Logic, as Hegel understands the word, is declared by him to be the same thing as metaphysics; it is something quite different from what is commonly called logic. His view is that any ordinary predicate, if taken as qualifying the whole of Reality, turns out to be self-contradictory. One might take as a crude example the theory of Parmenides, that the One, which alone is real, is spherical. Nothing can be spherical unless it has a boundary, and it cannot have a boundary unless there is something (at least empty space) outside of it. Therefore to suppose the Universe as a whole to be spherical is self-contradictory. (This argument might be questioned by bringing in non-Euclidean geometry, but as an illustration it will serve.) Or let us take another illustration, still more crude—far too much so to be used by Hegel. You may say, without apparent contradiction, that Mr. A is an uncle; but if you were to say that the Universe is an uncle, you would land yourself in difficulties. An uncle is a man who has a nephew, and the nephew is a separate person from the uncle; therefore an uncle cannot be the whole of Reality.
This illustration might also be used to illustrate the dialectic, which consists of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. First we say: “Reality is an uncle.’ This is the Thesis. But the existence of an uncle implies that of a nephew. Since nothing really exists except the Absolute, and we are now committed to the existence of a nephew, we must conclude: “The Absolute is a nephew.” This is the Antithesis. But there is the same objection to this as to the view that the Absolute is an uncle; therefore we are driven to the view that the Absolute is the whole composed of uncle and nephew. This is the Synthesis. But this synthesis is still unsatisfactory, because a man can be an uncle only if he has a brother or sister who is a parent of the nephew. Hence we are driven to enlarge our universe to include the brother or sister, with his wife or her husband. In this sort of way, so it is contended, we can be driven on, by the mere force of logic, from any suggested predicate of the Absolute to the final conclusion of the dialectic, which is called the “Absolute Idea.” Throughout the whole process, there is an underlying assumption that nothing can be really true unless it is about Reality as a whole.
For this underlying assumption there is a basis in traditional logic, which assumes that every proposition has a subject and a predicate. According to this view, every fact consists in something having some property. It follows that relations cannot be real, since they involve two things, not one. “Uncle” is a relation, and a man may become an uncle without knowing it. In that case, from an empirical point of view, the man is unaffected by becoming an uncle; he has no quality which he did not have before, if by “quality” we understand something necessary to describing him as he is in himself, apart from his relations to other people and things. The only way in which the subject-predicate logic can avoid this difficulty is to say that the truth is not a property of the uncle alone, or of the nephew alone, but of the whole composed of uncle-and-nephew. Since everything, except the Whole, has relations to outside things, it follows that nothing quite true can be said about separate things, and that in fact only the Whole is real. This follows more directly from the fact that “A and B are two” is not a subject-predicate proposition, and therefore, on the basis of the traditional logic, there can be no such proposition. Therefore there are not as many as two things in the world; therefore the Whole, considered as a unity, is alone real.
The above argument is not explicit in Hegel, but is implicit in his system, as in that of many other metaphysicians.
A few examples of Hegel’s dialectic method may serve to make it more intelligible. He begins the argument of his logic by the assumption that “the Absolute is Pure Being”; we assume that it just is, without assigning any qualities to it. But pure being without any qualities is nothing; therefore we are led to the antithesis: “The Absolute is Nothing.” From this thesis and antithesis we pass on to the synthesis: The union of Being and Not-Being is Becoming, and so we say: “The Absolute is Becoming.” This also, of course, won’t do, because there has to be something that becomes. In this way our views of Reality develop by the continual correction of previous errors, all of which arose from undue abstraction, by taking something finite or limited as if it could be the whole. “The limitations of the finite do not come merely from without; its own nature is the cause of its abrogation, and by its own act it passes into its counterpart.”
The process, according to Hegel, is essential to the understanding of the result. Each later stage of the dialectic contains all the earlier stages, as it were in solution; none of them is wholly superseded, but is given its proper place as a moment in the Whole. It is therefore impossible to reach the truth except by going through all the steps of the dialectic.
Knowledge as a whole has its triadic movement. It begins with sense-perception, in which there is only awareness of the object. Then, through sceptical criticism of the senses, it becomes purely subjective. At last, it reaches the stage of self-knowledge, in which subject and object are no longer distinct. Thus self-consciousness is the highest form of knowledge. This, of course, must be the case in Hegel’s system, for the highest kind of knowledge must be that possessed by the Absolute, and as the Absolute is the Whole there is nothing outside itself for it to know.
In the best thinking, according to Hegel, thoughts become fluent and interfuse. Truth and falsehood are not sharply defined opposites, as is commonly supposed; nothing is wholly false, and nothing that we can know is wholly true. “We can know in a way that is false”; this happens when we attribute absolute truth to some detached piece of information. Such a question as “Where was Caesar born?” has a straightforward answer, which is true in a sense, but not in the philosophical sense. For philosophy, “the truth is the whole,” and nothing partial is quite true.
“Reason,” Hegel says, “is the conscious certainty of being all reality.” This does not mean that a separate person is all reality; in his separateness he is not quite real, but what is real in him is his participation in Reality as a whole. In proportion as we become more rational, this participation is increased.
The Absolute Idea, with which the Logic ends, is something like Aristotle’s God. It is thought thinking about itself. Clearly the Absolute cannot think about anything but itself, since there is nothing else, except to our partial and erroneous ways of apprehending Reality. We are told that Spirit is the only reality, and that its thought is reflected into itself by self-consciousness. The actual words in which the Absolute Idea is defined are very obscure. Wallace translates them as follows:
“The Absolute Idea. The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea—a notion whose object (Gegenstand) is the Idea as such, and for which the objective (Objekt) is Idea—an Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity.”
The original German is even more difficult.* The essence of the matter is, however, somewhat less complicated than Hegel makes it seem. The Absolute Idea is pure thought thinking about pure thought. This is all that God does throughout the ages—truly a Professor’s God. Hegel goes on to say: “This unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself.”
I come now to a singular feature of Hegel’s philosophy, which distinguishes it from the philosophy of Plato or Plotinus or Spinoza. Although ultimate reality is timeless, and time is merely an illusion generated by our inability to see the Whole, yet the time-process has an intimate relation to the purely logical process of the dialectic. World history, in fact, has advanced through the categories, from Pure Being in China (of which Hegel knew nothing except that it was) to the Absolute Idea, which seems to have been nearly, if not quite, realized in the Prussian State. I cannot see any justification, on the basis of his own metaphysic, for the view that world history repeats the transitions of the dialectic, yet that is the thesis which he developed in his Philosophy of History. It was an interesting thesis, giving unity and meaning to the revolutions of human affairs. Like other historical theories, it required, if it was to be mad
e plausible, some distortion of facts and considerable ignorance. Hegel, like Marx and Spengler after him, possessed both these qualifications. It is odd that a process which is represented as cosmic should all have taken place on our planet, and most of it near the Mediterranean. Nor is there any reason, if reality is timeless, why the later parts of the process should embody higher categories than the earlier parts—unless one were to adopt the blasphemous supposition that the Universe was gradually learning Hegel’s philosophy.
The time-process, according to Hegel, is from the less to the more perfect, both in an ethical and in a logical sense. Indeed these two senses are, for him, not really distinguishable, for logical perfection consists in being a closely-knit whole, without ragged edges, without independent parts, but united, like a human body, or still more like a reasonable mind, into an organism whose parts are interdependent and all work together towards a single end; and this also constitutes ethical perfection. A few quotations will illustrate Hegel’s theory:
“Like the soul-conductor Mercury, the Idea is, in truth, the leader of peoples and of the world; and Spirit, the rational and necessitated will of that conductor, is and has been the director of the events of the world’s history. To become acquainted with Spirit in this its office of guidance, is the object of our present undertaking.”
“The only thought which philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of history is the simple conception of Reason; that Reason is the sovereign of the world; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process. This conviction and intuition is a hypothesis in the domain of history as such. In that of philosophy it is no hypothesis. It is there proved by speculative cognition, that Reason—and this term may here suffice us, without investigating the relation sustained by the universe to the Divine Being—is Substance, as well as Infinite Power; its own infinite material underlying all the natural and spiritual life which it originates, as also the Infinite Form, that which sets the material in motion. Reason is the substance of the universe.”
“That this ‘Idea’ or ‘Reason’ is the True, the Eternal, the absolutely powerful essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honour and glory—is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy, and is here regarded as demonstrated.”
“The world of intelligence and conscious volition is not abandoned to chance, but must show itself in the light of the self-cognizant Idea.”
This is “a result which happens to be known to me, because I have traversed the entire field.”
All these quotations are from the introduction to The Philosophy of History.
Spirit, and the course of its development, is the substantial object of the philosophy of history. The nature of Spirit may be understood by contrasting it with its opposite, namely Matter. The essence of matter is gravity; the essence of Spirit is Freedom. Matter is outside itself, whereas Spirit has its centre in itself. “Spirit is self-contained existence.” If this is not clear, the following definition may be found more illuminating:
“But what is Spirit? It is the one immutably homogeneous Infinite—pure Identity—which in its second phase separates itself from itself and makes this second aspect its own polar opposite, namely as existence for and in Self as contrasted with the Universal.”
In the historical development of Spirit there have been three main phases: The Orientals, the Greeks and Romans, and the Germans. “The history of the world is the discipline of the uncontrolled natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal principle and conferring subjective freedom. The East knew, and to the present day knows, only that One is free; the Greek and Roman world, that some are free; the German world knows that All are free.” One might have supposed that democracy would be the appropriate form of government where all are free, but not so. Democracy and aristocracy alike belong to the stage where some are free, despotism to that where one is free, and monarchy to that in which all are free. This is connected with the very odd sense in which Hegel uses the word “freedom.” For him (and so far we may agree) there is no freedom without law; but he tends to convert this, and to argue that wherever there is law there is freedom. Thus “freedom,” for him, means little more than the right to obey the law.
As might be expected, he assigns the highest role to the Germans in the terrestrial development of Spirit. “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 from itself as its purport.”
This is a very superfine brand of freedom. It does not mean that you will be able to keep out of a concentration camp. It does not imply democracy, or a free press,* or any of the usual Liberal watchwords, which Hegel rejects with contempt. When Spirit gives laws to itself, it does so freely. To our mundane vision, it may seem that the Spirit that gives laws is embodied in the monarch, and the Spirit to which laws are given is embodied in his subjects. But from the point of view of the Absolute the distinction between monarch and subjects, like all other distinctions, is illusory, and when the monarch imprisons a liberal-minded subject, that is still Spirit freely determining itself. Hegel praises Rousseau for distinguishing between the general will and the will of all. One gathers that the monarch embodies the general will, whereas a parliamentary majority only embodies the will of all. A very convenient doctrine.
German history is divided by Hegel into three periods: the first, up to Charlemagne; the second, from Charlemagne to the Reformation; the third, from the Reformation onwards. These three periods are distinguished as the Kingdoms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, respectively. It seems a little odd that the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost should have begun with the bloody and utterly abominable atrocities committed in suppressing the Peasants’ War, but Hegel, naturally, does not mention so trivial an incident. Instead, he goes off, as might be expected, into praises of Machiavelli.
Hegel’s interpretation of history since the fall of the Roman Empire is partly the effect, and partly the cause, of the teaching of world history in German schools. In Italy and France, while there has been a romantic admiration of the Germans on the part of a few men, such as Tacitus and Machiavelli, they have been viewed, in general, as the authors of the “barbarian” invasion, and as enemies of the Church, first under the great Emperors, and later as the leaders of the Reformation. Until the nineteenth century the Latin nations looked upon the Germans as their inferiors in civilization. Protestants in Germany naturally took a different view. They regarded the late Romans as effete, and considered the German conquest of the Western Empire an essential step towards revivification. In relation to the conflict of Empire and Papacy in the Middle Ages, they took a Ghibelline view: to this day, German schoolboys are taught a boundless admiration of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. In the times after the Reformation, the political weakness and disunity of Germany was deplored, and the gradual rise of Prussia was welcomed as making Germany strong under Protestant leadership, not under the Catholic and somewhat feeble leadership of Austria. Hegel, in philosophizing about history, has in mind such men as Theodoric, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Luther, and Frederick the Great. He is to be interpreted in the light of their exploits, and in the light of the then recent humiliation of Germany by Napoleon.
So much is Germany glorified that one might expect to find it the final embodiment of the Absolute Idea, beyond which no further development would be possible. But this is not Hegel’s view. On the contrary, he says that America is the land of the future, “where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world’s history shall reveal itself—perhaps [he adds characteristically] in a contest between North and South America.” He seems to think that everything important takes the form of war. If it were suggested to him that the contribution of America to world history might be the development of a society without extreme poverty, he would not be interested. On the contrary, he says that, as yet,
there is no real State in America, because a real State requires a division of classes into rich and poor.
Nations, in Hegel, play the part that classes play in Marx. The principle of historical development, he says, is national genius. In every age, there is some one nation which is charged with the mission of carrying the world through the stage of the dialectic that it has reached. In our age, of course, this nation is Germany. But in addition to nations, we must also take account of world-historical individuals; these are men in whose aims are embodied the dialectical transitions that are due to take place in their time. These men are heroes, and may justifiably contravene ordinary moral rules. Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon are given as examples. I doubt whether, in Hegel’s opinion, a man could be a “hero” without being a military conqueror.
Hegel’s emphasis on nations, together with his peculiar conception of “freedom,” explains his glorification of the State—a very important aspect of his political philosophy, to which we must now turn our attention. His philosophy of the State is developed both in his Philosophy of History and in his Philosophy of Law. It is in the main compatible with his general metaphysic, but not necessitated by it; at certain points, however—e.g., as regards the relations between States—his admiration of the national State is carried so far as to become inconsistent with his general preference of wholes to parts.
Glorification of the State begins, so far as modern times are concerned, with the Reformation. In the Roman Empire, the Emperor was deified, and the State thereby acquired a sacred character; but the philosophers of the Middle Ages, with few exceptions, were ecclesiastics, and therefore put the Church above the State. Luther, finding support in Protestant princes, began the opposite practice; the Lutheran Church, on the whole was Erastian. Hobbes, who was politically a Protestant, developed the doctrine of the supremacy of the State, and Spinoza, on the whole, agreed with him. Rousseau, as we have seen, thought the State should not tolerate other political organizations. Hegel was vehemently Protestant, of the Lutheran section; the Prussian State was an Erastian absolute monarchy. These reasons would make one expect to find the State highly valued by Hegel, but, even so, he goes to lengths which are astonishing.
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