"It must be further understood that all the worth which the human being possesses--all the spiritual reality, he possesses
only through the State." - Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) sought to square Judeo-Christian cosmology with reason and therefore allowed his dialectic to reflect any contradictions between them. Marx thought it was all wrong and devized his own version, which is with us till this day as a divisive mechanism for progress through struggle.
Hegel''s
philosophy is a secular fantasy based on Judeo-Christian cosmology: God''s projection, a spirit called the Absolute, represents creation which is seeking reunification with God. Its development by means of struggle and conflict through which it gets to know itself, is the story of the history of the world. The story ends when the Absolute - reunited with God - achieves full self-consciousness.
Hegel''s theme was the state. Freedom is not God-given as the Enlighteners held, but granted by the state. Under the principle ''as above, so below'' the state acts as the instrument of God. It is the ''ethical whole'', in an echo of Rousseau''s "common will" under the state: the ''actualization of freedom'', and per the Hegel story-line: the self-consciousness of the Absolute. As a mere aspect of the state it is the individual''s duty to submit to its needs, and worship it as a ''terrestrial divinity''. Consider the following quote as illustrative of the idea:
''''Otto Braun, age 19, a volunteer who died in World War I, wrote in a letter to his parents: "My inmost yearning, my purest, though most secret flame, my deepest faith and my highest hope - they are still the same as ever, and they all bear one name: the State. One day to build the State like a temple, rising up pure and strong, resting in its own weight, severe and sublime, but also serene like the gods and with bright halls glistening in the dancing brilliance of the sun - this, at bottom, is the end and goal of my aspirations."
Hegel''s views are a fine example how volition, human free will, the essence of morality, is shifted from man to God, thus abdicating human responsibility and lumbering God with the dire results of human will.
''World historical figures'' as operatives of God''s Plan, might be exacting high cost in terms of human lives, but collective historical development is of a higher order than mere morality. This hiearchy of ethics sounds familiar. The suspicion may be justified that the rift between the Enlightenment and the Counter-Enlightenment, the American-Continental fault-line, Locke versus Rousseau, is still visible today in the geopolitical differences between the United States and what is now the European Union.
Americans have taken up ownership of their public space, safeguarded by the Second Amendment, ensuring
democracy will be defended with something more impressive than corroded pitchforks and burning barricades. Europeans on the other hand are still stuck in the mind-set of subjects. They have not given up being the pawns of Hegel''s ''world historical figures'', the new operatives of ''God''s work'' who happen to be carving out a heroic role for themselves as unelected road-builders to Kantian world government.
Admittedly EU citizens were misled by their political leaders, but how else can one account for the civic tolerance of the collectivist, centralist super behemoth, the post-democratic techno-rule that is now controlling most of the continent and the United Kingdom? Are Hegel''s hiearchy of ethics, the flow of world historic events before ethics - and Kant''s world government before democratic values - alive and kicking in the third millennium?
The EU betrayed its Counter-Enlightenment credentials in the matter of the wave of Islamic fundamentalism that is encroaching on the Turkish secular democracy, founded by Kemal Ataturk. The latter - knowing his Youngturks from his Liberals - made the military the custodians of the secular government. In a recent crisis the EU made a perhaps not surprising, but very revealing choice. The military were to stay in barracks, Sharia come what may. This choice should not be interpreted as a mark of respect for the fundamentalists'' freedom of conscience: this liberty has offically been subordinated to postmodern moral legislation.
This was a choice for sacrificing democracy over military intervention, for putting the flow of ''world political events'' before the values and the interests of democracy. The habits of the Counter-Enlightenment die exceedingly hard. It is disturbing enough to see the rise of an unelected governing body on the European continent. But an even more disquieting prospect is the post-democratic elitism, combined with postmodern ideological chaos, understood in the philosophical context.
For all his talk of the Absolute, Hegel is anything but. He contributed four ideas postmodernity:
1. Reality is an entirely subjective creation: we ''make'' reality by our thoughts;
2. Contradictions are built into reason and reality: contradictions are reason''s traffic lights; ignore Aristotle''s law of contradicttions at your peril;
3. As reality evolves contradictorily, truth is relative to time and place: ignoring the laws of physics, is worse!
4. The collective, not the individual, is the operative unit: enough said of the hive-mind.
In view of the above this may be surprising, but compared to the Counter-Enlightenment''s later philosophers, who have become known as the Irrationalists, Kant and Hegel sound like the essence of reason.