Hegel—A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer—Book Review Part 1: Freedom
Hegel is a philosopher who is notorious for being incomprehensible. In fact, for one of his books he signed a contract that assigned a massive financial penalty for missing the publishing deadline, so the book ended up being a little rushed. While there was a time when he was dominant in German philosophy, he now seems to be held in relatively poor regard and his main importance is seen to be historical. So he’s not a philosopher that I was really planning to spend much time on.
Given this, I was quite pleased to discover this book promising to give me A Very Short Introduction, especially since it is written by Peter Singer, a philosopher who write and thinks rather clearly. After reading this book, I still believe that most of what Hegel wrote was pretentious nonsense, but the one idea that struck me as the most interesting was his conception of freedom.
A rough definition of freedom might be ensuring that people are able to pursue whatever it is that they prefer. Hegel is not a fan abstract definitions of freedom which treat all preferences the same and don’t enquire where they come from.
In his perspective, most of our preferences are purely a result of the context in which we exist and so such an abstract definition of freedom is merely the freedom to be subject to social and historical forces. Since we did not choose our desires, he argues that we are not free when we act from our desires. Hegel argues that, “every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever”. One such example would be the marketing campaigns to convince us that sweating was embarrassing (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/…/how-advertisers-convinced…/).
This might help clarify further: Singer ties this to the more modern debate between Radical Economists and Liberal Economists. Liberal economists use how much people pay as a measure of how strong their preferences are and refuse to get into the question of whether any preferences are more valuable than any other seeing this as ideological. Radical economists argue that many of our desires are a result of capitalism. They would say that if I convince you that you are ugly and then I sell you $100 of beauty products to restore your confidence, then I haven’t created $100 worth of value. They argue that refusing to value any preference above any other preference is an ideological choice in and of itself; and that there is no way to step outside of ideology.
If pursuing our desires is not freedom, what is? Kant answers that freedom is following reason and performing your duty. This might not sound very much like freedom, quite the opposite, but for Kant not following your reason was allowing yourself to be a slave of your instincts. Here’s another argument: perhaps a purely rational being wouldn’t desire the freedom to shirk their duty, so insofar as this is freedom, it might not be of a particularly valuable kind and if you think this is imposing on your freedom this is because of your limited perspective.
Hegel thought that Kant’s answer was a substantial advance, but he also thought it was empty of content. Kant viewed duty in terms of the categorical imperative, “Do not act except if you could at the same time will that it would become a universal law”, but Hegel thought it was empty of content. Kant would say that you shouldn’t steal because you couldn’t will a world where everyone would steal from everyone else. But mightn’t some people be fine with such a world, particularly if they thought they might come out on top? Even if you don’t want to consider people with views that extreme, you can almost always find a universal to justify whatever action you want. Why should the universal that the thief would have to accept be, “Anyone can steal from another person” instead of, “Anyone can steal from someone who earned who doesn’t deserve their wealth?” (See section III of You Kant Dismiss Universalizability). Further, Kant’s absolutist form of morality (no lying even to save a friend from a murderer) seems to require us to completely sacrifice our natural desires.
Hegel’s solution to this was to suggest the need for what he calls an organic community; or a community that is united in its values. He argues that such communities shape people’s desires to such an extent that most people won’t even think about pursuing their own interests and that this resolves the opposition between morality and self-interest that Kant’s vision of freedom creates. However, unlike the old organic communities which had somewhat arbitrary values, Hegel argued that the advance of reason meant that the values of these communities also had to be based on reason, otherwise freethinking individuals wouldn’t align themselves with the community.
Indeed, this is the key part of his much-aligned argument that the Prussian State was the cumulation of history. He argued that the French revolution has resulted in such bloodshed because it was based on an abstract notion of freedom which was pursued to the extent that all the traditional institutions were bulldozed over. Hegel argued that the evolution of society should built upon what already exists and not ignore the character of the people or the institutions of society. For this reason, his ideal society would have maintained the monarchy, but with most of the actual power being delegated to the houses, except in certain extreme circumstances.
I tend to think of Hegel as primarily important for his contributions to the development of Western philosophy (so even if he was wrong on details he influenced and framed the work of many future philosophers by getting aspects of the framing right) and for his contributions to methodology (like standardizing the method of dialectic, which on one hand is “obvious” and people were doing it before Hegel, and on the other hand is mysterious and the work of experts until someone lays out what’s going on).
Which aspects of framing do you think he got right?
“In more simplistic terms, one can consider it thus: problem → reaction → solution. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant’s work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model and popularized it.”—Wikipedia; so Hegel deserves less credit than he is originally granted.
I don’t recall anymore, it’s been too long for me to remember enough specifics to answer your question. It’s just an impression or cached thought I have that I carry around from past study.
Hegel—A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer—Book Review Part 1: Freedom
Hegel is a philosopher who is notorious for being incomprehensible. In fact, for one of his books he signed a contract that assigned a massive financial penalty for missing the publishing deadline, so the book ended up being a little rushed. While there was a time when he was dominant in German philosophy, he now seems to be held in relatively poor regard and his main importance is seen to be historical. So he’s not a philosopher that I was really planning to spend much time on.
Given this, I was quite pleased to discover this book promising to give me A Very Short Introduction, especially since it is written by Peter Singer, a philosopher who write and thinks rather clearly. After reading this book, I still believe that most of what Hegel wrote was pretentious nonsense, but the one idea that struck me as the most interesting was his conception of freedom.
A rough definition of freedom might be ensuring that people are able to pursue whatever it is that they prefer. Hegel is not a fan abstract definitions of freedom which treat all preferences the same and don’t enquire where they come from.
In his perspective, most of our preferences are purely a result of the context in which we exist and so such an abstract definition of freedom is merely the freedom to be subject to social and historical forces. Since we did not choose our desires, he argues that we are not free when we act from our desires. Hegel argues that, “every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever”. One such example would be the marketing campaigns to convince us that sweating was embarrassing (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/…/how-advertisers-convinced…/).
This might help clarify further: Singer ties this to the more modern debate between Radical Economists and Liberal Economists. Liberal economists use how much people pay as a measure of how strong their preferences are and refuse to get into the question of whether any preferences are more valuable than any other seeing this as ideological. Radical economists argue that many of our desires are a result of capitalism. They would say that if I convince you that you are ugly and then I sell you $100 of beauty products to restore your confidence, then I haven’t created $100 worth of value. They argue that refusing to value any preference above any other preference is an ideological choice in and of itself; and that there is no way to step outside of ideology.
If pursuing our desires is not freedom, what is? Kant answers that freedom is following reason and performing your duty. This might not sound very much like freedom, quite the opposite, but for Kant not following your reason was allowing yourself to be a slave of your instincts. Here’s another argument: perhaps a purely rational being wouldn’t desire the freedom to shirk their duty, so insofar as this is freedom, it might not be of a particularly valuable kind and if you think this is imposing on your freedom this is because of your limited perspective.
Hegel thought that Kant’s answer was a substantial advance, but he also thought it was empty of content. Kant viewed duty in terms of the categorical imperative, “Do not act except if you could at the same time will that it would become a universal law”, but Hegel thought it was empty of content. Kant would say that you shouldn’t steal because you couldn’t will a world where everyone would steal from everyone else. But mightn’t some people be fine with such a world, particularly if they thought they might come out on top? Even if you don’t want to consider people with views that extreme, you can almost always find a universal to justify whatever action you want. Why should the universal that the thief would have to accept be, “Anyone can steal from another person” instead of, “Anyone can steal from someone who earned who doesn’t deserve their wealth?” (See section III of You Kant Dismiss Universalizability). Further, Kant’s absolutist form of morality (no lying even to save a friend from a murderer) seems to require us to completely sacrifice our natural desires.
Hegel’s solution to this was to suggest the need for what he calls an organic community; or a community that is united in its values. He argues that such communities shape people’s desires to such an extent that most people won’t even think about pursuing their own interests and that this resolves the opposition between morality and self-interest that Kant’s vision of freedom creates. However, unlike the old organic communities which had somewhat arbitrary values, Hegel argued that the advance of reason meant that the values of these communities also had to be based on reason, otherwise freethinking individuals wouldn’t align themselves with the community.
Indeed, this is the key part of his much-aligned argument that the Prussian State was the cumulation of history. He argued that the French revolution has resulted in such bloodshed because it was based on an abstract notion of freedom which was pursued to the extent that all the traditional institutions were bulldozed over. Hegel argued that the evolution of society should built upon what already exists and not ignore the character of the people or the institutions of society. For this reason, his ideal society would have maintained the monarchy, but with most of the actual power being delegated to the houses, except in certain extreme circumstances.
I tend to think of Hegel as primarily important for his contributions to the development of Western philosophy (so even if he was wrong on details he influenced and framed the work of many future philosophers by getting aspects of the framing right) and for his contributions to methodology (like standardizing the method of dialectic, which on one hand is “obvious” and people were doing it before Hegel, and on the other hand is mysterious and the work of experts until someone lays out what’s going on).
Which aspects of framing do you think he got right?
“In more simplistic terms, one can consider it thus: problem → reaction → solution. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant’s work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model and popularized it.”—Wikipedia; so Hegel deserves less credit than he is originally granted.
Interesting.
I don’t recall anymore, it’s been too long for me to remember enough specifics to answer your question. It’s just an impression or cached thought I have that I carry around from past study.