carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (03/17/86)
Me: >> Modern liberalism >> is in no sense an antithesis of classical liberalism, but rather a >> development of the same basic principles. The basic idea, more or >> less, is that JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT A GOVERNMENT MUST TREAT ITS >> CITIZENS AS EQUALS, with equal concern and respect. Adam Reed replies: >... >1. Up to the time of Hegel, who made this kind metaphoric animism >academically acceptable, the ascription of personal attitudes (such as >concern and respect) to collective institutions (such as the state) >would have been regarded by every competent philosopher as a category >error. To speak of "government treating its citizens with equal concern and respect" is clearly a metaphor (or some other figure of speech), and has nothing at all to do with Hegel. If Adam has any principled objection to the use of metaphor, he will have to go stand in the corner with Thomas Hobbes, who said somewhere that a metaphor is a lie, and somewhere else said "the state is a great Leviathan." For libertarians are unable to write three sentences in a row without speaking of "the government" as an intentional agent, as in "seat-belt laws mean the government is telling you what to do for your own good." This is a legitimate manner of speaking as long as one is aware that a government cannot have intentions and feelings in the same sense as an individual, unless the government is identified with one individual. There's nothing wrong with saying "the Reagan Administration intends to overthrow the Nicaraguan government," as long as we understand that the meaning of this statement needs to be analyzed. But I haven't yet seen a libertarian analysis of such statements, at least on the net. "Hegel made this kind of metaphorical animism (ascribing personal qualities to supraindividual entities) academically acceptable, thus committing a category error." This is baloney, both in its interpretation of Hegel and its implication that he made such errors acceptable to the general run of philosophers. Do you really understand Hegel's incredibly complex philosophy? Neither do I, so instead of talking uninformed blather about Hegel, I will quote Charles Taylor from his book on *Hegel*, also quoted in the Sandel volume I mentioned previously. Taylor addresses the issues raised by Adam Reed and among other things rebuts the standard libertarian (mis)interpretations of Hegel. _______________ "Sittlichkeit" refers to the moral obligations I have to an ongoing community of which I am part.... The common life which is the basis of my *sittlich* obligation is already there in existence.... Hence in *Sittlichkeit*, there is no gap between what ought to be and what is, between *Sollen* and *Sein*. With *Moralitaet*, the opposite holds. Here we have an obligation to realize something which does not exist. What ought to be contrasts with what is. And connected with this, the obligation holds of me not in virtue of being part of a larger community life, but as an individual rational will.... The doctrine of *Sittlichkeit* is that morality reaches its completion in a community.... This is the point where Hegel runs counter to the moral instinct of liberalism then and now. Between obligations which are founded on our membership of some community and those which are not so contingent we tend to think of the latter as transcending the former, as the truly universal moral obligations. Hegel's reversal of the order and his exalted view of political society is what has inspired accusations of "Prussianism", state-worship, even proto-Fascism. We can see already how wide of the mark these are. We tend to think of *Moralitaet* as more fundamental because we see the moral man as being ever in danger of being asked by his community to do the unconscionable. And particularly so in an age of nationalism. We are probably right in feeling this in our age, but it was not what Hegel foresaw. The community which is the locus of our fullest moral life is a state which comes close to a true embodiment of the Idea. Hegel thought that the states of his day were building towards that. He was wrong, and we shall discuss this more later on. But it is ludicrous to attribute a view like "my government right or wrong" to Hegel, or to think that he would have approved the kind of blind following of orders of German soldiers and functionaries under the Third Reich, which was a time if ever there was one when *Moralitaet* had the higher claim.... Full realization of freedom requires a society for the Aristotelian reason that a society is the minimum self-sufficient human reality. In putting *Sittlichkeit* at the apex, Hegel is -- consciously -- following Aristotle.... The idea that our highest and most complete moral existence is one we can only attain to as members of a community obviously takes us beyond the contract theory of modern natural law, or the utilitarian conception of society as an instrument of the general happiness.... The community is an embodiment of *Geist*, and a fuller, more substantial embodiment than the individual. This idea of a subjective life beyond the individual has been the source of much resistance to Hegel's philosophy. For it has seemed to the common sense at least of the Anglo-Saxon world as both wildly extravagant in a speculative sense, and morally very dangerous in its "Prussian" or even "Fascist" consequences, sacrificing the individual and his freedom on the altar of some "higher" communal deity.... Hegel denies that the state exists for the individuals, in other words he rejects the Enlightenment utilitarian idea that the state has only an instrumental function, that the ends it must serve are those of individuals. But he cannot really accept the inverse proposition. The state is not there for the sake of the citizens; one could say, it is the goal and they are its instruments. But this relation of ends and means is quite inappropriate here. For the state is not something abstract, standing over against the citizens; but rather they are moments as in organic life, where no member is end and none means.... Rather we see here that the notion of ends and means gives way to the image of a living being. The state or the community has a higher life; its parts are related as the parts of an organism. Thus the individual is not serving an end separate from him, rather he is serving a large goal which is the ground of his identity, for he only is the individual he is in this larger life.... But why does Hegel want to speak of a spirit which is larger than the individual? What does it mean to say that the individual is part of, inheres in, a larger life; and that he is only what he is by doing so? These ideas only appear mysterious because of the powerful hold on us of atomistic prejudices, which have been very important in modern political thought and culture. We can think that the individual is what he is in abstraction from his community only if we are thinking of him *qua* organism. But when we think of a human being, we do not simply mean a living organism, but a being who can think, feel, decide, be moved, respond, enter into relations with others; and all this implies a language, a related set of ways of experiencing the world, of interpreting his feelings, understanding his relation to others, to the past, the future, the absolute, and so on. It is the particular way he situates himself within this cultural world that we call his identity. But now a language, and the related set of distinctions underlying our experience and interpretation, is something that can only grow in and be sustained by a community. In that sense, what we are as human beings, we are only in a cultural community.... The life of a language and culture is one whose locus is larger than that of the individual. It happens in the community. The individual possesses this culture, and hence his identity, by participating in this larger life. ...The fact is that our experience is what it is, is shaped in part, by the way we interpret it; and this has a lot to do with the terms which are available to us in our culture. But there is more; many of our most important experiences would be impossible outside of society, for they relate to objects which are social. Such are, for instance, the experience of participating in a rite, or of taking part in the political life of our society, or of rejoicing at the victory of the home team, or of national mourning for a dead hero; and so on. All these experiences and emotions have objects which are essentially social, i.e. would not be outside of (this) society. ...So that it is no extravagant proposition to say that we are what we are in virtue of participating in the larger life of our society -- or at least, being immersed in it.... ...The objects of public experience, rite, festival, election, etc., are not like facts of nature. For they are not entirely separable from the experience they give rise to. They are partly constituted by the ideas and interpretations which underlie them. A given social practice, like voting in the ecclesia, or in a modern election, is what is is because of a set of commonly understood ideas and meanings, by which the depositing of stones in an urn, or the marking of bits of paper, counts as the making of a social decision. These ideas about what is going on are essential to define the institution. They are essential if there is to be *voting* here, and not some quite other activity which could be carried on by putting stones in the urns. ...[These ideas about voting] involve a certain view of man, society, and decision, for instance, which may seem evil or unintelligible to other societies. To take a social decision by voting implies that it is right, appropriate and intelligible to build the community decision out of a concatenation of individual decisions. In some societies, e.g. many traditional village societies throughout the world, social decisions can (could) only be taken by consensus.... Thus a certain view of man and his relation to society is embedded in some of the practices and institutions of a society. So that we can think of these as expressing certain ideas.... In this sense we can think of the institutions and practices of a society as a kind of language in which its fundamental ideas are expressed. But what is "said" in this language is not ideas which could be in the minds of certain individuals only, they are rather common to a society, because embedded in its collective life, in practices and institutions which are of the society indivisibly. In these the spirit of the society is in a sense objectified. They are, to use Hegel's term, "objective spirit." ...There is no specially odd Hegelian doctrine of a superindividual subject of society, as is often believed. There is only a very difficult doctrine of a cosmic subject whose vehicle is man. This is woven into a theory of man in society which by itself is far from implausible or bizarre.... But the attempt to understand Hegel within the terms of this liberal tradition has just led to distortion. A notorious example is Hegel's doctrine of the state. In the atomist liberal tradition, "state" can only mean something like "organs of government". To talk of these as "essence" or "final goal" of the citizens can only mean subjection to irresponsible tyranny. But what Hegel means by "state" is the politically organized community. His model is not the *Machstaat* of Frederick the Great, which he never admired, but the Greek polis. Thus his ideal is not a condition in which individuals are means to an end, but rather a community in which like a living organism, the distinction between means and ends is overcome, everything is both means and end. In other words the state should be an application of the category of internal teleology. [Charles Taylor] -- Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
torek@umich.UUCP (Paul V. Torek ) (03/18/86)
I'm not familiar with much of Hegel's writings, but Charles Taylor's commentary is wrong on at least one count (here I am criticizing, not his exegesis of Hegel, but his apparent endorsement of the view he is elaborating). Taylor contrasts the individual considered "as an organism" vs. "as a human", but why are these mutually exclusive viewpoints (as seems to be implied)? (Hint: They aren't -- a human is a certain distinctive *sort* of organism.) Sure our communal life is important, but how does "liberalism" fail to acknowledge this? F'rinstance: Taylor lists utilitarianism among the "modern liberal" viewpoints; where does he get off accusing it of ignoring or disparaging communal life? I keep hearing this axe-grinding against "individualism", but just what is it and why is it objectionable? Feel free to give the answers you think Hegel, Taylor, and/or Alisdair MacIntyre (to throw in another contender with whom I'm more familiar) would give, or, of course, your own. --Paul Torek torek@umich