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PATRIARCHY IS NATURAL AND BENEVOLENT
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- Answering Hegel
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PATRIARCHY IS NATURAL AND BENEVOLENT1. PATRIARCHY IS INHERENT IN THE HUMAN CONDITION G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. “Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” in Monroe C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, pp. 573-4. The patriarchal condition is regarded--either in reference to the entire race of man or to some branches of it--as exclusively that condition of things in which the legal element is combined with a due recognition of the moral and emotional parts of our nature, and in which justice, as united with these, truly and really influences the intercourse of the social units. 2. PATRIARCHY IS AS NATURAL AS THE FAMILY UNIT IN SOCIETY G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. “Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” in Monroe C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, p. 574. The basis of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the primary form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the state as its second phase. The patriarchal condition is one of transition, in which the family has already advanced to the position of a race or people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply a bond of love and confidence, and has become one of plighted service.
We must first examine the ethical principle of the family. The family may be reckoned as virtually a single person, since its members have either mutually surrendered their individual personality (and consequently their legal position towards each other, with the rest of their particular interests and desires), as in the case of the parents, or have not yet attained such an independent personality, as in the case of the children, who are at first in that merely natural condition already mentioned. They live, therefore, in a unity of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in each other. And in a relation of mutual love the one individual has the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of the other; he lives out of self, and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life that has been virtually transferred to the other--gains, in fact, that other’s existence and his own as involved with that other. The further interests connected with the necessities and external concerns of life, as well as the development that has to take place within their circle, i.e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the family. 4. THE STATE SHOULD RESPECT THE FAMILY G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. “Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” in Monroe C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, p. 574. The piety of the family relation should be respected in the highest degree by the state; by its means the state obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as mere persons they are not) and who in uniting to form a state bring with them a sound basis of a political edifice--the capacity for feeling one with a whole.
“The formulas of Hegel are an essential and crowning justification of New World democracy in the creative realms of time and space. There is that about them which only the vastness, the multiplicity and the vitality of America would seem able to comprehend, to give scope and illustration to, or to be fit for, or even originate. It is strange to me that they were born in Germany, or in the old world at all.” Walt Whitman 1892
Throughout this edition of the Philosopher and Value Handbook we talk a lot about philosophical systems. A good deal of our understanding of what a system is, and certainly what a philosophical system is, comes from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the most well-known philosophers in Western History. Hegel is the person to listen to about systems; he tried to invent the biggest one of all, one which would encompass everything. When you read Hegel, listen for the silence which whispers “completeness” over all the issues Hegel manages to wrap into his dialectical scheme. To read Hegel, one philosopher remarked, is to undergo a constant series of “re-thinkings” as his system’s tentacles dig further and further back into the origins of origins. Hegel was a maker of systems, a crafter of inter-relatedness. He was a weaver of connections; using the bits of knowledge he had spent his life reading of. As a theological student in Eighteenth Century Germany he took advantage of that relatively liberal time (for scholars) by applying a mind which nearly had perfect and unlimited retention, to the study of how ideas “work.” How they relate to each other; when they are found, lost, and found again across the expanse of Hegel’s Western civilization; how they react to one another when they encounter one another. Ideas, ihen, have a life of their own for Hegel and when he talks about them, as in the encounter between Faith and Reason in his Phenomenology of Spirit, they seem like characters in a very long play about knowledge itself. Hegel saw reason as Reason, truth as Truth. The force that ran through these ideas and made them alive is described in reference to its “power” and ability to commit itself to itself. In almost religious fervor he writes: “Reason is not so powerless as to be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a mere intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where; something separate and abstract, in the heads of certain human beings. It is the infinite complex of things, their entire essence and truth. It is its own material which it commits to its own active energy to work up; not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an external material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the objects of its activity. It supplies its own nourishment, and is the object of its own operations. While it is exclusively its own basis of existence, and absolute final aim, it is also the energizing power realizing this aim; developing it not only in the phenomena of the natural, but also of the spiritual, universe--the history of the world. That this “idea” or “reason’ is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful essence, that it reveals itself in the world, and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and glory--is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy, and is here regarded as demonstrated.” Hegel, “Introduction to the Philosophy of History,” (in Monroe C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, pp. 544-5). More impressive than whatever finally resulted from Hegel’s thinking was the sheer magnitude of his effort. Reading the passage cited above, one senses a mystical optimism, a belief in the coherence of reason and life, so powerful that Hegel would ultimately declare that ours was a world where nothing was ever really wrong. The idea that nothing is wrong is, naturally, an excellent debate argument. Phenomena which seem “bad’ to us today will become resolved tomorrow. We often see states of affairs in our own present time spans (poverty, tyranny, moral permissiveness, and so on) which make us outraged and which inspire us to fight for justice. No problem, says Hegel; our outrage is simply a sign that history will eventually change to embrace that which is moral. Soon, if it is rational that there be no poverty, there will be no more poverty. Rather than using that outrage to fight against poverty now (which by virtue of its existence is, in some way, “necessary,” whether we see such reasons or not), we ought to accept that things are the way they are. This is the philosophical basis of Hegel’s conservatism. Its political manifestation goes a step further when Hegel gives more reasons why one should not fight against the existing order: The state, says Hegel, is as perfect as it is possible for a state to “at this time” be. It is the synthesis of the individual and the collective; it represents the highest attainable stage of history. To fight against it is to fight history itself, and this makes about as much sense to Hegel as trying to empty the oceans with a teaspoon. This section will mainly be concerned with the implications of Hegel’s theories on political thought. Hegel’s views make him an easy conservatizing element in value debate; Hegel can explain, for example, why things like patriarchy and classism aren’t going away as fast as some advocates think is necessary. Hegel’s views about personal morality basically acquit you of any sin or crime, so long as you are a “world-historical” figure and thus exempt from the moral codes that elsewhere Hegel says are vital to societal good. Politically, Hegel never met a government he didn’t like. His Philosophy of Right which is the inspiration for much of the evidence in this collection, purported to resolve the contradiction between individual and society, long a troublesome political question. His contention that the state was necessary for the realization of freedom might, at first glance, seem cogent. But the necessity does not extend both ways, ~pd in fact if the state is the mediator between individual and community, then how can it do anything but err on the side of the community, constantly? Ironically, the first brief in this section’s evidence will argue that, because Hegel is so awash in seeming contradictions, and because so many people think they have the correct interpretation of Hegel, but in fact have simply one philosopher’s interpretation versus that of some other Hegelian scholar, Hegel evidence is “inappropriate” for debate. This, of course, means simply that no debater, or judge, should trust the claim made about some particular piece of Hegelian evidence, unless it matches some coherent story the judge and the debaters understand; in other words, don’t just accept the words of a Hegel expert: They don’t know what they’re talking about either. 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