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Unit 10: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

kind. But the state is an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Notes
Hence even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an
individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy.
Hegel’s skepticism of international law emanated from his belief that the causes of war were sown
deeply in human nature, and as such no solution could be found on the basis of legal formulations.
Another argument against international law was that a state had an inherent right to act as a state,
which no contract could curtail. As there was no superior power to enforce international law,
states existed in a “state of nature” in relationship to one another. As a result, international law,
like the categorical imperative, remained only in the realm of ought and not is. Hegel wrote :
The fundamental proposition of international law ... is that treaties, as the ground of
obligations between states, ought to be kept. But since the sovereignty of a state is the
principle of its relations to others, states are to that extent in a state of nature in
relation to each other. Their rights are actualized only in their particular wills and not
in a universal will with constitutional powers over them. This universal proviso of
international law therefore does not go beyond an ought-to-be and what really happens
is that international relations in accordance with treaty alternate with severance of
these relations.
In the relationship between nations, Hegel discounted tightness or wrong as categories. He
recognized the inevitable existence of a variety of regimes or constitutions, without any attempt to
grade them. So war reflected a situation of two rights. There was nothing called a “just” war. The
only court of appeal for Hegel was the process of history itself, which decided who was right at
that moment, “the history of the world is the world’s court of judgement”. Both Hegel and Hobbes
cynically rejected the claim of the bourgeois state to be under international law. As such, “Hegel’s
idealism comes to the same conclusion as did Hobbes’ materialism”.
10.5 Dialectics

Hegel’s dialectical method played a crucial role in his political philosophy. By applying the
categories of a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis, Hegel’s major thrust was to solve the problem of
contradiction. It attempted to reconcile the many apparent contradictory positions and theories
developed by earlier thought processes. As a method of interpretation, it attempted to reconcile
the various different traits developed in the past. He never claimed to be its inventor, and even
acknowledged that the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates used it.
Hegel’s own use of the dialectical method originated with his identification of Kantian critical
theory, which meant rejection of the Enlightenment philosophical method based on the scientific
approach of studying nature. Crucial to this method was a belief that accuracy came out of a
method of reduction, which meant that knowledge emerged out of the detailed study and analysis
of parts. Descartes, for example, took recourse to mathematics in search of true knowledge. In
Descartes’ words, “to divide up each of the difficulties which I examined into as many parts as
possible, and as seemed requisite in order that it might be resolved in the best manner possible”.
Critical philosophy questioned the utility of this method in seeking answers to moral problems
which arose out of free will and initiation. In this situation, the scientific method became
inappropriate.
Hegel’s dialectical method presupposed that ideas and beliefs were to be related to their institutions
and social structures, i.e. the spheres of the subjective mind and the objective mind had to converge.
The categories of subject and object were to go together, as did theory and practice. What apparently
looked contradictory were actually dialectical terms, interdependent. This method was to be
internally linked to the subject matter. It did not just record and observe, but attempted to build an
edifice of a well-connected discourse, which one may accept or reject. It accepted dialogue and

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