Adrian Johnston
speaker
618 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2020
last heard Jan 2020
Adrian Johnston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
their reign and all of the measures that they were taken was to be accepted not only as, well, this is what we have to put up with, but rather this represents the height of historical development, the most rational social order.
And Hegel gives us various warnings that he should not be taken in that way.
One of them has to do with him saying, look, when I talk about what is actual, I'm not using this word casually.
It has a very precise sense that you can look up if you turn to my logic
But here, I think it's easier to focus on the historical and political dimensions to answer your question most readily.
And so Hegel, of course, in his earlier years, I mean, in fact, Hegel's very first publication was an anonymous translation with a very substantial translator's preface.
of a text by a dissident lawyer who was in exile in Paris writing about the oppressive conditions in his native Switzerland that the landed aristocracy were responsible for.
And Hegel was a house tutor for some of these people and hated them.
And so I think part of his revenge against his employers was to translate and publish this text denouncing them as these horrible, repressive people
exploiters of the people.
But Hegel's very first publication is a kind of progressive, one might even say radical political text.
And throughout much of his pre-1821, because this line about the rational and the actual occurs in the 1821 elements of the philosophy of right.
Prior to his Berlin period, it's very clear that among other things, Hegel is, within
certain reservations, but nonetheless, overall, very much an enthusiast for the French Revolution, you know, very in favor of the sort of, you know, liberty, equality, fraternity progress that that revolution represented and promised to spread to other parts of the world, including, you know, the next door German speaking world, that you have, you know, a very, really a very progressive Hegel.
I mean, in fact,
he, you know, every year on Bastille Day, he would, in mixed company, publicly toast the storming of the Bastille, even, you know, in Berlin, where you had this, you know, reactionary, repressive atmosphere, where that was a risky gesture, and could have gotten him in trouble.
And so you have these factors, and then how do you square that with the idea that, you know, he is, you know, pronouncing a kind of philosophical benediction over the Prussian authorities?
Well,
one way to get at this is to say, look, following Hegel's clues that he gives us, look, for him, historical actuality, and there's lots of evidence in his political writings throughout his career.
You know, Hegel thinks that, well, historical actuality is, but even in the philosophy of right, he calls the kind of interpersonal
Showing 281–300 of 618 · page 15 of 31
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