Chapter 3.3: Hegel, the logic of History

[Music] by far the most influential philosopher of history in the early 19th century and maybe ever was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel heygo completely agreed with the romantic idea that nobody can escape from his own time to take a position outside of history the way we think the way we are is shaped by our history and our culture and if that holds for individuals Hegel says it also holds for philosophy and for science we can only think in a way that fits our current time at the next stage of history people will think differently so we cannot and we should not hope that philosophical or scientific theories we come up with today will remain acceptable for all eternity as history progresses any thought will be discarded and replaced by something new we cannot reach any eternal truths the best thing we can do is to try and think through the thoughts of today as well as possible as Hegel pooted philosophy is its own time captured in thought since we are all part of history and cannot escape from our historical position then if you want to understand yourself or your own ways of thinking you have to study history but Hegel things studying history is only going to generate understanding if there is some kind of pattern in history if things don't just happen at random if they did just happen at random what could we learn from it we need a pattern and Hegel believes that such a pattern exists that if we study history we can find something like a law of historical development what Hegel wants to do then is to describe and clarify that now this may sound quite a lot like what we heard about Hempel and his deductive noma logical model in one of her previous lectures but Hegel's idea is very different from Hampus hempel believed that historians use the same kind of laws that physicists use or that anyone in any scientific discipline uses laws that link causes with a facts laws that tell us that every time a happens B will happen afterwards and we have seen that it is really hard to find such laws in history but haigo haye goes thinking of something else entirely unlike Hampel Hegel is not interested in events that happen again and again he is aware that history never repeats itself that every stage of history is new and unique what he wants to understand is why these unique stages follow each other in the way that they did and his idea is that these stages develop out of each other through the logical development of societies underlying concepts now that sounds pretty abstract so before I'm going to say anything more about it I want to give an example an example from the history of politics if you look at how the political structures of society have developed over the millennia Hegel tells us you can see the following pattern first there is a stage of lawlessness where there is no state and everybody can basically do what they want provided they are strong enough or smart enough or have enough friends to get away with it second there was a very long stage of autocratic rule states with one or a few persons at the top and a strict hierarchy that structures the rest of society and third Hegel says is the stage that he and we find ourselves in the stage of what in what in German and Dutch is called the left start that is a state in which everyone's powers are strictly limited by the law and in which if it's a democracy at least everyone has a say in what those laws are now according to Hegel this succession lawlessness strict hierarchies left start is not accidental in fact in it we can see the logical development of the concept of freedom it works like this what is freedom our first answer might be the ability to do whatever you want if I can do whatever I want then I'm free right and Hegel points out that this is exactly the idea of freedom that is embodied in the stage of lawlessness if there is no government then everybody can just do what they want but hey go goes on to this to say this ability to do whatever you want is not really freedom it looks like freedom but in fact it contains a form of unfreedom consider this maybe I have decided that I hate going hungry in winter and in order to make sure that I won't I spent the entire spring summer and autumn working as a farmer it's hard work but by the end of autumn my house is full of grain I can do all of that because there is no law forbidding it so I may see quite free but now winter starts and suddenly a group of big guys and gals shows up on my doorstep carrying huge clubs give us all your food they say and I'm like no way I work for that the entire year while you guys were just lying on the beach and they're like yeah that sucks but we've got clubs so in the end what can I do but give them all my food and next year I'm not going to farm I'm going to lie on the beach as well what this story suggests is that lawlessness isn't really freedom I'm not really free to be a farmer in a society where anyone else is free to then take away the fruits of my labor lawlessness may look like freedom but it contains a kind of contradiction it is also unfreedom now according to Hegel such contradictions are the engines of history they are what push history forward a society based on a contradiction isn't stable a new stage of history will follow in which society often unconsciously tries to solve that contradiction and the first new stage will be one which is the opposite of the original contradiction so instead of lawlessness the next stage in history is going to be a society of strict laws because that might also seem to be a kind of freedom if there are strict laws then nobody can take away the fruits of my labor I know what I can and what I can't do and I can live my life accordingly the existence of strict laws makes it possible for me to be a farmer to have property to live without the fear of violence if anyone comes to steal my food the ruler will send his police force and punish them so it may seem as if I am free but of course strict hierarchies don't just lead to freedom they also lead to unfreedom in this kind of society I have to obey the ruler if he wants me to pay 10% of my grain to him I have to do so if he wants me to build a palace for him I have to do so as well and so on so again we have a kind of contradiction the strict lawgiver seems to give me freedom but he also takes away my freedom again we have an unstable situation and history will have to take another step this third step Hegel tells us is going to be a synthesis of the earlier two opposites which are called the thesis and anti seizes in the synthesis the contradiction between the thesis and the antithesis is resolved the synthesis will contain the good elements of both the thesis and the antithesis while overcoming their weaknesses in our example the good element of the thesis was the fact that I had control over my own destiny the good element of the antithesis was that I was protected by the law in our current society Hegel points out both elements are present we are protected by laws that allow us to control our own destiny and in a democracy we have some control over the laws themselves thus the contradiction which was present in the earlier stages of history has been overcome let us return to what I said about Hegel's historical law I said that Hegel believes that the unique stages of history develop out of each other through the logical development of societies underlying concepts we can now see what he means our political history shows the development of the underlying concept of freedom from our current point of view we can understand why it was logical that society went through these three stages and in this order and if we look at any other major change in history Hegel tells us we can see the same thing the structure of thesis antithesis and synthesis is everywhere before we end this lecture I want to make a few quick points first Hegel believes that history is a story of progress the synthesis is better than the thesis and the antithesis since it contains the good elements of both so as history goes on the underlying concepts of our societies become more and more rational but second Hegel does not believe at least according to most Hegel scholars that we will ever arrive at that perfection a synthesis is not the final word it's going to turn out to have its own contradictions and will be the thesis in a new development so we have thesis antithesis synthesis and then the synthesis itself will be followed by a new antithesis and a new synthesis and so on history isn't stopping a third Hegel does not believe that knowing about the logic of history will allow you to predict the future you can only recognize the problems with the underlying ideas of a society and the logical development that will lead to the next stage once that next stage has been achieved we can look back at the old hierarchical societies and see what was wrong with them but the people back then couldn't do that historical understanding is always retrospective which brings us back to the main idea of the river of the romantics nobody can escape from their own historical situation

Channel: Leiden University - Faculty of Humanities

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Keywords: Universiteit Leiden, Leiden University (College/University), Humanities (field of study), Geesteswetenschappen, Bachelor, Education, gijsbers, victor, wetenschapsfilosofie

Id: 6QTy2VLBzwk

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017