Freedom and Its Betrayal

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FREEDOM

AND ITS ileen Kelly

BETRAYA~~

Six Enemies of Human Liberty

5

ISAIAH BERLIN Edited by Henry Hardy

hed by Chatto & Windu, • 4 6 8 to 9 7 S 3

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t

Berlin Literary Trust and Henry Hardy nal matter «:> Henry Hardy '00.

'00.

~~ Berlin and Henry Hardy to be identified as the r respectively of this work has been as,ened

subject to the condition that it shall not, ~erwise, be lent, resold, hired OUI, or otherwise lisher's prior consent in any form of binding or that m which it is published and without a mcluding this condition being imposed the subsequent purchaser

'00.

hed in Great Britain in by Chlano & Windus e, ~o Vauxhall Bridge Road, ndon SWIV ~SA e Australia (Pry) Limited Milsons Point, Sydney, 'W'1l1es ~06I, Australia Zealand Limited • Glenfield, ewZealand

£1) Limited "'193, South Africa

To the memory of Anna KaUm 18 96-- 19 84

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction Helvetius Rousseau Fichte Hegel Saint-Simon Maistre Notes Index

EDITOR'S PREFACE

when the six hour-long 11ec1:ut1ISJ~ this volume were delivered, they created a broadl." tion. Never before had a speaker on this scale dispense with a prepared script, and the forty-' Isaiah Berlin was the right person to inau practice. His headlong delivery, his idio9}'l1lltll though this made it hard for some to extraordinary articulacy, his evident abso,~1ni unfamiliar but immediately exciting subje combined to create an impact that those w still remember today. People tuned in found themselves mesmerised. John B records that the lectures'excited me SIl talk, on the floor beside the wireI series was over, it was the subject provoked a correspondence: 0 contributed.2

FIFTY YEARS AGO,

bel.

uBi.

The lectures co.,._...~ man who could

ITS BETRAYAL

later to the Chichele Professoreory at Oxford.' There was a less 'ty too. one which was always a ~d he was regarded partly as a Ud indeed Michael Oakeshott if)' goes) at the London School of Jear. when he gave the first Auguste f:ctureJ there, as 'the Paganini of the 'Some foundation to this fear, for he highbrow speech - 'the only man _ki',cal- as one syllable'. But this no permanent damage to the kind recognition of his wide-ranging • 'ty to deploy them with unique of just one of the lectures may be listened to at the is the closest we can come to !I'.had in 1952, But there are ) of all six lectures, and possible once again to IU!ncy. and to feel the liberty. views made :hic:hele Professor. elfayal is by no

EDITOR'S PREPACE

means simply a crude forerunner of a more lilt. . development. The conception of freedom that infuso. lectures is in its essentials already fully formed, &IlIl less dense treatment, especially since it is presented in specific thinkers rather than as an abstract treatise, and great deal that does not appear in the inauguralllllCll1llllli significant supplement to the work he published in In my more flippant moments I have thought of this book 'Not the Reith Lectures', Anna Kamo. producer for the BBC Third Programme, had alrciad:, responsible for a number of talks of his. She knew preparing to give the Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn College in Pennsylvania (as he did in February and M'UIlilllJl and she asked him to deliver a version of these on thewas well aware that he would be hard to plersIWI"_ customarily resisted offers of the limelight - &IlIl shMriI to be disappointed. To her delight, however. When she heard recordings (now lost) of the she had no hesitation in offering him, in addition. role of Reith Lecturer. to which he was ideall But when Kallin's superiors heard of her Cq her great embarrassment by ruling that BerellJ'.." .. Reith Lecturer. 1 have found no record oj view, It may simply have been that Ber ' established at that time. and that thlt . Lecturers were more conservati It There is no evidence, at any rate; Whatever their reasons. the Kallin had to br~ tb"",...'-e

m.

tnr;_ PI_.

oHended.1

PRBBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

transcripts. Broadly speaking, it was similar to his e publishability of his Mellon Lec~res,. delivered l'fl~ later in Washingron, DC, and publIshed In t 999 as ~f Romanticism. He knew that the transcripts ought ....my revised and no doubt expanded if they were to be -to a state in which he could contemplate their appearchook form in his lifetime. As he wrote to Kallin on I I er I9JI, 'You will easily perceive how it is one thing to of things in a general fashion to an audience and a very one to commit words to cold print.' He certainly publish a book based on the Bryn Mawr Lectures, a so within a year or two of their delivery, but, as in .he never managed to complete the necessary work, dIaft typescript on which both sets of lectures were 'd aside and forgotten, despite the fact that he had iId:ens:ively, In 1993 I produced a fair copy of it for rating all his manuscript alterations and an introe .had written subsequently, but I do not believe 'at it. Entitled 'Political Ideas in the Romantic erwhich the Flexner Lectures were delivered), ~ooo words, and will, I trust, be published in

ijt!t draft of the edited transcript of the ~ book, but this too he could not ught it almost certain that he lie- mentioned this belief to him, Perhaps out of kindness thing would happen: :Ii suddenly pick it up ). ~ut-"-:wu

BDI

backed up my judgement than I do about the sub lectures stronger than othe:n• • now somewhat out of fasbio on almost all hands that publica it goes without saying that carrying Berlin's own full ~pJII1" fairly represents his views on will help his readers to a fuller that it is no disservice to his rql\l1l lectures to his published oe~~nuI extempore, informal nature i claims are made for this vollunJel1 The BBC lectures are not typescript prepared for the simply a re-run of the P weekly summaries in Bryn: though it is hard to itemise. transcripts or recordings sometimes said that the same - for example, in. Katharine E. McB .d I have thou

substantially . Flexner,q 100

AND ITS BETRAYAL

iderable reorganisation before and aft er ' and it wou Id In any case have bee him to deliver the same lectures twic n d beSI'des, almost alwaye, ive reviser 1 an, h on the podium, even if he drew on th: on more than one occasion. f his terror when facing an audience is a on of Lelia Brodersen (later chief psychol. d guidance clinic), who worked briefly iiWlaenhe was at the College. She was doing the time, was therefore shon of money, . wherever she could find them. In a . es the most vivid account of Berlin's seen:

tmhis' lecture on Fichte & was appalled. He lIII;JliUl'lISelf behind the lectern, fixed his eyes t & over the heads of the audience, & ~ed out. For precisely an hour, with 'm really frightful speed, he poured • 'ant lecture from the little I could airection of his gaze once, Without so far that each time one was sure • ther forward or backward. His ~m of his left hand, & for the y up lit down as if he were It was scarcely to be lItream of words, in es except for certain evident that Kant:& to

the-l4P

EDITOR'S PIlKPA,etIl.Qil

To return to the history of the present of the long typescript are entitled 'Po'lidl~ Science', 'The Idea of Freedom', 'Two Qt. Romantic and Liberal' and 'The March at chapters were written as a basis for the last not survive. Perhaps shortage of time film. drafting these, though in the case of Maistre of a typescript prepared some years before.· began as a treatment of six topics, though predominantly illustrated at Bryn Mawr (m ideas of two individuals, ended up focused named in the present chapter titles, Before die was chosen the lectures are referred to in th Enemies of Human Liberty', and I have adop subtitle. I have also separated out the first lecture as a general introduction to the w what it provides. In many ways the editing of these 1,eetlW that of Berlin's Mellon Lectures, thou more different versions of the tran tations of these, and more caches 9i not repeat here what I said a}lou preface to The Roots of Roman has been the absence of lectures.2 This has meant. conjectural restoration of

DOM A.ND ITS BETRAYAL

uanscripts made by me~bers of the BBC enough, were not famIlIar with Berlin's aner, and found the. work hard going; at "'lfeIted, and the tranSCrIpt descends into near_ just one example for fun, Saint-Simon our'.)' Almost always, though, it is clear ~ even if the actual words are occasionally been ~e1ped by experts in my search for 5 quotations, as I record m the preamble to S..(i. But my greatest debt, and the reader's _ III that to the author - is to the late Anna in Berlin's intellectual career should not be 4eterminedly pressed him, again and again, "D. She cajoled and supported him through of recording, and where necessary re- a process which, characteristically, he kecause it fed his lifelong self-doubt). She nu perform miracles of cutting, condensBerlin in the letter to her from which I he also refers to her 'magical hands'. es clear how important the personal two Russian-Jewish exiles. Berlin, ectual impresario to enable him to Kallin filled that role with 'that is why I have dedicated this

HENRY HARDY

INTRODUCTIO'I"lo.".

whose ideas I proposeprominent just before and just after the French questions they discussed were among the p'ertllld political philosophy, and, to the extent philosophy is a branch of morals, moral plbil. and political philosophy are vast subjects. BlUlIo1 to analyse what they are. Suffice it to say we can, with a certain amount of exllggluil tion, reduce the questions to one and 0 should an individual obey other individ one individual obey either other in4ivid of individuals?' There are, of c questions, such as 'Under what cir and 'When do they cease to obt~ from obedience, questions ab~~~ society, by the individuaI,- ~III purposes of political p,hj.~ political theory or socioJa be precisely this ontll The six tbiI"1kei~i!lJ RouSleaPt,-l'U"iDIIli

THE SIX THINKERS

.:.I.

M AND ITS BETRAYAL

r of the ascendan? ~f the middle class. fWe1re born at the begInrung of a period of living at the end. ~u~ whether or not this ome people think, It IS ~Iea~ tha.t these are -.11n speak a language whIch I~ .stlll directly doubt there were great political thinkers erhaps more original ones also. Plato and and St Augustine, Dante and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke enunciated ideas which ..:reee more profound, more original, bolder than those of the thinkers I shall discuss. ers are divided from us by history, we ther easily or with familiarity, they need o doubt we can see how our ideas derive lier thinkers, but they are not identical should like to maintain that the six eak a language which still speaks directly denounces ignorance or cruelty or ,/When Rousseau delivers his passionate lPid the sciences and the intelligentsia, peaks) for the simple human soul; rify the great organised whole, the . h they belong, and speak of national duty and the joys of uple in the performance of a ~eaks of the great frictionless in which workers and tionaI system, and all oUl: suHerings as well;'VIiU

• oMaistre give; l;atw

INTRODUCTIQ·...

thinkers. Although they lived towards ~~ century and at the beginning of the situation to which they seem relevant, w perceived, to have described with an un characteristic not so much of the nineteen twentieth. It is our period and our time analyse with astonishing foresight and skilll them worthy of our consideration. When I say that they have these curious P I should like to say that they are prophets ia Bertrand Russell once said that the impOIItaIW keep in mind when reading the theories of phers (other than mathematicians or 10 .• symbols and not with empirical facts or hlUIQ" that they all had a certain central vision 0 and what it should be; and all the ingenuitiY the immense cleverness and sometim~i" they expound their systems, and them, all the great intellectual apparatus the works of the major philosophera not but the outworks of the iI'1D.l9~ assault, objections to objectio~ attempt to forestall and refute ae their views and their theories, what it is they really want this barrage of defensiv ~ vision within, whicoh ....'g complex, but simpL single whole "V>~• •

nUl_

wi.

AUQ1A'~_•

b'

),llJ(ilQJ"

BDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

lie asked again, at least in the fashion in which 6J\red before. Newton, for .example, was a thinker ~ered questio~s which ~ad pu.zzled many answered them wIth slmphcl ty , WIth lucidity, answer of immense power an d coherence. This ·d of Berkeley and of Hume, and of thinkers f8Icdy professional philosophers, for example of all people tof a novelist like Tolstoy. . These . are . the ancient, tormentmg questIons whIch had for many centuries, and answered them in !tror some people at any rate this seemed to be the

dUnkers who are great in another way, namely, questions which had been put before, but by of the questions themselves, by transforming from which the questions seemed to be much by solving the problems as by so the people to whom they talked as to cause a very different light', in which what had estion before no longer arose, or at any uite such urgency. And if the questions ~ons no longer seem to be required. per with the very categories, with the :which we see things. This kind of very dangerous, and can cast both Wty. I have in mind thinkers like Itoevsky, who in some special und~ 'deeper' thUlken than penetrate to a level where tmB their entire VQlOn Qlt-CODvClftCCI.

INTRODUCTI01II

conslstmg of other thinkers of whom leaders, or to whom they were merely Rather they were affected by them as one who suddenly transforms one's view of in a different relationship from that in whi In this respect, too, all six are thoroughly consideration. There is another quality, and a more CUlicl1l common to them. Although they all d·iSClIlIIfl human liberty, and all, except perhaps Mllisti~ were in favour of it - indeed some of them for it and regarded themselves as the truest they called true liberty, as opposed to imperfect brands of it - yet it is a pec:uliat their doctrines are inimical to what is rate, by individual liberty, or politicalli which was preached by the great E thinkers, for example; liberty in the conceived by Locke and by Tom Humboldt and by the liberal thinker. Condorcet and his friends, and, after and Madame de Stael; liberty in thu of it was what John Stuart Mill wlf freely to shape one's life as circumstances in which variously and richly, and, if The only barrier to this it men in respect of the security of them lJ); institution or P!=1ldiij

mm

self~ptOteetl~ Inl~fbilf1

PRBBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

nroblem, being among the earliest to do s . r d and partlCu . Iarly simple 0, hIS h, particularIy" VIVI ''"'1ften best examined in this pristine form , bef' t .e [llII Ore It over with too many nuances, with too much 1IQM1:b too many local and temporal variations. return to the central quest~on which all political sooner or later must ask: Why should an 0 . HI" b y ne else?' By the time e venus egan writing, this been answered a1toget~er too variously. He was e when, in other provinces . of human interest , In . for example, enormous stndes had been made, the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth like Galileo and Descartes and Kepler, and that 'shed Dutchmen whose names I shall not cite ibuted so much to the subject, although thei: still relatively unrecognised. men were overtopped by Newton, whose que in the annals of mankind. Among all the 1adiation of his name and achievement really e was praised by the poets, he was praised by e was regarded almost as a semi-divine IP'ded because people thought that at last ature had been adequately and combecause Newton had triumphantly few, very simple and very easily kom which every movement and m~tter in the universe could in hich had previously -b ~JggicaUy, ~

som .

.

INTRODUCTI01f

verifying observations by means of sp ment wherever this was possible. In the sphere of politics, in the sphere of ordinating principle, no such authority, found. If it was asked why I should obey the State, why anyone should ever obey anlYU. were altogether too many and too vari01lll said, this was the word of God, vouchsafed supernatural origin; or perhaps by direct whose authority in these matters is recoplflll medium of a Church; or perhaps given by the individual himself. Or because God had great pyramid of the world - that is what said in the seventeenth century, for example; bishop Bossuet. The king must be obey order of the world, commanded by God, all. reason and faith, and the commands of G ask for the source of their authority is 1 said others, the command to obey the rul or by his agents. The law is what the rut wills it, whatever his motive, it may no is the theory of absolute monarch said, the world has been created ( uncreated) in order to fulfil a view is called natural teleology{ is a kind of gradual unrolllitg unrolling of a scroll in whi is to say, the whole of tb the gradual develapm terms of this grea:

pIKe, that iii'I~. the>taf.alIIlI

BBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

otherwise; by obeying this rather than that Ie that is part of the pia.", part of the scheme of t do this, and of course In a mInor way I may b t the plan, then I shall be disturbing the hanno n; and frustrate others, and ultimately frustrate be unhappy. In the end the plan is more powerful I disobey it too far I shall be crushed by th out of the plan, which will sweep me aw e modified this view and said it may not a~~ ensabIe that you fulfil your part of the plan, not for the plan is not quite so tight and inevitable Fhaps it is the most convenient or economical iItIlQCi of securing that necessary minimum which a purpose of being happy, or being well, or that life should prove not too intolerable to till a plan, though you could live to some but not so well, not so comfortably, not so adjusting yourself to it. a means all the types of view which were .d that I possess certain inalienable rights, birth by nature or by God (say rights to ), which were said to be inherent in me, men to see. These rights entailed the d. the right to be obeyed by, certain l:llrtain occasions. Again, there were this or that king or government do it. This is the theory of the which I have agreed to abide in that unless I did so I should t

non and collabo,lftcQl, IlI¥ ~prQdlil',ed

INTRODUCTI0

conditioned to do so, by my education or by social pressure or by the fear of b do not. There were still others who said obey by something called the general will. called conscience, or by something called which the general will is in some way identifi a kind of socialised version. There were, apIn, that I obey because in doing so I fulfil the spirit, or the 'historical mission' of my nation CI1l of my class or of my race, or of my calling. who said I obey because I have a leader and he on me. Or else I obey because lowe it to friends, or to my ancestors or posterity. or oppressed whose labours have created me what is expected of me. Finally, it has b because I wish to do so, because I liq obeying when and as I please; or simply ~ which I feel but cannot explain. Some of these answers answer the q\1lllQ and some of them answer the question, which of course is not the same qUill drawn distinction between the two period in the history of the entire is that the entire topic had bec:Q century. If scientific method order in chemistry, in physt so forth, why did we have of conflicting opinions should some assert"ODI"l some be faithful s believe in mefa OIDe..Q

det.-

:aBBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

lifIl!iiD had so successfully been obtained Con

Id.

. cenung

pIe who made the most determined effort d ' . to 0 thinker, HeIvetlus.

CLAUDE-ADRIEN HELVETIUS was both Frenchman of German origin - the fami!: been Schweitzer, of which Helvetius IS His father was physician to the QUeeII; himself a wealthy and gifted youth, who other connections obtained the patt some of the most talented and in Voltaire, for instance, Montesquieu sion he was a tax farmer; that is to say; part in the financial administration profits from it. He was a disposition, and had many d the leaders in his day of wh4t ment. His principal work is published it in I 7S 8, but iii. heretical, that it was c:on and was burnt by the.p than three sepal'll that, in spite of

his wife,mJ • hacbhap eQ

ba

BBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

o g aim was the search for a single principle the basis of morality and really answer the t how society should be founded and how man here he should go and what he should do, with owof scientilic authority that Newton had disI: realm of physics. And Helvetius thought he had II therefore supposed himself to be the founder of a ence, whereby he could put in order, at long last, and political chaos. He thought himself, In shon, il.WtOJl of politics. blem should have posed itself in that way is Let me quote something from Condorcet, a opaedist of very left-wing views born somewhat . s, who died in one of Robespierre's prisons in Jan year of the French Revolution:

lIfin:

about the nature of the moral sciences [and by ~_lIIIS politics as well] one really cannot avoid the ~ like the physical sciences, they rest upon !Jc:rs, they ought to follow the same methods, tl0 less exact and precise, and so attain to the . .If some being alien to our species were to he would find no difference between these !2:amin' e human society as we do that of

HELvt

are we to reduce these sciencell to and clarity as physics and geomletr]r!lI found the answer. Let me quote wha dialogue between God and man { ously did not believe in God, is om say to man: 1 endow thee with sensibility. It is br tool of my wishes, incapable of pllum~ without knowing it, fulfil my purposes pain; the one and the other will watch excite thy aversions, friendships, tender thy desires, fears, hopes, reveal to thee and after causing thee to generate a of morals and legislation, will one day principles on the development of vi happiness of the moral world. What is this but the first clear t utilitarianism? According to this principle, the pleasure, and the only things w The pursuit of pleasure and motives which in fact act 11 physical principles are said ti' have discovered the central.: it is that causes hllUl.lllrb • characters to be what are, that is responsi passions and tb . conscious 0'" un...

Jl,BIlBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

a tree to become a table, or to ask a rock to .. . equally ridiculous to Invite men to pursue It ~y are psychologically incapable of pursuthat they are conditioned by these two forces _ d hatred of pain - then they Will be happy if pU:::,ing pleasure, frictionlessly, efficiently and 'Pk

q1Jo, then, is this: 'Why are men not happy? Why is

misery, injustice, incompetence, inefficiency, yand so forth on the earth?' The answer is that ~ have not known how to obtain pleasure, how ;'J:'hq have not known this because they have been use they have been frightened. They have been tened because men are not by nature good and US have in the past seen to it that the great whom they have governed has been kept in of the proper functioning of nature. This is a .~canery on the part of the rulers, on the part 'us and priests and other authorities whom ;in the eighteenth century so strongly are interested in keeping their subjects in llI'Iise the injustice, the arbitrariness, the of their own rule will be altogether the early beginnings of man an ageagaj,n.st the many has been organised d1ey do this the few cannot keep

HBLViTru

investigate those further. The only philosopher, is simply to create a which men have to seek because they with the least pain, most efficiendy, ically. Helvetius says as much. He say. really the architect of the edifice (he m is there already, because it is diSCOvered seeking of pleasures and the avoidance The 'physiocratic' philosophers, who mists of the eighteenth century, similar} the making of laws (that would be 'Iegisfaction'), legislation is the transla something which is to be found in DI true ends of man are given; they can be physics have been discovered; and th why I should obey this or that king;. will simply be demonstrable in thll' physics are demonstrable. If this or greater happiness - if, that is, it co by nature - then it is good, and if . frustrates it in some way, then it . truth, and it ought to be applie Unlike some other thinker. tius did not have too high 8IJ! sense of thinking man 1m neither benevolent no't'· Tnllli pliable; a kind of na,~~ but above all eduGati. that it is of 1l!k"WIIP: argument. The p designed to

11K.

people:

J.JlBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

d because men are what they are, because of aoD, their sad circumstances~ their poverty, mnce, fears - all the factors which have twisted trUe purpose, which have made of them natural be remedied? Only by artificial manipulation. Dot believe in automatic progress. Some celeof the eighteenth century did believe in that. The Turgot and his friend Condorcet cenainly iDlrual progress: Helvetius did not. He supposes that gress if a sufficient number of enlightened men .il·Is and with a disinterested passion to improve lIIemseJves to promote it, above all if they convert iQlllki'Dld - the kings, the ministers - and teach them .Dmlent, for government is certainly an art. It is happiness. Like other arts it requires IS a man who wishes to build a bridge has to eaI of mathematics, mechanics, physics and so l10ut to rule a State must know a considerable pology, sociology, psychology, and indeed ibe-discovers how men in fact function, what te conduct are, is he in a position to _hes to produce. Without this he will and plunge mankind into miseries ~~lier state. In the late eighteenth Ie hope that some of the rulers of 's view of philosophical advice: Il1'haps Catherine the Great in , re obviously susceptible 10

philosopher to do? ching,. becauu: ,,~an_

HELvtTll1

punish them when in fact they do tha What human motives are is totally irrelevu least matter whether people contribute they are benevolent and approve of it, • interested, base, mean motive of their 01II'D.iI whether people prevent human happineumalignant or vicious, or because they are ~1tllI idealistic fools - the damage they do wiJl b case, and so will the good. Therefore we discussion of motives, which is really neither of no use to try to operate against hlllllaII human superstitions, because they can be very long run. In the short run these and therefore, as the Italian thinker Pareto in the twentieth century, 'Do not fight p That is precisely what Helvetius says, reformers, must not try to convert people, their reason is not powerful enough, in owing to the dreadful misgovernment of what it is that we tell them. We must sufi interest', as he puts it, 'for the tone o£lin appeal to interest. 'I do not care', said Helvetius, 'if:! they are intelligent ... Laws v.riJ); judges of their own interests, pursue pleasure and avoid p purpose of government is to' true or false, rigbt or wr for which the eigbteentlri What is relatively nawJa of using men's D8

thiJ.

moral or spiritual!

BDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

tit better feelings and worthier attributes of . e ction he must make it worth men's while vea I· h h he wants them to do, not exp am W y e does do it whether they. ~a~t to or not; and then, Mwlt of the socia! condltlomng effected by the laws the enlightened philoso~hers, enough men have tlength of time done nothmg but what contnbutes in fact, they will insensIbly acquIre new and b ~t is their bad present habits which cause the Its'their new good habits which will make them 15' not know how they will be making themselves :y not, for a whi~e. at least, understand the own new ways of hvmg; but 10 fact they WIll be which will automatically produce happiness. mduction of happiness through the conditionmen who have grasped the few, necessary rules mment of mankind, rules which can only be ti6c observation, perhaps scientific experiment, of reason to nature - that is the way to the proper coercive legislation has been amn·of the educator. Now he need no longer ed by his ignorant and outraged pupils. , he will be able safely to teach them ~ineS's. He will be able to teach them &Ie to explain to them why it is ~~.to pursue pleasure and avoid it is wrong to be an ascetic or uct of misunderstanding of to be gloomy or to be r.ilWill. be driven from the and happy.

"'ter

.mous

_~ educaUlJlJ.

HIlLVhIV

for its own sake is surely absurd. Ind'ecllld1W do anything for its own sake. For the action is to render people happy - which . of utilitarianism. Similarly, the teaching of classical IlarqP1llII doned, for they are dead and of no praeti All interest is practical interest. What PeG1~ consequently, are the sciences and the ans, that of being a citizen. There is to be no nothing 'pure', without useful application, learning is simply an old, medieval sum1/: derives from the days when ignorant men men that there were certain things which their own sakes, for which no utilitarian r Nowadays there is no need to do an . can be given, and there must be a reason fi be done. The reason is the pursuit of ha One of the direct consequences of corollary about human rights. For g that every man has certain inalienable basic beliefs in the Christian tradition soul, and because he has an i trampled on by other men. Men sparks of a divine being, and . 'natura!' rights. They have the to enjoy certain things and being sentient, being rati them by God or by too talked a great d very strongly, b

.

QU~;Ol'OI'therefore, for

He is

obtained it - it will take the form of NI_ say 'Do thus: do not do thus', or statemlllllllUlll wrong: thi~ is right. This is just: this is un) is bad. ThiS IS handsome: this is ugly.' But once we have laws, principles, canons, OIUle of regulations which prescribe conduct, _ _ liberty? How can liberty be compatible with after all hem man in, prevent him from doing he wants, tell him what to do and what not to do certain things, control him to a c:ert:lUa Rousseau is very passionate about this• laws, these rules of life, are not conventI: utilitarian devices invented by man simpl)'l achieving some short-term, or even long~ pose. Not at all. Let me quote from him law of nature, the sacred imprescriptible heart of man and to his reason', and sa hearts of men better than all the iii power of willing or of choosing the explicable by any mechanicallawa. I man, and the subject-matter of no laws which man obeys are absoll1 knows that he must not depaq,'-lI! is a secular version of Cal . perpetually insists upon is: utilitarian devices, but . to the particular tmIe embodying sacred trIJ but eternal. UPiv.~l

o

DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

ROUSSBAU

d, absolutely wicked, to fly against. the rules called sometimes nature, sometimes Itirl~es God - but which in any case is absolute. in which Rousseau is plunged, and it is very e problem of those previou~ .thinkers who ent, in compromise, in empirical deVIces as I' solution which would of course not be ideal, either wholly good nor wholly evil, but more mething enabling human beings to carry on nably well; something based upon common .j~ect, moderate, decent respect for most of each that people on the whole get, not indeed all tion for minimal 'rights', and more than some other system. This kind of outlook, end Locke, Helvetius and Mill, is for cteptable. An absolute value means that e, you cannot modify; and he puts this in He says that the problem for him is 'to 'on .•. in which each, while uniting a still obey only himself alone and

"""I__

dox in an appropriately paradoxido the same time unite ourselves und a form of association 'authority, of coercion r olitary in a state of l8~il1olt obey these same

by him in the ~1l8elf to all, _~41r'it

way to visit his friend Diderot in prison problem of human vice and virtue . _ blinding flash of inspiration. He felt 1ike had suddenly solved a long and tOrturing to whom a vision had suddenly been VU'lifilil who had suddenly seen the truth, th truth itself. He tells us how he sat dowu wept and was beside himself, and how thisof his entire life. The tone in which Ite answers to the ancient puzzles, both in _ in other works, is exactly that of a man: idea, of a maniac who suddenly sees a co safed to him alone, somebody who for has suddenly found the answer to a centuries tormented the whole of h great thinkers, perhaps Plato, perhap ity, had in some degree anticipated, b had at last found in its fuJI richness, so to look for the solution again. He is, at such moments, like .. found a solution which is not mer rules of such iron logic thf.t question. What is this sol geometer, with two lines w: and one only. He says t authority, and it is . arrange a compr

answer has a . ~a~~

DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

and also the more you obey; the more

troJ.

point of intersection to be achieved? .is that, after all, freedom simply consists in things and not being prevented from having dP they want? What I ne~essa~ily want is that e _ that which alone wIll satisfy my nature. ~t know what is good for me, then when I lUffer, because it turns out not to be what I t aIJ. Therefore those alone are free who not things but also know what, in fact, will teDOUS

~t

will satisfy him, then he is endowed

on gives him the answer to the question: Dr in order that I may be - that my nature , What is trUe for one rational man will men, just as, in the case of the sciences, to be trUe will be accepted by other we reached your conclusion by a valid , using correct rules, you may be they are rational, will arrive at the :if you feel sure of the rationality _lome different solution, this ll>ssibly be rational; and you

ROUSSEAU

however upright, however clear-headecl profound and wise, I may yet Want sometlllitqld wise, eq ually good and virtuous man may will111l1 it. There will be nothing to choose between morality, no principle of justice, divine or tragedy will turn out, after all, to be due not4ll human stupidity and human mistakes, bu universe; and that conclusion neither Rouss prominent eighteenth-century thinker, with _ haps, of the Marquis de Sade, accepts. But S ously vicious madman, and when Voltaire:aut something of the kind, this was put down to one and the scepticism of the other, in nei"dIil, toO seriously; indeed neither Voltaire !lOr' anxious to stress this aspect of their tholuglmi, Consequently, if nature is a harmony, satisfies one rational man must be ofcompatible, at any rate, with whatevet: men. Rousseau argues that all that is seek the kind of ends which confli Why do they now tend to seek corrupt, because they are not ra natural; and this concept of nat\U cenain respects like the conllllp nevenbeless acquires a tone..o • knows what it is to be a n. be good, and if all men 'WI what they would thea.

make each and aJl. harmonious._~~

DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

ROUSSEAU

point, ask what this general will is. What men in the assembly that generates somelCa1led a single will which holds for them all? is that, just as all men who argue rationally th about matters of fact (politics and morals ~r:ruths are always necessarily compatible, so ndition of nature - that is to say, unpernot pulled at by selfish interests, not pulled IRedi'!anal interests, not enslaved by fear or by !Olen not bullied, not twisted out of their e wickedness of other men - men in that that which, if it is obtained, will be equally who are as good as they are. Therefore, omehow or other to regain, to recapture ~gi'nal innocent state of nature in which to the many passions, to the many , which civilisation has bred in the !tbIIrmony, happiness and goodness will an socIety. tural man was, naturally, affected seau was a petit bourgeois from a tramp, and who was at odds the prey of many kinds of complexes. Consequently . d opposite of the kind d and disliked. He 4he powerful: few -111 the natural the-firstto ~~eans

the disturbed better than the tranquil. 1\0II1II. deep resentment of cliques, of coteries, of suffers from a deep resentment of intelllectilll1llNi take pride in cleverness, of experts or IlJ4l1li1 themselves up over the heads of the people. teenth-century thinkers :who are violendy antlin a sense anti-cultural, mdeed the aggressive p next twO centunes - whom Nietzsche called. Ka including Nietzsche himself, are the natural Rousseau. Rousseau's tormented and tortured nature with eyes of hatred upon people like Did Helvetius in Paris, who seemed to him fastidio and artificial, incapable of understanding au,:u.JI tions, all those deep and torturing feelings heart of a true natural man tom from his na man, for him, was somebody who possess~ wisdom very different from the corrup towns. Rousseau is the greatest militant kind of guttersnipe of genius, and fi some extent Nietzsche, and cert:linli d'Annunzio, as well as re-uolte, pe Hitler and Mussolini, are his heu.. It is difficult, and indeed gratui wing or a left-wing phenomen bourgeois revolt against a so excluded, Rousseau makes; rebels, the free wild ut1S of romanticism and so many Dthcm

ROUSSEAU

OM AND ITS BETRAYAL

pened, SO that men may achieve emotional unple peasant sitting under the ancestral oak -f)f what life is like, and what nature IS like, ought to be, than the buttoned-up, priggish, _ .....ted. highbrow person who lives in the city. that, he founds a tradition distinct from that eI, which then spreads aU over Europe, and States, and is the foundation of that 1It11!111ed the American way of life, in accorde simple people of a society possess a deeper eeper virtue and a deeper understanding of professors in their universities, than the . ,than other people who have somehow ho have somehow cut themselves off from !J'Qllllll is at once the true life and the true of men and societies. pression which Rousseau communicates e, and although we are told that there IiWhich the word 'nature' is used in the u's usage is unique. He goes further ture not merely with simplicity, tivilised, elaborate, sophisticated or artists nor scientists must .slikes Helvetius and the st be led by the man who is in touch with the who allows the

.lIIe,

his heart. This ~'.e live the

lJIUClya

In theory Rousseau speaks like any other agh philosophe, and s.ays: 'We ~ust employ our rea_iii deductive reasomng, sometimes very cogent, V81r\Oo~1i extremely well-expressed, for reaching his conc:lwlid. reality what happens is that this deductive r~eIllOllD strait-jacket of logic which he claps upon the iDJlIeIl,almost lunatic vision within; it is this extraordinary._ of the insane inner vision with the cold rigorous stI'lIit.... kind of Calvinistic logic which really gives his prose enchantment and its hypnotic effect. You appear to logical argument which distinguishes between ~~ draws conclusions in a valid manner from prem;"~ the time something very violent is being said to you. being imposed on you; somebody is trying to do means of a very coherent, although often a very deiGdi of life, to bind a spell, not to argue, despIte collected way in which he appears to be talking The inner vision is the mysterious assumptl dence of authority and liberty. The coinCldi from the fact that, in order to make men at on of living with each other in society, and law, what you want is that men shall moral law in fact enjoins. In shon, the as follows. You want to give peopl£ otherwise they cease to be menj want them to live according tQ love the rules, then they • b~use the rules are Q,WIII

ww

prpWeJ». is 1m

"'-,JIM.

DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

ROUSSEAU

chains? If they are the chains of conven&ins of the tyrant, if they are the chains of _ut to use you for their own ends, then these mel you must fight and you must struggle, tand in the way of the great battle for "on and freedom. But if the chains are making, if the chains are simply the rules ~ilhYour own inner reason, or because of the while you lead the simple life, or because "!lD.ce or the voice of God or the voice of .referred to by Rousseau as if they were jf the chains are simply rules the very is the most free, the strongest, most of your own inner nature, then the you - since self-control is not control. 10 this way Rousseau gradually prooar idea that what is wanted is men who each other in the way in which the

mome form of coercion which the ;!to force you to do his will, and it ~ked1y embellished with their have so fulsomely and so encomia which they have ° But what is wanted is - I quote Rousseau th all his rights to to the whole ~ercesyou?

hich

will. It begins in the harmless notion of all is a semi-commercial affair, merely: voluntanly entered Into, and ultimately m_1II performed by human beings who come tog certain things intended to lead to their co,JlUl:C8Ii1 still only an arrangement of convenience w common misery, they can abandon. This is from the notion of a social contract as a perftlllt\llilJ on the part of individuals who remain . pursue each his own good, Rousseau gradlual~ the notion of the general will as almost the pen a large super-personal entity, of something which is now no longer the crushing leviatbaJiill something rather more like a team, sO'IDI:thibli unity in diversity, a greater-than-I, som my personality only in order to find it agaihi., There is a mystical moment in which passes from the notion of a group of . free relations with each other, each p the notion of submission to somletbilnll"i greater than myself - the whole, which he reaches it are peculiar I say to myself that there are if I am stopped from having thll the worst thing which can b is it that I desire?' I desire 0 am wise, and if I am ratie discover in what this one man cannot

man, for jf itrl:bl.

'RBBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

ROUSSEAU

.'PJ'll¥ent them? Not because I want something that Mt,vnLDt, not because I am superior to them, not "~Duger than they are, not even because I am wiser for they are human beings with immortal souls, y equals, and Rousseau passionately believes in JuAuse, if they knew what they truly wanted, they ~I'hat I seek. The fact that they do not seek this ,:do not really know - and it is 'truly' and 'really' ..-£telll; are the treacherous words. u really wishes to convey is that every man is _ nobody can be altogether bad. If men allowed ess to well out from them, then they would t>1I right; and the fact that they do not want it they do not understand their own nature. But lor all that. For Rousseau, to say that a man ~ilthiOUgh potentially he wants what is good, is some secret part of himself which is his .rehimse/f, if he were as he ought to be, if en he would seek the good. From that it Ilfing that there is a sense in which he tdoes not know this. It is true that if the wants, he may enunciate some man inside him, the immonal ,if only he allowed nature to the right kind of life, and ulf, seeks something else. .~I.r it must seek what tlam now is my "'-it simply the raw material. If this is so, if jeeting yourself in some way, it may be Q a kind of self-projection. Napoleon, 'ty across the map of Europe, who lle, in Germany, in Italy, in Russia, ~ as the composer moulds sound IllPn is the highest expression of , ,personality, he is asserting .~ drives him on and on. .In. Fichte's thought e ..ubject or self.

move towards the notion that selves are not; beings at all, that the self is something to do perhaps the self, the human self, is really product of history and of tradition, but human beings by Burke's myriad indislotuli that it existS only as part of a general patterD, an element. So much so that it becomes mist self is an empirical individual born in a c certain kind of life, in a certain physical elI'vi.in a certain place at a certain date. Fichte begtQl a theological conception of the self; he says is not the empirical self which is clothed in a and a place," it is a self which is common super-self, it is a larger, divine self which U identify, now with nature, now with G now with a nation.' Starting with the notion of the isola some inner ideal which is out of reach Fichte gradually adopts the idea that nothing, that man is nothing wi nothing without the group, that the all. The individual, he begins to 5tl vanish. The group - Gattung It begins innocently ena endeavour to repay his debt among men, he must strive humanity, which has 'only becomes IIlaI:t! destined to live'

to

PICHTE

IIBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

llontradicts his own nature, if he lives in came to believe something of this kind. But er. The real self of Fichte's fully developed you, nor I, nor any ~articular individual, nOr up of individuals. It IS that whJch IS common personified, embodied principle which, like a iIdJILil'tv, expresses itself through Ii ni te centres, ugh you, through other people. Its emhodime true society, conceived as a collection of ~~er metaphysically, like small flames issuing traI fire. It is the great central Ii re towards ..tends in the process of being aware of the c:h are impulsions, flame-like strivings - of its IIWp.cologicai doctrine, and Fichte clearly was logian, and so was Hegel, and no good pposing that they were secular thinkers. enced by the Christian tradition, and it tbJ:y were heretics in it. But theologians .cal than what is called philosophical

r moves from

the group to the true individual, whose act of 'tr in history - the imposi.,.~.an~, flexible nature - this being at his most selfd." This was the

,:;tCl~th;e German

IlIl

the troops he told the

opposite. All those who have within them a life, or else, assuming that such a gift has hem at least reject what is but vanity and aWalt th& are caught up by the torrent of original life. os: yet at this point, at any rate have some co freedom, those who have towards it not ha feeling of love - all these are part of the p considered as a people they constitute the p the people. I mean the German people. All tDlllCt.., who have resigned themselves to represent oDly hand products, who think of themselves in this in effect such and shall pay the price of their an annexe to life. Not for them those pure api before them, which still flow around them; coming back from a rock of a voice which IS people, they are excluded from the p strangers, outsiders. A nation which to German (or simply the people) has not creative and original activity in most . come at last when philosophy, peneua self-awareness, will hold to this na recognise itself with a clear perrceJlti.!lgfj become quite clearly aware of thI had but a confused premoni imposed upon that nation; an to it today to labour in freed itself according to the nq1:l! accomplish the duty wbi And everyone who people whose fwJ~JJQ believe on die

FICHTE DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

the nation were not led, if it were not e quasi-divine leadership of the Zwingherr. it we need is a leader; what we need IS a man to " he suddenly cries 'Zwingherr zur Deutschlfwill compel us to Germanism]. We hope, of be our King who will perform this service, e may we must await him till he comes and mes and makes us.' come full circle. We started with the notion person, anxious not to be impinged upon, absolute freedom, obeying only the inner inner consciousness, of its own inner we say: Life is art,life is a moulding, life is ~bi'ing - self-creation - by a so-called ere are superior beings and there are within me a higher and a lower nature, igllts in a moment of crisis, and crush ,and perform heroic acts of selfprinciple which raises me; which, as :>flow of life. If I can suppress that '!:he leader or the race can suppress spirit does the sinning flesh. d fatal analogy between the c metaphor which leaves the ek1Jlarised by Burke and by Webte. Fichte contrasts mbipation, and totum, o~c, single, J the higher b JJJ of

e

we spoke earlier, which the British and the defended, the freedom of each man to be allowed.. limits at least, to live as he likes, to waste his tune o to the bad in his own way, to do that which he' ~ecause freedom as such is a sacred value? Ind which in Kant has a sacred value, has for Fichte b made by something super-personal. It chooses choose it, and acquiescence is a privilege, a duty, It kind of self-transcendent rising to a higher level. morality generally, is self-submission to the su dynamic cosmos. We are back with the view submission. Fichte himself largely thought in terms of so tal, idealistic will-power which had relatively Ii actual terrestrial life of men, and only towards did he perceive the possibility of moulding conformity with these transcendental desires. translated it into more mundane terms. The from reason to will created that notion of the notion of non-interference, not the I man to have his choice, but the no \ notion of imposing yourself upon freedom as the removal of obstacl~ remove obstacles by subjugatin understanding; in material life, conquest. That is at the heart victorious nation, that freed freedom are one. To show what thiI

e

PICHTE

M AND ITS BETRAYAL

BDth° of thought, who in humble stillness of e men f . M"1i our most definite plans a aClion. axnlli en UPthingY. b the hand of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, no ut . hand that drew from the womb of lime the body cau had ercated . . . the Critique of Pure Reason esword WI°th which deIsm was beheaded .. 0

0

well paraphrased by the American philosodreame~ Out thus: 'The world is the poem If we th our worlds are literally Idifferent ,en, II oser a banker' a robber itera y create camp, not he was thinking of thIs, Heme feels er~ ... f re this attitude, and had a genume vISIOn 0 'ans will appear, who in the world of mere g sacred, and ruthlessly with sword and the foundations of our European life, and ast remaining roots. Armed Fichteans will wills neither fear nor self-interest can epantheists, will fight recklessly for their t1pJes are absolute, and their dangers ~, Naturphilosophen will identify rces, which are always destructive. il his gigantic hammer and smash 'ty was the only force which with its naked vioterrible cataclysm will break ch] to suppress or to our fingers.' Above twbl\JtJ.onary fancies. 0

0

0

0

mans

0

The French are warned not to clap this which will begin in Germany. 'Por yOU; 'liberated Germany is more dangerous Alliance, with all its Cossacks and its Germans forget nothing', and pretexts for The French are warned, above all, not to dis... says to them, that upon Olympus, 'amidst th6 feast upon nectar and ambrosia, there is one all this merriment and peace keeps her arm and a spear in her hand - the goddess of wu.... This prophecy was destined to be fulfilled" anyone thinker, anyone philosopher multitudes in history. Nevertheless it is odd, is a direct line, and a very curious one. liberalism of Kant, with his respect for sacred rights, and Fichte's identification assertion, with the imposition of your removal of obstacles to your desires, ous nation marching to fulfil its des demands given to it by transcend~ material things must crumble. W way from the Anglo-French n each man his own circle, tha,t within which he can do as good, choose for the sake. choice as such is regardecl; These are the two D Europe at the bl~!Il of them is trq

HEGBL

HEGEL

that originated during the period which 1 egeIian system has perhaps had the greatest omy thought. It is a vast mythology ther mythologies, has great powers of great powers of obscuring whatever it fonh both light and darkness - more light, but about that there will be no it is like a very dark wood, and those om come back to tell us what it is hen they do, like those who are iottllr, their ear appears permanently the older, simpler and nobler :to listen to. As a result it is not rlrJiltough the new terminology In them, what their vision

claim that, whereas

'1M.'de. :wtheymerely now see the theiDner

enable us to describe and predict th. say something about their past also. happen as they do, there are two sens one sense natural science does anSWer 'Why does the table not fly upwards, but the ground ?', a great many physical facta about molecules and their relations, and 1 physical laws which operate on these mol however, is to give me very general laws ab of objects which resemble each other ,•.-...._ showed themselves to be men of gemua. minimum the number of formulae in _ . classify the behaviour of objects. SO economically and manageably as possibl But suppose 1 ask a very different so say, 'I perfectly understand what you describing what this table does; all you table does not, for example, fly u ground, because it belongs to a cll~,g general subject to the laws of gravi something rather different: 1want sense in which I ask what the m rather what the purpose is of Vl arranged in such a way that ~ Why do trees, for examp 'Why?' is not answered. b providing very pow~ the position and mo why things happ

.

qUI~~\¥k'

EDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

that end. He did it in order to avenge himself; to obtain the satisfaction of giving pain to the struck. It seems quite clear that, whereas we of question about persons, perhaps a little less 'mals, much less certainly about, say, trees, it is Mi..:alik such questions about material objects, or l!Ii;'lnv entities in the universe which do not appear

the great German romantic philosophers, the th-century science, and to some extent of science too, or anyway of their philosophito amalgamate these two kinds of explanaere was only one kind of explanation, namely plies to material objects; to say that, in asking we only mean to ask for facts. Weare ? When does it happen? Next door to ? What happens after what, and before t' purposes does it pursue? What goals? e sense in which I can ask 'Why does a It is why Descartes said that history se there were no general laws which • The whole thing was much too I'MJ- was far greater than the number Ie to collect so unstable a subjectknown, where there were so into any form which could frirmulae. Therefore he ultimately, of gossip, r1Ii~il" of the name of teenth-century ~':AIi~

HEGEL

eighteenth century who was unjusd a bold and original genius - began : that to treat human beings as objects~: trees~ was absurd; that we knew more abcl1ll!l certam sense, than we knew about natural. whole of the prestige of the natural sciiencaI;PO' But you can also !Why do the do not?'

_:h

i:b. mpr.e

course, is the beginning of a mythology mythology, for otherwise we cenainly' do speak about groups and societies. When w a peculiar genius - that the Ponuguese from the Chinese genius - we are not sa~yin.d! portuguese is a man of genius and clift Chinese man of genius. We are trying to which the Portuguese build their ships, the express their views, have something in COIIlUDOIDI resemblance or family face which pervada it is quite different from the corresponding the Chinese; and this indication of the famiI what it consists in, we call historical expllall_~ says 'Why does so and so write as he does answer if you reply that it is betalu",,'" Ponuguese family of nations, because he group of persons who live in Brazil or P have a cenain outlook, cenain kinds of with cenain kinds of experience but of experience are wholly alien to th question 'Why?' which is quite . by the sciences, and this is the . Herder dealt with. It is this w . view being that all queslti'AQl~ answered in this 'deeper's He formulated this by self-devdopment of the like an individual Slp"i.J!it&I with the whole 1QQ.d..Qf aniq

PI_

loI AND ITS BETRAYAL

esses a certain purpose and a certain hat is the evidence for this? Certainly e anything which can be called empirical Ultimately it turns out to be a case of an act of faith. If what he says were not ere would be too many 'brute' facts. You stones are as they are, why plants are as PP'G' would be, 'In your sense of the word are asking who intended them for what, "uestion.' Vico had already said that only can truly understand their nature. The -'rerJrtI!J'ing there is to be understood about e creates them; there is nothing there • because he has made them. In this 'Dnly God can understand the universe, ::we can understand only those finite "",,_tchmaker understands a watch as a t about other human beings? Can ere is obviously a sense in which, they show certain moods, when happy or gay or fierce, we are t; in a different sense from lIS and tables. We do not lIB of tables. In short, we 1iPJ1fltI1ey are what they are. absurd because it 't appears to make

Blltwe mn ask It*c~lomantiC8

HEGEL

story of human creation, human imagllli intentions, feelmgs, purposes, evel'}'thing do and feel, rather than what is done to thmu.. something which we create by feeling, by.> active in some fashion, and therefore, by to understand it, which is why the undentan~. 'inside' view, whereas our understanding of an 'outside' view.' This being so, Hegel is able to say that; universe is an enormous sentient whole, we stand what each part of it is doing, proVi'idccll4Jl sufficiently clear degree of metaphysical iI·. . .~ possessed, for instance, by the most pow~ penetrating intelligences. If it were not so, 'mere' facts which could not be explained I is this stone lying on the ground, whereas through the air?' I should have to reply ~ is not asked in the case of stones; it just- . But for Hegel and for all the metaph thinking the brute fact is an offence 'accept' brute facts because they are no lie there as a challenge to our und relate them to a purposive system; a pattern, they remain unexplain pattern is something which a pI because somebody planned i pattern because that a1oD.!=l· 'make sense'; because phony subserves. 'Vi composed it, w or on the,pj

cre_

1lllDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

HIIGIIL-

This is the sense in which we understand Germ an, what it is to be a Frenchman. To be a I: an of a general German pattern, a pattern ~ergoing German experiences, German hopes in which a German walks, the way in which !I/llY Y in which he holds his head - everything ::'en ask 'Well, what part docs he play in the f which the entire universe consists?' the answer cmly be discovered by som~body who sees the the whole, if it were conscIOus of Itself, would ole. We are confined to seeing parts. Some see e smaller ones, but it is in perceiving things as things that any degree of understanding is DS.

further question, 'How in fact does the spirit mechanism, what is the pattern?' Hegel d the answer to that. He said that it worked e called the dialectic. The dialectic for him y in terms of thought or artistic creation; e universe because he thinks that in the et of thought, or a kind of act of selfthere exists nothing else.! In what It works in a way rather like that in ey try to think of answers to in my mind, then this idea is not stay. Other ideas come e collision and conflict of ($;and the criticism of the ,ne falling upon it, bi'ch is neither the :tbfl fult Idea;

lj;tbVt,.jQt:ihJ

So for example (though Hegel dlmYILlil metaphor) in a symphonic work you a phrase of music or a melody, then yclUlj. it were runs against it, and something called the cancellation of the first them continuation of the first into the second, of fusion which destroys the first something which is half familiar because out of the collision and conflict of th something new. This, according to Heg works. It works like this because that 15 thought and in every kind of consci know anything - and he distinguishes scious and self-conscious and uncons Plants and animals are conscious; purposes of some kind, they have I grade thoughts perhaps. Human hein because they not only have thou dialectical process in thetnselves. Th this collision of ideas, the irregul how they first do one thing, th doing and the not-doing fus doing. They can follow this: selves. He tries to explain wll point is that in the eiigh1tet explain differences but Ilg was very convincinlf affected people, ~~ explaining how ~ eighteenth-'cSll11 betw.ecur;

OM AND ITS BETRAYAL

HEGEL

lIl;1Iegetation. Yet modern Italians are utterly eat Romans. 'c thinkers of the eighteenth century maindue to human development. It was the result government; and it was because (people like t) human beings were governed, or rather :great many knaves, or perhaps a great many eel a great many fools - that the disasters all history up to the beginning of the rational .-sis'tence was so full. This, for Hegel, is plainly H human beings are as much under the causes as eighteenth-century science, needC, must maintain, then the vast differences, development, cannot be explained. This can y the dialectic, namely by some process of iI4;1ms'm of some sort, This collision of thesis erual clash of forces, is what is response forces are not merely thoughts in incarnate themselves' in institutions, in IlOiIStitutions, perhaps in vast human peoples, in revolutions, for example, plDents, where the thesis and lliihual mutual inner tension grow JliK\ the synthesis comes to be ashes of the thesis and

m(l

fQAlDS. It need not take only take the form or some

But

until the tension again grows to a dim occurs. For Hegel, that is history, that discontinuities ~nd tragedies. The tragedies of ineVItable confltct, but unless there were these nation and nation, between institution and ins one form of art and another, between one and another, there would be no movement; friction, there would be death. That is why shallow, for hIm, something inadequate m century explanation of evil, sorrow, sufferma simply due to mistakes, bad arrangements, in the efficient universe all this would be smOOlthlll would be complete harmony. But for Hegel symptom of development, growth, sometbAI stream of life beating against the shell of so from which it will presendy burst, thus reI slag-heap of those bits of experience, those are done with and are now consigned to Sometimes this development oc activities; sometimes there are individ: these leaps - Alexander, Caesar, individuals destroyed much; ce . suffering. That is the inevitable advance. UnIess there is mctio Hegel, Kant, and before hiJ;)J. Vico, had already said some Now the question ' history is a rational l"JtioDal is to 5"}':' Q1laqill

prq_

YOIl~eveu:~~

HEGEL

OM AND ITS BETRAYAL

irm'!'¥, a dogma which it is his task to learn and hen he has learned the axioms and the rules he realise that twO times two not merely IS be other than four. He need. no.t repea~ It by orne part of his natural skill m addmg or w:--hen we study history, Hegel supposes, we itt rational level, we rise to a certain stage of ~V1Yn'ch we begin to understand that historical t happened as they did, but had t.o happen. as y; not in the sense of the mecharucal causalIty deals but rather, for example, in the sense in the stages of a mathematical argument, where riJles; or perhaps even of a symphony, where such fixed rules, but we can say that each it, as it were, inevitable, or, as Hegel might sor' of the previous portion, so that we say lifeB not make sense' unless the later stage is 4n the way in which the pattern of the IltAl'ben we have learned arithmetic and '1D.ove freely in the mathematical or becomes identified with our own d action. We no longer feel it to I or that there are grim de fado ~ must adjust ourselves, but W'hat we want - of our own

-which one approaches .n·what you wanttteI''"'' and, on the

:bD;.just by

pattern of your thought. The rules of lated into the general rules of reaso1Ulllt you think and act. This notion of assimilation is vital in If of laws not in the way in which science tend to think of them, namely as g happens, but rather more as rules, patteJ:m,; which arithmetic proceeds by rules - or t music. To think of a general law as som want to be otherwise than as it is, is to which you identify yourself, the method naturally think, or which you naturally ap law discovered to operate outside you, an able barrier against which you beat JJJ methods presuppose users of them - pen or apply them, or live by them; and if is not far from this to the idea of it as • characters fulfil parts assigned to them. dramatist; and if you can now . confidence of the dramatist, unders will arrive at something like the world functions. It is an old theological or meta at first seem barriers, somethin work themselves into your purposes, and you begin Thus, when you becom matical terms almil's1~ correcdy aher }" without £aeling

JiUl WIJ

..,,.,....llDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

Dn in ponderous, obscure and occasionally . Prom it he derives his notorious paradox that gnition of necessity. d t problems of politics, as it is in life, in morals and everything else, is this: if I am ed, if some omniscient observer can foresee which I make, how can I possibly be said to riltbiIlll!: I have done in the past, am doing in the do m the future can be accounted for by ows all the facts and all the laws which govern :sense of saying that I can do what I want? Am rigidly determined element in some block ought that this perennial problem was one eel. The world, according to him, as we have which develops, now gradually and cumulaby explosions. The forces whose conflicts hose final clashes are cataclysmic leaps into e dIe form sometimes of institutions , legal systems - sometimes of great . tic masterpieces, sometimes of indipersonal relationships. This is the . :J understand it, how can I oppose ~ science - logic or music or flADlething which goes against it? :to but actively to want what 1[IP:!Q,d is to become part of QUI, his goal and his • • not an empirical !lAD falsify this ~F!ln. which

HEGEL

contrary can be absorbed as the nereel'-II ety.' For this reason it is not a scientifR: in the sense in which, say, the Darwinilllt are rational, because one could conceive them; they can be tested, but the diallectiri framework of things in general. In this metaph~sical vision, what happ Hegel IS very tnumphant on this point. doing what I wish to do, getting what I from life what I am seeking for? I can 0 run against the laws which govern the shall be inevitably defeated. To wish to b principle of rationality. It is irrational to' to wish to cause a state of affairs in whi wishes, no further goals. If I want to d defeating to behave as if twice two did to build an aeroplane, it is suiet aerodynamics. If I wish to be effectl myself against the laws which gove tions. This non-defiance is not an sciously adopt with resignation, al To understand why things canrtd not to be otherwise, because to stand the reasons for them. what they rationally must lie to be other than what it is to be seventeen. If the essence of my own to want them 0 also differeJ1,t

ll:RBBDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

twpagne to live after Louis XIV, and to think that well have lived in the nineteenth century, and II seventeenth, is not to understand how the world t a contradiction, to be irrational. Therefore I l'iol""W' be that which I am anyway forced to be; and to e wants is to be free. For everything to go as you ever to cross you, is absolute freedom, and the roch has that is the absolute spirit - everything world as a whole is totally free, and we are free to which we identify ourselves with the rational the world. A free mathematician is a person who mathematically, and a man free in history is a y proceeds according to the rational laws .~manlives, which govern history. To be happy, erstand where one is and when one is; where and to act accordingly. If you do not act, you u become historical stuff, you become, as e dragged by the Fates, and not the wise man In Hege~ we do see history through the rtainly not through the eyes of the victims. way in which those who, in that sense, seen it; the Romans were victors, they be on the right side of the historical ocians whom the Romans defeated 0Jlt things, understood the universe stood it correctly they would use they were defeated they

HEGEL

happiness are blank pages in it'. How is hit by the few, of course, and. b~ human beinp, rational creatures. But It IS not necessaril conscious wishes and desires. The great heroes of history, the people climaxes, at the moments of synthesis, are peap that they are merely pursuing their own part! Alexander were ambitious men, and their p~ aggrandise themselves, or to defeat their en wiser than they; history uses them, uses them as its weapons. This Hegel calls 'the cunning of it is history that 'sets the passions to work fa which develops its being through such penalty and suffers the loss'. In shon there embracing reason, or what he calls the spinto which is all that occurs. It is a development there exists nothing else; it is a self-develop else can develop it. If we understand it we we do not understand it we struggle Not to like what you see to be ratin it, is mere suicidal mania, ultimate grown-up-ness, a failure to be adult. • extreme term of opprobrium. Wh thinks of the theory of Euclid or of Einstein? To dislike the umv to find it not to your taste. to facts are against you, that til you which you cannot Pas the result of falling 11 a form of being • ~di~ud.

.

EDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

e it becomes yours, just as, when a piece of :..bounds to you, then by purchasing it, Or by ntake it yours and it is not out of bounds, and .bi·ing absurd and crazy, for Hegel, in praising or

the vast process in terms of whICh everythIng is aware of the whole objective march of history, some parts of it because we like them, and to because they may seem to contain cruelry or te. is a mere indulgence in subjective moods. ty to rise beyond what he calls 'civil society', economic desires of men, the ordinary private prosperity or comfort or a happy life, which shallow thinkers like Locke remained. To eaval and then to condemn it because it is is unjust to the innocent is for Hegel d contemptible. It is like condemning the 1!Ji,1~1!e has no rational square root. Who can or that man feels about events of cosmic . factions are trivial facts about somebe truly worthy of the occasion is to t something immense and critical is historic occasion, when perhaps ,humanity which will automatiboth facts and systems of

:which runs through his the subjective, the :middle-class, the i!illl1Il&l in human 1IIN1Il!"e~en.

HEGBL

remorseless march of history. For him, whether the great man, the earth-shaker. just are absolutely meaningless, and indeed implied by these words are themselves by those very transformations of which Herculean agent. For him the question of lIh. just or unjust belongs to the particular sya particular sphere of action, to the panicula occurring in history at a given time. These are' men themselves have made in the past; but generation are often the lawgivers of the Delltai that something is bad, wretched, wrong, IlIlIIIIlJ! tion-provoking in a given age is to say that ~ which the great rational process has readullk moment. But by the very transformatiOJl..; some immensely heroic act, by a revolu appearance of some vast hero who alters thr, mankind, the values of the previous III superseded, and what seems abominahl virtuous in the next. Therefore let u history will make real that is going to all, if you want it to be real, mu means that which the world intends, that which it supplies ment, the unrolling of the se; Hegel calls 'God's march ultimately is the activity The pattern matters individual? The indi would be a paJllk.

ere_

~the·smlb

HEGEL DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

of my race and religion and country, to the and those yet unborn. I am a kind of nodal en infinite number of strands which centre in, me and everyone else who enters with me into patterns, groups of lesser or greater tightness e great society of the living and the dead of spoken. To understand a man, you must hlli'li'ell, his friends and relations, his superiors and e'lioes and what is done to him, and by what merely because this throws light on him, but y does not exist except as part of this total than a sound in a tune exists (except in some as a mere physical event) save as a particular articular tune, played on a particular instructtnilill' context in which the music is played. orated reduction of the individual to an a 'concrete' social pattern; his denial that tlii'e MraIlgements of society, that the State al devices designed for the convenience of tence that they are networks of which ey will it or not, are the organically :rxence the celebration of the authority _!_mess of the State as against the DB of this or that citizen or bility in the view advanced by ~lJ,IliJ'ts, who said that legal _."orders of kings or lnvented to procure but rather part ~1liI'=ties, and

traditions, or the will or destiny of the natlOli world is, after all, composed of things and nothing else. Societies or States are not thIDI' ways in which things and persons are or COIU social patterns have no likes, no wills, no d,emiUIIl'4; no powers. But Hegel does speak as if pattemt. Churches, are more real than people or things; as houses that make the street, but the street that the houses - which it does in a celebrated fmy Christian Andersen. Among all the patterns the State is supreme. It all the patterns because, like the iron ring of w it integrates them all; because it is humanity a conscious, at its most disciplined and its most believe the universe to be a march, we mus marching in an intelligible direction, we must patterned order; and the State is the most Whatever resists it is bound to be annihila what is right and wrong is what history pI' sole objective source of right is the themselves, not individual judgement; no laws, not any set of moral princip history itself, the demands of perpetual talk about what historY condemns, and the way we talk t a nation or such and such a history is a typical piece of and worship of power. ~ sake. This force is. {QJ.:

whatever is mClllll

HEGEL

PREEDOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

which Hegel is perpetually tracing between great ary human beings, between fighters who hack d raise humanity to a new level and the mere ants of -anthill who perform their task without effectively whether to carry such burdens is necessary. It e distinction we still draw ourselves between (what tlc and unrealistic. 'Realistic' often means harsh AOt shrinking from what is usually considered I: swayed by soft sentimental moral considerations. very strong about the necessity for violent action condemned by the more prudish moralists in e', he says, 'is not cured with lavender water.' work of heroes; heroes who stand above the '£1, because they embody the human spirit at high a level, at so mighty a pinnacle, that can hardly discern what goes on at so draw, he says, 'not from the peaceful time• but from a spring whose contents are .nlner spirit still concealed beneath the virtues do not apply here. Sometimes "",,out heroes: Alexander dies young, eon is sent to St Helena. Sometimes What he says about heroes, he es are always performing the upon them, and when them. Peoples are like '.'!.,~...... process now dons, uaffed the bitter

_gs

with infinite 't

dies. A It

happened in the way that it did automat! SO very much against the losers, the vict1llW Don Quixote? Against the people who wheels of progress? Do we think it so WI to have. protested aga~nst the vulganty, immoralIty, the shoddmess of the factSs however foolishly to erect a more noble Id burke this problem. For him the visions of merely pathetic, not merely weak, not m him they are vicious too, in a sense. The onl: is to resist the world process. For the incarnation of reason - when he says iI'u:ariii the literal sense - and to oppose it is despises the utilitarians, the sentimenltaliS't&i lent philanthropists, the people who wan who wring their hands when they see revolutions, the gas-chambers, the all which humanity goes. These pers contemptibly blind to the movem immoral, because they resist that pitting against it their subject". like subjective mathematics, obstruct the process for a . pulverised. Power alone is w~ poetical prose. There is-

clear. In 18Q6 H firsl: great ~

living inl~ OA..~

OM AND ITS BETRAYAL

men and things with its mailed fist. This is of objective history. iliio!ll'lSay about this? One can only say that this on of what is good and what is successful is e:average human being rejects. It is not what we and the right. It is impossible to say to us that elf against superior force is in itself immoral. ~ink it is immoral if you are ultimately going to of today is the hero and the lawgiver and the w; but he thinks that to be good and to be ultimate, vast, world-historical sense, are political pragmatism, this kind of successBannai moral feelings; and there is no J;f:egel which is really effective against that that in Hegel's vision there is a vast tory, with which he identifies his own }pm true values. True values for him are ; history is the big battalions, marching ~ all the unfulfilled possibilities, all the ;wiped out; and morality is really a we the facts. This identification of of what is right with what resistance, with that which is the sure hallmark of the . to politics. An unsuc[b.Y It is not perhaps very of the censorship t to free speech sent for to t:$ire for

HEGEL

was really he who made it plain tha history was the individual and the t w umqu . hi t hat III t S respect history was de I from the natural sciences. Hege::: Y SCiences are often ludicrous - both i dogmatic. But he did show great insight that the natural sciences always search for to all the objects under observation, so _ umform III many different things, ato earthquakes, they can formulate laws w' .••. number of similar instances of atoms, tables is the last thing that one seeks from bU'b\!1 Robespierre or Napoleon, I do not wish to Napoleon had in common with all other other emperors; I do not wish to know resembled all other lawyers and revol~ discover is that which is uniquely iw teristic of these two men. I want character and acts 'brought to 1if individuality. When I read abou~ Renaissance, I am only interestedi great episodes of human c' developments in Babylon Of interest to sociologists, it. ing, but the business o~ . than similarities, tQ specific set of ev~t;Qtl~ Hegel appIi.e4ot:lWli1Ul

~"'JJ9J!U

Hl!Gl!L DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

other thought, not as a loose succe~sion sJrs tern, then another - but as .a contmuous iIt4_ from one generation of thinkers to the related to economic or social or other kinds ~ety or culture. All this is now so much taken Hegel's originality can scarcely be realised seemed to place immense stress on history ry, and the fact that everything in it matters tters at all. More emphatically even than if facts could not be clearly distinguished relevant and irrelevant; since the way in eir clothes or eat their food, sail the seas or handwriting, their accent, may be more of their more official acts - their wars, titutions. There is no telling what may Jainiog the total process of history, in yed its part, appeared on the stage at y left it after its hour had struck. moralising history which looked errors and vices, his condemna, ntation to rational men to ving forces as such, while power, to a peculiarly iUlJ11tribute to making all bl.e value. For the . $ty - a priori ;.-J:iistory

lIIIW II

laying bare the essence of that unique oetw tion of elements which forms the indivIdual case the universe, of which men are elem~ Furthermore, Hegel drew attention to UIIl:Q history: the dark forces, the vast impersonal to think of as the semi-conscious strivings of realise its being, but which we may calI unconscious forces, the occult psychological now think at least as imponant as the CODI generals or kings or violent revolutionaries. de-personalise and, if I may put it so, de-m There is a further respect in which Hegel' namely in its application to works of art,.t.o greatness and beauty, and to the aestheti thought he was reducing the confused laqJlIfl to something disciplined and rigorous. form acquired a specious kind of tee~" remained thoroughly dark. Despite remain loose. All the romantic te German metaphysicians and poets notions of transcendence and in forces which at once desuoy: other; the notion of a unity w~ principle, the pattern and 1;b,e which is at the same time becoming - all this, wbi nonsense, when appll unique part to objects, PSI •

DOM AND ITS BETRAYAL

HEGEL

growth - a tune which clashes with and ~sicaI phrases, leading to their mutual not: also to their transcendence, to the nflicting forces into something richer and, if ore perfect than the original ingredients. Here obscure semi-conscious growth of forces ddenly in some splendid, golden shower. The suggestive language of Hegel, and still more philosophers, of Schelling, the brothers ad mdeed of Coleridge and to some degree does at moments penetrate by its use of cal imagery to something like the heart of uch language can do something to convey e development of a pattern is like, the mterrelation of sounds and feeling - and m a symphony, or an opera, or a mass; 1:louding the issue, such a semi-poetical a:fv more vivid sense of the contours of school of artists or philosophers, the mething not to be analysed by the coherent, more tough-minded its standards of integrity and clarity in fields amenable to and in the history of lItiillVsis of civilisation, in 'II well as prose, the rMilt