Page 200 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes but no such attempt has flown from either German idealism or German Marxism. In this sense,
they were both locally dated.
Self -Assessment
Fill in the blanks :
1. George Wilhelm Friedrich was a ............... philosopher.
2. In January 1801 two years after the death of his father, Hegel finished with tutoring and went
to Jena where he took a position as ............... at the University of Jena.
3. The first major work Hegel published is ............... .
4. On November 14, 1831 Hegel died of ............... in Berlin.
5. Hegel’s famous quote in reference to the theory of state is ............... .

10.7 Summary

• In the entire tradition of Western political theory of over 2000 years, no other thinker aroused
as much controversy about the meaning of his discourse as Hegel did. Hegel himself was
partially responsible for this, as his works were difficult to dissect and because of the critical
nature of his philosophy and the operation of the dialectics, the inner essence was always
vulnerable to more than one plausible interpretation. As such, the debate as to whether
Hegel was a conservative, a liberal or a totalitarian, would continue for the coming years.
Complicating the problem was the assertion by Hegel that history as a mode of fundamental
shifts and changes had ended during his own time. He looked upon the 1806 war in Jena as
the last war, for by then the liberal principles of liberty and equality had become the acceptable
principles of a modern state in most advanced countries, and there were no other principles
than the ones that liberalism advanced .
• Marx realized the formidable dominance of Hegelian philosophy, and compared it with the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. He stressed that Hegel’s philosophy could be attacked
only from within and not from outside, which meant that Hegel could be criticized on the
basis of the rational and critical standards that he had evolved. Because of this reason,
Marxian materialism was dialectically linked to Hegelian idealism. Marx used all the categories
of Hegel and remained a Hegelian throughout his life. Moreover. Marx used Hegelian terms
to criticize the liberal state and projected Communism as not only superior, but also perfect.
The collapse of Communism raised “the question of whether Hegel’s Universal History was
not in the end the more prophetic one ... communism did not represent a higher stage than
liberal democracy, it was part of the same stage of history that would eventually universalize
the spread of liberty and equality to all parts of the world”. Interestingly, though Marx made
a dialectical critique of Hegel on all the major European themes, he accepted Hegel’s analysis
on the Orient without subjecting it to a dialectical critique. Hegel’s Eurocentricism
overwhelmed even his bitterest critic.
• Hegel was part of the Eurocentric tradition which began with Montesquieu and inspired the
entire gamut of thinkers who subscribed to what Edward Said called Orientalism. In spite of
his belief in universal history, Hegel remained a child of his times, unable to transcend the
prejudices of his time. This was borne out by his criticism of the Reform Act of 1832, the first
major electoral reform movement in England. Contrast Hegel’s reactions with those of
Rammohun Roy, who, coming from a relatively backward colonial country, could comprehend
the tremendous progressive content of the act.
• Hegel also lacked a proper understanding of the role of science in changing the societal
process. Even here, his French contemporary Saint Simon grasped the dynamics of the
industrial technocratic society, which enabled him to predict a future European Union. The

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