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Western Political Thought

Notes conversation, and as R.G. Collingwood pointed out, the very basis of the dialectical method is a
“constant endeavour to convert every occasion of non-agreement into an occasion of agreement”.
For Hegel, dialectics was “the only true method” for comprehending pure thought. He described
dialectics as
... the indwelling tendency outwards by which the one-sidedness and limitation of the
predicates of understanding is seen in its true light... the Dialectical principle constitutes
the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent
connect and necessity to the body of science.
In the Phenomenology, Hegel gave an example of its use in human consciousness, but a more
comprehensive political use was found in the Philosophy of Right, in which the dialectical process
reflected the evolution of world history from the Greek world to Hegel’s time.
For Hegel, there was a dialectical pattern in history, with the state representing the ultimate body,
highly complex, formed as a result of a synthesis of contradictory elements at different levels of
social life. However, the relationship between contradiction and synthesis was within concepts
shaped by human practices. Marx too discerned a dialectical pattern in history, but then understood
contradictions between the means and relations of production at different stages of history.
Praising Hegel’s method, Marx wrote to Engels:
In the method of treatment the fact that by mere accident I again glanced through
Hegel’s Logic has been of great service to me ... . If there should ever be time for such
work again, I would greatly like to make accessible to the ordinary human intelligence,
in two or three printer’s sheets, what is rational in the method which Hegel discovered
but at the same time enveloped into mysticism.
However, like many other unfulfilled desires of Marx, namely writing a book on Hegel’s political
philosophy or a book on the theory of the state, he could never find time to provide for this
rational explanation of the dialectical method.
Popper argued that it was possible that contradictions remained in our theoretical perception of
reality, but it was impossible that such contradictions were a part of reality itself. Popper argued
that our perceptions might be incorrect, but that was not true of reality itself. Scientific progress
revealed elimination of contradictions from our perceptions till they reached the proper nature of
reality itself. Unlike Hegel, Popper believed that the methods of the natural sciences and those of
the social sciences were identical. In this observation, Popper was closer to Descartes than to
Hegel.

10.6 Popper’s Critique

Popper launched a frontal attack on Hegel as a major enemy of the open society along with Plato
and Marx. He stressed the origins of Hegel’s historicism to three ideas developed by Aristotle : (a)
linking individual or state development to a historical evolution; (b) a theory of change that
accepted concepts like an undeveloped essence or potentiality; and (c) the reality or actuality of
any object was reflected by change. The first one led to the historicist method, which in Hegel
assumed a form of “worship of history”; the second one linked the underdeveloped essence of
destiny, and the third helped Hegel to formulate his theory of domination and submission, justifying
the master-slave relationship. Hegel, asserted Popper, was a true disciple of Heraclitus, Plato and
Aristotle. His initial success in evolving a new philosophical method of enquiry was mainly due
to the underdeveloped nature of German science at that time. It was an “age of dishonesty”, in
which Hegel became an important philosopher with the backing and patronage of the Prussian
state. No wonder Hegelianism was an apology for Prussianism. In the context of subsequent
history, Hegelian historicism and the doctrine of modern totalitarianism were identical. Hegel’s

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