Domenico Losurdo. Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. 378 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-3291-6.

Reviewed by Joe McCoy (School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America)
Published on H-German (April, 2006)

The Hidden Hegel

The question of esotericism--the extent to which a philosopher's public pronouncements correspond to his actual philosophical views--is a recurrent theme throughout the history of philosophy. Indeed, as Hegel himself says, the abstruse nature of philosophical thought seems to create this situation.[1] The question of esotericism also arises when the philosopher withholds aspects of his teaching due to pedagogical or political motives. Curiously, the rise of the modern university, which recognizes philosophers only among university professors, exacerbates this issue: as public officials, university professors are de facto required to be cognizant of matters of public interest and controversy and mindful of social mores and sentiments. For intellectuals who dominate the academic world of their day (as Hegel did in early nineteenth-century Germany), prudence and circumspection regarding public statements stems from more than personal interest in advancement or influence, but also from a sense of civic responsibility to prevent one's thought from undermining or destabilizing the polity. Such a situation clearly presents enormous problems for interpreters--how can one disentangle genuine philosophical doctrine from the public veneer?

Domenico Losurdo's Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns frames the discussion of Hegel's views on current political issues by considering the possibility that he practiced a kind of esotericism in the face of the restoration order that emerged in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The result is a thorough investigation of Hegel's words and deeds, public and private, in the classroom and in private associations, over the course of his career. Two aspects of Losurdo's work are particularly noteworthy. First, the author has gathered a large amount of information from various sources, including published works, private letters and accounts from contemporaries and students. Second, Losurdo considers Hegel's political orientation from many points of view--for example, whether Hegel is to be understood as a conservative or liberal, a monarchist or republican, an ancient or a modern. He further considers how Hegel appropriates and alters key notions in political philosophy: doctrines of individual rights contrasted with the prerogatives of the state; freedom understood as laissez-faire versus freedom that is made possible and vouchsafed through state regulation; the role of social institutions that mediate between the individual and the state; and also how Hegel is to be understood vis-à-vis the debate between the ancients and the moderns, themes such as the conditions of otium and Arbeit as preconditions for social and intellectual life, the primacy of politics over ethics, and the reconciliation of transcendent moral codes with the modern conception of freedom. The scope of Losurdo's work and its scholarly rigor makes it an excellent resource for Hegel scholars as well as for those with a general interest in the history of ideas. By the same token, it is a difficult book to summarize adequately,[2] and so I will discuss a few of the topics that highlight Losurdo's approach and conclusions.

Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns begins by asking whether Hegel systematically concealed his actual political views from the authorities and the public, or whether he modified his views in a sincere (though perhaps misguided) attempt to accommodate his doctrines to political realities. Chapter 1 examines some interpretive conjectures and indeed some accusations regarding these possibilities among Hegel's followers and critics. While Losurdo concedes differences in tone and emphasis between Hegel's published works and unpublished lectures (see pp. 4-5 on the rights of the starving man), he argues that these features do not require a major reordering or reevaluation of the Hegelian system and method. More generally, Losurdo's approach to the question of Hegel's putative esotericism is based on two sound interpretive principles: first, that an investigation into hidden or esoteric principles threatens to become an exercise in circular reasoning and question-begging when such an inquiry departs too far from the documents that Hegel himself chose to make publicly available (pp. 14-16). Second, Losurdo suggests, in view of alterations in and differences among published works, the interpreter ought to search for philosophical grounds to explain these, rather than viewing them merely as effects of the author's personal history or the political exigencies of the times. As Losurdo states: "[E]ven if certain elements and his explicit confession were to prove that he considered Philosophy of Right to be a mere pragmatic adjustment to the powers that be ... we should look for the deepest motives for this not simply in the cowardice of a private man, but first of all in his philosophy itself" (p. 13).

In chapter 2, Losurdo discusses the variously formulated and somewhat infamous Hegelian principle that "the rational is the real and the real the rational"--a phrase that has become a locus for criticisms that Hegel accommodated his doctrine to contingent political events and institutions. Here Losurdo argues that while this philosophical principle implies the course of history is a fundamentally rational and intelligible process, it is not a rationalization of whatever political state of affairs happens to obtain, nor is it a disingenuous accommodation to prevailing political authority. In principle, Hegel is committed to endorsing certain political institutions as suitable to a given epoch for better realizing certain aspects of consciousness or spirit, such as modern constitutional forms for the values of freedom and equality. Yet any particular arrangement--that of Revolutionary France, the United States, the German Federation--may realize the ideal forms only approximately and may be superseded in the course of time. Thus, a conclusion that is reiterated throughout the book is that the labels "conservative" and "liberal" (with the respective dogmas and worldviews these words evoke) are too flimsy to capture the scope of the Hegelian system.

Part 2 of the book, comprising chapters 3 through 6, takes up in broader terms the question of how Hegel is to be understood vis-à-vis conservatism and liberalism, with considerable attention given to the historical contexts from which these political views take their meaning. Chapter 3 examines Hegel's analysis of what is perhaps the defining principle of classical liberalism, namely, that a political constitution is to be conceived as a contract among the individuals that compose a society and that the state exists primarily as a guarantor of individual interests and freedom. Losurdo chronicles Hegel's preservation of a social domain of freely contracting individuals in the sphere of civil society, even while Hegel rejects the conception of the state as the product of a social contract. Chapter 4 documents the deeper constraints Hegel places on the liberal doctrine of individual rights, such as the right of resistance and revolution against the state and the right of extreme need (ius necessitas, Notrecht). Losurdo argues that Hegel denies the former and endorses the latter--positions which a contractual understanding of political society would preclude. According to Hegel, the state is presupposed in relations between freely contracting individuals and so its prerogatives are not derived from such a contract.

Two major questions arise at this point in Losurdo's analysis: first, how does Hegel understand the historical importance of political revolutions, especially the French Revolution, if not as a renegotiation of the putative contractual basis of the state? Second, given the theoretical limitations he places on individual rights, is Hegel a statist or even a totalitarian political theorist, as some of his liberal critics claim? In chapter 5, Losurdo argues that Hegel--far from being a conservative or reactionary--occupied "an antagonistic position with regard to the culture of the Restoration" (p. 96). Indeed, Losurdo states that "every revolution in the history of humanity was supported and celebrated by Hegel, despite his reputation as an incorrigible defender of the established order" (p. 99). Underlying these views is Hegel's conception of history as the increasing realization of freedom in concrete social circumstances as opposed to merely legal forms and the terminology of freedom and rights, which do not necessarily contribute to and may actually inhibit actual personal liberty. Losurdo's emphasis on Hegel's concern for concrete political conditions as the basic referents of his system underlie a number of important distinctions that run throughout the book, such as "formal" versus "substantive freedom" or "method" and "system." A recognition of these basic distinctions explains, for example, Hegel's endorsement of such diverse and disparate political causes as constitutional monarchy, the right of extreme need and compulsory public education--since these serve the concrete good of persons and so are conducive to their infinite worth as rational free agents.

Chapter 6 primarily concerns the place of the intellectual in Hegel's political thought. Unlike the philosopher in Plato's Republic or in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the intellectual is not to be understood as a trans-political, independent agent who is free from the regulation of the state, but rather as more akin to a worker who performs a specific and indeed essential function in the social order. Losurdo argues the Hegel is not a liberal who believes the intellectual has an unconditional and inalienable right to unhindered speculation, a right that is valid independent of his social and historical milieu. In one of the most interesting sections of the book (chapter 6, section 4), Losurdo links the liberal understanding of intellectual freedom to the ancient notion of "leisure (otium, scholê)" and points out the hierarchical social order it implies, including the necessity of a servile class. He further argues that Hegel assimilates intellectual inquiry into the category of "work" (Arbeit) and so brings it more in harmony with the modern understanding of reason as the productive modification of nature and society.

The third part of Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns, comprising chapters 7 through 11, assesses Hegel with reference to certain doctrines and turns of thought that have been taken to characterize modernity. In chapter 7, Losurdo traces out the extreme and sometimes paradoxical implications of individual rights doctrines in classical liberalism, such as the right of private property, self-defense and rebellion against the state. In addition, he examines others aspects of the primacy of economic activity in the liberal conception of the state. Losurdo argues that Hegel does not deny or negate individual rights, but rather that such rights have to be conceived as part of the community in which they function. For instance, he argues that Hegel assimilates the right of extreme need, which directly contravenes an absolute right to property, into the right of self-defense, which is sanctioned by classical liberal theory. Since it appears that Hegel consistently and thoroughly affirms the priority of the state and the political community over the individual, in what sense can he be said to be a modern rather than an ancient or a modern reactionary?

Chapters 8 and 9 continue to address this question--first from the point of view of Hegel's assessment of Rousseau's new conception of the citizen and his relationship to the state, and second by examining the modern state's relationship to the institutions of family; civil society and the regulation of the economy; modern educational institutions; and the protection of children. Hegel emerges throughout as a defender of state prerogatives in all these domains and so as a proponent of the modernist conception of the political regime where individuals are subsumed under the dictates of the "general will." Yet, at the same time, Hegel wishes to avoid the extreme position of Rousseau who does not seem to allow for institutions that mediate between the individual and the state. Hegel seeks to integrate concrete personal freedoms under the auspices of the state without abolishing or negating them. In so doing, the state assumes the role of the guarantor of "positive freedoms and rights," not merely avoiding contact with the individual and preventing citizens from violating each other's rights, but in addition organizing and regulating social institutions to insure the individual's development in the familial, economic and political domains.

Chapters 10 and 11 are also concerned with the priority of the state over the individual, a principle which implies the priority of politics and social organization of ethics, the sphere of individual moral judgment and action. Hegel seems to view the moral consciousness of the individual as constituted by political society and the social mores in which he is immersed. Consequently, the moral conscience of the modern citizen is no longer informed by principles or allegiances that transcend the state, such as those of traditional religion. Once again, Losurdo argues for Hegel's decision in favor of the primacy of politics with all its implications: "the waning of moral heroes," the assimilation of religious moral precepts into wholly political institutions, the rejection of even a secularized, transcendent (or transcendental) ethical system as in Kant and so forth. These all come about as startling though inevitable consequences of Hegel's identification of the rational and the real.

Chapters 12 and 13 provide an overview--brief for its scope--of Hegel's legacy in the Western world since his death, particularly in view of the social upheavals and political cataclysms of the twentieth century. These movements and counter-movements can be understood as attempts to define the twin notions of freedom and authority in a manner acceptable to populations for whom religious belief and customary attachments are less efficacious in the regulation of social life. Hegel has been and probably will continue to be both hero and devil in this conflict, as a result of his monumental and detailed attempts the political regime in which these notions may be reconciled.

Losurdo is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Urbino, Italy, and president of the International Hegel-Marx Society for Dialectical Thought. The only other work of his currently available in English is Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West (2001). While readers may be led to Losurdo's work through a more general interest in political and social thought among the intellectual left, Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns is also an important contribution to Hegel scholarship, and of general interest for students interested in the theoretical roots of modern political philosophy.

Notes

[1]. See Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 2. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 11-12. Hegel's point is that philosophy has an esoteric dimension due to the sheer complexity of the subject matter; yet, he denies that philosophers such as Plato conceal their teachings intentionally.

[2]. See also Mark Tunick's review of Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns, in Perspectives on Political Philosophy 34 (2004), p. 62.

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Citation: Joe McCoy. Review of Losurdo, Domenico, Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11674

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