Hegel’s „egophanic revolt“ and Voegelin’s critique (English)
As the title indicates the thinking of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and the critique of his thinking is the subject-matter of this paper. This implies that Hegel is understood to be part of the intellectual legacy of the French Revolution, or at least a translator and even a transformer of the ideas of the French Revolution. One must admit that Hegel as an outstanding thinker of German Idealism together with Immanuel Kant (1742-1805), had an enormous impact on German intellectual life and also the so called “West” up until today. In my paper I will in particular refer to the political scientist and philosopher of history Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). A brief introduction to Voegelin’s thoughts shall serve as a point of reference for a comparison to Hegel’s thinking: At the center of Voegelin’s work is a theory of the order of man and society:
“The reality of order is not my discovery. I speak of order in reality. By order we mean the experiential structure of reality and the attunement of man to an order that is not created by him, i.e. the cosmos.”
For Voegelin order always has a religious dimension. While searching for the concepts of order in the history of ideas, Voegelin stated that political ideas have their roots in “existential experiences” and beyond that always have an evocative character, i.e. they not only describe, but also always “evoke” political reality. True religious experiences form the foundation of every good political order, because it is the source of moral orientation in society and the basis of truth and rationality in general. In his studies on order in history Voegelin distinguishes three different “types of truths”: the “cosmological truth” of the oriental kingdoms, the “anthropological truth” of the Greek classical period and the “soteriological truth” of Christianity. Where they exist, there is order, where they are destroyed, order is being destroyed.
Voegelin was originally from Vienna, where his academic career began; later he also taught in the United States of America and in Munich/Germany. For more information for his life and work see the Voegelin Societies in the United States and Germany: Voegelin’s philosophy is in particular is also known for a critique of the deformations of the traditional notions of order. Voegelin sees the fundamental characteristic of modernity in the turning away from transcendence, which has led to the dissolution of the spiritual substance of our Christian civilizations. As a result, a whole bundle of measures came about with the help of which man tries to compensate the loss of faith and meaning of the modern world. Voegelin tried to summon up these measures as “gnostic”. Gnosis in Voegelin’s understanding is characterized by the attempt to bring about man’s self-redemption, which is, however, an expression of human hubris. This hubris became increasingly socially effective in the process of secularization and finally became the dominant force whose sign was a redeification of the world. A well-known phrase out of Voegelin’s thinking is the “immanentizing of the eschaton”. Voegelin’s thinking thus implies, we may conclude, also a critique of the ideas of the French Revolution with its anti-religious impulse – the French Revolution defines Voegelin as a “radical wave of gnosticism” (New Science of Politics). Let us turn to Hegel who, next to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), is being understood to be the main representative of German Idealism. The analysis of the German poet Heinrich Heine (1791-1856) shall serve our inquiry:
“Compare only the history of the French Revolution with the history of German philosophy, and one should believe that the French, who had so much real business to do, while having to stay awake, would have asked Germans to sleep and dream for them meanwhile, and that our German philosophy was nothing other than the dream of the French Revolution. Thus, we had the break with the existing and the tradition in the realm of thought just as the French had in the realm of society, around the critique of pure reason our Jacobins gathered, who did not accept anything as what stood up to that critique. Kant was our Robespierre – afterwards Fichte came with his ego, the Napoleon of philosophy, the solitary reign of thought the sovereign will, the despotic, gruesome lonely idealism. (…) – Until Hegel, the Orléans of philosophy, founded a new regime…”
Following Heine’s assessment, the premise of this paper is that even though neither Hegel nor Kant were political executors of their own ideas, both revolutionized German philosophy and became part of the intellectual legacy of the revolution. Even so, Hegel was like most thinkers. Full quote:
“The problem of the eidos in history, hence, arises only when a Christian transcendental fulfillment becomes immanentized. Such an immanentist hypostasis of the eschaton, however, is a theoretical fallacy.”
In that his thinking has many facets and layers, which also deserve acknowledgment, e. g.bearing in mind that he understood man not as an autonomous individual but as a zôon politikon in the sense of Aristotle. Eric Voegelin argued that the modernity of Hegel can be characterized
“as the coexistence of two selves, as an existence divided into a true and a false self – holding one another in such balance that neither the one nor the other ever becomes completely dominant”
Yet how is Hegel to be understood properly? Can he be understood as a revolutionary philosopher of Enlightenment, also as a Christian philosopher, or even as a reactionary glorifier of the Prussian state? All these categorisations are of secondary importance considering the overriding fact that Hegel professed himself to be a philosopher of the French Revolution. As a young man Hegel joined a “Political Club” in order to involve himself in the enthusiastic discussions about an alleged rebirth of Europe after the Declaration of Human Rights. He planted a liberty tree in Tübingen, singing the Marseillaise. Throughout his life Hegel celebrated the Bastille Day and even had contacts with Jacobin secret societies. Hegel considered Napoleon to be the “Great Man”, because he was supposed to be a world-historic “servant of the Idea that brings forth itself” (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences) as it comes to its fulfilment. Hegel saw Napoleon as the man destined to make the French Revolution a positive reality in Germany. In 1814, he wrote that the abstractness of the idea of freedom moved from France to Germany. We can conclude with Voegelin that the impact of the Revolution was indeed the experience that fundamentally formed Hegel’s existence as a thinker. It should be noted that Hegel, while he was a rather unimportant scholar teaching at the University of Jena, asked himself how he could participate in the Revolution as a noncombatant and concluded that death in battle and philosophy are the same – provided the battles are conducted to establish a “free people” – and that this process results in “absolute knowledge” (Phemenology of the Spirit). This understanding differs from the practice of art of dying to prepare oneself for immortality that Socrates spoke of, whereas Hegel speaks of death for the ideals of the French Revolution. This analysis can be argued of several modern thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche for example.
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Conclusion
Many different thinkers have tried to diagnose the so-called modern age as a project of subject orientated totalizing reason. Max Weber (1864-1920), for example, defined the modern world as a “housing of bondage”, or Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) as an “administered world”. There are also voices that have proclaimed the end of history, the Posthistoire. As one of the most important modern thinkers René Descartes (1596-1650) and next to him Hegel ought to be mentioned. Hegel’s thinking offers key concepts for a better understanding of modern thought, which became politically powerful through the French Revolution. Interpreting Hegel himself is no easy task. Hegel had a holistic approach; terms to describe his thinking would be “idealistic pantheism” or “monism”; Pope Pius XII. in his Encyclical Humanae generis (1947) spoke of “systematic idealism”. Hegel attempted to create a great unification theory and in particular saw a culmination of rationalism in the history of philosophy. The “absolute idea” (Science of Logic) is the “absolute spirit”. When the finite spirit thinks the absolute, the absolute spirit. As interpreted by Voegelin, Plato showed that the order of the human soul depends on the experience of God. This in turn forms the inner disposition of the human being. It is the philosophical experiences that evoke man that establish a true order of the soul. Such a person, who participates in the divine spirit (nous) and whose soul is therefore also ordered, should be an example and ruler in the state. According to Voegelin he is the measure of the paradigmatic order in the state and representative of cosmological truth.
Hegel attempted to create a great unification theory and in particular saw a culmination of rationalism in the history of philosophy. The “absolute idea” (Science of Logic) is the “absolute spirit”. When the finite spirit thinks the absolute, the absolute spirit thinks in it, and so on – Voegelin would speak of words of sorcery. Voegelin in particular pointed out that in Hegelian ideology man does not live in an “in-between” (metaxy), in a participatory tension towards the “divine ground of existence” (Voegelin), but constructs a false consciousness which is an imaginary attempt gain power over reality. This Voegelin understands to be an attack of man’s existence under God, in particular the Christian loving God, and thus could and should also be seen as undermining the dignity of man. And, let us remind us that any way of thinking has an evocative character, it not only describes, but always “evokes” political reality. In other words: Ideas have consequences in the political reality.
Hegel did not remain unchallenged. One of his first critics was the (Protestant) Danish thinker Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855). For Hegel, all reality is only reality insofar as it is reasonable: “What is reasonable is real, what is real is reasonable” (Elements of the Philosophy of Right). Kierkegaard’s accusation was directed against this thought. Hegel wanted to capture phenomena of life into a logical system, which would have ruinous effects on man’s religious-ethical existence as Kierkegaard pointed out. transfers the “authority of the spiritual sources of order” (Voegelin), revelation and philosophy to a system: Hegel does not “capitalize” the presence of eternal being, but the system in which one can get “locked” in. In Hegelian thinking the divine mystery is penetrated by the logic of the system, which leads to the alienation of man from God. The consequences of this are, in the words of Voegelin:
“The Spirit as a system requires the killing of God, or: the killing of God is committed in order to create the system.”
Hegel has just like Plato shown that every state worthy of the name is ultimately based on religion. Religion gives rise to morality in the state. Yet, for Hegel religion is “the reality of the state”. How does not the state have the status of an imminent religion in Hegelian thinking, a concept one would clearly find again in socialism? Three aspects of the political implications of Hegelian thinking ought to be pointed out:
- Central in Hegel’s thinking and the French Revolution is an idea of “freedom”. For Hegel, the idea of freedom is not quite emancipatory, but still predominant. The idea of freedom replaces the importance the classical thinkers would give to virtue.
- Hegel’s political thinking is political theory and not philosophy: Just like in his epistemology, where he wants to capture the “absolute knowledge”, in his political theory Hegel wants to “think” the “absolute state”. By doing so he is omitting the question of the right order, which was the guiding question of the philosopher of tradition.
- As a consequence, political philosophy in the sense of tradition loses its normative power; politics are consequently left to a mystical Weltgeist, which in fact is nothing else then the Zeitgeist. The history of Hegelian thinking is known; there has been a moderate, a conservative-reactionary-Prussian and also an effective leftist interpretation of Hegel. Hegel provided core concepts for the socialist and radical leftist interpretation. The core myth of Enlightenment thinking, liberalism and socialism is their understanding of history as a permanent process in the form of a necessary progressive human emancipation. Hegel spoke of a dialectic progress laying the ground for what a socialist would call “revolution”. The Russian philosopher Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) called the dialectics of Hegel the “algebra of revolution”.
Hegel’s “absolute science” was adopted into a Marxistische Wissenschaft, which is ideological and thus rather a system of believes that contradicts classical thinking and in particular its sense of reality. The consequences of socialist thinking in history with all its human casualties is known – it has to be pointed out that Marxism with its Hegelian foundation today in particular lives on in the West as “Cultural Marxism” causing the destruction of all (Christian) values that are the source of a true order of the soul and society, especially including the family.
Does the following dictum apply to Hegel: What is true in his thinking is not new, and what is new is not true? Voegelin sharply analyzed a crisis of our civilization and particularly sharply criticized the thinking of Hegel, which in his understanding is a cause for spiritual disorder. And Voegelin did not cease to say: The spiritual disorder of time is not an inevitable fate. We have the means to overcome it. No one is obliged to take part in a spiritual crisis; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to refrain from this nonsense and to live in order.
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Dr. Christian Machek 