G. W. F. Hegel - Introduction to the Philosophy of Right | Political Philosophy

Hegel's last words were a lament about having never been properly understood but the man only has himself to blame because his writings aren't exactly clear in spite of the dense and jargon heavy language Hegel's philosophy was an important influence on many subsequent philosophical developments from Marx to Kierkegaard in nature and from psychoanalysis to existentialism and post structuralism the big question with Hegel is where to begin his philosophical system could be described as circular which makes it hard to find an entry point you might start with his famous master-slave dialectic which describes the conflict between two self-conscious human beings and demonstrates the self-defeating nature of unilateral attempts to dominate others the lesson here is that only through the equal and reciprocal recognition of other people can we realize our true nature but an issue with drawing out their small essence is that by focusing on one aspect of his philosophy we ignore the larger whole and this is probably the most undergoing thing we could do this is because Hegel thought that every aspect of reality was inherently connected to an idea of totality where this video begins is with haggles idea that everything in the world is part of a single constantly developing organic whole his view was that everything from human society to plants animals and inorganic matter was structured by an implicit rationality you could say that it was all part of reason unfolding and developing itself in the world embodied in progressively higher historical and philosophical stages of development his politics are part of a larger system and they're actually a little more progressive than he is often given credit for but to understand his political argument set out in his book elements of the four sphere of right we should be good headings and understand how they can be situated within the development of a larger system this video will introduce the outlines of the Hegelian system so that in the next video we can understand the context of Hegel's arguments for the adequate realization of human freedom in the rational structure of a constitutional state I'm James Muldoon I'm the lecturer and political science at the University of Exeter and this is an introduction to Hegel's philosophy Hegel's early writings geography ahem friedrich hegel was born on 27th of august 1770 into a middle-class family in stuttgart in the southwest of germany he went to school at the age of three and started learning Latin at the age of five he was a dedicated student and a voracious reader of Enlightenment authors in his German high school when he was 18 he entered the tubing a shift a protestant seminary which was part of the local university he studied christian theology and philosophy and his two roommates as a student were friedrich hölderlin and friedrich shelling the three developed their ideas together and all shared an admiration for ancient Greek culture the French Revolution and Conti and philosophy Hegel and her de lijn were called jacobins by their opponents referring to the radical left of the French Revolution Hegel followed the unfolding of the revolution and in 1792 he and his friends planted a Liberty tree on a meadow near the seminary in honor of the storming of the Bastille he believed that the revolution introduced the concept of individual political freedom as a political fact for the first time in European society despite his later criticisms of the revolution he always saw this as an enormous turning point in the history of the West even at a young age Hegel earned the nickname the old man from his friends and during his earliest years he was eclipsed by his younger friend Schelling who was seen as the rising star of his generation after graduating from the seminary Hegel wanted time to study so he took up a position in Bern as a private tutor and kept working on his philosophical system one of my tricks to understanding Hegel is to start with his early writings on religious topics it's here that his motivations and basic vision of the world are more visible than in his later technical language he was troubled by what he saw as the cultural disintegration of modern society he thought that society was progressing but there were also negative effects of things like the advance of the sciences and the growth of modern industry there are enormous changes to how society was being organized big cities were growing peasants were being displaced from their land and new political rights of citizens were being declared in addition the authority of the church was challenged by new movements the breakdown of traditional sources of meaning and authority was creating social alienation and destabilizing traditional values and institutions people were obsessed with material wealth they were no longer oriented to the common good and they saw public institutions as threatening rather than providing for their freedom to Hegel human beings were becoming separated from God from nature and from their communities much like other 19th century writers like John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville Hegel wanted to harness the positive aspects of these inevitable changes while avoiding their downsides in his first book the difference between Victor's and schelling systems of philosophy Hegel said out the central goal of his philosophical project he aimed to overcome the fragmentations divisions and contradictions of modern life his goal was to enable modern alienated individuals to be at one with themselves and to feel at home in their social world it was a project of reconciliation what defined it is distinctly heard Galen was that he acknowledged there was no going back to an idealized Society of the past he didn't want to make prussia great again by looking back to a medieval period he recognized that the advances of modernity meant that we would need new institutions like commercial society modern art the rule of law and a constitutional state he was initially attracted to the model of the Greek polis which through the Rose tinted glasses of 19th century German history looked like a beautiful unified and harmonious whole but he discovered that modernization had forever changed how we live and any ideal of social unity would have to acknowledge the many divisions and contradictions at the heart of modern life individuals couldn't be expected to all belong to a unified culture because they'd be divided by class religion and ideological differences an important early essay for seeing the progress of Hegel's thought is one of his early theological writings an essay called the spirit of Christianity and its fate here Hegel attempts to grapple with the social and economic Changez of modern Europe against the background of religious themes the spirit of Christianity in its fate this essay presents itself as a theological study of the difference between the Jewish and Christian religions it can also be interpreted as a commentary on European politics and philosophy it unfolds as a narrative of Jesus's teachings and seeks to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus's notion of love over a Jewish idea of a transcendent God Hegel's views on Judaism are complicated he was critical of certain aspects of the religion on philosophical grounds but he supported Jewish emancipation in terms of political rights the main aim of this essay is to develop a notion of Christian love as a unifying force which is superior to divine law and theoretical reason it's Havel at his most romantic even though he will later become very critical of his romantic contemporaries in this essay love represents the power of unification that can reconcile opposites he'll divisions and provide a new foundation for an organic and holistic conception of community Hegel understood Jesus's precept love thy neighbor not as an external command which repressed and naturally self-interested subject but as articulating an original connection between individuals we don't treat others well because we need to mechanically look up a rulebook and follow a set of laws we love our neighbors because we see them as part of our community and ultimately as part of ourselves love describes a structure of ethical relations which reconciles individuals with each other as reciprocally bound ethical agents the reason why this is still a Hegelian rather than a romantic text is that Hegel also demonstrates the inevitable disintegration of a loving community into a more institutionalized and rural governed religion although he doesn't develop the insight in this essay he will later see a rational bureaucracy of the state and a developed commercial marketplace as necessary components for reconciling individuals with their social world his narrative of the Jewish people in this text is divided into three parts centered on the figures of Noah Abraham and Moses he begins with a story of an incredible flood in Noah's time which ends the natural harmony between human beings and nature the flood could symbolize the rise of the physical sciences the Age of Enlightenment and the political events culminating in the French Revolution this is because these events all share a similar hope placing human reason for the possibility of the liberation of humanity and the mastery of nature after this original separation Abraham the second figure is intended to evoke the image of individuals in a fragmented modern society they live isolated lives in which they attempt to submit all other living things to their will the figure of Abraham is also meant a stand-in for cards ethics which the young Hegel thought was too devoted to an abstract moral law and was disconnected from emotional and social attachments to the world the third and final figure of Moses established a covenant with a transcendent God creating a system of law as command this can make people feel like they're governed by another power and not truly free in opposition to the objective command of the law Hegel argued that Jesus stood for a holistic ethics in which the divisions of modern life were restored through the unifying power of love love and the related notion of life were Hegel's first answer in his search for a basic substance that could connect the atomized individuals of modern society and integrate them both physically and ethically into a shared world this conception of love is what eventually will become spirit or Geist in Hegel's phenomenology of spirit which will come to shortly in the final session of the spirit of Christianity Hegel turns from the concept of the spirit of a people to examine the idea of their fate the fate of a people is their movement along a path of development from which they're unable to turn back this section reveals Hegel's growing belief that a utopian vision of the holy unified and harmonious society is impossible under modern conditions the early German romantics who were Hegel's contemporaries and rivals tended to think of the political state not as a set of legal institutions but as a living organic bond the connected people there is something like this conception expressed here in Hegel's notion of a metaphysics of love and life but Hegel shows that it's the fate of Jesus and his followers to have their small loving community eventually transformed into an institutionalized religion there were two main issues here the first was that as the community grew in size it couldn't be sustained through personal connections of love it required a more formalized kind of interpersonal relationship facilitated through laws and regulations the second problem was the mode of being in which love expressed itself it was a feeling and an emotional bond that didn't satisfy the demands of an increasingly important way of experiencing the world through one's reason while aesthetic experience was an important reference point for a whole generation of students after Kant Hegel would ultimately see philosophy and reason as a higher form of human experience than either art or aesthetics in his years in Bern and Frankfurt Hegel had also engaged in a detailed study of modern political economy and was keenly aware of the ways in which industry and modern commerce were transforming society the marketplace meant that interactions with other individuals could be spread across continents requiring property rights contract law and a system of justice politics required more developed institutions and than nostalgic ideals of a medieval society this essay was an important moment in the development of his thought because he demonstrates the self-defeating nature of a romantic conception of politics but the metaphysics of love and life provide a starting point for Hegel thinking about the basic interconnectedness of people as part of an organic and holistic conception of society the phenomenology of spirit Hegel's the phenomenology of spirit is his most famous work and was written as a kind of introduction to his system of philosophy it's a notoriously challenging text even for philosophers the phenomenology is a narrative of humanities development through successive stages of history imagine us looking back from our own time and examining the different ways in which we used to think about the world the story is told from a position at the end of this journey from the standpoint of what Hegel calls absolute knowledge at this final stage in Hegel's time we can look back on the development of human consciousness and see ourselves as a necessary product of these stages of human history he describes the journey as a pathway of despair because we're taken from the certainty of our naive understanding of the world and a force to see the failures and blind spots of various philosophical positions Hegel thought that there was something special about his own time and indeed about his own philosophy which was for him the point at which Humanity had achieved a sense of self understanding about the inherent connections between each stage of its development every stop on the journey contains an element of truth and important insights into the human condition in the Roman Republic for example people came to conceive of themselves as individual persons subject to the law for Hegel this notion of legal personhood is a modern social category that was first discovered in the Roman world similarly the modern principle of political freedom was first articulated for Hegel in the French Revolution which remains an important reference point for modern societies quita Hegel's understanding of development is the previous stages are not refuted and discarded but rather mind for their kernel of truth which is incorporated into a higher stage of development we could say that this development is dialectical which would mean that part of what is negated is also retained and raised to a higher level this is what Hegel means by his concept of Alf haben which means both to negate but also to partially preserve and lift up the development of consciousness in the book is not merely an abstract epistemological exercise but a rec elective narrative of different forms of life that bears our relation to a history of Western Civ lies Asian in Chapter four on spirit we start to see this much more explicitly whereas the first three chapters are more like a logical development of different philosophical positions from Chapter four the text adopts a more historical character it's a rather old fashioned and Eurocentric vision but it's one that charts a course from ancient Greece to modern Europe as part of a single journey of discovery for Hegel the original undivided unity and harmony of the Greek polis gradually develops into the modern legal and political institutions of the nation-state the point he's trying to make is that we need to understand the totality of human history to see how humanity has expressed itself in different ways through its politics art religion and philosophy the structure of the phenomenology the book is structured around two figures one called a natural or experiencing consciousness who is taking the journey of discovery and another called observing consciousness which already has a knowledge of the entire journey the two perspectives of the book revealed the double-sided nature of Hegel system of philosophy like two sides of the same coin the phenomenology of spirit describes both the experience of human consciousness progressing to true philosophy and also the objective and conceptual development of an abstract system of science it describes both how we perceive the world as human subjects but also how the world itself is structured rationally according to an implicit logic as we're reading the book it developed simultaneously along both these paths from the point of view of experiencing consciousness it's a progression through different ways of understanding the world it starts with a naive empiricism and shows the internal inconsistencies of a variety of different philosophical systems but at the same time from the perspective of the observing consciousness at the end of this journey we can see that this movement is not only a logic of experience but also the self development of a system of science so let's pause here for a second we know the book is a journey of philosophical discovery we know it was written as an introduction to his system and that it's both a story of the development of human experience and a system of science by Chapter four consciousness has gone through a number of stages and has now developed into spirit let's find out what Hegel means by this technical term Geist or spirit spirit and human society spirit is Hegel's name for the totality of a form of life including a society's politics our religion and philosophy remember that his concept of love and life from his earlier writings described him metaphysical and ethical bonds that connected people to a community spirit plays a similar role in that it identifies a set of relations between human beings that connects them into an organic whole for Hegel spirit is humanity as it is constantly evolving and redefining itself throughout history here's one of the first philosophers to see human history as part of a single evolution and development every society has a basic understanding of certain core ideas that structure how they live we live norm governed societies which have an implicit consensus over certain authority of principles which we view as rational and legitimate as societies customs and laws are constantly evolving through conflict over what counts as part of this consensus for example Hegel saw a conflict in ancient Athens in his reading of the play Antigone it was over contradictions between the private sphere personal morality and an attachment to personal duties versus a public sphere of human law universality and public duties the characters of Antigone and Creon represented each side of this division with neither being able to rise above this social position Hegel thought his own home was the beginning of the dramatic change in the 19th century find the impact of content philosophy the French Revolution and the nation-state human societies develop their necessary institutions and practices to properly scrutinize their own way of life through rational reflection absolute knowledge the position at the end of this journey is what Hegel calls absolute knowledge some interpreters have seen this as an end of history and that Hegel thought that this would be the final philosophical system to ever be developed Hegel did see his own era as an important stage in the development of humanity but he never claimed that it would be the end of history his definition of absolute knowledge in the final chapter is simply spirit that knows itself as spirit in other words Humanity has reached a point in its development where it has developed the necessary practices and institutions that allow it to adequately reflect on its own freedom and existence modern societies come to see themselves as the sources of their own customs and laws they no longer have to rely on any pre given ground for their forms of moral consensus they can see how their own lies of the outcome of a long journey of different forms of life from the position of absolute knowledge we can see that the world is structured rationally and we've become conscious of the implicit connection between different aspects of reality in politics we can see that individuals can participate in modern commercial society but they also need the universality of the rule of law and the state to maintain their Liberty from the position of absolute knowledge or an understanding of Hegel's philosophy we can also observe not just the ascent of experiencing consciousness on its educational path but also the structure of Hegel's philosophical system he was writing at a time when philosophers were developing complex systems of philosophy that sought to give an account of humanity and its place in the world shelling and Hegel also thought that such a system would have to be a dynamic one and show how different aspects of reality were both connected to each other but also developed out of each other as part of an interconnected whole Hegel's philosophical system encompasses all aspects of reality and included everything from abstract logic and mathematics to inorganic matter organic matter plants animals and finally human consciousness and its various political religious and Phyllis ethical activities his system is set out in a book called the encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences which provides an overview of how he saw every aspect of his philosophy fitting together the whole system could be represented in the form of a circle Hegel thought that this science captured the totality of experience in three main sections first a science of logic which would contain philosophical knowledge logic and abstract reasoning second a philosophy of nature which was a philosophical account of the development of inorganic and organic life and finally a philosophy of spirit or mind which started at the psychological level of human consciousness and also contained an account of human activities like politics art religion and philosophy philosophy was the most important human activity and allowed Hegel to complete the circle by returning to the position of abstract thought never one to be modest Hegel thought that the development of his own philosophy was the point at which humanity finally came to adequately see itself with a true and complete system of philosophical knowledge his account of the history of philosophy sought to show how every previous philosopher only captured part of the truth but that they were all leading to his own synthesis and completion important for us in this video series is what Hegel calls objective spirit within the third section of a philosophy of mind because this is where he gives an account of his ethics and politics objective spirit gives a philosophical reading of what Hegel saw as the appropriate form of political institutions for modern life in this section of his philosophy he constructed what we might call a logic of political life that justifies and gives an account of the rational structure of the institutions of the family civil society and the state Hegel thought that individuals could only be free in the fullest sense of the term within the political structures of a modern constitutional state he developed his theory of social freedom of ethical life and of the modern institutions of the state in texe the philosophy of right and it's this text which we're going to examine in the next video you

Channel: James Muldoon

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Keywords: G. W. F. Hegel, phenomenology of spirit, philosophy of right, political philosophy, philosophy

Id: H8zTC05ZB6w

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019