[net.politics.theory] Non-liberalism

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