In 1806, nearly two hundred years before Fukuyama’s audacious historical stance, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel declared the end of history. Hegel bases his claim in that the Napoleonic Code, a preliminary, yet revolutionary replacement of previous feudal laws, was being promulgated and slowly implemented throughout Napoleon’s empire . Hegel believes, however, that the adoption of a particular code or set of standards for a civil society, like the Napoleonic Code or the Constitution of the United States, is stipulated on the rational evolution or progression of peoples towards the realization that they are free or equal. In short, a constitution that guarantees your freedom means nothing to those who do not possess the self-consciousness …show more content…
to know they are free. Building upon that, Hegel additionally relies little on national hegemony when discussing the potentiality of success of a state such that he believes a “person counts as such only because he is a person, not because he is a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, German, Italian, etc. “ While this understanding of national identity and origins of modern states is in sharp contrast to Napoleon’s views, their differing opinions can be used as a tool to explain our understanding of Orientalism and the Orients failure to produce a viable civil society. With regards to Napoleonic ideas of statehood, the emperor adopted a traditional view of nationalism epitomized in the quote: “France first and always. ” To Napoleon, the French people were also the “great people,” afforded certain rights and privileges not available or guaranteed to those in other nations. In fact, his “[grand] idea” of l’Agglomeration centered on the premise that people who shared the same national origin should be grouped and separated into respective nation-states. Yet, historians have argued that the very nature of Napoleon’s expanding international empire (imperialism) ran counter to traditional nationalism. This incongruity can perhaps speak to Napoleon’s wish to “rewrite history, ” effectively erasing prior national and cultural identities and replacing them with what he desired to see in the world. Here, however, it becomes necessary to delve deeper into Hegel’s Philosophy of History, to contrast it with Napoleon’s logic behind state building and also to apply Hegel’s philosophy to the Orient. The arc of history, according to Hegel, bends towards the “…the consciousness of freedom as expressed in political, cultural, and religious institutions of a nation--Volksgeist.” Hegel then introduces a three-prong progression of history’s evolution towards Volksgesit.
First, the Oriental World understood that “one is free,” that individuals are on their own autonomous beings. But, the Oriental World fell short in that they did not realize that while one was free, so was Mankind, or the collection of peoples in a state. Hegel then proceeds to the Classical World, particularly the ancient Greeks. The Greeks and Romans possessed the “consciousness of freedom,” but the fact that they owned and exploited slaves precludes them from being a truly free society and renders their Volksgesit less authentic. The Germanic World, the final stage in Hegel’s evolution of consciousness, reached the intellectual point where, through the influence of Christianity, they were able to “attain the consciousness that Man, as Man, is free…” , making them intellectually prepared for a codified document, like a constitution. To simplify Hegel (and perhaps this is not doing him justice), this evolution in the consciousness of freedom describes the progression from anarchy to the civil society--Man is free in the Oriental World but Mankind is free in the Germanic …show more content…
World. Using Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Napoleonic ideas of “Frenchness” as our standard, an examination of the nations in the Orient reveal that they both do not meet the Napoleonic ‘standard’ of nationhood and also fail to emulate Hegel’s archetypical German World, precluding them from consideration as a modern state while simultaneously complicating our scholarly understanding of the area. The Sykes-Picot agreement , a divvying of former Ottoman Empire land between the French and the British, separated the Orient, indiscriminately, into arbitrary ‘states.’ This became problematic in two ways. First, with regards to Napoleonic ideas of “Frenchness,” the Orient was divided into countries that had little to no commonalties between people. These zones of influence were not meant to become nations, consisting of peoples who identified with one another; rather, they were considered “entities,” as Said writes on page 221 of Orientalism, “For despite their differences, the British and the French saw the Orient as a geographical—and cultural, political, demographical, sociological, and historical—entity over whose destiny they believed themselves to have traditional entitlement.” Even the scholarly endeavor into trying to learn about the area, has imposed as hegemonic nomenclature (the Orient) on an innately heterogeneous and diverse collection of peoples, cultures and lands. Secondly, with regards to Hegel and Philosophy of History, the Oriental states, without the moral underpinnings of Christianity and not yet acquainted with the idea that Mankind is free, cannot successfully exist as a modern state, like the Germanic World. If the Oriental states do not possess the ‘consciousness of freedom,’ or more broadly, do not comprehend the legitimacy and rational behind a civil society, they are low on the evolutionary ladder of modern statehood, according to Hegel. With that in mind, Sykes-Picot can be considered a death sentence, as it rendered the Orient insufficient and inadequate for legitimate modern nation building. There exists no true indication for a society’s viability.
But, utilizing both Napoleon’s ideas on national hegemony and also Hegel’s views on the evolution and progression of consciousness clearly show that the Orient, particularly in the era after Sykes-Picot, was a region doomed to conflict and turmoil. This internecine conflict infamously linked to the Orient has now clouded our scholarly and geopolitical understanding of the area, making it our scholarly imperative to analyze and assess the modern Orient as 1) a product of Anglo-French interests and 2) as a region arbitrarily categorized into states entirely unprepared for the prospect of nation
building.
Because Orientalism is still a factor, the question then therefore would be “why does Orientalism exist and what is its purpose?” Edward Said, a literary theorist and critic poses the response as “Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
In section 190, Hegel begins with the lord existing in so much to be dependent through another consciousness. Hegel writes, “is a consciousness [lord] existing for itself which is mediated with itself through another consciousness, i.e through a consciousness [bondsman] whose nature it is to be bound up” (Hegel 115). In this passage, Hegel shows why the lord is dependent on the bondsman. The lord exist only “for itself” through his need and mediation through the bondsman. With the bondsman being bounded as an object of desire to the lord, the bondsman has to submit to his lord due to the physical and monetary power he yields.
...eferred to it as “the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom”. He argues that historicism rejects political philosophy and is entrenched in the belief that human thought including scientific thought, is based on the grounds that cannot be validated by reason and come from historical era. In his book, ‘Natural Right and History’ he offers a complete critique of historicism as it emerges in the works of Hegel and Marx. He believes that historicism grew out of Christianity and was a threat to civic participation, as well as understanding the classical philosophers and religions. In his books he warns that historicism, and the resulted perceived Progress can lead to totalitarianism and democratic extremism. In his book, ‘On Tyranny’ he blames historicism for Nazism and Communism. Many believe that the Strauss work is based on the Nietzsche's view of historicism.
Hegel is the philosopher whose teachings on history, politics and law set the stage for the genesis and evolution of the Russian constitutional tradition. Although Hegel made only a brief mention of Russian history in his own writing, (1) his theories have played a major role throughout the development of Russian constitutionalism.
This paper will accomplish two tasks. First, it will briefly outline the main points of Thomas Nagel’s argument in “Personal Rights and Public Space”. Secondly, it will examine and discuss the portion of his argument that I find to be the most problematic.
In the beginning of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote about how when any form of government becomes “destructive”, it is the right of the people “to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government…” Jefferson wrote very passionately about how all men have rights which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Jefferson recognized that these rights are not always attainable, but when a government repeatedly ignores these rights completel...
Orientalism, which became famous as a term after Edward Said’s book written in 1978, explains a power relation between the Orient and the Occident inspiring from the Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge and
A famed philosopher, Hegel, emphasizes that self-consciousness is attained by being recognized by another conscious being. When these two beings collide, one will be a Master and the other would be a Bondsman, after fighting in a life-or-death struggle to prove dominance over the other. This relationship is said to be fluid. This idea can be found in Ellison’s the invisible man where he gives the story of himself relating to the black experience in the 1950s. Most importantly, when he fought a white man in the alley, and with the Light & Power Company.
For Kant and Luther, the question of human freedom and the amount individuals are at liberty of, if any, is determined in an effort to achieve high morality. However, it precisely the outlook that Kant deems fatalist which Luther argues for, that is, freedom through faith. For Luther, we do not posses the liberty required to live a moral life without God’s guidance. On the other hand, for Kant, the predestination that Luther argues for places individuals in a state of “immaturity” and therefore unable to achieve freedom to be moral. In contrast to Luther’s argument, for Kant self-determination, autonomy, and morality are closely related to his notion of human freedom.
Houlgate, S. (2005). An introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History, Oxford: United Kingdom, Blackwell Publishing, p. 48-51.
In Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s article, The Interrelations of Societies in History, the idea of our egocentrism influencing our perception and education of history is more deeply explored and analyzed. The piece outlines how history primarily focuses on Western Civilization, although in reality the studies are usually only on European states. It argues that large scale history should be studied not as individual areas that are separate in nature, but through the interrelations throughout these societies in world history. In other words, that the achievements, declines, successes, and failures of all world societies through history have been connected to one another in some way, and it is impossible to understand a time period without understanding first the connections of societies. Hodgson makes this argument through two main points, first there is critiques of the current models of studying world history for their lack of interrelational studies. Second, he presents his own method of tracing large scale history by comparing societies involved in history. The Interrelations of Societies in History presents a theory on the faults with
...arly lead to the rivalry of superpowers being replaced by the clash of civilizations. Conversely it then makes it evident that in this particular new world global politics then become the politics of civilizations whereas local politics become the politics of ethnicity (Huntington, 1996).
Fukuyama discusses the work of past philosophers, particularly Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, to explore the idea of history and its past, present and end. Hegel pinpointed the French Revolution as the start of the liberal and democratic system. He commented on how the triumph of the numerous poor to persuade the rich to give them what they want. When this system began to be realized in the world, Hegel argued that with this ideology major issues that characterized changes in history, such as war, would diminish. To pr...
Human beings have been struggling to learn the meaning of life since the first day. Ideologies are born as human’s interpretation of the world and belief system, also an endeavor to seek the truth of human nature. Ideologies emerge throughout the periods of great changes: the Enlightenment, the English “Glorious” Revolution, the American Revolution, etc. They have become the motivations, the standards, and the roots to modern political systems. Their roots are the philosophies developed by famous philosophers throughout the time. However, as each ideology is developed, its own contradiction also grows, takes place in the realm of actions. This, in turn, shows contradiction as human nature.
In this paper, I will argue that the current system is hegemonial. My explanation to hegemony will then be centered on the sources of the United States as a hegemonial power. Furthermore, I will state the different primary implications associated with the rise of China and what the Roman Empire offers for understanding the United Sta...