Kierkegaard on the Philosophy of History

G. Patios

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137383280
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

History doesn't have to mean only an effort to know the past. It can be instead, according to Kierkegaard, a willful and personal choice regarding the creation of the future. Kierkegaard offers us an amazing new approach to the problem of what is history and who makes it.

1

Hegel’s Philosophy of History

Introduction

To begin, it is worth considering a paradigmatic version of what the philosophy of history looks like when it is too objective or, to put it in other words, when it considers the nature of history as something which is only an object of our understanding and our knowledge without acknowledging the importance of individual existence in the shaping of the historical phenomenon.

Hegel’s philosophy of history depicts history as the product of Spirit’s self-realisation through reason.¹ Both ‘Spirit’ and ‘reason’ transcend human subjectivity. Hegel also claims that human subjects do not create history. History instead is created by organised communities like states and nations.

Hegel’s philosophy of history thus is an ‘objective’ one in the sense that it does not consider human subjects to be the actual historical subjects. It is also ‘objective’ because Hegel claims that the only thing that human beings can succeed in their effort to realise and understand history is objective knowledge of their past history. This knowledge is ‘objective’ because, for Hegel, it can be validated without the interference of any individual (and thus subjective) interpretation. The meaning and the aim of history is always there for us to discover it, and we can do so only if we follow Hegel’s method. Historical research thus can arrive at an absolutely certain (and thus objective) knowledge of the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of our past history.

It is then quite obvious that Hegel in his philosophy of history tries to transcend human subjectivity in terms of: (a) making history and (b) knowing history. Hegel’s philosophical effort then can be an excellent example of an ‘objective’ approach to history and the historical. In a way, we can claim that Hegel tries to create a subjectively undisputed method to know history in a manner similar to how our sciences (like physics and chemistry for example) try to acquire ‘objective’ knowledge, that is, knowledge that does not depend on individual interpretations but depends instead on objective facts.

The purpose of this chapter will be to point out two basic Hegelian claims in regard to (a) who is the actual historical agent and (b) which must be the actual object of our historical research. I will argue that Hegel makes a metaphysical claim that Spirit through reason and not human individuals creates history and an epistemological claim that we, human beings, can and should know our past history.

I will argue accordingly that the Hegelian philosophy of history fails to do justice to the subjective individual contribution to history and as such fails to provide us with a complete picture of the nature of history. I will try to indicate Hegel’s lack of any interest in the idea that the individual human is a crucial historical agent.

My argument in this chapter runs as follows: (a) Hegel understands history only as something which already is past (and thus for him completed), (b) history for him can be approached only through our cognitive powers and (c) individual human beings are not important factors in the constitution of history; Spirit² is the crucial historical agent, and besides Spirit only nation-states can play any (important) role in history.

My method will consist of: (a) a close examination of Hegel’s original texts, focusing mainly on his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (hereafter IPH),³ but analysing also parts of his Lectures on the Philosophy of the World History,⁴ his Philosophy of Right,⁵ and his Phenomenology of Spirit;⁶ (b) an effort to define certain Hegelian terms such as ‘Spirit’, ‘Reason’ and ‘Understanding’ in order to point out the exact philosophical argumentation of Hegel.

The chapter will be structured as follows:

1.A basic approach to Hegel’s ambiguous use of ‘reason’ and ‘rational’. My point is that Hegel cannot be approached considering his philosophy of history without having first a definite grasp on some key concepts he uses, such as ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’.

2.I will give a detailed analysis of what Hegel considers to be ‘the wrong way to do history’. My point is that if we aspire to fully understanding his philosophy of history we must be aware of Hegel’s criticism against other ways of doing history. What emerges from this discussion is the overarching motif that Hegel, even in his critiques of other positions, never concerns himself either with individual human beings as historical agents or with history as something other than a past to be known. In fact, I argue that Hegel chooses to be totally blind to such possibilities regarding the nature of history.

3.The idea of ‘Reason in history’ forms the heart of my argument and the most important aspect of my analysis. I will examine closely the Hegelian argumentation to this conclusion from IPH and I will argue that Hegel bases his whole philosophy of history on the particular way he chooses to interpret Incarnation. My claim is that both the metaphysical claim and the epistemological claim on which Hegelian philosophy of history is grounded (rehearsed above) are informed by this particular interpretation of reason in history.

The Hegelian enigma

One is not able either to analyse or to comprehend Hegel’s philosophy of history without first understanding his particular philosophical method as well as his philosophical aims in general. Only through acquaintance with the overall context of his philosophy can one do justice to his philosophy of history. To begin, therefore, I must provide the basic parameters of Hegel’s philosophy in general.

Each philosopher presents a distinctive challenge to their reader; but if someone decides to read Hegel’s philosophy he will find himself sorely challenged – not only owing to his notoriously obscure writing but far more significantly owing to the ambiguity of Hegel’s philosophy.⁷

Everybody, not only the philosopher, in her effort to understand both the external and her internal world, makes distinctions. Rational subjects customarily separate the objects of knowledge from the subjects which know them. Hegel, however, argues for the coincidence of the subject of knowledge with its object. He believes that he has found a distinctive logic, ‘reason’ (Vernunft) which, instead of separating, always unifies.⁸ Whenever, then, one tries to approach Hegel’s philosophy through customary distinctions, one will fail to fully grasp Hegel’s effort to surpass these very distinctions, and so one will end up viewing Hegel either from one side (the subjective) or the other (objective).⁹

One consequence of this refusal to distinguish the subjective from the objective is that there is no way to arrive at a univocal interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. To this extent, ambiguity stands at the very core of his philosophy. Hence, every possible interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy is confronted with one almost insuperable problem: how can one transpose Hegel’s unique terminology into common philosophical language?

It is, of course, natural for every thinker to adopt their own vocabulary, but Hegel initiates a different logic as well. How, then, are we to translate Hegel’s logical conclusions into a logic that he considers to be inherently inferior? What is more, one always has to be aware of Hegel’s mixing of philosophical and theological terms. In his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, for example, he uses ‘reason’, ‘Idea’ and ‘God’ as synonyms. Again, although it is not unnatural for a philosopher to appropriate the concept of ‘God’, Hegel tends to equate ‘God’ with ‘reason’ or with ‘Idea’ or with ‘Absolute’ without providing any explicit definition of any of these terms. Is ‘God’ to be understood in the same way as it is understood in every Western Christian community or, at least, in every Western Protestant community? If yes, how can we explain Hegel’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the ‘Incarnation’? Of course, this is only to hint at a problematic character which besets every interpretation of Hegel’s thought: it is not the purpose of this analysis to solve this problem; yet it needs to be borne in mind in what follows.¹⁰

Thus, there are not only many different interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy, but many contradictory ones.¹¹ Some interpreters consider Hegel to be an exponent of ‘panlogism’ (because he believes that ‘everything is rational’), others believe him to be the father of ‘irrationalism’ (because he uses a different kind of logic). Some define him as utterly religious and others as an atheist who transformed religious faith into a categorical system. Some view him as someone who reduces everything to one absolute principle and some as a ‘historicist’ (because he reduces everything to its historical situation).¹²

I think the reader has the idea by now. My way of approaching this fundamental ambiguity is to begin with Hegel’s statement that ‘What is rational is real; And what is real is rational.’ (PR, 18). I do take him to be claiming that the very core of reality is rational and thus can only be essentially understood by reason.¹³

Hegel himself underlines this interpretation with the following remark:

The courage of truth, faith in the power of the spirit, is the first condition of philosophising. Because man is spirit he should and must deem himself worthy of the highest; he cannot think highly enough of the greatness and power of his spirit. For a man of this faith nothing is so inflexible and refractory as not to disclose itself to him. The originally hidden and reserved essence of the universe has no force which could withstand the courage of knowing; it must expose itself to that courage, bring its wealth and depths to light for our enjoyment. (IHP, 3)

It should be noted that in this passage Hegel speaks of ‘the courage of truth’, ‘faith in the spirit’ and ‘enjoyment’, whereas in PS Hegel speaks of the ‘desire’ of the consciousness to know the world and the other consciousnesses. It seems that either Hegel quite frequently uses metaphoric language or else he really does ascribe vital inclinations and impulses to our abstract logical capacities. This, of course, is one more example of Hegel’s disregard for distinctions: he unifies passion and thinking and so transforming thinking into a vital, living force.

‘The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development’ (PS, 11). Hegel rejects habitual distinctions; for him the truth is both inside us and out there, it can be grasped by us but only in its totality. My suggestion for a plausible reading of Hegel’s thought is therefore the following: whenever we find philosophical characterisations of Hegel’s philosophy we must extend them to totality to ensure they possess the absoluteness Hegel would require of them. Reason, for example, is not just a faculty; reason is the sum ‘total’ of human comprehension – and, indeed, sometimes reason is ‘absolute’ knowledge.

Hegel specifically ascribes to reason purposeful nature: ‘What has just been said can also be expressed by saying that “Reason is purposive activity”’ (PS, 12, the italics are not mine). Reason is a living totality: living because it is an ‘activity’ and totality because it carries its own purpose within itself without needing to depend on anything else.

A further illustration of the difference between Hegelian terminology and other employments of the same terms is ‘understanding’. Hegel characterises the understanding as follows:

To break an idea up into its original elements is to return to its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea, but rather constitute the immediate property of the self. This analysis, to be sure, only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar, fixed, and inert determinations. But what is thus separated and non-actual is an essential moment; for it is only because the concrete does divide itself, and make itself into something non-actual, that is self-moving. The activity of dissolution is the power and work of the Understanding, the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle that remains self-enclosed and, like substance, holds its moments together, is an immediate relationship, one therefore which has nothing astonishing about it. (PS, 18–19)

Understanding separates in order to ‘understand’, to comprehend. It is powerful but it is not ‘real’. What is ‘real’ and concrete is the union or rather the active unification of these elements that have been separated by the understanding. Such unification is the product of reason. It might be true that in this way understanding is more ‘effective’ than reason, but it is also ‘non-actual’, it is fixed. What is critical for our knowledge of reality is reason. In this way, understanding only provides a prelude to knowing. We cannot ‘know’ through our understanding because in life nothing is segregated; instead, everything is whole, everything lives through its totality. The IPH has the title ‘Reason in History’. This reason has nothing to do with understanding, nothing to do with making distinctions. This reason is not merely a cognitive capacity. It is the core of reality itself. Reason unifies, gives meaning and most of all actualises our comprehension of the reality. It is in this way that Hegel not only tries to overcome the Kantian restrictions on knowledge, but tries also to sketch the very nature of reality and consequently the very nature of history.¹⁴

It is worth rehearsing one further problem when faced with Hegel’s philosophy of history. Hegel gives his philosophical approach to history in many different texts without earmarking any text in particular as definitive. Regardless of the systematic structure of the Hegelian philosophy in general, we must look in many different places to fully understand his philosophy of history.

What is more, Hegel never published any kind of philosophy of history. All we have are the notes that his students kept from his lectures and some personal notes he made for these lectures. In consequence, it must be borne in mind that the Lectures on the Philosophy of the World History and its Introduction are not works that Hegel prepared for publication.

We do hav...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Hegels Philosophy of History
• 2  Kierkegaards Concept of History
• 3  The Structure of the Kierkegaardian Self
• 4  Hegels Philosophy of History and Kierkegaards Concept of History: A Synthesis Instead of a Confrontation
• 5  Heideggers Response to the Problem of History
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index