Hegel, the Charlatan
Naked Emperors of Philosophy #3
This essay continues a series on The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper.
Popper thought far less of Friedrich Hegel than either Plato or Karl Marx [1], but his role in having “given rise to modern nationalism as well as to modern Idealist philosophy” and made it impossible to ignore him altogether.
Hegel developed his grandiose philosophy by relying upon Aristotle’s theory of change, which was not very different from Plato’s essentialism (actualization of potentialities already present in anything).
As explained in the essay that introduced this series, I am sharing my notes only, in order to present as accurately as possible what Popper said.
Aristotle’s essentialism haunts social science scholarship to this day. It invokes intuitive definitions as premises. His ideal of perfect and complete knowledge was an encyclopedic body of facts. Clearly this contradicts modern scientific methods in which statements of experience must be refutable.
In science, definitions don’t contain knowledge. They describe variables in a hypothetical relationship. Overdue concern with definitions leads to pointless argument and despair in reason.
Hegel is the source of all contemporary historicism. Both political extreme factions base their ideas on his methods. He punched above his weight because feudal monarchies (esp. Prussia) were threatened by the French Revolution and Prussia made him the state’s official philosopher. Hegelianism is the renaissance of tribalism.
Hegel is only worth attention as an example of how easily a clown may be a maker of history. Schopenhauer said he dished up “the craziest mystifying nonsense” that, with official endorsement, enabled “intellectual corruption of a whole generation.”
War is the court of justice. Dialectics is a war of opposites that determines their unity or identity.
Dialectic triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is fine, but in science contradictions are resolved. Hegel seeks them out and preserves them — because they defy attack of reasonable argument and validate dogmatism.
The second pillar of Hegelianism is the philosophy of identity: What is, is good, and might is right. Also, subjective and objective equality makes truth an identity.
Hegelianism permits twisting ideas into their opposites. Equality is recognition of inequality and liberty is a function of law.
History is realization of the World spirit’s rational process of perfection. It is development of the Idea of Freedom.
Nationalism is a utopian dream of tribal collectivism. It is a mystical experience of community with others in the oppressed tribe. It emerged in Germany as a reaction to Napoleon’s invasion, and it ultimately replaced Christianity as well as loyalty to the king.
In Hegel’s modern totalitarian doctrine, the state is an instrument of power for the dominant race. Dialectics necessitate opposition and historicism dictates might makes right. Hegel makes no moral distinction between aggression and defense.
“Nations…win peace at home as a result of war abroad.”
The Great Man tells us what our will is and carries it out. He acts most effectively with a passion that doesn’t recognize limitations of justice and morality.
[1] In a passage describing the public drama involving Hegel’s contemporaries Johann Fichte, Immanuel Kant, and Arthur Schopenhauer, Popper vents just a bit:
The whole story is interesting mainly because of the light it throws upon the “history of philosophy” and upon “history” in general. I mean not only the perhaps more humorous than scandalous fact that such clowns are taken seriously, and that they are made the objects of a kind of worship, of solemn although often boring studies (and of the examination papers to match). I mean not only the appalling fact that the windbag Fichte and the charlatan Hegel are treated on a level with men like Democritus, Pascal, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, and Bertrand Russell, and that their moral teaching is taken seriously and perhaps even considered superior to that of these other men. But I mean that many of these eulogist historians of philosophy, unable to discriminate between thought and fancy, not to mention good and bad, dare to pronounce that their history is our judge, or that their history of philosophy is an implicit criticism of the different “systems of thought.” For it is clear, I think, that their adulation can only be an implicit criticism of their histories of philosophy, and of that pomposity and conspiracy of noise by which the business of philosophy is glorified. It seems to be a law of what these people are pleased to call “human nature” that bumptiousness grows in direct proportion to deficiency of thought and inversely to the amount of service rendered to human welfare.
