Rational Truth in the Actualised State
Preparing for the Philosophy of Right (2)
This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests, Alyssa Polizzi of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of O.G. Rose, and Michelle Garner of O.G. Rose. You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.
How to start? In Hegel’s Philosophy of Right he suggests that we should start to think politics, not by trying to create something new, some new system that is the result of our own “bright ideas”, but rather by taking a good hard look at what is. Indeed, one of the central tenets of Hegel’s philosophy, and its great power, is that he is not constantly trying to create “new concepts” or “new systems” or a new this or that, but trying to engage in the process of conceptualising what is already right in front of our eyes.
For Hegel, the fundamental problem with the way thinking persons approach politics is that they have yet to reconcile themselves with what is, and thus they try to push their visions of what should be onto the world. What awaits people who try to push their visions of what should be onto the world, is a whole lot of negativity, confusion, and pain in the absolute failure of their bright ideas. Often times this tendency of persons to insist with an insane confidence on their own bright ideas about the way the world should be, and the ways in which, if only they were put in charge, things would be different, is as obnoxious as it is persistent.
In the last month alone I have encountered people who have suggested that (1a) we should abolish states altogether and just allow the free flow of peoples; (2a) we should start post-state intentional communities governed by blockchain technologies; (3a) we should destroy the European Union because it is only an instrument of financial capital. In the past I have encountered people suggesting that (1b) we should abolish the police in total for self-regulating communities; (2b) we should start building our own religions to defend against global monoculture; (3b) we should impose one religion on the global whole to overthrow the perversities of secular politics; (4b) we should organise states along ethnic lines to stop the flow of immigration; (5b) we should organise societies without human leaders and instead be led by the intuition of psychedelic ritual; (6b) we should design a society based on automating all labour and redistributing the excess income for a world of total leisure; (7b) we should establish a global state that unifies all nation states and regulates international capital.
We should, we should, we should.
As Hegel said in the Phenomenology, in the moral domain one finds nothing but a whole nest of unthought contradictions. At times, before reaching philosophical maturity, I have entertained some of the above ideas myself.
But Hegel asks of us: what is, what is, what is.
Hegel suggests that if we are constantly proposing “new” theories of state organisation out of our own proverbial rear end, not only do we never get anywhere or learn anything other than how to spin around in the emptiness of our own abstract moralistic propositions, but we think in such a way as that “no state or constitution has ever existed, or now exists”.1
As mentioned in the first piece of this series,2 Hegel thinks that the truth of rights, ethics, and state organisation is on open display in the history of our laws, morality, and religions. Are we willing to take a real look? Are we willing to derive the concept qua concept from this history so we can actually make an effective intervention on the universal level of what is? Or even, so we are to actually reconcile with the actuality of what is in the realisation that our problems about external materiality involve something more particular and less universal?
To demonstrate this point, how many times have you seen someone actually come to the following political conclusion:
Maybe my bright ideas about the universality of politics are more a product of the limited particularity of my own horribly distorted standpoint, and not only do I not know what the heck I am talking about, but if my ideas were actually implemented, I would both not be ready to face the consequences of them, but I might be facing the absolute horror of what I have unleashed on the world.
Maybe it is good that most of us are politically impotent. The rage of the particularist will, when it has yet to reconcile itself with what is, tends towards two options:
Fanatical contemplation in an isolated withdrawal from the realities of what is
Destructive demolition of all positive organisational capacities of what is
While both stances are both understandable and at the same time to be overcome, with the first position represented in the stereotype of a monkish being, and the second position represented in the stereotype of the activist being; neither stance leads to a true political universality, but rather a particular effacement of a true political universality.
Or in Hegel’s own thought: when one uses their own faculties of reason to search for the truth outside of both the state and the ethical world, one in fact becomes disconnected from truth. The easy path is to withdrawal from the world of what is; the easy path is to simply negate all of what is. That is so easy.
What is hard?
What is hard is to actually engage the actuality of both the reality of state organisation and the ethical world on its own terms, as if my particularist vision, understanding and will does not and cannot know the whole picture. What is hard is to actually engage the actuality of both the reality of state organisation and the ethical world on its own terms, as if my particularist vision, understanding and will may not be the absolute unlimited world spirit in-and-for-itself.
The key is to understand one’s limits, to understand one’s own impotence, in the face of the absolute unlimited world spirit in-and-for-itself. To understand one’s own limits and impotence is to operate from a real universal standpoint of interpretation (inclusive of my particularity). And when one is operating from a real universal standpoint of interpretation (inclusive of my particularity), you may actually be able to make a change and be able to face the consequences of that change (which will obviously be different than what you initially intended or willed).
In other words, one opens up a loop between willing change and consequence that will not absolutely blow up one’s identity, but allow for a radical and unlimited process of sublation of identity that extends into whatever the future (which is not already decided but depends on your decision) holds for you as a particular self-consciousness.
This is a true revolution.
It is a revolution, not in the sense of everything being overthrown by an abstract collectivity in one night, but rather in a revolution of one’s own infinite self-reference which has the possibilities to actually make a difference.3
But to understand one’s own limits and impotence, one must understand the historicity of the state and the ethical world, to be informed by what has already been derived in the concept. To understand the historicity of the state and the ethical world, to be informed by what has already been derived in the concept, is to use your reason to search for the truth as connected, as opposed to disconnected, from world spirit.
The infinite problem in politics today is that it is absolutely impossible to have a reasonable discussion about the truth of contemporary state tensions. If Hegel were alive, he would probably conclude that not much had changed from his time, namely, that we are still labouring in the transition from the truth of the world of authority to the truth of the world of feeling. The paradox is that neither world knows truth. As it relates to our world, the truth of the world of feeling, the truth cannot be known because everyone thinks that what the think in the immediacy of their heart is right. Everyone thinks that what they feel is right.
But that is the opposite of what Hegel teaches in the Philosophy of Right.
What you think is (most likely) very wrong.
How to get better at being wrong?
The only way to get better at being wrong is to become a scientist of spirit. While a classical scientist, as opposed to a Hegelian scientist, is well trained to be wrong in using the scientific method, this training is as a rule applied to test the truth of the world of substance without subject (which Hegel says, unfortunately, has no truth). The world of substance without subject has no truth. The world of substance gains its truth with the introduction of subjectivity, and yet subjectivity is radically incomplete and unfinished, the definition of untruth in its immediate intuitions. The truth is something that is derived in the process of conceptualisation itself, in the thought and speech of submitting to the domain of the symbolic order that existed before you were born and will exist after you die. In other words, in what truly exists beyond one’s own particularity in truth.
The truth is that the rights of this world, the ethics of this world, and the states of this world existed before you did. The rights of this world, the ethics of this world, and the states of this world will exist after you do. This is not to say that one cannot make a real change, this is not to say that one is not a key part of this unfolding process. But it is to say that if one is not truly humbled before this process when making an interpretive gesture and opening a loop that imposes one’s will on this process, then one will be definitely humbled by this process.4
I do not speak from the place of nowhere.
I have gone through a phase of progressivist elitism where I thought I could occupy the position of the good and right side of history; I have gone through a phase of Marxist totalitarianism where I thought I could occupy the position that confidently abolishes all property and seizes the means of production; I have gone through the phase where I thought me and my brights ideas could open a liberated world for all spirits beyond historical frictions and antagonisms.
And I have also gone through a phase of total withdrawal into the depths of the inner conscience where one walks the path of no path, where one decides that there are no good paths to walk in this world.
The stakes of taking seriously Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is learning to occupy an interpretive stance where one can in fact open towards revolution, where one can open a loop that allows for a process of change where one can make a difference and work with the consequences of it. The difference is that this interpretive stance is a stance that is radically aware of and reconciled with what is. And I have seen, in the early stages of building Philosophy Portal, that that is the best place to be, because one is already the infinite self-recursive thing-in-itself; and the totalising visions of what the world should be, are mostly an inability or an unwillingness, to really work with the fact of thou art that! It is the best place to start, and start again. It is the best place start, and start again in a way that seeks truth in the actualised state (as well as the interrelation between states), as opposed to beyond, before, without or outside of it (as so many unreflective philosophies today do).
This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests, Alyssa Polizzi of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of O.G. Rose, and Michelle Garner of O.G. Rose. You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.
Hegel, G.W.F. 2001. Philosophy of Right. Batoche Books. p. 13.
One is here reminded of Alenka Zupancic’s idea that the true meaning of engaging political universality is not to find the elixir of eternal life, but rather to learn how to die differently, see: Zupančič, A. 2017. What Is Sex? MIT Press. p. 106.
As a general rule, if you are still in your 20s, and making grand universal statements about political universality, you are almost certainly not humbled (yet).