Political thought

Political thought

Hegel’s political thought is best understood as an attempt to liberalize the classical Greek concept of the community. Hegel revives some of the central theses of classical political thought: that the state is an organic whole prior to its parts, and that the individual has its identity only within the state. He is therefore critical of the contractarian tradition of Hobbes and Locke, which held that the state can be formed by a contract between self- sufficient individuals. Reviving Aristotle’s dictum that man is a beast or god apart from the polis, Hegel contends that there are no individuals apart from the state. The very identity and worth of the individual rests upon his performing his role within the state and political life. Nevertheless, Hegel was also critical of the classical state for its failure to recognize individual rights and freedoms. The modern state would have to overcome this limitation, ensuring every individual certain basic rights and the freedom to pursue its self-interest in the market-place.

In the tradition of Rousseau and Kant, Hegel maintains that the foundation of the law is the concept of freedom. The justification for law is not that it ensures happiness, still less that it has been established by tradition or force, but that it guarantees freedom. Hegel has two concepts of freedom: subjective freedom, which consists in the power and right to pursue my self-interest independent of constraint by others or the government; and objective freedom, which consists in moral autonomy, acting according to the principles of morality. While Hegel stresses the value of moral autonomy, he insists that the specific content of morality has to be provided by the community and cannot be supplied by the reason of the individual alone. This has led to charges of authoritarianism, but such criticisms neglect the great value that Hegel places upon subjective freedom. Hegel stresses that there are certain fundamental constitutional truths,

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certain basic rights, which should be given to every individual simply as a free and rational being.

Although Hegel was inspired by the republics of antiquity and stressed the value of individual rights, he was still sceptical of modern mass democracy. He doubted the wisdom of the masses as well as the value of universal suffrage. Nevertheless, he still affirmed the importance of public participation in government, stressing that the state had to reflect the general will of its people. Such participation would take place indirectly through the channels of corporations, which would represent the interests of their members. Hegel also stressed the value of a bicameral legislative body, whose members would be elected from corporations and local governments. Although he valued a monarchy, he also insisted that the monarch should be bound by the constitution, and that his policies should be formulated according to the will of the legislative body.

While Hegel recognized the importance of a single central power in the modern state,

he was also highly critical of too much centralization at the expense of local autonomy and independent groups. He deplored the absolutist states of the ancien régime and the government of revolutionary France for attempting to control everything from above. A healthy constitution permitted individual initiative, independent corporations, and local government and popular participation in affairs of the state. Rather than a machine that controls everything from above, the state should be an organism that has some independent life in its individual parts. These intermediate or independent groups played

a pivotal role in Hegel’s attempt to reconcile the demands of community and liberty: they would ensure community as a source of belonging for the individual, and they would uphold liberty by limiting control from above.

Hegel’s political philosophy has been notorious for its Prussianism, for its attempt to rationalize the reactionary Prussian state. This interpretation has been based upon Hegel’s notorious dictum that ‘the actual is rational, the rational is actual’, and his famous claim in the preface to the Philosophy of Right that the purpose of philosophy is not to prescribe how the state ought to be but to comprehend the reason within the present. Yet Hegel himself explained that the actual should not be conflated with whatever exists but only what realizes the ideals of reason. If Hegel preached reconciliation to the facts of history this was mainly because he believed that history was progressing towards its ultimate goal, the self-awareness that every human being is free. Rather than an apology for a reactionary Prussian state, Hegel’s political philosophy is better understood as a defence of the Prussian reform movement, which attempted to liberalize and modernize the Prussian state by creating more local government, economic freedom, popular participation and a constitution ensuring fundamental rights.