7. We have now seen that this ideational,
symbolic world of spirit is a complicated mixture of perspective/epistemic and
pragmatic/ practical elements. This conception also permeates Hegel's
understanding of spirit. When he speaks of Spirit being "thought in
general" it must be underlined that this is not meant to render spirit as
some sort of timeless ideational aether. Hegel is quite explicit that thought
and will form a unity that has both theoretical
and practical
aspects. This is not a case of "two
separate faculties" a la Kant. Even the theoretical aspect of this unity
is for Hegel an active grasping (greifen) totally in accord with his activist
conception of knowing. This grasping is a deprivation of sensuousness that
makes the object into the ideational possession of the thinker. Equally, the
practical aspect: the will--is merely a way of thinking that "translates
itself into existence", expressing "the drive to give itself
actuality". Hegel puts this unity succinctly in
the Addition to §4 where he points out that the animal lacks "will"
because it "does not represent to itself what it desires." In the
case of spirit, on the other hand, "the will determines itself, and this
determination is primarily of an inward nature, for what I will I represent to
myself as my object." In Hegel' s understanding of thought, the
practical has primacy and "the theoretical is essentially contained within
the practical." This is because "in thinking we are necessarily
active" and even if the content of thought assumes the" form of
being", it "is something mediated and posited by our activity."
The other side of this primacy remains the recognition of the unity of thought
and the fact that "one cannot have a will without intelligence".
8.
This puts us in a solid position to quickly rehearse the moments of the will.
The will as pure indeterminacy, as transition to differentiation and the unity
of these two that Hegel will call "individuality". Pure indeterminacy
is the moment of pure thinking that abstracts from all content. The limitation
of this moment is its flight before limitation and its flight from every content.
Hegel characterises it as the negative freedom or the "freedom of the
void" Such a freedom is essentially theoretical, destructive and ignorant
of the fact that a will without some positive content cannot really be a will
at all. The second moment of differentiation of the will requires that the will
be given a determinant content either by nature or spirit. Only thereby can the
"I" actually step into existence as a moment of finitude and
particularly-I must will something and
that something is limit, negation and finite in its particularity. Hegel also
points out the one-sidedness and interchangeability of these two moments. The
determinacy of the second differentiated moment is already contained in the
first owing to the fact that indeterminacy is itself a determination, while
every determination is itself a product of mediation by pure thinking. The will
is the unity of both these moments. While the act of differentiation provides a
particular content of the will, it does not allow the will to know that this
determination is a self-positing. Thus the differentiating will remains unaware
of the real freedom of the will. However, when the will has a particular
content and knows this content to be ideal and self-posited, then this will is
with itself in limitation and therefore is really free and an individual. Hegel
points out that we have already experienced this freedom in the form of feeling
as love and friendship. Here again we have testimony of the pivotal role that
these paradigmatic emotional relations play in allowing Hegel to theorise a
model of the unity of unity and difference. Hegel assigns this unity a form
that is in keeping with knowledge of the concept, "freedom" [of the
will] "lies neither in indeterminacy nor in determinacy, but in both at
once" ... " freedom is to will something determinant, yet to be with
oneself in this determinacy and to return once more to the universal (§7
Addition).
9. But having demonstrated the unity of
the most abstract moments of the pure will in the figure of the individual,
Hegel is far from finished. If we are to begin with the mere contingent
empirical fact of a particular historical form of subjectivity, this notion of
the free will requires further determination. Again it will be the degree of
self-consciousness that will constitute the difference between these further
forms of will. And this self-consciousness will primarily turn on the status of
the content of the Will. This content is
initially immediate. This means here that for
the concerned consciousness these contents are self-evident in the sense that
the categories in which they are articulated seem naturally legitimate and
valid. For Hegel, immediacy always refers to the most elementary and most
abstract but also most one-sided and superficial determination. The most immediate
Will is the natural will not yet conscious of its freedom. The determinations of its difference appear
as drives and inclinations. This Will is inherently rational but lacks the form
of rationality. This occurs only when the human being is able to stand above
its drives and posit them as its own. Hegel's analysis of this natural will is intended
to show that the form of consciousness corresponding to this immediate natural understanding
of the will does not in fact correspond to the phenomenological analysis of its
experience. Thus, we discover that in their natural immediacy these drives and inclinations
are multiple and the will having given itself the form of individuality must resolve
this indeterminacy. At this point Hegel takes this opportunity to critique the
concept of freedom understood as arbitrariness. This is the idea of freedom
most famously associated with the license of natural man in the unhindered
pursuit of desires. To focus exclusively on the arbitrariness of the will is to
reduce the freewill to its moment
of indeterminacy where any content is
mere possibility. Such a will remains trapped in its own finitude insofar as
any choice of content it makes will still be finite. What's more, the arbitrary
will is tied to a content that is internally conflicting. The multiplicity of drives
and inclinations are in conflict with one another without a yardstick to
distinguish between them. While this dilemma provides two great historical
options that have each had their champions, Hegel favors the Christian solution
to view the natural drives as evil. This is not correct in itself but it
contains the superior philosophical understanding that the free spiritual
being, man, should "not let himself be determined by natural drives".
The resulting demand for the purification of the soul contains the idea that
the drives be freed from the form of
immediacy and subjectivity and contingency of content. However, again Hegel is
especially keen in § 20
to demarcate his own version of bringing these drives to a rational system in
the terms of a science of right from the more pedestrian grades of merely
formal reflection. His target here are those quasi-scientific philosophies and
psychologies that attempt to reduce these various drives to a universal
measure. The obvious candidate is English Utilitarianism and its offshoots.
While Hegel admits that the idea of reducing all natural drives to the single measure
of happiness is a step forward (a value of education), the fact that the content
still ultimately remains universal
pleasure, means that we return to finite quantities and the drives from which
we hoped to escape.
10.The result of this analysis of the
application of formal reflection to the natural content of the will is the recognition
that the truth of formal universality is self-determining universality: the
will to freedom. This will is free not only in itself but also for itself. The key
to this free universality is not feeling or the heart but thought. Only this
latter universality is truly infinite because it is not externally determined,
does not view its object as other
or as limitation
but takes itself as its object. Hegel captures
this sense of infinity with his idea of the circle §22 Addition (H) P54. This
universality, which permeates its determination and is identical with itself in
this determination, is what he understands as rational.
1l.Yet,
even here we have attained only the identity of form and content that Hegel
associates with the concept. The absolute drive of the free spirit is to make
freedom into its object. This means not simply the "rational system of the
spirit itself' but in the sense that this system becomes immediate actuality.
Thus the spirit must be for itself what the will is in itself. The concept must
realise itself as Idea. The substantial content of the Idea is the
actualisation of the will. This actualisation takes the form of a variety of particular
forms of the existence of free will that Hegel calls "Right". He
takes the time in passing to reject the Kantian concept of Right. We have
already seen that Hegel refuse to associate the idea of right with mere
individual entitlements. He associates the Kantian emphasis on the negative
moment of limitation of the arbitrary will in accordance with a universal law
as just such an emphasis on the will of the particular individual in his
distinctive arbitrariness. This is a view, he tells us, devoid of any
speculative thought. Against this, Hegel views right as" the rational will
which has being in and for itself or the spirit as true spirit" §29 P58.
Each form of right is sacred but they inevitably come into collision with each
other. For Hege1 it is precisely this collision that imposes the moment of
limitation on particular forms of right and allows one to be subordinated to
another. At this point we leave the domain of Objective Spirit and enter that
of World Spirit where right "is absolute in an unlimited sense" P59.
Only this final absolute moment that goes beyond Elements of the Philosophy of Right itself
enables Hegel to close his preliminary circle by adding the last and most
concrete moment to his system of right. Here the free will is enclosed in the
largest circle of all which is not that of the state, but of the historical
process as a whole, which culminates in precisely the forms of social existence
that corresponds to the realisation of modem freedom and self determination.
This conception of right will be the most concrete in the sense of being
richest in laying out its underlying conditions and determinations.
Lecture 6 Das Recht
The exposition attains its
final endpoint only when social objectivity and individual practical
subjectivity find themselves in complete correspondence as far as this is
possible within the inerradicable accidentality of conditions associated with
finitude. This result is the final attainment of a form of practical
self-consciousness that recognises the corresponding institutional structure of
the state as the realisation and guarantee of its freedom. As a final
methodological remark, I should point out that this dialectical sequence is
both progressive and regressive.
It is progressive in the fairly obvious sense
that each new level of analysis represents an even more concrete determination
of the conditions of rational freedom. It is regressive in the sense that every new
configuration constitutes the condition of realisation of the earlier indicated conditions, of the undisturbed
functioning of the lower spheres. Thus we will find that Sittlichkeit or ethical life constitutes
a richer and more concrete determination of freedom than either Abstract right
of Morality. However, at the same time, Ethical life is also the underlying
condition that makes at all meaningful the very notions of abstract right and
morality.
Lecture 6 Das Recht
1. Having followed Hegel'
s derivation of the concept of the "really free will" and its concrete
determinations, we arrive at his formal starting point-- the category of Abstract Right. At this point it might be useful to
say a little more regarding Hegel's
method. We have already seen that he
regards only his own speculative circular
reconstruction to be the only
appropriate method for contemporary
philosophy. He starts from the
appearance of a mere "empirical
fact:" the free will. His task is to
disclose the necessity of
the merely apparent. That means to demonstrate
that
this form of subjectivity is the necessary
and general result and product of the
particular modem socio-political arrangement. If the
ultimate conclusion is to justify
the initial premise and point of departure, we
should be assured that the circle traversed is not vicious. Although we in a
sense return to the beginning, the self-understanding
of that beginning so attained is quite different
to that from which we began. During the phenomenological journey, this
self-consciousness changes and learns to better comprehend itself.
2.
In the most general terms what this involves is the recognition that what
initially confronts us as the posited and abstract "free will" turns
out to involve a unity of subjective formations and roles required for the
sustained functioning of the normatively posited, and presently realisable,
institutional structures of modernity. This unity is crucial for Hegel because
he understands that practices and institutions do not exist on their own
account but only insofar as there are individuals both capable and ready to
fulfill the prescribed roles and functions institutionally posited. Thus the
reality of the "free will" implies not only an ordered set of
normative and institutional conditions but also the corresponding forms of
practical subjectivity, active human beings, who possess the appropriate
motivations and competence, that is, particular configuration of the will characterised
by a modem bearer of rights. Consequently at each level of Hegel' s
construction he will analyze the parallelism
between social objectivity and subjectivity or
the interplay between these two as a
form of experience. Thus Abstract right
and the legal person, morality and the moral person, the family and the
differentiated family member become equally essential constituents of the
exposition. Hegel understands rationality as the acknowledgement of all the
means and consequences that render a particular end achievable. Thus it will
turn out that our rational addressee, the reader posited as the really existing
"rational free will" is driven along this ideal path and must
therefore step by step discover who he/she ought to be in order to be what
he/she claims to be. The reader learns what is really
involved in achieving the freedom posited by modernity. The expository sequence
of the work describes the path that will lead modem subjectivity to
self-consciousness, at each stage of which this individual is forced to
reconsider and revise their earlier practical stand and attitude. Moving along
this path the initially completely abstract and one-sided self-understanding of
the individual is progressively revised, progressively rendered more concrete.
What was immediate is shown in many
respects to be illusory and this self-understanding is gradually made aware of
the multiple underlying mediations. This is possible because Hege1 connects his
theory of the normatively required objective institutional structures with a phenomenology of modem subjectivity
committed to the value of freedom. The result is a series of shapes of experience generated by the contradictions
between the required forms of social objectivity and the 'corresponding' forms
of practical subjectivity.
3. Clearly it is this dynamic sequence of
"shapes of experience" that will fill out the interval between Hegel'
s abstract and one-sided starting point and his concrete and fully mediated
endpoint. The logical sequence that presents the mediating stages of the
exposition, as we have seen, possesses a twofold aspect. On the one hand, it is
constituted by a hierarchically ordered succession of the spheres of 'objective
freedom' that in their totality form the fundamental normative and institutional
structure of modem society. This whole complex constitutes the conditioning
context that makes possible the activity of autonomous and self-reflexive
individuals. On the other hand, we have a phenomenological sequence of forms of
practical subjectivity carefully co-related to the objective forms: the series
of those active attitudes and roles that the modem individual must necessarily
take upon him herself to actually fulfill the claim that they are willing their
own freedom. In this first normative institutional aspect, the sequence will
advance from abstract to concrete (immediate
and one-sided to fully mediated). The second-phenomenology of practical
subjectivity-moves from particularity to
universality -from the fixation of the individual on private interests to
the interiorisation of the general interests of his/her political community.
4. We do no have to look far to find the
principle of generation of these two sequences. It is
the contradiction between the required forms of social objectivity and the
corresponding forms of practical subjectivity that provides the key to
derivation. What drives the exposition forward is the non-correspondence between these two. If we
take as an example the level of abstract right we find that an immediate
conception of such a right as that of
possession of property turns out, on analysis, to involve a great deal more
than merely the physical possession of the external thing. By unfolding the
categories of contract and crime we are led both to a deeper understanding of the
notion of abstract right and to the necessity of a new higher normative
structure: that of morality. The emerging consciousness of abstract right comes
into collision with its form and necessitates a movement beyond it. From this
new form, the analysis must begin again. In other words, the contradiction at a
lower configuration can only be dissolved by the introduction of a new
"higher' complex of normative and the institutional conditions of freedom.
Hegel specifies this principle of construction that he calls dialectic in
an addition to the 1824-25 lectures:
The
development of the concept is dialectical. The concept has
a
determination; this latter, however, is limited and this is
contrary
to the nature of the concept. This first
determination...
is not adequate to it, therefore the concept
supersedes
this stage and moves beyond it... This is then
dialectic,
this negation of a limitation, of a definite stage which
proves
thereby to be subordinate. This negation constitutes,
however,
only one side of the matter; the negated stage
simultaneously
possesses affirmative sense; this is just the
higher
stage and this equally must be made manifest in it.
(Ilting
(Ed) Hegel's
Vorlesungen uber Rechtsphilosophie
1818-1831,
Vo14, ppI58/9)
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