According to Hegel What Is the Final Stage of History?
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Hegel on History
Lawrence Evans rationally interprets Hegel's rational estimation of history.
We are often taught that history is nothing but the record of by events. Yet Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) idea that globe history was not simply a random sequence of happenings but progressed rationally, co-ordinate to a specific purpose. This has led some to the mistaken belief that Hegel thought history followed some predetermined path, such that his philosophy could somehow reveal the futurity course of events. This misconception has often been accompanied by the allegation that Hegel sought to impose his own metaphysical scheme onto the historical facts, to adapt them to his theory. I volition contend that these are gravely mistaken views; and also that Hegel can exist exonerated from the idea that he believed in 'the end of history', which is to say, the idea that history was fulfilled in his own particular historical moment.
How Hegel's Theory of History Works
Hegel's philosophy of history is most lucidly ready out in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, given at the University of Berlin in 1822, 1828 and 1830. In his introduction to those lectures Hegel said that in that location is reason in history considering 'reason rules the world'; hence world history is the progress of reason.
What does Hegel hateful by reason in history? He has in mind a 'teleological' business relationship – the idea that history conforms to some specific purpose or blueprint (this idea is too called 'historicism'). He compares this with the Christian notion of providence. Historical analysis, from the Christian perspective, reveals God's governance of the world and world history is understood equally the execution of His plan. Hegel has a very idiosyncratic idea of God, which he calls Geist – meaning 'spirit' or 'heed'. A philosophical understanding of the progression of world history enables us to know this God, to comprehend the nature and purpose of Geist.
For Hegel, the purpose or goal of history is the progress of the consciousness of liberty. Progress is rational in so far as it corresponds to this evolution. This rational evolution is the development of Geist attaining consciousness of itself, since the very nature of spirit is freedom. Hegel as well refers to Geist every bit the 'world spirit', the spirit of the world as it unveils itself through human consciousness, as manifested through a society's culture, particularly its fine art, organized religion and philosophy (Hegel calls this triad the expression of the 'absolute Spirit'). As Hegel puts it in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), spirit is the "ethical life of a nation." For Hegel, and then, in that location is rational progress in history only in then far as there is progress of the self-consciousness of the spirit of the world through man culture in terms of the consciousness of freedom.
It is crucial nevertheless that Hegel does not mean by 'freedom' merely the unrestricted ability to practice whatever we like: in the Philosophy of Right (1820) Hegel calls that type of liberty 'negative freedom' and says it's an intellectually immature style to sympathize freedom. What Hegel ways by freedom is instead closer to Immanuel Kant'southward idea, in which a free subject field is someone who self-consciously makes choices in accordance with universal principles and moral laws, and who does non merely pursue personal desires. Hegel claims that if the individuals of a nation merely pursue their own gratification, this will atomic number 82 to the eventual collapse of the nation.
The aim of world history is the development of the self-consciousness of spirit, which is the cocky-consciousness of freedom. The crucial point – and this is the key Hegelian twist – is that the world spirit does not have a conscious aim which it sets out to reach; rather, the aim but becomes known through the spirit achieving its aim. So the purpose of history can but be understood retrospectively. That is to say, to understand historical development, i has to know the result in order to then trace back the factors which led to it. As Hegel explains, historical necessity so emerges through the historical contingency; or as nosotros might say, the outcome and then gives its cause the appearance of necessity. For instance, permit's say that I catch the eight.30 train to work. Assuming the train is on fourth dimension (an unrealistic expectation, I know), and given that I do arrive at work on time, and then it was necessary that I caught my train; but this does not mean that I was ever going to grab the train… In the same way, the point is not that for Hegel history is predetermined, but rather that the purpose of history tin be realised retrospectively. What's more, the realisation of this purpose is the purpose of the very process of history!
We tin can also see from this that Hegel not simply intends to explain how the past has influenced the present, merely besides the influence the present has on our estimation of the past. Hegel points out that the task of philosophy is not to prophesy or make forecasts. Instead, philosophy ever arrives as well late. Every bit he famously writes, "the owl of Minerva flies only at sunset." In other words, philosophy (or 'wisdom', hence his reference to the Roman goddess of wisdom) tin only analyse history retrospectively, from the standpoint of the present. And so Hegel does not remember that his philosophy of history should be imposed on the facts. On the contrary, he stresses that we must examine the facts of history (or indeed the facts of any other matter) every bit they present themselves, that is, empirically and for their own sake. Nosotros tin then derive our philosophy (or wisdom) from these facts, without imposing any metaphysical preconceptions on them. This also means that although Hegel sees reason in history, this reason tin can nevertheless but exist completely understood philosophically when the goal of history is consummate.
Hegel perceives world history to have adult co-ordinate to a dialectical process. Hegelian dialectic is ofttimes described this way: "a thesis provokes its opposite idea – its antithesis – and together they give rise to an thought that combines elements of both – their synthesis." But Hegel never used that terminology, although information technology does convey some sense of what he had in mind. Hegel himself called the master feature of the dialectic Aufhebung, a discussion with meanings including 'to overcome' or 'cancel' or 'choice upwardly or preserve'. To endeavour to render several of its meanings, equally well every bit the technical connotation Hegel intended, it's ofttimes translated equally 'sublation'. The Merriam-Webster Lexicon defines this every bit "to negate or eliminate (something) simply preserve as a partial chemical element in a synthesis." Any imperfect idea, and in detail, whatsoever incomplete concept of liberty, contains within itself its own contradictions, and sublation is the process whereby these contradictions come to exist unified in a higher principle. Thus in a Hegelian dialectical process there is a conflict betwixt a concept and its external opposite which develops into an internal contradiction where the concept struggles with itself, and through this struggle the concept is overcome and simultaneously preserved in a unification with its contradiction at a higher level. Then the new concept produced in this mode undergoes the same process again, and and then on, so history progresses in a sort of spiral.
To understand this, though, information technology'due south best to look at how Hegel discussed actual history.
What Hegel's Theory of History Is
To describe the development of the consciousness of freedom, Hegel divides globe history into three major cultures or epochs. In the tyrannical age, which Hegel thought was characterised past the pre-Greek 'Oriental' world, people know that but one person, the ruler or autocrat, is free. Then the Greeks and Romans know that some persons – the citizens – are free. Finally, the Germanic peoples (that is, Western Europe), through the influence of Christianity, know that all persons, or homo beings as such, are free. Information technology is crucial to understand that Hegel doesn't but want to bear witness that the corporeality of freedom has increased over the course of history, simply that the concept of freedom itself has fundamentally changed. And if there has been development in the concept of freedom, there will also take been development in the nature of spirit, since spirit is characterised by freedom.
In more detail, Hegel distinguishes this development into four particular stages. In the Oriental world, the people knew that just the ruler is gratuitous. Since the spirit of liberty was therefore immanent or manifested only inside a single private, whose liberty was realised by an accident of birth, this freedom is thus merely arbitrary. Moreover, people were unaware of the subjective freedom inside themselves; and so Hegel considers this the 'babyhood' menses of the evolution of spirit.
The consciousness of subjective liberty kickoff appeared in the Greek world; but even the Greeks did non realise that all human beings as such are free. The ethical life (or absolute spirit) of the Greeks was distinguished past an underlying satisfaction with convention. People lived in relative harmony with the norms and traditions of gild. Yet still this was an inherently self-contradictory style of life, for people did not question the land's customs, morals, rights and then on, and so they still lacked a sufficiently adult cocky-consciousness. In Greek society there was therefore an inherent tension between individual freedom and the universal principles of the country. Hegel compares this tension with adolescence. It took the figure of Socrates to encourage people to reflect on the accepted notions of ethics, and thus for the spirit to re-awaken itself.
In the subsequent period of the Roman Empire, subjective liberty was recognised in terms of the introduction of formal rights for citizens. Merely this notion of freedom was besides abstract, above the concrete, everyday globe of citizens. Hence, spirit was in a phase of self-alienation. Truthful freedom only emerged with the rise of Christianity in the Germanic world, when liberty was understood as the very essence of humanity. So Christianity is important for Hegel, since it is only through the effigy of Jesus Christ (whom Hegel calls the 'God-man') that human beings observe the essence of spirit within themselves and overcome their alienation from God (that is, from the world spirit). For after Christ dies on the cantankerous he is 'sublated' into the Holy (or divine) Spirit (which for Hegel means the community of believers, or 'Christendom' as nosotros might telephone call it).
Christianity was at the fore of intellectual life throughout the Middle Ages. However, Hegel saw Medieval Christianity as an archetype of what he called the 'unhappy consciousness', due to what he perceived every bit the failure of the Church to mediate between individuals and God. Information technology took a item world-historical moment, namely the French Revolution, for spirit to get truly cocky-witting; to escape 'abstract' freedom and realise 'concrete' freedom through the laws equally they applied to the people. Even near the end of his life Hegel remained jubilant most the French Revolution, describing it as "a glorious mental dawn."
So the world spirit has developed dialectically throughout history by a series of struggles with itself. Spirit tin but overcome its phase of alienation from itself through realising this very breach. Each stage was therefore entirely necessary in the development of spirit'southward cocky-consciousness, but the necessity of each phase can simply exist realised retrospectively.
The Terminate of History
What drives the world spirit towards a full consciousness of liberty? And how do individuals become aware of the goal of history, that is, this fulfilled consciousness?
For Hegel, globe history is driven by 'earth-historical individuals'; so-called 'great men' such as Socrates, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon. They alone are able to influence the tides of history and bulldoze forward the cocky-consciousness of liberty. In a alphabetic character written to his friend Friedrich Niethammer in 1806, Hegel described Napoleon with adulation equally 'a world soul on horseback'. However much these earth-historical individuals are inclined to pursue their own interests, they are unknowingly used by spirit to motility towards the realisation of its ain self-consciousness. Hegel refers to this as the 'cunning of reason'.
A "globe soul on horseback" past Jacques-Louis David, 1805
But how then can the pursuit of their own interests past earth-historical individuals be a result of the working of reason in history and and so aid the development of liberty? Hegel's answer is ingenious. He notes that any individual who actively supports a historically-prominent cause is non only a self-interested political party who seeks their own satisfaction; they must also be actively interested in the cause itself. And this crusade, beingness a manifestation of a given stage in the progress of reason'due south history, must consequence in overall progress towards the realisation of human freedom.
Some – notably Francis Fukuyama – have taken Hegel to mean that, because the goal of history as the self-consciousness of human liberty had been achieved in his time, the world had reached 'the end of history'.
We must be careful to go along in mind the fashion Hegel is using the word 'history' hither – which is, of course, the unfolding of reason in the progress of the consciousness of freedom. For Fukuyama, this realisation of freedom actually occurred with the plummet of the Berlin Wall in 1989, signalling the end of Communism in Europe and the triumph of liberal republic over all alternative systems of authorities. Fukuyama'south particular notion is then that liberal democracy is the terminal grade of society embodying the cocky-consciousness of freedom. At that place is, however, nothing to propose that Hegel would accept endorsed anything like the detail kind of liberalism prevalent in modern social club. Hegel saw in liberalism - specially in the French liberal authorities in his own time - a tension between individual rights and social unity. It seems that Hegel himself rejected liberalism as an ideology, because he believed that it would atomic number 82 people to selfishly put their individual interests in a higher place the universal principles which uphold the state; and and so liberalism, at to the lowest degree in his ain fourth dimension, could not be a stable socio-economic and political system. "This standoff," Hegel writes in the conclusion of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, "this problem is that with which history is at present occupied and whose solution it has to work out in the future." It is also important to note that Hegel does not mean 'the end of history' in the sense that historical development finishes with his historical moment in Europe. Indeed, with regards to the actual content of world history, and the contempo surge in his own time of American independence, Hegel insightfully remarks that "America is therefore the state of the future, and its world-historical importance has still to be revealed in the ages which prevarication alee…"
Hegel before history
The fact that Hegel mentions 'the future' in the specific context of world history in these final two quotes is of particular interest here, for information technology suggests that this was not only a gesture simply something systematic. Hegel does not pretend to accept knowledge of what lies ahead; even if the consciousness of liberty is now fully manifested in the earth, this does not mean that the future must therefore be already written. On the contrary, Hegel believes that because history is contingent there are no foregone conclusions concerning the hereafter. And these points surely demonstrate that Hegel did not believe that liberalism was the 'end of history', nor that in whatever conceivable way history ended at his particular historical moment. What Hegel means past an end to history is not that there are to be no further developments: instead, the goal of history has been achieved: the world is at present conscious of freedom, and the world spirit knows itself as the ultimate reality – what Hegel refers to every bit 'absolute knowing'.
To conclude, I have tried to clear upwardly some common misconceptions about Hegel's philosophy of history, specially nearly his thought of historical necessity. I accept argued that for Hegel, history is not determined and closed, and thereby at an end, but is instead both contingent and radically open up.
The past is preserved in the nowadays to the extent that it has shaped the present in the development of the self-consciousness of human freedom that we at present have. This understanding is the Hegelian legacy we need today.
© Lawrence Evans 2018
Lawrence Evans has a Master's caste in philosophy from the London School of Economics, and is currently a research student in the philosophy department at Academy College London.
Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/129/Hegel_on_History
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