Out of the Echo Chamber Wars

I noted in the previous post that our present predicament bears some similarities to Hegel's master-slave dialectic in his Phenomenology of Spirit. In this post, I want to use that as a clue to how we might expect our cultural development to go from here. However, having taken time to examine that region of the Phenomenology of Spirit a little bit more, it turns out that Hegel later discusses a phenomenon closer to our own culture, and so we will examine that discussion, not the master-slave dialectic. We will also discuss Hegel's account of the French Revolution and Terror. It is noting, however, that the feature which all of these share, that is, that of hostility between groups which each want unilateral recognition, is based, in both cases, on a desire for independence which does not permit mediated independence.

The sections we are interested in to begin with are  labeled (in my copy) The  Law of the Heart, and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit (C.V.B.b., pp.209-15) and Absolute Freedom and Terror (C.VI.III., pp.343-50). First, I want to show how this section matches our current predicament, then I want to examine whether Hegel's account of this phase's transition can be made sense of from where we are. Be warned that I find these sections difficult, and will be relying somewhat on Charles Taylor's reading in his Hegel (Ch.V.3.II., and Ch.VI.2., pp.163-7, 184-188). Even with such aid, however, I may not be able to make this as clear as I would like.

Taylor sets the stage as one where self-consciousness wants to recognize itself in the state, and believes itself to be naturally good and the world to be at its service. Thus, it wants to reform the state in its own image. This natural goodness, however, means that it thinks that the problem is law itself. Thus, it finds laws, generally, to be bad. For this reason, self-consciousness cannot, here, stop trying to reform the law and finds any law it passes to be an alien imposition upon it again. What one generation reforms the state into, the next (if both are in this stage) reforms it back out of. This comes out especially in Hegel's discussion of the French Revolution:

This process is consequently the interaction of consciousness with itself, in which it lets nothing break away and assume the shape of a determinate object standing over against it. It follows from this, that it cannot arrive at a positive accomplishment of anything, either in the way of universal works of language or of those of actual reality, either in the shape of laws and universal regulations of conscious freedom, or of deeds and works of active freedom.

Now, Hegel describes how get conflict from here:

Hence others find in this content not the law of their heart fulfilled, but rather that of someone else; and precisely in accordance with the universal law, that each is to find his own heart in what is law, they turn against that reality which he set up, just as he on his side turned against theirs. (p.212, emphasis in original)

And, in the case of the French Terror:

Universal freedom can thus produce neither o positive achievement nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the rage and fury of destruction. (p.346)

The government is itself nothing but the self-established focus, the individual embodiment of the universal will. ... By no manner of means, therefore, can it exhibit itself as anything but a faction. The victorious faction only is called the government; and just in that it is a faction lies the direct necessity of its overthrow; (p.347)

Because the government is a faction, it is guilty, and thus cannot prove the guilt of its opposition, thus,

Being suspected, therefore, takes the place, or has the significance and effect,  of being guilty; and the external reaction against this reality that lies in bare inward intention, consists in the arid barren destruction of this particular existent self, (ibid.)

And towards the end of Hegel's analysis (after discussing how this stage goes crazy):

The universal here presented, therefore, is only a universal resistance and struggle of all against one another. ... What appears as public ordinance is thus this state of war of each against all.  (p.215)

I have now presented the two contradictions in the opposite order to Taylor (and Hegel). Taylor follows his explanation of these two contradictions with the shift which they require:

If the world order is the law of all hearts, then it can be considered as potentially capable of expressing the universal. What it would require on this view would be simply to be purged of individual self-seeking. (pp.165-6)

Because the source of the problem here is holding to one's own individuality, the next phase is a stage of self-denial. As I cannot yet make sense of Hegel himself in this following section, we will deal with Taylor here.

The peculiar feature of this kind of phase is man's sense of his own unworthiness, his apologizing for his existence, and his attempt to suppress his particularity, and become nothing but universal will. (p.166)

If Taylor's reading of Hegel is right, and if our era is sufficiently like the previous phase, then a Hegelian prediction for our future would be that we will transition into this self-denying phase. What could this look like? I think we already see this developing in a concern with "checking one's privilege" and avoiding assimilating other cultural expressions for fear that we will do so in an offensive manner. It shows up in other ways as well, but the general direction is towards putting oneself and one's own group down. This may also account for the amount of depression if we take depression to be internalized anger, anger with oneself. This is strongest in groups which form a majority, but I suspect it spreads to other groups, and most people are part of some kind of majority.

However, this takes self-consciousness on a road to a Kantian philosophy of duty. This is a duty which can never be fulfilled, because its fulfillment would be its end. Just as our current attempts at being authentic tend to involve seeking to be different from others, this kind of duty seeks to do the duties because they are duties and not because that is how we can be true to ourselves. What is needed is an account where being true to oneself and doing one's duty, as one is called to it by one's society, can come together, and thus where one can attain both true authenticity and fulfill one's duty. The Kantian account divides happiness from duty, whereas the account Hegel is driving at has it that our ultimate fulfillment is a fulfillment of duty, happiness is found in doing what is truly one's duty.

Because of this contradiction, we come around to a Romantic notion which holds to a moral intuition which is divided into a virtue-signaling speaker and a confidently active person who fails to attain to a genuine universal, who is thus charged with hypocrisy by the virtue-signaler who is likewise a hypocrite. Each is confident that it is in harmony with the universal, but they are still operating from intuition, not reason. They hold their views as a kind of divine revelation through intuition of the divine mind, but not one which can be thought, rather, it is only felt. This phase finally ends in a reconciliation between the two parties, and seems to complete the development of political culture in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Perhaps there are other hints as to directions of development elsewhere, and we should certainly be open to the possibilities that Hegel may easily have gotten things wrong, missed stages, or failed to recognize a continuation.

This is not an entirely optimistic bit of futurology, but this discussion also does not bring us to the end of the line. We can hope that it is a short lived phase, and that we get to a decent stage before too long. Or we can hope that we take a good long time getting there, for the following one appears to be coming, one of letting the intention count for everything, on the one hand, and a struggle over what our actions mean on the other, which goes along with the Romantic phase I briefly noted above. This already appears, in our development, tied up both with entitlement and with the fear of appropriation just noted. It is a long road out if Hegel is correct and if we do not speed up.

It is worth noting that this account has twists and turns. On this account, we are not doomed to go farther and farther in the direction we are now going. I have not articulated how these twists might actually impact those trends which we are currently concerned about, but there are glimpses of hope for concerns about entitlement, linguistic tyranny, and, I think, racism.

A small note on race and Hegel. Hegel can look quite racist, and I wouldn't deny that he is, in fact, racist. However, his account of slavery's position in history and the development of consciousness does not validate slavery or racism in the end, although it grants it a position in the development of a people. Hegel would say a similar thing about the French Terror. The various iterations of master-slave-type dialectics can be seen as transitions enabling a previously hierarchized relation to reach equality. This is, roughly, how I see Marx appropriating the master-slave dialectic in economic relations. Thus, our present transition through extreme opposition may be seen, from a Hegelian standpoint, as a stage in racial reconciliation.

I should also note that I am not completely sold on Hegel's philosophy. I find it intriguing, and an interesting tool for thinking through these things and gaining a new perspective on them. It is worth trying to see how well what Hegel would say fits with where we are, and how much we might be able to use to make better progress.