Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History

Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History (1820’s)

Excerpt on the end of history, pp. 145-149

A nation is only world-historical in so far as its fundamental element and basic aim have embodied a universal principle; only then is its spirit capable of producing an ethical and political organisation. If nations are impelled merely by desires, their deeds are lost without trace (as with all fanaticism), and no enduring achievement remains. Or the only traces they leave are ruin and destruction. In this way, the Greeks speak of the rule of Chronos or Time, who devours his own children (i.e. the deeds he has himself produced); this was the Golden Age, which produced no ethical works. Only Zeus, the political god from whose head Pallas Athene sprang and to whose circle Apollo and the Muses belong, was able to check the power of time; he did so by creating a conscious ethical institution, i.e. by producing the state.

An achievement is only objective in so far as it is an object of knowledge. It contains the determination of universality or thought in its very element; without thought, it has no objectivity, for thought is its basis. The nation must know the universal on which its ethical life is based and before which the particular vanishes away, and it must therefore know the determinations which underlie its justice and religion. The spirit cannot rest content with the mere existence of an order or cult; its will is rather to attain this knowledge of its own determinations. Only in this way can it succeed in uniting its subjectivity with the universal of its objectivity. Admittedly, its world is also composed of distinct elements to which it responds through the medium of external intuition, etc., but the unity of its innermost nature with this external world must also be present to it.

This is its supreme liberation, since thought is its innermost nature. The highest point in the development of the nation is reached when it has understood its life and condition by means of thought, and acquired a systematic knowledge of its laws, justice, and ethical life; for in this achievement lies the closest possible unity which the spirit can attain with itself. The aim of its endeavours is for it to have itself as its own object; but it cannot have itself as its object in its true essentiality unless it thinks itself. At this point, then, the spirit knows its own principles, the universal aspect of its real world. Thus, if we wish to know what Greece really was, we find the answer in Sophocles and Aristophanes, Thucydides and Plato; in them, we find the historical expression of what Greek life actually was. For in these individuals, the Greek spirit comprehended itself through representation and thought.

This spiritual self-consciousness is the nation’s supreme achievement; but we must remember in the first place that it is also only ideal. In this achievement of thought lies the profounder kind of satisfaction which the nation can attain; but since it is of a universal nature, it is also ideal, and accordingly different in form from the real activity, the real work and life which made such an achievement possible. The nation now has both a real and an ideal existence. At such a time, we shall therefore find that the nation derives satisfaction from the idea of virtue and from discussion of it – discussion which may either coexist with virtue itself or become a substitute for it. All this is the work of the spirit, which knows how to bring the unreflected – i.e. the merely factual – to the point of reflecting upon itself. It thereby becomes conscious to some degree of the limitation of such determinate things as belief, trust, and custom, so that the consciousness now has reasons for renouncing the latter and the laws which they impose. This is indeed the inevitable result of any search for reasons; and when no such reasons – i.e. no completely abstract universal principles – can be found as the basis of the laws in question, men’s ideas of virtue begin to waver, and the absolute is no longer regarded as valid in its own right, but only in so far as it has reasons to justify it. At the same time, individuals gradually become isolated from one another and from the whole, selfishness and vanity intervene, and men seek to obtain their own advantage and satisfaction at the expense of the whole. For the consciousness is subjective in nature, and subjectivity carries with it the need to particularise itself. Vanity and selfishness accordingly make their appearance, and passions and personal interests emerge unchecked and in a destructive form. This is not, however, the natural death of the national spirit, but merely a state of internal division.

And thus Zeus, who set limits to the depredations of time and suspended its constant flux, had no sooner established something inherently enduring than he was himself devoured along with his whole empire. He was devoured by the principle of thought itself, the progenitor of knowledge, of reasoning, of insight based on rational grounds, and of the search for such grounds. Time is the negative element in the world of the senses; thought is equally negative, but it is at the same time that innermost and infinite form into which all existence – and in the first place finite being or determinate form – is dissolved. Time, then, is indeed the corrosive aspect of negativity; but spirit likewise has the property of dissolving every determinate content it encounters. For it is the universal, unlimited, innermost and infinite form itself, and it overcomes all that is limited. Even if the objective element does not appear finite and limited in content, it does at least appear as something given, immediate, and authoritative in nature, so that it is not in a position to impose restrictions on thought or to set itself up as a permanent obstacle to the thinking subject and to infinite internal reflection.

This dissolving activity of thought also inevitably gives rise to a new principle. Thought, in so far as it is universal in character, has the effect of dissolving every determinate content; but in this very dissolution, the preceding principle is in fact preserved, with the sole difference that it no longer possesses its original determination. The universal essence is preserved, but its universality as such has been brought out into relief. The preceding principle has been transfigured by universality; its present mode must be considered as different from the preceding one, for in the latter, the present mode existed only implicitly and had an external existence only through a complex series of manifold relationships. What formerly existed only in concrete particulars now has the form of universality conferred upon it; but a new element, another further determination, is also present. The spirit, in its new inward determination, has new interests and ends beyond those which it formerly possessed. This change in the principle’s form also brings with it new and additional determinations of content. Everyone knows that a cultured [gebildet] man has quite different expectations from those of his uncultured fellow-countryman, although the latter lives within the same religion and ethical community and his substantial condition is precisely the same. Culture would at first seem to be purely formal in character, but it does also give rise to differences in content. The cultured and the uncultured Christian appear completely identical in one respect, but their needs are nevertheless completely different. And it is precisely the same with property relations. Even the serf has property, but it is coupled with obligations which render another person the joint owner of it. If, however, we define property in terms of thought, it of course follows that only one man can be the owner. For thought brings out the universal aspect, thereby creating a different interest and different needs.

The determinate nature of the transition which takes place in all such changes is therefore as follows: what at present exists becomes an object of thought, and it is thereby elevated into universality. The nature of the spirit is to comprehend the universal, i.e. that which is essential. Universality, in its truest sense, is the substance, the essence, that which truly exists. In the case of the slave, for example, the appropriate universal is that of the human being; for it is at this point that particularity passes over into universality. If, therefore, particularity is transcended in a given nation – for example, in that of Athens – by means of thought, and if thought develops to the point where the particular principle of the nation in question is no longer essential, that nation cannot continue to exist; for another principle has meanwhile emerged. World history then passes over to another nation. Such principles are present in world history in the shape of national spirits; but the latter also have a natural existence. The particular stage which the spirit has reached is present as the natural principle of the people in question or as the nation. According to the different ways in which it manifests itself in this determinate natural element, the spirit appears in various forms. Thus, although its new and higher determination within a particular national spirit does appear as the negation or destruction of the preceding one, its positive side also emerges in the shape of a new nation. A nation cannot pass through several successive stages in world history or make its mark in it more than once. If it were possible for genuinely new interests to arise within a nation, the national spirit would have to be in a position to will something new – but where could this new element come from? It could only take the shape of a higher and more universal conception of itself, a progression beyond its own principle, or a quest for a more universal principle – but this would mean that a further determinate principle, i.e. a new spirit, was already present. In world history, a nation can be dominant only once, because it can only have one task to perform within the spiritual process.

This advance or progression appears to be a process of infinite duration, – in keeping with the notion of perfectibility – a constant progress which must always remain distant from its goal. But even if, in the advance towards a new principle, the content of the preceding one is comprehended in a more universal sense than before, it is at least certain that the new form which emerges will again be a determinate one. Furthermore, history has to do with reality, in which the universal must in any case assume a determinate form. And no limited form can establish itself permanently in face of thought or the concept. If there were something which the concept could not digest or resolve, it would certainly represent the highest degree of fragmentation and unhappiness. But if something of the kind did exist, it could be nothing other than thought itself in its function of self-comprehension. For thought alone is inherently unlimited, and all reality is determined within it. In consequence, the fragmentation would cease to exist, and thought would be satisfied within itself. This, then, would he the ultimate purpose of the world. Reason recognises that which is truthful, that which exists in and for itself, and which is not subject to any limitations. The concept of the spirit involves a return upon itself, whereby it makes itself its own object; progress, therefore, is not an indeterminate advance ad infinitum, for it has a definite aim – namely that of returning upon itself. Thus, it also involves a kind of cyclic movement as the spirit attempts to discover itself.

(Source: Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History, tr. H.B. Nisbet, CUP, 1975)