[PEN-L:8795] Review of *Hegel and Marx After the

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie cites Hegel:

> I'd have to disagree with the view of Hegel expressed above. On the
> question of freedom, Hegel (in his _The Philosophy of History_) had this to
> say:
> "According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History,
> that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the
> knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself
> the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do
> the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History. The
> Orientals have not attained the knowledge that Spirit--Man as such --is
> free; and because they do not know this, they are not free. They only know
> that one is free. But on this very account, the freedom of that one is only
> caprice; ... That one is therefore only a Despot; not a free man. The
> consciousness of Freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they
> were free; but they, and the Romans like wise, knew only that some are
> free--not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The
> Greeks, therefore, had slaves; and their whole life and the maintenance of
> their splendid liberty, was implicated with the institution of slavery: a
> fact, moreover, which made that liberty on the one hand only an accidental,
> transient and limited growth; on the other hand, constituted it a rigorous
> thralldom of our common nature--of the Human. The German nations, under the
> influence of Christianity, were the first to attain the consciousness, that
> man, is free: that it is the freedom of Spirit which constitutes its
> essence."


Yoshie then  concludes:

> It is difficult to see why such a view of freedom is in any way superior to
> Marx's. (Perhaps Ricardo, who I assume has read the MacGregor book, not
> just Murray's review of it, can explain to us.) I for one think that
> Hegel's view of freedom and history is not just an idealist but a
> nationalist and racialized one, despite the proclamation of universalism
> and 'our common nature.'

Why "despite"? His very point is that the Greeks and the Romans had
thought that only "some men are free", but the "German nations" (note
plural, since he means western Europe) had come to understand that
"man, as man, is free." That's right, not one culture or race, but
man as such is free.

Yoshie continues:

In his writing, it is nations (anachronistically
> projected upon the past) that embody the movement of the Spirit and express
> the realization of freedom, which is also at the same time the measure of
> cultural ranking of humanity, with predictable racial implications.

RD:
His use of the word 'nation' is  not anachronistic since he does not
speak of the Greek, Roman or
Chinese nation but only "German nations". He is "ranking" peoples,
if you want to call it that, in terms of their realization of
freedom. Only in western Europe (for various historically contingent
reasons) men came to the realization that "all men absolutely
(man *as man*[his itallics]) are free" - including non-Europeans.

On the stuff on Africa, it is interesting to note that it is under
the heading "Geographical Basis of History"....