History of Philosophy

Romanticism vs. Enlightenment (conservatism vs Romanticism vs. Enlightenment (conservatism vs. liberalism): controversies over the nature of society and man. Organic vs. contractual theories of society (G.W.F. Hegel)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) Major works: Phenomenology of Spirit The Science of Logic Elements of the Philosophy of Right Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Contractual theories emphasised the rationality of men, who understood the necessity of an agreement among themselves to set up a system of protective measures against the violence. According to these theories society and a system of political institutions - government/state or political power are artificially set up. Man is defined as a rational creature, who can design fundamental institutions and execute their plan. Any design to be executed is based on general knowledge, which can explain and predict events (identify causes and effects). The leading idea is that man can subordinate the whole reality around him. Without general well justified theories man would not be able ‘to subdue the earth’ and make society well ordered.

Hegel’s approach to political philosophy is organic, i. e Hegel’s approach to political philosophy is organic, i.e. it emphasises the natural development of social and political institutions, the role of particular nations in history of mankind and significance of their cultures, and argues in the Aristotelian vein that both family and state are natural communities. Hegel tried to combine certain liberal and conservative ideas in his political theory: • civil society, spontaneous coordination of individual interests and wills leading to the common will, contract and natural bonds, abstract morality (universal precepts) • the State – ‘the Divine Idea as it exists on earth’; the State ‘is the realization of Freedom, i.e., of the absolute final aim, and it exists for its own sake’.

• man can achieve/develop his rationality and freedom in full only in the State, and in the State only he becomes fully human; the Sittlichkeit - the ‘ethical life’ determined on the level of family and fully developed on the level of the State by mores contrasted with contractual relations of individuals in the marketplace • the State is an ethical entity • Aristotelian themes in Hegel’s idea of relationships between individuals and natural communities of family and state • law and the state.

“Subjectivity of will, as a complete phase, is in its turn a whole which, by its very nature, must also have objectivity. Freedom can at first realize itself only in the subject, as it is the true material for this realization. But this concrete manifestation of will, which we have called subjectivity, is different from absolute will. From this new onesidedness of subjectivity must the will free itself, in order that it may become absolute will. In morality the interest peculiar to man is in question, and the high value of this interest consists in man’s knowing himself to be absolute, and determining himself. Uncivilized man is controlled by the forces and occurrences of nature. Children have no moral will, but are guided by their parents. Civilized man is determined from within, and wills that he shall be in all he does.”

“/…/ A duty or obligation appears as a limitation merely of undetermined subjectivity and abstract freedom, or of the impulse of the natural will, or of the moral will which fixes upon its undetermined good capriciously. But in point of fact the individual finds in duty liberation. He is freed from subjection to mere natural impulse; he is freed from the dependence which he as subjective and particular felt towards moral permission and command; he is freed, also, from that indefinite subjectivity, which does not issue in the objective realization implied in action, but remains wrapped up in its own unreality. In duty the individual freely enters upon a liberty that is substantive.

Addition.—Duty limits only the caprice of subjectivity, and comes into collision only with abstract good, with which subjectivity is so firmly allied. When men say we will to be free, they have in mind simply that abstract liberty, of which every definite organization in the state is regarded as a limitation. But duty is not a limitation of freedom, but only of the abstraction of freedom, that is to say, of servitude. In duty we reach the real essence, and gain positive freedom.

150. The ethical, in so far as it is reflected simply in the natural character of the individual, is virtue. When it contains nothing more than conformity to the duties of the sphere to which the individual belongs, it is integrity. (Philosophy of Right, transl. by S.W. Dyde, Batoche Books: Kitchener 2001, http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hegel/right.pdf)”