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The State As A Community Of Persons In Hegel; A Critique
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At this time when the French power was incumbent, Germany experienced
much reformation. In Prussia, for instance, Von Stein, a liberal, was
appointed chief adviser to the king, and he immediately abolished
serfdom and reorganized the system of government. Following him was Von
Hardenberg, who promised to give Prussia a representative constitution;
but these hopes were obliterated completely after Napoleon’s defeat.
On
his own part, Frederick William III, the Prussian king lost interest in
reform, and after years of delay, in 1823 he set up only provincial
‘estates’ which engaged only in advice, and in any case were completely
dominated by land owners.
Moreover, in 1819, at a meeting at
Carlsbad, all the German states agreed to censor repressive measures
against those who advocated revolutionary ideas. After observing all
these, Hegel viewed that Germany has had a real genetically political
cankerworm. He instantly detected these national defects of German
character as ‘provincialism’ and ‘particularism,’ which, he said, are
the causes of the empire’s weakness.
He also observed that Germany,
viewed from the cultural point of view, was a nation but it had not
understood what it meant to subjugate parts to whole which was essential
to (the) a national government. The central government, he noted, was
weak because its power flowed from its parts. Even the existing
constitution reflected nothing but an explicit subterfuge for weakness.
Thus,
there was total individualism among the people and sheer sectionalism
among corporations, estates, guilds and even religious sects. For this
reason then Hegel identified this German particularism with an
anarchical love of freedom which misconceived liberty as an absence of
discipline and authority[5]. And this he contrasted with “true freedomâ€,
which is to be found only within the bounds of a national state.
Freedom as Hegel understood it had nothing to do with the individualism
of English and French political thought but it was rather a quality
reflected upon the individual by the national power of
self-determination.
In effect, Hegel saw Germany as revolving around
what he termed the’ civil society’ with no greater aim than collective
protection of its industrial property. He aimed at elevating Germany
from its political and social trash to an organic natural state, the
divine idea in the universe. Following his diagnosis of Germany’s
weakness Hegel defined the state as a group which collectively protects
its property. Its only essential powers are civil and military
establishment sufficient to this end.[6]
1.1.2 THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS
Hegel’s
treatment of most of the social issues can rightly be seen as a direct
criticism and rejection of some of Rousseau’s liberal opinions. Rousseau
had put forward his idea that man is born free but is everywhere in
chains. For him man is naturally free. He captures his freedom as soon
as he gets the opportunity. This freedom of the individual, ordained by
nature, offers the general will. The general will is the will that
discrete individual, that appear to be more powerful than their fellow
individuals, and the less powerful individual falls the victim of
surrendering to more powerful individual and as a result pay their
obeisance to them. As it were, it was Rousseau who initiated the
romantic cult of democracy. This led him to formulate the contractualist
theory of the state against which Hegel would hold as a contrary
view, one that is strictly organic. More so, the constitution of Germany
showed clearly that Hegel’s conception of the dialectic was
controlled by a moral rather than a scientific purpose. Hegel explained
that the object of the essay was to promote understanding of things as
they are, to exhibit political history not as arbitrary but as
necessary. The unhappiness of man is a frustration that arises from the
discrepancy between what is and what he is feigned to believe ought to
be. It occurs because he imagines that event is mere unrelated detail
and not a “system ruled by a spirit.â€[7] Its remedy comes with
reconciliation, the realization that what is must be and the
consciousness that what must be also ought to be. This is manifestly the
principle which Hegel later summarized in his aphorism, “the real is
rational and the rational is realâ€[8] The authority that was fully
conferred on the civil society, with the elimination of the state
government as it were upheld by Rousseau was seen by Hegel as nothing
but transitory means to and end and not the end itself.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
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