Wen | Zhang Rulun
Excerpt from | Rhine's Shadow
Hegel and the modern state
Fame and slander followed, and it was a fate shared by Hegel with Nietzsche and Heidegger. Hegel became the object of criticism almost as soon as he died, and philosophically and politically, his verbal criticism continues from then to the present day. As early as 1857, his compatriot Rudolf Haym, in his book Hegel and His Time, said that Hegel's doctrine of the state was nothing more than an academic defense of the Carlsbad police state and its political persecution. Michelet then said that Hegel was in harmony with the policies of the reactionary governments of the Restoration era. Since then, Hegel has become increasingly reactionary in the writings of many of his peers, to the point of becoming a reviled non-negotiable character. Hobhouse said that Hegel's doctrine of the state was wrong because it was right to prove the negation of the individual.
Russell wrote in the History of Western Philosophy that if Hegel's theory of the state is recognized, then all domestic tyranny and all foreign aggression imaginable have an excuse. And he also found that Bismarck's ethics were directly related to Hegel's teachings. Cassirer, for his part, said in The Myth of the State: "There is no other philosophical system like Hegel's nationalism... In that way, so much preparation was made for fascism and imperialism. In Pop's pen, Hegel became the "enemy of open society," the ideological forerunner of totalitarianism. Three people become tigers, not to mention that there are far more than three well-known people who accuse Hegel. Naturally, people will not doubt the veracity of these allegations, because the accusers are all academic celebrities. Moreover, it is so easy to find "unmistakable" evidence from the writings of Hegel and others. Thus, the powerful defense of Hegel by many philosophers, including Marcuse, has not completely changed the prejudice against him.
Interestingly, Hegel, who was seen by liberal thinkers as a pioneer of fascist thought, was not considered his own by the Nazis. Hegel's political ideals of advocating a state governed by the rule of law as a rational whole, demanding the indiscriminate protection of everyone's interests, are far removed from the reality of the Nazi state. The Nazis ruled the country by the party, while Hegel saw the state above the interests of all individuals and groups. In this way, Hegel was naturally regarded as a heretic by the Nazis. They thought it was possible to destroy Hegel's thought in the same way that they destroyed a man's flesh. On the very day Hitler came to power, Karl Schmitt said with great ambition: "So to speak, Hegel is dead." But history proves that Hegel did not die so easily.
The Shadow of Rhinegar
By Zhang Rulun
|, Guangxi Normal University Press I think Cogito
Hegel's fate in China also experienced ups and downs. At one point he was the only Western philosopher who could study positively, and his words had an authority second only to the classical writers of Marxism and Leninism, and he was worshipped not only by the philosophical community, but also by researchers in other humanities disciplines. Hegel studies (mainly his dialectics) is an apparent science in the study of philosophy. However, after the 1980s, when Western thought poured in, Hegel lost his glory and soon changed from a god to a "dead dog". One either accepts the old view of English-language philosophical circles as a completely obsolete metaphysician, or is attracted to something new and turns around. Even scholars who have studied for many years have changed their ways, turning to Heidegger or something more fashionable. In addition to Mr. Xue Hua's several works, there are not many works on Hegel in the past 20 years, and even fewer works on his political, social and historical ideas. This phenomenon of Hegel's research also partly explains why we have introduced Western studies on a large scale for nearly a century and a half, and there are many Chinese translations of important texts of Western studies, but almost no Western thinker has been truly thoroughly studied.
Yu Jianxing's new work, The Critique of Liberalism and the Reconstruction of Liberal Theory, is a larger, positive study of Hegel's political philosophy that has emerged in recent years. The book deals more carefully with Hegel's critique of the basic theory of liberalism and Hegel's own conception of freedom, giving people a more objective understanding of Hegel's political philosophy, which has long been distorted, and this alone is commendable. But the value of Yu Jianxing's work lies more in allowing us to see the modern relevance of Hegel's thought, and for all those who reflect on modernity, Hegel's philosophy is an important ideological resource that cannot be ignored.
Hegel was the first thinker to comprehensively reflect and criticize modernity from the height of world history, and in this sense, Marx, Weber, and even Nietzsche and Heidegger were his successors. He is both the child of the modern age and its contrarian; both the apologist of the modern era and its critic. His ideas fully embody the heterogeneity and ambiguity of modernity itself. The contradictions of modern times are also embodied in the contradictions of the thought of this master of dialectics. That is why, just as modern times can be completely different in the eyes of different people, Hegel will also take on different faces in different people. The complexity of Hegel's thought is due to the complexity of the modern era itself, which manifests itself in fictional figures such as Hamlet and Faust, as well as in real beings such as Hegel and Nietzsche.
The German philosopher Ritter, in his famous book Hegel and the French Revolution, pointed out that Hegel had insight into the historical essence of the French revolution and the whole era, that is, the emergence of an industrial civil society of modern labor. Civil society is where all the problems and contradictions of modernity lie. Hegel's reflections and critiques of modernity, including his critiques of liberalism, developed from his analysis and critique of civil society. In Hegel's view, the fundamental feature of modernity is the liberation of the individual from all kinds of bondage, and civil society is the institutional and political embodiment of this individual freedom and free individual. Hegel's concept of civil society bürgerliche Gesellschaft differs from the civil society concept of civil society by British thinkers such as Locke. The former refers to the society of citizens (who live in cities, especially autonomous cities), the society of people associated with the market; the latter comes from the Latin societas civilis, which in Roman law refers to the public city as opposed to the family.
It was in this sense that British classical thinkers used the term. Although Hegel also accepted many of their views, his concept of civil society was different from theirs. Hegel saw civil society primarily as a field of private economic activity opposed to both the family and the state, which he called the "system of needs", that is, the place where individuals satisfies their own material interests and needs, which, although there is a judicial system and a police, is basically not a political field. Hegel defines civil society as follows: "It is the union of the members as independent individuals, and thus in the universality of form, which is established through the needs of the members, through the legal system that guarantees the person and property, through the maintenance of the external order of their special interests and the public interest." "The civil society that Hegel speaks of is in fact the modern bourgeois state.
Unlike his contemporaries, the Romantics and Conservatives, and unlike contemporary critics of modernity, Hegel was first and foremost a strong apologist for the legitimacy of modern society. Although civil society is a mercenary society, it is a free society that has never existed. It insists on the inalienable equal rights of the individual, increases the needs of the human person and the means to satisfy them, organizes the division of labour and promotes the rule of law. Hegel, like the liberals, believed that private property was the primary embodiment of freedom, and that the abolition of private property was tantamount to the abolition of the free individual. The State must protect and satisfy the interests of the individual and must not be based on the principle of the abolition of individual rights. Freedom, as the highest principle of his philosophy, has not only political and moral significance, but also metaphysical significance. All this has led many people to refer to him as a "liberal" in recent years. But this statement, like calling him a "totalitarian intellectual pioneer", is simply "a different way of playing the same tune" (Habermas).
Although hegel is often treated with a simple attitude (as they do with Nietzsche and Heidegger), Hegel's thought is complex, especially his reflections on modernity, as complex as modernity. Hegel was perhaps the first to see that modernity was actually a heterogeneous form of civilization. Civil society itself embodies this heterogeneity. It certainly liberates man from need, but at the same time it makes him more subject to the contingency of desire. It brings people together on the basis of interests without true unity and freedom. Thus, Hegel affirmed the world-historical significance of civil society while at the same time being critical of it. He criticized civil society not because it produced poverty, mass unemployment, illiteracy, the unfair distribution of wealth, as well as economic imperialism, the search for overseas markets, colonialism, and so on, but that the public good or the interests of the whole had no place in it.
Marx, in his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, once said that if the theory is to be convincing, it must be thorough. "The so-called thoroughness is to grasp the essence of things. But the root of man is man himself. "To understand anthropocentric modern society, we must begin with its understanding of man. The atomically isolated individual is both the basic description of man by modernity and the main ideological assumption of its self-understanding and construction, the cornerstone of all modern value systems. Freedom is ultimately the freedom to pursue one's own interests, while rights are ultimately the right to possess and preserve one's own interests. The individual (self) is the basic starting point and premise of society, not the other way around. As Hegel points out: "In civil society, everyone has his own ends, and everything else seems to him to be nothing." Thus, nihilism is the fate of the modern age.
Although Hegel acknowledged civil society as a "union of independent individuals," this in no way meant that he recognized or accepted the modern concept of the atomically isolated individual. On the contrary, he argues that the concept of the individual is a fictional myth, a concept created by society, and that modern society and social order make people think of themselves first and foremost as individuals, not as members of a community, such as the family, society, etc. It makes people completely forget about this. Thus, the freedoms and rights based on this personal concept are undefined and abstract. The "abstraction" that Hegel speaks of is not only a lack of regulation, but also an accident and arbitrariness that arises from the will and desire of the individual. The horrors of the French Revolution were the result of this proliferation of abstract freedoms and rights.
In Hegel's view, the problem of the French Revolution was not, as some people today understand, because of revolution, not reform; but "in a real great power, with the overthrow of all that exists, the state system is built from the ground up on the basis of abstract ideas, and it is hoped that it will be based only on imaginary rational things." This is not the case with China's modern history. It is felt that abstract principles and even slogans have the magic of resurrection, and the historical legitimacy that evolution has given to these principles and slogans gives their advocates the courage and self-confidence of the way of heaven, and all the sacrifices and costs are not worth mentioning compared with the wonderful prospects promised by these abstract principles. The establishment of a modern political system must not be a continuation of history, but only the latest and most beautiful pictures drawn on a blank piece of paper. It seems natural to take someone else's path, the difference is only to take someone's path. The basis of tradition and historical rationality is completely ignored. The resulting system no longer has any constraints in itself. The question is not whether violence-power is used, but whether violence-power is still constrained by reason. When abstract principles become super-historically indisputable, they become the main source of institutional tyranny.
Abstract rights and abstract freedoms have always been the basis of modern socio-political ideology. The superficial concreteness (appealing to the desires and wills of the moment) reflects the abstraction of the essence. The universality of modern political and legal forms is the embodiment of this essential abstraction. This form of universality and abstract freedom and rights give legitimacy to the inequality and oppression of facts that pervade modern society, making any questioning and protest of such inequality and oppression politically reactionary. According to Hegel's line of thought, the question, of course, is not to deny abstract freedoms and rights, but to discard them, that is, to rise to concrete freedoms and rights, that is, freedoms and rights that conform to the requirements of universal reason and are realized in the structure of universal reason, that is, in the state.
In the eyes of liberals, however, Hegel's idea is purely a metaphysical occult. In their view, the State is merely a tool for arbitrating conflicts of interest between individuals. Maintaining the existing property system and the market system is the only public good. "The creation and implementation of laws, the emergence of policies and institutions, are lawful only if they all uphold the principle of utilitarianism." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest majority" is doomed to be an empty phrase that cannot be fulfilled in societies where personal interests are paramount, and the reality is that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
In the utilitarian view, people, out of self-interest, will obey the state, but there is no explanation why prisons have become the creative hallmark of modernity, and violence has become a basic feature of the modern state, "totalitarianism is a characteristic of the modern state for a reason." In fact, liberalism and its moral philosophy utilitarianism can only ideologically justify modern society, but it cannot confront its problems. The protests in Seattle in 1999 and the demonstrations in Davos in 2000 both showed that the world's minority is harming the majority. Fortune's top dozens of rich people are touted as dismissive of those struggling with poverty and death. Conversely, demands for social justice are often labelled "populist." Hegel, and Burke before him, envisioned a binary framework of society and the state. The former is the realm of secular interests, while the latter is the realm of morality and justice. The latter is higher than the former, that is, conscience and justice are always above the pursuit of individual interests.
Hegel does not deny the positive role of abstract freedom and abstract rights as pillars of modern ideology, but they are ultimately private rights and private welfare, and cannot be the principle of common life or the basis of the state. The arbitrariness of their nature makes them potentially destructive. Civil society merely incorporates them externally into an order of mutual recognition and dependence, but it fails to give them a rational universality.
However, according to classical liberalism, the free competition of the atomic individual in pursuit of the greatest satisfaction of personal interests will not lead to social chaos and disintegration, and will not affect the stability of the social order, because the "invisible hand" will arrange everything in an orderly and reasonable manner. The state is no longer a sacred thing, but merely a tool to protect the individual in pursuit of self-interest and its consequences. In liberal rhetoric, the individual = the economic man; freedom = property; rationality = instrumental reason. The rationalization (rationalization) of the hallmark features of modern society or modernity that Weber pointed out is precisely irrational in essence. In other words, the extreme rationalization of modern society inevitably produces irrationality. Because rationalization is only about the means, not the end. For example, making money to ensure a standard of living is reasonable and understandable. But making money for the sake of making money has in fact become the purpose of modern society (civil society), which is particularly irrational. The rationalization of modern social means has precisely created irrational ends and ways of life. The conflict of interest between competing individuals makes civil society a battlefield of brutal competition. Hobbes's "war of all against all" is not the primitive natural state of man, but the reality of a modern society of free competition.
Civil society, of course, has its own mechanisms for integrating individuals who pursue self-interest and, through its abstract universal system, to form an order. But this integration is only an external integration, not a rational universality. It cannot truly eliminate the contradictions and conflicts inherent in civil society, let alone protect and safeguard the interests of all society. Hegel believed that only the state could do this, and only the state could establish rational freedom. But the "state" he speaks of is not a modern state power or state apparatus as a violent institution and administrative body, but an ethical and cultural community that is the basis of people's common life, and of course, it is also a sovereign political entity. The essence of the state is not characterized by its external power-violence, but in its intrinsic rational character. The state is the structure that guarantees the full development of the individual and society, which Hegel called "the rational architectural structure of the state." The state embodies rational order and freedom. It is not to replace civic life, but to protect its interests. It is the perfect unity of the individual and the universal. If in civil society people are united on the basis of their respective interests, in the state people decide to unite on the basis of reason and freedom. In the state, "the unity of the individual and their special interests are not only subjected to their full development, but their rights are clearly recognized".
But on the other hand, the individual must be subordinate to the state, because the state represents the interests of the whole. Man's obedience to the state does not abolish individual freedom, but only restricts his abstract freedom, but it means that he obtains substantial freedom and liberation. He is no longer subject to arbitrary and accidental wills and desires, but can make rational decisions for the common good, the interests of the whole, which is his true freedom. In short, the state is the representative and guarantee of the interests of all. In civil society, everyone pursues the maximization of self-interest, and no one cares about the interests of the whole. And once from civil society to the state (this does not mean abolishing civil society, but the unity of civil society with its larger social context), the problem of civil society, modern society, is solved, and human beings reach a rational perfection.
The teleological worldview made Hegel's belief too bold and optimistic. His "state" can only exist in his philosophy. The modern state is closer to Hobbes's Leviathan than to what he calls the "reality of concrete freedom." Hegel's idea of the state is destined to be like Plato's ideal state, which can only be an ideal and cannot solve the conflicts of real society. The conflicts of modern civil society manifest themselves in three basic phenomena: 2. Widespread (single civil society and global) inequality in the distribution of wealth and resources; 2. Private interests take precedence over the common good; The irrationality of purpose and the lack of meaning. Hegel has long seen that civil society is the battlefield of the private interests of the individual, the battlefield of all against all; civil society is also the stage of the conflict between private interests and special public affairs, and the stage of their common conflict with the highest views and institutions of the state. Modern society actually lacks an intrinsic basis for common life, and its cultural division and disintegration are inevitable. Classical liberalism had based the foundation of the common life of society on the myth of contract theory, but Hegel believed that the contract was in any case only an agreement between individuals, essentially arbitrary, and that the basis of the common life of society must be universally inevitable. The state in the eyes of liberalism is not at all the country in his mind.
In any case, classical liberalism also recognizes the need for the state as an arbitral institution that overrides the individual, adjudicates conflicts of interest between individuals, and safeguards the common interests of society. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, takes the logic of civil society to the extreme, openly questioning the necessity of the state and other structural forms of human life. In the neoliberal view, market mechanisms and economic relations are the only bond that maintains the common life of human beings, and there should be no obstacles or restrictions to the pursuit of maximizing interests by individuals. Economic value becomes the only universal value, and the abstract freedom and rights that appear in the guise of universal values are only ideological footnotes to this value. People can sell their lands on the moon without stopping the predatory exploitation of the earth; people have the right to produce and sell arms, but they cannot prohibit the arms trade for money and death. Abstract rights and freedoms do have a great liberating effect, but they also have the potential to disintegrate people's common lives and undermine the common interests of mankind. For this reason, Hegel pinned his hopes on the state, a community of ethical life, as a community of ethical life, which would enable freedom and rights to be realized within a framework of universal reason. It turns out that this, like Plato's ideal state, can only be another utopia.
Hannah Arendt has pointed out very profoundly that modern politics is characterized by the transformation of private interests into public affairs, in which the public sphere, on the one hand, the manifestation of the common will, is shrinking day by day, and on the other hand, the state (the government) is "reduced to a more limited and impersonal administrative region". "The function of the government is to provide protection to private individuals from competing for more wealth. ...... The only thing people have in common is their private interests. "1 In the modern age, where private interests are above all else and have become the basic principles of society, the state cannot be a pure "public instrument", or the representative and defender of the common interest, which is inevitably dominated by powerful groups to varying degrees. This is true even when the State deprives individuals of their liberty and rights in the name of the people and of the interests of the whole. The state in Hegel's mind could not exist.
But Hegel's analysis of civil society tells us unequivocally that there must be a rational force that embodies the common interests of mankind to restrain it; otherwise, the future of mankind is not wonderful. This means that there needs to be a public sphere outside of civil society and the state, not oriented towards private interests, and that it exists for the purpose of giving people a place to freely discuss and decide on the public interest, a place to defend the public interest. Without such a place, human life lacks the intrinsic conditions that bind people together, and the fate of mankind will be manipulated by a few, even "no one"— the ruthless mechanism of civil society itself. As the process of economic globalization accelerates, this "nobody" power is also accelerating its expansion, and as the recent financial turmoil told us, it is already a terrible force that cannot be restrained. However, is a public sphere concerned with the common good and happy life of humanity possible in today's world? Isn't it just another utopia? At least the Green Movement and other forms of civic politics, such as the World Social Forum, which is in direct opposition to the World Economic Forum, give us a glimmer of hope.