Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [big ebook reader .txt] 📗

But if this is true, it is also to be remembered that the philosopher is, like other men, the son of his age, and estimates the value of reality from preconceptions and aspirations due to his generation. The historical circumstances of his nation as well as the personal experiences of his life help to determine his horizon, even in the effort to discover the hidden pulse and movement of the social organism. This is specially obvious in political philosophy. The conception of ethics and politics which is presented in the Encyclopaedia was in 1820 produced with more detail as the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Appearing, as it did, two years after his appointment to a professorship at Berlin, and in the midst of a political struggle between the various revolutionary and conservative powers and parties of Germany, the book became, and long remained, a target for embittered criticism. The so-called War of Liberation or national movement to shake off the French yoke was due to a coalition of parties, and had naturally been in part supported by tendencies and aims which went far beyond the ostensive purpose either of leaders or of combatants. Aspirations after a freer state were entwined with radical and socialistic designs to reform the political hierarchy of the Fatherland: high ideals and low vulgarities were closely intermixed: and the noble enthusiasm of youth was occasionally played on by criminal and anarchic intriguers. In a strong and wise and united Germany some of these schemes might have been tolerated. But strength, wisdom, and unity were absent. In the existing tension between Austria and Prussia for the leadership, in the ill-adapted and effete constitutions of the several principalities which were yet expected to realise the [pg clxxviii] advance which had taken place in society and ideas during the last thirty years, the outlook on every hand seemed darker and more threatening than it might have otherwise done. Governments, which had lost touch with their peoples, suspected conspiracy and treason: and a party in the nation credited their rulers with gratuitous designs against private liberty and rights. There was a vast but ill-defined enthusiasm in the breasts of the younger world, and it was shared by many of their teachers. It seemed to their immense aspirations that the war of liberation had failed of its true object and left things much as they were. The volunteers had not fought for the political systems of Austria or Prussia, or for the three-and-thirty princes of Germany: but for ideas, vague, beautiful, stimulating. To such a mood the continuance of the old system was felt as a cruel deception and a reaction. The governments on their part had not realised the full importance of the spirit that had been aroused, and could not at a moment's notice set their house in order, even had there been a clearer outlook for reform than was offered. They too had suffered, and had realised their insecurity: and were hardly in a mood to open their gates to the enemy.

Coming on such a situation of affairs, Hegel's book would have been likely in any case to provoke criticism. For it took up a line of political theory which was little in accord with the temper of the age. The conception of the state which it expounded is not far removed in essentials from the conception which now dominates the political life of the chief European nations. But in his own time it came upon ears which were naturally disposed to misconceive it. It was unacceptable to the adherents of the ancien régime, as much as to the liberals. It was declared by one party to be a glorification [pg clxxix] of the Prussian state: by another to rationalise the sanctities of authority. It was pointed out that the new professor was a favourite of the leading minister, that his influence was dominant in scholastic appointments, and that occasional gratuities from the crown proved his acceptability. A contemporary professor, Fries, remarked that Hegel's theory of the state had grown “not in the gardens of science but on the dung-hill of servility.” Hegel himself was aware that he had planted a blow in the face of a “shallow and pretentious sect,” and that his book had “given great offence to the demagogic folk.” Alike in religious and political life he was impatient of sentimentalism, of rhetorical feeling, of wordy enthusiasm. A positive storm of scorn burst from him at much-promising and little-containing declamation that appealed to the pathos of ideas, without sense of the complex work of construction and the system of principles which were needed to give them reality. His impatience of demagogic gush led him (in the preface) into a tactless attack on Fries, who was at the moment in disgrace for his participation in the demonstration at the Wartburg. It led him to an attack on the bumptiousness of those who held that conscientious conviction was ample justification for any proceeding:—an attack which opponents were not unwilling to represent as directed against the principle of conscience itself.

Yet Hegel's views on the nature of political unity were not new. Their nucleus had been formed nearly twenty years before. In the years that immediately followed the French revolution he had gone through the usual anarchic stage of intelligent youth. He had wondered whether humanity might not have had a nobler destiny, had fate given supremacy to some heresy rather than the orthodox creed of Christendom. He had [pg clxxx] seen religion in the past “teaching what despotism wished,—contempt of the human race, its incapacity for anything good94.” But his earliest reflections on political power belong to a later date, and are inspired, not so much by the vague ideals of humanitarianism, as by the spirit of national patriotism. They are found in a “Criticism of the German Constitution” apparently dating from the year 180295. It is written after the peace of Lunéville had sealed for Germany the loss of her provinces west of the Rhine, and subsequent to the disasters of the German arms at Hohenlinden and Marengo. It is almost contemporaneous with the measures of 1803 and 1804, which affirmed the dissolution of the “Holy Roman Empire” of German name. The writer of this unpublished pamphlet sees his country in a situation almost identical with that which Macchiavelli saw around him in Italy. It is abused by petty despots, distracted by mean particularist ambitions, at the mercy of every foreign power. It was such a scene which, as Hegel recalls, had prompted and justified the drastic measures proposed in the Prince,—measures which have been ill-judged by the closet moralist, but evince the high statesmanship of the Florentine. In the Prince, an intelligent reader can see “the enthusiasm of patriotism underlying the cold and dispassionate doctrines.” Macchiavelli dared to declare that Italy must become a state, and to assert that “there is no higher duty for a state than to maintain itself, and to punish relentlessly every author of anarchy,—the supreme, and perhaps sole political crime.” And [pg clxxxi] like teaching, Hegel adds, is needed for Germany. Only, he concludes, no mere demonstration of the insanity of utter separation of the particular from his kin will ever succeed in converting the particularists from their conviction of the absoluteness of personal and private rights. “Insight and intelligence always excite so much distrust that force alone avails to justify them; then man yields them obedience96.”

“The German political edifice,” says the writer, “is nothing else but the sum of the rights which the single parts have withdrawn from the whole; and this justice, which is ever on the watch to prevent the state having any power left, is the essence of the constitution.” The Peace of Westphalia had but served to constitute or stereotype anarchy: the German empire had by that instrument divested itself of all rights