Hegelians of the Right, Hegelians of the Left

HEGELIANS OF THE RIGHT, HEGELIANS OF THE LEFT

The philosophy of nineteenth-century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has been tremendously influential in Western history in at least one very important respect—it is the direct origin of the two dominant totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, communism and fascism, both of which have been massively destructive of human life and society.

Moreover, communism and fascism are enormously influential today. They are not dead letters, eccentric relics of the recent past. They are living systems, organized, complex networks of ideas that compete for the loyalty and blood of billions.

The Amazon.com introduction to a translation of Hegel’s Reason in History says:

“The metaphysics of Hegel has exerted a strong and enduring influence upon political life. All recent political ideologies bear his stamp. …He was the most rational and religious philosopher who unchained the most irrational and irreligious movements—Fascism and Communism. …Some thinkers accepted the content of his philosophy and opposed its form. They became conservatives and so-called ‘Hegelians of the Right.’ Other thinkers accepted the form of his philosophy and opposed its content. They became revolutionaries and ‘Hegelians of the Left.’ The two opposing factions met in the battle of Stalingrad. What won at Stalingrad was the revolutionary form, not the conservative content of Hegel’s philosophy.”

https://www.amazon.com/Reason-History-G-W-F-Hegel/dp/B000X1HG1W

—Amazon book description of G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History, translated by Robert S. Hartman, Taiwanese Chinese Edition (January 1, 1953)

Let’s take that paragraph apart, starting with Hegelian metaphysics.

Hegel’s metaphysics—metaphysics, meaning, philosophy of ultimate reality—has been described as Absolute Idealism. “Idealism,” as the term indicates, declares that ideas are the ultimate reality. Our empirical, sensible human experience of the world is not real, or at least, its reality is of a secondary order, subordinate to ideas that subsist at a basal, fundamental level, so that it is ideas that determine everything else.

When we assert that ideas constitute reality at the most fundamental level, we are in effect obliging ourselves to make our understanding of reality conform to ideas, not the other way around. As a consequence, ideas—which, organized for political purposes, constitute ideology—are thereby given an absolute character.

Communism and fascism operate as a dictatorship of ideas, ideologies which are held to be reality and to which human thought and behavior, including social organization, are compelled to conform. In this manner the Absolute Idealism of Hegel accounts for the totalitarianism of communism and fascism.

In contrast to other types of idealism, Absolute Idealism posits distinct—and defining—philosophical claims.

According to Hegel’s philosophical conception, reality is ordered toward historical realization.

In communism, the goal of history is utopian—unattainable, essentially—a society in which social classes no longer exist and the means of production are owned by all and operate for the benefit of all. The state does not exist, yet even without the state, the economy functions as it should, perfectly.

Fascism is similar to communism in that the former also seeks to attain a type of ideal society. However, unlike communism, fascism is elitist. Moreover, fascism is chauvinist, which is possibly its most defining attribute. Fascism works to advance the hegemony of the one-party state, a goal that is often convergent with the apotheosis of a dictatorial leader. As authoritarian control of the state over the polity is exercised internally, chauvinism is pursued externally, in international relations. Politically, the fascist state organizes itself like the military. Economically, the fascist state is corporatist.

Proponents of communism and fascism, as a rule, are satisfied with advancing intermediate, transitional forms of social organization. Communists are content, for example, to establish a totalitarian state with centralized control over the economy even though this type of regime necessarily creates a privileged bureaucratic class. Similarly, it is sufficient for fascists in illiberal democracies to tighten their dictatorial grip over the polity even as they maintain a façade of liberal democracy.

Based on the foregoing, communism and fascism share in common the will to power realized through the advancement of totalitarianism. In this respect, they bear a family resemblance. After all, they share the genetic heritage that originates in Hegelianism.

Therefore, when dictatorial Duterte leans conspicuously towards Communist China, seeking to import its repressive system into the Philippines in order to bolster his political position, the drift is not coincidental. It arises because the roots of fascism and communism are the same and to a significant extent their ends are similar.

At this point in history Duterte is maneuvering for his own sake to establish in the Philippines the totalitarian apparatus of Big Brother next door. In advancing his totalitarian agenda, he is a traitor to our liberal democratic constitution and to the Philippine people.

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Both expressions, “Hegelians of the Right” and “Hegelians of the Left,” originate from Hajo Holborn, “The Science of History” in The Interpretation of History (1943), edited by Joseph R. Strayer and published by Princeton University Press.

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=FeVdNxyFiKsC&pg=RA3-PT446&lpg=RA3-PT446&dq=who+said+stalingrad+was+a+battle+between+the+hegelian+left+and+the+hegelian+right&source=bl&ots=W2eXK63BCa&sig=ACfU3U1_jyPEGfiRa3XPKHsMM4VJshXTIA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi85NCN9qbvAhUmyIsBHczAAjI4ChDoATAEegQIARAD#v=onepage&q=holborn&f=false

—Tom Rockmore, “Hegel,” A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (2011), edited by Aviezer Tucker

“The struggle of the Russians and the invading Germans in 1943,” Holborn wrote, “was a conflict between the Right and Left wings of Hegel’s school.”

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=--tqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA147&lpg=PA147&dq=ernst+cassirer+hegelians+of+the+right+stalingrad&source=bl&ots=GfsvCsUyTQ&sig=ACfU3U0KslSdLMly-4WfKSjRMWbSdigurQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi28vaZ96bvAhWbyIsBHbC1A0IQ6AEwB3oECAcQAw#v=onepage&q=ernst%20cassirer%20hegelians%20of%20the%20right%20stalingrad&f=false

—Avihu Zakai, The Pen Confronts the Sword: Exiled German Scholars Challenge Nazism (2018), page 147

Hegel’s historical dialectic lies at the foundation of Marx’s dialectical materialism, which explains why communists, who include the Russians under Stalin, are described as “Hegelians of the Left.”

It is not so apparent why the invading German army at Stalingrad qualifies as “Hegelians of the Right.”

Right-wing Hegelians of the nineteenth century understood the Prussian state as the culmination of Hegelian historical dialectic:

“The Rightists (following the lead of some of the other German Idealists) developed Hegel's philosophy along lines which they considered to be in accordance with Christian theology, and took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. The Right Hegelians felt that the series of historical dialectics had been completed, and that Prussian society as it existed was the culmination of all social development to date. They included Johann Philipp Gabler (1753 - 1826), Karl Friedrich Göschel (1784 - 1861), Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz (1805 - 1879) and Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805 - 1892).”

https://www.philosophybasics.com/movements_hegelianism.html

—“Hegelianism,” The Basics of Philosophy

Hegelians of the Right elevated the Prussian state to the point that they conceived of it as an ideal over and above the individuals that constituted it. They pursued conservative politics and religion in their desire to advance, distinguish, and apotheosize the German nation—it is this ideological direction grounded in a type of absolutist metaphysics that defined and motivated the totalitarian Nazi regime.