Taking the justification point first: an implication of our foregoing discussion is that Hegel’s defense of the thesis of reconciliation must rely on an appeal to evidence that is historical, evidence drawn from his own “thoughtful” or “philosophical” consideration of history. As he writes in his Philosophy of Right, “Spirit is only what it does” (PR § 343).17 If we seek to know the nature or essence of Spirit, we need to consult not pure reason or insight, but rather the history of Spirit’s activity. We need to gather data about how its effort to realize its freedom has been exhibited in the various domains of its activity: in religion, science, and art; in ethics, politics, and law.
As for what Hegel can have in mind by the terms “freedom” and “necessity”, we can conclude from our earlier discussion that he does not consider the meaning of these terms to be fixed. Their meaning undergoes transformation as history progresses. Hegel gives us an example of such a transformation in his sketch of three key moments in the course of freedom in world history. The course of freedom began in the ancient orient, he tells us, with the idea that only one person is free; it advanced to the Greek and Roman world, in which some were considered free; and it has culminated in the “Germanic world” with the idea that all persons are free (PH 93/134). The changes Hegel tracks here are not simply changes in quantity. He wants us to notice, too, that underlying the changes in quantity are transformations in Spirit’s understanding of its freedom. Over the course of its history, Spirit has adhered to various conceptions of its freedom and its right. Over time, it has altered its self-conception, and correspondingly, its aims and demands. It has altered its understanding of its relation to necessity as well. The “reconciliation” to necessity that Hegel believes Spirit enjoys in his own time is a result of this historical process.
We can now move on to ask: precisely in what ways does Hegel believe that, in his time, Spirit is reconciled to necessity? This question will be the focus of my attention in the remainder of this section. I will indicate an answer to it, very briefly, by highlighting three important respects in which Hegel considers freedom and necessity to be reconciled in his age. I draw my evidence from his discussion in his Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of History of how the modern “ethical” state has come to be. Hegel gives us a highly condensed version, in these pages, of the story of the modern development of freedom and its associated institutions that he elaborates in much greater detail in his Philosophy of Right.18
On Hegel’s portrayal, the development of modern Spirit began when Spirit understood that it could not satisfactorily actualize its freedom in a natural or “state of nature” condition. The freedom of modern Spirit is reconciled with necessity, then, at least in this first sense: it recognizes that it can only satisfactorily realize its freedom if it submits to a certain kind of constraint. It understands that its freedom cannot simply consist in the unrestricted effort to satisfy its private ends and appetites.
Of course, Spirit is already subject to some constraint in the state of nature. Most obviously, it is limited in what it thinks and does by laws of nature—laws that require it, for example, to attend to its biological needs. Moreover, a particular will in a state of nature has to contend with the fact that, insofar as it is not alone, its pursuit of its ends may sometimes conflict with the pursuits of others. But as Hegel tells the story, the particular will in the natural condition discovers that it cannot successfully pursue its freedom without (paradoxically) submitting its freedom to further limitation. Its transition to a “higher” standpoint requires that it accept the fact that it shares with other particular wills an interest in realizing its freedom. The transition requires the particular will to acknowledge that it can secure its freedom only by joining others in forming civil society, a society in which this common interest is ultimately recognized and protected by laws of a state.
If the particular will is to secure a truly successful transition out of the state of nature, the laws to which it submits must be of a certain kind. Hegel takes it to be a special achievement of modern Spirit that it recognizes a law as valid only if “everyone agrees to it [übereinstimmen]” (PH 45/61). On his account, the modern will acknowledges that, in addition to the interests that distinguish it from other wills (interests that derive from its particularity), it shares some interests with all other wills (interests that derive from its universal aspect). The modern particular will understands that both the basis of its freedom as well as the legitimacy of laws rest on the fact that, in common with all other particular wills, it is capable of freedom and is thus a “person.” The freedom of modern Spirit is thus reconciled to allowing itself to be governed by laws that are valid only insofar as they can be endorsed by every particular will. As just noted, the validity of these laws derives from the fact that they reflect the ends or interests of all persons; they have their basis, that is to say, in the nature of the will as free (in what Hegel refers to as the will’s universal aspect).
A second respect in which the freedom of modern Spirit is reconciled to necessity, in Hegel’s view, is therefore this: the particular will recognizes not just that its freedom must consist in more than in the unrestricted pursuit and satisfaction of its private ends and appetites. It recognizes, in addition, that it can satisfy its freedom only if it conforms to laws that are universally valid. These are the impartial and effectively enforceable laws of the modern state; as universally valid, they are laws that the universal aspect of the particular will gives itself. The particular will is free, then, only to the extent that it is self-necessitated or self-determined (necessitated, that is to say, by itself qua universal). Modern Spirit is thus reconciled to the fact that its freedom is a form of self-constraint.
As for a third respect in which Hegel judges freedom and necessity to be reconciled in his own age, we just saw that the laws to which the modern free will submits are laws that it takes to originate in its universal aspect. The third reconciliation is achieved by casting off a particular conception of the will as a universal. Hegel is convinced that Spirit in his time has advanced beyond the view that the will qua universal is a will that transcends actual, empirical reality and is capable of a special, non-temporal form of causality. The freedom Hegel takes Spirit to enjoy in his time is in other words no longer understood as having its basis in a world outside or beyond the actual world. Spirit instead takes its freedom to refer to the ‘higher’ part of its this-worldly nature, to its self-conscious subjectivity. Spirit in Hegel’s time is reconciled to necessity, then, in that it does not conceive of its freedom as wholly opposed to or other than the realm of necessity, the realm of nature. In this third respect, its freedom is reconciled to necessity.
22.5 SPIRIT AS MASTER OF ITS OWN FATE
I have highlighted three (but certainly not the only) respects in which Hegel considers Spirit in his age to be reconciled to necessity: (i) Spirit is reconciled to the fact that it can realize its freedom only if it submits to law or constraint; (ii) it is reconciled to the fact that, since its freedom derives from its universal aspect, its freedom is a form of self-constraint; (iii) Spirit, furthermore, recognizes that its universal aspect is a feature it possesses as a being belonging to this world, the domain of nature or necessity.
In highlighting these three forms of reconciliation, part of my purpose has been to lend support to the thesis that, for Hegel, the meaning of the terms “freedom” and “necessity” undergoes transformation in history. Hegel looks back over the history of Spirit and discovers development in what Spirit identifies as its ends and purposes, in its self-understanding, and in what it takes to be its freedom and its right. The development is propelled forward by conflict.19 The particular will that initially thinks of itself as the only will entitled to property, for instance, learns in its encounter with others that it cannot sustain this self-conception. In its confrontation with others, the particular will must revise its self-understanding. In particular, it must grant that it is not the sole bearer of rights, and that
others who are also capable of freedom (and are thus also “persons”) are entitled to rights as well.
Notice that none of the above three forms of reconciliation commits Hegel to a fatalistic account of the course of world history. That is, nothing in the story we just sketched implies that he aims to persuade us that the various moments of Spirit’s historical progression are set from the start. We so far have no reason for supposing, then, that Hegel believes Spirit is reconciled to necessity in the further sense that it recognizes that its freedom is fated or pre-determined. On the other hand, the forms of reconciliation we have just considered are not necessarily incompatible with a fatalistic view either. And this means that if we wish to clear Hegel of the charge that his philosophy of world history is fatalistic, we have to do more than merely indicate that he understands freedom and necessity to be reconciled in the aforementioned three ways.
I cannot wholly clear Hegel of the fatalism charge here, but I want to conclude this section with some observations that cast doubts on the charge’s plausibility. Our foregoing discussion allows us to dismiss at least one interpretation of what a commitment to fatalism could amount to, for Hegel. If fatalism commits us to the idea of a force or agency that controls all that happens in history from entirely outside the realm of history, then we have good reason to suppose that this is not a view Hegel endorses. This form of fatalism relies on an appeal to an extra-mundane reality; it assumes we have the capacity to wholly transcend the realm of the actual at least in thought. We saw earlier, however, that Hegel rejects this latter assumption. We thus have reason to conclude that he also rejects this version of fatalism.
Of course, one might propose an alternative reading, according to which Hegel’s defense of fatalism is based not on the insights of pure reason but is rather itself historical in nature. That is, it could be the case that he defends fatalism with the help of the very same moderate a priori method he uses to justify his claims about the rationality and progressive nature of history. Although this proposal cannot be as easily dismissed as its predecessor, it nonetheless leaves us the considerable challenge of explaining how a fatalistic interpretation of world history could be, for Hegel, an interpretation of the course of Spirit, that is, an interpretation of human freedom. Hegel after all describes Spirit as the master of its own fate. In its struggle to realize its potential, Spirit encounters various forms of resistance. Over the course of history, it encounters forces that threaten to obstruct its path: laws of nature, its own natural drives, other wills seeking to realize their own ends. In the process of negotiating these limits, Spirit redraws its own nature. Spirit is in this way, as Hegel puts it, the “result of its own activity” (PH 82/104). Its essence is “to be its own deed, and its own work” (PH 77/99). These remarks do not settle the interpretative question, but they cast doubt on the thesis that, for Hegel, the fate of Spirit is settled in advance.
22.6 FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS: MARX AND NIETZSCHE
On the interpretation I have been defending, human freedom is not, for Hegel, a mere idea or ideal of pure reason. Its concept does not pick out a special object which transcends the realm of nature and which can thus neither be known nor even investigated empirically or historically. But Hegel does not hold that human freedom simply reduces to nature either; we are more than just biological machines, in his view. Unlike other animals, we have the capacity to reflect on the natural as well as contingent historical conditions that confront us. Thanks to this capacity, we can in some cases change both the conditions themselves and our way of thinking about them. In our interactions with concrete natural and historical conditions, our self-understanding as well as the nature of our freedom can take on new shapes. Our freedom is in this way indebted to the realm of the actual. It does not reduce to nature, but it is nonetheless empirically conditioned.
Needless to say, the reception of Hegel’s theory of freedom and philosophy of history has not always been as charitable as the one I have provided here. Neither of two of his most noteworthy nineteenth-century successors, Marx and Nietzsche, discovers in his philosophy of history the kind of reconciliation between freedom and necessity I have just outlined. Both appeal to perceived deficiencies in Hegel’s system to justify their own approaches to the philosophy of history. Marx seeks a remedy for the excessive apriorism or abstractness he discovers in Hegel’s thought; he urges that we attend more closely to the concrete or material conditions of human freedom. Nietzsche shares Marx’s distaste for abstract speculation and likewise enlists history in his investigations into the origin of value and nature of freedom. We learn from undertaking a “genealogy of morals,” he thinks, that the various conceptions of the good and of human freedom throughout the ages are unique manifestations not of the power of pure reason or of transcendental insight, but of the psychological drive he calls the “will to power.” While recommending the virtues of a genealogical approach, however, Nietzsche also warns of the dangers of too much attention to history. An over-developed historical sense, in his view, depresses the will to life and cripples the creative impulse. It effectively undermines our freedom.
It would be difficult to make the case that Marx and Nietzsche are careful readers and critics of Hegel. But my aim in this final section is not to assess the merits of their respective representations of Hegel. I review their criticisms in order to highlight some developments in the philosophy of history triggered by the reception of the Hegelian philosophy.
Marx’s assessment of Hegel’s philosophy is by no means wholly negative. He acknowledges his debt to the Hegelian conception of human reason or Spirit as an active, transformative force—a force that, in its efforts to achieve ever more adequate forms of freedom, is capable of transforming both itself and the world around it.20 Marx nonetheless sees himself as taking the philosophy of history in a new direction, one which he believes is free of the flaws of the Hegelian system. He endorses Ludwig Feuerbach’s characterization of Hegel as an “abstract realist” who reduces the “concrete” into a mere “predicate of thought.”21 For both Feuerbach and Marx, the abstract nature of Hegel’s system is tied to Hegel’s failure to appreciate the extent to which material conditions determine the nature of human consciousness. Human consciousness owes its very nature to a variety of material forces: to nature itself, as well as to concrete social and political reality. As Marx puts it, it is not “consciousness that determines life”; rather, “life determines consciousness.”22
Commenting on Hegel’s Phenomenology, Marx argues that Hegel’s abstract realism is responsible for his defective treatment of the history of human freedom. On Marx’s reading, Hegel’s history of our efforts to overcome various forms of unfreedom or alienation is nothing more than a history of alienation in thought or consciousness. We overcome alienation, on this interpretation of Hegel, simply by changing our mindset, by coming to see our situation in a new way. The slave achieves freedom, then, by recognizing that both his servitude and the power of the master are not reflections of the nature of things, but are rather consequences of historical contingency.23
Following Feuerbach, Marx condemns Hegel for ignoring the extent to which human nature is more than merely thinking nature (more than just consciousness or reason). As an “abstract realist,” Hegel devotes too little of his attention to the fact that “man is a natural being” with “actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of life-expression.”24 As real, sensuous beings, we have real versus merely ideated objects of need and desire. We do not satisfy our real hunger merely by thinking about food. Instead, we satisfy our hunger, Marx insists, by consuming concrete objects of need—objects truly “outside” the self.25
Since we cannot achieve freedom simply by thinking our way out of our problems, what is required is that we confront the real or material causes of alienation. Marx’s prescription is that we both abolish religion and confront the economic and political causes of human misery. Confronting the economic and political causes of our misery means directing our attention
to the real phenomena of production. We need to understand how we produce our means both of subsistence and of satisfying our more complicated needs (for example, for power and status). The idea here is that who we are, how we live, and even how we think of ourselves, is intimately connected to the things we produce and our means of producing them.26
Marx’s critique of Hegel thus leads him to understand the philosophy of history in what he takes to be a fundamentally non-Hegelian way. For Marx, it is not sufficient to undertake a merely thoughtful consideration of human history. A serious philosophy of history must set out to describe not just abstractions, but “real individuals, their actions, and their material conditions of life.”27 It must include a critique of the concrete causes of unfreedom, a critique that expresses itself not just in thought but also in action.28
In his 1874 essay “On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life,” Nietzsche outlines a different kind of concern.29 He warns us there of the consequences for human freedom of an over-developed historical sense. Reverence and even nostalgia for the past can be harmless and even laudable, but not when it results in hostility towards the future (§ 8). A preoccupation with the past is especially dangerous, he suggests, when combined with the Christian and Hegelian thesis that all that has happened in history is part of a “world process” governed by inexorable laws no individual or culture can control (§ 9).30 A commitment to the inevitability of the world process depresses the human spirit. It encourages submissiveness and passivity; it reduces to futility the exercise of our critical faculties. “If every success contains within itself a rational necessity…[and] is a victory of the logical or of the ‘idea’,” Nietzsche writes, “then quickly down on your knees and up and down on every rung of the step ladder of ‘success’!” (§ 8). Nietzsche is convinced that the Hegelian system is infected by this “idolatry of the factual [Götzendienste des Tatsächlichen]” and for that very reason poses a genuine threat to human freedom (§ 8).
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Page 83