Abstract
This paper challenges the association of Hegel with political realism. Many approaches rely predominantly on the Philosophy of Right’s third part (the State) and on the Phenomenology of Spirit’s ‘master‒slave’ dialectic, classifying Hegel as a political realist who praises the state, glorifies war and dismisses international law. However, this oversimplifies Hegel’s thought and misinterprets his methodology. The thesis of this paper is that these misperceptions can be avoided once: (i) Hegel’s corpus is considered coherently; (ii) the context of his philosophical thought is taken into account; and (iii) his insights cease to be applied in a descriptive or prescriptive way. Hegel’s contribution will be revisited by way of treating the Phenomenology of Spirit as the point of departure to comprehend the Philosophy of Right. Approaching the Philosophy of Right through the Phenomenology’s emphasis on the forms of consciousness, spirit (Geist) and ethical life (Sittlichkeit), reveals the intellectual wealth of Hegel’s methodology while exposing the methodological flaws of realism.
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Notes
For an interesting interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of history as linear yet unfamiliar, which associates Hegel with constructivism and postmodernism, see McKay and LaRoche (2017).
Scholars such as Taylor adopt a ‘metaphysical’ interpretation of Hegel which associates the realm of nature with the human historical world of spirit according to which existence and truth derive from a cosmic substance ‘for the inner truth of things is that they flow from thought, that they are structured by rational necessity’ (Taylor 1975, p. 298). On the other hand, scholars such as Pippin and Pinkard adopt a ‘non-metaphysical’ interpretation. The former draws a distinction between nature and spirit which understates the metaphysical dimension of Hegel’s work arguing that ‘contrary to the rationalist tradition, human reason can attain non-empirical knowledge about what has come to be called recently our conceptual scheme and the concepts required for a scheme to count as one at all’ (Pippin 1989, p. 8).
The approach this paper adopts is closer to Pinkard’s treatment of spirit as a form of social space. Specifically, Pinkard notes that ‘Spirit is a self-conscious form of life, it is a form of life which has developed various social practices for reflecting on what it takes to be authoritative for itself in terms of whether these practices live their own claims and achieve the aims that they set for themselves’ (Pinkard 1996, pp. 8‒9).
Realism is often considered to describe the ‘world as it is, not as it ought to be’ (Jorgensen 2010, p. 78); therefore, the perception of realism as a normative (in an ethical sense) account of international relations might appear unconvincing. Nevertheless, the present study considers that realism accommodates a normative dimension. Normative is a broad term which refers to theories which tend to be prescriptive and concerned with changing or improving the world. Realism has a normative dimension if we focus on its ontological dimension. Specifically, the ontological component of (classical) realism is comprised of both an empirical (verifiable facts) and a metaphysical dimension which refers to ‘truths’ regarding our existence. The metaphysical one is premised on the claim that human nature is essentially bad (e.g. Hobbes) and a teleological or repetitive pattern of human history according to which states aspire to maximise their power (e.g. Morgenthau 1975). Both metaphysical claims affect a realist’s understanding of interstate relations and international law. As Hutchings notes, ‘the prescriptive element of normative international theory follows from its ontological and methodological claims’ (Hutchings 1999, p. 5). Furthermore, in spite of the fact that realism does not constitute ‘a single theoretical tradition but an interconnected series of themes […] elements of which can be found in the work of Niebuhr, Morgenthau and Carr […] they have all worked to reinforce a particular set of claims about the right way to organize and conduct international politics’ (ibid., p. 15) in a normative fashion.
For a realist constructivist reading of Hegel, see also McKay and Levin (2015).
Instead, Mansfield observed how, for Machiavelli, the notion of morality cannot be absent from politics but is context specific and such a critical understanding of morality should determine the actions of the political leader, reviving this as ‘a virtue which brings success in politics’ (Mansfield 1996, p. xiii). Carr who is often celebrated as a realist, yet his thought is much deeper and complicated, also makes another reference to morality. Carr writes that realism ‘lacked a finite goal, an emotional appeal and a right of moral judgment and a ground for action’ (Carr 2001, p. 89).
In par. 29 (Hegel 1977, p. 17), Hegel argues that ‘Science sets forth this formative process in all its details and necessity, exposing the mature configuration of everything which has already been reduced to a moment and property of Spirit. But the length of this part has to be endured because each moment is necessary and further each moment has to be lingered over because each is itself a complete individual shape and one is only viewed in absolute perspective when its determinateness is regarded as a concrete whole’.
To use Hegel’s words in par. 81, Zusatz 2, ‘[true philosophy] includes the sceptical principle as a subordinate function of its own in the shape of the dialectic. In contradiction to scepticism however, philosophy does not remain content with the purely negative result of the dialectic […] the negative as the result of the dialectic is at the same time the positive, it contains what it results from absorbed into itself and does not exist without it’. See Hegel (2010).
‘[T]he refutation must not come from the outside, that is it must not proceed from assumptions lying outside the system in question and which it does not accord with. The genuine refutation must penetrate the opponent’s stronghold and meet him on his own ground. No advantage is gained by attacking him somewhere else and meeting him where he is not’ (Hegel 1969, pp. 580‒581).
A similar approach which defends a phenomenological reading of the Philosophy of Right was advanced by Hutchings (1999, pp. 98‒99).
In the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, par. 131, Hegel argues that ‘appearance does not get away from Essence, but contains it as “show” […]. The essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a ground forward into existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself, but on something else, is just appearance’ (Hegel 1991, p. 191).
In the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, appearance and reality are examined from the prism of the form and content. According to Hegel, form and content are a unity of opposites. Unlike Fichte, Hegel does not identify the content with a ‘formless’ matter and form with the structure of that matter, since such a concept reduces content to a wholly abstract ‘thing-in-itself’ which is conducive to an idealist understanding of things. As Hegel (1991, p. 193) stresses in par. 133, ‘the essential point to keep in mind about the opposition of Form and Content is that the content is not formless, but has the form in its own self, quite as much as the form is external to it […]. We are here in presence, implicitly, of the absolute correlation of content and form: their reciprocal revulsion, so that content is nothing but the revulsion of form into content, and form nothing but the revulsion of content into form. This mutual revulsion is one of the most important laws of thought’.
Fukuyama argued that evolution and historical progress are stimulated on two accounts. The first relates to the modern natural science which develops ‘a changing horizon of production capabilities for which capitalism proved to be the most efficient means’. The second is associated to the struggle of human beings for recognition which culminated in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, see Fukuyama (1989).
It is worth noting that Fukuyama has indeed been influenced by Kojeve, but their approaches differ. In contrast to Kojeve, Fukuyama in his early work (1989) places substantive emphasis on liberal democracy and argues that the development of history resulted in a liberal state linked to capitalist economy. In his latest work Fukuyama insists that liberal democracies are the final form of human government, yet they can decay or go backwards, highlighting the role of identity politics which ‘can be used to divide but can also be used to integrate’ (Fukuyama 2018, p. 163).
Reference should also be made here to Suzan Buck-Morss’ book Hegel, Haiti and Universal History (2009). Unlike Kojeve, one of the main arguments of Buck-Morss’ book is that Hegel’s master‒slave dialectic was inspired by the Haitian revolution when the former slaves declared their independence from Napoleon’s France.
Terry Pinkard elaborates further on the link between the development of our consciousness with history, treating the contingency of history as ‘the infinite end of collective self-comprehension and different ways of being a human subject’ (Pinkard 2017, p. 167).
There are certainly exceptions: military conscription still exists in countries like Israel and Greece.
On the importance of context in the study of war see e.g. Van Ingen (2016).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Alex Callinicos, Kimberly Hutchings, Gary Browning and Bill Bowring who offered invaluable feedback at an early stage. Moreover, I would like to thank Richard Ned Lebow, Tarak Barkawi and Adrian Blau who had the patience to read the manuscript and provide me with comments that improved it. Importantly, I would also like to thank Chris Blunt who had the patience to read the manuscript thoroughly, prompting me to proceed to a number of important corrections. Finally, I would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their insights.
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Gkoutzioulis, A. Challenging the association of Hegel with political realism: the contribution of Hegel’s methodological insights to a critique of realism and a richer understanding of war and statehood. J Int Relat Dev 23, 970–995 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-019-00177-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-019-00177-5