk, a people, appears only once in
history. Europe has been there all along, but not as a Volk, China,
according to Hegel, has been a unified Volk as long as there has been
a Chinese state; but he might be willing to say that it has changed so
much in the last century that it is really not the same Volk at all.
82 John McCumber
But I think he would be even more willing to say that he was

wrong; that in the shapes of China and Europe, history, once again,
will surprise us all.
Notes
1. Cf. my Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000).
2. Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowl-
edge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massoumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984), 27–31.
3. Cf. Pierre Hadot, “Être, Vie, Pensée chez Plotin et avant Plotin,”
Entretiens Hardt V (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1960) 107–37.
4. Hegel, letter to Sinclair of early 1813, in Hegel, Briefe von und an
Hegel, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 4 vols., 1952–1960) II 4
(#218); Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1984), 292.
5. All references, unless otherwise noted, will be to Hegel, Werke, ed. Eva
Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 20 vols. 1970–71)
XIII 138; English translations will be given after the slash; that of this volume,
Hegel, Aesthetics, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 vols.
with consecutive pagination, 1975), 100.
6. On the impotence of nature cf. Emil Fackenheim, The Religious Dimen-
sion in Hegel’s Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 109n, 112–15.
7. Werke XII, 35/ Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans.
Leo Rauch (Indianapolis: Hackett 1988), 24.
8. Hegel, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, Hrsg. Johannes
Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner, 1940), 126/ Hegel, Introduction to the Lectures
on the History of Philosophy, trans. T. M. Knox and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985), 94.
9. Cf. Werke XII, 81–85/60–65; translation altered.
10. On the revisability of Hegel’s System, see my The Company of Words:
Hegel, Language, and Systematic Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1993), 127f, 165f, 177f.
11. McCumber, The Company of Words, 15–18.
12. Werke II, 413f/ Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, trans. Walter Cerf
and H. S. Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), 172.
Reinhard Lauth argues that Hegel is wrong to claim that Fichte conflates the
two levels; indeed, Fichte himself denied this doubleness, claiming that his
Wissenschaftslehre never claimed that the ego as found and perceived was its
principle: the principle of Fichte’s philosophy was instead the ego as a free, a
priori construction. But Hegel’s deeper point remains: even a “pure” ego, if
used as the sort of principle that Fichte uses it as, must be at once plenary and
defective. Reinhard Lauth, Hegel vor der Wissenschaftslehre (Wiesbaden: Franz

Steiner Verlag, 1987), 146f.
13. Hegel, Werke II 81; Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s
System of Philosophy, trans. Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1977), 144.
14. Werke II, 426f/184.
15. Ibid., 87/148f.
16. Ibid., 426f/184.
17. Ibid., 89f/151.
18. Ibid., 187/148.
19. Cf. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1987); the racism and sexism of Bloom’s account of higher
education should not blind us to its merits.
20. Isaiah Berlin,”On the Pursuit of the Ideal,” New York Review of Books,
March 17, 1988, 11.
21. For a discussion of minimal negation see my The Company of Words,
161–62.
22. In the words of Soviet Americanologist Georgi Arbatov: “We are
going to deprive you of an enemy.” Time, May 23, 1988.
23. Werke III, 163–78/Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
24. Werke V, 190–92/Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New
York: Humanities Press, 1976), 170–72.
25. Werke III, 75/52.
26. Werke XIX, 331; Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans.
E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities
Press, 3 vol. 1974) II, 307; translation altered.
27. Cf. my “Just in Time: Towards a New American Philosophy,” Con-
tinental Philosophy Review 1, no. 34 (2003): 61–80.
28. Werke V, 131–39/122–29.
29. Werke VI, 82–113/444–69.
30. Werke, 119–23/474–78.
PART II
History, Geography, and Race

5
Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History

Eurocentric?
Andrew Buchwalter
Of the many criticisms leveled against Hegel, one of the most persistent
and least contested concerns his purported Eurocentrism.1 This criticism
is directed with special force at his theory of history. Not only does
Hegel’s philosophy of world history have as its principal subject matter
events and developments largely specific to European social, political,
cultural, and religious traditions. World history itself is presented as a
teleological process culminating in an affirmation and even apotheosis of
European or, as Hegel says, Christian-Germanic societies. True, Hegel
does include in his account of world history the cultures of non-Western
societies. He is said to do so, however, not because he is committed to
a genuinely inclusive account of world history but only because such
cultures are viewed as germinally possessing traits that find realized
expression in the cultures of modern Western societies. In the words of
one critic: Hegel “goes so far as to think of every culture as a means
in the furtherance of the ultimate goal that, of course, is, for Hegel,
the European-Christian culture.”2
In what follows, I shall not dispute the presence of a centrally
Western or even Eurocentric focus to Hegel’s conception of history.
Nor do I deny that his writings on history may exhibit a certain
Eurochauvinism and what has been called “a certain prejudice against
non-European cultures.”3 What I do challenge is the assumption that
Hegel’s idea or “logic” of world history is itself Eurocentric, at least in
the pejorative sense commonly associated with that term. My argument
revolves around the following six theses: (1) while Hegel does fashion
a developmental account of world history, he does so not through an
87
88 Andrew Buchwalter
objectivist depiction of actual historical phenomena but through a norma-

tive reconstruction that challenges such depictions, including those that
might assign special status to the empirical development of the West;
(2) while Hegel’s account of history does make systematic reference to
existing empirical realities, it does so not because it abandons a norma-
tive focus but because normative reconstruction itself takes the form of
reality’s self-reconstruction; (3) while Hegel’s account of history does
assign priority to Western cultural and political arrangements, it does so
in a way that also challenges one-sided views of European modernity,
while also fostering an openness to other cultures; (4) while Hegel’s
approach to history articulates a singular logic of development, that logic
not only accommodates but even requires plurality in accounts of history
itself; (5) Hegel’s normative account of history includes a moral-practical
dimension designed to cultivate in his contemporaries commitment to
the practical realization of freedom in the world; and (6) appreciation
of the moral-practical component of Hegel’s account of history supports
not only alternate accounts of historical development but a form of civic
engagement committed to interculturalism and to a notion of globality
more inclusive than that associated with Eurocentric positions.
Thesis 1
Conventional understandings notwithstanding, Hegel’s philosophy of

history proffers no objectivist assertions about the empirical course of
historical events. It does not make philosophical claims about existing
historical phenomena, depict law-like regularities in the historical pro-
cess, or trace indwelling patterns of development. None of these efforts,
central though each may be to traditional theorizing about history,
are features of Hegel’s “philosophical history of the world.”4 Indeed,
to the extent that Hegel does express himself on the actual course of
historical events, he does so reluctantly5 and with skepticism. Far from
exhibiting any overarching unity or purpose, history as convention-
ally apprehended is more accurately characterized as the haphazard
and pointless succession of individual cultures. Hegel, of course, does
advance a developmental account of world history, yet he does so not
in depicting some preexisting order of things but in rationally recon-
structing empirically received phenomena.6 While proceeding from data
obtained historiographically (we “take history as it is”),7 a philosophical
account of world history nonetheless restates what might otherwise seem
without meaning so that it may be construed as a process expressing
Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History Eurocentric? 89
as a developmental purpose. Adverting to the “simple idea of reason,”

the philosophical approach refashions empirical phenomena so as to
vindicate the supposition “that reason governs the world, and that
world history is therefore a rational process.”8 As he also writes, if not
unambiguously: “Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that
it in turn assumes a rational aspect.”9
That Hegel’s philosophy of history may take the form of a philo-
sophical reconstruction is certainly no evidence that it is not also an
account of a logic inherent in existing historical phenomena. Thinkers
such as Marx10 and Habermas11 have employed reconstructive tools just
to expose an underlying logic inaccessible to conventional analysis. For
Hegel, however, rational reconstruction has a different function. In
keeping with his idealist ontology, reconstruction serves to constitute
reality itself. Consonant with the general method of the Realphilosophie,
its task is to rework what is obtained empirically (Dasein) in terms
of conceptual categories (Begriffe), and thereby generate the actuality
(Wirklichkeit) of objects themselves. Rational reconstruction operates
not by revealing an order beneath the welter of historical phenomena,
but by constituting world history in its genuine nature or “true being.”
Philosophical history, Hegel writes, is at once the narrative account of
history and history itself, the res gestas and the rerum gestarum. The
“object” of philosophical world history is “not general reflections about
history . . . but world history itself.”12
For many it is precisely this idealism that reveals the problematic
nature of Hegel’s account of history. Apart from exemplifying the specula-
tive hypostatizations first ridiculed by left-Hegelians, it appears to bolster
the view that Hegelian historiography is part of a self-serving metaphysics
employed to fashion modern European or “Christian-Germanic” culture
as the triumphant culmination of global development. Yet again this view
misconstrues Hegel’s position. Though the philosophy of history, like
the Realphilosophie in general, is part of a reconstructive ontology, that
ontology has a decidedly evaluative function. Indeed, it can be called a
“normative ontology,”13 an account of reality that is critical while also
devoid of the abstract moralizing anathema to Hegel. Hegel himself speaks
of its “transfigurative” nature: “Philosophy . . . transfigures reality, which
appears to be unjust, into the rational, showing it as something . . . with
which reason can be satisfied.”14 The task of a reconstructive ontology
of history is not to present a purified endorsement of existing condi-
tions but to proffer a transfigured account committed to demonstrating
concretely what is deficient in existing reality and how the latter might
appear when purged of its adventitious attributes.
Thesis 2
To be sure, Hegel does not fashion philosophical history as a normative

ideal abstractly juxtaposed to the empirical course of events. Any such
juxtaposition of reason and reality is alien to a thinker whose central
aim is to surmount just such oppositions. It is also foreign to the idea
of philosophical historiography itself. While Hegel does claim that the
philosophical historian proceeds from the assumption that history is
rational, this assumption is merely a “hypothesis” or “presupposition”
that must be elaborated in explicating the subject matter itself. If the
philosophical historian proceeds from the “simple idea” that reason rules
the world, this is an idea whose “proof is to be found in the study of
world history itself.”15
Still, the fact that philosophical world history is intertwined with
the actual course of events does not detract from its reconstructive or
“transfigurative” character. On the contrary, in linking the validity of his
account to a historical process, Hegel only underscores the reconstructive
nature of the undertaking. What characterizes a philosophical study of
world history is precisely the process by which historical reality subjects
itself to normative reconstruction. If Hegel’s normative ontology seeks
to establish the “true being” of an entity, that is achieved not simply
in conjoining existence and concept but—in line with his equation of
truth with spirit—in the process by which an existing substance becomes
subject for itself. The point is central to Hegel’s account of philosophical
history as a history of the realization of freedom—“the progress in the
consciousness of freedom.”16
Hegel’s determination to construe philosophical history as a history
of freedom flows from his intention to view history rationally, for reason
here connotes just that which is self-determining, that is, that able to
account for its own foundations. Accordingly, the task of a normative
account of world history is to assess empirical history from the stand-
point of the degree to which it realizes the principle of freedom. This
means that a rational approach to history regards received developments
from the perspective of their capacity to contribute to a societal order
ideally characterized by, inter alia, commitment to individual rights and
liberties; republican political institutions; and a citizenry that reflexively
identifies with its political institutions and exhibits the civic virtue needed
to sustain them.17 At the same time, however, a history of freedom can-
not be understood merely as a normative undertaking, a philosophical
statement of what might count as such a history. If nothing else, this
approach contravenes the idea of freedom itself. Understood as selfhood
in otherness, freedom, for Hegel, cannot abide dichotomy, be it between

thought and being, subject and object, or reason and reality. To assert
the claims of freedom against received historical phenomena is also to
explicate the conditions for their realization in externally existent real-
ity. Yet a history of the concrete realization of freedom itself cannot be
presented as a mere theoretical construct; it cannot be a third-person
account that has reality just for an external observer, one valid only “in
itself.” If a history of freedom is validated in reality itself, it must attain
reality for the agents that comprise social historical reality. It must dem-
onstrate how what is free “in itself” or “for us” can also be so regarded
on a first-person basis as well, that is, for the subject matter itself. In
short, freedom is realized only to the degree individuals know and
understand themselves as free. On Hegel’s view of freedom, however,
individuals know themselves as free only to the degree that they can
find and identify themselves in the external circumstances that condition
their existence. In an account of history, such knowledge is achieved
as individuals shape and reshape institutions and other circumstances
of their shared existence to accommodate their self-conceptions, just as
self-conceptions are reshaped to accommodate external realities. In this
sense, history qua history of freedom is a process of self-reconstruction,
one in which the process by the matter or substance of history reshapes
itself in accord with the principle of freedom.
Thus, while Hegel does regard philosophical history as a normative
undertaking, it is not one in which norms not abstractly contraposed
to the domain of empirical reality. Such an approach would be at vari-
ance with the idea of a history of freedom itself, which, focused on the
unity of concept and existence, must chart the concrete development
and realization of freedom in empirical reality itself. Yet the fact that
history takes an empirical dimension, the fact that it must take the
form of a “phenomenological” account of freedom’s realization, is not
also to say that it is not a reconstructive undertaking.18 Hegel’s point,
rather, is that a phenomenological account of the history of freedom,
focused as it is on the progress in the self-consciousness of freedom,
is also one in which the empirical reality subject restates and further
shapes itself from the perspective of freedom and rationality. Here in
particular, the phenomenal course of history is one with its concep-
tual narration. Hegel may abandon an abstractly normative approach
to history for one charting freedom’s actual self-development, not,
however, because he rejects normative reconstruction but because a
concrete history of freedom requires that reality subject itself to nor-
mative reconstruction.
Thesis 3
Critics of Hegel will likely find little compelling in these observations.

Even if his history remained a reconstructive undertaking, this would
presumably count for little if reconstruction itself served to champion
European cultural and political arrangements. Indeed, philosophical history
presented as normative reconstruction may be even more objectionable
than its descriptive-explanatory counterparts. It is one thing to make
assertions about world history based on contestable empirical claims
about the preeminence of Western practices and institutions. It is another
to advance an account of history that recasts empirical reality in a way
that presents Western culture as the very culmination of world history,
one that serves as a normative standard against which others are judged
and to which they are expected aspire.
In fact, Hegel’s philosophical history does ascribe a certain priority
to European cultural and political arrangements. It does so, moreover,
not just as a part of philosophy that, understood as its own time appre-
hended in thought, attends first and foremost to the parameters of its
own cultural circumstances. Hegel also ascribes normative significance to
Europe, European modernity especially, which for him instantiates the
highest expression of the human spirit—the notion of freedom understood
as bei sich Selbst sein. The account is of course familiar. The concept
of freedom emerged politically with the Greek city state and culturally
with Christianity. It found generally realized cultural expression with
modern Christianity, Protestantism in particular. And it found political
realization with modern constitutional polities, committed equally to the
right of subjective freedom, political autonomy, republican liberty, and
the general idea that political institutions must conform to standards of
rational justification. Nor is the European contribution to the realization
of freedom just a moral-political matter. The idea of rational justifica-
tion itself—the autonomy of reason—is just the theoretical expression
of a notion of freedom whose articulation is of Western provenance.
For Hegel, European modernity certified a notion of rational legitimacy
according to which what heretofore may have been validated through
tradition, custom, and other received considerations is now to be justi-
fied by rational argument alone. “It is a great obstinacy, the kind of
obstinacy which does honor to human beings, that they are unwilling
to acknowledge in their attitudes anything which has not been justified
by thought—and this obstinacy is the characteristic property of the
modern age.”19
Certainly Hegel does not claim that the notion of autonomy has
application only to Western or modern European societies. He asserts
that this principle, together with that of autonomous self-reflexivity,

possesses universal standing and denotes features implicit in all cultures.
Rational autonomy is a concept that is “inherent in the essence of every
man.”20 He makes this point even when detailing the ethnic and racial
differences of peoples: “Man is implicitly rational; herein lies the pos-
sibility of equal justice for all men and the futility of a rigid distinction
between races.”21 Appreciation of this point is important given current
tendencies to construe Hegel’s cultural philosophy in racial and even
racist terms.22 It is also important as it demonstrates the universal exten-
sion of his conceptions of freedom and reason.
Still, whatever generally Hegel may say about the universal
nature of these concepts, he maintains that their realization is specific
to the Western experience. For one thing, he claims that the idea of
freedom first “came into the world”23 with the revealed religion of
Christianity, whose notion of the interpenetration of finite and infinite
established “the self-sufficient and inherently infinite personality of the
individual, the principle of subjective freedom.”24 In addition, freedom
proper—“the self consciousness of freedom”25—is something specific to
European modernity. Not only does modern Western culture formally
institutionalize legal and political structures based on the principle of
freedom; with its differentiated accounts of thought and being, subject
and other, self and other, it also furnishes the bifurcations required for
the form of self-objectification needed for any explicit self-consciousness
of freedom.26 Moreover, modern developments fashion a social world
in which consciousness of freedom becomes the defining principle of
social life itself. Cultural consciousness of the “intrinsic value of sub-
jectivity”27 itself becomes the “form of the world” itself, shaping all
aspects of human life, from the legal, moral, economic, and political
to the aesthetic, emotional, and religious as well.28 All are respects in
which, for Hegel, “[t]he greatness of our age consists in the fact that
freedom, the distinctive feature of spirit whereby it is at home with
itself, is recognized.”29
Yet if Hegel does assign normative pride of place to Western notions
of freedom and rationality, his account of history, precisely in its norma-
tive character, also questions contemporary articulations of these notions.
He would challenge the type of narrow, self-satisfied understandings
of European modernity evident in thinkers as diverse as Fukuyama30
and Rorty.31 This follows from the general structure of his philosophy
of freedom, whose distinction between existentially realized freedom,
“Objective Spirit,” and fully self-apprehending freedom, “Absolute Spirit,”
bars ratifying any historically existent state of affairs as freedom’s full
realization. More importantly, the principle of social-political freedom
infusing world history is not fully represented in modern societies, how-

ever much they might idealize the latter. Indeed, measured against the
“self-consciousness of freedom,”32 modern life is easily characterized by
deficiencies in concretizing freedom, as the economic and administrative
imperatives of modern societies undermine the very notions of freedom
they purport to defend. Finally, Hegel’s own articulation of what counts
as realized freedom is at variance with its conventional modern manifes-
tations. Liberty for him is intertwined with concepts of mutuality, social
membership, and communal virtue—concepts more akin to Asian and
African accounts than Western counterparts.33
True, unlike some critics of Western modernity, Hegel’s critique
and his proposed alternatives remain within the ambit of Western reason
itself. They are advanced not as radical dismissals but as internal criticisms,
committed to realizing more fully the claims of Western reason itself.
Not only is his communitarianism presented as an immanent develop-
ment of modern notions of freedom and liberty; its proper articulation
itself depends on incorporating those notions. Yet this does not under-
mine Hegel’s challenge to one-sided notions of Western conceptions of
autonomy. In his view the only proper challenge is one that confronts
an object with its own claims. Thus, a rational reconstruction of modern
notions of liberty—as his transition from civil society to political com-
munity demonstrates—must take the form of a societal self-reconstruction
on the part of individuals defined by those liberties.
Hegel’s criticism of a narrow understanding of modern freedom also
flows from his particular understanding of the autonomous character of
modern societies. In keeping with his definition of spirit, Hegel claims
that what characterizes a free society is not just that it accommodates
institutions that underwrite individual and collective liberty but that a
people also understands itself as free. This means, inter alia, that a people
can claim autonomy—it can claim the status of a Volksgeist—only to the
degree that it routinely reassesses the relationship between norms, prac-
tices, and institutions that shapes and defines its identity. Only through
such regular self-reimaging can a people hope to remain the source of
conditions defining it. Yet such self-reflection is never complete. Because
the self, be it of an individual or a culture, can never fully grasp itself,
qua subject, in the act of self-comprehension, every such act is necessar-
ily partial and one-sided. Likewise, every act of self-comprehension, in
seeking to be authoritative, is compelled to repeat the process, continu-
ally seeking anew the closure its nature nonetheless denies. And to the
degree that it is repeated, every new act of self-comprehension propels
the self beyond itself, to a different and presumably more encompass-
ing, if no less unstable, articulation of its identity. Any affirmation
of autonomous identity is inevitably an assertion of nonidentity and

self-transcendence. Hegel makes the point with regard to the experience
of the individual consciousness, ever condemned to “suffer . . . violence
at its own hands.”34 But it is also applicable to accounts of cultural and
societal identity. Referring to the historical succession of Volksgeistern,
Hegel writes: “The history of spirit is its own deed; for spirit is only
what it does, and its deed is to make itself . . . the object of its own
consciousness, and to comprehend itself in its interpretation of itself to
itself. This comprehension is its being and principle, and the completion
of an act is at the same time its alienation and transition.”35
Thus, while Hegel claims that European modernity represents the
world historical realization of the principle of freedom, that principle,
far from endorsing as definitive the structures of European modernity,
only attests to the need for their self-transcendence. The autonomous
realization of a culture or an epoch itself is fulfilled “by effectuating a
transition to . . . a new phase and a new spirit.”36 Any culture, including
that represented by Europe, sustains itself only in surpassing itself.37
It may be objected that while Hegel does ascribe a dynamic and
self-transcending dimension to European culture, he does so not in
the spirit of, say, cross-cultural understanding and global openness but
to undergird Europe’s imperialist and expansionist tendencies. Modern
notions of freedom, identified by Hegel with the European spirit itself,
are predicated on an appropriative attitude to the other. The “infinite
drive for knowledge” that infuses reason’s claim to autonomy is not
satisfied until all that is alien can be deemed its own determination.
“The principle of the European spirit is . . . self-conscious reason which
is confident that for it there can be no insuperable barrier and which
therefore takes an interest in everything in order to become present to
itself therein.”38
Even here, however, Hegel is no crude apologist for Western
expansionism. His commitment to the universal reach of freedom should
not be construed as support for a Napoleonic mission civilisatrice gone
global. Instead, the infinite drive characteristic of modern principles of
freedom and rationality is not only constrained by but fulfilled in rec-
ognition of the autonomy of the other. The self may seek to find itself
in the other, but that self-location is itself possible only to degree that
it not only recognizes the other but obtains the other’s recognition. He
makes the point with regard to European colonialism, claiming that the
“liberation of colonies itself proves to be of the greatest advantage to
the mother state, just as the emancipation of the slaves is of greatest
advantage to the master.”39 He says the same of the European spirit
itself, which “opposes the world to itself, makes itself free of it, but
in turn annuls this opposition, takes its other, the manifold, back into
itself, in its unitary nature.”40 At least in principle, the European spirit
is a principle not of domination but mutuality.41 What Hegel says of
the individual self is applicable to the relationship of communities as
well: “[T]he concrete return of me into me in externality is that I,
the infinite self-relation, . . . have the existence of my personality in the
being of other persons, in my relation to them, and in my recognition
by them, which is thus mutual.”42
Those critical of the Eurocentric character of Hegel’s philosophy of
history may focus less, however, on cross-cultural dialogue than on his
account of the relationship of earlier stages of development to history’s
presumed final culmination in “Christian-Germanic” societies. It is here
that Hegel appears to assert that such cultures have value, not in them-
selves, but only as a means to the realize a modern social order. Yet
this view also misrepresents the very idea of a developmental account
of freedom. A history of freedom cannot regard individual cultures as
mere tools needed to realize a final end. At least as regards those fea-
tures of a culture distinctly expressive of the principle of spirit—Hegel
names “morality, ethics, and religiosity”—these have an “infinite right”
and must be assigned intrinsic value.43 Central to a history of freedom
is the proposition that earlier cultures must be valorized as autonomous,
as ends in themselves rather than mere stepping stones for the realiza-
tion of a later stage.44
To be sure, this is not to suggest that Hegel seeks to champion
the irreducible and self-sufficient uniqueness of an earlier culture. As
already suggested, cultural identity, for Hegel, is not a wholly indigenous
property but one achieved only through reference to other cultures, to
those—future cultures included—alien to itself. Moreover, cultural identity
itself depends on the availability of institutional structures allowing for
genuinely collective processes of self-interpretation and self-definition—
and these for Hegel are most fully developed in modern constitutional
societies. Yet if in this sense Hegel does ascribe historical superiority
to modern societies, he does so not to denigrate the claims of earlier
cultures but to accommodate their realization. Hegel’s critics are not
wrong to assert that on his view an earlier culture can serve as a means
to realize a social order understood as the endpoint of history. But it
is also the case that a higher stage itself serves as a means to actualize
more fully a principle of identity associated with earlier culture.45 In this
regard, “the relation of a mere means to an end disappears.”46
In the same way that Hegel claims that the past cannot be tossed
aside in the march of history, he also claims that the historical present
depends for its own reality on recourse to the past. Directed to the
self-consciousness of freedom, philosophical history culminates not just in

the realization of free institutions but in the self-awareness of individu-
als as free. Self-conscious freedom, however, cannot take the form of
an internal state or a mere subjective phenomenon. Rooted in the idea
of selfhood in otherness, freedom requires that individuals recognize
themselves in the objective conditions of their existence. This means,
inter alia, that self-conscious freedom is also the historical conscious-
ness of freedom. Autonomous self-consciousness involves the process
by which a people locates itself with regard to the historical traditions
that always already shape it,47 affirming its debt to a historical legacy
even as it refashions that legacy so as to claim a distinctive identity of
its own. For Hegel, cultural self-definition is a process of internalization
(Er-innnerung), an appropriation of a received heritage that simultane-
ously recalls the heritage itself.48 Without historical reference, the present
is an incomplete abstraction; it “cannot understand itself and develop an
integrated consciousness without reference to the past.”49
Thesis 4
Even if one acknowledges that Hegel’s is a nuanced account of world

history that eschews any apotheosis of modern European culture, his
view as a whole may be said to articulate a singular and even unilinear
structure that would seem to preclude alternative accounts, especially
those that may lie outside the Western cultural context. And indeed his
theory does give expression to a specific inner logic of historical devel-
opment. Yet to say that world history is governed by a developmental
logic is not also to say that history itself is incapable of assuming alter-
nate forms and iterations. On the contrary, openness to diversity is not
only accommodated but even mandated by his view. This point can be
appreciated by noting the degree to which developmental world history
is for Hegel a history of spirit.
Hegel’s history of spirit is conventionally construed in theological
terms.50 On his view, though, such a history instantiates first and fore-
most the principle of self-reflexive subjectivity that informs spirit in all
its manifestations. For a reconstructive account of history, this principle
is significant in multiple respects. It defines history’s subject matter
(political communities), historical dynamism (surmounting self-reflexive
incompleteness), historical development (simultaneous negation and
preservation of one cultural principle in another), and history’s very
purpose (deepening human self-comprehension). But subjectivity is also
important as it accommodates contingency and diversity in an account
of historical development. As the articulation of self-reflexive subjectiv-

ity, spirit affirms the principle of bei sich Selbst sein. Yet this principle
requires that spirit find expression in what is other and alien to itself—in
the circumstances that envelop any account of historical experience. As
a history of spirit, a “universal” account of historical development must
also affirm particularity and contingency. In this regard, Hegel, display-
ing affinities to Montesquieu, asserts that historical development has
meaning and reality only with reference to specific climatic, geographi-
cal, anthropological, and cultural conditions, among others. Indeed, he
defines history itself as just the shape of spirit assumes in the form of
particular events and occurrences: “die Geschichte [ist] die Gestaltung
des Geistes in Form des Geschenens.”51 And because contingent circum-
stances are endlessly variable, so too—here Hegel displays affinities to
Herder—are the accounts of historical development and the specific
shapes of spirit expressed through them. “Since history is the process
whereby spirit assumes the shape of events and is of immediate natural
reality, the stages of its development are present as immediate natural
principles, constituting a plurality of separate entities.”52
To be sure, as a history of spirit world history remains first and
foremost a history of freedom rather than nature; at issue is self-de-
termination, not external determination. Indeed, proper to a history
of freedom is just the purgation of the forms of heteronomous deter-
mination associated with empirical contingency. Even here, however,
world history on Hegel’s account affirms circumstantial contingency.
Qua selfhood in otherness, freedom can never be articulated abstractly,
in juxtaposition to forms of external determination. Rather—and here
Hegel opposes Kant and Fichte—it can express self-determination, it
can defuse external conditioning, only when it can be said to affirm
itself in the circumstances that might otherwise constrain it. Here, too,
freedom is unintelligible as a mere concept, but requires realization in
external reality as well. In addition, attention to contingency inheres in
the very idea of a history of the consciousness of freedom. A people
is self-consciously free—again in line with the notion of freedom as bei
sich Selbst sein—only to the degree that individuals apprehend themselves
in the circumstances specific to the conditions of their existence. Here,
too, freedom is relative to the conditions surrounding its expression.
And since these circumstances are endlessly varied, a philosophical world
history “mediated by consciousness and will”53 will also assume varied
forms relative to the diverse conditions of its expression.
Hegel’s point, though, is not just that an already clarified and vali-
dated principle of development assumes different manifestations according
to changing contextual circumstances. It is also that the embodiment
process defines and often generates the principles themselves. Such is

certainly the case with the concept of freedom. World history is the
history of the consciousness of freedom, but what freedom is is itself
defined and redefined according to conditions relative to particular
circumstances. The process by which the concept of freedom is histori-
cally realized is also one in which “the concept itself . . . is modified.”54
Moreover, since a history of the consciousness of freedom advances to
the degree that one culture appropriates, reworks, and transfigures a
received legacy, the process of development is itself intertwined with
the specific circumstances defining the reality and self-understanding of
a particular culture. World history, for Hegel, may remain a singular
and even unilinear history of spirit, but that process is not thereby
contraposed to the particularity and variety of empirical reality. Rather,
developmental world history itself incorporates difference, instantiating
“the differentiation of . . . spirit within itself.”55
In recent years much discussion has been devoted to the concept of
“alternative modernities.”56 To the extent that this discussion thematizes
diverse types of modernity,57 Hegel would be an unlikely proponent. For
him modernity—and his theory of history is also an account of moder-
nity—expresses a uniform logic, depicting development of a concept of
spirit whose structures derives from his logic and metaphysics. But Hegel
does not thereby claim that a developmental account of modernity can-
not assume multiple forms and expressions. Multiple accounts flow from
appreciation of how history—tellingly fashioned as world rather than
universal history—requires empirical diversity for its concrete articulation.
Hegel himself advances a conception of history that forefronts European
considerations. And a Eurocentric bias may attach to any account rooted
in notions of freedom, spirit, and subjectivity as derived from the Western
philosophical tradition. Still, appreciation of the nuanced nature of his
account of history reveals an openness to alternative accounts, including
those that supplement his own Western orientation.
Thesis 5
I have argued that Hegel’s philosophy of history, far from serving as a

positivistic apotheosis of the existing realities of Europe and European
modernity, is advanced rather as part of a normative reconstruction, one
that, while acknowledging the achievements of the West, also represents
a challenge to any narrow understanding of those achievements. This
point can be further developed, however, by regarding the philosophy of
history as much as a normative-practical as a normative-theoretical under-
taking. As does the Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s Philosophy of History has

a pedagogical dimension. This is so not just because it was prepared as
lectures for university students, but because, like the practical philosophy
of which it is a part, it was intended to “cultivate and shape the civic
disposition”58 of members of his audience. Directed to students who, given
the then current nature of German society and the German university
system, were expected to assume positions of leadership in society, the
philosophy of history was conceived in part as an effort in civic educa-
tion designed to exhort the public engagement needed to further realize
the principle of freedom whose evolution is normatively sketched in the
account of history. In publicly challenging “the cultural prejudices of
the age”59—e.g., apolitical notions of Protestant liberty, egoist views of
individual freedom, bureaucratic notions of legal authority, institution-
alist conceptions of law, traditionalist conceptions of community, and,
not least, exclusionary notions of national sovereignty—Hegel sought to
inculcate in his audience appreciation of the desirability of further real-
izing a notion of freedom understood as selfhood in otherness, thereby
encouraging individuals to participate in the efforts required to promote
that realization.60 Concluding one set of lectures, he states: “It is my
desire that this history . . . should contain for you a summons to grasp
the spirit of the time, which is present in us by nature, and—each in his
own place—consciously to bring it from its natural condition, i.e., from
its lifeless seclusion, into the light of day.”61 Not unlike Kant’s philosophy
of history,62 also a history of freedom, Hegel’s is as much practical as
theoretical philosophy and remains dependent on the moral cultivation
of its addressees for its reality and final validity. In practical as well as
theoretical terms, a history of the self-consciousness of freedom assumes
objectivity in its normative reconstruction.
The point may be made more concrete by briefly considering Hegel’s
account of civil servants, the chief players in his treatment of executive
power. The corps of civil servants, “the most conspicuously educated
class,”63 possesses a special relation to university education. First, education
provides training (Erziehung) in the competencies needed to administer
the complex systems of modern societies. In addition, university educa-
tion trains individuals for administrative positions, qualifications for which
are established through uniform and objectively demonstrable skills and
abilities rather than, as had traditionally been the case, through group
membership, family ties, patronage, or personal connections. Perhaps
most significantly, education furnishes the moral cultivation (Bildung)
required of modern civil servants.64 Education inculcates sensitivity to
the universal considerations required of individuals expected to exhibit a
“public consciousness.”65 This “universalizing education”66 cultivates in
individuals the impartiality and selflessness needed for genuinely public

servants of the state, individuals who are neither public employees nor
political operatives but agents of the common good. Moreover, moral
and intellectual cultivation fosters an appreciation of the commonality of
interests and diversity of perspectives that must be the focus of admin-
istrators in the large, complex, and differentiated societies of modernity.
Finally, Bildung cultivates the complex judgment required of public
officials whose task, as members of what Hegel calls “the middle class”
(Mittelstand), is to mediate universal and particular. On the one hand,
moral cultivation equips administrators with an ability to relate laws and
politics to particular circumstances. On the other, it cultivates an ability
on the part of career civil servants—termed by Hegel “the educated
intelligence and the legal consciousness of the mass of the people”67—to
bring the concerns of everyday social life to the attention of policymak-
ers. In both respects moral education enables “the intellectual estate”68
to perform its function as the mediating class in public life.
Hegel assumes that the functions of the class of civil servants are
exercised principally in the domestic sphere. But anticipating the work
of the late Kojève,69 he also assigns the intellectual estate a global and
even world historical function. As products of universities committed
as much to self-cultivation as career training, the future civil servants
are viewed both as addressees and agents for the “universal knowledge
and universal perspectives” comprising the material of a cultural world
spirit. Also, as agents of political systems whose identity is itself linked
to relations of reciprocal recognition with other states,70 civil servants
in one community interact with counterparts elsewhere,71 and in a
way that can contribute to a shared global culture. Similarly, in their
expectation to mediate universal and particular, one that also concretizes
the situated cosmopolitanism introduced by Hegel at the beginning of
his account of the Administration of Justice, civil servants can effectu-
ate the Weltgeist itself, understood by Hegel as reposing in just the
mediation of “restricted” and “unrestricted” perspectives on the human
spirit.72 It is not coincidental that one version of the Philosophy of Right
concludes the section on world history with a robust endorsement of
this “middle class.”73
It is easy to ridicule Hegel’s confidence in the intelligence, impar-
tiality, and moral judgment of the class of civil servants. Karl Marx is
well known for the scorn he heaped on what for him was an ideological
view of state bureaucracy.74 For present purposes, however, it is enough
to note the role played by moral-practical considerations in Hegel’s
account of world history. World history does not proceed objectivistically,
behind the backs of human agents, but is dependent in part on practical
engagement, itself nurtured through moral and theoretical cultivation.

Hegel may be famous for claiming that philosophy does not directly
instruct the world; he does claim that education can and should shape
the consciousness of individuals who later can contribute to reason’s
realization in the world.
Thesis 6
Two points follow from this account of the role of moral cultivation
in the realization of world history, and both involve a commitment to
global openness. First, it further questions the notion that Hegel advances
a monolithic, singular, or exclusionary conception of world history. To
say that philosophizing about history has a normative-practical function
aimed at the knowledge and action capacities of contemporary agents
means that world history is fashioned from a particular perspective. Like
philosophy generally (“its own time apprehended in thought”), the phi-
losophy of history is directed to the “present standpoint,”75 addressing
individuals, including lecture attendees, from the perspective of “their
time and their world.”76 But if philosophical world history does have
this perspectival dimension, then it allows, precisely in its character as
world history, for other accounts of development, those written at dif-
ferent times and directed to different audiences. Hegel may do little to
detail such accounts;77 and his own has an undeniably European dimen-
sion. There is little in his thought explicitly directed to “provincializing
Europe,” the expression proffered by Dipesh Chakrabarty to relativize
Eurocentric approaches.78 Still, understanding Hegel’s philosophy of
world history as a type of normative reconstruction conceived with
practical intent permits ascribing to it an openness not only to diverse
accounts of history, but to what Charles Taylor, invoking Chakrabarty,
calls a “multiform world” of historical development.79
Second, to say that world history for Hegel is a normative-practical
undertaking directed to the conditions of agency on the part of his
contemporaries also suggests that the latter can be expected to display
sensitivity to other cultures, one that may facilitate realization of a
global culture and even the idea of globality itself. To expect compa-
triots to play a role in the worldly realization of freedom means that
they must contribute to the reality not just of free institutions but of
an ethico-political community conscious of itself as free.80 However, a
realized form of self-conscious freedom cannot be circumscribed by the
boundaries of a particular political community.81 As we know from Hegel’s
epistemology and social ontology, both of which rest on accounts of

intersubjectivity, affirmation of the autonomous self-consciousness of one
being (be it an individual or a group) is unintelligible without recognition
of the self-consciousness of another. For Hegel this means at least three
things as regards an autonomous political community: it must recognize
the culture of another, it must acknowledge the other’s understanding
of itself, and it must incorporate into its own self-understanding the
other’s recognitive understanding of it. What Hegel said of the historical
emergence of German identity applies generally as well: cultural-political
autonomy requires attention to “alien forms of life and the bringing
of these to bear upon [one’s] own.”82 Moreover, since the recognition
that one culture obtains from another is enriching and meaningful only
if freely given, the autonomous self-identity of one culture depends
on its affirming the autonomy of the other. Thus, while the historical
realization of freedom may depend on citizens committed to realizing
freedom in one community, such realization itself not only involves but
demands a broader Weltweisheit83—an openness to other cultures, their
sense of self-identity included.
Appreciation of the intersubjective dimension of cultural identity for-
mation is also important as it indicates how historical agents may contribute
to the realization of a global culture, a shared global identity included. As
noted, individual self-identity depends a limine on a recognitive process in
which the self is prepared to incorporate into its own self-understanding
the other’s perspective on its identity. Yet the first self will most openly
recognize the other’s recognition of it only if knows that the other is in
turn prepared to recognize that its own identity itself depends on recog-
nizing that of the first. This means that the other must also be prepared
to incorporate into its sense of self the first self’s understanding of it. In
this respect individual identity formation is intertwined with a process of
mutual recognition, one involving a dynamic of reciprocal adjustment
and adaptation tendentially contributing not only to a convergence of
perspectives but formation of a common identity. What Hegel in the
Phenomenology of Spirit said of persons applies to peoples as well: in recip-
rocal recognition the I becomes a We. In this respect, freedom properly
realized in one community is intertwined not only with the freedom of
another community but a limine with formation of a global culture and
a shared sense of global identity—a Weltgeist, as it were. Hegel himself
spoke only of the emergent cultural identity of European peoples,84 but
his argument applies as well to the world’s peoples.
To be sure, a Hegelian notion of global commonality has little in com-
mon with the “philanthropic” humanism of Kantian cosmopolitanism.85
For Hegel, historically realized freedom remains tied to the realities of

a particular political community. Moreover, any global culture is itself
formed and sustained only in the ongoing interaction of its individual
communities. For Hegel, there are no global norms outside the law of
peoples itself. The world’s court of judgment is indeed world history
itself.86 Yet far from denying a “cosmopolitan” dimension to Hegel’s
notion of historical agency, this insight only affirms it. Because Hegel
does assert the codependency of global and national culture, Weltgeist
and Volksgeist,87 realization of freedom in one community proceeds
isomorphically with cultivation of an intercultural sensibility and a com-
mitment to globality itself.
It is true that Hegel himself does not fully develop the position
adumbrated here. And his university lectures certainly include comments
reflecting more ethnocentric dispositions. Still, proper acknowledgment of
what Hegel did say, combined with an appreciation both of his general
view of the relationship of self and other and his own advocacy of a
contemporizing approach to philosophical historiography,88 argues for
a treatment of his position that in this instance too, goes beyond the
parochialism commonly associated with it. Hegel does exhort his listeners
to contribute to the realization of freedom in the world. Since worldly
freedom consists in the self-consciousness of freedom, such exhortation
must include not only an openness to other cultures but a commitment to
a (properly differentiated) notion of globality itself. Hegel’s philosophical
world history articulates the rudiment of a notion of global citizenship,
rooted in Weltweisheit and contributive to the Weltgeist itself.
In this chapter I have questioned the charge of Eurocentrism typi-
cally leveled at Hegel’s philosophy of history. While not disputing the
presence of such a dimension, I have argued that it is less pernicious
than commonly assumed. Hegel’s history does culminate in affirma-
tion of European cultural-political accomplishments, but this affirma-
tion is advanced less as a triumphalist presentation of actual historical
developments than as a reconstructive account of historical phenomena
ultimately meant to engage the moral consciousness and conditions of
agency of a German and European public. In this respect Hegel not
only allows for alternative accounts of history but expects from his
fellow countrymen an openness to other cultures, one in turn that
can contribute to global commonality itself. His position thus proffers
the type of “situated” critique of Eurocentrism that one might expect
from a thinker sensitive to the historically contextualized conditions of
thought and experience—a critique initiated from within the ambit of
Western culture itself.
Notes
1. For recent critiques of Hegel’s Eurocentrism, see Robert Bernasconi,

“Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” in Hegel After Derrida, ed. Stuart Bar-
nett (New York: Routledge, 1998), 41–63 and Susan Buck-Morss, “Hegel and
Haiti,” Critical Inquiry 26 (Summer 2000): 821–65. That Hegel might be the
preeminent proponent of philosophical Eurocentrism is asserted by Enrique Dus-
sel, “Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of Modernity,” in
The Cultures of Modernity, ed. Frederic Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998), 3.
2. See Ram Adhar Mall, Intercultural Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield, 2000), 51.
3. Robert Bernasconi, “Religious Philosophy: Hegel’s Occasional Perplex-
ity in the Face of the Distinction between Philosophy and Religion,” Bulletin
of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 45/46: 1–15.
4. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in His-
tory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 11 (hereafter Lectures).
5. This is so for one thing simply because any type of historiography
is unavoidably theory-laden. “Even the ordinary, run-of-the mill historian who
believes and professes that his attitude is entirely receptive, that he is dedicated
to the facts, is by no means passive in his thinking; he brings his categories
with him, and they influence his vision of the data he has before him.” Lec-
tures, 29.
6. For a statement of the reconstructive character of Hegel’s approach
to reality, see Klaus Hartmann, “Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View,” in Hegel:
A Collection of Essays, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books,
1972), 101–24.
7. Lectures, 29.
8. Ibid., 27.
9. Ibid., 29.
10. The “dialectical process of becoming is only the ideal expression of
the real movement through which capital comes into being.” See Grundrisse
der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (London: Penguin, 1973), 310.
11. “The systematically reconstructable patterns of development of nor-
mative structures . . . depict a developmental logic inherent in cultural traditions
and institutional change.” Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston:
Beacon, 1979), 98.
12. Lectures, 11; amended.
13. For the idea of Hegel’s metaphysics as a “normative ontology,” albeit
one somewhat different than that adumbrated here, see Klaus Hartmann, “Lin-
earität und Koordination in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,” in Hegels Philosophie des
Rechts: Die Theorie der Rechtsformen und ihre Logik, ed. Dieter Henrich and
Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 305–16.
15. Ibid., 33.

16. Ibid., 54.
17. Compare Ludwig Siep, “Das Recht als Ziel der Geschichte,” in Das
Recht der Vernunft: Kant und Hegel über Denken, Erkennen und Handeln, ed.
Christel Fricke et al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstaat: Frommann-Holzboog, 1995),
355–80.
18. In “The Dialectic of Civil Society,” K.-H. Ilting distinguishes between
two approaches used by Hegel in the Philosophy of Right: “a phenomenology
of the consciousness of freedom” and a “philosophical reconstruction” of that
concept. The position advanced here is that in Hegel’s account of a history of
freedom, the two approaches are one and the same. See “The Dialectic of Civil
Society, in The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, ed.
Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 216f
especially.
19. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 22 (hereafter PR).
20. G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 75.
21. The Philosophy of Mind: Part III of the Encyclopædia of Philosophical
Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), §393A (hereafter Enc.). See
further Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth, and His-
tory, 2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 175f.
22. In addition to work by Robert Bernasconi, see, for instance, Michael
H. Hoffheimer, “Hegel, Race, Genocide,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy
XXXIX (2001): 35–62 and “Race and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,”
in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, ed. Andrew Valls (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 2005), 194–216.
23. Enc., §482.
24. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), §185 (hereafter PR).
25. Lectures, 54.
26. Jenaer Systementwürfe III, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Hamburg:
Meiner, 1987), 239.
27. Philosophy of History (New York: Dover, 1956), 343.
28. PR, §124.
29. Werke in zwanzig Bänden, edi. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus
Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 20, 329; emphasis added (hereafter
Werke).
30. The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press,
1992).
31. Consider Rorty’s “frankly ethnocentric” championing of Western val-
ues. See “Justice as a Larger Loyalty,” in Cosmopoliticus: Thinking and Feeling
Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Chea and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1998), 45–58.
32. Lectures, 54.
33. See, for instance, Claude Ake, “The African Context of Human Rights”;
Roger T. Ames, “Rites as Rights: The Confucian Alternative”; and Kenneth K.
Inada, “A Buddhist Response to the Nature of Human Rights,” all in Larry
May et al., Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2002).
34. Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
51.
35. PR, §343.
37. Susan Buck-Morss concludes the critique of Hegel she advances in
“Hegel and Haiti” with the following question: “What if every time that the
consciousness of individuals surpassed the confined of the present constellations
of power in perceiving the concrete meaning of freedom, this were valued as
a moment, however transitory, of the realization of absolute spirit?” (op. cit.,
865). Without disputing her assertions either about Hegel’s blindness to the
historical realities of slavery or the limitations in his general treatment of world
history, I would simply note that attention to processes whereby individuals do
surpass the confines of the present is a component in his own account of the
logic of a history.
38. Enc., §394.
39. PR, §248.
40. Ibid.
41. See Erzsébet Rózsa, “ ‘Versöhnlichkeit’ als europäisches Prinzip: Zu Hegels
Versöhungskonzeption in der Berliner Zeit,” in Vermittlung und Versöhnung: Die
Aktualität von Hegels Denken für ein zusammenwachsendes Europa, ed. Michael
Quante and Erzsébet Rózsa (Münster: LIT, 2001), 21–52. This point will be
addressed more fully in the final section of this paper. Here, though, it can be
noted that, the very appeal to mutuality may itself reaffirm Western values. This
is so not just for the obvious reason that mutuality is a two-way street, one that
involves as much openness on the part of non-Western to Western cultures as
the converse. It is also so in the sense that the very structure of mutuality may
itself enforce a Western bias. Not only does reciprocal recognition, for Hegel,
center, in origin as in goal, on the idea of subjective freedom; the very idea of
reciprocity is rooted in a notion of freedom—bei sich Selbst sein—that for Hegel
finds articulated expression in modern societies. Nor can this form of Western
dominance be easily contested, since any challenge, be it in declarations of inde-
pendence or claims to recognition, arguably affirms the structures of recognition
in question. In this regard Hegel anticipates the analyses of contemporary social
theorists who assert that, under conditions of globalization, Western categories
have become inescapable. Still, in also asserting the inescapability of structures of
dialectical mediation, Hegel allows for a measure of cross-cultural dialogue that
goes beyond any one-sided imposition of Western values on other cultures. On
the inescapably of Western categories, see Depesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing
Europe: Post Colonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton
University Press 2000).
42. Enc., §490.

43. Lectures, 90.
44. See Hennig Ottmann, “Die Weltgeschichte,” in Grundlinien der Phi-
losophie des Rechts, ed. Ludwig Siep (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 279f.
45. See Fred R. Dallmayr, G.W.F. Hegel: Modernity and Politics (Newbury
Park: Sage, 1993), 9.
46. Lectures, 93.
47. “We are what we are through history.” Hegel, Lectures on the History
of Philosophy I (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), 2.
48. Phenomenology of Spirit, 492.
49. Lectures, 136.
50. See Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1964), 31–36.
51. PR, §346.
52. Ibid.; emphasis added.
53. Lectures, 126.
54. Ibid., 128.
55. Ibid., 130.
56. See, for instance, Dilip Gaonkar, ed., Alternative Modernities (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2001).
57. This seems to be the approach of Charles Taylor in “Two Theories
of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, 172–96.
58. PR, §270.
59. Vorlesungen über die Beweise vom Dasein Gottes (Hamburg: Meiner,
1966), 2.
60. For an important discussion of Hegel’s political writings as an exercise
in civic education, see Laurence Dickey, Religion, Economics, and the Politics of
Spirit: 1770–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
61. Lectures on the History of Philosophy III, 593. None of this entails that
Hegel renounces his strictures on philosophy “instructing” the world. Here, too,
he remains committed to the view that philosophy has no direct (unmittelbar)
effect on public life (see Werke 17, 343f.). Philosophers should not rule, nor
should they be directly involved in shaping of public policy. However, philoso-
phy can have bearing on the consciousness of those who do engage in these
activities, and in this mediated sense—that fitting for a philosopher of media-
tion—it is appropriate.
62. See Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 120f.
63. PR, §297A.
64. Ibid., §296; amended. For a treatment of the role of Bildung in
the development of the Prussian bureaucracy (but one that does not con-
sider Hegel), see Hans Rosenberg’s classic study Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and
Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660–1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958),
especially 182–92.
65. PR, §297A.
66. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, 1819/20 Lecture, ed. Dieter Henrich
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), 258 (hereafter PR 1818/19).
67. PR, §297. Hegel also refers to the corps of civil servants as “the
intelligence and educated self-consciousness of a people.” See Vorlesungen über
Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, ed. Karl-Heniz Ilting (Stuttgart: Frommann-Hol-
zboog, 1973), 334.
68. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen Über Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft:
Heidelberg 1817/18, transcribed by P. Wannenmann, ed. C. Becker et al. (Ham-
burg: Felix Meiner, 1983), §170, 265 (hereafter Wannenmann).
69. Alexandre Kojève, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, ed. Bryan-Paul
Frost (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
70. See my “Hegel’s Concept of an International ‘We,’ ” in Identity and
Difference in Hegel’s Logic, Philosophy of Spirit, and Politics, ed. Philip Grier
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).
71. For a discussion of this point with reference to current issues in
international law and diplomacy, see Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse’s
“Introductory Essay” in Kojève’s Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, op. cit.,
especially pp. 18–24.
72. PR, §209; for the relationship of restricted and unrestricted accounts
of spirit, see PR, §340.
73. Wannenmann, §170.
74. Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1970), 41–54.
75. Lectures on the History of Philosophy III, 552.
76. Compare The Philosophy of History, 442. In this regard Hegel’s position
bears interesting resemblance to that of Max Weber, whose theory of history is
also often perceived as advancing objectivistically universalist claims about global
development. He writes: “A product of modern European civilization studying
the problem of universal history is bound to ask himself, and rightly so, to
what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western
civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared
(at least as we like to think [emphasis added]) to lie on a line of development
having universal significance and validity. See The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism (New York: Scribner’s, 1958), 13.
77. However, he does claim that the “Oriental” image of the Phoenix pro-
vides a different model of historical development, one that—employing categories
of nature rather than spirit—notes how the destruction of one culture contains
the seeds for the transition to a new stage of development. See Lectures, 32.
78. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.
79. Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004),
195f. For one example, deriving from Taylor, see Xin Liu, The Otherness of Self:
A Genealogy of Self in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2002). I thank Marek Hrubec for this reference.
80. PR, §347.
81. I have dealt with these issues at greater length in “Hegel’s Concept
of an International ‘We,’ ” op. cit.
82. Philosophy of History, 342.
83. In contrast to divine wisdom, Weltweisheit denotes human reason
unaided by revelation and directed to the realities of finite experience. As Hegel
notes, the term derives from the Middle Ages and was revived by Friedrich Schle-
gel and others, who sought to contrapose philosophy to religion and theology.
Hegel himself utilizes the term, but rejects any rigid distinction between the
spiritual and the secular. Such distinction is incompatible both with his view of
the relationship of reason and revelation and his understanding of the divine,
for which the infinite can and must find expression in finite reality, particularly
in human knowledge and self-consciousness. As a result, Hegel advances a par-
ticularly rich conception of worldly wisdom, one based on the comprehensive
integration of spiritual and secular considerations. On his view Weltweisheit entails,
among other things, a conception of cross-cultural understanding that ascribes,
at least in part, intrinsic or “infinite” worth to every particular culture. It also
entails the concept of Weltgeist, according to which every specific culture not
only can express with others a common principle, but can be seen as contribut-
ing to a shared global culture, one that tendentially takes the form of a global
consciousness. For Hegel’s discussion of the concept of “worldly wisdom,” see
Lectures on the History of Philosophy I, 60f.
84. PR, §339.
85. Ibid., §337.
86. Ibid., §340.
87. Ibid.
88. Philosophical historiography “has not to do with what is gone but with
the living present.” Lectures on the History of Philosophy I, 39; see also p. 3.
6
Hegel’s New World
History, Freedom, and Race
Sûrya Parekh
Introduction
Is race significant to Hegel’s1 philosophy of history? Commentators2 are

divided between those who find in Hegel’s philosophy of history, the
account of Africa in particular, a pervasive reliance on race that impli-
cates not only the philosophy of history but the philosophical system
as a whole3 and those who consider race contingent to the movement
of spirit within the progression that is history. For the latter, Hegel’s
powerful and dynamic philosophy of freedom is itself without bias because
its basis lies in Hegel’s definition of the human as immanently rational.
The principle for this philosophy of freedom is that the development of
freedom is the actualization of this immanent reason. Freedom is thus a
universal telos. This principle is the criterion by which historical progres-
sion is discerned. History is the exposition of this principle, the dialectical
unfolding of the self-conscious awareness of freedom. This basis for the
normative human with equal rights in Hegel’s political philosophy, rights
that for Hegel cannot be nullified by racial difference, supposedly leaves
Hegel’s philosophy free from any necessary relationship to race.
Houlgate has given this line of argument in An Introduction to
Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History.4 He argues that Hegel’s comparison
of civilizations so as to consider some more advanced than others does
not involve a “doctrine of ‘cultural imperialism’ or ‘racial superiority.’ ”5
Instead, this comparison uses a purportedly dynamic and impartial cri-
terion—the dialectical unfolding of the self-conscious awareness of free-
dom—to make these evaluations. Thus, although the historical accounts
111
112 Sûrya Parekh
of peoples designate different stages of the self-conscious awareness of

freedom, the principle of evaluation is itself without bias. Although racial
and geographic factors do play a role in the makeup of a particular
Volksgeist, they are contingent factors subordinate to “a civilization’s
mode of understanding the world and itself.”6
Commenting on Hegel’s specific account of race, given in the
Zusatz to §393 in the Encyclopedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, Houl-
gate admits that geographical differences, which give rise to racial and
national differences, do set “limits to what certain peoples may achieve
in history through their own efforts.”7 Nonetheless, they are natural
determinations subordinate to the power of rational thought and become
“weaker . . . as we become more educated.”8 Thus, “such naturally deter-
mined character does not prevent individuals or whole peoples being
educated into the ways of freedom.”9 The minimal expression of the
definition of the human as immanently rational seems to be the capacity
for education, which allows individuals and peoples to overcome natural
determinations. To demonstrate the universality and consistency of this
capacity, one can note that although Hegel makes prejudicial statements
about Africans, the lowest major race in his hierarchy of races, he also
indicates that they “cannot be denied a capacity for education,” that
the term animal humanity, used to describe Africans (PWH, 177; VPW,
218), is “totally other than animality,” “impressed with the character
of humanity,” and contains the “real [realle] possibility to be rational”
(PWH, 133; VPW, 161–62; my translation). This lowest major race in
Hegel’s schema of race also provides the paradigm cases for education
into freedom in the philosophy of history, namely, the freedom attained
by African slaves in Brazil and Haiti.
This would seem to demonstrate that the definition of the human
as in itself rational, or its equivalence, formal freedom, is not racially
exclusive, and can through education lead to actualized freedom. Admit-
tedly, this comes at a heavy cost, requiring us to accept the loss of life
and violence accompanying slavery in Africa and the Americas as a pre-
condition to education into freedom; nonetheless, on formal grounds, it
would seem that race imparts no immutable limitation on the potential
for freedom. This would support one commentator’s claim that Hegel’s
comments are “incompatible with the view that biology is destiny, a
fate that ineluctably attends a people and is indelibly inscribed in every
individual son and daughter of it.”10
Using a similar line of reasoning, Moellendorf has argued that
although Hegel gives the biological category of race more weight than
he should by considering geographic differences necessary—and hence
Hegel’s New World 113
rationalizing racial differences—race is still only made possible by, not

a necessary consequence of, his claims about spirit.11
It would seem that potentially necessary racial differences are ulti-
mately natural determinations contingent to the principle of freedom.
Walsh’s conclusion that “we can take it that prejudice as well as igno-
rance come into them [Lectures on the Philosophy of World History] at
some point, without having to deny that the main judgments are based
upon principle”12 seems to be valid.
Thus, Hegel can strongly reject racial differences as necessary in
his comments on race and instead state, “The human is in itself rational;
herein lies the possibility of equality of rights of all humans,—the nul-
lification of a stark distinction between those of the human species with
rights and those without” (PSS 46–47; translation modified).13
This interpretation is, however, authorized by a Hegelian break
from a Kantian conception of race. Hegel’s comments show him to be
incorporating Kant’s conception of race as a moment whose contingency
is revealed in the movement of spirit. Fixed, racial differences become
mutable, natural, contingencies. Hegel’s remarking of racial difference
as a diversity reflects this movement. At the limit of his concept of
race, Kant negotiates a tension between the division of the worlds and
his concept of race, in the inhabitants of the New World. This tension
produces a paradoxical gesture: the use of a racial explanation for a
racial exception.
How does Hegel cope with this tension? It is this question that
is the focus of this paper.
Hegel’s account of the New World has a place in the polemic that
Antonello Gerbi has titled, in the book with the same name, La disputa
del Nuovo Mondo (The Dispute of the New World).14 Within the many
vicissitudes and contradictions of this polemic are two theses, the first
of which is the driving force: the inferiority of the New World in every
way to the Old; and the New World as a future to the Old World.
Gerbi locates in Hegel’s account both an apex to the polemic, because
his account powerfully articulates these two theses, synthetically uniting
them, and at the same time anachronistic, the polemic having by this
time been systematically refuted.15
The thesis of inferiority was first systematically developed by Buffon
in the context of developing a classificatory system of global distribution
114 Sûrya Parekh
of fauna. From the start, Buffon’s thesis was untenable and counter to
empirical observation: he suggested that the cold and humid climate of
the Americas made it unsuitable for species to thrive there. This climatic
theory supported another thesis, which had already been associated with
the inferiority with the inhabitants: a perverse sexuality of the New World
inhabitants, characterized by a lesser ability to procreate.
Although Buffon did not extend his scientific thesis to humans, he
speculated that “Nature had treated him [the New World inhabitant] less
as mother than as stepmother, withholding from him the sentiment of
love or the strong desire to multiply.”16 The Prussian philosopher, the
abbe Cornelius de Pauw extended this thesis to humans and added the
vices of gluttony, drunkenness, ingratitude, and pederasty.17 From these
ignoble beginnings, this thesis of absolute inferiority expressed in a lesser
ability to copulate developed, further supported by claims of lactating
men, non-menstruating women, small penises, and other fictions.
I briefly situate Hegel’s place in the history of this polemic, in the
persistence of this thesis of inferiority in a line of philosophers, from
Buffon to Hegel and including Kant. I consider the persistence of this
thesis, which from its inception in Buffon was already facing empirical
counterevidence, a historico-philosophical problem, which I will call the
problem of the New World.
Philosophical anthropologies of the eighteenth century grappled
with the problem of how to formulate a unity of the human. Unlike
polygenetic theories, which could rationalize human differences as bio-
logical differences arising from multiple origins, monogenetic theories
required the formulation of a common origin that could still account
for human difference. This led to the use of theories of climatic and
geographic determinism to formulate accounts that commenced from a
common genus but then hierarchized human differences in nonoriginary
natural differences, namely, some composite of climate and geography.
The biologization of these natural differences, as in Kant, produced a
scientific conception of race and the development of the science of natural
history.18 In Kant, a theory of human migration, whether motivated by
nature or autonomy, is held responsible for the divergence from a single
origin, which subsequently leads to the formation of races.
Nonetheless, these monogenetic accounts inherited a problem that
had earlier confronted Christian theologians: How to account for life
in the New World?
The tension is between the division of the world into Old and New,
a division that is metaphysical, and seems to require an absolute newness
to the New World, and the incorporation of the inhabitants of the New
World to a racial anthropology. The reasons for this insistence on the

new are complex and enigmatic, and I probe them no further here.
This tension produces in Kant’s anthropology an uneasy gesture:
the use of a racial explanation—here understood as the conceptual,
including physical, suitability of inhabitants to an environment—for a
racial exception—the total unsuitability of New World inhabitants to
their environment.19
This gesture incorporated the thesis of inferiority of the New World
inhabitants. The effect of this thesis was to offer a partial solution to
the problem of the New World, namely, a thesis of inferiority whose
inevitable consequence was the vanishing of the New World inhabitant,
whether through external contact with Europeans, internal weakness,
or both.
This solution, however, assumes a conflation of the phenomenon
of genocide with the ambiguous trope of vanishing. Conflation of the
two is common in these works, nonetheless, the trope of vanishing
performs work that exceeds its descriptive sense. A primary function
of this trope, in forecasting the destiny of the New World inhabitants
as vanishing, is to allow these philosophers to prophesy a future that
alleviates the need to incorporate these inhabitants in the unity of the
human. Although genocide did occur, its inevitable or necessary result
was not a total vanishing.20 The resolution to the problem of the New
World is, in effect then, a displacing of the problem vis-à-vis vanishing. In
opting for this solution, the unity of the human that these philosophers
formulate is thus substantially based on the Old World human.
The Hegelian break consists in shifting the “proof” for the unity
of the human from a genetic unity to a dialectic of freedom, which
through its teleological development “proves” the unity. The task in such
a philosophy is not to formulate a unified basis that serves as the best
starting point but to properly comprehend the immanent development
of freedom, which is itself the basis for this unity. The truth of theories
of descent within this philosophy is that they are contingent, posing no
immanent limit to the historical movement of spirit. There is, thus, no
need to formulate a theory of racial formation in a philosophical com-
mentary on race. This also allows Hegel to reject racial differences as
justified in the possibility of equal rights.
With regard to the racial diversity of humans [Menschen], it

must be observed at the outset that the merely [bloß] histori-
cal question as to whether all human races have descended
from a single pair [Paar] or from several is of no concern
116 Sûrya Parekh
whatever to us in philosophy. The question has been regarded

as important, since it has been thought that by assuming
descent from several pairs [Paaren] one might explain the
spiritual superiority of one human species over the other.
The hope has even been entertained that one might prove
humans [Menschen] to be so naturally different in respect of
their spiritual aptitudes, that some might be treated as animals.
The freedom and supremacy of humans [Menschen] can derive
neither justification nor invalidation from descent. The human
is in itself rational; herein lies the possibility of equality of
rights of all humans,—the nullification of a stark distinction
between those of the human species with rights and those
without. (PSS, 44–47; translation slightly modified)
Nonetheless, according to Gerbi, the accomplishment of the

polemic of the New World, in which both theses are positively affirmed
and synthetically united in a single account, is to be found in Hegel’s
work, at a time when the thesis of inferiority had been systematically
discredited. In this chapter, I do not treat Hegel’s place in the history of
this polemic.21 My task, instead, is to approach the suggestion that this
polemic responds to a historico-philosophical problem indirectly, through
an analysis of its incorporation in Hegel’s philosophical system.
II
Hegel’s comments on race are a moment in the Philosophy of Subjective

Spirit, in the volume titled Anthropology, and belonging to the first divi-
sion, titled “Natural Soul.” Natural Soul marks the appearance of soul
as the immediate truth of nature. The Anthropology as a whole charts a
movement from the indeterminacy of the genus, the abstract universal, to
the appearance of the ego or consciousness, the actualization of soul.
The movement of soul interiorizes nature. It is “the microcosm in
which nature concentrates itself and so sublates its juxtaposition” (PSS,
26–27). This transition from nature to spirit is thus also a movement
from the predominance of space to time and juxtaposition to sequence
(PWH, 128; VPW, 154).
Racial diversity is the initial determination of the soul. After account-
ing for the limited influence of various natural phenomena—planetary
motion, seasonal and climatic change, the times of the day—Hegel turns
to the natural differences that produce the universal, qualitative determi-
nations of the soul that are race (PSS, 22–23). These are the necessary,
terrestrial divisions of the Earth. Two are mentioned in the thesis itself.
The first is the difference between continents: “The universal planetary
life of the natural spirit particularizes itself in the concrete differences
of the Earth and separates into particular natural spirits, which express
as a whole the nature of the geographic continents and constitute
racial diversity” (PSS, 44–45; translation modified). The second is the
polarity of North and South: “The opposition of terrestrial polarity,
through which the land in the north is more concentrated . . . brings
into the difference between continents a modification” (PSS, 44–45,
translation modified).
The determination of racial diversity is constituted by the differ-
ences between continents and modified by the terrestrial expression of
the polarity of North and South, namely, a concentration of the land
in the North. There is, however, a third necessary, terrestrial division
of the Earth, one that is only introduced in the Zusatz: “The main
dividing of the Earth is that into the old and new world” (“Die Haup-
tunterscheidung der Erde ist die in die alte und in die neue Welt”). For
a division that is here called the main division, and in the PWH “no
mere external difference . . . the division is essential” (“kein bloß äußerli-
cher Unterschied . . . die Einteilung ist wesentlich”) (PWH, 162; VPW,
199; translation modified), it is peculiar that Hegel does not treat it
directly—if only to determine and minimize its influence. Instead, he
seems to devalue its importance, stating, “we are concerned here with
the determinateness constituting the distinctive character of the conti-
nents” (PSS, 48–49).
That Hegel wishes to draw our attention away from this differ-
ence should, therefore, draw our attention. And, if on the one hand,
he seems to draw our attention away from it, the very next sentence
treats this division. A curious parallel is introduced.
He says, “It must be said in this regard, that America has a younger
appearance than the Old World and falls behind it in its historical for-
mation [Bildung]” (PSS, 48–49; my translation). America here has the
signification of a specific location on the Earth (whether the New World
has continents or not is never clarified) and a metonym for the New
World. As we shall see, this is in line with Hegel’s general argument
concerning the division of the worlds: whereas in the Old World, spirit
particularizes itself into determinate difference, in the New World, these
differences never become determinate.
In the Philosophy of Nature, in the section titled “Organic Nature,”
Hegel posits that after the division of the world into an Old and New,
there is “the further division of former into continents distinguished from
one another and from the new world by their physical, organic, and
118 Sûrya Parekh
anthropological character, to which an even younger and more immature

one is joined (PN, 278, §339).22 Whereas the Old World divides into a
determinate set of differences in the continents that constitute a unity,
the land masses in the New World are indeterminate.
What, however, is the difference that constitutes this division into
Old and New? What is the qualitative difference between the Old and
New World? If on the one hand, this difference is “essential,” on the
other, it is not clear as to how to situate it.
Is it simply a matter of the time of discovery, because “this
difference relates itself at first to the earlier or later world-historical
acquaintance of this earth-part [Erdteile]” (PSS, 48–49; my translation)?
It would seem not. In the PWH, Hegel says, the New World is “not
only relatively but rather absolutely [überhaupt] new, by virtue of its
wholly peculiar physical and political characteristics” (PWH, 162; VPW,
199; translation modified).
The peculiar physical characteristics, the “younger appearance” of
the New World is not geological: “Its geological age does not concern
us here. I will not deny it the honour of also having risen from the
sea at the time of the world’s creation” (PWH, 162; VPW, 199). Yet
he calls the New World geographically immature. A strange temporality
governs the New World. Time, whether natural or historical, is differ-
ent in the New World. Its result is that the New always appears new
in distinction to the Old, younger or more immature to the unity and
totality of the Old.
This temporality is reflected in the natural principle that Hegel says
governs the New World. At the start of his section on the Old world,
Hegel lists the three geographic principles that constitute the totality
of the Old World: the upland principle, great river valleys, and coastal
lands. In a parenthetical aside, Hegel then says, “The only principle left
over for America would be that of incompleteness [Nichtfertigseins] or
constant non-fulfillment [Nichtfertigwordens]” (PWH, 172; VPW, 212).
Incompleteness and nonfulfillment do not quite capture the temporal-
ity of the German here, denoting a principle, as it does, of perpetually
becoming without ever having quite been.
This principle then reflects a peculiar status for the New World:
it is neither indeterminate nor determinate, but rather perpetually
immature. The New World appears as an immature copy of the Old,
but with no qualitative difference. It is no surprise that the magnetic
polarity of North and South appear in a more general form in the New
World (PSS, 48–49).
What are the consequences of this division for Hegel’s racial
anthropology?
The necessary continental differences determine the “physical

and spiritual relations [Beziehung] of the racial varieties of humankind
connected with these differences” (PSS, 50–51; translation modified).23
These are the determinate differences of the continents in the Old
World, with whom “physiology distinguishes itself in its first reference
the Caucasian, Ethiopian, and Mongolian race.” What of the inhabitants
of the New World, the races that Hegel calls Malay and American? They
“rank themselves here,” but they are incomplete: “they form more of an
aggregate of infinitely various particularities than a sharp, distinct race”
(“aber mehr ein Aggregat unendlich verschiedener Particularitäten als eine
scharf unterschiedene Race bilden”) (PSS, 50–51; my translation). This is
repeated in the physiognomical differences: “The Malay and American
races are in their physical formation less sharply designated than the
races just described” (“Die malaiische und die amerikanische Race sind
in ihrer physischen Bildung weniger als die eben geschilderten Racen scharf
ausgezeichnet”) (PSS, 52–53; my translation).
In their spiritual significance, there are only four races: the Malay
is no longer mentioned.24 The three Old World races form a dialectical
totality: the immediate universal in the Negro, the unmediated opposition
in the Mongolian, and the absolute unity in the Caucasian. In distinc-
tion, we have the American, who are a “weak, vanishing, Geschlecht”
(PSS, 60–61).
In the PWH, the thesis of inferiority is incorporated on this basis:
“The inferiority of these individuals in every respect [jeder Rücksi-
cht . . . erkennen], including stature [die Grosse], can be recognized in
every particular” (PWH, 164; VPW, 202; translation modified).25 That
Hegel extends this thesis to the animals of the New World testifies to
the imprecision of the difference.26
The “difference” is on the one hand infinitely determinable,
imposing on every particular a measure—old or new—the aggregate of
which distinguishes the Old and New World; on the other hand, the
“difference” itself is never determinate. This “difference” then mediates
the dialectical unity of the Old in opposition to the immaturity of the
South. The New World and its inhabitants are in every way an immature
version of the Old. This “difference” is not in Hegel’s terms a proper
racial difference.
Hegel offers specific examples of the inferiority in particulars,
describing the inhabitants as spiritless (geistlos), exhibiting drivelessness
(Trieblosigkeit), meek (Sanftmut), and with little capacity for culture
(von geringer Fähigkeit der Bildung) (PWH, 164; VPW, 201–202,
translation modified). The New World inhabitant, it would seem, has
little capacity to work or for education, casting into doubt whether
120 Sûrya Parekh
the definition of the human as in itself rational applies to the New

World inhabitant.
The implications of this division are perhaps best seen in the
opposition between the American and the African, who is the example
of the Old World human. The New World is a topos of freedom for
the African. How is this opposition characterized? “[T]he weakness of
the American’s Naturells was a main reason [Hauptgrund] why Negroes
were brought to America, in order to allow the work to be done through
their force; for the Negro is more receptive to European culture than
the Indians” (PWH, 165; VPW, 202; translation modified).
This receptiveness leads to free citizens in Brazil and the professional
accomplishments of Negroes in the Americas: “An English writer reports
that, among the wide circle of his acquaintances, he had encountered
instances of negroes becoming skilled workers and tradesmen, and even
clergymen and doctors, etc. But of all the free native Americans he
knew, he could think of only one who had proved capable of study and
who eventually become a clergyman; but he had died soon afterwards
as a result of excessive drinking” (PWH, 165; VPW, 202–203; transla-
tion modified).27 The English writer here is Henry Koster, and Hegel
significantly distorts his account.28
This opposition of the worlds guarantees for the African, the low-
est major race in Hegel’s schema, a telos of freedom, while at the same
time excluding the Americans. Yet, it is not a difference that seems to
be reducible to dialectics.
What is his solution to the problem of the New World?
III
When considering the spiritual significance of the races, Hegel says of

the Americans that they are a “weak, vanishing, Geschlecht.” Geschlecht
here names the “difference,” operating at a greater level of abstraction
than race, which marks the division of the worlds. In contrast to the
dialectical totality of the major races, the minor races—one or two—are
destined to vanish. This emphasis on vanishing has its counterpart,
in the account in the PWH, in the encounter between the American
and European:
The recent history of the transatlantic continent indicates

that, although it did possess an indigenous culture when
it was first discovered by the Europeans, this culture was
destroyed through contact with them; the subjugation of
the country amounted, in fact, to its downfall. We do have
information concerning America and its culture . . . but only

to the effect that it was a purely natural culture which had
to perish as soon as spirit approached it. America has always
shown itself physically and spiritually impotent, and does so
to this day. For after the Europeans had landed there, the
natives were gradually destroyed by the breath of European
activity. (PWH, 163; VPW, 200)
Hegel vacillates as to who is to blame for this vanishing. On the

one hand, “the whole American world has been destroyed [untergegan-
gen] and suppressed [verdrängt] by the Europeans.” On the other hand,
he juxtaposes these remarks, sometimes from one sentence to the next
with “[t]he tribes [Die Stämme] of North America have in part vanished
[sind teils verschwunden], and in part withdrawn from contact with the
Europeans.” This is due to “[t]heir degeneration [Sie verkommen],”
which indicates a “lack of strength [nicht die Stärke]” to “join the free
American states” (PWH, 163; VPW, 201; translation modified).
The difficulty in determining this difference is reflected in the
multiplicity of terms used to both describe the vanishing/genocide and
the inhabitants. Hegel says that they have been wiped out or extermi-
nated (ausgerottet), died out (ausgestorben), vanished (verschwunden),
gone under or perished (untergegangen) and suppressed (verdrängt).
The inhabitants he describes as first American (ersten Amerikaner),
inhabitant (Bewohner), tribe (Stämme), aboriginal (Einwohner), native
(Eingeborenen), local (Einheimsich), and domestic (inländische).
The turning point in this account is the association of the thesis
of inferiority with a lesser ability to procreate. Hegel says:
A priest [Geistlicher] has, I have remembered reading [ich

mich gelesen zu haben erinnere], rung a bell at midnight so
they [Americans] remember to fulfill their conjugal duties
[ehelichen Pflichten], because by themselves, this would not
have occurred to them. (PWH, 165; VPW, 202; translation
modified)
With this fiction as justification for the thesis of inferiority, Hegel

denies the New World inhabitant any place in the future. Thus, the
New World inhabitant is “living from one day to the other, distant
from higher thoughts and purposes” (“die von einem Tage zum andern
fortleben, fern von höhern Gedanken und Zwecken”) (PWH, 165; VPW,
202; translation modified).
Hegel thus concludes his treatment by stating, “Since the original
American nation has vanished—or as good as vanished—the effective
122 Sûrya Parekh
population comes for the most part from Europe, and everything that
happens in America has its origin there” (PWH, 165; VPW, 203).
In the PSS: “Finally, we have however to observe with regard
to the original Americans, that they constitute a vanishing and feeble
Geschlecht . . . It is clear therefore that the Americans are unable to hold
their own against the Europeans, who will initiate a new American culture
in the land they have conquered from the natives” (PSS, 62–63).
How are we to understand this vanishing? In the dialectical process
of history, the vanishing of a peoples is part of the immanent movement
of spirit, their essence preserved in the “depths of its [spirit] present”
(PWH, 151; VPW, 183). The passing of life becomes meaningful through
this progression.
The vanishing of the New World inhabitants is not dialectical. The
vanishing is an immediate effect of the encounter of the Europeans and
the Americans, without any struggle.
Hegel incorporates one of the main themes of the polemic. Like
Kant, the New World inhabitant cannot be incorporated into Hegel’s
racial anthropology. The solution to this is to cast the inhabitants
as vanishing.
IV
What is the relationship of this account of the New World to the unity
of the human? As we have seen, the dialectical unity of the Old World
seems to depend on the immaturity of the New World. In Hegel’s
anthropology, the determination of a dialectical unity of race as a totality
is coterminous with the racial indetermination of the New World.
The destiny of the New World inhabitants as vanishing seemingly
secures the unity of the Old World human as the unity of all humans.
The movement of the anthropology, from a natural unity of the human
in the genus to a spiritual unity in the Old World, would then depend
on the vanishing of the New World inhabitant. If this constitutive
moment depends on vanishing, it is mediated by another type of dif-
ference, which incorporates these inhabitants into the unfolding of
freedom. Hegel says:
The only inhabitants of South American and Mexico who feel

the need for independence are the Creoles, who are descended
from a mixture of native and Spanish or Portuguese ancestors.
They alone have attained a higher degree of self-awareness,
and felt the urge for autonomy and independence. . . . For

this reason, the English have also adopted the policy in India
of preventing the rise of a native Creole population, i.e., a
people of mixed European and native blood. (PWH, 164;
VPW, 201)
Some paragraphs later, Hegel again says, “And if at any time we

speak of free citizens in South America, this applies only to peoples of
mixed European, Asiatic, and American blood” (PWH, 165; VPW, 203).
That this solution pertains only to the inhabitants of South America,
whereas Hegel considers a total vanishing to have taken place in North
America, will become clear shortly.
If the unity of the Old and New World human is a natural unity, in
the sharing of a common genus and expressed in a capacity to procreate
with each other, the subsequent movements that determine the spiritual
unity of the human as in itself rational are biologized in a difference in
blood. The division of the Old and New World, a division whose “dif-
ference” is perhaps irreducible to dialectics, now becomes biologized.
This appeal to blood, then, marks a limit to Hegel’s conception of
race, the Old World inhabitants seemingly sharing a common blood in
opposition to the New World inhabitants.29
Is this natural determination of difference confined to this “differ-
ence”? The actualization of the ideal human is the German. How is the
identity of the German with the normative human determined? Hegel
says of the Germans:
The German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its

aim is the realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited
self-determination of freedom—that Freedom which has its
own absolute form itself as its purport. . . . The destiny of
the German peoples is to be the bearers of the Christian
principle. (PH, 341; VPW, 763)
The fulfillment of the German destiny as a world-historical people

is signaled by the Reformation. Hegel notes that “[t]he time-honored
and cherished sincerity of the German people is destined to effect this
revolution out of the honest truth and simplicity of its heart” (PH,
414). It is a German, Luther, whose doctrine marks the Reformation.
The principle and destiny of the German peoples is also the “essence
of the Reformation: the human is through his self-determination to be
124 Sûrya Parekh
free” (“der Mensch ist durch sich selbst bestimmt, frei zu sein”) (PH, 417;
VPW, 882; translation modified).
A question troubles Hegel: Why did the Reformation originate
and not extend outside of the Germanic nations?
Here an important question solicits investigation:—why the

Reformation was limited to certain nations, and why it did
not permeate the whole Catholic world? The Reformation
originated in Germany, and struck firm root only in the
purely German nations; outside of Germany it established
itself in Scandinavia and England. But the Romanic and
Sclavonic nations kept decidedly aloof from it. (PH, 419;
VPW, 885)
The Sclavonic nations, Hegel states, are “purely agricultural” and

therefore “the agency of nature predominates” (PH, 420; VPW, 885).
What is the reason for the Romanic Nations?
[T]he Romanic nations also—Italy, Spain, Portugal, and in

part France—were not imbued with the Reformed doctrines.
Physical force perhaps did much to repress them; yet this
alone could not be sufficient to explain the fact, for when
the Spirit of a Nation craves anything no force can prevent
its attaining its desired object: nor can it be said that these
nations were deficient in culture; on the contrary, they were
in advance of the Germans in this respect. It was rather owing
to the fundamental character of these nations, that they did
not adopt the Reformation. But what is the peculiarity of
character which hindered the attainment of Spiritual Freedom?
We answer: the pure inwardness of the German nation was
the proper soil for the emancipation of Spirit; the Romanic
nations, on the contrary, have maintained in the most inner
ground of their soul [im innersten Grunde der Seele]—in their
Spiritual Consciousness—the principle of Disharmony: they are
a product of the fusion of Roman and German blood, and
still retain the heterogeneity thence resulting. (PH, 420–21;
VPW, 886)
At the realization of the ideal of the anthropology, blood marks

a difference in the ground of the soul. The natural determination of
the soul relates the capacity for freedom to blood, a relation that is
conserved in the movement of spirit.
In two places, in the margins of Hegel’s discourse of race, a

natural determination produces a natural exception: in the New World,
inhabitants who are naturally destined to vanish, unsuited to their envi-
ronment; in the Germans, people who are naturally destined to be free
of natural determination. Blood marks the difference in both peoples.
These destinies coincide in North America.
The causality and temporality of nature in these moments is not
that of an endlessly recurring cycle whose truth as contingency has
been revealed. Instead, the causality of nature and freedom are united
in these moments as identical.
The famous passages that end the account of the New World can
now be read differently:
The American continent had in some respects outlived itself

when we first came into contact with it, and in other respects,
it is still not yet fully developed. . . . America is therefore the
country of the future, and its world-historical importance has
yet to be revealed in the ages which lie ahead—perhaps in a
conflict between North and South America. It is a land of
desire for all those who are weary of the historical arsenal of
old Europe. . . . It is up to America to abandon the ground
on which world history has hitherto been enacted. (PWH,
170–71; VPW, 209–10)
What has happened here until now [Was bis jetzt sich hier
ereignet] is only [nur] an echo of the Old World and the
expression of an alien liveliness [fremder Lebendigkeit]; and as a
land [Land] of the future, it is of no interest to us here. The
philosopher has nothing to do with prophecy [Der Philosoph
hat es nicht mit dem Prophezein zu tun]. In history, we are
concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy,
however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively
to the past or future, but with what is and eternally is [was
ist und ewig ist] with reason. And with that we have more
than enough to do. (PWH, 170–71; VPW, 209–10; transla-
tion modified)30
This prophecy articulates a set of oppositions that have determined

the progression of history: the polarity of North and South, Protestant
and Catholic, and if one recalls that the English are a pure Germanic
nation for Hegel, a “pure” people against a heterogeneous people.
Given the natural determinations elucidated thus far, for this future to
126 Sûrya Parekh
be prophetic, rather than a destiny of spirit and nature, would require

a radical overturning of the ground of world history. For it seems clear
that North America is the destiny of world-historical spirit.
Conclusion
I have shown that the inhabitants of the New World form a type of
limit to the determination of racial diversity, unable to be and unable
to become, a race. The precise nature of this limit is difficult to specify,
on account of this “difference” irreducible to dialectics: inferior in every
particular, too diffuse to constitute a sharp difference.
I have also isolated the constitution of two “limits” of Hegel’s
determination of race in an appeal to blood, in the movement from the
natural unity of the genus to the spiritual unity of the human. On the
one hand, the determination of race in Hegel’s thought in some ways
marks an advance over Kant: within its limits, that is, within the hierarchy
plotted from the Africans to the French, there is room for movement.
Natural determinations are not immutable, changes can occur. Africans
and Asians, it would appear, could be free in the New World. History
can occur as well in this space, without any relationship to race. But at
the limits of these progressions, there is an appeal to blood.
Thus, the Hegelian break is in effect a displacement, which at
its “limits” constrains the progression of history and predetermines
the movement of freedom. The movement constituting the transition
from a natural unity in the genus to a spiritual unity of the human in
reason is thus dependent on the exclusion of the “pure” inhabitants of
the New World, who are consigned to vanish. The telos of freedom
in Hegel is accessible only to the Old World human. In the Aesthetics,
Hegel says:
If now in contrast to these epics we contemplate others that

may perhaps be composed in the future, then these might
have nothing to describe except the victory, some day or
other, of living American rationality over imprisonment in
particulars and measurements prolonged to infinity. For in
Europe nowadays each nation is bounded by another and
may not of itself begin with a war against another European
nation; if we now want to look beyond Europe, we can only
turn our eyes to America.31
We should note that this living rationality might also be a victory

of the “purity” of spirit.32
Notes
1. Frequently cited texts of Hegel along with abbreviations are: VPW—

Vorlesung über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Erste Hälfte, Band I: Die
Vernunft in der Geschichte, Hrsg. J. Hoffmeister, 5th ed., and Zweite Hälfte,
Hrsg. G. Lasson (Hamburg: Verlag von Felix Meiner, 1955); PWH—Lectures
on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H. B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); PH—The Philosophy of
History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956); PSS—Hegel’s Philosophie des
subjektiven Geistes, Vol. II, English and German, trans. M. J. Petry (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, 1978); PN—Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1970). For other works of Hegel in German, my reference is Werke
in zwanzig Bänden, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt-am-Main:
Suhrkamp, 1970).
2. I have benefited greatly from Robert Bernasconi’s meticulous and
careful scholarship and approach to the topic of philosophy and race generally,
and the role of race in Hegel’s philosophy. Regarding the latter, see “Hegel
at the Court of the Ashanti” in Hegel after Derrida, ed. S. Barnett (London:
Routledge, 1998); “With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On
the Racial Basis of Hegel’s Eurocentrism,” Nineteenth Century Contexts 22, no.2
(2000):171–201; “With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin? Hegel’s
Role in the Debate on the Place of India within the History of Philosophy,”
in Hegel’s History of Philosophy: New Interpretations, ed. D. Duquette (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2003); “The Return of Africa: Hegel and
the Question of the Racial Identity of the Egyptians,” in Identity and Differ-
ence: Studies in Hegel’s Logic, Philosophy of Spirit, and Politics, ed. Philip T. Grier
(Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 2007; and “Hegel’s Racism: A Reply
to McCarney” Radical Philosophy 119 (May/June 2003): 4–6.
3. Analyses of Hegel’s account of Africa that take some form of this
position include Lewis Gordon, Her Majesty’s Other Children; Christian Neuge-
bauer, “The Racism of Hegel and Kant,” in Sage Philosophy, ed. H. Odera Oruka
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 259–70; Sander Gilman, “Hegel, Schopenhauer,
and Nietzsche See the Black,” in Hegel-Studien, Band 16 (Bonn: Bouvier Ver-
lag Herbert Grundmann), 163–88; Molefi Assante, Kemet, Afrocentricity, and
Knowledge; James Snead, “On Repetition in Black Culture” Black American
Literature Forum 15, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 146–54; and Charles Verharen,
“ ‘The New World and the Dreams to Which It May Give Rise’: An African
and American Response to Hegel’s Challenge,” Journal of Black Studies, 27,
no. 4 (Mar. 1997): 456–93.
4. Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and
History, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
5. Ibid., 23.
6. Ibid., 10.
7. Ibid., 175.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
128 Sûrya Parekh
10. Joseph McCarney, Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000),

143.
11. Darrel Moellendorf, “Racism and Rationality in Hegel’s Philosophy
of Subjective Spirit,” History of Political Thought 13, no. 2 (Summer 1992):
243–55.
12. W. H. Walsh, “Principle and Prejudice in Hegel’s Philosophy of His-
tory,” in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge
13. The PSS is a dual language edition, with the German and English on
opposing pages. My practice is to cite both.
14. Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic,
1750–1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle (London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973).
Gerbi’s meticulous study of this polemic, which includes a chapter on Hegel’s
account of the New World, is one of few treatments of the original inhabitants
of the New World. For Gerbi, Hegel’s account is both an apex to the polemic
and at the same time anachronistic. Jose Ortega y Gasset’s thesis in his reading
of Hegel’s account of the New World is that the inferiority of the animals there
is because they were the originals in “Hegel and America,” in Clio, trans. L.
Buchanan and M. Hoffheimer (Fort Wayne 1995), 25:1. I have benefited from
Michael Hoffheimer’s careful work on this topic in “Hegel, Race, and Genocide,”
The Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 supplemental (2001): 35–62, and “Race
and Law in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” in Race and Racism in Modern
Philosophy, ed. A. Valls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 194–216. G.
A. Kelly in “Hegel’s America,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 1 (Autumn
1972): 3–36 confines himself to Hegel’s comments on European America.
15. Gerbi, 418 and 438n.
16. George Buffon, Oeuvres completes, ed. Richard (Paris: Delangle,
1824–28), quoted in Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The
History of a Polemic, 1750–1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle (London: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1973), 6.
17. Gerbi, 206.
18. See Robert Bernasconi “Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s
Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race,” in Race, ed. Robert Ber-
nasconi (2001), 11–36 for this argument.
19. Immanuel Kant, “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philoso-
phy,” in Race, op. cit.
20. See Jack Forbes, Africans and Native Americans, 2nd ed. (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1993) for an argument against the vanishing of
Native Americans.
21. To treat Hegel’s place in this polemic would require an analysis of
how Hegel constructed his account, including the sources he selected, the
sources that were available, and the details he chose to use or omitted. In this
paper, I cite Hegel’s use of two of his sources: Henry Koster’s Travels in Brazil
(microform) (London, 1817). (I have used a microform reprint of the original
two volume second edition and an abridged edition, C. Harvey Gardiner, ed.,
Travels in Brazil (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966); and
Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied’s Reise nach Brasilien in den Jahren 1815

bis 1817 (St. Augustin: Gardez! Verlag, [1820] 2001, trans. as Travels in Brazil
in 1815, 1816, and 1817 (London: Sir Richard Phillips and Co., 1820).
22. I am using the online version of the Werke (www.hegel.de) for the
Philosophy of Nature. I cite, therefore, the thesis rather than page number.
23. Hegel’s schema of race is derived from Johannes Blumenbach’s third
edition of his dissertation De generis humani varietate nativa, 3rd ed. (Micro-
form) (Gottingae: Vandenhoek et Ruprecht, 1795), trans. T. Bendyshe “On the
Natural Variety of Mankind,” in The Anthropological Treatises of Blumenbach
and Hunter (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865).
Blumenbach’s schema posits three major races: the Ethiopian and Mongolian are
at two extremes and the Caucasian is in the middle. Two minor or intermediate
races mediate between the extremes and the medial race: the American, which
mediates between the Mongolian and the Caucasian, and the Malay, which
mediates between the Ethiopian and the Caucasian. Malay here refers to the
Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific Islands, Australian Aboriginals, and
New Zealand Maoris. According to this schema, the three major races inhabit
the Old World and the two minor races inhabit the New World. For Blumen-
bach, however, racial differences exist along a continuum such that typicality
is not to be found. Hoffheimer suggests that the Kantian conception of race
serves as the basis onto which this schema was superimposed, in “Hegel, Race,
Genocide,” 45.
24. Hegel is inconsistent as to whether there are five or four races, a
difference between Blumenbach and Kant. In the lectures on the Philosophy of
Subjective Spirit of 1825, Hegel lists five races, in accordance with Blumenbach.
In his 1827–28 lectures, he lists four, in accordance with Kant’s conception.
See Bernasconi, “With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin?”
195 n.40 and Hoffheimer, “Hegel, Race, Genocide,” 46.
25. Is this taken from Maximilian? Maximilian, refuting Herr von Eschwege’s
claim that only one tribe of Brazilians—the Puris—have small male genitals,
says, “Mr. Von Eschwege adduces, as a peculiarity of the Puris, the smallness
of the male sex [männlichen Geschlechtstheile]; but I must confess, that I found
in this respect no remarkable difference between them and the other tribes;
the Puris are in every respect [Allgemeinen] very little and all Brazilian tribes
[Stämme] are, on this point, inferior to Europeans, and still more so to the
Negroes” (137–38, 61).
26. Hegel states, “Even the animals [of the New World] show the same
inferiority as human beings. The animal world [Tierwelt] of America includes
lions, tigers, and crocodiles, but although they in fact [zwar] have a similarity
in shape [Gestaltung] to their old world counterparts, they are in every con-
sideration [Rücksicht], smaller, weaker, and less powerful [unmächtiger]. As one
understands, the animals themselves are not as nourishing as the food [Lebens-
mittel] that the Old World provides. And although America has huge hordes
of cattle, European beef is still regarded as a delicacy” (PWH, 163; VPW, 200;
translation modified). Antonello Gerbi cites Alexander Humboldt’s consternation:
“I have organised my life very badly, and soon I shall have completely lost my
130 Sûrya Parekh
senses. I would willingly renounce the European beef that Hegel tells us is so
superior to American beef, and I would love to dwell beside these weak and
inoffensive crocodiles of his which are however, unfortunately, twenty-five feet
long” (Gerbi, 417).
27. These examples have frequently been cited by commentators as evi-
dence that Hegel’s philosophy accords the potential for freedom to all people.
That this example is situated in his account of the New World reveals a selec-
tive reading on the part of his commentators. See McCarney, 143 and Sandra
Bonetto, “Race and Racism in Hegel—An Analysis,” Minerva—An Internet
Journal of Philosophy 10 (2006): 47.
28. There are at least three distortions in this account, which is taken
from Henry Koster’s Travels in Brazil (microform). Koster writes, “The priest-
hood is open to them [Indians]; but they do not take advantage of it*. I never
saw an Indian mechanic in any of the towns; there is no instance of a wealthy
Indian; rich mulattos and negroes are by no means rare” (120). The asterisked
footnote reads, “I heard, from good authority, that there are two instances of
Indians having been ordained as secular priests, and that both these individuals
died from excessive drinking.” The distortions are as follows: (1) the assertion
that there are negro clergymen when Koster is clear that the clergy is not open
to negroes; (2) the omission of the term mulatto from Hegel’s account; and
(3) the shifting from two individuals to a single one. It is not clear whether
Hegel read Koster’s book directly or the review in the “Quarterly Review” that
included the passage above (PSS, 460).
29. The inclusion of Africans in this unity is not certain. Hegel omits
any mention of mulattoes, or for that matter, any union that involves an Afri-
can. In the PWH, Hegel refers to Creoles as offspring of Europeans or Asian
with Americans. This is not consistent with the various usages of the term
by his sources. Koster and Maximilian will both describe a complex system
of classification. Maximilian uses the terms Portuguezes (natives of Portugal),
Brazileiros (“Brazilians, or Portugese born in Brazil, of more or less purity in
origin”), mulattoes (“union of whites with negroes”), mamalucos (“whites and
Indians, also called Mestics”), Negroes (“pure African Negroes”), Creoles (“born
of Negroes in Brazil”), Caribocos (“born of Negroes and Indians”), Caboclos
(“civilised” Indians), and Tapuyos (wild Indians) (28, 9). Koster describes a
similar schema except: he substitutes Creole whites for Brazileiros; Caboclos
refers to domestic instead of “civilised” Indians; Creole Negroes refers to free
Negroes; and mestizo is substituted for Caribocos (Koster [abridged], 174). I
should add that Koster’s account concerns only Caboclos, for he does not meet
any Tapuyos (Koster [microform], 395). Further, the only reference I have
found concerning the relations between Asians and Americans is a reference by
Maximilian to nine Chinese day laborers who were brought to Rio de Janeiro.
He indicates that “some of them have been converted and married to young
Indians” (243, 110).
30. Commentators have understood Hegel to be here dismissing proph-
ecy as if they knew what Hegel meant by the term. See G. A. Kelly, “Hegel’s
America”; Paul Franco, Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 339–40; Stanley Rosen, “Hegel and Historicism,” in G. W.

F. Hegel: Critical Assessments, ed. Robert Stern, Vol. IV (London: Routledge,
1993), 391–92; Charles Verharen, “ ‘The New World and the Dreams to Which
It May Give Rise’: An African and American Response to Hegel’s Challenge,”
457–58; and George Kline, “Presidential Address: The Use and Abuse of Hegel
by Nietzsche and Marx,” in Hegel and His Critics: Philosophy in the Aftermath
of Hegel, ed. William Desmond Albany: State University of New York Press,
1989), 10. As a phenomenon to be studied by philosophy, Hegel was inter-
ested in prophecy, situating it in the PSS as a form of magnetic somnambulism.
Referencing Plato’s Timaeus, Hegel indicates that prophecy has some claim to
truth as it allows for a subjective or conditioned rising above the determina-
tions of time (PSS 281–83). Hegel dismisses prophecy from the concern of the
philosopher because it is an unreliable mode of cognition, precisely because it
is only subjective.
31. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik Vol. III, in Werke, Vol.
15 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 353; Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. II,
trans. T. M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 1062. Catherine
Malabou in her work, The Future of Hegel:Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic,
trans. L. During (New York: Routledge, 2004) and more astonishingly, Daniel
Berthold-Bond, in his article “Hegel’s Eschatalogical Vision: Does History have
a Future,” History and Theory 27, no. 1 (Feb. 1988): 14–29, which explicitly
references the theme of a Christian New World, both miss these accounts of the
New World as a future in the philosophy of history and the Aesthetics. Some
commentators who have dismissed Hegel’s claims of America as the future seem
to miss this account in the Aesthetics. Thus, Franco will say, “It [Hegel’s claim
that America is the land of the future in the philosophy of history] does not
find an echo in anything else that Hegel wrote” (340).
32. I wish to thank David Marriott for his comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
PART III
The Historicity of Morality,

Ethical Life, and Politics
7
Spirit without the Form of Self
On Hegel’s Reading of Greek Antiquity
Introduction
In §6 of the Introduction to the 1830 Encyclopaedia Hegel mentions

a requirement that there be an “external touchstone of the truth of
a philosophy.”
In the following, this requirement is applied to Hegel’s own assess-
ment of the achievements of Greek antiquity with regards to what he
calls “subjective freedom.” This is done here necessarily in a limited
framework. Some important claims of Hegel’s on the state and the
individual are being compared to related claims by Plato and Aristotle
on the polis and personhood; to expressions of popular attitudes and
beliefs in Greek literature; and to contemporary scholarship on the
political dynamics of the ancient city-state. In the end, Hegel’s overall
judgment on the “spirit of antiquity” appears corroborated, rather than
relativized, by these “external touchstones” of its truth.
Much of Hegel’s appraisal of Greek civilization is of course, in
nineteenth-century fashion, nothing short of enthusiastic. When it
comes to his own concern with “subjective freedom” however, Hegel’s
judgment on antiquity is severe and uncompromising: Greek popular
and philosophic culture, he maintains, knew nothing of the concept
nor of the ethical realizations of subjective free will. This is a very seri-
ous charge, as Hegel grounds the entire world of Right proper (Recht,
jus) precisely in the shared recognition and institutional embodiment
of subjective free will: “Only in the will as subjective can freedom, or
135
136 Allegra de Laurentiis
the will as it is in itself, be actual“1 and: “Subjectivity constitutes the

ground of existence of the concept of freedom.”2
As stressed by Peperzak, Tuschling, and others,3 for Hegel the
meaning of the Delphic Apollo’s injunction “know thyself” lies in its
philosophical, not psychological meaning. The oracle does not recom-
mend introspection or self-criticism. Instead, it affirms that “the human
being as such [der Mensch überhaupt] must know itself,”4 that is, it must
know the essence of being human:
Know thyself, this absolute command, does not mean . . . mere

self-knowledge of the particular abilities, character, drives and
weaknesses of the individual, but rather knowledge of the
true in man [Mensch] . . . as well as of the true in and for
itself—of essence itself as spirit.5
Even in the quite different systematic context of the Science of Logic,

knowledge of the self represents the innermost dynamic structure of spirit,
thus the motive force of its movement: “The most important point for
the nature of spirit is the relation, not only of what it is in-itself to what
it is actually, but rather [the relation] of what it knows itself to be.”6
This reading of the Socratic exhortation is the interpretive criterion
of Hegel’s account of the myth of Oedipus (to choose but one example)
in the lectures on the Philosophy of History.7 Hegel understands the fall
of the Egyptian Sphinx upon hearing Oedipus’s solution to the riddle8
as symbolizing the fall of the “Oriental” phase of spirit vis-à-vis the rise
of the “Greek” phase. He does credit “the Orient” for having raised
for the first time the central question of philosophy, namely that of the
nature of man, but he also charges it with failing to answer its own
question. Oedipus’s insight, then, would signify the dawning of human
self-knowledge in Greek culture.
Yet Hegel considers the Greek contribution to be just that: a dawn.
In Griesheim’s transcription of the 1825–26 lectures on the History
of Philosophy, Hegel indicts ancient Asian, Greek, and Roman civiliza-
tions together as incapable of a theoretical grasp and juridical-ethical
fulfillment of the Socratic command. No ancient civilization created
the kind of ethical world that could make self-reflexive knowledge and
self-determining action possible:
The Greeks and the Romans, not to mention the Asiatics,

knew nothing of this concept [of freedom], did not know
that man as man is born free and is free. Neither Plato nor
Spirit without the Form of Self 137
Aristotle, neither Cicero nor the Roman jurists, and still less
the Greek and Roman peoples, possessed this concept although
it alone is the source of Right. They knew well enough that
an Athenian, or a Roman citizen, an ingenuus, is free and that
there are free men and slaves; therefore they did not know
that man as man is free . . . that is, man as apprehended in
thought and as he apprehends himself in thought.9
As is well known, the source of Oedipus’s tragic fate following his

encounter with the Egyptian Sphinx lies in his failure to know what he
has done. His ignorance ranges from simple lack of insight to consciously
self-inflicted blindness. For Hegel, this signifies the epochal tragedy of
the Greeks’ attempt and failure to pursue self-knowing:
But this ancient solution by Oedipus, who thereby shows

that he is in the knowing, is coupled with immense igno-
rance regarding his own deeds. The rise of spiritual clarity
in the old kingdom is still united with the horrors deriving
from ignorance, and this first dominion of kings, in order
to become true knowing and ethical clarity, must transform
itself through civil laws and political freedom.10
Hegel’s explicit theoretical account of self-knowing begins in the

last chapter of the Phenomenology but is developed only in the Science of
Logic. The final Doctrine of the Concept exhibits the logical structure
of “self-determining substance.” Having concluded previously that all
substance is a “relation of substantiality [Substanzverhältnis],” Hegel
now shows that “circular” or reflexive substantiality denotes the logical
structure of subjectivity, that is, it describes the Concept (der Begriff).
The most general features of subjectivity, namely self-differentiation,
self-reference, and self-development already exist in nature, namely in the
living organism. At first, we read at the beginning of the Doctrine of
the Concept, “the Concept is the principle of all life.”11 In a comment
toward the end of the same Doctrine, Hegel explains:
From the standpoint of the understanding life is usually

considered to be . . . incomprehensible . . . In fact, life is so
far from being incomprehensible that on the contrary we
have the Concept itself before us in it . . . But . . . the defect
of life . . . consists in the fact that [in it] concept and reality
still do not . . . correspond with one another . . . Hence, the
process of life consists in the overcoming of the immediacy in

which life is still entangled; and this process . . . results . . . in
the Idea . . . as cognition.12
While living matter is nature’s analog to the logical Concept, only think-
ing is the element proper to it—from its simplest form as self-feeling
soul to absolute knowing. Already in the closing pages of the Phenom-
enology, the Concept is referred to as spirit “in the form of Self [in
selbstischer Form].”13
In the lectures on ancient philosophy, Hegel argues that pre-Socratic
philosophizing already contains intuitions of the self-referential nature
of human thinking. For instance, the ancient thesis that knowledge is
a kind of reminiscence indicates awareness that all knowledge depends
logically upon self-knowledge, or that “the Concept remains at home
with itself in the course of its process.” And yet, from Anaximander to
Aristotle and the Roman philosophers we search in vain for a properly
conceptual grasp of the self. With the dissolution of Western antiquity,
those ancient intuitions metamorphose into the representational thinking
of religious monotheisms. Only modern philosophy would be able to
engage in the labor of grasping the self in the self’s own terms—that
is, conceptually.
As is well known, Hegel interprets the transition from Antiquity to
the Middle Ages and Modernity as a “becoming subjective” of spirit. This
does not indicate an increasing individualization but rather a growing
universalization of subjectivity away from mere singularity. For example,
the recognition of a right to individual satisfaction (as defined in the
“Morality” section of the Philosophy of Right)14 amounts to a universal-
ization of the singular will. This right to subjective particularity is then
characterized a few sections later as “the turning- and center-point in
the difference between antiquity and modern times.”15
To be sure, Hegel detects in Plato’s work early forms of the
conception of a necessary universalization of mere particularity. Yet he
also points out that this notion plays there always a negative role. Plato
would recognize subjective freedom only as a threat to the harmony of
ethical life. Since the kallipolis is supposed to embody universality, and
since singularity is in Plato’s eyes its logical contradiction, the affirmation
of individual interests cannot but represent a strident dissonance in the
universal harmony. Dikaiosune is only guaranteed by purging the state
of all singular and particular claims. Subjective freedom in Plato’s polis
is the enemy within.
Despite this, Hegel does encounter in the Republic signs of
Plato’s awareness of a potential compatibility between universality and
singularity. He points to the seemingly peculiar notion of a necessary

parallelism between the just city and the good soul (Books II–IV).
Despite its enormous significance in Socrates’ discussions of justice and
virtue, no attempt is made to ground this kinship either logically or
metaphysically.16 Socrates merely praises its didactical advantages and
compatibility with popular wisdom.17 The deeper ties of polis and psyche
remain unaccounted for. In the 1820 Introduction to the lectures on
the History of Philosophy, Hegel offers the following interpretation: the
kinship of city and soul expresses the unity of objective and subjective
spirit as moments of the Idea. Despite having detected this unity, Plato
can explain it only at the “poor” conceptual level of his epoch, the
“childhood of philosophizing.”18
In this context, Hegel’s choice of Plato’s Republic as illustration
of the thesis that philosophy is fundamentally descriptive of its epoch
rather than normative19 merits renewed attention.
The oft paraphrased passage from the Philosophy of Right, according
to which philosophy takes flight only when an epoch “has attained its
completed state” (Nisbet)20 or “is already there cut and dried” (Knox)21
actually states that every epoch must have “completed its formative pro-
cess and made itself ready [nachdem die Wirklichkeit ihren Bildungsprozess
vollendet und sich fertig gemacht hat].” The reflexive “sich fertig machen”
means “to make oneself ready”—not “to be finished” (fertig sein). Thus,
the expression implies that an epoch readies itself for the next phase of
spirit. Accordingly, philosophy does not merely grasp a closing epoch
but—since to grasp is always to have surpassed—philosophy always also
announces a new epoch as well. This is one reason why philosophers
need not think of themselves as original creators of precepts for a new
world order—as the new world is already unfolding under their eyes.
Yet even in the light of this, it still seems paradoxical on Hegel’s
part to choose the Republic, the archetype of all Western political utopias,
to illustrate philosophy’s nonnormative character. He writes: “[E]ven
the Platonic Republic . . . has essentially apprehended nothing but the
nature of Greek ethical life.”22 One is hard pressed not to read the
Republic as prescribing, among other things, an ideal division of labor
and a lifelong separation of individuals in classes as ultimate guarantors
of justice. After all, Plato understands justice as harmony resulting from
the class allocation of individuals on the basis of their talents, and from
the lower class’s sharing the conviction of the ruling class that its rule
is legitimate:
If indeed the ruler and the ruled in any city share the same
belief about who should rule, it is in this one [the temperate
city]. . . . It makes the weakest, the strongest, and those in

between . . . all sing the same song together. . . . And this
unanimity, this natural agreement between the worse and the
better as to which of the two is to rule . . . is rightly called
temperance.23
Given the well-documented, conflict-ridden social history of Athens in

the classical age, there would seem to be little doubt that Plato is not
describing but rather prescribing a condition to be achieved. And yet, a
close reading of Hegel’s carefully chosen words helps dissolve the appar-
ent paradox of his interpretation: Plato’s “apprehending” the “nature”
of Greek ethical life means neither that he describes the polis’ reality
(in the sense of Dasein) nor that he prescribes a utopian Sittlichkeit but
rather that he conceptualizes the essence of Greek actuality.
Hegel’s Logic defines actuality as the unity of the ground of existence
and its appearance. It defines essence as “the sphere” in which everything
“relates itself to itself . . . as a being of reflection, a being within which
another shines while it shines within the other.”24 Accordingly Plato, in
Hegel’s interpretation, by conceptualizing the essence of Greek actuality
is not so much describing social and political realities as he is developing
the concept of the essence that underlies and transpires through them
while in turn finding in them a form of its actualization.
Contemporary historical and philological research may help fill the
perceived gap between the apparent reality and the deeper actuality of
Plato’s political world. The following sections discuss few but emblematic
“touchstones of the truth” of Hegel’s reading: caste and class, slavery
and personhood, property and happiness, as they form Greek reality and
inform Greek self-conceptions.
Caste as the Truth of Class
Far from being a place of harmony and unbroken continuity with the
past, classical Athens is described by historians as a relatively self-contained
world of antagonism and strife. This both bears the unmistakable marks
of class struggle—not the essence Hegel focuses upon—and closely
resembles forms of antagonism that define modern civil society, that
is, the competition among particular interests and the conflict between
these and the common good.
While Hegel largely ignores Plato’s references to class struggle,
historians have often called attention to them. Some have called these
references “obsessive.”25 For example, Plato repeatedly characterizes oli-
garchy in terms of the mutual reenforcement of hostile classes: “money

makers create . . . drones and beggars,” and the latter “plot” against the
former, “longing for a revolution [neoterismou erontes].”26 The same
applies to democracy, which of course in Plato’s eyes fares no better
than oligarchy. In his analogy of demokratia with a “sick body,” the
fever of civil warring (stasiazei) takes central stage.27 Since the kallipolis
cannot countenance disharmony, Plato is in search of an authentic, stable,
“natural” form of class. He finds it in what modern social historians
would refer to as “caste.”
In a Hegelian perspective, the recourse to the infamous “myth of
the metals” in the third book of the Republic offers Plato just such an
alternative to the cacophony of classes. On the one hand, he is aware
that this “useful falsehood” from barbarian mythology28 is decidedly
far-fetched in the light of his audience’s social experience. Socrates
feigns embarrassment in propagating the myth: “I don’t know where
I will get the audacity.”29 On the other hand, he then proceeds to tell
it in lavish detail. The myth suggests that meritocracy may not be the
whole story behind the “just” allocation of individuals to estates. The
real ground for the tripartite structure of the state may well lie in fate,
divine caprice, or “nature,” that is, the gods’ bestowal of gold, silver,
or bronze in the bloodstream of individuals.
Socrates’ embarrassment is due to the fact that the social immo-
bility essential to castes is anathema to the self-image of class society
as experienced by his contemporaries. In class society, as long as the
reproduction of class structure is not in question, individual mobility is
inevitable—and even encouraged. Plato’s insertion of the myth in his
overall argument, despite all that would speak against it, becomes more
understandable if viewed as part of a strategy to uncover the essence
intrinsic to the kallipolis. It is the accident of birth, the caprice of destiny
that underlies the apparently rational divisions of the state. Caste is the
quintessential class, class stripped of appearances: the truth of class.
With this conception, Hegel argues, Plato reaffirms the preemi-
nence of Eastern ancient Sittlichkeit. The so-called Eastern world—in the
Philosophy of Right the chosen examples are India’s caste system30 and
Egyptian society31—is based on the “allotment of individuals to classes
according to mere birth.”32
As mentioned above, however, Hegel himself does not view class
antagonism nor caste division as the essence of Plato’s polis. He locates
it rather in the all-round conflict among particular interests and between
these and the common good.
The historical Athens presents itself indeed as an ancient laboratory
of modern civil society. The rise of an aristocracy of wealth joining the
ranks of birth nobility (and occasionally displacing it), a modest degree

of social mobility, the establishment of popular juries, the successes of
political satire, or the public display of skepticism in religious matters,
are all ingredients of demokratia that for Hegel (though certainly not
for Plato) represent early forms of existence of the “independent . . . per-
sonhood of the individual, of subjective freedom.”33 Many of the city’s
legal, economic, and cultural practices carry within them the dawning
consciousness of a right to subjectivity. In themselves, though not yet
for the agents engaged in them, these practices imply that there exists a
specific legitimacy of the particular interest (or will) vis-à-vis the absolute
legitimacy of the universal interest (or will). And it is precisely because
of the potential implications (not least juridical ones) of these practices
that they become targets of Plato’s denunciation.
From a logical point of view, Hegel explains Plato’s attitude as
being based on twin premises: first, that singularity is the contradictory
of universality, and second, that a self-contradictory whole is an unintel-
ligible figure of thought. On the plane of political philosophy, Hegel
thinks that these logical dogmas translate into Plato’s rejection of the
possibility that singular or particular interests may imply and be implied
by the universal interest of the whole.
Against these Platonic doctrines, Hegel claims to have proven in the
Logic that singularity, particularity, and universality are not just compat-
ible but rather integral “moments” of any unity that is organic. In the
ethical sphere, this translates into the notion that the realization of free
personhood lies precisely in its recognition by the state (“the principle
of personhood is universality”), and, vice versa, that the state’s univer-
sality is “undeveloped” if it does not include the right of individuality.
Hegel insists that grasping this notion is a historical achievement—which
explains the concept’s absence from the Platonic corpus:
What is universal about the Concept . . . is what particulariz-

es . . . itself remaining at home with itself in its other. . . . [I]n
its true and comprehensive significance, the universal is a
thought that took millennia to enter into men’s consciousness.
The Greeks, although otherwise so highly cultivated, did not
know God, or even man, in their true universality.34
Mere Singularity: The Selfless Slave
The social acceptance and legal recognition of slavery in antiquity is one

of its most striking features. In the rare occasions where justification is
felt to be in order, slavery is justified alternately as legitimate privilege

of the master, as natural state of the slave, as unavoidable economic
device, or as fulfilling all three functions at once—such as in the famous
discussion in Aristotle’s Politics.35 In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel attri-
butes these justifications to a historical failure to grasp that the essence
of being human is personhood or, in logical terms, that the essence of
individuality is universality:
What the slave lacks is the recognition of his personhood;

but the principle of personhood is universality. The master
considers the slave not as a person, but as a selfless thing
[eine selbstlose Sache]; and the slave himself does not count
as an I, for the master is his I instead.36
“Sache,” of course, is not to be read as “Ding.” The characterization of

ancient conceptions of the slave as “selfless thing” must appear ludicrous
if “thing” is understood as a lifeless object—or even as an automaton.37
The same happens if “selfless” is taken to mean altogether “soulless.”
Hegel is of course perfectly aware that even for the ancients, slaves are
individual human beings. His point is that they are not recognized as
persons. Their self is someone else’s. Though Hegel does not mention
it, the most likely referent of his discussion of ancient conceptions of
slavery is Book I of Aristotle’s Politics.38 Aristotle distinguishes between
poietika organa (means of production) and praktika organa (means for
the improvement of life). The latter have souls, and the slave is one of
these: empsychon organon. While he lacks a concept of personhood, Aris-
totle insists that the slave—not unlike the woman—has a soul, though
one of a different kind as the master’s.
In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel discusses slavery in the context of
property acquisition, that is, of the embodiment of the will—the source
of right—in external objects. He explains both the “asserted justification
of slavery” and the opposite “assertion of [its] absolute injustice”39 as
theses of an “abstract” antinomy. Historically, thesis and antithesis are
found in pristine form in Aristotle’s and in Rousseau’s work. One is
embodied in Aristotle’s laconic definition: “[He] who is by nature not
his own, but another’s man, is by nature a slave.”40 The other is carved
indelibly in Rousseau’s aphorism: “Man is born free, and everywhere he
is in chains.”41 Hegel however thinks that the antinomy is only apparent,
in that both thesis and antithesis regard “man” as a natural entity: either
as naturally un-free, or as naturally free. The real antithesis to this com-
mon perspective, he argues, consists of grasping “man” (der Mensch) as
referring to more than a bundle of natural capacities. “Mensch” denotes
the capacity to sublate natural capacities:
Man, in conformity with his immediate existence, is in himself

something natural, external to his concept. It is only through
the formation [Bildung] of his own body and mind, essen-
tially through his self-consciousness’s apprehension of itself
as free, that he takes possession of himself and becomes his
own property over against others. This taking possession . . . is
the positing into actuality of what he is according to
his concept.42
By contrast, the ancients still regard “man” as a creature of nature, a

mere “existence . . . not adequate to its concept.”43 The problem with
using humans as “tools for tools,” as codified by Aristotle,44 is not that
such use is incompatible with biological nature but that it is incompat-
ible with the spiritual (geistig) nature, that is, with the concept or truth
of “man.” Slavery is legitimated by custom and positive law at histori-
cal stages that precede man’s grasp of his own concept: “This early,
un-true phenomenon befalls spirit that has just attained the standpoint
of its consciousness.”45 The new standpoint emerges late in the history
of the species. Eventually, it brings about subjects who grasp and will
themselves as free, and a political organism that enables and guarantees
this knowledge and will:
[T]he dialectic of the Concept and of the at first only immedi-

ate consciousness of freedom brings about at that point the fight
of recognition and the relation of lordship and servitude. . . . It
is only in the knowledge that the Idea of freedom is actually
true exclusively as state that objective spirit, the content of
Right, is no longer taken in its subjective concept alone, and
that thereby man’s in-and-for-himself incompatibility with
slavery is no longer taken as a mere ought to be.46
Property as Mark of Subjection
Hegel discusses Plato’s conception of property in the same context as

slavery, namely in Abstract Right. Property is the first, most rudimentary
form in which the will of individuals becomes objective to them, namely
as embodied in things. By outlawing this “abstract” externalization of
the will, Hegel argues, Plato aims at inhibiting the will’s further devel-
opment toward more “concrete” expressions. By denying the guardians
personal property and familial privacy, Plato betrays a strong awareness
of the connection between abstract externalizations of the will and more

concrete ones that might eventually subvert the established order:
The idea of the Platonic state contains as general principle

a wrong against the person, namely its unfitness for private
property. . . . [T]he proscription of the private property
principle . . . fails to recognize the nature of spirit’s freedom
and of Right. 47
T. M. Knox has raised a pertinent objection against this Hegelian

reading. Plato, he stresses, does not deprive everybody in the kallipolis
of private property, but only the guardians. This is factually correct, but
the objection ignores that Hegel’s aim in this context is to identify in
Plato’s thinking conceptual precursors of modern notions of person-
hood or free citizenship.48 The virtues of the guardians are those that
most closely resemble the essential characteristics of a self-conscious and
self-determining citizenry. They must be kept from involving themselves
in the degrading activities of people who are farther removed from per-
sonhood—principally the activity of embodying one’s “desire” (to epithu-
metikon, the Greek forerunner of “the will”) in material possessions. In
Plato’s eyes, the apparent privileges enjoyed by the “money-makers”49 of
the third estate (to own, to accumulate and to trade currency and goods)
are directly related to the poor quality of their souls and thus to their
contemptible way of life. Holding property is a symptom of congenital
powerlessness, that is, lack of self-control and thus of control of others.
It marks permanent exclusion from power and is at best an indemnity
for this exclusion. Plato is not alone in holding this judgment. In very
different contexts, Demosthenes and Aristophanes present all who make
money as servile natures or irredeemably contemptible nouveau riches.50
In sum: while property in things is for Hegel a basic and elementary
form of self-determination, for Plato it is the greatest obstacle to active
citizenship. By denying the guardians the most elementary manifestation
of their will, Hegel claims, Plato means to destroy in them the first
awakening of free personhood.
It is important, however, to clearly understand that Hegel’s criti-
cism of Plato’s suppression of a right to individual satisfaction of one’s
desires does not imply the claim that ancient individuals did not in fact
seek such satisfaction. Hegel’s point concerns the juridical, moral, and
political recognition, not the psychological awareness of free individual
will. This point is made evident in his interpretation of Greek concep-
tions of happiness and desire.
Happiness without Freedom, Desire without Will
Lecturing on Solon’s sayings, Hegel points out that eudaimonia, intro-

duced by Solon as lifelong, habitual satisfaction of human desire and
opposed to short-lived enjoyment, must be understood as a first concep-
tualization of desire, that is, as universalization of desire’s particularity
and thus potentially as recognition of its ethical value: “Happiness as a
state for the whole life, represents totality of enjoyment. This is some-
thing universal and a rule over single enjoyments . . . [a rule] to restrain
desire, to have [a] universal standard before one’s eyes.’51
In the pre-classical age, eudaimonia refers to a condition due to the
“good will of a daimon,” typically a condition of material wealth that
makes an overall positive attitude to life possible. Solon’s eudaimonia,
Hegel comments, is universal in form though not yet in content. It
is a gift of fortune, not a deed of the will. Discussing an anecdote by
Herodotus, Hegel comments that in Solon’s conception of happiness
“the form of universality is already present, but the universal does not
yet emerge for itself.”52 Solon recommends happiness over the gratifica-
tion of single desires as a matter of prudence in the choice of means
for ends (namely the choice of sacrificing pleasure in favor of long-term
happiness). Neither freedom of the will nor a right to the satisfaction
of one’s desire are part of this picture.
Knox has written that “Hegel . . . held that subjective freedom never
came within the Greek purview at all.”53 This may be overstating the
case, but Plato’s efforts in warding off expressions of subjective freedom
are hardly mistakable. Although his term for freedom, eleutheria (literally
“doing as one pleases”) is closer to Willkür (arbitrium) than to Wille
(voluntas), Plato’s bitter caricature of life in demokratia speaks volumes
about his assessment of this motive force of human action:
A democratic city, athirst for freedom, . . . praises and hon-

ors . . . rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave
like rulers. . . . A father accustoms himself to behave like a
child . . . while the son behaves like a father. . . . A resident
alien or a foreign visitor is made equal to a citizen. . . . The
utmost freedom for the majority is reached . . . when bought
slaves, both male and female, are no less free than those who
bought them. And I almost forgot to mention the extent of
the legal equality of men and women and of the freedom
in their relations.54
This description (which continues to include bitter visions of democratic

freedoms for dogs and asses) culminates in Plato’s disparagement of a
citizenry “incapable” of enduring any kind of bondage (douleia): “citi-

zens’ souls,” he chides, become “so sensitive” that “at the least degree
of slavery they become angry and cannot endure it.”55
In the last division of the Philosophy of Right (Ethical Life) Hegel
contrasts the ancient reverence for order and harmony with the modern
exaltation of choice and antagonism. He maintains that in modern civil
society, “self-conscious” or “for itself” particularity perpetually asserts itself
against the containing power of the state’s universality.56 He adds that, if
left unchecked, the self-assertion of particularity must produce centrifugal
forces that undermine society itself. Hegel’s description of the internal
dynamics of civil society shares both the Platonic disdain of the freedom
of “the many” and the Rousseauian contempt for that of “the few.”
He seems now very close to sharing Plato’s judgment on “democratic”
freedom. This seeming self-contradiction is easily resolved when one
realizes that for Hegel civil society is only a necessary, not a sufficient
condition for freedom: it is a “state of need and of the understanding”
(Not- und Verstandesstaat),57 not a state of reason (Vernunft). What
Plato had feared is precisely “the excess, [the] misery, and the physical
and ethical depravity common to them both”58 that characterize a civil
society become more powerful than its state. With realistic foreboding,
the ancient philosopher dreads the proliferation of particularisms (mainly
understood as the breeding of greed) in society, without being able to
envisage its incorporation and containment by the state.
Hegel himself, of course, views the right to satisfy one’s subjective
will only as a moment in the overall “progress in the consciousness of
freedom”59 that is spirit’s history—and yet it is a necessary moment and
not, as in Plato, a mere destabilization of the community, a violation of
justice, a threat to the subsistence of the whole:
The independent development of particularity . . . is the

moment that appears in the states of antiquity as intruding
corruption of the ethos and as the ultimate ground of their
decline.60 Thus, not being integrated in and unified with
the organization of the whole, subjective particularity [in
the polis] shows itself . . . as an enemy, as corruption of the
social order.61
Ancient juridical, comic, and tragic literature offers a picture of the

Greeks’ interest in and recognition of individual character, desire, and
will that is quite different from that found in the works of the philoso-
phers. While in tragedy individual characterization is limited (undoubtedly
because of the exemplary role of its characters and the archaic setting of
their deeds), comedy and oratory are keenly interested in the peculiarities
and eccentricities associated with gender, social position, age, or sexual

proclivity of their characters. Nothing is sacred to comedy—especially not
the moralistic typology embodied in the heroes and the heroines, the
divine founders, the blameless mothers and virginal sisters, the lovers of
Hellenic mankind, or the philosophers. Against these role models, comedy
asserts the legitimacy of a cultural and political interest in individually
sized bullies and opportunists, immoralists and philistines, superstitious
fools and cunning atheists, rogues and their victims. Comedy’s dislike
of clichés is at its best (for example, in Aristophanes’ Knights) when it
parodies the politically all-powerful idea of divine intervention in human
affairs. Menander’s audiences laugh at official religious beliefs and prac-
tices: a citizen whose enemy has fallen into a well cries in relief “There
are gods, by Dionysus!”62 Surviving fragments of literary works testify
to ethical ideas and attitudes stunningly divergent from what we find in
philosophers’ works. A fragment by Antiphanes, for example, contains the
extraordinary thought that the educated man forgoes retaliation when
wronged and is motivated by compassion in all circumstances.63
Hegel is familiar with this larger picture. He does not allege that
ancient ethos altogether ignores the existence of individual desire and
will. His argument is rather that ancient philosophers intuit the poten-
tial development of individual subjectivity from its mere status as fact
to that of a claim to recognition, eventually attaining the new status
of a universal right to it. Despite his unabashed admiration of classical
antiquity, Hegel’s ultimate pronouncement on the form of consciousness
upon which all ancient civilizations rest is stern:
These states . . . could not endure in themselves the diremp-

tion [of their ethical life]. They succumbed to this reflection,
as it began to appear first in mental disposition and then in
actuality . . . Plato . . . does present substantial ethicality in its
ideal beauty and truth; but he is incapable of dealing with
the principle of independent particularity, which in his time
had penetrated Greek ethical life, otherwise than by oppos-
ing to it his merely substantial state and . . . by excluding it
altogether [from the latter].64
Lest the appearance of a “principle of independent particularity” in

history be understood only as cultural manifestation of an immaterially
conceived “spirit,” one must point out that this aspect of spirit’s transi-
tion “from substance to subject” is also intended as a material historical
development. One need only to read an often neglected passage from
the Philosophy of Right’s section on the State.65 Here, Hegel discerns the
transition in the historical novelty of requiring that work be mediated

through individual’s own volition. Labor, in other words, becomes a
means to further particular subjective ends. Besides being motivated by
raw necessity and in accordance with another’s will, individual labor is
increasingly seen as personal possession (much like one’s body, talents,
religious belief or inclinations), thus as an activity performed “volun-
tarily.” In a surprising comment, Hegel specifies that the recognition of
the right to one’s work and thus in the end to one’s will arises thanks
to (“is made possible by”) the practice of paying for services, not with
goods, but in form of a quantitatively equivalent “universal value”—that
is, in form of money:
In Plato’s state the rulers are left to assign individuals to

their particular stands and to impose on them their particu-
lar tasks. . . . [I]n the feudal monarchy vassals had to carry
out equally undetermined services . . . in their particularit
y. . . . What is missing in these contexts is the principle of
subjective freedom, namely that the substantial activity of the
individual . . . be mediated through his particular will—a
right made possible only by the requirement that services be
provided in form of universal value.66
The material side of the mediation in modern social orders is

represented by the exchange of wages (in universal currency) for work.
Wages represent the universal abstract equivalence of particular, quali-
tatively different kinds of work.67 Through this sober mechanism, indi-
vidual volition or interest begins to be integrated in the general will or
interest while being recognized by the latter. This, Hegel notes, is the
most striking feature of civil society—the realization of freedom in its
utterly abstract dimension: “The egoistic end in its actualization, con-
ditioned in this way by the universality—grounds a system of all-round
dependency.”68
In the Greek world, it is the Sophistic movement that stands out
as forceful manifestation of an emerging right to individual interest—not
surprisingly, also by claiming material compensation for intellectual labor.
Rather than conceiving the true and the good as objective, preordained
goals, the Sophists consider them as results of competent argument,
acquired skill or—more scandalously still—personal conviction. This is
why Plato views sophistry as spearheading the internal corrosion of a har-
monious society of peacefully coexisting, mutually segregated estates.
For Hegel, human history is the development of the Idea itself,
and an integral part (or logically necessary moment) of its substance is
individuals’ right to their particularity. Indeed, he writes, “[P]articularity

is the externally appearing mode in which the ethical exists.”69 Thus,
neither particular aspirations to it nor its eventual juridical establishment
could be banned from history: “If Plato’s state wanted to exclude par-
ticularity, it could not be helped, since such help would contradict the
infinite right of the Idea to let particularity be free.”70
By historical as much as logical necessity, an epochal revolution
would come about through which subjective particularity would attain
universal recognition. The price that antiquity paid for the suppression
of this development was its own dissolution.
Notes
This chapter is a revised version of two sections of chapter 5 of my Subjects

in the Ancient and Modern World. On Hegel’s Theory of Subjectivity (Basingstoke,
UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005). These passages are reproduced with permission
of Palgrave-Macmillan.
1. G. W. F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1820), Werke
in zwanzig Bänden, vol. 7 (W 7), §106.
2. W 7, §152, Remark.
3. A. Peperzak, Selbsterkenntnis des Absoluten: Grundlinien der Hegelschen
Philosophie des Geistes (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987); and B. Tusch-
ling, “Die Idee in Hegel’s Philosophie des Subjektiven Geistes,” in Psychologie und
Anthropologie oder Philosophie des Geistes, ed. F. Hespe and B. Tuschling (Stuttgart:
Frommann-Holzboog, 1991). For Hegel’s own statements, see among others
the Introduction to the Philosophy of Spirit, Enzyklopädie der Philosophischen
Wissenschaften 1830 (Enz.), §377 and the Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Geschichte (W 12), discussed below.
4. W 12, 272.
5. Enz. §377.
6. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Lehre des Seins (1832); Gesammelte
Werke (GW), Vol. 21 (Hamburg: 1968), 15–16.
7. W 12, 271 ff.
8. “What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, on three
at nightfall?” Oedipus’s answer: “It is man.”
9. I use translation by T. M. Knox and A. V. Miller, G. W. F. Hegel.
Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1985), 75, except for replacing “law” with “Right” for Hegel’s Recht.
10. W 12, 272.
11. Enz., §160, Addition.
12. Ibid., § 216, Addition.
13. Phänomenologie des Geistes (W 3), 589.
14. In W 7, §121 the “right of the subject to find its satisfaction in the
action” is defined as “the more concrete determination” of “subjective freedom,”
which in turn consists of the fact that “the particularity of the agent is contained
and implemented in the action.”
15. W 7, §124, Remark.
16. Even Allan Bloom, in The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books,
1968), seems to consider Plato’s argumentative strategy in this case baffling. He
both stresses the fundamental role of the parallelism in the overall argument of
the Republic (344) and admits that the book contains no satisfactory justification
for it: “A city, like a man, desires wealth, needs food, and deliberates. But a city
cannot reproduce or philosophize. . . . In this sense a city cannot be properly
compared to a man” (376).
17. See Republic 368d-369, 434d-435b, and 435e-436. At 368e Socrates
argues that, since “a city is larger than a single man . . . perhaps . . . there is more
justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is.” At 435e we
learn that “[i]t would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness didn’t
come to be in cities from such individuals as the Thracians, Scythians, and oth-
ers who live to the north of us . . . or that the same isn’t true of the love of
learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world, or the love of
money which . . . is conspicuously displayed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians.”
The quotations are from Grube’s and Reeve’s translation in J. M. Cooper, ed.,
Plato. Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
18. GW 18, 48.
19. W 7, 26.
20. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans., H.
B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
21. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, ed. and trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1952).
22. W 7, 24.
23. Republic 431e-432.
24. Enz., §114.
25. See in particular: A. Fuks, “Plato and the Social Question: The Problem
of Poverty and Riches in the Republic,” Ancient Society 8 (1977): 49–83; M.
H. Jameson, “Agriculture and Slavery in Classical Athens,” Classical Journal 73
(1977–78): 122–45; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient
Greek World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). De Ste Croix (p. 70)
refers approvingly to Fuks’s talk of Plato’s “obsessive conviction” that “the tense
political atmosphere and acute civil strife of his day were the direct consequence
of increasing contrasts between wealth and poverty. In particular Plato realized
that an oligarchy . . . will actually be two cities, one of the poor and the other
of the rich, ‘always plotting against each other’([Republic] 551d).”
26. Republic, 555d.
27. Ibid. 565–57.
28. Ibid., 414c-d.
29. Ibid.
30. W 7, §206, Remark.
31. Ibid., §299, Remark.

34. Enz., §163, Addition 1.
35. Aristotle’s discussion is a partial endorsement of all three. See Politics,
Book I, chapter 4, and Book III, chapter 6.
36. Enz., §163, Addition 1.
37. For “Sache” vs. “Ding” see M. Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), 288 ff.
38. Especially 1253b 1 ff.
39. W 7, §57, Remark.
40. Aristotle, Politics, 1254a 15.
41. J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, chapter 1.
42. W 7, §57.
43. Ibid., Remark.
44. Politics, 1253b 30.
45. W 7, §57, Remark.
46. Ibid.
48. Furthermore, in the Laws Plato does extend the prohibition to the
whole. See Laws V, 739c-e.
49. Republic, 434c.
50. For textual examples see J. K. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the
Time of Plato and Aristotle (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 170 ff.; V. Ehren-
berg, The People of Aristophanes (Oxford: 1951); F. Egerman, Vom attischen
Menschenbild (Munich: 1952).
51. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, W 18, 186–87.
52. W 18, 187. Hegel refers as well to Herodotus’s story of an encounter
between Solon and Croesus in W 7, §123, Remark.
53. Knox 1952, 339.
54. Republic, 562d-563b .
55. Ibid., 563c-d.
56. W 7, §185.
57. Ibid., §183.
58. Ibid., §185.
59. W 12, 32.
60. W 7, §185, Remark.
62. Cited in Dover 1974, 20.
63. Antiphanes’ fragment is quoted in Dover 1974, 20. Dover notes that
this passage, lacking any context, may as well have been meant sarcastically. The
expression “well [alethes] educated” may have read “guileless [euethes].” Still, even
then the fragment testifies to the awareness, on Antiphanes’ part and thus of his
audiences, of highly unusual, un-Greek, “singular” conceptions of the good.
64. W 7, §185, Remark.
65. Ibid., §299.
66. Ibid., Remark. The Addition further illustrates this notion.
67. For Hegel’s determination of the nature of money see W 7, §63,

Addition.
68. W 7, §183.
69. Ibid., §154.
70. See W 7, §185 Addition.
8
The Historicity of Ethical Categories
The Dynamic of Moral Imputation in

Hegel’s Account of History
Jason Howard
History may be moved by many things in Hegel, but few would single
out ethical obligations as a core contributing factor. I propose to recon-
sider this assumption by examining the role of moral imputation in
Hegel’s conception of historical progress, and by “moral imputation” I
mean, very briefly, those experiences whereby agents confront their own
culpability.1 I believe taking up this issue will help answer two important
questions. First, in what sense do ethical obligations “move” history’?
Second, in what sense can these obligations have any substantial ethi-
cal import if they are destined to change as the historical actuality of
self-conscious communities alter? Simply put: Are ethical commitments
of only instrumental worth for Hegel, stepping stones of ancillary
value through which history reveals its own absolute telos, or are they
something more, and if so, what could this “more” signify? What does
Hegel mean in his lectures on history when he says that world history
“occupies a higher ground” (VpG, 67/90) than that of morality, yet
also insists at the same time that “the responsibility and moral value of
the individual [Schuld und Wert des Individuums], remains untouched,”
and is shut away from the clamor of history (VpG, 37/54).2 One of the
first things that needs to be clarified here is the extent to which ethi-
cal obligations are an inevitable aspect of our historicity. This chapter
addresses this issue by demonstrating how Hegel balances the necessity
155
156 Jason Howard
of self-discovery as the true medium of history with the experience of

moral imputation. Clarifying this issue will not solve all of the difficulties
that beset Hegel’s providential union of moral progress and history, but
I believe it will illuminate to what extent issues of accountability serve
as the unique fulcrum of spiritual self-discovery.
To understand the role of moral imputation is to appreciate its
living warrant as the pivotal anchor of cultural existence. What inter-
ests me here is the way the manifold ethical obligations that cement
self-conscious existence also serve as that vehicle through which the
concerns of singular agents “crash” up against larger, and often compet-
ing, cultural norms, forcing the limitations of the historical warrants that
govern agents’ self-interpretation into the open. It is these experiences
that question the viability of our own sense of identity and serve as the
individual locus through which the various worlds of spiritual actuality,
whether Oriental, ancient Greek, Roman, or German, are experienced
firsthand in their existential disintegration.
Ethical concerns and commitments work to anchor our relation-
ships to one another, which make accessible our common aspirations
as historical subjects. They serve as the personal expression of the
purposefulness that underwrites our existence, which also means they
articulate how we recognize ourselves and what is important to us. How
we evaluate our duties, then, is also a reflection of how we evaluate
ourselves, because if it turns out that nothing substantial is at stake in
our engagements with the world, so too there is nothing at stake in
being a subject. What makes these concerns so central rests with the fact
that the peculiar reality of these obligations, more than any other single
experience, shows self-conscious agents the limitations and achievements
of their own personal existence, embodying together the gamut of epis-
temological and metaphysical issues that show the character of an age
in its most visceral expression. Ethical duties show, as Lewis Hinchman
explains, how our identities are implicated in the desires and choices
we pursue, along with the stances we take toward them.3 It is this fric-
tion, then, between the legitimacy of our duties to the norms of our
culture and the burgeoning demands of our own singularity, that forces
self-consciousness beyond the security of its various historical worlds. As
Hegel attests in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History:
This is the seal of the absolute and sublime destiny (Bestim-

mung) of man—that he knows what is good and what is
evil; that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or
evil—in one word, that he is the subject of moral imputa-
tion [daß er Schuld haben kann], imputation not only of evil,
The Historicity of Ethical Categories 157
but of good; and not only concerning this or that particular

matter, and all that happens ab extrâ, but also the good
and evil attaching to his individual [individuellen] freedom.
(VpG, 34/50–51)
In order to understand how our historical destiny is anchored in

the unavoidable reality of moral imputation it is not enough to look at
the rise of morality as an explicit institution and way of life, or the preva-
lence of conscience as the defining attribute of our modern spirituality,
or even the struggle of the master and slave dialectic; rather, one must
also indicate the extent to which the experience of moral imputation
is the specifying matrix of all historical communities, whether explicit
or not.4 This entails examining the unique role that moral imputation
plays in the dynamic of historical progress, which draws agents into
the multiple demands of mutual self-determination. And let me clarify
once again that by moral imputation I mean, as Hegel indicates above,
the capacity to feel implicated at the deepest levels of our identity—to
experience the individuating anguish of guilt—and so become conscious
of our accountability to all those actions and duties that promote both
good and evil. As Hegel clarifies elsewhere: “An ethical state of humanity
begins only with a state of accountability or a capacity for guilt . . . to
have guilt means to be accountable, that this is one’s knowledge and
one’s will, that one does it as what is right.”5 As I see it, focusing on the
experience of moral imputation as the historical expression of a culture
will help address not only how the capacity for guilt propels the world
spirit toward unveiling freedom as “the fundamental object of history”
(VpG, 55/76), but also aid in clarifying the unique character ethical
obligations have for Hegel.
In order to make my discussion as specific as possible I turn my
exegesis to the Phenomenology and concentrate on two distinct modes of
spiritual qua historical existence, that of ancient Greece (ch. VI, A), and
the rise of European culture, whose historical purview stretches roughly
from the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution (ch. VI,
B).6 I appreciate that the role of history and the way it is depicted
in the Phenomenology and the Lectures on the Philosophy of History is a
debate in itself. Suffice it to say that I do not see these two texts in
any serious contradiction but rather—following interpretations such as
Goldstein—as mutually complementary, with each offering a “retrospec-
tive reconstruction of the development of Geist” toward freedom, but
emphasizing different vantage points.7 My present objective in turning to
the Phenomenology is to supplement the view of moral imputation Hegel
repeatedly touches on in his lectures on history, with a more detailed
158 Jason Howard
description whose focus is not simply the state but also the underlying
duties that moor the state as a determinate kind of cultural existence.
Moreover, I believe the scope as well as the necessity of this moral
dynamic of disintegration and transformation can be seen most clearly in
the struggles of ancient Greece and developing Europe to contend with
the reality of individual accountability.8 And so, far from contradicting
his later orientation in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, I believe
the Phenomenology specifies a level of normative experience and perspec-
tive that Hegel valued throughout his career, and which is necessary to
appreciate the full scope of his account of history.
Before turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology, I want to offer a few
brief clarifying remarks on how the notion of moral imputation, or what
Hegel calls Schuld or böse Gewissen, operates in Hegel’s texts.9 As Hegel
states much earlier in his System of Ethical Life, the experience of guilt
refers to an “inner negation.”10 It surfaces from the defiance of a com-
mandment whose violation brings the subject immediately into conflict
with the sources of his or her own objective existence. The sense of
guilt arises on behalf of an outer negation, an actual defilement of the
“real” as it exists in the norms of culture. The objective negation then
returns as an inward negation of the subject. In the System of Ethical
Life Hegel describes this moment of inner negation as the implicit arrival
of freedom insofar as negativity appears here in its transformation from
real negation to “ideal” negation, or negativity as a mode of thinking.
I want to describe how this individual experience of negativity disrupts
both the security of Greek ethical life, as well as the boundless confidence
of Enlightenment rationality. It is important to realize at the outset that
what I propose to chart, the experience of moral imputation, is experi-
enced in different ways by agents depending on the historical world they
dwell within. The most substantial distinction is that between objective
and subjective guilt. The objective experience of guilt is defined by the
virtual absence of any rationalizing role for subjective intentions—that
one’s fate is determined tout court by the will of the Gods or the state.
The subjective sense of guilt, which is the modern sense of guilt we are
familiar with, locates the experience of guilt solely at the level of sub-
jective intentions and the personal knowledge of one’s circumstances.11
As our discussion of Antigone in Ancient Greece and the perils of the
French Revolution will make clear, although the experience of guilt is
expressed differently depending on what historical world we examine, its
relevancy for the consciousness of freedom as historical self-determination
is indispensable, and the most visceral way in which agents come to real-
ize the implications of their own singular individuality. Quoting Stephen
Houlgate: “History is thus the process whereby human beings come
to new levels of awareness of their freedom, of their productive, active

nature, and thereby produce new forms of social and political life.”12
The argument I develop here is that these “levels of awareness” would
be largely meaningless if they did not emerge from a confrontation at
the level of personal accountability.
II
Hegel begins his analysis of spirit in the Phenomenology with the histori-
cal word of the ancient Greek city-state.13 The significant aspect to note
here is how ethical life rests upon and reaches actualization through
natural characteristics; for example, age, character, and most signifi-
cantly gender. These natural distinctions are endowed with a sense that
is directly related to the larger organization of social/ethical existence,
the intelligibility of which is seen as an extension of the larger cosmos
and the natural order intrinsic to it.14
What is being examined here, as Hegel points out, is not the
subjective consciousness of singular agents per se, but the constitutive
elements that determine the “meaning” of one’s existence as this is
forged in the inseparable binds of intersubjective (living) communities,
or self-consciousness in general: “Absolute spirit realized in the plurality
of distinct consciousnesses definitely existing” (PhG, 466/292). The first
thing to recognize at this level of natural ethical life is that issues of
moral adjudication rarely, if ever, reach explicit thematization. However,
it would be a serious mistake to assume from this lack of thematization
that moral concerns are absent. Rather, these concerns are embedded in
one’s social identity, shaping the certainty of one’s existence as cultural
agent (PhG, 467/293).15
Natural ethical life flourishes through the continued interaction
of the “family” and the “state” as organizations of one social totality.
Although it is true that each sphere has its own priorities and purposes,
the first being the exclusive preserve of women and the other that of men,
these spheres do not exist in separation but as two facets of the same
world that “confirm” and “substantiate” one another (PhG, 481/303).
The state subsists on behalf of members who knowingly participate in
all the concerns of objective social organization (the sphere of human
law), while the life of the family persists through the folk wisdom of
familial traditions handed down from generation to generation (the
sphere of divine law).
These two spheres of human and divine law work to ground the
meaning or point of all natural differences through stipulating, in two
160 Jason Howard
elemental ways, what these differences mean for beings who also think
the difference and do not just live it.16 As Hegel specifies, these natural
determinations supply the “operative individuality” (betätigenden Individu-
alität), while the “universal actuality” (allgemeinen Wirklichkeit) of this
individuality is lived in the duties of nation and family (PhG, 479/302).
As a result, the ethical concerns that underwrite ancient Greece are never
explicit as distinct moral obligations since cultural existence is itself a
totality of harmonious norms whose index runs so deep its vehicle is
biological facticity itself. Consequently, reflection on these norms is not
only superfluous, but would be construed as sacrilegious.
In their allegiance to human and divine laws, the state and the
family rely on subjects in different ways. The real difficulty lies in the
fact that each recognizes the duties of individual agency in only one way,
which prohibits any robust notion of a mediated social identity from
being fulfilled within the day to day concerns of cultural existence. The
fault does not lie with either the family or the state, but the identity
of both as a single functioning world: each recognizes singular agents
in different ways, one as an explicit vehicle of universality, while the
other as the preserve of individual agency through familial piety. It is
when human beings seek to negotiate or mediate the demands of both
spheres to accommodate their own experience as singular agents, their
existence as either this man or this woman, that irreconcilable difficul-
ties emerge. As Wilfried Goossens puts it, with natural ethical life we
have two forms of self-consciousness (man and woman) that determine
themselves according to only one facet of their substantiality, and so
“not only the knowledge of but also the ignorance of a part of their
own substance (the other law),” is embodied in each which creates the
conditions for a “fatal internal contradiction.”17
In order to press home his point about the potential problem of
(natural) attribution and social organization, Hegel turns to the classic
tale of Sophocles’ Antigone. As a woman, Antigone must venerate her
brother’s death to fulfill the customs of the family, for as keeper of the
familial order she recognizes that the death of her brother demands
acknowledgment. However, in Antigone’s case such action is prohibited
by the state, the law of men, since her brother is seen as a traitor to
the state; consequently, his body is to be left unburied as a sign of his
transgression. What, then, is Antigone to do? Her identity as woman
demands she do her duty and bury her brother. To refuse would be
to relinquish the intelligibility of her own identity, since as woman her
gender transcribes her into an order that directly supervenes upon the
truth of whom she recognizes herself to be. This has the effect of forcing
the simple immediacy of her duty as woman, the truth of her essential
identity, into question through placing her act in contradiction with

the larger universality from which she coordinates her actions (the law
of the state). In the natural ethical life of ancient Greece, one lives the
certitude of ethical duties as the reality of social existence, enacting it as
determining principle of one’s experience.18 By following one course of
action, Antigone rejects the authority of the law of men, excommunicat-
ing herself from the recognition accorded those who participate within a
single cultural world of human community and commerce. It is from out
of this disjunction that Antigone is paralyzed from all social interaction
via the experience of guilt, whereby her sense of self becomes severed
from her familial duties. Yet what, one might ask, is Antigone guilty of,
and what bearing does it have on the disintegration of ancient Greece?
One must fulfill the law of their respective spheres. To decline this
duty would be to deny the intelligibility of one’s identity. The demands
the institutions of state and family dictate are transcribed, as it were,
into the very meaning of self-conscious existence. In seeking to fulfill the
rights of one sphere, irrespective of the other, the opposition between
consciousness (the known) and self-consciousness (the ignorance of our
own singularity) surfaces for the first time through the experience of
guilt. No amount of knowledge or foresight could prevent the impending
transgression from happening, because it concerns two distinct ways of
enacting one’s duties that miss the implications of their own historical
instantiation as facets of a single world.
Hegel explains that by her deed Antigone becomes guilty (PhG,
488/308). The moment she acts on the knowledge of her duty,
Antigone is forced outside the security of her own identity as female
agency. This occurs through the simple act of fulfilling her role, which
differentiates the consciousness of her own singularity from the certainty
of herself as an ethical being. In so doing Antigone, as Hegel puts it,
“gives up the specific quality of the ethical life” and initiates its divi-
sion (PhG, 488/308). Antigone epitomizes an experience that unveils
the paradoxical nature of self-consciousness as infinite negativity: that
the truth of experience is inseparable from the activity of determining
(negating) facets of one’s existence. Hegel defines the inward realiza-
tion of this paradoxical condition as guilt (Schuld). This experience of
guilt signals the arrival of self-conscious agency “for itself.” The choice
to act “is itself this splitting [Entzweiung], this explicit self-affirmation
and the establishing over against itself of an alien external reality” (PhG,
488/308). Antigone experiences this truth at the deepest levels of her
identity, but she, like all the agents of natural ethical life, is unable to
articulate its significance for her own unique sense of selfhood, and so
she grasps it as the inevitable consequence of fate.
162 Jason Howard
If my reading of Hegel on this point is correct, Antigone’s experience

of guilt expresses one, if not the most, of the primordial ways that human
beings realize the depth of their own identity as self-determining agents.
It is an experience that disrupts not only our relation to independent
others, but is primarily, as Robert Williams says of Hegel’s concept of
the “other,” an “othering of self,” an experience of self-estrangement.19
Antigone does not appear guilty in the modern sense of the word, since
she is compelled to fulfill the divine law—she experiences what Hegel
calls “objective guilt”—yet this by no means detracts from what can
rightly be called the ethical wisdom of Hegel’s point. What we should
note here is the nature of this compulsion itself and the way it forces
agents to confront what it means to be implicated in the experience of
a common world. In looking at the experience of guilt in the natural
ethical life of Ancient Greece, Hegel is demonstrating how agents are
imputed beyond their immediate beliefs in recognizing a world that is
no longer experienced as simply the natural extension of their own val-
ues, yet one that agents are powerless to disown. It is this problem in
particular that unseats the security of natural ethical life, for the certitude
that anchors one’s sense of duty precludes its elucidation, every attempt
at which must be seen as a betrayal of the trust that substantiates one’s
social existence. In taking this angle, Hegel specifies with some precision
one fundamental way in which self-conscious agents inevitably come to
confront the duties imposed upon them as specific agents.
As Hegel goes on to clarify, the moment of guilt signals the rise
of the unconscious (Unbewußte) in the shape of one’s own ineradi-
cable singularity, which is the incarnation of the “possible.” “The deed
consists in setting in motion what was unmoved, and in bringing to
light what was shut up as mere possibility [Möglichkeit] . . . linking on
the unconscious to the conscious” (PhG, 490/309).20 This experience
of the possible is the education of self-conscious agency, which is an
inevitable aspect of our existence as social/historical beings, and it is
through this education that we confront our own contingency as singular
entities. Hegel’s analysis of guilt demonstrates how the reality of free-
dom is inescapable, since self-consciousness can at best only postpone,
but never wholly avoid, the weight of its own interiority—that in this
initial awareness of our own activity, however vague, is also concealed
the “possible” as a category of actuality. What the possible signifies at
this point, however, is only the difference between the knowledge of
our ethical identity—what our duties consist in as subjects of a certain
culture—and our inability to actualize such demands despite their intui-
tive certainty. Seen from this vantage point, what makes guilt such a
pivotal moment in the experience of singularization so central to the
historical odyssey of self-consciousness, is the way it forces agents to

confront the contribution of their own ineradicable presence as living
subjects.
At the historical level in discussion here singularity has no substan-
tial place, which threatens to leave those guilty of action traumatized
by their own difference. And so although it is true that guilt centers
out singular consciousness, this experience only serves to intimate the
insubstantiality and indeterminacy of one’s own self-identity. Within
the historical reality of natural ethical life the actuality of freedom is as
indeterminate as the sense of one’s own singularity, yet it is guilt that
opens the experiential space for such self-discovery. The rise of guilt
dissolves the determinate identity of natural ethical life because the fact
that we are “self-conscious” is given inadequate confirmation, which acts
to occlude our common identity in equating natural determinateness
with conscious determinations. This experience signals the transition
beyond natural ethical life, for the attempt to restrict the meaning of
spiritual (conscious) existence to a natural (contingent) determination,
such as being a man or woman, leads to a restriction of the possibili-
ties we are endowed with as self-conscious agents. The experience of
guilt indicates that we cannot ground the articulation of our duties on
the indifferent determinations of nature, because these determinations
cannot bear the weight of the social experiences they are called upon
to substantiate. With this the act of knowing is differentiated from its
determinate source as immediate substance, initiating the transition of
self-consciousness beyond its natural factuality. What’s more, this event
is rightly experienced as traumatic insofar as it is the effort to fix a dif-
ference that agents lack the means to articulate given the conceptual
resources at their disposal.
What Antigone’s act brings about is the negation of the harmony
that underscores natural ethical life, which resurfaces as an ideal negation
of her self-identity as guardian of the hearth. Although the “objective
experience” of guilt exemplified by Antigone does not literally bring
about the immediate collapse of the ancient Greek city-state, it points
to the spirit of “subjective freedom” that will be its final downfall.21
What postpones its collapse is only the impeding reality of war for the
Greek city-states, which forces self-conscious agents back into the realm
of universality proper, thereby effectively “suppressing the spirit of indi-
vidualism” (Unterdrücking dieses Geistes der Einzelnheit) and returning it
to its “natural” cycle (PhG, 497/314). Yet even the reality of war can
only postpone the consciousness of a more subjective sense of freedom
from taking hold, one whose ambiguous sense is conveyed most directly
for the agents of Ancient Greece as the estranging experience of guilt.
164 Jason Howard
III
An intrinsic sense of duty underscored the world of natural ethical

life, yet there was no explicit concept of bad per se; wrongful action
was simply any action that hindered the fulfillment of one’s immedi-
ate obligations. With the world of culture, which Hegel designates in
the Phenomenology as the spread of Christendom throughout Western
Europe and the rise of the Enlightenment, the distinction between good
and bad is brought into the open, as is the role singular agents play in
sustaining this distinction. In calling this phase of existence “culture”
(Bildung), Hegel is drawing our attention to the growing objectifica-
tion of the natural world through the projects of self-consciousness. I
want to look at how this process of objectification affects both the way
agents make sense of the various duties placed upon them, as well as
how it anchors their own sense of culpability.22
It is only when the immediacy of natural ethical life is broken
down, making its customs objectively distinct, that agents can first
address these customs as something truthful to experience or not. To be
sure, the defining issue of the European cultural experience is the way
it rearticulates the nature of self-conscious existence, which is something
that occurs most viscerally at the level of normative concepts of duty.
These norms anchor the meaning of cultural experience for self-conscious
agents in stipulating the binary opposition that exists between good
and bad, which “stands as the absolute basis of all their action, where
all their action securely subsists” (es bleibt die absolute Grundlage und
Bestehen alles ihres Tuns) (PhG, 520/328). It is with the emancipation
of self-consciousness away from the harmony of the natural world, that
terms such as “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong,” finally become
explicit as concepts. Yet the more the value of these norms is fixed as
specific duties the more they become divested of their conceptual war-
rants—their certainty—as they become increasingly identified with the
trends and ambitions of the time.
The moral experience of early feudal Europe unfolds as ethical dis-
tinctions gradually begin to intermingle, erasing the rigidity that defines
them, pushing apart cognitive warrants and practical actuality—distinguish-
ing the true from the good—while bringing the symbols of good and
bad closer together.23 In this gradual inversion, the norms that govern
dutiful conduct become dependent on various media of culture, such
as service and wealth, to determine the meaning of right and wrong.24
Good and bad eventually lose their function as substantial modes of
self-reflection or self-certainty, verifying what is inherently “right” from
what is definitely “wrong,” but come to exist merely as predicates that

stand outside the life of self-conscious subjects (PhG, 526/332).
In this “transfusion” of values self-conscious agents experience the
very purpose of life as eroding away, only to be replaced by an abstract
system of regulative exchange. In reflecting upon its predicament and
the meaning of its “own” existence in culture, Hegel states that con-
sciousness confronts an “abyss” (Abgrunde) in which “every solid base
and stay [Halt] has vanished,” forsaking “all true spiritual import”
(sein Geist ist die ganz wesenlose Meinung, die geistverlaßne Oberfläche
zu sein) (PhG, 539/342). It is here that human existence loses its
sense of meaningfulness, seeing the source of all commitments has been
completely ceded to the sphere of chance and contingency (the domain
of wealth). This inversion marks the dissolution of dutiful agency into
the indifference of pure universality, in which “self-existence is cut-off
from essential being” (PhG, 546/347). What is acknowledged here is
our own lack of obligation and purpose; our indifference to everything
is taken as the genuine reflection of our own identity, having no posi-
tive or substantial ties to either the ideals of culture or the environing
world such ideals circumscribe (PhG, 547/348). It is here, from this
state of moral abandonment, that self-consciousness finally recognizes
its “pure self” (das reine Ich selbst)—that consciousness is only the activ-
ity of self-movement, which is equally nothing determinate. With this
recognition, self-conscious agents come to see their identity not in the
substantiality of their own commitments, but the power of pure thought
itself. Rather than outline the details of this intricate process, I want
to focus on its final cultural result, that of the French Revolution. This
final expression of spiritual revolt results from incorporating the infinite
confidence of religious belief into the limitless powers of the Enlighten-
ment project (pure insight), transforming the certainty of belief into the
drive of political autonomy.25 Thus, the cultural education of Western
Europe comes to a close in the revolution (Umwälzung) of political
self-definition (PhG, 600/385), where the abstract power of thought
becomes an actual form of existence.26
The move to actualize the freedom of pure thought in the world
of culture, the final example of which is the terror of the French Revolu-
tion, is the move to re-forge cultural existence in the ideal image of what
consciousness knows itself to be.27 In so doing, self-consciousness sees
the concept of utility as the practical truth of its own universality—that
everything gains its value vis-à-vis the uses self-conscious agents can
put it to in order to enhance their own projects. The implicit difficulty
here is that such a criterion runs into serious problems when it comes
166 Jason Howard
to justifying projects in any other way than appealing to what appears

useful at any given moment. On account of this, the universal project of
political self-definition is also rife with indeterminacy, lacking the means
to concretely differentiate itself and its “vision” of the future from other
versions of political autonomy. Given that the universal will to secure
freedom as the absolute truth of existence has no way of determining
or evaluating life-goals outside what appears applicable to agents at any
given time, this universal will itself collapses into factions (Faktion), all
of which want to instill their particular version of governance. As Hegel
explains, in seeking to subjugate all singular wills to one particular purpose,
the once-universal will toward freedom epitomized in the Enlightenment
project becomes dismantled, placing the ideal of freedom explicitly on
one side, and the citizens its seeks to govern on the other. This event
occasions the arrival of “guilt” (Schuld).28
To say the universal will to self-definition becomes guilty is to say
that the members who compose it inevitably find themselves united by a
specific interest, and no longer the desire to preserve the freedom of all.
As Hegel explains: “The victorious faction only is called the government;
and just in that it is a faction lies the direct necessity of its overthrow;
and its being government makes it, conversely, into a faction and hence
guilty” (PhG, 606/390). Once again, what I want to draw your attention
to is how Hegel’s description of the rise of Enlightenment Europe and
its final culmination, the French Revolution, works to reveal the way
the vernacular of accountability itself is shaped in modern Europe, and
its eventual reification. In the event of the French Revolution it is our
particularity itself that eventually becomes suspect. This is true both of
those self-conscious agents who manage to come to power, since their
faction is potentially just another form of tyranny, as well as those who
are not presently in power, since their intention to subversion can never
be ruled out. Rather than risk intentions (Absichten) becoming objective,
dominant members of the ruling faction seek to nullify the only thing
left, “this particular existent self,” in other words, personal existence in
general (PhG, 606/391).
With this “real” negation of itself, consciousness finally awakens
to what the motivating power was behind the pure I and its universal
will, which is a retreat from the mortality of existence by wholly negat-
ing the “meaning” of this existence in its singular significance.29 The
impending reality of death awakens self-consciousness to the realization
that its absolute freedom as pure universal determination—pure will—is
intimately connected to its existence as a singular being, and that they
“ought” never to be separated.30
What I hope to have made clear, is how the culmination of the
French Revolution is inseparable from the experience of moral aban-
donment that began with the disintegration of feudal Europe in the

ascendancy of wealth, and whose realization at the guillotine expresses
the final attempt to reduce self-conscious agency to a mere “thing.” It
is this “experience” of thinghood—a life without possibility, neither of
denial nor affirmation—that instigates the revolt of self-conscious agency
to reclaim its existence for itself. The peculiar catalyst for this realization
is the rampant emergence of guilt, wherein agents are indicted merely
because of the possibilities they embody as subjects. The subjective reality
of an agent’s inner intentions is treated as objective proof that each is a
potential traitor. And so although subjective guilt was recognized in the
historical world of the French Revolution, it was granted no independent
status in assessing one’s moral worth; rather, the fact one always has
specific intentions served to cast doubt on all agents, placing them under
a suspicion they could never be redeemed from. It is from the depths of
this realization that “the vacuous negativity of self . . . turns round into
absolute positivity” (PhG, 609/393), which sequences the transition to
morality proper. With this move the indispensable importance of subjec-
tive guilt takes on unprecedented positive significance (the explanatory
priority of personal intentions must be respected), signaling the rise of
the modern conscience—“spirit certain of itself”—as the culminating
experience of modernity.
In being unable to articulate any durable notion of accountability,
the agents of the French Revolution come to experience their existence
as mere things, a renewable resource like any other. The native limits of
natural existence are traded for the limitless determinability of thought,
and in so doing the substantial commitments that once defined the
worth of human agency are relinquished for abstract truths. What’s
more, it should come as no surprise that this failure is experienced most
concretely in the moral abandonment that follows from the subjectifica-
tion of all nature to pure utility. Accordingly, the real problem with the
European world of culture is not that self-consciousness is unsuccessful
in educating itself about the world, but that it proves unable to think
itself as part of this world in any deep way.
IV
It is the experience of moral imputation that points to the limitations

of both the natural ethical life of the Greek city-state and the abstract
character of Enlightenment Europe. In each case, it is the reality of
our own unique efforts that is ignored, which arises in the attempt
to negate the particularity of our commitments. Yet unlike in Ancient
Greece, where the reasons for one’s guilt were seen as an extension
168 Jason Howard
of one’s fate, the experience of guilt at the close of Enlightenment

Europe is precisely the opposite. In forcing guilt upon agents “cut off”
from any ethical order—that one is guilty simply for being mortal—the
complete inadequacy of Enlightenment ideals as a concrete way of life
is exposed. The experience of disjunction epitomized in revolutionary
France forces the dignity of self-consciousness in its singularity to assert
itself and confront the complete inversion of its own selfhood. It is this
realization in its lived reality that ultimately brings home the limitations
of Enlightenment Europe as a historical world, where finite selves crash
up against the limits of the empty ethical vernacular their own culture
has created.
Much more could be said here of the move to morality proper,
and the discovery of the primacy of personal morality—of the transition
to the supremacy of conscience and subjective guilt (ch. VI, C)—but I
believe my point about the unique priority of moral imputation for the
historical development of spirit should have some measure of plausibility.
Returning to our first question, which concerns how the dynamism of
moral imputation can be said to move history, I think my account makes
clear the extent that issues of accountability reveal the inadequacy of a
given age to accommodate the burgeoning reality of spirit’s autonomy.
Moreover, it should be stressed that the necessity of this movement in
history is revealed reconstructively, through discerning the obligations
that communities experience in exploring their own deepest possibili-
ties.31 This means that although we can indicate the sources of spiritual
transformation in history, this does not allow us to predict with precision
the specific forms of ethical life that will inevitably arise in the future,
but only indicate those general moral dilemmas that self-consciousness
cannot avoid in the act of creating its own histories.32
The second question we addressed was whether such experiences
of moral imputation are only of transitional significance, or whether they
can be said to have some intrinsic ethical value or “infinite worth” of
their own. My answer to this question is that since no other experience
than that of moral imputation has the power to push agents outside their
historical facticity to confront the specter of their own singular worth,
our ethical obligations do have intrinsic value in the sense that they are
a unique and irreducible expression of the reality of freedom, without
which no experience of concrete autonomy would be complete. Far from
being “mere transitions” that testify to the relativity of moral concerns,
the experience of moral imputation illustrates that the ultimate gauge
of the development of freedom in history is the capacity of our various
historical worlds to find a meaningful home for our own interiority.
The last major issue that we need to broach is whether there is

any reason to believe that Hegel later renounced the importance of
moral imputation for the development of spirit in his lectures on history.
Although it is true that Hegel insists in his Lectures on the Philosophy
of History that “world historical individuals” move history, meeting the
needs of the age by unconsciously initiating the next phase of spirit’s
development (VpG, 30–31/46–47), this need not diminish the unique
importance of moral imputation for the consciousness of freedom in
history. No doubt, for Hegel, Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon are the
great agents of history, whose own ambitions brought them to wager
the established practices of their age. These world-historical individu-
als are the primary initiators of historical change, and yet their moral
vision, or lack thereof, plays no role for Hegel in assessing the neces-
sity of their accomplishments. Despite this fact, I believe there remains
another level of transformation that is much more subtle, and whose
consequences Hegel would agree are that much more indicative of the
maturity of spirit in history. This level of transformation refers to how
we experience those ethical obligations that supply the final anchor for
our sense of belonging in the world of nature. Consequently, although
we may owe much of the explicit push of history, and the rise and
fall of nations, to the ambition of world historical individuals, it is to
the aftermath of their actions that we must look if we are to assess
the true extent of spirit’s self-discovery. That is not to condone the
violence and senseless injustices of the past, but only to say we can
learn from them.33
Whether it is Enlightenment Europe or the Oriental world, ancient
Greece or the Roman Empire, each is a lens through which the freedom
that defines spirit is played out. Consequently each has its own unique
ethical life, which cements the concerns of self-conscious individuals
within a meaningful cultural totality. It is these concerns that show us
glimpses of the life of spirit from the inside out, where the existential
contest to forge a free society continues to press forward. As Hegel
famously states in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History:
Spirit is at war with itself; it has to overcome itself as its most

formidable obstacle. That development which in the sphere
of nature is a peaceful growth, is in that of Spirit, a severe,
a mighty conflict with itself. What Spirit really strives for is
the realization of its Ideal being; but in doing so, it hides
that goal from its own vision, and is proud and well satisfied
in this alienation from it. (VpG, 55/76)
170 Jason Howard
The most formidable obstacle of all to achieve is balancing the

limitless depths of our power for self-determination with concrete
actuality. History is the unique site of this balancing act, and there is
no compelling reason to believe Hegel ever gave up this insight. The
cultural worlds spirit engenders are the environments through which
human beings experience the full reality of their own possibilities. This
struggle is not easy precisely because it deals with that restless negativity
which is the condition of all our accomplishments, good and evil alike.
History is the confirmation of this struggle, which shows us again and
again that we cannot avoid being imputed by the weight of our own
interiority. To discern this charge in the unfolding of history is to learn
one of the most enduring lessons that Hegel can teach us.
Notes
1. I use the term moral imputation rather than ethical because I want
to draw attention to the peculiar difficulty that arises when agents are forced
to assess the measure of their own accountability, rather than the security and
meaning they experience when fulfilling the duties imposed by cultural life
(which I take Sittlichkeit to indicate). For an account of some of the different
roles the concept of morality plays for Hegel, consider the following: B. Bitsch,
Sollensbegriff und Moralitätkritik bei Hegel. Interpretationen zur “Wissenschaft
der Logik,” “Phänomenologie,” und “Rechtsphilosophie” (Bonn: Bouvier, 1977);
Roland Pelzer, “Studien über Hegels ethische Theoreme,” Archiv für Philosophie
13 (1964): 3–49; Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (NewYork: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); and Robert Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on
the Other (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
2. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Amherst, NY: Pro-
metheus Books, 1991). Hereafter referred to as VpG with the English pagination
preceding the German, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke 12
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999).
3. See Lewis P. Hinchman, “On Reconciling Happiness and Autonomy:
An Interpretation of Hegel’s Moral Philosophy,” The Owl of Minerva 23
(1991–92): 29–48. Hinchman points out that the various shapes in Hegel’s
Phenomenology all disintegrate because they sense, but are unable to articulate,
the missing moral dimension of their identity, 39–40. My own interpretation
tries to make this idea more explicit at the level of historical transitions from
one world of spirit to another.
4. Saul Tobias explores the limitations with taking Hegel’s master and
slave dialectic as a model of recognition in his article “Hegel and the Politics of
Recognition,” The Owl of Minerva 38 (2006–07): 101–26. I agree with Tobias
that recognition should not be separated from a process of self-determination;
a fact that becomes even clearer once the importance of moral imputation for
Hegel is discerned.
5. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827) One-volume

edition, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F Brown, P. C. Hodgson and J. M.
Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 214. For the German
citation see Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manusckripte, Vol. 4a,
ed. Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1984), 424.
6. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, 2nd ed., tr. J. B. Baillie (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1961). Hereafter referred to as PhG with the English
pagination preceding the German, Phänomenologies des Geistes, hg. Hans-Friedrich
Wessels und Heinrich Clairmont (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988).
7. Leon J. Goldstein, “Force and the Inverted World in Dialectical Ret-
rospection,” International Studies in Philosophy 20, no. 3 (1988): 19.
8. This is not to say that Hegel’s treatment of the issue of moral obligation
is confined to his analysis of spirit proper (chapter VI), since he also discusses
this at some length in chapter V (“Reason,” section B) “Realization of rational
self-consciousness through itself” (and C) “Individuality, which takes itself to
be real in and for itself,” which can be seen as not only a criticism of Kant
and Fichte’s approach to morality, but of Rousseau as well; see subsection 2b
of section B, chapter V, “The law of the heart and the frenzy of self-conceit.”
However, these positions are abstractions of morality in the sense they present
explicit definitions of how morality is to operate, for instance, as formulating
laws or following one’s heart, that arise to a large extent in abstraction from
the community, and thus from history. My interest is with indicating how the
experience of moral obligation itself becomes concrete within actual communities,
which initially arises in simply performing those duties expected of us, where
morality has no explicit thematization.
9. As Jean Wahl comments in his book on the development of Hegel’s
concept of conscience, the notion of guilt played a central role in Hegel’s earlier
theological writings, which Wahl sees as the key concept in Hegel’s transition
away from theology to philosophy, a move that becomes explicit in the Phenom-
enology. As Wahl writes: “The capital notion that marks the entrance from an
apologetic theology to the history that becomes a logic is the bad conscience
[conscience malheureuse].” See Le Malheur de la Conscience dans la Philosophie
de Hegel, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), VI.
10. Hegel, System of Ethical Life, trans. T. M. Knox and H. S. Harris
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979), 132. System der Sittlichkeit,
hg. Georg Lasson (Hanburg: Felix Meiner, 1967), 41.
11. The importance of this distinction was drawn to my attention by
Robert Williams, for which I am grateful. Hegel offers the following explanation
of the distinction in his Lectures on Aesthetics: “The independent solidity and
totality of the heroic character repudiates any division of guilt between subjective
intentions and the objective deed and its consequences, while nowadays, owing
to the complexity and ramification of action, everyone has recourse to everyone
else and shuffles guilt off himself as far as possible. Our view in this matter is
more moral, in that in the moral sphere the subjective aspect, i.e., knowledge
of the circumstances, conviction of the good, and the inner intention, constitute
for us a chief element in the action.” See Hegel, Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Art
172 Jason Howard
Vol. I, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 188. For
the German see volume 13 of Hegel’s Sämmtliche Werke, 247.
12. Stephen Houlgate, Freedom, Truth, and History: An Introduction to
Hegel’s Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 27.
13. Hegel is quite explicit about the fact that that all of the other forms
of conscious experience up to spirit have been abstractions of sorts, which
presuppose the reality of spirit as the originary ground of their existence (PhG,
459/288). I agree with John O’Donohue that these previous forms of spirit
cannot be seen as actual presuppositions of spirit, but are “decisive moments” in
the unfolding of experience that are unable to successfully stabilize themselves,
pushing beyond themselves toward their underlying reality, spirit proper. Each is
an attempt to thematize an element of spirit’s development, which is necessary
to show the extent to which spirit is self-grounding, yet they do not “exist,”
per se, in their own right, but are reflective moments that illustrate the inability
of restricting the vitality of spirit to a single moment. See John O’Donohue,
Person als Vermittlung: Die Dialektik von Individualität und Allgemeinheit in
Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes” (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1993), Part
III, section 11, 278–87, esp. 284. O’Donohue argues that the concept of “per-
son” is the conceptual cornerstone of the Phenomenology, mediating the poles
of universality and individuality in the development of spirit into concreteness.
I largely agree with this approach to the Phenomenology and take a similar per-
spective in my own reading.
14. This process of spiritual development is not, contrary to what Kojève
thinks, only a recapitulation of the master-slave dialectic (ch. IV, section A,
“Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness: Lordship and Bondage”).
First, from the point of view of how spirit actually experiences its own unfold-
ing, although it is true that elements of this “struggle to the death” periodically
emerge, notably in the section on the French Revolution, the agents involved
in this movement do not see themselves as either “slaves” or “masters,” but
as fitting into a meaningful totality from which they discover the import of
their own singularity. The conflict is one of self-alienation, and not a fight to
the death, since every affirmation of singularity (being-for-itself) also singular-
izes the spiritual community, forcing self-conscious agents into making sense of
their essence on their own terms. It is the impossibility of doing so that sets
the stage for self-consciousness to transcend its own singularity through the act
of forgiveness, in which the move to religion as the awareness of spirit as an
absolute totality is made (ch. VII). See Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. J. H. Nichols
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980).
15. Terry Pinkard summarizes this point well by stating that the Greeks
did not confuse “is” and “ought.” “For them, what they ought to do followed
from the way things are, from the background understanding that this is ‘the
way things are done,’ which for them was a fact about social life.” See Terry
Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 140. Although I agree with Pinkard’s initial description
of this phase of spirit, he downplays the role of guilt in effecting the transition
out of the immediacy of the Greek city-state, overlooking an essential aspect of

Hegel’s account of natural ethical life.
16. For a good account of the importance of Hegel’s insight here for
issues of feminism and social criticism see Jeffrey A. Gauthier, Hegel and Feminist
Social Criticism: Justice, Recognition, and the Feminine (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1997), esp. Part One, “Emergent Action And Normativity
in Hegel,” and Shannon Hoff, “Restoring Antigone to Ethical Life: Nature and
Sexual Difference in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” The Owl of Minerva 38
(2006–07): 77–99.
17. Wilfried Goossens, “Ethical Life and Family in the Phenomenology of
Spirit,” in Hegel on the Ethical Life, Religion, and Philosophy (1793–1807) ed. A.
Wylleman (Belgium: Leuven University Press and Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1989): 163–94,172.
18. As Hegel specifies, what drives natural consciousness here, its “absolute
right,” is that its deeds are directly known—this is “the mode and form of its
realization” (PhG, 487/307).
19. As Williams points out, Hegel employs the concept of “other” to
indicate both an independent being, as well as the relation of self to itself, as
something initially other. This “othering of self” is the process of “self-estrange-
ment.” See Williams, Recognition, 153. As I see it, the experience of moral
imputation exemplifies this process of self-estrangement, which forces agents to
confront the multiple implications of their own singular identity.
20. The full text reads as follows: “Dem sittlichen Selbstwußtsein stellt auf
diese Weise eine lichtscheue Macht nach, welche erst, wenn die geschehen, hervorbricht
und es bei ihr ergreift; denn die vollbrachte Tat ist der aufgehobne Gegensatz des
wissenden Selbst, und der ihm gegenüberstehenden Wirklichkeit. Das Handelnde
kann das Verbrechen und seine Schuld nicht verleugnen;—die Tat ist dieses, das
Unbewegte zu bewegen und das nur erst in der Möglichkeit Verschlossene hervor
zu bringen, und hiemit das Unbewußte dem Bewußten, das Nicht-seinde dem Sein
zu verknüpfen” (PhG, 490/309).
21. As Hegel reiterates years later in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History:
“That very subjective Freedom which constitutes the principle and determines the
peculiar form of Freedom in our world . . . could not manifest itself in Greece
otherwise than as a destructive element,” eventually plunging “the Greek world
into ruin, for the polity which that world embodied was not calculated for this
side of humanity—did not recognize this phase” (VpG, 253/309).
22. Now, the claim can be made that in the Phenomenology, at least at
the level of culture, good and evil are not moral terms in the strict sense, but
only metaphysical concepts, which is the claim that John O’Donohue makes.
See John O’Donohue, Person als Vermittlung: Die Dialektik von Individualität
und Allgemeinheit in Hegels “Phänomenologie des Geistes,” 316. Yet Hegel’s
point here is precisely that self-consciousness is initially unable to differentiate
between cultural norms and moral concepts, not that moral warrants are inac-
tive or inoperative. The concepts of good and bad are already moral, because
they encompass the practical concerns of the subject by indicating how these
concerns are fulfilled, as well as what my “particular” role is in fulfilling them.
174 Jason Howard
I care about making the good choice because it matters to me personally. The
underlying thematic concern is the attempt to unearth how and why it is that
these concepts matter. It is this search that acts to differentiate the two poles,
that of pure universality and moral imputation, whose unsuccessful resolution
will result in the terror of the French Revolution.
23. Initially the “good” is what is universal, unquestioned and objective,
stipulating the right way to live from the wrong, whereas the “bad” is identified
with what is contingent, subjective, and relative. Thus, the good is what defines
the meaning of objective reality, while the bad is what contradicts this reality,
that which calls it into question (PhG, 519–20/327–28). Within this opposi-
tion, which permeates the entirety of self-conscious existence, the acceptable
is distinguished from the unacceptable; the good is seen as that which appeals
directly to all, while the bad exists as a force of exclusion, promoting personal
welfare at the expense of social harmony.
24. Kainz makes the remark that “good” and “bad” function in this sec-
tion as equivalent judgments to what does or does not cultivate subjectivity, yet
it should be added that in the beginning of culture both good and bad contain
their own warrants, they are “objective” and viewed as inherently meaningful;
they are not attributes of the subject. They do eventually become “terms” of the
subject, and with this identification lays the ruin of their conceptual legitimacy.
See Howard P. Kainz, Hegel’s Phenomenology, Part II. The Evolution of Ethical
and Religious Consciousness to the Absolute Standpoint (Ohio: Ohio University
Press, 1983), 44.
25. Pure insight and belief succeed in reestablishing the primacy of the true
and the good through the rudimentary conceptual scheme of self and not-self:
belief takes inwardness as good and externality as bad, while pure insight takes
inwardness as true and externality as false. The compact solidity of the good
and the true from which our analysis of culture began, has become completely
separate domains of experience, each of which approach finite existence only in
reference to its own pure vocabulary of universality (PhG, 578/370).
26. What should not be overlooked is how each universal shape of the pure
I (that of belief and pure insight) arises out of an ethical crisis of commitments,
reducing the truth of this existence to structures of pure consciousness. These
two molds of universality totalize the lives of self-conscious agency, trading the
reality of singular existence for an explanation of what it means to exist.
27. As Axel Honneth explains: “For Hegel, then, the real challenge posed
by the age must have been the question generated by the Revolution, namely,
how that sphere of abstract freedom which had been won through political
struggle could itself be embedded in an overarching context so that it would
not unleash its atomizing capacity ad infinitum, but rather become a positive
formative element in an ethical community.” See Axel Honneth, “Atomism and
Ethical Life: On Hegel’s Critique of the French Revolution,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism 14 (1988): 359–68, 361–62.
28. Hegel describes this frightful process in his Lectures on the Philosophy
of History as follows: “The principle of the Freedom of the Will, therefore,
asserted itself against existing right. . . . The political condition of France at that
time presents nothing but a confused mass of privileges altogether contravening

Thought and Reason—an utterly irrational state of things, and one with which
the greatest corruption of morals [die höchste Verdorbenheit der Sitten], of Spirit
was associated—an empire characterized by Destitution of Right, and which, when
its real state begins to be recognized, becomes shameless destitution of Right.
The fearfully heavy burdens that pressed upon the people, the embarrassment
of the government to procure for the Court the means of supporting luxury
and extravagance, gave the first impulse to discontent [gaben den ersten Anlaß
zur Unzufriedenheit]. The new Spirit began to agitate men’s minds: oppression
drove men to investigation. . . . The change was necessarily violent, because the
work of transformation was not undertaken by the government . . . unwilling to
surrender the privileges they possessed, either for the sake of expediency or that
of Abstract Right” (VpG, 446/528). It is interesting to note that in his lectures
on history Hegel attributes much of the widespread violence throughout the
French Revolution to the abstract sense of religious belief that was operative
throughout this period—the religious conscience—dismantling the concrete
force of right from the legitimating power of moral conviction by separating
the interests of the secular and the spiritual.
29. Shklar sees the fact of “mortal fear” as merely instructing individuals
to accept discipline and restraint, thereby reuniting them with the “substantial
reality” of spirit. See Judith Shklar, Freedom and Independence: A Study of the
Political Ideas of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1976), 174. In seeing the only outcome of the self of absolute freedom
as another type of submission, I believe Shklar completely misses the meaning
of not only this chapter, but the text of the Phenomenology as a whole, which
has very little to do with a “lament for Hellas” (85).
30. Hegel seems to confirm this view in stating that the development of
spirit, which he describes as a “cycle of necessity” up to that point, would cease
“if only complete interpenetration of self-consciousness and the substance were
the final result” (PhG, 607/392). Indeed, the cultural worlds that spirit has
created thus far need not be intolerable places to exist. As Hegel clearly states,
it is possible that the particular individual (Besonders) “would be able to endure
[könnte ertragen] the objective reality of universal spirit, a reality, excluding
self-consciousness qua particular” (PhG, 607/392). Yet if consciousness could
live with the recognition of itself as instrument of the universal, from whence
comes the necessity to move onward; the answer is freedom, the move to take
responsibility for the singularities that we are.
31. In taking this stance I side with scholars such as Kain who credit Hegel
with a certain degree of freedom in the examples he chooses to emphasize, which
points to Hegelian necessity in its retrospective elements, rather than prospec-
tive. See Philip J. Kain, “The Structure and Method of Hegel’s Phenomenology,”
Clio 27, no. 4 (1998). That moral imputation is an issue for spirit is something
ingrained in the texture of experience itself, yet the examples that make this
most clear owe something to Hegel’s own peculiar genius. What this means,
pace interpreters such as Dove, is that Hegel’s method in the Phenomenology is
not simply observing, but a pedagogical lesson on how to read the dialectical
176 Jason Howard
nature of experience in its comprehensiveness. See Kenley R. Dove, “Hegel’s

Phenomenological Method,” in The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: Critical
and Interpretive Essays, ed. Jon Stewart (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1998), 52–75. For a recent and informative summary on how questions
of methodology relate to necessity, and the problem with approaches such as
that of Dove, see Wendy Lynn Clark and J. M. Fritzman, “Reducing Spirit
to Substance: Dove on Hegel’s Method,” Idealistic Studies 32, no. 2 (2002):
73–100.
32. For an informative and recent survey of interpretations on Hegel’s
account of historical progress, see Frederick Rausher, “The Regulative and the
Constitutive in Kant’s and Hegel’s Theories of History,” Idealistic Studies 32,
no. 2 (2002): 121–42.
33. For a recent informative account of Hegel and his relation to the
problem of evil in history, see Alice Ormiston, Love and Politics: Re-interpreting
Hegel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), esp. 118–24.
9
The Mechanization of Labor and the

Birth of Modern Ethicality in Hegel’s
Jena Political Writings
Nathan Ross
Hegel’s mature philosophy of history considers history as the actualiza-

tion of the idea of freedom, a process that occurs on a variety of levels,
in the formation of political institutions, religious practices, as well as
philosophical developments. This chapter will consider this process of
actualization on a somewhat different level, however, namely in terms of
Hegel’s thinking about the historical importance of economic processes,
in particular the nature of human labor pursuits. Clearly, Hegel’s mature
political philosophy invites such a connection, as his account of civil
society considers the “system of needs” as a sphere in which subjectivity
is formed and educated so as to participate in social life, and it regards
the advantage of the modern state over the ancient polis as consisting in
the relative autonomy that it allows to economic activities. Yet Hegel’s
account of civil society here in the Philosophy of Right is not historical
in its methodology (aside from a few historical remarks), and his mature
philosophy of history, though it gives foundational significance to the
role of self-interest in the actualization of historical forces, gives little
attention to the economic sphere. It is necessary to turn to Hegel’s
Jena writings, in particular his Essay on Natural Right, and his System
of Ethical Life (both from 1802), to find him treating the vital role that
the development of economic forces plays in the unfolding of historical
processes, and much of what he develops here will be consistent with and
relevant to both his later account of civil society and his understanding
of the actualization of freedom in a historical sense.
My argument is that these texts describe the nature of human labor
pursuits as inherently “mechanistic” in their developmental principle,
177
178 Nathan Ross
meaning that they isolate the activity of individuals from the pervasive
teleological organization of their common existence;1 his (mechanistic
understanding of labor) places these pursuits in contrast to Hegel’s
organic grasp of “ethical life” during this era. And yet I will argue that
Hegel comes to the paradoxical insight in these writings that the modern
state is a more pervasively organic form of ethical life to the degree that
it includes and does not negate or stifle this mechanism. Thus, it will be
necessary to consider this mechanism thesis from three perspectives:
first, it must be clarified how labor is inherently mechanistic; then I
will demonstrate how Hegel includes this mechanism in his historical
conception of ethical life, and hence grasps it as contributing to the
actualization of freedom; finally, I will consider how this force has the
tendency to “become positive” according to Hegel and thus embody a
one-sided form of historical development that is destructive of ethical
life. The strength of Hegel’s historical vision here in the Jena texts, as
opposed to his later philosophy of history, is perhaps the very fact that
he leaves this possibility open, that he sees in the forces of the modern
economy both the possibility for a deeper and more pervasive kind of
social freedom than that of previous historical epochs, as well as the
possibility for a profoundly alienating form of progress that is destructive
of any vision of human society in which we could be at home.
The Mechanization of Labor
In System of Ethicality, Hegel gives an account of “labor” as what he

calls a nonethical, or natural, potency of the ethical. In this section,
Hegel demonstrates that even when work is divorced from its social or
ethical context, it tends by its own conceptual development toward an
increasingly mechanical form of labor, as well as toward instilling in the
laborer a consciousness of “right.” Labor is here treated as the interaction
of humans with their natural environment, their transformation of their
environment in order to meet their needs. But Hegel approaches the
concept of labor from two perspectives, or under two “potencies”: one
which he calls “subsuming the concept under the intuition,” the other
which he calls “subsuming the intuition under the concept.” Under the
first “potency,” he gives a conception of labor as an immediate relation
to nature, in which there is the moment of natural need, the moment
of negation of a natural object and the moment of satisfaction in which
the cycle ends. Here the subject of labor is subordinated to the natural
object at which work is directed. But Hegel then treats labor from a
second perspective, in which there is the moment of labor, the product
The Mechanization of Labor 179
of labor and the “tool” as a product of labor that can be reapplied to

the labor process.2 He calls this second potency of work “subsuming the
intuition under the concept,” since now the labor process is no longer
subordinate to nature, but nature is subordinate to work. In this second
kind of work, Hegel is considering the kind of work in which humans
produce an accumulation, beyond meeting their immediate desires. We
no longer just “consume” the object, but modify it so as to serve us.
We no longer work in order to satisfy our immediate desire, but suspend
acting on our immediate desire in order to bring forth a product that
relates to the totality of desires in a “universal” way. It is clear that
for Hegel the second potency is the one that opens up onto further
forms of ethical involvement, since only to the degree that work leads
to a product does it also involve a properly social component in which
humans can encounter the products of their respective labor.
Hegel describes the second potency of work as tending to become
“increasingly mechanical.” In the first form of work, the relation between
subject and object could best be described as teleological (in the sense
of what Hegel would later call external teleology): the subject has a
desire, the object is negated to fulfill the desire, and then the subject
enjoys the negation of the object. But in the second form of labor, the
work-activity does not negate, but “causes” an object to which it is not
immediately related through a relation of desire. “Labor in [this second
potency] is hence completely mechanical, for singularity, abstraction,
pure causality is in the form of indifference and is the ruling factor, it
is something external even for the object. . . . This subject is a singular,
absolute being-for-itself, thus absolute separation and difference” (GW
V, 285). This work relates to the object not as a subject to an object
(i.e., immediate negation), but as one object to another object, and this
is the sense of a mechanistic relation here. The subject only manages to
reestablish itself in the negative relation to object when it is outside of
the labor process; only there can it “enjoy” the product of labor. But
because of this mechanistic aspect of labor, the subject can also increas-
ingly “save itself” from labor by using tools and even machines: to the
degree that work is simply an object working on another, the human
can use one external object to work on another, and thus not “wear
itself out” in the labor process.
The second form of labor leads to replacing the teleological aspect
of work with a mechanistic aspect, but it also leads to what Hegel here
calls the “education” (Bildung) of the subject. “The universal, recipro-
cal interaction and education of humans; their absolute equality is here
latent, and in terms of this whole potency, in which we are here, the
relation is only present in the individual; a recognition that is reciprocal,
180 Nathan Ross
or the highest individuality and external difference” (GW V, 290).

Since this kind of work does not relate to objects through the medium
of immediate desire, but by suspending desire and treating objects as
indifferent, mechanical objects, it introduces a form of indifference into
subjects that extends to their relation to other humans as well.3 In the
first potency, Hegel says, the only mediating factor between humans was
the particularity of sexual difference. But here in this potency, we do
not just desire other human beings in terms of their particularity, but
we relate to them in terms of the entirety of their relation to objects.
Hegel eventually demonstrates that the creation of “products” and the
use of tools makes possible the use of language or “discourse” as a kind
of tool that serves us in communicating about our common involve-
ments with objects.
Here in this opening section of System of Ethical Life, Hegel also
describes how certain “relations of right” result out of the second form
of labor. It is by no means original to justify property rights as implied
by and arising out of rational labor processes that produce an excess;
thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau did so as well. They argue that we
would never have the incentive to produce an excess or a “product” if
there were not some assurance that the product would be to our exclusive
benefit. But Hegel, by contrast, here justifies the formation of a sense
of “right” out of the transformation of human subjectivity through the
mechanization of labor. Insofar as my “work” does not relate immediately
to fulfilling my “need,” but produces a product that at some further
phase can fulfill my need, or another person’s, I form the consciousness
of products as being the “same,” as having a value that can be compa-
rable to each other. And Hegel here argues that in this consciousness
of things as “the same,” I also learn to relate to other humans as the
“same” as me. Thus, he bases the possibility of recognition between
subjects on the moment in which humans first learn to see objects not as
fulfilling a desire, but as representing a distinct and comparable “value”
in relation to other objects. In this section, Hegel demonstrates how
this abstract notion of equality resulting out of mechanical work leads
to the possibility of recognizing the property of another (GW V, 303),4
entering into a contract with another (GW V, 302), but also enslaving,
or being enslaved by, another (GW V, 305).
Modern Ethicality
In both of these 1802 texts, Natural Right and Ethicality, Hegel devotes
extensive attention to the notion of civil society,5 that is, to the place of
commercial activities within political life. In both texts, he uses a common

measuring stick in approaching civil society: the notion of “ethicality”
(Sittlichkeit) as a speculative idea. To say that ethicality is a speculative
idea is to make the claim that human society, if it is to fully embody
and realize human freedom, must embody a conceptual structure that
is quite similar to that of an organism: it must be self-sustaining in the
way that it motivates individuals to take part in it; it must embody a
relation of internal teleology between the parts and the whole; and it
must have a kind of earthly “immortality” that transcends the finitude
of individual actors within it. Hegel would essentially maintain this
notion of ethicality from 1802 until his later Philosophy of Right. Thus,
he views the ethical as a living system, but unlike the philosophers of
German Romanticism who also consider the healthy political society
in organic terms, he no longer simply views the organic as altogether
separate from the mechanistic: in these Jena writings the organic can
only sustain itself and develop by making its “unorganic nature” into
part of itself.6 Civil society becomes for Hegel this sphere of mechanism
that is taken up into ethicality and integrated into it without destroying
its organic nature.
In Natural Right, Hegel describes the development of the insti-
tutions of civil society from the perspective of a broad philosophy of
history. In this text, Hegel is trying to reconcile the notion of ethicality
embodied in the Greek city state with the development of “bourgeois”
freedom inherent in the modern era. He accomplishes this by view-
ing “ethicality” as an organism that develops and regenerates itself by
learning to make its “inorganic basis” (GW IV, 459) into part of itself.
Hegel begins his account of ethicality by distinguishing within Greek
life two distinct estates or classes (Stände): the class of the free and the
class of the un-free. Following the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato,
Hegel calls the class of merchants and workers the class of the un-free.
The free class is the one made up of those involved in the governance
of the city, and they are free to the degree that they are able to attain
to an “intuition” of the whole, and that they are willing to brave death
in order to protect the life of the city. The “un-free class” lacks this
freedom to the degree that its members are stuck in what Hegel calls the
“extremes of the concept,” which is to say in singular determinations that
are opposed to each other, such as “need-work” and “work-enjoyment.”7
The un-free class only manages to unify the moments of the concept
through a physical process; while the free class dwells in the simple
“point of indifference,” in that its appreciation of the whole process is
inherently “spiritual.” Using the language of the speculative concept,
Hegel specifies that while the free class dwells in the undifferentiated
182 Nathan Ross
ideality of the concept, the un-free class dwells in the bifurcated extremes
of the concept, “the reflection of absolute unity.”
As Hegel makes clear in his discussion of the structure of the con-
cept of ethicality, the structure is whole only in this entire process, that
is, the concept consists in the bifurcation of its moments and the taking
back of these moments into a vision of their unity. In Greek ethical life,
the speculative form of the concept implies that the un-free class only
takes part in the ethical thanks to the free class, and the free class only
through the un-free class. But although both classes make up integral
moments in the creation of ethicality, of a functioning social whole in
which there is a vision of freedom, only one of the classes enjoys the
“intuition” of such freedom. Freedom, here in this context, means giving
up one’s individuality for the sake of the whole, subsisting as much as
possible in the moment of universality within the concept. “A free death,”
the willingness to die for the city and the courage that goes along with
such a stance, are the virtues that stem from such a freedom.8
Hegel’s description of the nature of the political class in ancient
Greece and his identification of this class with “Tapferkeit” demonstrates
the manner in which his conception of ancient ethicality is essentially
based in an account of “political virtue.” However, it will become clear
in what follows that by the time that Hegel wrote this text, he no longer
believes that such political virtues as the Greek Tapferkeit could serve as
the constitutive force of modern political life.9 This shift in his thought
departs from the realization that this class and the form of ethicality
that it represents is inferior to that of the modern state, precisely to the
degree that the modern state includes the notion of bourgeois freedom,
that is, the development of a more universal form of freedom that stems
from the pursuit of economic activities that stood within Greek society
under the aspect of the un-free class.
For Hegel, the departure of the ancient city-state means a funda-
mental change within “ethicality,” and a shift in what it means to be
free. He calls this change the “tragedy within the ethical.” He writes:
“In the loss of absolute ethicality and the degradation of the noble class,
the two hitherto separate classes have become equal, and with the end of
slavery comes the end of freedom as well” (GW IV, 456).10 But Hegel
argues in the course of this essay that the rise of bourgeois equality does
not represent a simple death of the ethical life. The notion of tragedy
does not imply a simple loss of the ethicality expressed in the ancient
Greek state, but a movement of “sacrifice” aimed at regaining whole-
ness. The soul dies to make itself one with the body, but in so doing
it imbues the body with a life of its own. Hegel borrows a phrase from
Plato in calling ethicality “an immortal animal in which body and soul
are eternally giving birth to each other” (GW IV, 462). This mixing of
the “free” and the “un-free” classes represents not just a moment of
leveling, but a moment of further, more developed and pervasive dif-
ferentiation within the syllogistic whole called ethicality. In the hitherto
developed conception of ethicality in terms of two classes, the concept
had two moments, one of pure unity (the intuition of freedom) and
one of bifurcated unity (the governed life of the worker or merchant).
This form of ethicality must cease, “sacrifice itself,” in order to generate
a more pervasive unity between the moment of unity and difference.
Hegel poses the question: What would happen if the organizing
principle of the second, un-free class were allowed to divide itself off and
posit itself as autonomous? Could such a social whole ever organize itself
in such a way as to become a form of ethicality? In becoming indepen-
dent in this manner, this class makes one of the conceptual extremes into
the unifying medium of ethical life. The negative unity of the concepts,
“desire-work” and “work-enjoyment,” remains the governing principle
of this class, but this principle is allowed to organize itself as much as
possible into a rational whole (what Hegel would later call a “system of
needs”). This results in the concept of “bourgeois freedom,” a kind of
freedom that no longer consists in the sacrifice of the individual to the
universal, but in the protection of individuality as a “universal” right.
Such a freedom “has the unity of the concept only as an imitated, nega-
tive independence, namely as the freedom of the individual” (GW IV,
461). In such a conception, freedom would mean the absolute right of
the individual to work and own, the right to life and property and to
pursue prosperity. Hegel makes it clear that he considers such a form
of freedom a mere shadow of the form of freedom represented by the
Greek model of ethicality, and yet he writes, “[E]ven if the essence of
ethicality views this [bourgeois freedom] as something foreign, still it
intuits it and is in spirit one with it” (GW IV, 461). This cryptic phrase
seems crucial to understanding what Hegel views as the relation between
“ethicality” and bourgeois freedom within civil society. But what does
he mean by calling the latter a negative reflection of the former? How
does this clearly lesser form of modern freedom relate to the model of
ethicality he has developed up to this point?
We have up to now two conceptions of freedom, the freedom of
the individual to give up its singularity and think and act as part of a
unified social fabric, and the freedom of the individual to pursue its own
interests and see its achievements protected as a form of right. He tells
us that the first form must learn to recognize itself in the latter and be
“in spirit one with it.” For Hegel already in this period, this is only pos-
sible in and through a state that allows civil society to develop itself by
184 Nathan Ross
ensuring certain rights to individuals, a conception he would develop at

much greater length in his later Philosophy of Right. This form of ethicality
is superior in that the material substrate of society is no longer un-free,
but lives in at least a negative reflection of the intuition of freedom.11 To
the degree that this negative reflection of freedom develops, the ethical
whole is more pervasively integrated, since now the class that had previ-
ously been considered as the un-free class is bound to the ethical whole
out of a sense of their self-interest. Thus, Hegel’s argument seems to be
that a totality is more organic as the parts become more teleologically
connected to the whole, out of a purpose that is their own, and that the
modern state is more organic since its model of ethicality accomplishes
this through the factor of bourgeois rights.12
But for Hegel this historical affirmation of civil society goes along
with the notion that it is a negative moment of the realization of the
idea of ethicality. The kind of freedom that it aspires to and the kinds
of rights that it entails are only possible within a state that does not
take the ends of civil society as it own. “What is by nature negative
cannot become positive, must remain negative and must not become
something solid” (GW IV, 450). Yet Hegel acknowledges that the free-
ing of the slaves goes hand in hand with the destruction of the “free
class” as a free class (GW IV 456). So how is it possible for this now
more or less universal, commercial class to remain a negative, subordi-
nate factor in the social whole? To put the question another way: How
is freedom in a positive sense possible in a society that has done away
with aristocratic rule and replaced the freedom of self-sacrifice with the
freedom of bourgeois right?
For Hegel this is only possible through the action of the state upon
civil society, and through a new model of political activity as such. As
he writes: “The ethical whole must maintain it [the commercial sphere]
in the feeling of its inner nothingness and hinder its impetuous growth
into ever greater differences and inequalities” (GW IV, 451). He goes
on to argue that such a hindrance is only possible through the taxation
of the wealthy, limitation of trade, the fighting of wars and the “jealousy
of other classes.”13 What Hegel gives here is a rather underdeveloped
account of state regulation of the economy, but it at least serves to
show that Hegel sees the solutions to the structural contradictions of
civil society not in the communitarian ideals of ancient “ethicality,” but
in the regulative resources of the modern state as a distinctly modern
form of “ethicality.” Yet it remains to be clarified what these structural
contradictions are for Hegel, how they result out of the unleashed power
of the commercial class, and how this force can be held in a negative
or subordinate position.
In the two texts that I have treated up to now, Hegel treats the
genesis of civil society under two different methods, the System of Ethi-
cality developing the concept of labor first outside of the ethical whole,
the Natural Right essay treating civil society as a historical force arising
out of the decline of ancient civilization. But there are certain common
methodological points that connect these two texts from the same year.
In describing work as tending toward “mechanization,” Hegel describes
the way that work, by its own dialectic, leads to a kind of concep-
tual externality: the extremes of “desire-work” and “work-enjoyment”
(which were unified in the first potency) only relate together through
some kind of external mediation. As the division of labor progresses,
the labor process is only “whole” in a mediating term that escapes the
consciousness of the person engaging in work. Labor stands for a form
of teleology that is increasingly divided against itself and in need of some
external conceptual mediation. Thus, we have a key to understanding
what Hegel means in Natural Right when he describes the working
and trading class as the “inorganic nature of ethicality” and argues that
this class dwells in the “extremes of the concept” (GW IV, 461). Since
this class dwells in the extremes of the concept, it lacks the “intuition
of freedom” inherent to the political class in the ancient world. For
work to be mechanical thus means for it to represent an abstract, or
one-sided, form of mediation within the conceptual whole that Hegel
calls ethicality. And yet it is one of Hegel’s most important discoveries
of these writings, both into the nature of the speculative concept and
into the nature of social wholes, that the intuition of freedom can only
grow in an organic sense through “sacrificing” itself to the divided form
of externality and creating a new, more fundamental unity out of this
bifurcation. This means that the kind of teleology present in political
action, its ability to accomplish its goals in a way that arises out of and
is immanent to the movement of society, will be greater if this mechani-
cal, divided teleology of the laboring aspect of society becomes a free
factor within the state.14
Up to now, I have discussed the Jena writings mostly in such a
manner as to illustrate the positive ethical importance that Hegel attributes
to the mechanistic aspect of civil society, its contribution to the state as
a form of ethicality. But at the same time, these texts articulate a sharp
critique of the contradictions that Hegel sees as latent in the modern
economy, and these contradictions will also be diagnosed through con-
sidering civil society as a mechanistic aspect within the cohesive whole
that Hegel calls ethicality. In order to arrive at Hegel’s critique of these
contradictions, I will turn toward the notion of positivity that Hegel
develops in the Natural Right essay.
186 Nathan Ross
The Positivity of Civil Society
Hegel devotes the fourth section of the Natural Right essay to an

examination of the problem of “positivity,” a term of great importance
in his early writings that he uses here to critique the so-called “posi-
tive juridical sciences.” In what follows, however, I will demonstrate
that Hegel’s critique of positivity here relates not just to the form of
the legal sciences, but more fundamentally to the very nature of the
modern economy in its influence on social developments. Hegel defines
positivity here as follows: positivity results whenever any “potency” of
the ethical whole tries to separate itself off and establish its principles
as unconditional demands without taking account of their genetic rela-
tion to the other potencies.15 He is worried primarily about two forms
of positivity in modern society: the positivity of the “state” (which he
associates here with Fichte’s overly regulated commercial state) and
the positivity of civil society, a danger Hegel sees embodied in many
prevalent legal theories of the day and perhaps more fundamentally in
the actual practices of states of this time. Thus, Hegel makes it clear
that positivity lies more in the “form” of laws than in their “content”;
a law protecting the property of citizens is not in itself positive, but it
becomes positive when it attempts to define such rights as “natural” and
not determined by a certain level of commerce and political organization,
and hence not subordinate to other concerns within society.
Hegel devotes most of his discussion here to the positivity of civil
society. He argues that the legal forms of modernity are justified when
taken as a consequence of a particular “potency,” an expression of the
absolute under this potency. But positivity results when the legal sciences
take the principles of “bourgeois right” as a totality that can be thought
out of itself as absolute and unconditioned. Such an approach eventu-
ally leads to describing the principles of this potency as overriding or
superseding (übergreifen) other potencies, that is, the predominance of
bourgeois right over state right and people’s right. (He compares such
positivity in the legal sciences to the scientist who attempts to explain
organic and chemical phenomena through mechanical laws.)
In this text, in contrast to the Romantics, Hegel attributes great
importance to the codification of laws. Hegel realizes, like the Roman-
tics, that the codification of laws does not create public morality like
that contained in customs (Sitten). But he argues that the moment
of codification is a moment in which “ethicality” recognizes itself and
gives intellectual form to its latent organic character. The way in which
this recognition occurs can be one-sided, in that in codifying its laws a
people can fail to give real credit to the ethical forms that make it up,
and such a misrecognition will then allow one part of the ethical fabric
to dominate another and stifle the organism. Thus, Hegel embraces the
“formalism” of the legal sciences out of his notion of the organic: a
living whole is one in which the “form” supersedes the content, where
the form assimilates its content to it. But even in a living whole there
is a tendency toward positivity, when, in the growth of the whole, the
customs and laws drift apart and no longer reflect each other. This mani-
fests itself in a set of laws that contradict the actual lives of the people
governed by them. Hegel argues that such a system of laws becomes
mechanical, in that it relates parts to a whole in such a way that these
parts do not have an understanding of their relation to the whole.16
Hegel even anticipates Marx in arguing that such positive laws become
a means by which one class in society dominates another.
But for Hegel, such positivity does not simply result out of the
misformulation of laws, or out of scientific errors; it results also out
of the “material” of society itself. This becomes clear in the ensuing
discussion of where such legal positivity comes from. He claims that
positivity of laws comes not just from the past, that is, from a society
clinging to outdated laws, but also from new developments that do not
proceed in a properly organic way:
Not only that must be considered positive which belongs

completely to the past and no longer has any living present
and has an incomprehensible and shameless power because
it is without inner meaning; also that power is without truly
positive truth which merely perpetuates the dissolution and
sundering of the ethical totality; the former is the history of
a past life, while the latter is the determinate representation
of the present death. (GW IV, 482–83)
I will argue that Hegel means here to claim, adding to his earlier notion
of positivity, that false positivity dwells not just in the maintenance of
the feudal order in German states, but also in the very tendencies of
the new industrial economy. Positivity, or the legal form that does not
adequately express the ethical dimension of a society, can result not just
from a people outgrowing its laws, but also from a one-sided form of
development inherent in civil society. Civil society has a tendency to posit
as absolute the rights of a class that has a merely negative, individualistic
conception of right. In doing so, it posits a subordinate moment of the
social development as an absolute purpose of the development. The form
of right is positive, or mechanical, to the degree that it posits a purely
quantitative factor of economic life as a politically determinative force
188 Nathan Ross
within the social whole; this latter aspect will become clearer through
a discussion of Hegel’s analysis of modern class structures in the System
of Ethicality.
In this text, Hegel’s thesis on the positivity of civil society takes
on a new, more specific dimension. In a later passage from the text
(GW V, 349–57) Hegel gives a discussion of the class structures that
arise out of the modern economy, analyzing how the dialectic of labor
in a free market economy creates a measureless degree of inequality. In
the Natural Right essay, Hegel has simply spoken of the “commercial
class” (Erwerbestand), but in this latter section of System of Ethical
Life, he argues that when this commercial aspect of society is allowed to
develop in a relatively autonomous manner, it engenders distinct classes
within itself, classes that are determined not by the political agency of
individuals, but by their quantity of ownership. But the initially quanti-
tative differences within the commercial class convert into “relations of
dominance” between its members. Differences in the quantitative level
of wealth between free citizens in a free market economy will lead to
distinct relations of power and agency, an owning class and a working
class.17 This class differentiation is different from the two classes of ancient
Greek society distinguished in the Natural Right essay, in that here the
distinction does not take place according to conceptual moments, for
the classes have the same political rights and the same basic motivating
principle in their activities. And yet the purely quantitative difference
within the commercial class leads to a kind of domination that is all the
more blind and ethically alienating. In the Natural Right essay, it was
posited that the commercial class represented the separated “extremes of
the concept” and that the extremes were only mediated by the activity
of labor, rather than in an ethical intuition. But now in the System of
Ethical Life, it seems that Hegel would claim that through the formation
of quantitative inequalities within the commercial sector, this relative
conceptual unity could become sundered, and lose even the external
mediation described earlier.
In this state of affairs the well-off bring forth riches that are
connected to the deepest poverty; for in the separation, labor
on both sides becomes universal, objective; on the one side is
ideal universality; on the other side it is real, mechanical, and
this purely quantitative, conceptually individuated inorganic
aspect of labor is the most elevated brutishness [die höchste
Roheit]. (GW V, 354)
If work mediates between the moments of “need” and “enjoyment,”

then in a class society with a separation between the working class and
the owning class, such as what Hegel describes here, these conceptual
extremes no longer describe separate subjective aspects of a cohesive
labor process, but separate social functions. Individual groups of human
beings become pinned, as it were, to one side of the whole teleology of
the labor process and pursue this one side with a measureless intensity.
One class in society is completely absorbed by speculation upon the
cultivation of new forms of luxury, while another group is immersed
in the mechanical production of the materials needed to fulfill such
speculations. The physical aspect of labor becomes increasingly mechani-
cal, that is, subjectively detached from the enjoyment of the product of
labor. The mental aspect of the production process, on the other hand,
takes on the aspect of an infinite speculation on the creation of needs,
which Hegel calls a completely “empty ideality” that can be cultivated
to infinity.
Hegel sees potentially disastrous political consequences in this
quantitative inequality within the commercial class. When groups within
society become so confined to one side of the labor process, they become
incapable of any intuition of the whole as an organic system. In ancient
Greek ethical life, Hegel writes, at least the commercial class and the
aristocracy could pray to the gods of the city;18 but in modernity, with
the progressive development of economic inequality on purely economic
grounds the commercial class becomes incapable of submitting itself to
any divinity outside of its sphere.19 And with this inability, Hegel argues,
the very possibility of a common ethicality disappears, in that separate
members of society become so occupied with a socially mediated material
prosperity that they are not capable of cultivating the kind of political
institutions that make for fulfilling their desires.
It is clear from the dialectic Hegel describes here in this section
of Ethicality that the political problem of the positivity of civil society
emerges from within the very dialectic of labor. The tendency of the
labor process to lead to increasingly mechanical forms of labor leads
to the creation of a class structure in which political consciousness is
destroyed and replaced by a kind of blind pursuit of economic devel-
opment. Hegel turns this incapacity of civil society into a defense of a
higher political moment in society that hinders the measureless pursuit
of wealth and the development of excessive inequalities primarily through
a system of taxation. As in the Natural Right essay, he views the role
of the state in relation to the commercial activities of its citizens not
only as that of protecting the property rights that make commerce pos-
sible, but that of limiting or hindering commerce so as to keep it from
propagating socially destructive levels of inequality between citizens.
But for Hegel the state’s limitation of economic development is not a
merely negative or restrictive factor, for it is the giving of a measure to
190 Nathan Ross
a form of development that is incapable of giving itself its own measure.

The distinction between the commercial and the political in these essays
could be described as the difference between mechanism and organism,
between formless growth that is driven by a measureless desire to own
and consume material goods in ever more refined ways and a principle
of development that maintains an intuition of the whole while letting
each part pursue its distinct function. Unlike the Romantic defense
of society and culture in distinction to the state, Hegel views culture,
at least in the West, as standing so much under the constraint of the
principles of bourgeois development that an organic whole can only be
achieved by reinventing within the European states a kind of political
consciousness that has insight into the political nullity of bourgeois
aspirations. Because of the distinctive function that is required of this
state in regard to society, this political consciousness can no longer be
described, like that of Greek ethical life, as an “intuition of the whole,”
but instead takes the form of “thought.” The modern state is grounded
not in the political virtues of those who act within it, but on the form
of the concept, which dictates that each moment of the concept can only
develop itself in through-going relation to the others. Thus, I would
argue that for the Hegel who wrote these two works, the problem of
inequality in modern economic relations, and the political problems that
such inequality entails, cannot be solved merely through a “sense of
community” or any such virtue, but through a rational insight into the
kinds of structural problems that emerge out of such economic relations,
and an institution capable of counteracting such institutions.
Notes
1. This definition of mechanism is borrowed, roughly speaking, from

Hegel’s logical treatment of mechanism in his Science of Logic. Cf. Hegel,
Gesammelte Werke: Band VI (Nordrhein-Westfällische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968), 410 (hereafter, GW VI): “This is
what constitutes the character of mechanism, namely, that, whatever relation
obtains between the things combined, this relation is one that is extraneous to
them that does not concern their nature at all, and even if it is accompanied
by a semblance of unity it remains nothing more than composition, mixture,
aggregation and the like.”
2. These two potencies of labor bear a close relation to Hannah Arendt’s
distinction between labor and work in The Human Condition (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1992) the first potency corresponding to what Arendt
calls labor, the second to work. The obvious difference, of course, is that Hegel
considers the first potency as a kind of abstraction, since all human labor tends
in the direction of some repeatable labor process that transcends the actual
consumption of the worked on object.
3. It would be easy to compare the two conceptions of labor here to the
analysis of labor in the master-slave dialectic of Hegel’s Phenomenology (1807).
The first form of work from Ethicality is taken up there in the analysis of the
master, who merely negates the object as something immediate, while the second
form of work is taken up there in the case of the slave, who subordinates his
desire to negate the object in working upon it. The Phenomenology makes clear
moreover that the formation of spirit, its acquiring of a conception of its own
freedom and of its right, is based in the work of the slave. This seems parallel
to the manner in which Hegel here develops the notion of “right” out of the
second conception of labor.
4. In discussing “right” within this section on work, Hegel does not
think that he is giving an exhaustive account of what right is. He will make clear
later in the text that these relations do not yet belong to the sphere of “ethical-
ity.” Instead, what Hegel does here is to demonstrate how human involvement
with nature leads to certain determinate social relations, and to the formation
of a primitive conception of right. Only later, in discussing industrial pursuits
(cf. GW V, 350–57) as a part of “ethicality” will Hegel demonstrate how this
basic conception of equality and security in one’s possessions can exist as part
of a sustainable social body. Thus, in the language of Hegel’s later philosophy
of objective spirit, this dialectic of labor belongs to the realm of abstract right
rather than “civil society.” But nevertheless, this basic account of how human
labor transforms itself from a simple teleological activity into a mechanical and
social process will remain implicit in Hegel’s account of the nature of civil
society as a “potency of the ethical.” Later in the Ethicality essay, he discusses
civil society (a “system of needs”) as a moment in ethical life, and here too he
speaks of the increasing mechanization of the labor process and of a one-sided
notion of bourgeois right. Civil society begins, as it were, not with natural labor
but with labor that has already attained to the second potency, and its correct
account assumes the results of this dialectic of natural labor.
5. Hegel did not yet use the term civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft)
until the 1817 Encyclopedia. However, since these texts are largely occupied with
the issue of economic activities and the sphere of social involvements, rights,
and institutions entailed by them, I have chosen to use this term here for the
sake of expediency, since it makes clear the contrast between social/economic
aspects and political aspects that Hegel is working with in these texts.
6. Throughout Hegel’s Bern and Frankfurt writings, he often compares
the organic structure of ancient political community to the mechanistic nature
of modern social relations. However, it seems to me that the new element here
in these Jena texts is the manner in which he grasps the logic of mechanism
and organism not as utterly antinomical, but as two forms of processuality that
can coexist.
7. When Hegel here explains that the “un-free” or laboring class dwells
in the separated “extremes” of the concept, I believe this can be explained
by reference to the prior treatment of work in the System of Ethicality, where
192 Nathan Ross
work involves the separation of “need-work” and “work-enjoyment.” The same

aspect that makes work mechanical also makes this class of workers into a class
of the “un-free.”
8. Ludwig Siep has written an excellent essay distinguishing the evolv-
ing conceptions of freedom in Hegel’s early thought; he considers the stance
of Freigabe des Einzelnen (giving up one’s individuality) as definitive of Hegel’s
notion of freedom in the NR essay. Cf. Praktische Philosophie im deutschen
Idealismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 161. I will argue, however, that the
text must be understood as an attempt to diagnose the limits of this notion
of freedom and describe its relation to a different, negative model of freedom
embodied in modern political institutions.
9. In his reading of the Natural Right essay, Laurence Dickey gives a
rather strong role to the notion of Tapferkeit within Hegel’s thought of this
time, and he views Hegel’s goal in the text as one of reinventing such a virtue
within the modern context as a solution to the ethical problems of the modern
economy. Cf. Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 220–27. In my view, this account of the
role of Tapferkeit within the text fails to account for two serious issues: (1) the
issue that I will explicate henceforth as the “tragedy within the ethical”; i.e.,
that the free class within the Greek polis must sacrifice itself in order to make
bourgeois freedom possible; (2) where Hegel critiques or seeks to limit bour-
geois self-interest in this essay he does so not from a description of political
virtues, but from one of state regulation. In my view, the Natural Right essay
marks a phase in Hegel’s development where he acknowledges that the form of
ethicality, or social cohesion, that is founded in the virtues of the ruling class
is an untenable, or not fully organic form of integration. Instead, he seeks to
found the cohesion of the whole on a form of ethicality in which each of the
parts is bound to the whole out of self-interest. Such a whole is, however, only
approachable through a description of institutional rationality, not through the
description of the subjective dispositions of the members of the state.
10. If we take this passage on the tragedy within the ethical as it stands,
Hegel’s insight here bears a remarkable similarity to Arendt’s thesis regarding
“the rise of the social” (The Human Condition, 38–50). Like Arendt, Hegel
argues that the price for the political freedom of the laboring class is the loss
of the kind of political autonomy that he sees embodied in the virtues of the
ancient Greek aristocrats. But unlike Arendt, Hegel seeks to reinvent a particular
kind of political autonomy that is reconcilable with, but not identifiable with,
“the rise of the social.”
11. According to Hegel’s later Philosophy of History the difference between
modern and ancient society consists in the fact that in ancient society only
some were free, while in modern society all are free. The present passage in
NR clearly serves as a kind of foundation for this position. It demonstrates,
however, that this transition from some being free to all being free requires
Hegel to mediate between two very distinct concepts of freedom: freedom as
political virtue versus freedom as individual right. What seems crucial in the
present discussion is the notion that this modern freedom is only seen as valu-
able insofar as it can actually be viewed as a factor that leads to more cohesive
integration within society.
12. In a rather parenthetical context, Ludwig Siep gives an excellent articu-
lation of this sense in which Hegel uses the term organism within the Natural
Right essay: “Paradoxerweise enthält gerade der Begriff des Organischen—der
immer wieder als romantisch und totalitaer kritisiert wurde—die ‘liberalen’ Züge
der hegelschen Staatsphilosophie” (Praktische Philosophie im deutschen Idealismus,
168). In the footnote Siep expands upon the meaning of the organic within
Hegel’s political thought: “Im Begriff des Organischen hat Hegel nicht nur die
Einheit, sondern stets auch die Selbstständigkeit der Teile und das Vermögen, das
Ganze gerade in ihrer besonderen Funktion zu repräsentieren, zu denken versucht.”
Needless to say, this conception of the organic is completely consonant with the
notion that I am developing here. Since, however, my work is primarily interested
in a definition of the mechanistic, rather than the organic, the point remains to
be made that the organic must be thought of as containing or integrating the
mechanistic forms of social existence within it.
13. Hegel admits that there are two ways in which the state limits civil
society (GW IV, 451): advertent and inadvertent. An example of an inadvertent
limitation would be the fighting of a war, which conscripts members of the
working class and absorbs taxes. An example of an advertent limitation would
be taxation of the wealthy intended to improve the lives of the poor. Hegel’s
point is that any action of the state that limits the development of bourgeois
interests is one that serves to give measure to the inherent measurelessness of
the civil society, which tends toward ever greater social disparity.
14. In the work of Herder and perhaps also the earlier works of Hegel
the figure of mechanism stood for the danger of the state in interfering with
the “organic” development of society. Frederick Beiser gives an excellent account
of this aspect of Romantic political theory. Cf. Enlightenment, Revolution, and
Romanticism (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1992), 236–39. But here
for Hegel the figure of mechanism stands for a principle of development latent
in society; the state can only become organic by allowing this mechanism to
subsist and yet drawing determinate limits on its activities. Hegel’s critique of
mechanism, from henceforth in his writings, will revolve around an attempt
to distinguish the functions of the state from the “measureless” developments
associated with the modern economy.
15. Hegel’s term potency is derivative of Schelling’s nature philosophy,
which uses this term to designate a developmental phase within the genesis
of a systematic whole, a fragment in which the whole is visible at some phase
of its organization. Hegel seems to use the term here in a somewhat different
manner to designate each of the subsystems that make up a social whole, such
as the family, the economy, and political institutions.
16. “The historical recognition of laws demonstrates . . . that there is now
lacking in the living present an understanding [of the laws] and the meaning is
lacking, even if through the form of law, and by way of the fact that the laws
still represent the interests of some factions and these factions have attached their
existence to these laws, these [laws] still have force and power” (GW IV, 481).
194 Nathan Ross
17. “This necessary inequality that establishes itself inside the commercial
class and within all of the specialized branches of commerce brings forth a rela-
tion of dominance [Herrschaftsverhältnis] by way of its quantitative make-up,
which only relates to degrees and is not capable of any other determination
than that of degree; the individual, immensely wealthy one becomes a power,
he sublates the form of pervasive physical dependence, to be of a particular and
not a universal nature” (GW V, 353–54).
18. Cf. Natural Right III; GW IV, 462.
19. “The foremost character of the commercial class, that it is capable
of an organic, absolute intuition, and of respect for an albeit foreign divin-
ity, falls away; and the bestiality of disdain for everything higher emerges; the
wisdom-less, the purely universal, the mass of wealth is determinative; and the
absolute bond of the people, the ethical has disappeared, and the people dis-
solved” (GW V, 354).
10
Hegel’s Claim about Democracy

and His Philosophy of History
Mark Tunick
Introduction
Hegel claims that democracy was necessary for the ancient Athenians but
is inappropriate for a modern state. My purpose is to clarify this claim
by spelling out its underlying assumptions. I also hope to indicate how
Hegel’s views on democracy draw us into a larger controversy concern-
ing Hegel’s philosophy of history.
The larger controversy is about the extent to which Hegel’s approach
to history is empirical. On the one hand, Hegel is critical of original
historians who merely describe the events they experience or witness,
without reflection or having transcended the events (RH, 4); he advo-
cates a philosophical method of history that does not seek just to record
brute facts. Yet Hegel rejects as one-sided the view that a philosophy of
history produces its own ideas without regard to given data (RH, 10).
Hegel claims his approach to history is in some sense empirical:
Only the study of world history itself can show that it has
proceeded rationally, that it represents the rationally necessary
course of the World Spirit. . . . This [m]ust be the result of
history. History itself must be taken as it is; we have to proceed
historically, empirically [empirisch]. (RH, 12; VPG, 22)
For Hegel, history is governed by reason and culminates in the establish-

ment of rational institutions, including private property, monogamous
marriage, and hereditary monarchy, but not democracy. Does Hegel
decide which institutions are rational on the basis of what he observes
195
196 Mark Tunick
to prevail in the latest stage of history? If different institutions had

developed instead, such as community property, polygamy, and elec-
tive monarchy or other democratic forms of government, would Hegel
have accepted the relativistic implications of his view that history must
be taken as it is, and regarded these other institutions as rational? Or
would Hegel say, in the case where these other institutions existed,
that they will inevitably degenerate, ultimately to be replaced by the
rational institutions outlined in his Philosophy of Right? When Hegel
suggests that a modern state that is democratic will fail, to what extent
is he being empirical? Hegel’s claim about democracy is not only of
intrinsic interest, but is also relevant to the broader interpretive question
concerning Hegel’s philosophy of history of whether Hegel truly is an
empiricist historian and is willing to accept the relativist implications of
an empirical approach.
Hegel’s Claim about Democracy
Democracy can be understood in a variety of ways, some of which are in

conflict.1 It can mean rule by the people, usually through majority vote;
but it can also mean protection of individual rights and liberties, which
sometimes requires that we restrict majority rule.2 Hegel understands
democracy generally to refer to a form of government in which the
citizen is in some sense “present at the critical stages of public business”
(PH, 255). Athens was democratic though only one in ten Athenians
was a citizen, because those who were citizens took part. Not all forms
of democracy rely solely on voting as the means for taking part: the
Athenians, for example, used a lottery to select some public officials. But
Hegel singles out deliberation followed by voting as essential features of
modern democracy. For Hegel, democracy in a modern state refers to
a form of government in which “[t]he interests of the community, the
affairs of State, shall be discussed and decided by the People . . . [and]
the individual members of the community shall deliberate, urge their
respective opinions, and give their votes” (PH, 252).
Hegel’s claim that democracy is proper for the Athenian polis but
inappropriate for a modern state illustrates his view that “the constitution
of a specific nation will in general depend on the nature and development
of its self-consciousness” (PR, §274). Democracy is appropriate for the
Greeks because they lacked subjective consciousness and the institutions
of civil society that promote the expression of particular wills: “The
citizens are still unconscious of particular interests, and therefore of a
Hegel’s Claim about Democracy 197
corrupting element” (PH, 252; VPG, 308). Where Greek subjectivity

(Fürsichsein) did exist, it was confined to “artists and scholars who were
indifferent to politics” (RPH I, 199).
In the section Moralität of his Philosophy of Right, Hegel explains
that the moral agent with subjectivity wills that he himself is in everything
he does (PR, §107). Persons with subjective consciousness see them-
selves as determining their own aims. When they focus on themselves to
the exclusion of the universal, they reveal a defect, which Hegel refers
to as the “abstraction of subjectivity.” Athenian citizens, on Hegel’s
view, lacking subjectivity, did not have this defect. They had as their
object of interest not themselves as individuals, but their polis.3 Just
as important, the Greeks lacked a civil society, and therefore a means
by which they could outwardly express their particularity. Democracy
did not have subversive effects because the Greeks, lacking subjectivity
and civil society, did not place individual, particular interests above the
welfare of the community.
Hegel associates democracy in a modern state with the principle of
individual sovereignty, the principle that the individual should be deter-
mined not “by any consideration of what others are doing, but only by
his own will, and that his arbitrary will as an individual is the ultimate
and sovereign principle which befits him and to which he is entitled.”4
Hegel emphasizes how Greek political thought, as expressed by Aristotle,
is opposed to the modern principle of individual sovereignty:
Aristotle does not place the individual and his rights first, but
recognizes the state as what in its essence is higher than the
individual and the family, for the very reason that it consti-
tutes their substantiality. . . . This is directly antagonistic to the
modern principle in which the particular will of the individual,
as absolute, is made the starting point, so that all men by
giving their votes, decide what is to be the law, and thereby
a commonweal is brought into existence. (HP, 208)
Democracy was appropriate for the Greeks because for them,

democratic participation involved expressing the collective interest of
the polis and not the principle of individual sovereignty, a principle that
Hegel thinks subverts the state.
Hegel states his claim in stronger terms when he says not merely
that a democratic constitution was appropriate for the Athenians, but
that it was “the only possible one” (VPG, 308: “die einzig mögliche”).
Hegel’s claim that democracy was not merely appropriate but necessary
198 Mark Tunick
for the Athenians is puzzling, given the existence of city states contem-
porary with Athens with similar features such as a “common culture”
and small size (PH, 255) but that were not democratic.5
There are two ways we might understand Hegel’s claim. Democracy
may have been necessary in order for humans to advance beyond the
limits of Greek culture and society. Hegel says that the “justification and
absolute necessity of the democratic constitution of the Greeks rests on
the still immanent, objective ethical life” that lacks the corrupting ele-
ment of particular interests that have not yet developed (VPG, 308). He
argues that the democratic, along with the aristocratic and monarchical
structures of government,
must . . . be regarded as necessary structures in the path of

development—in short, in the history of the State. Hence
it is superficial and absurd to represent them as an object
of choice. The pure forms—necessary to the process of evolu-
tion—are, in so far as they are finite and in course of change,
conjoined both with forms of their degeneration. (PM, §544,
272; emphasis added)
Hegel doesn’t explain how Athenian democracy was necessary for

the eventual rise of subjectivity that led to the downfall of the Greek
polis and paved the path of world spirit. He might refer to the neces-
sity apparent in hindsight: the Greeks played an instrumental role in
the development of the Idea in history, and so features they shared
must have been essential. Perhaps a more promising account Hegel
might have suggested is that democratic practices such as speeches in
public assemblies and other public discourse would have provided the
impetus and opportunity for the sophists and Socrates to develop the
principle of subjectivity that Hegel claims is essential for human free-
dom, and for their newly emerging principle to clash with the existent
principles of Greek ethical life, a clash prompting historical evolution.6
Hegel does note that the democratic constitution “affords the widest
scope for the development of great political characters” in allowing
the display of their powers and summoning them to use those powers
for the general welfare; it also requires that one be able to satisfy the
intellect, judgment, and passions of the people in order to obtain influ-
ence (PH, 260): “In a democracy it is a matter of the first importance,
to be able to speak in popular assemblies—to urge one’s opinions on
public matters”(PH, 268). Of course, unlike the sophists, Socrates was
uncomfortable speaking in large assemblies, preferring instead to engage
in one-on-one dialogue, and the Assembly’s verdict against him, recounted
by Plato in the Apology, indicates his inability to satisfy the passions of

most Athenians. Hegel is best understood to refer to others with great
political character, but not Socrates, who said he avoided politics.7 Still,
Socrates may have been able to develop his subversive form of dialogue
only because Athens was democratic.
On another interpretation, democracy was necessary for the Greeks
in the sense that it cohered with their other practices. Hegel singles out
three features of the ancient Greek republics: an appeal to oracles for
making decisions such as where to found a colony or how to conduct a
battle; slavery, which Hegel says is “a necessary condition of an aesthetic
democracy” in providing the freedom to citizens to take part in public
activities; and their small size, which allows for the interests of all to
be similar and for a common culture and living polity to be possible
(PH, 254–55). The necessity of democracy, on this interpretation, is a
necessity for interpretive coherence: democracy is needed to make sense
of Greek ethical life as an integral system.
When Hegel spoke of democracy in Athens, he had in mind direct
democracy: each member of the demos is “present at the critical stages
of public business, he must take part in decisive crises with his entire
personality—not with his vote merely” (PH, 255). Hegel claims that
democracy can’t take the same form in modern times, when a living demo-
cratic polity is no longer possible.8 But Hegel’s criticism of democracy
in a modern state is not that it is impossible because the large number
of people make face to face interaction implausible; Hegel is aware of
forms of democracy other than direct democracy that could function in
a modern state. To understand Hegel’s critique of democracy we shall
need to review two of his most important works of political theory,
and distinguish two different sorts of arguments. For now his position
can be briefly summarized as follows: In allowing individual wills to
express themselves through the vote, a modern democratic constitution
recognizes the importance only of expressing particular wills. Democracy
fails to recognize the importance of mediating the particular will with
the universal, and the extent to which the individual is part of a system
of complete interdependence. For Hegel, democracy in a modern state
consists in individuals collecting temporarily for a single act, believing
that their own particular interests, “whim, opinion, and caprice” are all
that counts (PR, §281, Rem.), after which they disperse until the next
occasion for collective action. This practice, he argues, is inappropriate
to a modern state because “[civil society] is not split up into individual
atomic units which are merely assembled for a moment to perform a
single temporary act . . . on the contrary, it is articulated into its associa-
tions, communities, and corporations”(PR, §308).
200 Mark Tunick
Hegel presents his critique of democracy both in the Philosophy of

Right and in another essay offering an even more extensive treatment of
the failings of democracy, “The English Reform Bill.” The Reform Bill
proposed to expand English political representation, so that the major-
ity of the House of Commons would no longer be “controlled by 150
persons of eminence” (RB, 236). Hegel recognizes that the proposed
reforms might increase the chance for some positive changes, such as land
reform and an end to church tithes and hunting rights (RB, 242–43,
248–49), though he thinks such results remain unlikely in England (RB,
248–49). But Hegel is concerned that England’s constitution lacks a
structure to mediate the power that the radical reformers would place in
Parliament. While the English constitution ostensibly was a monarchy, in
fact the monarchic power was “more illusory than real,” the real power
lying with Parliament (RB, 261). Because it was so weak, “the monarchic
element in England lacks the power which, in other states, has facilitated
the transition, without convulsions, violence, and robbery,” from earlier
forms of legislation based on positive rights and privileges, to legislation
“based on principles of real freedom” (RB, 269). The Reform Bill rightly
tries to improve upon a system of government that rests on unprincipled
traditions and prescriptive rights with no other justification than that
they have existed for a long time; but it would open the door for “new
people” who would introduce “heterogeneous principles” and “claims
of a new kind” that could “threaten to become increasingly dangerous”
(RB, 268–69). Hegel worries especially about reformers who appeal to
the abstract rights of man and argue that the people should express their
will by choosing those who govern: such a theory provides no assurance
that England will be governed by those with talent and competence, as
would a more rational constitution in which service to the state is tied
to preconditions such as “a course of specialized [wissenschaftlicher] study,
state-approved examinations, preliminary practical training, etc.”(RB, 263).
Hegel has no high opinion of the existing members of the House:
The English nation has not yet achieved through popular

representation what several centuries of quiet work in the
cultivation of science, and of princely wisdom and love of
justice have accomplished in Germany; . . . Nowhere but in
England is the prejudice so entrenched and sincerely accepted
that if birth and wealth give someone an office, they also give
him the intelligence to go with it. (RB, 250)
But the new bill offers no improvement; it is “devoid of those

particular elements which might allow well founded insight and genuine
knowledge to prevail over the crass ignorance of the fox-hunters and

rural gentry, over an education acquired merely through social contacts,
newspapers, and parliamentary debates”(RB, 250)
In “The English Reform Bill,” Hegel recommends a structure of
government in which “issues rather than individuals” are voiced and
given a hearing (RB, 254). The democratic reforms proposed in England
rest on the principle of individual sovereignty—“the modern principle
according to which only the abstract will of individuals as such should
be represented” (RB, 253). But this principle is inappropriate in a ratio-
nal modern state, which is a differentiated unity in which the various
classes that make up the state have their corporate interests represented
(RB, 253). In Philosophy of Right Hegel develops in detail the theory
of a modern state as a differentiated unity. A rational modern state has
a hereditary monarch guided by a cabinet of experts at its head, and a
bicameral assembly with one house consisting of landed property interests
who earn their role through inheriting property rather than by being
elected (PR, §§305–306), and the other house consisting of deputies
who are elected not by an undifferentiated electorate, but by corpora-
tions (PR, §§308, 311). Hegel rejects democracy even in the form of
elective monarchy, in favor of a constitution that has “real rationality,”
in which “each of the three moments of the concept has its distinc-
tive shape” (PR, §279). An elective monarchy where the people are
entrusted with choosing who they charge with their welfare mistakenly
makes decisive the capricious will of the people. But “to know what
one wills, and even more to know what the will which has being in
and for itself—i.e. reason—wills, is the fruit of profound cognition and
insight, and this is the very thing which ‘the people’ lack” (PR, §301,
Rem.; cf. PR, §268Z).
While Hegel does not think the people should have a voice in
electing the monarch, he recognizes the importance of representation
through the Estates (PR, §301). The Estates are a “mediating organ,”
where the “interests of particular circles and individuals” are presented
to the government at large. Hegel’s support of corporate representa-
tion might seem to conflict with his argument that particular interests
shouldn’t undermine the unity of the state, especially given examples
with which we are familiar where central authority is undermined by
parochial interests of clans or tribes.9 But on Hegel’s view, representa-
tives serve corporate rather than geographically based interests.10 Cor-
porations ultimately contribute to allegiance to the state and central
authority, and support the rule of law, because corporate interests, for
Hegel, are not parochial allegiances to clans or tribes of the sort that
challenge official loyalties.11
202 Mark Tunick
The true function of the representative institution in a modern

state, for Hegel, is precisely the opposite of what many of the English
reformers conceived it to be: it is to “ensure that individuals do not
present themselves as a crowd or aggregate, unorganized in their opin-
ions and volition, and do not become a massive power in opposition to
the organic state” (PR, §302). Even in the event that representatives
were to advance individual rather than corporate interests, their potential
corrupting influence is limited: Hegel distinguishes the Estate assemblies
from a legislative power because the monarch and his cabinet retain the
final decision, and legislation only modifies existing laws and deals with
“minutiae of detail,” with the “main drift” already settled by law-courts
(PM, §544, 274).
The principle Hegel understands modern democracies to advance,
individual sovereignty, conflicts with the principle of differentiated unity.
Hegel criticizes democracy because he thinks it would subvert the state
as a differentiated unity not only in theory but in practice. In the Phi-
losophy of Mind Hegel writes that the principles of liberty and equality
associated with democratic institutions and the principle of individual
sovereignty, “if stuck to in this abstract form, [a]re principles which
either prevent the rise of the concreteness of the state, i.e. its articula-
tion into a constitution and a government in general, or destroy them”
(PM, §539). In the very last line of “The English Reform Bill” Hegel
suggests that the proposed democratic reforms in England could destroy
the state, could “inaugurate not a reform but a revolution.”12
Hegel’s unwillingness to provide a potentially meaningful form
of political participation to most citizens has been a cause of great
concern.13 He believes that democratic participation threatens the unity
of the state. In the next section I distinguish two sorts of arguments
Hegel invokes to reach this conclusion.
Two Sorts of Arguments against Democracy
Hegel argues that democratic institutions totalize the principle of indi-

vidual sovereignty, preventing the mediation of individual needs within
a unified state. This is an empirical claim, presumably based on the
observed consequences of democratic practices, a claim I shall turn to
in the fourth section. This critique of democracy in practice can be dis-
tinguished from a second sort of argument Hegel advances: democracy
rests on a false conception of the state, one that totalizes civil society.
On this argument, Hegel objects on metaphysical grounds to institutions
that give priority to particular wills and subjectivity over corporate and
universal interests. To make sense of this argument, we must understand
why Hegel thinks it wrong to totalize particularity and subjective con-

sciousness—to see the state as only civil society.
The essential difference between the modern state and the state of
classical antiquity, for Hegel, is that in the modern state the “universal is
bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with
private well-being” (PR, §260Z). In civil society, an essential moment
of the modern state that was absent in ancient Greece, individuals are
conscious of themselves as individuals with particular needs, and become
conscious that these needs are fulfilled through a process of mediation
involving institutions including businesses and corporations, schools, the
police, and the administration of justice. This process of mediation is
what binds the particular members to the “universal.” Civil society is
only one moment of a state, not to be mistaken for the state. We are
not to think that the reason we live in a state is to fulfill our particular
needs. It is within the sphere of civil society itself that such an under-
standing is exposed as false (PR, §182Z; cf. PR, §207).
Hegel wants us to recognize how civil society is a means by which
we recognize the limitations of particularity and the error in totalizing
subjective consciousness:
[C]ivil society, in which the Idea has lost itself in particularity

and split up into the division between inward and outward,
returns to its concept, to the unity of the universal which has
being in itself with subjective particularity. (PR, §229)
Here Hegel draws on his metaphysical commitment to the view

that human beings are spirit (Geist) and history the record of spirit’s
path of self-recognition. In regarding themselves as merely individuals
with particular wills, and regarding the state atomistically, those who
defend the principle of individual sovereignty take a viewpoint “that
excludes Spirit, because it leads only to an aggregation, whereas spirit
is not something individual but the unity of the individual and the uni-
versal” (PR, §156Z). Hegel hopes for us to recognize that spirit is the
“substantial and underlying essence” of man, and to put this objective
truth above the “trivialities of external existence and contingency” (PM,
§549; cf. PS, 43). By participating in the institutions of civil society we
come to see ourselves as part of a universal community of spirit (cf.
PR, §249). Democratic institutions, on Hegel’s view, are premised on
a way of understanding the state that fails to recognize this essential
purpose of civil society.
Hegel sees history as human beings’ development, through appro-
priate institutions, of a self-understanding of themselves as free. Hegel
believes subjectivity is necessary for humans to recognize they are fully
204 Mark Tunick
free: man, unlike animals, raises “himself above the singleness of sensa-
tion to the universality of thought, to self-knowledge, to the grasp of his
subjectivity, of his ‘I’ ” (PM, §381Z). By virtue of this capacity, humans
can realize they are spirit. But subjectivity must not be totalized. A state
that adopts institutions that give play only to subjectivity and particularity
fails to help its citizens develop an adequate self-understanding, leaving
them with an abstract or incomplete, and untrue form of consciousness.
Because the Athenians lacked subjectivity, they could have democracy.
But, on Hegel’s view, because modern democracy necessarily expresses
only subjectivity and particularity, modern democratic states fail to satisfy
the demands of the Idea.
Hegel’s Empirical Argument against

Democracy in a Modern State
If Hegel’s account of history is empirical in some sense, we might expect

that his suggestion that democracy will fail in a modern state because it
totalizes the principle of individual sovereignty is not presupposed but
is established by observing democratic practices. To what extent does
Hegel support his claim about democracy with empirical observations?
In the “English Reform Bill,” Hegel infers from only a few observa-
tions of an actual democratic society that the proposed democratic reforms
would fail. He criticizes the proposed reforms because they would allow
incompetents to decide on important affairs through a process open to
corruption, echoing the Duke of Wellington’s worry that the Reform Bill
would allow “shopkeepers” to make decisions on domestic and foreign
affairs (RB, 263). To support this fear, Hegel points to Brougham’s
description of a scene where people were rounded up by the owners of
great estates, “made to camp in the courtyards with fires, pudding, and
porter—to isolate them from the influence of opposition,” and kept until
they were to cast their vote (RB, 257; cf. PH, 455, on “election to seats
in parliament by means of bribery”). Hegel also points to what he sees
as the empirical reality of an uninformed, corruptible electorate, whose
slack attendance of electoral meetings and low voter turnout suggests
they are indifferent as well (RB, 258–59). These observations of voting
behavior in England, Hegel argues, belie the principle underlying the
vote, that it manifests the people’s sovereignty and “right to participate
in public affairs,” and is a “supreme duty” (RB, 257). Hegel does not
explain why the voter indifference he observes would not temper the
potentially destructive effects of democracy.
Hegel appeals to experience or observation in a few other passages
to support his claim about democracy in a modern state. He says that
“experience shows” that England, which is regarded as among the most

democratic nations, in which private persons “have a predominant share
in public affairs,” is “the most backward” in its civil and criminal law,
liberty of property, and arrangements for art and science; in England,
objective freedom is “sacrificed to formal right and particular interest”
(PM, §544, 273)—but he provides no evidence of this backwardness
or that it is due to excessive particularity resulting from democratic
practices. In Philosophy of Right he cites Montesquieu’s observations
that England in the seventeenth century had a weak democracy because
ambition replaced virtue: “[T]he state falls prey to universal exploitation
and its strength resides solely in the power of a few individuals and the
unruliness of everyone” (PR, §273, 310). In Philosophy of History he
supports his claim that democracy fails in modern times by pointing to
the French Convention after the Revolution, at which governance broke
down and despotism resulted (PH, 255–56; cf. RPH V, 804). But he
fails to show that democratic practices in non-extraordinary times, or
constitutional democracies, are likely to fail.
An essential goal of many of the English reformers seeking greater
democratization is that the individual should be guided solely by his
own will, and that each individual, through the vote, shapes the state to
suit himself. Hegel opposes this goal, but also makes the point that the
democratizing reforms will never realize their ideal of individual sover-
eignty given the modern state’s size (PR, §311, Rem.). Hegel calculated
that “the individual vote” was a “ninety-millionth of one of the three
branches of the power which makes the law” (RB, 257). Of course, in
modern democracies individuals form coalitions and parties that increase
their voice. In criticizing democracy for a modern state, Hegel seems
to rule out a pluralist or a party system, where individuals express a
will representing not an isolated individual but a particular plurality, or
what Rousseau calls a “corporate will” (SC 3:2, 177). Rousseau, who
agrees with Hegel that “nothing is more dangerous than the influence
of private interests on public affairs” (SC 3:4, 179), theorizes a regime
where voting concerns only general objects, not particular matters (SC
2:4, 157), and in which people detach their private from the common
interest, and in considering a proposed law are asked not “whether they
approve or reject, but whether or not it conforms to the general will
that is theirs” (SC 4:2, 206). Hegel, unlike Rousseau, does not envision
a practice of democracy in a modern state that would diverge from the
principle of individual sovereignty.14
Why not? Why doesn’t Hegel consider the possibility that rational
people will come to see that their best chance to realize their will is to
organize in groups or parties where their particular will is no longer a
trivial fraction? The logistical problem that a single vote becomes trivial
206 Mark Tunick
in a large state can be avoided by a party system in which individu-

als cluster in groups whose members have fairly similar interests and
preferences and negotiate policies of compromise with groups having
opposing preferences. Hegel equated modern democracy with a system
consisting of atomistic units expressing their subjective volitions. He did
not consider how rational alliances, be they strategic and self-interested,
or ideological, could avoid the particularism he assumed would destroy
the state’s unity. In one passage from lecture notes of his Rechtsphiloso-
phie, Hegel apparently recognizes the potential significance of political
parties: “[W]ith parties, one’s voice becomes important” (RPH VI,
718). He concludes, however, that parties are potentially destructive
because they allow “passion” to enter into politics (“so tritt der Eifer
ein”), a point recorded in another set of lecture notes on the Recht-
sphilosophie when Hegel asserts that the rise of political parties entails
the dominance of particular interests that can lead to war or seizure
by foreign hands, a result, he says, from which Germany was spared
only through divine Providence.15
Hegel’s unwillingness to conceive of a democracy that focused
on the universal interest is apparent in his reading of Rousseau’s Social
Contract. For Rousseau,
The substantial basis and primary factor is supposed to be

not the will as rational will which has being in and for itself
or the spirit as true spirit, but will and spirit as the particular
individual, as the will of the single person in his distinctive
arbitrariness. (PR, §29, Rem.)
Rousseau considered the will only in the determinate form

of the individual will . . . and regarded the universal will not
as the will’s rationality in and for itself, but only as the com-
mon element arising out of this individual will as a conscious
will. The union of individuals within the state thus becomes
a contract, which is accordingly based on their arbitrary will
and opinions, and on their express consent . . . the further
consequences which follow from this, and which relate merely
to the understanding, destroy the divine which has being in
and for itself and its absolute authority and majesty. (PR,
§258, Rem.)
Hegel is so locked into an understanding of democracy as neces-

sarily totalizing the principle of individual sovereignty that he seems
unable to see the passages in which Rousseau articulates a vision of
democracy involving “the total alienation of each associate, together
with all of his rights, to the entire community” (SC 1:6, 148). Hegel
was unable to conceive of democracy as capable of coexisting within a
corporatist structure in which citizens had civic consciousness and could
be mediated with the universal. Why did he assume democracy neces-
sarily is governed by the principle of individual sovereignty and leads
to the dissolution of the state? Hegel points to empirical evidence of
how individuals express their wills through the vote, but his evidence
is anecdotal and meager, and so it is hard to believe that he was led to
his conclusions about democracy in a modern state by his observations
of political behavior.
Hegel’s weakness as an empiricist political scientist is apparent
by comparing one of his arguments against elective and for hereditary
monarchy with Thomas Paine’s objection to hereditary monarchy.
Hegel argues that hereditary monarchy is rational because by having
the monarch decided by “nature” and not by political deliberations or
in-fighting, conflicts among factions are avoided (PR, §281, Rem.).
This is by no means Hegel’s only defense of hereditary monarchy,
and he explicitly disavows that this is its primary ground.16 But it is
an important one, and an argument that Paine anticipates and rejects
with a far more effective empiricism. Paine observes that there are
more civil wars resulting from contested hereditary claims than ever
arose from elections. Paine provides the example of Poland, which
“though an elective monarchy, has had fewer wars than those which
are hereditary.”17 Even Paine’s woefully slim data set is more impressive
than what Hegel assembles for establishing a correlation between elec-
tions and regime breakdown. Hegel points only to intuitive arguments
about the effect of a vote when there is a large electorate, and anecdotal
evidence about corruption, indifference, and competence, without ever
establishing that democratic polities are more likely to fail. Indeed, he
fails to explain how the particularism to which democracy gives play
would still effectively destroy the unity of the state if voters are, as he
claims, indifferent and disengaged. Paine at least compares observable
outcomes of democratic and nondemocratic regimes.
Despite Hegel’s claim that the historian should proceed empiri-
cally, and that we should not imagine how the world ought to be but
instead reflect on what has already transpired, he did not convincingly
base his claim about the failure of democracies in modern states on
observations of democratic practices in England or elsewhere. Hegel’s
criticism of modern democracy is left to rest on his rejection of the
principle of individual sovereignty:
The idea that all individuals ought to participate in delib-

erations and decisions on the universal concerns of the
208 Mark Tunick
state—on the grounds that they are all members of the

state and that the concerns of the state are the concerns of
everyone . . . appears plausible precisely because it stops short
at the abstract determination of membership of the state and
because superficial thinking sticks to abstractions. . . . The
concrete state is the whole, articulated into its particular
circles. (PR, §308, Rem., 247)
This raises a question about the extent to which Hegel’s philosophy of

history really is empirical.
Hegel’s Claim about Democracy and

His Philosophy of History
To justify his claim that democracy is inadequate for a modern state,

Hegel appeals to his corporatist theory of the state as a differentiated
unity, and to his philosophy of history, which he claims is in some sense
empirical. Hegel, committed to showing the rationality of the actual
(PR, Preface, 20), rejects elective monarchy or other democratic forms
of government because they were not features of the modern state
he regarded as actual. His reason for thinking they were not was his
conviction that democracy necessarily expresses a principle of individual
sovereignty destructive of the state. This is a problematic view given the
existence of successful democratic elements in some European states and
in the United States: democracy had not necessarily led to the folding
of regimes or to revolutions.18
Hegel might have made an empirical argument that virtue is unlikely
in a large state and, like some political scientists, ruled out a successful
Rousseauian democracy as improbable.19 But his observations of actual
democracies do not constitute what political scientists would regard as
adequate empirical evidence. This is not necessarily a criticism of Hegel,
whose intentions and goals differ from those of a political scientist seek-
ing to explain political behavior and outcomes. What, though, becomes
of Hegel’s claim that the historian must proceed empirically?
The sense in which Hegel means philosophical history is empirical
can of course be distinguished from the sense in which a political scien-
tist proceeds empirically when evaluating the effectiveness of democratic
practices by observing their consequences. In saying philosophical history
is empirical, Hegel means to deny that one can read history however one
pleases: one is constrained by facts. But Hegel at the same time denies
there are “brute facts” independent of our theories about the world,
which is why he criticizes “original” and defends a philosophical method

of history. Hegel claims that his philosophical system gives an account
of both the logical and temporal development of Spirit (cf. PH, 72).
Hegel refuses to justify this claim by faith or unfounded convictions.
That history is rational and not a random series of events will be seen
by one who intelligently reflects back on history. His approach requires
sometimes bracketing what one can observe in the world and regarding
it as not “actual” even though it exists, and it is precisely this rejection
of brute-fact empiricism that makes Hegel’s political theory so powerful
as a strategy of immanent criticism.20
But the discussion of his claim about democracy suggests a problem
with this approach. Hegel’s metaphysical argument against democracy
assumes that democracy necessarily expresses a principle destructive to
the modern state. If democracy does indeed express only the principle
of individual sovereignty, it would violate a central tenet of Hegel’s dia-
lectical system. It would totalize one moment, subjectivity, and exclude
another moment essential to the Idea. But the claim that democracy
necessarily embodies the principle of individual sovereignty is fundamen-
tally an empirical claim—it is a claim about how people behave given
certain institutions. In ignoring nondemocratic Greek institutions, and
democratic practices of modern states that do not disrupt the state,
Hegel might claim that they exist but are not actual, in that they don’t
accord with his account of what a rational state was in ancient Greece
or is in modern times. But the political scientist will take issue with
Hegel’s conclusion that modern democratic practices necessarily lead to
regime failures. In drawing conclusions about what democracy must be
on such scanty observations, Hegel is left with a claim against democ-
racy resting on an assumption—that democracy necessarily expresses the
principle of individual sovereignty—that is not convincingly supported
by empirical evidence.
Hegel may have been too quick to reject democratic practices. He
says “there can be no further discussion” of democracy “in face of the
developed Idea” (PR, §279, Rem., 319); and though at times he seems
to reject democratic institutions because of the destructive consequences
he thinks they have, he says he regards as irrelevant considerations such
as the utility of an institution because “the one thing which we must bear
in mind is the internal necessity of the Idea” (PR, §279Z, 321). But it is
unclear whether Hegel needed to regard democracy as inconsistent with
the Idea. His constrained understanding of the possibilities of democracy,
and his ignoring of nondemocratic Greek polities and nondestructive
democratic practices of modern states, suggests that at least in his view
of democracy, Hegel shaped his understanding of existing practices so
210 Mark Tunick
that it conformed to his ideal. But it would not have been inconsistent
with his philosophy of history for Hegel to rework his understanding of
an ideal, rational state if institutions such as democracy, which he does
not regard as rational, had historically developed instead.21
Notes
1. Some have argued that democracy is an “essentially contested con-

cept”—see W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” in Philosophy and
the Historical Understanding (London: 1964); originally in Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 1955–56; and Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political
Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 20.
2. Ball and Dagger, 40.
3. See PH, 253: The Greeks “had no conscience; the habit of living
for their country without further reflection, was the principle dominant among
them”; and PR, §279Z: In Athens, “self-consciousness had not yet arrived at
the abstraction of subjectivity, nor had it yet realized that an ‘I will’ must be
pronounced by man himself on the issue to be decided.” Cf. Shlomo Avineri,
Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1972), 111–12, 162, 225–26.
4. RB, 258; cf. RB, 253: “the modern principle according to which only
the abstract will of individuals as such should be represented”; and RB, 259:
“the right [of the franchise] was accepted as by definition sovereign, primary,
inalienable, and generally the opposite of all that can be conferred or taken away.”
In Philosophy of Right Hegel refers to this principle mainly when criticizing it:
see PR, §301, Rem., 340; PR, §303, Rem.; and PR, §309Z: “it is not essential
that the individual should have a say as an abstract individual entity.”
5. Hegel, though, suggests that the democratic constitution was the
primary form of government in Greece (PH, 250). He concedes that the gov-
ernment of Sparta was “almost an aristocracy and oligarchy” and that the power
of the Ephors became tyrannical; but he says that the Spartan constitution may
still be called democratic (PH, 263).
6. For Hegel, Socrates’ death marked the rise of subjective consciousness
that began with the sophists, “who first introduced subjective reflection” (PH,
253). Cf. PR, §138, Rem., and §279, Rem., 320.
7. Plato, Apology, 31c5–31; but see Plato, Gorgias, 521d, where Socrates
says he alone practices politics, probably meaning he alone improves the character
of his fellow Athenians, through his one-on-one discussions with them.
8. Avineri, 163. See also Andrew Buchwalter, “Hegel’s Concept of
Virtue,” Political Theory 20, no. 548–83 (November 1992): 553–54, 574–75,
on how the “systematic bifurcation” of modern societies makes impossible the
rehabilitation of Greek republicanism.
9. See, for example, Steven Erlanger, “Loyalties Clash, Exposing Rifts in
Unruly Gaza,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 2005, on how clan loyalties in Gaza
undermine the central Palestinian Authority.
10. Hardimon, 222; and Buchwalter, 571.

11. See PR, §§252, 255. Andrew Buchwalter, in arguing that corporate
benevolence does not provide a genuine account of civic virtue, suggests a
different position: that Hegel thinks corporate membership can be based on
“tribal kinship” (Buchwalter, 560). The reason I differ is that Hegel says cor-
porations “admit members in accordance with their objective qualification of
skill and rectitude,” and he distinguishes the tie to corporations from the tie
to family by referring to the corporation as “a second family” (PR, §252) and
by speaking of family as the first ethical root of the state, and the corporation
as the second (PR, §255).
12. RB, 270. But earlier Hegel admitted to not being too concerned that
England would be influenced by “the fanaticism” associated with commitment
to the abstract rights of man, given the “so-called practical sense of the British
nation” (RB, 255).
13. E.g., Michael Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 255; and Dudley Knowles, Hegel and the
Philosophy of Right (London: Routledge, 2002), 335.
14. It is unclear whether Rousseau felt that the model of voting he
theorizes could be put into practice in actual states. Rousseau does not want
to give up on ideals simply because they have not taken hold (SC 4:1, 204;
yet he concedes that he does not see his proposed solution as possible “unless
the city is very small” and while he doesn’t think small states are impossible, he
defers discussion of why until later, and then explains that he never addresses
the concern as he hoped he would (SC 3:15, 199–200 and fn 14).
15. RPH III, 247–48; Cf. PR, §281, Rem.: while not focusing on political
parties, Hegel says that by making particular wills the basis of selecting rulers,
“the state is dissolved from within and destroyed from without.”
16. See Mark Tunick, “Hegel’s Justification of Hereditary Monarchy,”
History of Political Thought 12 (1991):481–96.
17. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999), 115–16.
18. In one reference to American democracy in his Rechtsphilosophie lec-
tures a student records, cryptically, that Hegel dismisses the American case as
“not really an instance” of democracy because America lacks a developed civil
society and has “no true commerce” (RPH V, 751).
19. Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven: Yale
20. See PR, Preface, 20. Hegel explains his distinction between actuality
and existence in Enzyclopädie of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), vol. 1, §6.
On Hegel’s immanent criticism, see Mark Tunick, Hegel’s Political Philosophy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and on immanent criticism
generally, see Tunick, Punishment: Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992).
21. I thank Joshua Cohen for his invaluable guidance when I first
approached Hegel’s views on democracy.
PART IV
The Philosophy of
History and Religion
11
Hegel’s Philosophy of
World History as Theodicy
On Evil and Freedom
Pierre Chételat
My objective in this chapter is to explore what Hegel means when he

claims that the philosophy of history is theodicy.1 Most often associated
with Leibniz, the term theodicy means literally a justification of God, or,
as Hegel puts it, “a justification of the ways of God.”2 The principal
task of theodicy is to address the problem of evil that arises when one
claims, on the one hand, that a good and omnipotent God exists, and
when one acknowledges, on the other hand, that there is evil in the
world. These two claims appear incompatible and the challenge for the
philosopher engaging in theodicy is to explain why such a God would
allow evil to exist.
In the 1830 manuscript, Hegel introduces the topic of theodicy
as follows:
The aim of human cognition is to understand that the inten-

tions of eternal wisdom are accomplished not only in the
natural world, but also in the realm of the [spirit] which is
actively present in the world. From this point of view, our
investigation can be seen as a theodicy, a justification of the
ways of God (such as Leibniz attempted in his own metaphysi-
cal manner, but using categories which were as yet abstract
and indeterminate). It should enable us to comprehend all
215
216 Pierre Chételat
the ills of the world, including the existence of evil, so that

the thinking spirit may be reconciled with the negative aspects
of existence; and it is in world history that we encounter the
sum total of concrete evil.3
This passage leaves us with the impression that Hegel’s theodicean project
is essentially the same as Leibniz’s. In other words, it seems that, like
Leibniz, Hegel intends his theodicy to address the problem of evil. It is
certainly true that for Hegel there are particular events that are a neces-
sary part of history’s development and are therefore justified. However,
I will argue that when Hegel claims that the philosophy of history is
theodicy, he does not pretend to have resolved the problem of evil but
has a different philosophical project in mind. For Hegel, the philosophy
of history is theodicy first and foremost because it demonstrates that
God is at work in the world and that this work leads ultimately to a
state in which evil or suffering can be overcome.
The Philosophy of History as a

Response to the Problem of Evil
At first glance, it is puzzling that Hegel would claim that the philoso-
phy of history is theodicy. One might expect him to associate theodicy
with theology or metaphysics, since God is an object of study in these
disciplines, but normally the focus of history is not on God but on
human events. Hegel helps to resolve this puzzle when he tells us that
God is at work in history. As he writes, “History is the unfolding of
God’s nature in a particular, determinate element.”4 For Hegel the task
of the philosophy of history is to show how God is active in history’s
development. This explains why the philosophy of history can be theo-
dicy: insofar as it deals with the role of God in history, the philosophy
of history has God’s activity as its subject matter.
What does Hegel mean by the term God when he claims that his-
tory is the unfolding of God’s determinate nature? I cannot address this
question here in detail, but I must take a position on it. As a number
of scholars have already argued effectively, the God that Hegel is refer-
ring to here is not the transcendent, autonomous creator of traditional
Christianity.5 Hegel’s God is not one who plays a role in history by
determining the course of historical events from beyond as a puppet
master determines the actions of his marionettes.6 In Hegel’s philosophy
of history, God is reason both as Idea and as spirit. As the latter, God is
reason as it manifests itself in the events of world history. When Hegel
Hegel’s Philosophy of World History as Theodicy 217
says that history is the unfolding of God’s nature, or when he claims

alternatively that world history is governed by providence, he is simply
expressing in religious language what he takes to be the fundamental
claim and the starting point of the philosophy of history, namely, that
history does not consist of a mass of purely contingent events, but that
it develops in a necessary way.7 God is at work in history insofar as his-
tory is rational, and the primary task of the philosophy of history is to
show how it is rational. For Hegel, the reason governing the process
of history is teleological: historical development is not only necessary,
but it proceeds necessarily toward a final purpose.8 For Hegel the final
goal of world history is the realization of freedom, the conditions for
which are achieved when history reaches the period of the modern
European world.
This outline of how Hegel conceives of the role of reason in
world history is brief, but it is sufficient to give an initial indication
of what Hegel means when he claims that the philosophy of history
is theodicy. Contrary perhaps to first appearances, his claim is not that
the philosophy of history examines the role played in the world by a
transcendent God. It does not attempt to explain how the existence of
evil can be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent
being. Rather, if God for Hegel is reason, then the philosophy of his-
tory is theodicy insofar as it considers the role of reason in the develop-
ment of history. To the extent that the philosophy of history provides
a solution to the problem of evil, it does so by giving a justification
of reason. Reason for Hegel is the good, and in the domain of spirit,
in the sphere of human history and culture, reason itself determines or
guides the process through which freedom or the good is actualized.
Yet there is also evil in the world. If Hegel’s philosophy of history is to
resolve the problem of evil, it must reconcile in some way the existence
of evil with reason that governs the development of history. It must
explain how it is possible for evil to exist in a world that is governed
by reason and that is ultimately good.
How then does Hegel’s philosophy of history attempt to address
the problem of evil? According to one response, the philosophy of
history is theodicy because it shows how evil events in history are a
necessary means for achieving a higher end. Hegel himself suggests that
evil plays this role: “So we have to consider world history and what its
final purpose may be; this final purpose is what God wanted with the
world. For this final purpose all sacrifices upon the altar of the world
are brought.”9 The progress of world history leads ultimately to a stage
in which humans are able to be fully free for the first time, but this
freedom can only be actualized as the result of a long development, and
evil is inevitably a part of this development. The evil of history occurs

both at the level of individuals and of whole peoples; it includes the
tragedy that accompanies the downfall of great civilizations, as well as
the suffering of the individuals who fall prey to history’s momentous
events and other sorts of evil. According to what I will refer to as the
means/end view, the philosophy of history is theodicy because it shows
that certain evil events are a required part of the historical process that
results in freedom and so are justified.10 Hegel’s view presupposes that
although this evil is regrettable, it ought to have happened. According
to the means/end interpretation, Hegel would say that it is better for
humanity to become fully free and to suffer evil along the way than it
would be for humanity to avoid this evil at the expense of freedom.
Hegel believes that the philosophy of history can provide some
justification for the evil that occurs in the course of the world’s histori-
cal development. But if we take this to be the explanation of how the
philosophy of history functions as theodicy, then I think that it attributes
to Hegel a theodicy that is, at best, weak or incomplete. There are
three ways in which Hegel’s theodicy in this interpretation falls short of
providing a full response to the problem of evil. First, the philosophy
of history is able to justify the evil of some historical occurrences, but
not others. The events that it can justify are world-historical events,
since these are necessary moments in the development of world spirit.
For example, the civil war in which Julius Caesar prevailed as emperor
brought about a major political transition in history and constitutes
for Hegel an “inherently necessary determination in the history of
Rome and of the world.”11 Like all wars it involved evil and suffering,
but because this evil was required for the development of freedom, it
is justified according to the means/end account of Hegel’s theodicy.
However, not all large-scale events in history involving evil are of such
great significance, and presumably one would have a hard time arguing
that all were necessary for spirit’s development toward freedom. As a
result, Hegel’s theodicy is in these cases unable to explain why this evil
was required. The same applies even more strongly to the actions of
individuals. Caesar’s actions in the civil war brought about death and
destruction but were justified because of their historical importance. Yet
most murders and other crimes are not the work of world-historical indi-
viduals like Caesar, and play no significant role in pushing the progress
of history along. The evil associated with such events cannot be excused
by appealing to their necessary place in history.12
Second, Hegel’s theodicy in the means/end interpretation is unable
to justify nonmoral forms of evil. For Hegel reason is at work in history
in the actions of humans, and it is the evil of certain human actions that
can be accounted for. But not all evil in the world is caused by humans,
since there is also natural evil, the harm and suffering that results, for
example, from natural disasters, disease, the infirmities of old age, etc.
Traditionally the job of theodicy has been to justify or account for not
only the evil that is caused by humans, but also for this natural evil. But
the philosophy of history is unable to do this if it is theodicy in the way
that has been suggested. Since spirit does not advance the progress of
history in the events of nature, and since diseases and natural disasters
are merely contingent occurrences, they cannot be justified as necessary
events on the road toward freedom.
Finally, according to the means/end interpretation, theodicy can
only serve effectively as a justification for evil that has occurred in his-
tory, since this justification is dependent on the fact that such evil has
a necessary role in history, and so must be viewed in the context of
history’s complete development. But alongside the conditions of freedom
that have been attained in the modern world, evil continues to be a
reality: wars are still fought, people are still oppressed, etc. These evil
events cannot be justified by this form of theodicy, first, because the good
toward which they could potentially contribute has for Hegel already
been reached, and, second, even if there was a higher goal toward which
they could contribute, their necessity and hence their justification would
only be apparent in retrospect. Hegel’s theodicy in this interpretation
has no bearing on the evil in our own lives, but is only able to give an
account of evils that are already long past.
Thus, we see in these three ways that according to the means/end
interpretation Hegel’s philosophy of history provides only a weak reply
to the problem of evil. The fact that Hegel’s theodicy may be weak
is not in and of itself a problem for interpreters, since this is perhaps
what Hegel intended. For those who defend the means/end interpre-
tation, this weakness of Hegelian theodicy may even be viewed as its
strength, since it shows that Hegel does not try to deny or play down
the full reality of the world’s pain and suffering.13 However, I believe
that the means/end interpretation on its own is insufficient. If we look
closely at what Hegel writes in the 1830 manuscript about the role of
philosophy of history as theodicy, Hegel appears to have a significantly
stronger form of theodicy in mind. In the passage that I read at the
outset of this chapter, Hegel tells us that his theodicy encompasses not
only some evil but all evil. “It should enable us to comprehend all the
ills of the world, including the existence of evil.”14 Here Hegel clearly
distinguishes human or moral evil (Böse) from evil in general (Übel) or
what Nisbet translates as “ill.” When he claims that theodicy should
allow us to grasp “all the ills of the world,” he is referring not just to
the evil that results from human action, but to all suffering whatsoever,
including that brought on by acts of nature. The means/end interpre-
tation cannot explain why Hegel thinks that the philosophy of history
functions as a theodicy in this way.
Furthermore, from what Hegel tells us in his discussion of theodicy,
we see that it does more than just justify evil as a means to an end.
It shows, rather, that evil is itself overcome in history. Here he writes
about the reconciliation that theodicy must bring about between spirit
and the negative aspects of existence.
A reconciliation of the kind just described can only be achieved

through a knowledge of the affirmative, an affirmative in
which the negative is reduced to something subordinated and
overcome. In other words, we must first of all know what the
ultimate design of the world really is, and secondly, we must
see that this design has been realized and that evil has not
been able to maintain a position of equality beside it.15
From this passage we see that there is some sense for Hegel in
which the good wins out against evil or in which the problems associated
with evil and suffering are resolved for us. Once again, the means/end
interpretation of Hegel’s theodicy is unable to account for why Hegel
might be saying this. The means/end interpretation shows that certain
evil occurrences in history are necessary, but, on its own at least, it does
not explain how evil is overcome. History could lead necessarily to the
advent of freedom without having any effect on the place of evil in the
world or our relationship to it.
Freedom as the Overcoming of Evil
The passages that I have just presented give us good reason to look more
closely at how Hegel’s philosophy of history is theodicy. The starting
point for such a reconsideration is to be found in the manuscript pas-
sages that I have already considered above. Hegel’s initial explanation
of theodicy is that it ought to allow us to grasp the evil (Übel) of the
world in general and that it ought to allow thinking spirit to be recon-
ciled with the negative. Elaborating on this reconciliation, Hegel says a
little farther that it requires the perception (Recentness) of an affirmative
in which the negative (i.e., evil) is subordinated and overcome. When
Hegel speaks of an affirmative in which evil is transcended, what is he
referring to? The answer is given in what follows, where he goes on to
spell out three points through which this perception of the affirmative is
achieved. First, this perception requires that we be conscious of what the
final purpose of the world is. Although Hegel does not say so explicitly
here, we have seen that this final purpose is freedom. Second, it demands
consciousness that this purpose, or freedom, is actualized in the world.
Third, this perception involves a recognition that evil does not count
alongside this purpose. In other words, in freedom evil is overcome; it
no longer has force. Thus, the affirmative in which evil is transcended
is freedom itself.16 Hegel is suggesting that for the individual freedom
is itself a type of solution to the problem posed by evil, that with the
advent of freedom evil is in some way overcome. The philosophy of
history is theodicy because it shows that history progresses necessar-
ily toward freedom in which evil is transcended, and that this state of
freedom has been realized in modern European culture.
The claim that freedom allows us to transcend evil is one that
does not fit well either with ordinary conceptions of freedom or with
conceptions of freedom normally attributed to Hegel. Although scholars
agree strongly that the concept of freedom is of central importance in
Hegel’s thinking, there is still a lot of debate over what this freedom
involves. Some stress that freedom is ultimately the capacity to make
decisions that are truly independent or self-determined.17 This means
that our decisions are not merely determined by our natural impulses
or desires, but are rationally justified by us insofar as they are actions
that we are able to support with good reasons. For others, Hegelian
freedom is ultimately self-actualization,18 and in yet other cases the
emphasis is put on freedom as reconciliation with the other.19 None of
these views gives us an obvious explanation of why Hegel thinks that
freedom allows us to overcome evil. If interpreted in any of these ways,
freedom is undoubtedly a good. Moreover, being a member of a society
in which freedom is promoted might arguably shield someone from evil
more than being a member of another type of society would. But it is
not apparent on any of these readings why freedom would allow us to
overcome evil in the way that Hegel is suggesting. Whether freedom
means having the capacity to make independent decisions or being fully
self-actualized or being at home in the world, it does not, in and of
itself, spare a person from evil and does not offer any obvious way of
dealing with evil. Further explanation is required.
Hegel has claimed that the advent of freedom involves a transcending
of evil, and I believe that there is other textual evidence to suggest at
least that Hegel does see freedom as a state in which evil is overcome.
As I will argue, freedom for Hegel ultimately involves liberation, and
this is rooted in the fact that freedom not only allows us to supersede
our particular existence but even requires that we do so. In the 1830
manuscript Hegel closely associates freedom with the capacity to think
or to act as a universal, and, in turn, with the ability to renounce one’s
particular or natural self.
Since man alone—as distinct from the animals—is a thinking

being, he alone possesses freedom, and he possesses it solely
by virtue of his ability to think. Consciousness of freedom
consists in the fact that the individual comprehends himself
as a person, i.e. that he sees himself in his distinct existence
as inherently universal, as capable of abstraction from and
renunciation of everything particular, and therefore as inher-
ently infinite.20
In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel’s point is even

stronger: freedom involves not only the capacity to renounce one’s par-
ticular natural existence, but requires that the individual ultimately carry
out this renunciation. In a discussion of the cultus, he writes:
This highest rupture is what generates the field of true free-

dom. Here the view is that human beings are no longer natu-
rally good; rather the natural state, the immediate life of the
heart, is what must be renounced, since it is the moment of
immediate naturalness that does not leave spirit free. . . . Now
there is the requirement that the heart should break, i.e., that
the immediate will, the natural self-consciousness, should be
given up.21
To take another example, Hegel writes the following in his discus-

sion of the third moment of the consummate religion: “[T]he knowl-
edge of it belongs to finite spirit so that finite spirit has its freedom
in this knowledge, and is itself the process of casting off its particular
individuality and of liberating itself in this content.”22
Commentators on Hegel’s theory of freedom are well aware that
for Hegel freedom involves the capacity to rise above our natural incli-
nations, and so I think that most would be comfortable with Hegel’s
claim from the manuscript passage at least. It makes sense for Hegel to
hold this position, since the ability to control one’s natural side, one’s
desires and inclinations, is a necessary condition for any form of rational
choice. To be free is to be rationally self-determined, and to be rationally
self-determined is to act as reason tells us to act. Different interpreters
understand rational self-determination for Hegel differently. For some, it
is consistent with being motivated by one’s particular desires, while for

others it is not.23 However, all would accept that for Hegel free actions
cannot be ones that are immediately determined by our inclinations. For
Hegel we need the ability to override or stand above these desires if
we are to act as a free and rational agent should, since the dictates of
reason often conflict with these desires.
That rational self-determination requires in this way the ability to
resist desires and inclinations is certainly true. I am suggesting that for
Hegel this ability of the thinking agent to overcome or rise above her
particularity plays another important role in freedom: by being able to
renounce her particularity or the natural side of herself, the agent is able
to overcome her suffering, or, to put it positively, she is in a position
to reconcile herself and her expectations with the world. Before we
consider the textual evidence, we should first try to clarify what Hegel
means by this expression “overcoming evil.” There are at least a couple
of things that he could mean by this. First, “overcoming evil” can be
interpreted as the elimination of pain and suffering. When an agent
overcomes pain in this sense, the pain no longer exists for the agent as
pain. Here suffering is fully transcended. Second, “overcoming evil” can
be interpreted as the enduring of pain and suffering. Unlike the first
interpretation, here the agent continues to feel pain or to suffer, but
the agent is able to bear the suffering. Here the agent has accepted the
pain or is reconciled with it, and it no longer poses a problem.
Although there is some evidence to suggest that Hegel has in
mind the first interpretation of “overcoming evil,”24 the preponderance
of evidence indicates that for Hegel the overcoming of evil in freedom
is not a complete elimination of suffering but an acceptance of suffer-
ing. At the outset of the Philosophy of Spirit, where Hegel writes about
spirit’s essential nature, he associates freedom with the ability not to
escape pain but to endure it. There he tells us that free spirit is able
to “abstract from all that is external and even from its own externality,
its determinate being [Dasein].”25 He then goes on to explain “[spirit]
can bear the infinite pain of the negation of its individual immediacy
i.e. maintain itself affirmatively in this negativity and have identity as a
being-for-self.”26 Thus, for Hegel the free individual has the capacity to
endure pain and suffering. She may not be able to make the suffering go
away completely, but Hegel indicates that she is able to deal with it.
Hegel may be starting to sound a lot like a Stoic, but it is impor-
tant to note that a Stoic, at least in the narrow sense, Hegel is not.
With the formal or abstract freedom of the Stoic, the agent identifies
entirely with herself as a thinking being capable of abstraction—her
undifferentiated, immediate universal nature—and in so doing gives
up her particularity or her desires. She no longer sees these desires as

a part of herself, and it is this renunciation of her desires that allows
her to overcome suffering. That Hegel distances himself from the Stoic
model is perhaps clearest from the critique of Catholic monasticism and
asceticism that Hegel raises at numerous points throughout the Berlin
writings. Hegel rejects Catholic celibacy in favor of family life, vows of
poverty in favor of diligent and honest acquisition of earthly goods, and
blind obedience to authority in favor of rational freedom.27 Hegel does
not advocate a life of abstract freedom, one in which a person seeks to
liberate himself by attempting to deny or eliminate desire altogether.
As we all know, true freedom for Hegel is concrete freedom, and the
concretely free individual is one that expresses himself as a particular and
that has particular wants. The person who is concretely free may be in
a position to renounce his particular desires, but he does not actually
do so. Rather, the satisfaction of particular desire has an important role
to play in the rational way of life.28
Thus, if the person that is concretely free is able to overcome suf-
fering, she does so in a different way than the person who is abstractly
free. Hegel explains this difference as follows: “In abstract freedom I
am able to sublate all content, all determinateness in me; in concrete
freedom I annihilate the other in my determinateness—restriction, nega-
tion—[and] am only at home with myself [bei mir].”29 Insofar as con-
crete freedom involves being at home with oneself in suffering, Hegel
is suggesting here that one is reconciled with this suffering. In order to
show how concrete spirit is able to endure suffering, Hegel compares
how negation affects both the natural and the spiritual. When certain
properties of a natural object undergo negation, the object is changed
or transformed completely; it is no longer what it was. To take Hegel’s
example, if gold no longer had its specific weight, it would no longer be
gold.30 Spirit, however, is able to undergo the negation of its particular-
ity without being fundamentally altered. It “is able to maintain itself
in contradiction and consequently in pain, to survive wickedness [Böse]
as well as evil [Übel].”31 The individual is able to endure suffering as a
concrete universal, because as spirit she is able to sublate negation and
so remains with herself in this other. Pain and suffering are themselves
determinations of spirit, and so spirit can find itself at home with them
and be free. Pain ultimately does not, or need not, disturb the identity
of spirit with itself. As Hegel states, “Since we also have the conscious-
ness of our freedom, the harmony of our souls and our peace of mind
will not be destroyed by the misfortunes that befall us.”32
Thus, in concrete freedom we overcome evil not by eradicating
suffering but by learning to live with it or by being reconciled with it.
Hegel is saying quite simply that the free individual can recognize pain
as just another one of its particular determinations, one that the mind
is able to distance itself from, or one that is ideal just like any other
determination and so can be taken in stride. As with abstract freedom,
the agent that is concretely free is ultimately able to achieve a form of
liberation from suffering. However, she does so not by stamping out
all desire and inclination, but by accepting the negation of particular
desires whenever this occurs.
This acceptance of suffering need not be viewed merely as a state
of resignation. Not only does the free individual reduce the effect of
suffering by being able to let go of what she cannot have, but she also
benefits from the good that freedom itself brings, a good that works
to offset the negative aspects of suffering.33 This good is the feeling of
blessedness that results from identifying with the universal and from
acting in accordance with one’s own rational nature. Nor should the
overcoming of evil be viewed as a capacity that can be immediately
exercised. The overcoming of evil that is present in freedom needs to be
understood as mediated by ethical life. Hegel is not proposing that we
are automatically able to endure any pain simply because we decide to
accept it. Rather, this aspect of freedom is one made gradually possible
by habit (Gewohnheit), and, more specifically, by participation in ethical
life.34 A detailed discussion of how ethical life shapes this capacity for
freedom cannot be undertaken here, but I can give a brief outline of
what I think this explanation would be like. An ethical life for Hegel
is a modern life. It involves possessing property, marrying and raising
a family, having a career, acting morally, being a member of the state,
etc. Far from being ascetic, ethical life gives the individual a lot of room
in which she can, indeed ought to, pursue her own particular desires.
However, for Hegel ethical life is governed first and foremost by duty.
It is a life in which all of a person’s actions or activities are justified by,
or are at least consistent with, the achievement of the highest good,
namely freedom. The individual’s particular subjective existence—her own
personal subjective identity with all her likes and dislikes, needs, talents,
experiences, expectations, etc.—is a necessary moment of who she is as
a free individual, and it needs to be developed and nurtured. But as a
moment, it is also sublated or ideal; it can be affected or changed without
affecting her universal nature. By living a life of duty, a life in which
she ultimately subordinates her particular interests to the imperatives of
her universal, rational side, the agent’s capacity to act and view herself
as the universal is strengthened gradually, and with it her ability to rise
above or to bear pain is also strengthened. To put it in Hegel’s terms,
she develops the capacity to eliminate the otherness of the negative and
to be at home with herself in it. It is in this way that the ethical life
allows one to be reconciled slowly with life’s adversity.
The Philosophy of History as Theodicy
Let us return to the main topic of this chapter, namely, Hegel’s claim
that the philosophy of history is theodicy. I have argued that the means/
end view does not account for all the claims that Hegel makes about
his theodicy, and I have explored Hegel’s claim that theodicy involves
recognizing that evil is overcome in freedom. It should be noted that
even if evil for Hegel is overcome in freedom, this fact does little to
strengthen Hegel’s response to the problem of evil. Freedom as over-
coming of evil is perhaps good news for those who are free or part of
a free society: it can contribute to the individual’s own struggle with
suffering because it suggests that in freedom the reality or full force
of evil can be mitigated. This also can contribute to addressing the
problem of evil in a small way, since it shows for one group of people
in history that evil need not be the problem that it initially appears to
be. However, this does nothing to justify the unmitigated suffering of
those in both the past and present who are not free. It may be the
case that in truth evil is ideal, but this of little comfort or use to those
who cannot benefit from this truth. If we recognize this, then we see
that we are not much farther ahead than the means/end interpretation
in our justification of evil.
We make better sense of Hegel’s claim that the philosophy of
history is theodicy if we abandon the view that it is a theodicy as a
response to the problem of evil. The Lectures on the Philosophy of World
History do demonstrate that certain evil events in history are neces-
sary, but the primary task of Hegel’s theodicy is not to try to provide
a rational justification for the world’s suffering. A strong case can be
made for the fact that Hegel often employs his religious terminology
in unconventional ways. I have in mind here terms such as immortality,
eternity, creation, proof as in the proofs for God’s existence, the mystical,
and, perhaps most importantly but also most controversially, the term
God itself. If Hegel is employing such terms in unusual ways, there is
no reason to assume that his use of the term theodicy could not also be
unusual. In considering the few other instances where Hegel speaks of
theodicy in his Berlin writings, we see that philosophy is theodicy for
Hegel in a more general sense, insofar as it simply demonstrates to the
philosophical observer that spirit is present in the world, or demonstrates
that the world or history is governed by reason.35 If we assume that
this is what Hegel means by “theodicy,” then theodicy need not be first
and foremost an explanation of why there is evil in the world. In this
interpretation of theodicy, the demonstration that God is at work in
the world allows the observer to comprehend evil or to be reconciled
with the negative, not because it shows that all of this evil had to be or
because it justifies all the suffering in history in the way that full theo-
dicy ordinarily demands, but because it shows the individual that evil is
ultimately overcome by free spirit. On this reading, theodicy allows the
individual to be reconciled with the negative insofar as it demonstrates
that evil by its very nature is ultimately ideal.
At the very least, the view that freedom for Hegel involves an
overcoming of evil gives the philosophy of history a more optimistic feel
from Hegel’s point of view than it might otherwise have. It shows more
than the fact that history develops in a necessary way toward its final
purpose, the goal of freedom. Freedom is not a good that simply exists
for the individual alongside the evil that she continues to suffer. Freedom
itself is a form of response to evil. It is a state in which one has the
knowledge and social context necessary to live a life in which suffering
can be handled. In the free individual’s own life at least, good wins out
against evil, not because evil is completely eliminated but because it is
possible for her in her freedom to accept and be reconciled with it.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Ardis Collins, David Duquette, George di

Giovanni, William Maker, Bryan Smyth, Ken Westphal, and anonymous reviewers
for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this chapter.
2. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduc-
tion: Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), 42 (hereafter LPW).
3. Ibid., 42–43.
4. Ibid., 42. See also G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Weltgeschichte: Berlin 1822/23, Vol. 12, ed. Karl Heinz Ilting, Karl Brehmer, and
Hoo Nam Seelmann (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1996), 23 (hereafter VPW).
5. See, for example, Stephen Houlgate, An Introduction to Hegel: Free-
dom, Truth, and History, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 24–25; Joseph
McCarney, Hegel on History (London: Routledge, 2000), 39–48; George Dennis
O’Brien, Hegel on Reason and History: A Contemporary Interpretation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1975), 53–57; Terry Pinkard, “Hegel on History,
Self-Determination, and the Absolute,” in History and the Idea of Progress, ed.
Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 53–54.
6. I have borrowed this analogy from Houlgate, Freedom, Truth, and

History, 24.
7. LPW, 27. As he indicates explicitly in his discussion of providence,
Hegel maintains that religious and philosophical language provide two parallel
ways of making the same claim about history. “I could have refrained from
mentioning that our principle (i.e. that reason governs the world and always
has done so) has a religious equivalent in the doctrine of a ruling providence”
LPW, 37.
8. VPW, 21, 22.
9. Ibid., 24.
10. McCarney’s account of Hegel’s philosophy of history as theodicy is a
version of the means/end view, as is Beiser’s. See McCarney, Hegel on History,
206–207; Frederick Beiser, Hegel (New York: Routledge, 2005), 272.
11. LPW, 76.
12. In his discussion of Hegel’s theodicy in the philosophy of history,
Beiser claims that all evil events in history are taken to be necessary and are
therefore justified. “In Hegel’s fundamentally optimistic account, nothing is lost
or done in vain in the realm of history. All struggles in the past are preserved
as necessary moments toward the self-awareness of freedom.” Beiser, Hegel,
273. If Beiser’s view were indeed true, it would lead to consequences that pose
serious problems for Hegel’s theory. For if all acts of evil are a necessary part
of historical progress, then all who commit evil are world-historical individu-
als, and their evil actions are sanctioned by a standard that is higher than the
ethical. McCarney shares my view of the matter, claiming that some evil deeds
are committed by individuals who have no world-historical significance. See
McCarney, Hegel on History, 116.
13. For example, Joseph McCarney claims that Hegel’s theodicy “should,
perhaps, be seen not so much as an attempt at a formal solution of the problem
of evil but rather as a magisterial sidestepping of it.” McCarney, Hegel on His-
tory, 201. It is one that leaves us with a bleak picture of world history, Ibid.,
205. Hegel takes the reality of evil in the world seriously and acknowledges its
true sadness, Ibid., 199–200.
14. LPW, 42.
15. Ibid., 43; translation modified.
16. Elsewhere, Hegel speaks explicitly of freedom as an affirmative in
which the negative is subordinated. “Spirit’s negation is in spirit subordinated
to its affirmation, the unity with itself. This is the determination of freedom
in general.” Vorlesungen über die Philosophie des Geistes: Berlin 1827/1828, Vol.
13, ed. Franz Hespe and Burkhard Tuschling (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1994),
14 (hereafter VPG).
17. See, for example, Robert Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian
Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 109. Alan Patten in
Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11, identifies
his interpretation as a self-actualization reading, but in fact his interpretation
of what freedom involves is similar to Pippin’s. In Patten’s reading, subjective
freedom, the capacity for autonomous decision making, is an essential part of
full freedom, and its promotion for Patten is what ultimately justifies the norms
of ethical life.
18. See Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
19. McCarney takes reconciliation and the overcoming of alienation as
central to Hegel’s concept of freedom. See McCarney, Hegel on History, 77–79.
In the philosophy of world history, this reconciliation is understood as finding
oneself at home in one’s political setting, Ibid., 80. For Will Dudley, com-
plete freedom involves various forms of reconciliation. See Will Dudley, Hegel,
Nietzsche, and Philosophy: Thinking Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 111. These forms of reconciliation include being at home in one’s
social and political situation, as well as having a theoretical understanding of
the fact that the natural world is not an other. Dudley’s account of freedom as
reconciliation and as liberation is closest in spirit to my own. However, I have
found no evidence that Dudley interprets Hegel’s concept of freedom as the
capacity to endure suffering.
20. LPW, 144; my italics.
21. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 3 vols., trans. R.
F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984–87), 1:362 (hereafter LPR1-3).
22. Ibid., 223. Hegel also associates freedom with the loss of particular-
ity in the following passages: LPR-1, 342–43; LPR-2, 623, 634; VPW, 501,
519. The theme of overcoming of particularity is one that thoroughly pervades
Hegel’s work in the Berlin period. It is a central part not only of Hegel’s phi-
losophy of religion, but plays a role for Hegel in education, art, philosophy,
and ethical life.
23. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, 44, belongs to the former, while Patten,
Hegel’s Idea of Freedom, 51, and Richard Schacht, Hegel and After: Studies in
Continental Philosophy: Between Kant and Sartre (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1975), 76, have a more Kantian reading of Hegel’s freedom.
24. For example, in the preface to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Reli-
gion—perhaps the most rhetorical and passionate couple of pages that the mature
Hegel wrote—Hegel gives the impression that religion offers a type of liberation
or escape from suffering. “Finite purposes, disgust at petty interests, the pain
of this life, even if only in isolated moments that are themselves unhappy, the
troubles, burdens, and cares of ‘this bank and shoal of time,’ pity and compas-
sion—all this, like a dream image, seems to float away into the past like the
soul that drinks from the waters of forgetfulness, its other, mortal, nature fading
into a mere semblance, which no longer causes it anxiety and on which it is
no longer dependent,” LPR1, 85. Moreover, in a remarkable passage from the
Science of Logic, Hegel indicates that a person ought not to care about the state
of his particular existence. Replying here to Kant’s famous argument against the
ontological proof for the existence of God, Hegel states that the Christian ought
to be indifferent whether he does or does not possess the infamous one hundred
dollars, and Hegel goes on to say that “it ought to be a matter of indifference
to him whether he is or is not, that is, in finite life,” G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s
Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
International, 1993), 89. In this passage Hegel’s ideal Christian is suggestive of
the Stoic: he does not care about the particulars of his existence or does not
cling to the satisfaction of his own desires, and so does not suffer when these
desires are not met. In the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel tells us that a person is
able to overcome pain or is able to be liberated from sensation through habit
(Gewohnheit), G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3 vols., trans.
M. J. Petry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), 2:§410, Remark. Hereafter PSS1-3.
Habit or custom makes it possible for a person to harden his body against
external sensations such as heat, cold, or fatigue, and to harden the mind against
unhappiness. Habit also makes it possible for a person to become indifferent
with regard to whether or not his desires are satisfied. It is not entirely clear
to what extent Hegel thinks we can inure ourselves through habit to pain and
deprivation. However, all of this evidence indicates that for Hegel it is possible,
at least to some degree, to be indifferent to loss and to rise above pain.
25. PSS-1, §382.
26. In his discussion of stoicism in Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der
Philosophie, Teile 1–4, Vols. 6–10, ed. Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986–1996), 3:114, hereafter VGP1-4, Hegel confirms
his view that the free individual is able to resist pain, and he claims that this
understanding of freedom is what is great in Stoic philosophy.
27. G. W. F. Hegel, Berliner Schriften: 1818–1831, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1956), 45–51. One also finds a very similar critique
of Catholic holiness in LPR-1, 473; LPR-3, 341–42, 455–56.
28. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W.
Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
§154; §261, Remark.
29. VPG, 14.
30. PSS-1, §382, Addition.
31. Ibid.
32. G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of
Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and
H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), §147, Addition (hereafter EL).
33. This point was suggested to me by Ken Westphal.
34. PSS-2, §410.
35. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York:
Dover, 1956), 457; G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie
III, Werke vol. 20, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 455; VGP-4, 6. For other references to theodicy,
see LPR-1, 147; EL, §147, Addition.
12
Hegel’s Philosophy of
History and Kabbalist Eschatology
Glenn Magee
Introduction
Hegel’s philosophy of history makes three striking claims, which have

been both tremendously influential and tremendously controversial. First,
Hegel claims that history has a knowable pattern or order that allows us
to speak not only of meaning in history, but also of history’s end point.
Second, this end point is understood by Hegel to occur within time.
Third, Hegel asserts that at the end of history, amongst other things, the
Absolute Idea or God becomes “objectified” in human institutions.
These claims are famous in part because they are regarded as
highly original. They are also notorious, because they were offered and
accepted as part of an optimistic, humanistic, and (broadly speaking)
Enlightenment worldview that now seems questionable to many of us
living in the “postmodern age.” Thus, it is rather surprising to discover
that not only are these theses not wholly original, but that they are to be
found in the “irrationalist” tradition of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah.
In this chapter I shall argue that the basic tenets of Hegel’s philosophy
of history—as well as much else in his thought—are to be found in the
Christian adaptation of Kabbalism handed down through what has come
to be known as Swabian “speculative pietism.”
Further, I do not intend simply to show that there are striking
parallels between the doctrines of Swabian speculative pietism and those
of Hegel. I will also lay out a case that there was a highly probable,
though mostly indirect, influence of this tradition on him. I shall begin
with an overall description of the doctrines of the Kabbalah, and then
offer a brief history of how these doctrines were adapted by Christians,
231
232 Glenn Magee
with special attention to how they influenced authors writing in Hegel’s

native Württemberg. In the works of two highly influential Swabian
theologians, J. A. Bengel and F. C. Oetinger, Kabbalistic ideas coalesce
with those of the Christian apocalyptic thinker Joachim of Fiore to
form an unusual eschatology. I shall argue that this eschatology was an
influence on both Schelling and Hegel.
The Jewish Kabbalah
“Kabbalah” can be translated as “received,” or “tradition.” Some scholars

argue that Kabbalism, as a distinct form of Jewish mysticism, begins in
the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in Spain. Others maintain that it is far
older. There are many schools of thought within Kabbalism, but it is pos-
sible to discern certain fundamental ideas which continually crop up.
In the Kabbalah, God is conceived initially as Ein-Sof, or infinite;
an utterly transcendent and unknowable being. However, within this
being is a will to self-manifestation. Indeed, many Kabbalists held that
God as unmanifest is incomplete or inchoate. Gershom Scholem writes
that, “The essence of the Kabbalistic idea of God . . . lies in its resolutely
dynamic conception of the Godhead.”1 God’s self-development unfolds,
according to the Kabbalists, through a series of emanations that take
place at first within God, then lead to God’s expression in the form
of nature.
The first stage of God’s self-development or self-manifestation is
conceived by many Kabbalists as a kind of primal indeterminacy, which
is both being and nothing. As one thirteenth-century Kabbalist writes,
“Nothingness is being, and being is nothingness.”2 This indeterminacy
is called Ayin. Scholem claims that Ayin transcends the subject-object
distinction, but that its telos is to become a true subject.3 Speaking
figuratively, the Kabbalists say that “God willed to see God,” to achieve
perfect self-relation.4 Scholem writes that, “the Zohar [one of the most
important Kabbalist works] identifies the highest development of God’s
personality with precisely that stage of His unfolding which is nearest to
human experience, indeed which is immanent and mysteriously present
in every one of us.”5
From out of Ayin emerge ten emanations or Sephiroth. The term
Sephiroth, which means “numbers,” first appears in the Sefer Yezirah (or
Book of Creation), the earliest known Kabbalistic text. The system of
Sephiroth, usually depicted in a diagram known as the “Tree of Life,”
is essentially an articulation of the aspects or moments of the divine
nature or the divine mind. Ernst Benz writes that the Sephiroth “are
Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Kabbalist Eschatology 233
different levels on the way to the self-mirroring and self-manifestation

of the transcendent divine Being.”6 But the Sephiroth perform a num-
ber of functions in the Kabbalah. In addition to being an articulation
of the aspects of God, they are simultaneously a categorial ontology, a
philosophy of nature, and a psychology: in other words the Sephiroth
are the ten most fundamental categories in terms of which we can
make being-as-such, nature, and human psychology intelligible. Scholem
writes that “this tree of God [the Tree of Life] is also, as it were, the
skeleton of the universe; it grows throughout the whole of creation and
spreads its branches through all its ramifications. All mundane and cre-
ated things exist only because something of the power of the Sephiroth
lives and acts in them.”7
As to the Sephiroth themselves, they are always presented in a hier-
archical order that almost never varies in the works of the Kabbalists.
And this hierarchy, as Scholem and others have pointed out, is dialecti-
cal, containing a number of pairs of opposing or antagonistic Sephiroth
reconciled, in each case, by a third. Indeed, in one of his works Scholem
states that “we find [in the Kabbalah] a mode of contemplative thought
that can be called ‘dialectic’ in the strictest sense of the term as used by
Hegel.”8 Despite their hierarchical structure, each Sephirah is considered
equally close to its source in Ein-Sof or Ayin. Scholem says that in the
Sefer Yezirah, “it is emphasized that the ten Sephiroth constitute a closed
unit, for ‘their end is in their beginning and their beginning in their end’
and they revolve in each other; i.e., these ten basic principles constitute
a unity.”9 Scholem notes further that “[f]rom the 13th century onward
we find the idea that each Sephirah comprises all others successively in
an infinite reflection of the Sephiroth within themselves.”10
A description of each of the ten Sephiroth and its symbolism would
require an article (or, more properly, a book) in itself, and so I will
confine myself to a discussion of Malkhut, the tenth and final Sephirah,
because Malkhut is conceived as “containing” each of the preceding
Sephiroth, which culminate in it.11 Malkhut represents the divine presence
in the world. In a sense, it is the transition point, or the portal between
the purely eidetic realm of the Sephiroth, and the world of space-time.
Sometimes Malkhut is referred to as Shekhinah or “divine presence.”
But what kind of presence is it? Earlier I stated that though Ein-Sof,
or God in himself, is beyond the subject-object distinction, the Kab-
balists understand God’s end as to develop into a true subject. Many
Kabbalists identify the subjectivity of God with Malkhut or Shekhinah.
God’s presence in the world is simultaneously God fully developed as a
subject, or a self-conscious being. But, to use a carefully chosen word,
what does this mean concretely?
234 Glenn Magee
Consider the following lines from Joseph Gikatilla (thirteenth

century):
[In the days of the Patriarchs] the Shekhinah was in suspenso

[literally, “hanging in the air”], and found no resting place for
its feet on earth, as in the beginning of Creation. But then
came Moses, of blessed memory, and all of Israel together
with him built the Tabernacle and the vessels, and repaired
the broken channels, and put the ranks in order, and repaired
the ponds, and drew live water into them from the House
of Water Drawing, and then brought the Shekhinah back to
its dwelling among the lower ones—into the Tent, but not
upon the ground as in the beginning of Creation. And the
hint of this is: “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may
dwell among them” [Exod. 25:8]. We find that the Shekhinah
was like a guest, moving from place to place, and of this
it is said “and I shall dwell among them” and not “I shall
dwell below” but “among them”—i.e., like a lodger. Until
David and Solomon came, and placed the Shekhinah on solid
ground in the Temple of Jerusalem.12
This and other passages seem to be saying that the living presence
of God, Shekhinah, truly came to be only in the Temple of Jerusalem,
the religious center of the Israelites.
A well-known Kabbalistic epigram states: “Israel forms the limbs
of the Shekhinah.”13 The Jewish Gnostics held to a doctrine of the
“exile of the Shekhinah,” which maintained that God’s presence in
the world is like a “divine spark” which must be ignited in order that
the world be filled with divine presence. This is the task of the knes-
set Yisrael, which came in the works of the Kabbalists to be identified
with Shekhinah.14 Christian Kabbalists, whom I shall treat in the next
section, accordingly identified Shekhinah with the third person of the
trinity, the Holy Spirit.
In contrast to conventional or orthodox Christianity, however,
Jewish Kabbalism views redemption as something that will take place
in time and within the world. As Scholem expresses it, “[R]edemption
is expressed as the end of the ‘exile of the Shekhinah,’ the restoration
of the Divine unity throughout all areas of existence.”15 And this is the
basic Kabbalist eschatology. God develops and unfolds through cre-
ation and history, but creation (and thus God) must be completed or
perfected by the faithful. Daniel Matt writes, “God is not static being,
but dynamic becoming. Without human participation, God remains
incomplete, unrealized. It is up to us to actualize the divine potential

in the world. God needs us.”16
Eschatology became a major Kabbalist preoccupation with the
advent of the so-called new Kabbalah of Isaac Luria (1534–1572).
Luria’s teachings were enormously influential well beyond the confines
of Judaism. (Most of what can be called “Kabbalistic” in the thought
of Jacob Boehme, for example, is Lurianic.) Luria reasons that if God
is truly without limit there would be no room for creation. Yet, mani-
festly, creation does exist. The solution to this problem is for God, the
Infinite, to contain the finite. According to Luria’s cosmogony—which
is expressed almost entirely in mythic form—God created the world by
making a space within himself and then injecting the divine light into
that space. The light differentiated itself into the ten Sephiroth, which
streamed into ten “vessels,” but the vessels proved incapable of holding
it and shattered. It is the broken shards of these vessels that constitute
the inherently imperfect matter out of which our world is made. But
the goal of this imperfect world is to be made whole; to be perfected
and raised back up to the divine light. This would complete the cosmic
process begun literally within God, by transforming the finite within
the infinite into a faithful image of the infinite. This idea is called by
Luria Tikkun (a term that is not original with him, though his use of
it is highly original). Tikkun is the cosmic restoration, and it is effected
by human beings.
Scholem writes that Luria believed that “[t]he process in which
God conceives, brings forth and develops Himself does not reach its
final conclusion in God. Certain parts of the process of restitution are
allotted to man.”17 The supreme task of men on earth is to perfect
themselves, to realize the nature of the divine Adam in the earthly Adam
and thereby to raise the fallen, created world up to its initial state of
being in the light emanated by God. The means to accomplish this is
obedience to the commandments of the Torah, which are conceived
by Luria as, in effect, an instruction manual for bringing about God’s
presence in the world.18 Scholem writes that, “By fulfilling the com-
mandments of the Torah, man restores his own spiritual structure; he
carves it out of himself, as it were. And since every part corresponds
to a commandment, the solution of the task demands the complete
fulfillment of all the 613 commandments.”19 If the Tikkun is to come
to pass it is crucial that the Law must be strictly observed. Summing up
Luria’s position, Scholem states that “it is man who adds the final touch
to the divine countenance; it is he who completes the enthronement
of God, the King and the mystical creator of all things, in His own
Kingdom of Heaven; it is he who perfects the Maker of all things!”20
236 Glenn Magee
Incidentally, it is Luria’s Kabbalah and only Luria’s that Hegel discusses

under the section “Kabbalistische Philosophie” in the Lectures on the
History of Philosophy.
Throughout the preceding account I have not drawn explicit
parallels between the Kabbalah and Hegel’s philosophy. I have instead
counted upon readers to make such comparisons, as in many places they
are quite obvious. However, an objection might be raised at this point.
I have relied throughout chiefly upon the interpretation of the Kabbalah
advanced by Gershom Scholem. (I have frequently quoted Scholem
rather than primary Kabbalistic texts simply because the writings of the
Kabbalists, even in brief quotation, require extensive exegesis in order
for their meaning to become at all approachable.) But Scholem himself
was a product of the German university system, and studied Hegel and
the Idealists closely. Couldn’t his own understanding of Kabbalism have
been colored by his acquaintance with Hegel, and aren’t I therefore
“stacking the deck” in inviting a comparison between Scholem’s Kab-
balah and Hegel’s philosophy? There is, in fact, no way to adequately
answer such an objection in a short article. I can only invite those
interested in the matter to study the original Kabbalist texts and make
up their own minds whether there are genuine parallels between the
Kabbalah and Hegel.21 However, my argument does not rest entirely
on a simple comparison between Kabbalist and Hegelian doctrine, but
also on evidence of direct and indirect influence. I believe, in fact, that
it is possible to situate Hegel’s philosophy in the historical lineage of
“Christian Kabbalism.”
The Christian Kabbalah
Christians initially used Kabbalist ideas to attempt to prove the divinity

of Christ, and to unlock the secret meaning of the Trinity. Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola (1463–1494) is generally recognized as the founder of
Christian Kabbalism. Pico had a number of Hebrew texts translated into
Latin, and in 1486 went to Rome with nine hundred “theses” offered for
public debate. One of them stated that “no science can better convince
us of the divinity of Jesus Christ than magic and the Kabbalah.” The
swift condemnation of the Church did not deter others from following
in Pico’s path. In Germany, Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who knew
Pico, published two Christian Kabbalist works, De Verbo Mirifico in 1494,
and De Arte Cabalistica in 1517. It was largely through Reuchlin’s work
that the Christian appropriation of the Kabbalah became respectable in
European intellectual circles. Germany, in fact, became one of the major

centers of Christian Kabbalist speculation.
Perhaps the most significant of the Christian Kabbalists in Germany
was Jacob Boehme, a shoemaker from Lusatia who had a mystical vision
in 1600 and subsequently wrote his first work, Aurora, in 1612. Like
his other writings, it bears the unmistakable influence of the Kabbalah of
Isaac Luria—though it remains a mystery what Boehme’s sources could
have been. The importance of Boehme for the history of the Christian
Kabbalah is that he translated Kabbalist language and ideas into a wholly
new vocabulary. The Sephiroth, for example, became the “seven source
spirits,” and Boehme replaced their majestic Hebrew names with homey
designations like Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Heat, Love, etc. Indeed, because
he wrote only in German, and invented a wholly new philosophical (or
theosophical) vocabulary, Hegel declared him to be the “first German
philosopher.” As is well known, Hegel devotes considerable attention to
Boehme in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. However, the ques-
tion of Boehme’s influence on Hegel is a controversial one. I believe,
and have argued elsewhere, that although Hegel ultimately distances
himself from Boehme, the influence was positive and decisive.22 In fact,
one might attempt to prove Kabbalist influence on Hegel simply by
dealing with Boehme. For the purposes of the present chapter, I have
chosen instead to argue for another influence entirely.
Beginning in the seventeenth century in Germany, Christian
Kabbalist ideas (from a variety of sources) became influential in pietist
circles—and this was especially the case in Hegel’s native Württemberg.
Indeed, the Swabian tradition of Christian Kabbalism actually begins
with Reuchlin, who was native to the region.
The Duchy of Württemberg was notorious for harboring strange
forms of mysticism, religious enthusiasm, and reactionary antimodern-
ism. This was especially the case after it turned Protestant in 1534, and
remained so until well into the nineteenth century. David Walsh writes
that in the modern era: “The influence of the Enlightenment, to the
extent it had made itself felt in Württemberg, was integrated with a
theosophic philosophy of nature and a speculative pietism which was
concerned with the progressive revelation of the divine structure of
history.”23 This tradition culminates with Friedrich Christoph Oetinger
(1702–1782), the most important figure in the history of Württemberg
pietism after Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752).
Bengel and his followers—who called themselves “The Free” (Die
Freien)—proclaimed the “final age” of man in which God would be
actualized in the world and history would come to an end. Bengel’s
238 Glenn Magee
theory of history was influenced by Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202), a

Benedictine monk who held that history exhibited a definite pattern
and would come to an end when all the different historical possibili-
ties have played themselves out. The eidos of history, for Joachim, is
the Christian Trinity. Joachim speaks of the “Age of the Father,” “Age
of the Son,” and “Age of the Holy Spirit.” Each age represents an
advance in the freedom and spiritual attainment of humankind. In the
final stage of history all that matters is the piety and contemplativeness
of the individual, not the sacraments of the organized Church, which
Joachim believed would wither away.24
As to Oetinger, he encountered Boehme’s writings while at the
Tübingen seminary, where Schelling and Hegel would study several
decades later. In addition to Boehme, there were Jewish Kabbalistic
influences on Oetinger. He is known to have visited a circle of Jewish
Kabbalists at Frankfurt am Main, who introduced him to Knorr von
Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata, as well as to Lurianic works.25 Oetinger’s
firsthand knowledge of Kabbalistic texts allowed him to greatly expand
upon Boehme’s ideas. His insight into Kabbalism is reflected in one of
his most important works, Öffentliches Denckmal der Lehrtafel (1763).
This work was a commentary on a Kabbalistic triptych painting hanging
in a church at Bad Teinach in the Black Forest (where it hangs to this
day). The painting had been commissioned in 1652 by Princess Antonia
of Württemberg, who was a follower of a Christian Kabbalist pastor.
Boehme’s claim that spirit cannot truly exist without embodiment
is crucial for Oetinger’s thought. Oetinger writes: “Embodiment is
the end of God’s work” (Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes).26
Oetinger refers to God as Geist, and holds that Geist comes to more
and more adequate expression through corporeality—what he calls
Geistleiblichkeit. All of nature and history exhibits the process of God’s
progressive embodiment, which is simultaneously the process by which
God achieves self-consciousness. Oetinger holds that “God is an eter-
nal desire for self-revelation” (eine ewige Begierde sich zu offenbaren).27
He writes, “The ancients [die Alten] saw God as an eternal process in
which he emerges from himself and returns to himself; this is the true
conception of God and of his Glory; it is the true conception of his
infinite life and power which issues in the Blessed Trinity.”28
There is quite a bit that can be described as Lurianic in Oetinger’s
theology. His developmental conception of God, who begins in an incho-
ate form, is strikingly Lurianic, as is his belief that God is actualized in
the world through the activity of human beings. Indeed, Benz notes
that Oetinger gave Christian Kabbalah a strong eschatological twist:
Oetinger was deeply convinced that the world was in fact

rushing to its end at a tremendous pace, that the Return
of Christ would take place in the year 1834, and that the
“Golden Age” would arrive in a few decades. Because of the
proximity of the end, he felt obliged to urge the princes and
the government of his time to prepare for the Golden Age
that was drawing near by putting into effect a courageous
reform of rights and the social order, and so contribute to
the speedy end of the world and its crossing over to the
Golden Age.29
Having offered a sketch of Christian Kabbalism, especially in its

Swabian form, I turn now to the evidence for its influence on Hegel
and his schoolmates.
The Influence of Swabian Speculative Pietism

on Schelling and Hegel
Writing to his father on September 7, 1806, Schelling reports that

Franz von Baader (at that time the preeminent interpreter of Boehme)
had asked if he could obtain for him Oetinger’s writings. Schelling’s
father—who was a follower of Bengel—owned a number of Oetinger’s
books. Schelling subsequently communicated Baader’s request to his
friend Christian Pregizer, an Oetingerite. Pregizer later claimed that when
he first met Schelling in 1803 they spent most of their time together
talking about Boehme and Oetinger. Schelling’s great uncle Friedrich
Philipp von Rieger was one of Oetinger’s supporters. When Schelling
was a boy he lived for a time in Nürtingen with his uncle Nathanael
Friedrich Köstlin, who was known to have a close connection to the
Bengel-Oetinger circle. On October 6, 1784, Schelling’s father called
on Philipp Matthaeus Hahn (1739–1790)—the most influential follower
of Oetinger—with his wife and young Friedrich. This event is recorded
in Hahn’s diary, and Schelling’s first publication was a poem he wrote
commemorating Hahn’s death. Schelling’s interest in Boehme is well
documented, but he is known to have told one of his Jena students
that Oetinger was “clearer than Boehme.”30
Ernst Benz has demonstrated that Schelling borrowed material from
Oetinger’s works, incorporating it into both his published writings and
lectures, but without attribution. Schelling also employed translations of
biblical passages made by Oetinger, also without crediting him.31
240 Glenn Magee
One can discern characteristically Oetingerite ideas in Schelling’s

System of Transcendental Idealism (1801) when, near the end of the text,
he writes, “History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing
revelation of the Absolute. . . . Man, through his history, provides a
continuous demonstration of God’s presence, a demonstration, however,
which only the whole of history can render complete.”32 Schelling then
follows this up with the unmistakably Joachimite claim that history
will unfold the revelation of God in three stages. Of the third stage,
Schelling writes, “When this period will begin, we are unable to tell.
But whenever it comes into existence, God will also then exist.”33 In
making such claims, Schelling is following in the footsteps of Bengel and
Oetinger, and, of course, Hegel would follow in Schelling’s footsteps in
making similar claims in his own philosophy of history.
It is very difficult to imagine that Schelling was unaware of his
debt to Oetinger. In Die Weltalter (1811) Schelling writes: “This is the
ultimate purpose, that everything will be transformed as far as possible
into a visible and bodily form. Embodiment [Leiblichkeit] is, according
to the ancients, the end of the ways of God, who wishes to manifest
himself as much in space as in time.”34 This is virtually a quotation from
Oetinger, who writes, again, “Embodiment is the end of God’s work”
(Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes).35 The influence of Oetinger’s
Christian Kabbalism may have made it inevitable that Schelling would
find Fichte’s system empty. For the Schelling of Die Weltalter—as for
Boehme and Oetinger—the Absolute must express itself in concrete
form, in nature, or remain abstract and empty. For the very same rea-
sons, Hegel’s system passes beyond Logic to Philosophy of Nature and
Philosophy of Spirit. (Incidentally, Die Weltalter was also the title of a
well-known book by Bengel, published in 1746.)
There is also strong evidence for the influence of Oetinger on
Hoelderlin, but rather than discuss it here I shall instead refer the reader
to Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy’s excellent study “A Foretaste of Heaven”:
Friedrich Hoelderlin in the Context of Württemberg Pietism.36
The fact that both Schelling and Hoelderlin were familiar with
Oetinger’s ideas makes it exceedingly unlikely that Hegel was not.
Further, the fact that Oetinger was taken seriously by both men makes
it highly likely that he was, at least to some extent, taken seriously by
Hegel, who for a considerable period was very much under the influ-
ence of his two precocious schoolmates.37 Indeed, it would be easy
enough—but perhaps a bit lazy—to simply say that in demonstrating
the influence of Oetinger and Christian Kabbalah on Schelling I have
ipso facto demonstrated their (indirect) influence on Hegel. However,
this will not satisfy skeptics. My case would obviously be strengthened

if it could be shown that Hegel himself was aware of this influence.
There is some reason to believe, in fact, that he was, and the evidence
is to be found in The Phenomenology of Spirit.
As is well known, Hegel attacks Schelling in the preface to that
work with the following words: “To pit this single insight, that in the
Absolute everything is the same, against the full body of articulated
cognition, which at least seeks and demands such fulfillment, to palm
off its Absolute as the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are
black—this is cognition naively reduced to vacuity.”38 Hegel then imme-
diately offers us his own conception of the Absolute as “the process of
its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal, hav-
ing its end also as its beginning; and only by being worked out to its
end, is it actual.”39 The Absolute, he says further, must be conceived
in “the whole wealth of the developed form. Only then is it conceived
and expressed as an actuality.”40 Next comes the oft-quoted remark,
“The true is the whole [Das Wahre ist das Ganze].” In fact, this line is
virtually a direct quote from Oetinger.
In one of his works Oetinger writes: “The truth is a whole [Die
Wahrheit ist ein Ganzes]; when one finally receives this total, synoptic
vision of the truth, it matters not whether one begins by considering
this part or that.”41 Oetinger immediately follows this up with a Kab-
balistic image which essentially communicates the idea that the whole
is immanent in each of the Sephiroth, or moments of God.42 The whole
is known through its moments, but what enables us to move from
moment to moment is the immanence of the whole in each. Oetinger,
incidentally, referred to the procedure of displaying the moments of the
“divine system of relations” as Phänomenologie. In fact, Oetinger appears
to have been the first author to use the term—not, as is often claimed,
Johann Heinrich Lambert—employing it as early as 1736.43
This passage in Oetinger was well known. Therefore, when Hegel
announces in the preface to the Phenomenology that “Das Wahre ist das
Ganze,” my suggestion is that he knew that Schelling would understand
the allusion. When Hegel conceived the Phenomenology Schelling still
held to his conception of the Absolute as Indifference Point—which
was essentially a Post-Kantian reappropriation of the perennial mystical
doctrine of the coincidence of opposites. The Absolute, in other words, is
something that utterly transcends the subject-object distinction (or any
other distinction). It was only later that Schelling would move to the
Oetingerite conception of the Absolute as striving for embodiment or
concretization. And here is Hegel in the Preface to the Phenomenology
242 Glenn Magee
giving him a clue as to how to get there: the developmental concep-

tion of God to be found in the Christian Kabbalist theological tradition
exemplified by Boehme and Oetinger, and which Hegel must have known
Schelling to be familiar with.
After writing, “The true is the whole,” Hegel states: “But the
whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its
development.” The Preface’s hidden dialogue with Schelling culminates,
therefore, in Hegel alluding to the neo-Boehmian ideas of Oetinger’s
Swabian pietism. As Robert Schneider points out, the theme of the truth
as a whole (or the whole) is a perennial theme of Swabian speculative
pietism. It is for this reason, Schneider argues, that the skeptical element
of Kant’s philosophy was almost universally rejected in Württemberg.44
Schneider writes that, “in the [Tübingen] Stift, spurred on and enriched
by the Enlightenment, the original spirit of the [Swabian] Heimat was
at work, seeking the Truth only in the Whole.”45 In the Preface, Hegel
is in effect reminding Schelling of his—or rather their—roots.
Schelling seems to have understood Hegel quite well. After Hegel’s
death, Schelling publicly accused him of stealing many of his ideas from
Jacob Boehme and his followers. For instance, in his lectures of the 1830s,
Schelling remarks, “Jacob Böhme says: divine freedom vomits itself into
nature. Hegel says: divine freedom releases nature. What is one to think
of this notion of releasing? This much is clear: the biggest compliment
one can pay to this notion is to call it ‘theosophical.’ ” 46
It might be objected that Hegel never mentions Oetinger by name
in the Preface, or anywhere else. Of course, Hegel doesn’t mention
Schelling by name in the Preface either. Schelling also never refers to
Oetinger, though, as I have argued, there is considerable evidence for
Oetinger’s influence on him. This is not a mystery, however. At the time,
academics who cited Oetinger faced ridicule, and clergymen who were
sympathetic to his ideas even sometimes lost their positions.47 Hegel’s
wary treatment of Boehme provides an interesting and illuminating paral-
lel. In the writings Hegel published early in his career, there is only one
small reference to Boehme, in paragraph 391 of the 1817 Encyclopedia.
After he had achieved fame and a secure position in Berlin, Hegel began
referring to Boehme more openly. The preface to the 1827 edition of
the Encyclopedia includes more than one mention of Boehme, as well
as an admiring reference to Franz von Baader. In the 1832 revision
of the Doctrine of Being section from The Science of Logic, Hegel also
corrects a passage so as to credit Boehme as the source of two unusual
terms (Qualierung and Inqualierung). In the 1812 edition, Hegel had
said only that they have their origin in “a philosophy which goes deep
but into a turbid depth.”48
Conclusion
My objective in this chapter has been to show that some of the more
famous claims of Hegel’s philosophy, including his philosophy of his-
tory, are to be found in the Kabbalist and Joachimite mystical traditions.
Further, I have argued that these strains fuse in the tradition of Swabian
speculative pietism, and that there is some reason to believe that this
tradition was a formative influence on both Hegel and Schelling.
However, I am not claiming that Swabian pietism was the sole source
of certain ideas in Schelling and Hegel. The question of influence is an
extremely difficult one to disentangle. The most reasonable approach
is to understand both thinkers as having been influenced by multiple
sources—philosophical and nonphilosophical—which they saw, in many
cases, as mutually supporting and confirming each other. I am merely
arguing that there is a further possible source to be explored, one that
has so far received little attention from scholars. Nevertheless, to argue
for such influences has, I believe, extremely important implications.
Though it seems obvious that regional traditions, attitudes, and
intellectual fashions must have had an influence on the Swabian Ideal-
ists, this is actually seldom considered by philosophically trained scholars,
especially Americans, who feel themselves on surer ground situating their
subjects exclusively in the context of the philosophical canon. This is a
highly artificial way to understand a thinker’s development, and highly
ironic when it is applied to a thinker such as Hegel, who was so attuned
to how every man is a product of his time and place. I offer this chapter,
in part, as an invitation to scholars to understand Schelling and Hegel
in the context of their homeland, and in doing so I am following in
the footsteps of the German scholars Ernst Benz and Robert Schneider,
and, more recently the American Laurence Dickey.49
What is needed is a study of the Swabian Idealists that situates
them in the context of the speculative traditions of their native land.
For example, a systematic comparison of the writings of Schelling and
Hegel to those of Oetinger and other Swabian mystics and theologians
might yield important new discoveries. The present essay has, I believe,
merely scratched the surface.
Notes
I wish to think William Altman, Karin de Boer, Gregory R. Johnson,

Allegra de Laurentiis, Philip Grier, William Maker, David Stern, and Mario
Wenning for their helpful comments and constructive criticism.
244 Glenn Magee
1. Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic

Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Schocken,
1991), 158.
2. Quoted in Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah (San Francisco:
Harper Collins, 1996), 68.
3. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York:
Schocken, 1946), 221.
4. Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, Kabbalah: Tradition of Hidden Knowledge
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), 7.
5. Scholem, Major Trends, 216–17.
6. Ernst Benz, The Christian Kabbalah, trans. Kenneth W. Wesche (St.
Paul: Grailstone Press, 2004), 66.
7. Scholem, Major Trends, 214–15.
8. Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: New American Library,
1978), 143.
9. Scholem, Kabbalah, 24.
10. Ibid., 113.
11. I offer a much longer account of the Sephiroth and, indeed, of the
Kabbalah itself in Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001).
12. Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, 178.
13. Ibid., 175.
14. Scholem, Kabbalah, 31.
15. Ibid., 335. It should be pointed out, as with everything in the Kab-
balah, that this position was held by many, but not all Kabbalists. There is
seldom universal agreement about anything among Kabbalists.
16. Matt, 1–2.
17. Scholem, Major Trends, 273.
18. See ibid., 268, 275–76.
19. Ibid., 279.
20. Ibid., 273–74.
21. And, again, I offer a more detailed treatment of the Kabbalah in
relation to Hegel in my Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, op. cit. There I
discuss much more extensively Hegel’s own treatment of the Kabbalah, primary
Kabbalist texts, and commentaries by scholars other than Scholem.
22. See my Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, op. cit.
23. David Walsh, The Esoteric Origins of Modern Ideological Thought: Boehme
and Hegel (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1978), 296.
24. As to the relation of Joachim to Hegel, the similarity between the
two was pointed out to Hegel himself in an 1810 letter from the occultist
K. J. H. Windischmann. Hegel himself never mentions Joachim. Nevertheless,
such contemporary scholars as Clark Butler, Laurence Dickey, Antoine Faivre,
Henri de Lubac, Michael Murray, Cyril O’Regan, and Eric Voegelin have argued
for a Joachimite influence on Hegel. See Butler, “Hegelian Panentheism and
Joachimite Christianity,” in New Perspectives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion, ed.
David Kolb (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Laurence Dickey,
Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit 1770–1807 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987); Antoine Faivre, “Ancient and Medieval
Sources of Modern Esoteric Movements,” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed.
Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York, Crossroads, 1995); Henri de
Lubac, La Spiritualité de Joachim de Fiore (Paris: Sycamore, 1979–1981), vol.
2, 359–77; Michael Murray, Modern Philosophy of History (The Hague: Nijhoff,
1970), 89–113; Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1994); Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduc-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). I discuss the evidence for
Joachim’s influence on Hegel at length in Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (op.
cit.) with special attention to the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.
25. The Kabbala Denudata (Kabbalah Unveiled, 1677–1684) included,
among other texts, large excerpts from the Lurianic Kabbalah. It also included
an essay by Francis Mercury van Helmont, the alchemist and friend of Leibniz
who introduced the Cambridge Platonists More and Cudworth to Kabbalism.
The Kabbala Denudata made Kabbalism accessible to every educated person in
Europe, and affected interpretations of the Kabbalah until the end of the nine-
teenth century. It is highly likely that Hegel consulted it, at least in preparing
his remarks on Kabbalism for the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
26. Oetinger, Biblisches und emblematisches Wörterbuch (1776; reprinted,
Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969), 407. Pagination refers to the original
edition.
27. Ibid., 536.
28. Quoted in Gerald Hanratty, “Hegel and the Gnostic Tradition: II,”
Philosophical Studies (Ireland) 31 (1986–87): 301–25, 314; his translation.
29. Benz, Christian Kabbalah, 52.
30. See Paola Mayer, Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jacob
Böhme (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 185.
31. Benz, Mystical Sources, 54–56.
32. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Peter Heath (Char-
lottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1980), 211.
33. Ibid., 212.
34. Schelling, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 14, ed. Karl Friedrich A. Schelling
(Stuttgart/Augsburg: J. H. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856–1861), 205. Quoted in
Benz, Mystical Sources, 50–51.
35. Oetinger, Biblisches und emblematisches Wörterbuch, 407.
36. See Hayden-Roy, op. cit. See also Ulrich Gaier, Der gesetzliche Kalkül:
Hölderlins Dichtungslehre (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1962); Walter Dierauer,
Hölderlin und der Speculative Pietismus Württembergs: Gemeinsame Anshauung-
shorizonte im Werk Oetingers und Hölderlins (Zürich: Juris, 1986).
37. Benz writes, “Oetinger was the mediator of cabalistic ideas for the
German idealistic philosophers, especially Schelling, who returned often to
the Swabian theological sources, with which he had been indoctrinated in his
youth during his sojourn as a theological student at the Stift, the seminary at
Tübingen, and which he called to mind in all the decisive crises of his spiritual
and philosophical development.” Benz, Mystical Sources, 48.
246 Glenn Magee
38. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1977), 9 (henceforth PS); Phänomenologie des Geistes,
ed. Hans-Friedrich Wessels and Heinrich Clairmont (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1988), 13 (henceforth PG).
39. PS 10; PG 14.
40. PS 11; PG 15.
41. Oetinger, Sämtliche Schriften, Vol. 5, ed. Karl Christian Eberhard
Ehmann (Stuttgart: Steinkopf, 1858–1864), 45.
42. In contrast to some Jewish Kabbalists, Oetinger maintained that the
Sephiroth were forms or aspects of God’s manifestation, not “creatures” of
God.
43. See Ignacio Angelelli, review of Niels W. Bokhove, ‘Phänomenologie’:
Ursprung und Hintergrund des Terminus im 18. Jahrhundert (Aalen: Scientia
Verlag, 1992), in Review of Metaphysics 47 (1993): 36–62.
44. Robert Schneider, Schellings und Hegels Schwabische Geistesahnen
(Würzburg: Tiltsch, 1938), 56.
45. Ibid., 54; my translation.
46. F. W. J. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. Andrew
Bowie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 155.
47. See Hayden-Roy, 69; Robert Schneider, 47.
48. Wissenschaft der Logik: Das Sein (1812), ed. Hans-Jürgen Gawoll
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986), 82. Because A. V. Miller bases his translation
on the 1832 edition, this passage is missing from his text.
49. See Benz, Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy, op. cit.;
Robert Schneider, Schellings und Hegels Schwabische Geistesahnen, op. cit.;
Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit 1770–1807,
op. cit. The only problem with Dickey’s work is that he has almost nothing to
say about Swabian speculative pietism and the ideas discussed in this essay.
Contributors
Karin de Boer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Groningen (The Netherlands). She is the author of Thinking in the
Light of Time: Heidegger’s Encounter with Hegel (2000) and On Hegel:
The Sway of the Negative (forthcoming from Palgrave, 2010), as well
as of numerous articles on the history of modern and contemporary
continental philosophy.
Andrew Buchwalter is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Univer-

sity of North Florida, and has served as Fulbright Guest Professor at
the Hegel-Archiv, University of Bochum, Germany. He is the editor of
Culture and Democracy: Social and Ethical Issues in Public Support for
the Arts and Humanities, and is completing a book entitled The Actual-
ity of Dialectics: Hegel’s Social-Political Philosophy and Its Contemporary
Significance.
Pierre Chételat is a graduate student at McGill University, and is currently

completing a dissertation on Hegel’s concept of religion.
Will Dudley is Professor of Philosophy at Williams College. He is the

author of Understanding German Idealism and Hegel, Nietzsche, and
Philosophy: Thinking Freedom.
Jason Howard is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Viterbo University,

La Crosse, Wisconsin. He has published articles on Kant and Hegel.
Allegra de Laurentiis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State

University of New York, Stony Brook. She is the author, most recently,
of Subjects in the Ancient and Modern World: On Hegel’s Theory of
Subjectivity.
Glenn Alexander Magee is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the

C. W. PostCampus of Long Island University. He is the author of Hegel
247
248 Contributors
and the Hermetic Tradition, The Hegel Dictionary, and editor of The
Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism.
William Maker is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy

and Religion Department at Clemson University. He is the author of
Philosophy without Foundations: Rethinking Hegel, and the editor of Hegel
on Economics and Freedom and Hegel and Aesthetics.
John McCumber is Professor of Germanic Languages at UCLA. He is the

author of numerous books and articles on Hegel and related topics.
Sûrya Parekh is a graduate student in the History of Consciousness

program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Nathan Ross is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oklahoma City

University. He is the author of On Mechanism in Hegel’s Social and
Political Philosophy, and has published articles in Idealistic Studies and
Hegel Jahrbuch.
Mark Tunick is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean at

the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. He is author
of Hegel’s Political Philosophy and other books and articles on political
and legal theory.
Mario Wenning is assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico

and visiting scholar at the University of Alberta. He has published
articles on Adorno, Heidegger, and Rorty, and is the translator of Peter
Sloterdijk’s Rage and Time. Currently he is working on a book on the
role of utopia in the Critical Theory tradition.
Index
absolute knowledge, 15, 23–25 Aristophanes, 145, 148

actuality, 4, 22, 30, 42–45, 48, Aristotle, 47, 135, 137–38, 143–44,
56–57, 59, 89, 140, 144, 148, 152, 181, 197
155–56, 160, 162–64, 170, 211, art, 1, 205, 229
241 asceticism, 77, 224–25
Adorno, Theodor, 47–48 Asia, 3, 94, 123, 126, 130, 136
Africa, 69, 94, 107, 111–12, 120, Assante, Molefi, 127
126–28, 130–31 Athens, 140–41, 196, 198–99, 210
agency, 102, 104, 124, 160–62, 165, authority, 4, 18–19, 42, 100, 161,
167, 174, 188 201, 206, 210, 224
agents, 3, 6, 9–10, 43, 47, 91, autonomy, 7, 47, 92–97, 103, 114,
101–03, 124, 142, 151, 155–70, 123, 165–66, 168, 177, 183, 188,
172–73, 197, 223, 225 192, 216, 228
Ake, Claude, 107 Avineri, Shlomo, 49, 63, 65–66,
Alexander, the Great, 169 210
alienation, 36, 95, 169, 172, 206,
229 Ball, Terence, 210
America, 7, 41, 81, 112, 114, becoming, 4, 16–17, 22, 24, 26, 28,
117–23, 125–31, 211, 243 30–33, 40, 47–48, 105, 118, 138,
American Dream, 34 234, 241
Anaxagoras, 39 being, 4, 15–28, 31–33, 42, 53,
Anaximander, 138 89–91, 93, 232–35
Angehrn, Emil, 50 Beiser, Frederick, 193, 228
Angelelli, Ignacio, 246 Bengel, J.A., 232, 237, 239–40
anthropology, 98, 114–16, 118, 122, Benz, Ernst, 232, 238–39, 243–46
124, 129, 150 Berlin, Isaiah, 75, 83
Antigone, 9, 158, 160–63, 173 Bernasconi, Robert, 105–06, 127–29
antiquity, 8, 135, 138, 142, 147–48, Berthold-Bond, Daniel, 17, 29, 131
150, 203 Bitsch, B., 170
Arbatov, Georgi, 83 Bloch, Ernst, 48–49
Arendt, Hannah, 190, 192 blood, 7–8, 123–26, 141
aristocracy, 141, 184, 189, 192, 198, Bloom, Allan, 83, 151
210 Blumenbach, Johannes, 129
249
250 Index
Boehme, Jacob, 12, 235, 237–40, conscience, 74, 157, 167–68, 171,
242 175, 210
bourgeoisie, 28, 34, 55, 181–84, consciousness, 1, 3, 10, 18, 20–23,
186, 190–93 27–28, 31, 35–37, 40–41, 44,
Buchwalter, Andrew, 210–11 48, 61, 65, 77, 90, 93, 95,
Buck-Morss, Susan, 105–07 97–104, 106–10, 116, 124, 142,
Büchner, Georg, 37 144, 147–48, 158–69, 173–74,
Buffon, George, 113–14, 128 178, 180, 185, 189–90, 196–97,
Butler, Clark, 244 203–04, 207, 210, 221–22
constitutions, 36, 40, 66–67, 92, 96,
Caesar, Julius, 169–218 196–202, 205, 210
caste, 8, 140–41 contingency, 6–7, 11, 25, 32, 39,
categories, 6, 39, 65, 77–78, 89, 105, 111–13, 115, 125, 162–63, 165,
107, 109, 112, 162, 215, 233 174, 203, 217, 219
Catholicism, 7, 43, 124–25, 224, Cooper, Barry, 15, 29
230 corporations, 58–60, 66, 199, 203,
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 102, 107, 109 211
China, 81–82, 109, 130 cosmopolitanism, 101, 103–04
Christianity, 12, 43, 87, 89, 92–93, culture, 2, 4, 6–7, 9, 62, 64, 69, 73,
96, 114, 123, 131, 164, 216, 80, 87–89, 92–97, 99, 101–04,
229–32, 234, 236–40, 242 107, 109–10, 119–22, 124,
citizens, 5, 36, 52, 54–55, 57–60, 135–36, 156–58, 162, 164–65,
62, 66, 90, 103–04, 120, 123, 167–68, 173–74, 190, 198–99,
137, 145–48, 166, 186, 188–89, 217, 221
196–97, 199, 202, 204, 207 cunning of reason, 2
city-state, 135, 159, 163, 167, 173, custom, 1, 92, 144, 160, 164,
182 186–87, 230
civil servants, 100–01, 109
civil society, 9–10, 54–56, 65–66, Dagger, Richard, 210
94, 140–41, 147, 149, 177, 180– Dahl, Robert, 211
81, 183–89, 191, 193, 196–97, Dallmayr, Fred R., 108
199, 202–03, 211 death, 32, 77, 79–80, 160, 166,
civilizations, 51–54, 56, 109, 111, 172, 181–82, 187, 210, 218
135–36, 148, 185, 218 de Boer, Karin, 63
Clark, Wendy Lynn, 176 de Lubac, Henri, 244–45
class, 8, 10, 34 54–55, 66, 100–01, de Ste Croix, G.E.M., 151
139–41, 181–85, 187–89, 191–94, democracy, 10–11, 59–60, 141,
201 195–211
Cold War, 5–6, 72, 75, 78 Descartes, 36
colonialism, 95 desire, 2, 16, 35, 45, 77, 79, 124,
comedy, 147–48 125, 145–48, 151, 156, 166,
communitarianism, 94, 184 179–80, 183, 185, 189–91,
concept, the, 24, 52–53, 57, 62, 64, 221–25, 230, 238
67, 71–72, 74, 90–91, 99, 137– Dickey, Laurence, 180, 192, 243–44,
38, 142, 144, 178–79, 181–85, 246
188–91, 201 Dierauer, Walter, 245
Index 251
diversity, 97, 99, 101, 113, 115–17, family, 9, 78, 100, 144, 159–61,
126 193, 197, 211, 224–25
Dove, Kenley R., 175–76 fate, 54, 112, 137, 141, 158, 161,
Dover, J.K., 152 168
Dudley, Will, 17, 30, 32, 229 feudalism, 57–59, 66, 149, 164,
Dussel, Enrique, 105 167, 187
duties, 74, 121, 156–58, 160–65, Fichte, 6, 72–76, 82–83, 98, 171,
170–71, 204, 225 186, 240
Forbes, Jack, 128
Forster, Michael, 48
East, 3, 141
Foucault, Michel, 47
education, 7, 40, 45, 74, 76, 83,
foundationalism, 23, 26–27
100–02, 108–09, 112, 119, 148,
Franco, Paul, 130–31
152, 162, 165, 167, 177, 179,
freedom, 2–9, 11–12, 16–20, 22–23,
201, 229, 245
25–26, 28–30, 36, 38, 40–42, 45,
Egerman, F., 152
52–54, 56–65, 73, 88, 90–100,
ego, 73, 78, 82, 116, 149
102–04, 106–07, 111–13, 115–16,
Ehrenberg, V., 152
120, 122–26, 130, 135–38, 142,
empiricism, 207, 209
144–47, 149–50, 157–59, 163,
end of history, 3–4, 12, 16–20,
165–66, 168–69, 173–75, 177–78,
23–25, 30, 40, 231
181–85, 191–92, 199–200, 203,
English Reform Bill, 200–02, 204
205, 217–30, 238, 242
Enlightenment, 37, 158, 164,
free will, 25, 29, 135, 145
166–69, 231, 237, 242
French Revolution, 4, 35–38, 42,
Erlanger, Steven, 210
157–58, 165–67, 172, 174–75,
eschatology, 4, 232, 234–35, 238
205
estates, 58–60, 66, 101, 141, 145,
Fritzman, J.M., 176
149, 181, 201–02
Frost, Bryan-Paul, 109
eternal return, 28
Fuks, A., 151
ethical life, 8–10, 12, 62, 138–40,
Fukuyama, Francis, 93
147–48, 158–64, 167–69, 173–74,
fundamentalism, 5–6, 77
177–92, 198–99, 225–26, 229
future, the, 3, 5–6, 12, 16–17, 19,
Eurocentrism, 6–7, 87–88, 96, 99,
25–26, 33, 37, 41, 43–45, 47–48,
102, 104–05, 127
56, 60, 62, 79, 81, 96, 113, 115,
Europe, 3, 7, 9, 34, 81–82, 87–89,
121, 125–26, 131, 166, 168
92–93, 95–97, 99, 102–04, 109,
115, 120–23, 125–26, 128–30,
Gaier, Ulrich, 245
157–58, 164–69, 190, 208, 217,
Gallie, W.B., 210
221, 237, 245
Gaonkar, Dilip, 108
evil, 3, 11, 39, 156–57, 170, 173,
Gauthier, Jeffrey A., 173
176, 215–21, 223–28
genealogy, 4, 36, 38, 41, 46, 48, 72
exclusion, 21–22, 24, 78, 100, 102,
genocide, 115, 121
126, 145, 174, 197
geography, 7, 98, 112, 114, 117–18,
201
Fackenheim, Emil, 72, 82 geology, 118
Faivre, Antoine, 244–45 Gerbi, Antonello, 113, 116, 128–30
252 Index
German identity, 103, 123 Howse, Robert, 109

Germanic society, 87, 89, 96, 100, Humboldt, Alexander, 66, 129
104, 123, 124, 125, 187
Germany, 3, 6, 42, 124, 200, 206, idea, the, 52, 71, 81, 138, 149–50,
236–37 198, 203, 216, 231
Gilman, Sander, 127 idealism, 189
Gnostics, 234 ideals, 4, 36–37, 39, 43–44, 165,
God, 3, 11–12, 16, 26, 45, 64, 168, 184, 211
142, 158, 215–17, 226–27, 229, identity, 9, 24–25, 94–97, 101, 103,
231–35, 237–38, 240–42, 246 123, 156–57, 159–63, 165, 170,
gods, 141, 148, 189 173, 223–25
Goethe, 43 Ilting, K.-H., 106, 109, 227
Goldstein, Leon J., 157, 171 Inada, Kenneth K., 107
Goossens, Wilfried, 160, 173 inclinations, 149, 222–23, 225
Gordon, Lewis, 127 individualism, 6, 11, 34, 75–76, 78
Greece, 3, 8, 157–58, 160–63, 167, infrastructure, 6, 80–81
169, 173, 182, 203, 209–10 injustice, 39, 143, 169
guilt, 9, 157–58, 161–63, 166–68, institutions, 5, 8, 12, 29, 36–37,
171–72 39, 47, 56, 59–60, 90–94, 96–97,
100, 102, 105, 135, 157, 161,
Habermas, Jürgen, 30, 37, 49–50, 177, 189–93, 195–96, 202–04,
89 209–10, 231
Hadot, Pierre, 82 intuition, 8, 138, 178–79, 181–85,
Hanratty, Gerald, 245 188–90, 194
happiness, 5, 8, 45–46, 140, 145–46 Inwood, M., 152
Hardimon, Michael, 49, 211 irony, 43, 71–72, 78
Hartmann, Klaus, 105 irrationality, 6, 12, 32, 40, 175, 231
Hayden-Roy, Priscilla A., 240,
245–46 Jameson, M.H., 151
Heidegger, Martin, 79 Jewish mysticism, 12, 226, 231–32,
Heiman, G., 66 235, 237, 241, 243
Herder, 98, 193 Joachim of Fiore, 232, 238, 240,
Herodotus, 146, 152 243–45
heteronomy, 19, 26, 31, 98 Joyce, James, 15
Hinchman, Lewis, 156, 170 justice, 19, 41, 45, 54–55, 93, 101,
historiography, 38–39, 41, 45, 139, 203
88–90, 104–05, 110
Hoff, Shannon, 173 Kabbalah, 12, 231–33, 235–38, 240,
Hoffheimer, Michael H., 106, 244–45
128–29 Kain, Philip J., 175
Hölderlin, 43 Kainz, Howard P., 174
Hölscher, Lucian, 49 Kant, 36, 39–40, 43, 49, 98, 100,
Homer, 78 103, 113–15, 122, 126, 129, 171,
Honneth, Axel, 174 229, 241–42
Houlgate, Stephen, 17, 20, 29, 64, Kelly, G.A., 17, 128, 130
106, 111, 127, 158, 172, 227–28 Kierkegaard, 51
Index 253
Klenner, H., 66 mechanism, 10, 178, 181, 190–91,

Kline, George, 131 193
Knowles, Dudley, 211 meritocracy, 141
Knox, T.M., 63, 145–46, 152 metanarrative, 72
Kolb, David, 30 Middle Ages, 44, 110, 138
Kojève, Alexander, 15, 29, 101, 109, modernity, 3–5, 7, 10, 16–19, 26,
172 30, 36–37, 48, 52, 62, 88, 92–95,
Kosselleck, R., 66 99, 101, 138, 167, 186, 189
Koster, Henry, 120, 128, 130 Moellendorf, Darrel, 128
monarchy, 10, 59, 149, 195–96,
labor, 9–10, 54–56, 60, 130, 139, 198, 200–02, 207–08
149, 177–80, 185, 188–92 monasticism, 224
law, 1, 33, 35, 39, 55, 64, 73, 77– money, 141, 145, 149, 151, 153
78, 88, 100–01, 104, 109, 137, monotheism, 11, 138
144, 150, 159–62, 171, 186–87, Montesquieu, 98, 205
193, 197, 201–02, 205, 235 moral imputation, 8–9, 155–58,
Leibniz, 215–16, 245 167–70, 173–75
Lessing, Gotthold, 40 morality, 1, 54, 65, 74, 96, 138,
liberties, 90, 94, 196 155, 157, 167–68, 170–71, 186
literature, 135, 147 More, Thomas, 37
Liu, Xin, 109 Murray, Michael, 244–45
Locke, John, 180 music, 5, 41
logic, 23–25, 30–31, 42, 47, 64, 70,
72, 75, 77–78, 80, 88–89, 97, 99, Napoleon, 15, 59, 95, 169
105, 107, 140, 142, 191, 240 narrative, 4–6, 7, 41, 47, 70–71,
logos, 17–18, 20–22, 27 89
Löwith, Karl, 108 native Americans, 7, 120–22, 128,
Luria, Isaac, 235–38, 245 130
Luther, Martin, 123 nature, 24, 26, 39, 53, 71, 75, 82,
Lyotard, Jean-François, 69, 82 98, 109, 114, 116–17, 124–25,
137–38, 141, 143–44, 163, 167,
Malabou, Catherine, 131 169, 178–79, 181, 185, 191, 193,
Mall, Ram Adhar, 105 207, 219–20, 232–33, 237–38,
Marcuse, Herbert, 48 240, 242
Marquard, Odo, 50 necessity, 5, 7, 11, 26, 39, 64, 149–
Marx, Karl, 15, 36–37, 51, 65, 89, 50, 155, 158, 166, 168, 175–76,
101, 109, 187 198–99, 209, 219
marriage, 195 negation, 22, 24, 27, 29, 44, 52,
master, 95, 143, 157, 170, 172, 70, 75, 83, 97, 158, 163, 166,
191 178–79, 223–25, 228
master narrative, 5, 69 negativity, 22, 28, 62, 158, 161,
Matt, Daniel C., 234, 244 167, 170, 223
Mayer, Paola, 245 Neoplatonism, 70
Maximilian, Prinz, 129–30 Neugebauer, Christian, 127
McCarney, Joseph, 128, 130, 227–29 New World, 7–8, 113–23, 125–26,
McCumber, John, 63, 65, 82 128–29, 130–31
254 Index
Nietzsche, 4, 16, 26–30, 32–34, 37, 96–97, 125, 140, 169, 187, 219,
51 226, 228–29
nihilism, 3–4, 27–29, 33 Patten, Alan, 228–29
non-being, 21–22, 24 Pelzer, Roland, 170
normative reconstruction, 6, 88–93, Peperzak, Adrien, 48, 136, 150
99–100, 102, 105 personhood, 135, 140, 142–43, 145
normativity, 4, 18, 30, 35–38, Pico, Giovanni, 236
40–44, 46–48, 111, 123, 139, Pietism, 12, 231, 237, 240, 242–43,
158, 164 246
norms, 4, 7, 37–38, 41–42, 44–46, Pinkard, Terry, 66, 172, 227
91, 94, 104, 156, 158, 160, 164, Pippin, Robert, 228
173, 229 Plant, Raymond, 29
nothingness, 16, 24, 27–28, 31, 33, Plato, 8, 37, 54, 62, 131, 135–36,
184, 232 138–42, 144–45, 181–82, 199,
Novalis, 43, 49 210
Popper, Karl, 63, 70
O’Brien, George Dennis, 227 possibility, 4–5, 25, 27, 43–44, 48,
O’Donohue, John, 172–73 56, 80, 112–13, 115–16, 142,
O’Regan, Cyril, 244–45 162, 167, 178, 180, 189, 205
Oedipus, 136–37, 150 poverty, 5, 52, 56, 65, 151, 188,
Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, 12, 224
232, 237–43, 245–46 present, the, 1, 3, 5, 12, 19–21,
Old World, 7–8, 113–15, 117–20, 23–28, 31, 33, 35–36, 38–46, 48,
122–23, 125–26, 129 61, 67, 79–80, 95–98, 100, 102,
oligarchy, 141, 151, 210 107, 110, 146, 187, 193, 215,
ontology, 64, 89–90, 103, 113, 233 226, 232
organism, 10, 137, 144, 181, 187, presuppositions, 4, 38–39, 78, 90,
190–91, 193 172
Orient, 38, 64, 69, 109, 136, 156, property, 8, 29, 54, 56, 92, 96,
169 140, 143–45, 180, 183, 186, 189,
Ormiston, Alice, 176 195–96, 201, 205, 225
Ortega y Gasset, Jorge, 128 Protestantism, 92, 100, 125, 237
otherness, 24, 30, 32, 91, 97–98, providence, 2, 39–41, 206, 217, 228
100, 225 Prussia, 42, 51, 57–58, 108
Ottmann, Hennig, 108
quietism, 5
pain, 3, 219, 223–25, 229–30
Paine, Thomas, 207, 211 race, 7, 93, 111–16, 119–20,
panlogism, 41 122–23, 125–27, 129
Parmenides, 4, 16–17, 20–24, 27, 31 rationality, 7, 57–58, 71, 73, 76, 91,
particularity 11, 32, 56, 60, 63, 67, 93, 95, 126, 158, 192, 201, 206,
98–99, 138, 142, 146–48, 150– 208
51, 166–67, 180, 197, 203–05, Rausher, Frederick, 176
223–24, 229 Rawls, John, 37
past, the, 5, 16, 18–20, 25–26, 28, Raz, Joseph, 50
30, 33, 37, 39, 43–46, 51, 61–62, Realphilosophie, 25, 89
Index 255
reality, 19–20, 25, 27, 33, 35–36, self-conception, 91, 140

42–44, 71, 88, 92, 96, 98–100, self-consciousness, 9, 64, 91, 93–94,
102, 105, 110, 137, 140, 156–58, 97, 100, 103–04, 109–10, 144,
161–63, 166–68, 170, 172, 156, 159–68, 171–73, 175, 196,
174–75, 204, 219, 226, 228 210, 222, 238
reason, 2–4, 11, 16–17, 26, 35–43, self-criticism, 3, 136
45–48, 51–53, 56, 63, 67, 89–95, self-definition, 96
102, 109–11, 125–26, 147, 175, self-determination, 3–4, 18–20,
195, 201, 216–18, 222–23, 226, 24–25, 30, 53, 74, 98, 123, 145,
228 157–58, 170, 222–23
recognition, 7, 10, 25, 28, 30, 32, self-development, 24, 26, 91, 137,
95–96, 101, 103, 107, 135, 138, 232
142–50, 161, 165, 170, 175, self-differentiation, 137
179–80, 186–87, 193, 203 self-discovery, 156, 163, 169
reconciliation, 5, 35, 37, 39, self-estrangement, 162, 173
42–43, 45–46, 48, 51, 61, 63, 75, self-interpretation, 96, 156
220–21, 229 self-knowledge, 8, 136, 138, 204
Reformation, 7, 123–24 self-legitimation, 4, 18–20
religion, 1, 11, 36, 78, 93, 110, self-organization, 53, 62
172, 222, 229 self-positing, 64, 73
resignation, 3, 11, 225 self-realization, 18
respect, 7, 167, 194, 236 self-recognition, 203
Reuchlin, Johannes, 236–37 self-reconstruction, 88, 91, 94
rights, 8, 10, 37–38, 55, 59, 66, 74, self-reference, 28–29, 137–38
90, 111, 113, 115–16, 161, 180, self-transcendence, 95
184, 186–89, 191, 196–97, 200, selfhood, 8, 90, 97–98, 100, 161,
207, 211, 239 168
Ritter, Joachim, 37, 49–50 Shklar, Judith, 175
Romanticism, 35, 42, 181, 193 Siep, Ludwig, 49, 106, 192–93
Rorty, Richard, 34, 93, 106 singularity, 138–39, 142, 156,
Rosen, Stanley, 16, 29, 108, 131 161–63, 168, 172, 179, 183
Rosenberg, Hans, 108 slaughter bench, 2, 45
Rousseau, 37, 143, 147, 152, 171, slavery, 58, 107, 112, 140, 142–44,
180, 205–06, 208, 211 147, 182, 199
Rózsa, Erzsébet, 49, 107 Snead, James, 127
Socrates, 70, 139, 141, 151,
Schacht, Richard, 229 198–99, 210
Schelling, 12, 193, 232, 238–43, solipsism, 29
245–46 Solon, 146, 152
Schiller, 43, 48 soul, 116, 124, 138–39, 143, 145,
Schlegel, Friedrich, 43 147, 182, 224, 229
Schneider, Robert, 242–43, 246 sovereignty, 67, 100, 197, 201–09
Scholem, Gershom, 232–36, 244 Sphinx, 136–37
Schumpter, Joseph, 33 spirit, 1, 8, 20, 22–23, 30, 32,
self-actualization, 52, 62, 221, 228 35–37, 39, 41, 47, 51–52, 57, 61,
self-comprehension, 30, 94, 97 63–64, 67, 69, 75, 90, 92–101,
256 Index
spirit (continued) 216–17, 220–21, 223, 232–33,

107, 109–11, 113, 115–17, 241
119–24, 126, 135–39, 144–45, truth, 1, 2, 8, 11–12, 15–20, 23–28,
147–48, 151, 156–57, 159, 163, 31–33, 64, 70–71, 90, 116, 123,
165, 167–72, 175, 181, 183, 125, 131, 135, 140–41, 144, 148,
191, 195, 198, 203–04, 206, 160–61, 164–67, 174, 187, 203,
209, 215–20, 222–24, 226, 229, 226, 241–42
234–35, 237–38, 242, 245 Tunick, Mark, 211
state, 5, 9, 36, 41–42, 45, 51–53, Tuschling, B., 136, 150
55–60, 62, 64–66, 73–77, 80–81,
95, 101, 135, 138, 141–42, unconscious, the, 162
144–45, 147–50, 158–61, 177–78, unhappy consciousness, 36, 77
182–87, 189–90, 192–93, 195– universality, 8, 18, 55, 63, 112, 138,
211, 225 142–43, 146–47, 149, 160–61,
Stoicism, 11, 223–24, 230 163, 165, 172, 174, 182, 188,
subjectivity, 8, 31–32, 36, 97, 99, 204
136–38, 142, 148, 174, 177, 180, utopianism, 4, 42, 48
197–98, 202–04, 209–10, 233
substance, 20, 23, 26, 28, 31, 38, Verharen, Charles, 127, 131
52–53, 90–91, 137, 148–49, 160, virtue, 54, 90, 94, 139, 145, 182,
163, 175 190, 192, 205, 208, 211
suffering, 2–3, 11–12, 40, 48, 216, Voegelin, Eric, 244–45
218–20, 223–27, 229
Wahl, Jean, 171
Taylor, Charles, 64, 102, 108–09 Walsh, David, 237, 244
theodicy, 3, 11, 39, 215–21, Walsh, W.H., 113, 128
226–28, 230 Wartenberg, T.E., 63, 65–66
Thomä, Dieter, 50 Weber, Max, 109
time, 3, 6, 12, 15–16, 24–25, 30, West, 3, 6, 69, 87–88, 92–95, 97,
37, 45, 52, 61–63, 67, 71–72, 92, 99, 104, 106–07, 109, 138–39,
100, 102, 116, 118, 131, 231, 164–65, 190
233–34, 240 will to power, 4, 16, 26–30, 33
Tobias, Saul, 170 Williams, Robert, 162, 170–71,
Torah, 235 173
tradition, 4, 9, 11–12, 15, 19, 33, Winfield, Richard, 17, 29
57–59, 63–64, 66, 87, 92, 100, wisdom, 19, 21, 23, 36, 45, 109–10,
105, 159, 200, 232 139, 159, 162, 194, 200, 215
tragedy, 137, 147, 182, 192, 218 Wood, Allen, 63–66, 106, 170, 229
transcendence, 4, 11, 15, 27, 32,
35–36, 172, 181, 191, 195, Yack, Bernard, 50
PHILOSOPHY
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New York Press
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HEGEL

© 2009 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

Production by Eileen Meehan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hegel and history / edited by Will Dudley.

I PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

1 The End of History and the Nihilism of Becoming 15

2 Hegel, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History 35

3 Hegel’s Account of the Present: An Open-Ended History 51

4 Hegel and the Logics of History 69

II HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND RACE

5 Is Hegel’s Philosophy of History Eurocentric? 87

6 Hegel’s New World: History, Freedom, and Race 111

III THE HISTORICITY OF MORALITY,

7 Spirit without the Form of Self: On Hegel’s Reading of

8 The Historicity of Ethical Categories: The Dynamic of

9 The Mechanization of Labor and the Birth of Modern

10 Hegel’s Claim about Democracy and His Philosophy

IV THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AND RELIGION

11 Hegel’s Philosophy of World History as Theodicy:

12 Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Kabbalist Eschatology 231

“History,” Hegel emphasizes, has a double meaning: it refers both to the

Hegel’s philosophy of history aims to comprehend the trajectory

and painful course of events is in fact accomplishing the plan of God. By

Part I: Past, Present, and Future

and the rejection of unjustiﬁed authority. The implication of this insight

“necessary,” given the context established by the moments that came

features of phenomena that are merely contingent and inconsequential,

Part II: History, Geography, and Race

The two papers in this section of the volume undertake to determine

blood to freedom, or draw metaphysical distinctions between the Old

Part III: The Historicity of Morality, Ethical Life, and Politics

interested in the role that moral imputation—the experience of being

Paradoxically, however, Hegel regards the mechanism of civil soci-

is that individualism fails to actualize the truth of freedom as fully as

Part IV: The Philosophy of History and Religion

blessedness of freedom, which is enjoyed through participation in ethical

Past, Present, and Future

The End of History

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to

Part I. Historicizing the Eternal:

In history, we are concerned with what has been and what

Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result,

Part II. Freedom as Eternity: Historicizing Philosophy

Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by

Free, philosophic thought has this direct connection with

Hegel regards modernity as distinctly philosophical and sees modernity

ized within philosophy as deﬁnitive of philosophical thought.17 When

Part III. Parmenides, Hegel, and the Problem of Philosophy

Parmenides began philosophy proper.22

For philosophy to attain self-legitimation and completion by properly

thoroughly or absolutely excluded. It cannot be thoroughly excluded

Part IV. Openness and Closure

To say that spirit exists would at ﬁrst seem to imply that it