 |
 |
 |  |
 |  | |||||||||||||
|
archive |
about
us |
links |
contact |
current | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The
Thought Box Hegel:
A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer |
|
Sarah
Boyes | |
|
I recently came across one of those books that deals with daily problems (of the Richard and Judy variety) by exploring the work of Germanic philosophers. Jostein Gaarder tried to do something similar in Sophie's World, that great master of the non sequitur Alain de Botton has been trying, soullessly, to do it for years, though perhaps best with The Consolations of Philosophy, and Borges, being blind I suppose, took a more oblique approach. Giant corporations want applied-Nietzsche quick fixes to office existentialism, and then there's the wonky philosophical film I Heart Huckabees. Philosophy, it seems, will not be confined to academia. The book in question was about relationship problems: a bugbear of mine. Philosophy has, for the past three years, resolutely refused to get me laid. Which is why this cute little modern box gets pride of place on my shelf. I have no bones about applying a sex-appeal criterion to judging books, and neither, it seems, does Oxford University Press. And at £25 for six (or a mere £16.50 from Amazon), they're also cheaper than they would otherwise have been, individually priced at £6.99. So how many good chat-up lines can you wring out of this lot? Marx: 'wanna change my world, baby?', or Nietzsche, advertising beer since 1860, 'how can we make things beautiful, attractive and desirable for us when they are not?' or perhaps Friedrich 'you know, our minds are really one so why not our bodies too' Hegel? The recent popularisation philosophy, I thought, would have had droves of philosophers hovering expectantly round bars, sporting the odd endorsement of moral autonomy ('That's right love, you tell him'), questioning the reality of the barstool, or spouting long words in a bid to impress. These books find their wily ways onto the tube, sticking out like tongues from trouser pockets, or are casually strewn across coffee-ringed tables and messy floors. Over two million have been sold, says the OUP website. Then where's the pay-off? But perhaps this oversimplifies the issue. Sometimes the best reading happens in your own head, and stays there. It isn't always best to go babbling on about everything you read: sometimes talking too much precludes actually doing anything with the ideas you have. Engaging in debate and conversation is one way to develop arguments and address issues, but it isn't the only way, or always the best. Sometimes short introductions serve as a sort of intellectual polyfilla, simply plugging a gap in one's knowledge. This box, claims the marketing blurb, is 'the perfect gift for students and the knowledge hungry'. But still, surely the knowledge-hungry would want to talk about their knowledge, and, presumably, stuff themselves further? The teasingly labelled 'thought box' is a funky little semi-translucent thing, with bright pink squares lettered in something like the Guardian font. It looks like it originated from Ikea. It's growing on me. But I don't get the 'library' bit: 'small but perfectly informed': is this a claim for epistemological certitude? The authors of each volume are in fact at pains to explain the problems with giving a potted introduction to the work of some of the most obscure writers in Western philosophy. All stress that whole discussions have been glossed over or omitted altogether, which is how it should be in a pint-sized book. They even point out alternate interpretations, criticisms and downright denials of certain doctrines, which does, rightly or wrongly, make their own text more trustworthy. It seems the writers don't want to be 'library' definitive, nor do they consider themselves 'perfectly' informed: more reading is required, and suggested, at the end of each book. The philosophers covered are Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The sixth book, A Very Short Introduction to Everything, is a thematically organised meta-introduction to Short Introductions. Since the chronological listing now reaches 153 (Existentialism), this makes good sense. The themes are well-chosen and insightful: How on earth did we get here?; There's more to us than meets the eye; What can the past tell us?. But they really don't have much to do with nineteenth century philosophy specifically. This book's function seems to be to encourage an even broader reading, and spending, rather than to contextualise the thinkers discussed here, and engage in deeper discussion with their ideas and relevance, which would be more in the spirit of the 'thought' part. After all, more books don't equal more knowledge, and more knowledge doesn't always equal greater understanding. Peter Singer (How are we to live?) writes both the Hegel and Marx volumes. This is nice because there's a continuation of style and discussion, especially about how the latter's theories of history and human freedom are a response to and in a way a development of the former's. It gives the box-set a bit more coherence, and makes sense of the thinkers as existing in one historical period, reacting to the same events and circumstances, rather than as simply following one another chronologically. Early on Singer pinpoints Hegel's philosophical position historically by distinguishing him from Kant. Whilst the latter thought human nature was definite and knowable, Hegel claimed human nature varies with historical age. This sets the scene for a broad account of Hegelian historical development, along with examples and colourful discussion of various criticisms. The concept of Geist isn't introduced till half way through, so as not to confuse the reader ('it is time to confess: I have been cheating'), and leads on to a thorough discussion of human knowledge and self-consciousness. A nippy fifth chapter deals with the Science of Logic and Hegel's dialectic. The chapter on 'freedom and community' is the most interesting, as it focuses on Hegel's view of the rational community and explores how it is that its members are free. Singer defines the 'liberal' or 'formal' concept of freedom: for a person to be free is for that person to have no restrictions stopping them from doing as they chose. Hegel rejects this characterisation of freedom as showing an 'utter immaturity of thought': it takes the choices of the individual as basic, without investigating why it is that individuals make certain choices. But we have already learned that the choices we make, based on our 'human nature', are a product of our historical circumstance. How are we supposed to be free, then, if what we choose is defined by the time in which we happen to have been born? Singer explains Hegel's affinity with Kant in order to answer this question. Roughly, we can't be free when acting from socially conditioned desires, but we can be free when we act from something universal, and reason is universal. Therefore, when we act from reason, we act freely. In a few steps we get, 'in doing my duty I am by myself and free' (Hegel). Unfortunately, there is not much discussion of what makes reason universal for Hegel. Whilst a Kantian position grounds the universality of reason in a specific epistemological position, it is not discussed how a Hegelian position grounds such a claim. And the question of whether reason is universal is a pertinent one. Many philosophers, social scientists and anthropologists have rejected the claim for the universality of reason, challenging what is seen as an overtly Western notion that ultimately tries to impose itself on everything else for its own benefit. This is a discussion which is especially topical today. But for Hegel, we need reason because there can be no freedom without it. (Which is no argument if we don't care about our own freedom.) Universal principles should be embodied in the law of the state. When I am a part of such a state, the law will tell me what to do in order to be free. Hegel's concept of freedom is therefore not simply a 'formal' one, but has practical social application. What would such a state be like? - it is what Hegel terms 'the absolute idea', or ending point of the dialectical process of history. Singer explains that, for Hegel, the absolute idea is simply 'everything', and it seeks to comprehend itself. Does Hegel think, then, the universe is a conscious entity, some sort of God? Singer takes the reading of Whittemore, that Hegel is a pantheist (Einstein was too). The standard pantheistic position is that the universe is simply identical with God. Singer argues Hegel's position is more than this: the universe as a whole is identical with God, in the same way a person is greater than the sum of cells that make up her body. Just as no amount of cells amount to a person, so no individual parts of the universe amount to God. And further, the relationship between God and the world can be understood as analogous to the relationship between master and slave: it is one of complex interdependence. An entailment of this position is that we can't be free until the absolute idea has been realised. Did Hegel think the perfect state did exist? Many commentators believe Hegel thought his own society was this perfect rationalist state; others believe he merely said so to please the reigning King of Prussia. Singer takes the middle line: 'if Hegel's remarks…are to be defensible, the rational state he has in mind must be very different from any state that existed in his day (or has existed since, for that matter)'. So if we are to be Hegelians, we are not (yet) free. Marx: Singer shows how Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel, especially by his Phenomenology of Mind. In this text Hegel set out his theory of the dialectical progression of history: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Marx appropriated the formal principles of this account for his own system, which is often called dialectical materialism. Similarly, Marx's theory of the capitalist-worker relationship 'strongly echoes' Hegel's master-slave relationship. Reading the two books back-to-back, it's easy to get a sense of Marx's views organically growing out of Hegel's. Singer explains that Hegel was first used by the Young Hegelians to show that the cause of alienation was religion, and later reinterpreted by Marx to show the cause was, in fact, material. Marx then broke away from Hegel by expounding his own views on the nature of labour and productivity. The continuity here helps to make sense of what are quite involved ideas. Although, it's interesting to ask whether the theories of both Hegel and Marx dovetail as neatly as Singer suggests. Has the same author been chosen to write both books purposefully, and would we get a different picture of the relationship between the two thinkers had another author written this second book? Singer is always primarily concerned with Marx's concept of freedom rather than with his scientific or historical accuracy: Marx not as social scientist but as philosopher. This neatly avoids many problems with historical events seemingly falsifying a Marxist reading of history and politics, and creates space for a more interesting discussion about Marx's notion of communism. And as Singer piercingly comments, 'Marx's penetrating insight into the nature of freedom remains a challenge to any liberal political philosophy'. Michael Tanner's Nietzsche is the shortest of the shorts. He explores Nietzsche's life (ending it with his insanity in 1889) chronologically, focusing on his well-known work. The preliminary discussion points out the inordinate amount of people claiming to have been influenced by Nietzsche, alongside Nietzsche's final despairing 'Do not, above all, confound me with what I am not!'. (Ecce Homo) The reasons for Nietzsche's attractiveness range from the sheer amount of subjects he discusses, to his 'careful lack of definition of an ideal' and pointedly obscure writing style. It's not difficult to think perhaps he had it coming. Central to Friedrich's life, we learn, was plotting the relationship between suffering and cultures, spurred on by his personal discontent and self-confessed amor fati. Dealt with are Nietzsche's views on tragedy and the heroic, his perspectivism, his individualism and theories on the genealogy of morals. The tempestuous Wagner-Nietzsche relationship frequently punctuates the text, and the exploration of Nietzsche's views on music reference neatly to Schopenhauer's notion of Will. Kierkegaard's Romantic reaction of to Hegel and Marx gives good mix to the box. It would be easy to divide this collection into a play-off of Enlightenment vs Romantic mentalities (there are actually football-style t-shirts, with philosophers' names on the back), but sensitive discussion shows this may not be easy. Patrick Gardiner's text is engaging and involves a more in-depth debate than other volumes. The choice of illustrations is rather quirky: pages are peppered with photographs of famous, infamous and utterly unknown people and places. Cynically, this could be because no serious popular book dealing with complex issues would contrive to be just text; realistically, the pictures provide a useful excuse to stop and think about the issues at hand. Particularly amusing is page 39, where the point is that a sort of ventriloquism had arisen in Kierkegaard's time, a depersonalised obsession with abstract reasoning that hid or precluded spontaneous emotion. Living had now become a matter of 'knowing rather than doing'. And in illustration: a ventriloquist! - a top-hatted, be-suited man with an imitation doll on his knee. On reflection, this picture is a stroke of genius. Gardiner gives a useful overview of a broad Kantian position, pointing out the intricacies of believing in a transcendental realm and showing how this relates to Kierkegaard's belief in God. Kant is no nineteenth century philosopher, but it would have made sense to include his Introduction (no.50) in this series, since his transcendental idealism and claims for the universality of reason inform many of the discussions running through these texts. There is further much discussion of Kierkegaard's affinity with, and objections to, Hegel. Kierkegaard disliked Hegel's philosophy rendering the world utterly intelligible to human reason. Kierkegaard believed we learn about the world 'from without', ie. through revelation from God rather than 'from within' ie. by reason. But despite not agreeing with this, Hegel often uses religious terminology in his own works and, Gardiner notes, goes as far as calling his philosophy a 'theodicy', or apologia for God. He affords an historic place for Christianity in his system, but doing so distorts the Christian message, which has as a cornerstone the belief in a transcendent, or supersensible reality. Further, Hegel's account of history being carried along by a sort of 'necessity' refuses to afford a place for individual responsibility. In this sense, it was symptomatic of what Kierkegaard diagnosed as malaise: the evading of personal responsibility through self-deception. We see in this doctrine, the beginnings of the 'bad faith' of existentialism. How is all this relevant today? In producing this plastic pink pizzazz, OUP, I'd like to think, are making positive yet fashionable noises. It's interesting to learn that some of these texts have been around for a long time. Gardiner's Kierkegaard, for instance, was originally published as an OUP paperback as early as 1988, and was only made into a short intro in 2002. It's then taken four years for that book to be incorporated into a box set. The content has always been as relevant as it is, or isn't, and that has long been available. It's the style that has changed, that seems 'relevant', today. And it's the style, I think, that people notice. No amount of philosophy chat-up lines will impress without a decent jacket. But perhaps a decent jacket will encourage engagement with what lies within. These books are concise and informative, well-written and topical, but should they be marketed as simply sating the knowledge-hungry? If anything, reading text so jam-packed with ideas makes you ravenous for more. There are issues left unresolved, questions unanswered. For instance, Tanner often ties Nietzsche's philosophising tightly with what was going on in his life. Whilst this makes for interesting reading, is it always the best way to approach Nietzsche, or is there more critical discussion to be had? Should we accept Singer's characterisation of Hegel's rationalist state? Regardless, the overriding impression is of a century of thinkers peddling the practical import of philosophy: from Marx's changing the world to Kierkegaard's doing and not thinking. And the distinction between thinking and acting is not always straightforward, and needs teasing out. These are the bigwigs, the system-builders of the nineteenth century, but that's no good reason for agreeing with them. And the things they did often included making a mess. Nietzsche regularly slept with whores and Marx fathered an illegitimate child with his wife's maid. But at least they all made some effort. Why, then, after all this, is the thought still in the box?
|
|
|
