Spirit is the keystone of Hegel's philosophy of history, and as Blunden says without considering Spirit understanding the philosophy of Hegel is not possible. Logic, Spirit and Nature are the three components constituting the System of Science in Hegel's philosophy. Though Hegel may be blamed for introducing "spiritual forces" into historical processes it should remembered that Spirit for Hegel is not a supernatural force, a divine will or something so. In Hegel's system, Spirit indeed is the "nature of human beings en masse" rather than a wandering ghost though Hegel really believed the Spirit enters a nation and encourages social-historical movements and leaves another nation and plunges it into stagnation and decline.
Perhaps, discovering true relations between human beings and the nature, which determines the level of social and economic formations and consequently political, legal and intellectual institutions of each society, was required to substantiate Spirit and interpret it in terms of real people's activities.
As Blunden says with a little manipulation we can strip idealist parlance from Hegel's philosophy and reproduce in terms of real life's concepts. Spirit is made by all human beings but act beyond the will of each man. Similar is our understanding of the level of man's struggle with the nature: a product of human beings' needs but independent on individuals, groups, classes, and even all men.
if the spirit for Hegel is not a supernatural force, what would be the "idealist parlance" to be stripped?
ReplyDeleteThe difference between supernatural forces and Spirit as the "human beings' nature en masse" may be ascribed to various levels of idealism. The crude and early version of idealism put God as final decision-maker in history while more advanced forms of idealism attribute this role to "history", "heroes", and Spirit, in case of Hegel. I think Hegel stands on the borderline between a materialist and purely idealist interpretation of history. Removing idealism from Hegel is necessary to come to the conclusion that man and his actions creates history and society.
ReplyDeleteAndy Blunden: Good question. Not eaily answered because recovering Hegel's philosophy is not at all a simple matter.
ReplyDeleteA supernatural force is something coming from outside an already-existing humanity and acting upon it. It would be as if one tried to understand the nature of the present period in world politics by claiming that there was some disease or ghostly intervention or conspiracy making people behave in this way. But this is the very opposite of what Hegel suggests. In fact it would be more like the natural science of the time which saw objects being moved by forces. Hegel suggests that world politics (for example) arises out of the nature of people's lives and has to be understood by studying the totality of those lives.
What is idealist about Hegel's philosophy is this perhaps: actions are simultaneously mental actions (you mean to do it) and material actions (you do something). It is what you do which matters and which explains things, even if this can only be understood in connection with your thinking. Hegel seemed to think it was sufficient to understand thinking. But it is more complex than that.