Abstract
The “disappearance of ethical life” that characterizes the transition from family into civil society in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right must be followed by a second step: ethical life has to be restored in the good life of the state. According to Hegel, this movement is repeated at international level: at the level of world history, the ethical organism of the state seems, once again, is subjected to a process that can be characterized as “disappearance of ethical life.” From a contemporary point of view we might conclude that in this repetition the “disappearance of ethical life” has to be overcome by the development of a just international order. Under current conditions, however, the double movement needed for the “sublation” or supersession of the “disappearance of ethical life” manifests itself (at least in Europe) as a double crisis: at national level the sublation seems to fail, resulting in a distrust of national government; at international (European) level the sublation seems to fail, resulting in a distrust of European institutions. The essay seeks to show how a revised account of conditions for sublating the “disappearance of ethical life” can contribute to a better understanding of the actual double crisis at the national and international level mentioned above.
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- 1.
“It follows that if states disagree and their particular wills cannot be harmonized, the matter can only be settled by war.” G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press, 1967) [hereafter PR], §334.
- 2.
Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Essay, trans. M. Campbell Smith (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1917).
- 3.
G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996), 56.
- 4.
PR, 12.
- 5.
Hegel still wrote: “But since the sovereignty of a state is the principle of its relations to others, states are to that extent in a state of nature in relation to each other. Their rights are actualized only in their particular will and not in a universal will with constitutional powers over them. This universal proviso of international law therefore does not go beyond an ought-to-be, and what really happens is that international relations in accordance with treaty alternate with the severance of these relations.” PR, §333.
- 6.
PR, §340.
- 7.
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford University Press 1977), 112–19.
- 8.
As Hobbes’s Leviathan, the master transforms the power of nature into a social one. But in contrast to the Leviathan, the master is recognized not as law-giver but as the representation of the slave’s freedom. In obeying the laws of the master the slave concretely asserts that he is not governed by the laws of nature and so, in this sense, is in principle free.
- 9.
In the Religion chapter of the Phenemonology of Spirit, Hegel discusses the historical stages through which the master has passed.
- 10.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 117.
- 11.
“Hence this absolute decisive moment of the whole is not individuality in general, but a single individual, the monarch.” PR, §279.
- 12.
“The constitution is rational in so far as the state inwardly differentiates and determines its activities in accordance with the nature of the concept.” PR, §272.
- 13.
PR, §275.
- 14.
“The monarch, therefore, is essentially characterized as this individual, in abstraction from all his other characteristics, and this individual is raised to the dignity of monarchy in an immediate, natural, fashion, i.e. through his birth in the course of nature.” PR, §280.
- 15.
“This relation and the recognition of it is therefore the individual’s substantive duty, the duty to maintain this substantive individuality, i.e. the independence and sovereignty of the state, at the risk and the sacrifice of property and life, as well as of opinion and everything else naturally comprised in the compass of life.” PR, §324.
- 16.
“It is the moment wherein the substance of the state-i.e. its absolute power against everything individual and particular, against life, property, and their rights, even against societies and associations-makes the nullity of these finite things an accomplished fact and brings it home to consciousness.” PR, §322.
- 17.
PR, §282.
- 18.
PR, §333 (see note 5).
- 19.
If not embedded in international law, the conscience of the monarch seems to be a subjectivist conscience, one that cannot distinguish between good and evil.
- 20.
It is true that, according to Hegel, world history results in reconciliation: “The realm of fact has discarded its barbarity and unrighteous caprice, while the realm of truth has abandoned the world beyond and its arbitrary force, so that the true reconciliation which discloses the state as the image and actuality of reason has become objective” (PR §360). This reconciliation is elaborated in the institutions of ethical life as developed in the Philosophy of Right. This reconciliation, however, does not concern the reconciliation between the real states of history. Each state is only a finite realization of ethical life: “Their deeds and destinies in their reciprocal relations to one another are the dialectic of the finitude of these minds…” (PR, §340).
- 21.
Hegel advocates freedom of religion: “…since religion is an integrating factor in the state, implanting a sense of unity in the depths of men’s minds, the state should even require all its citizens to belong to a church-a church is all that can be said, because since the content of a men’s faith depends on his private ideas, the state cannot interfere with it” (PR, §270A). But religion, for its part, does not interfere with the state: “But if religion be religion of a genuine kind, it does not run counter to the state in a negative or polemical way like the kind just described. It rather recognizes the state and upholds it, and furthermore it has a position and an external organization of its own” (ibid.). Therefore, religions seem in no way able to contribute the specific conception of the good that characterizes the state in which they participate.
- 22.
The state guarantees that the activities at the level of civil society serve the prevailing conception of the good: “The maintenance of the state’s universal interest, and of legality, in this sphere of particular rights, and the work of bringing the rights back to the universal, require to be superintended by holders of the executive power …” PR §289.
- 23.
In modern world history (the Germanic Realm), this multiculturality has, in Hegel’s view, nothing to do with religious differences. Modern world history is characterized rather by the separation between state and church. Multiculturality is expressed in different conceptions of the good (even if in each of these conceptions the realities of fact and truth are reconciled).
- 24.
It must be stressed that this kind of multiculturality has nothing to do with a “clash of civilizations”: only those cultures are relevant that correspond to institutional structures oriented to the realization of freedom.
- 25.
Phenomenology of Spirit, 118.
- 26.
The ethical institutions of family, civil society and state represent a systematic reconstruction of the institutions historically presented respectively as the polis, the realm of Education and Morality, in the Spirit chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. See Paul Cobben, The Nature of the Self. Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009).
- 27.
“An animal’s needs and its way and means of satisfying them are both alike restricted in scope. Though man is subject to this restriction too, yet at the same time he evinces his transcendence of it and his universality …” PR, §190.
- 28.
“… these circles of particular interests must be subordinated to the higher interests of the state, and hence the filling of positions of responsibility in Corporations, &c., will generally be effected by a mixture of popular election by those interested with appointment and ratification by higher authority.” PR, §288.
- 29.
“The right of the individuals to be subjectively destined to freedom is fulfilled when they belong to an ethical order, because their conviction of their freedom finds its truth in such an objective order, and it is in an ethical order that they are actually in possession of their own essence or their own inner universality.” PR, §153.
- 30.
PR, §197.
- 31.
“The identity of the good with the subjective will, an identity which therefore is concrete and the truth of them both, is Ethical Life.” PR, §141.
- 32.
Max Weber distinguishes between the domain of subjective values and the domain of rational action.
- 33.
In Hegel’s view as well, different point of views are represented in the parliament. This differentiation, however, does not reflect distinct conceptions of the good. It concerns rather the different domains of society that are represented. The deputies represent “associations, communities, and Corporations, which, although constituted already for other purposes, acquire in this way a connection with politics.” PR, §308.
- 34.
In this sense, the European Union recalls Hegel’s concept of the state: the differentiations of civil society have a one-sided economic significance; they are not politically represented at state level.
References
Cobben, Paul. 2009. The nature of the self. Recognition in the form of right and morality. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1967. Philosophy of right (trans: Knox, T.M.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1977. Phenomenology of spirit (trans: Miller, A.V.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1996. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
Kant, Immanuel. 1917. Perpetual peace: A philosophical essay (trans: Campbell Smith, M.). London: George Allen and Unwin.
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Cobben, P. (2012). The Citizen of the European Union from a Hegelian Perspective. In: Buchwalter, A. (eds) Hegel and Global Justice. Studies in Global Justice, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8996-0_9
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