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Western Political Thought

Notes This utmost emphasis on reason was of tremendous importance to Hegel, as human emancipation—
a distinct possibility in the modern period—could only be realized on the basis of reason. “Man
could be free, could develop all his potentialities, only if his entire world was dominated by an
integrating rational will and by knowledge. The Hegelian system anticipates a state in which this
possibility has been achieved”. This was how, in Hegel’s theory, reality merged with rationality.
Hegel, however, was well aware that the present reality in many of its manifestations was far from
reason and perfection. But what he emphasized was the human capacity to cherish freedom, and
in that sense had the capacity to transcend the imperfections of contemporary nature and society
by the process of mediation. Reason and human action led to mediation, by new concepts and
categories replacing old ones, which at one time looked stable. This was the driving force of the
Hegelian dialectic, which made his philosophy a negative one. Marcuse remarked :
It is originally motivated by the conviction that the given facts that appear to
commonsense as the positive index of truth, so that truth can be established by their
destruction. The driving force of the dialectical method lies in this critical conviction.
Dialectic in its entirety is linked to the conception that all forms of being are permeated
by an essential negativity, and that this negativity determines their content and
movement. The dialectic represents the counter thrust to any form of positivism.

10.3 Philosophy of History

To convince that the present was really different from the past, capable of actualizing reason and
ending the negative and critical roles of philosophy, Hegel had to dissect the historical process of
humankind critically and comprehensively. In attempting to perform this gigantic task, there was
also a marked difference between Kant and Hegel. Kant argued with the help of philosophical
reasoning that human nature was permanent and unchanging. Hegel pointed out that human
nature, like everything else, changed from one historical epoch to another. Employing his dialectical
method, Hegel developed one of his most enduring achievements, a philosophy of history based
on change. “It was Hegel who established the history of philosophy as a central academic discipline
as part of the core of any philosophic education” (Kaufmann 1965 : 21-22). Commenting on the
enormous influence of Hegel, Engels wrote :
What distinguished Hegel’s mode of thinking from that of all other philosophers was the exceptional
historical sense underlying it. However abstract and idealist the form employed, the development
of his Ideas runs always parallel to the development of world history, and the latter is indeed
supposed to be only the proof of the former.
Engels’ clear statement revealed that for him and Marx, no other philosopher could match Hegel’s
sense of history, as it truly reflected the process of world history. Such a claim emerged because
the Hegelian scheme of analyzing history had both a reflection of accumulation of a good deal of
facts encompassing a large portion of world history, and a novelty of the method of the dialectic
in understanding the hidden meaning of the process of history. His canvas included the ancient
and important civilizations of India, China, and Persia, linking them to the ancient civilizations of
Greece and Rome, ultimately stressing the development of the modern period of European history
reflecting on European feudalism, the Protestant Reformation and ending with the Enlightenment
and the French Revolution. But what distinguished Hegel’s enterprise from other historical accounts
was the important fact that the philosophy of history was not purely a historical account, but a
way to comprehend the entire evolution of human civilization in a comparative perspective, with
a view to understanding the meaning and rationality behind the evolution.
This rationality of world history was the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Since the
concept of freedom was the pivot around which the entire political philosophy of Hegel hinged, it
was important to find the link between the realization of freedom and the process of history, not
only of Europe but also of the Orient.

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