War, International Relations and the Philosophy of History

1. War, International Relations and the Philosophy of History

2. 1. External sovereignty Depends on: (1) Being subject to no higher power, and hence politically independent (2) Being recognised by other states as (1) (§ 331) Recognition - can be based on state’s relative strength vis-à-vis other states Only through achieving recognition can a state become genuinely conscious of its sovereign status

3. Each sovereign state is an individual state distinct from other individual states: Individuality, as exclusive being-for-itself, appears as the relation [of the state] to other states, each of which is independent in relation to the others. Since the being-for-itself of the actual spirit has its existence in this independence, the latter is the primary freedom and supreme dignity of a nation. (§ 322) State’s individuality depends on its relation to other states in the sense of (1) Depending on their recognition (dignity) (2) Being partly defined in terms of what it is not and what it therefore excludes

4. Thus sovereignty entails a negative as well as a positive relation to other states The essentially relational nature of sovereignty requires that a state: (1) Can attain recognition of its independence from other states (2) Can define itself in opposition to other states not only through its political independence, but also as a nation with its own unique identity On the one hand, an essential relation exists between independent states On the other hand, their relations to each other assume an ‘external’ appearance

5. Thus sovereignty entails a negative as well as a positive relation to other states The essentially relational nature of sovereignty requires that a state: (1) Can attain recognition of its independence from other states (2) Can define itself in opposition to other states, not only through its political independence but also as a nation with its own unique identity On the one hand, an essential relation exists between independent states On the other hand, their relations to each other assume an ‘external’ appearance

6. This ‘external’ relation brings with it the possibility of conflict (i.e. war) caused by contingent events The fact of war needs to be comprehended if human beings are to be able to ‘recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present’ (Preface, p. 22) 2. War War has an ethical significance – it is not, therefore, an absolute human evil (1) It manifests the state’s internal sovereignty and universality – its power over everything individual and particular It thereby demonstrates the relatively of human existence, particular ends and interests – their ‘ideality’

7. [T]his negative relation is the state’s own highest moment – its actual infinity as the ideality of everything finite within it. It is that aspect whereby the substance, as the state’s absolute power over everything individual and particular, over life, property, and the latter’s rights, and over the wider circles within it, gives the nullity of such things an existence and makes it present to the consciousness. (§ 323) Thus war demonstrates the error in confusing the state with civil society The latter qua ‘external’ state or ‘state of necessity’ has personal security and the protection of property as its ends Yet personal security and property are precisely what must be sacrificed in times of war

8. Couldn’t this independence be viewed simply as a condition of personal security and property rights? Why (if at all) would it be rational for individuals to put at risk their lives and property if they knew that defeat in war would not result in a threat to personal security and to loss of property? (2) Manifests and maintains ‘the ethical health of nations’ (§ 324R) War prevents nations from stagnating, as happens when people focus too narrowly on their particular ends and interests It leads people to subordinate these ends and interests to the common good of the political community as a whole (identity of particular and universal, subjective and objective)

9. (3) Necessity Hegel appears to think that war manifests a metaphysical truth: the contingency of the finite, and the relationship between contingency and (rational) necessity: [W]ar should not be regarded as an absolute evil and a purely external contingency whose cause is therefore itself contingent, whether this cause lies in the passions of rulers or nations, in injustices etc., or in anything else which is not as it should be. Whatever is by nature contingent is subject to contingencies, and this fate is therefore itself a necessity … It is necessary that the finite – such as property and life – should be posited as contingent, because contingency is the concept of the finite. (§ 324R)

10. The necessity in question is not mere natural necessity Rather, it is a necessity that has its source in human freedom – ‘a willed evanescence’ – individuals must willingly risk their lives to preserve the state’s independence Thus Hegel’s views on war can be seen to reflect his conception of the place of ‘objective spirit’ in his philosophical system Modern warfare Although ‘sacrifice for the individuality of the state’ is a ‘universal’ duty, it is normally in the modern form of ethical life the task of a specific estate – ‘the estate of valour’ (§ 325) – a standing army

11. It is not personal valour – a subjective, psychological trait - that matters but the object and end of one‘s actions: The significance of valour as a disposition lies in the true, absolute, and ultimate end, the sovereignty of the state. The actuality of this ultimate end, as the product of valour, is mediated by the surrender of personal actuality. (§ 328) Personal courage would be valueless in the absence of an appropriate end, in this case the state’s sovereignty This emphasis on the objective rather than the subjective aspect reflects anonymous, mechanistic, impersonal nature of modern mass warfare:

12. The principle of the modern world – thought and the universal – has given a higher form to valour, in that its expression seems to be more mechanical and not so much the deed of a particular person as that of a member of a whole. It likewise appears to be directed not against individual persons, but against a hostile whole in general, so that personal courage appears impersonal. This is why the principle of thought has invented the gun, and this invention, which did not come about by chance, has turned the purely personal form of valour into a more abstract form. (§ 328R) Nature of modern warfare viewed in providential terms as victory of thought and universality (i.e. reason) over particularity The gun conceived as necessary product of thought and underlying historical necessity, not as a contingent material invention

13. However prophetic such remarks may be, does the positive ethical value that Hegel wants to accord to war suit the centrally planned and administered mechanised mass destruction that characterizes much modern warfare? Hegel sometimes accused of viewing war only in terms of limited, and not total, war (cf. § 338), but: If the entire state has thus become an armed power and is wrenched away from its own internal life to act on an external front, the war of defence becomes a war of conquest. (§ 326)

14. 3. International relations States may nevertheless make agreements with each other Such agreements are limited, however They are made by sovereign states which, by their very nature, are subject to no higher political authority These agreements cannot, therefore, be legally binding in the same way as are contracts between persons within a state, because there is no independent power capable of enforcing them A state can choose to submit itself to the authority of some transnational political body

15. It would nevertheless always have the right to withdraw itself from such a body (provided it remains a sovereign state) Interstate relations are at most, therefore, a matter of non-enforceable obligations: [S]ince the sovereignty of states is the principle governing their mutual relations, they exist to that extent in a state of nature in relation to one another, and their rights are actualized not in a universal will with constitutional powers over them, but in their own particular wills. Consequently, the universal determination of international law remains only an obligation, and the [normal] condition will be for relations governed by treaties to alternate with the suspension of such relations. (§ 333)

16. Thus national sovereignty by its very nature implies the possibility of interstate conflict War is the only means of settling conflicts (§ 334) Yet if the welfare of the state is the ultimate end (§§ 336, 337), couldn’t war be the worst possible outcome, to be avoided at almost all costs? World history is ‘the world’s court of judgement’ (§ 340) Only world history as the ‘right’ to judge in relation to independent states and nations

17. 4. World history The object of world history Particular nations that have formed states, because only they have a history in the relevant sense ‘Objective’ history – historical facts, deeds ‘Subjective’ history – historical narratives Only states have reason to develop a subjective history World history is the process whereby the ‘ideality’ of particular nations is demonstrated These nations’ places in history are determined by an underlying principle, of which they are the phenomenal appearance

18. The content of world history Freedom is the principle that determines the course of history World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom – a progress whose necessity it is our business to comprehend. (LPWHI, 54) Since this concept has its source in reason, world history can be comprehended as both rational and necessary: [S]ince spirit in and for itself is reason, and since the being-for-itself of reason in spirit is knowledge, world history is the necessary development, from the concept of the freedom of spirit alone, of the moments of reason and hence of spirit’s self-consciousness and freedom. It is the exposition and the actualizationof the universal spirit. (§ 342)

19. Hegel’s philosophy of history is an attempt to provide a rational reconstruction of the actual historical course of events which identifies and describes: (1) The way in which the principle of freedom it has determined the course of history and thus actualized itself within it (2) How human beings have become progressively conscious of this principle and thus gained knowledge of it This rational reconstruction is a source of reconciliation ‘achieved through a knowledge of the affirmative side of history, in which the negative is reduced to a subordinate position and transcended altogether’ (LPWHI: 43).

20. More from implicit to explicit (process of actualization) By comprehending this process, philosophy attains a higher standpoint than that of the various forms of ethical life (or spirit) It is able to interpret the self-understandings, practices, internal organisation, etc. of these forms of ethical life in terms of the principle of freedom (§ 343) When these forms of ethical life begin to reflect upon themselves, a condition of alienation eventually arises Reflection produces the need to justify themselves, but this is something which they cannot do

21. The means of world history States, nations, individuals concerned with their own ends and interests are ‘the unconscious instruments and organs’ of the principle of freedom, which determines the course of history and progressively realises itself in doing so (§ 344) Each national, historically determined form of ethical life has its own distinctive principle Each major historical epoch is determined by the particular principle of the dominant world-historical nation The nation whose principle corresponds to the relevant stage of the development and actualisation of the principle (or concept) of freedom

22. Rise and fall of nations understood in terms of the way in which the principle of one nation has to be supplanted by that of another A nation’s dominance is justified in virtue of the necessary role that it plays in history, a role that it can play only once: In contrast with this absolute right which it possesses as bearer of the present stage of the world spirit’s development, the spirits of other nations are without rights, and they, like those whose epoch has passed, no longer count in world history. (§ 347) Problem of amoralism Any action performed in accordance with the necessary role that a nation plays in history is justified and cannot, therefore, be condemned from a moral standpoint

23. Since the state and its institutions – and therefore external sovereignty - are necessary conditions of freedom, Hegel denies certain nations any rights at all This ‘entitles civilized nations to regard and treat as barbarians other nations which are less advanced than they are in the substantial moments of the state … in the consciousness that the rights of these other nations are not equal to theirs and that their independence is merely formal’. (§ 351) This would also be true at the individual level

24. Individuals are the ultimate means by which the principle of freedom is unintentionally realised in the course of human history: At the forefront of all actions, including world-historical actions, are individuals as the subjectivities by which the substantial is actualized. Since these individuals are the living expressions of the substantial deed of the world spirit and are thus immediately identical with it, they cannot themselves perceive it and it is not their object and end. (§ 348) The actions of these individuals would therefore be justified – irrespective of their immorality – in so far as they have world-historical significance

25. Problem of Eurocentric nature of world history Hegel locates the end point of world history in the Christian-Germanic state Freedom is universally recognised, while subjective freedom and objective freedom are unified in such a way that each of them is preserved: The spirit attains its truth and concrete essence in its own inwardness, and becomes at home in and reconciled with the objective world; and since this spirit, having reverted to its original substantiality, is the spirit which has returned from infinite opposition, it produces and knows its own truth as thought and as a world of legal actuality. (§ 353)

26. The reconciliation thus attained ‘is assigned to the Nordic principle of the Germanic peoples’. (§ 358) The modern state as it has arisen on the basis of, and is informed by, the ideas and values of Protestant Christianity What will the relationship of other nations and their corresponding forms of ethical life be to this state with its ‘Nordic’ principle? Hegel implies that it will be a purely reactive one, since in the case of nations whose principle has been but is no longer (or never was) of world-historical significance: From this period onwards, the previous nation has lost its absolute interest, and although it will positively absorb the higher principle and incorporate it in its own development, it will react to it as to an extraneous element rather than with immanent vitality and vigour. (§ 347R)

27. Such nations will be determined by a principle that is not their own, but in accordance with which they must shape their laws and institutions This process is already far advanced in Europe, whose nations form ‘a family with respect to the universal principle of their legislation, customs, and culture’. (§ 339) Couldn’t it extend to the creation of a global community shaped by a commitment to the principle of freedom? This would appear to violate the way in which individuality depends on opposition: [E]ven if a number of states join together as a family, this league, in its individuality, must generate opposition and create an enemy. (§ 324A)

28. Thus, even if history has come to an ‘end’ in the sense that there can only be an extension of principles that have already emerged in the course of human history – but not the development of new principles – human history will still be characterised by interstate conflict