Abstract
This chapter gives an overview of Hegel’s dialectic as it operates in his overall scheme of global history. It argues that this dialectic expresses the movement of capitalist society, whose economics are intrinsically expansive, ever needing to move outward. Most theorists acknowledge that this movement is an underlying component of globalization. It is precisely this movement that is embodied in the appropriative structure of Hegel’s dialectic. The chapter concludes by outlining Hegel’s scheme of global history, which moves from the Oriental world through the Greek and Roman worlds and the Middle Ages to the modern (Germanic) world.
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Notes
- 1.
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 173. Hereafter cited as LPH. See also Robert Bernasconi, “With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On the Racial Basis of Hegel’s Eurocentrism,” Nineteenth Century Contexts, 22 (2000): 179.
- 2.
This particular formulation was offered by Jean-Luc Nancy in Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative, trans. J. Smith and S. Miller (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), p. 3.
- 3.
Fayaz Chagani puts this very well when he states, “Hegel’s Eurocentrism is not just a matter of historical curiosity; it is a fundamental feature of contemporary knowledges. The Hegelian dialectic … has become the dominant paradigm for thinking about … the relationship between the West and the non-West,” “With or Without You: ‘Beyond’ the Postcolonial Hegel,” presented at “Philosophy and the West,” The New School for Social Research, March 2, 2013.
- 4.
Hegel’s treatment of Judaism (as historically superseded) and Jews (whose emancipation he supported) has of course provoked much heated debate. Paul Lawrence Rose argues that his attitude (unlike that of Kant and other German thinkers) was genuinely bifurcated, German Question/Jewish Question: Revolutionary Anti-Semitism from Kant to Wagner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 109–116. See also Teshale Tibebu’s comprehensive treatment of the subject in Hegel and Anti-Semitism (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2008).
- 5.
As Timothy Brennan states, “The war over Hegel could not be more central to the past and future of postcolonial studies itself—where the field came from and what it deliberately excludes. At different times and in different places, Hegel has been accused of an unsavory deification of the state; of uncritically defending bourgeois property relations … of adopting a coercive concept of universality; of imposing a reprehensible concept of historical telos; and of infamously conflating differences by way of a quasi-theological ‘absolute spirit’,” “Hegel, Empire, and Anti-Colonial Thought,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies, ed. Graham Huggan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 143. Hereafter cited as “HE.” Brennan is concerned to correct what he sees as these imbalanced accusations by placing Hegel’s commentaries on non-Western cultures within the overall development of his philosophy.
- 6.
Benjamin R. Barber , Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and tribalism are Reshaping the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p. 4.
- 7.
Timothy Brennan , “From Development to Globalization: Postcolonial Studies and Globalization Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, ed. Neil Lazarus (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 125–128. Hereafter cited as “DG.”
- 8.
Brennan in fact argues that Hegel “brings a geopolitical consciousness into the discourse of philosophical modernity” by establishing the “global nature” of the movement of history. Notwithstanding this, there has been “a failure to recognize the affinities between Hegelian philosophy and anti-colonial theory,” and indeed a concerted effort to marginalize Hegel, “HE,” pp. 143–144.
- 9.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), §17–18.
- 10.
The extent to which Hegel drew upon the experience of Empire and the expansion of Europe into a world economy has yet to be explored in depth. But some scholars have searchingly raised this question. See, for example, John K. Noyes, “Hegel and the Fate of Negativity after Empire,” Postcolonialism Today: Theoretical Challenges and Pragmatic Issues, 2003, http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/postcolonialism/Noyes%20Hegel.htm.
- 11.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), §45. Hereafter cited as PR. See also the more recent edition of this text is Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §45. Hereafter cited as EPR.
- 12.
See, for example, Hegel and Capitalism, ed. Andrew Buchwalter (New York: SUNY Press, 2015), hereafter cited as HC. In his introduction entitled “Hegel and Capitalism,” Buchwalter states that Hegel’s “general conceptual framework, expressed above all in its notion of dialectics, can itself be construed as a response to the phenomenon of modern capitalism ” (p. 2). See also my forthcoming book Hegel and the Foundations of Literary Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
- 13.
Some scholars, however, have stressed that Hegel held a negative view toward the unbridled expansion of capital. See, for example, Jay Drydyk, “Capital, Socialism and Civil Society,” Monist 74.3 (1991): 457–477.
- 14.
Robert Young states that “Hegel articulates a philosophical structure of the appropriation of the other as a form of knowledge which uncannily simulates the project of nineteenth-century imperialism ; the construction of knowledges … mimics at a conceptual level the geographical and economic absorption of the non-European world by the West,” White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 34. While I would broadly agree with Young’s characterization, I would argue that the relation between knowledge-construction and conquest is not so much one of mimicking; rather, it is the same imperialistic operation that occurs on both levels, and this is how Hegel himself appears to view the parallel endeavors of both language and labor, G.W.F. Hegel, System of Ethical Life (1802/3) and First Philosophy of Spirit (Part III of the System of Speculative Philosophy 1803/4), ed. and trans. H.S. Harris and T.M. Knox (New York: State University of New York Press, 1979), pp. 226–246.
- 15.
Hegel’s geographical divisions, of course, have been subjected to much criticism. For example, he did not consider Egypt to be a part of Africa . This, as J. Obi Oguejiofor points out, was a “general misconception of the time,” “The Enlightenment Gaze: Africans in the Mind of Western Philosophy,” Philosophia Africana, 10.1 (2007): 33.
- 16.
Hegel, The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York, 1956), pp. 88–91, hereafter cited as PH; Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 172. Hereafter cited as LPH.
References
Barber, Benjamin R. 1996. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World, 4. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bernasconi, Robert. 2000. With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin? On the Racial Basis of Hegel’s Eurocentrism. Nineteenth Century Contexts 22: 179.
Brennan, Timothy. 2004. From Development to Globalization: Postcolonial Studies and Globalization Theory. In The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, ed. Neil Lazarus, 125–128. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Buchwalter, Andrew, ed. 2015. Hegel and Capitalism. New York: SUNY Press.
Drydyk, Jay. 1991. Capital, Socialism and Civil Society. Monist 74 (3): 457–477.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1956. The Philosophy of History. Trans. J. Sibree, 88–91. New York.
———. 1975. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction: Reason in History. Trans. H.B. Nisbet, 172. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1979. System of Ethical Life (1802/3) and First Philosophy of Spirit (Part III of the System of Speculative Philosophy 1803/4). Ed. and Trans. H.S. Harris and T.M. Knox, 226–246. New York: State University of New York Press.
———. 1980. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Trans. H.B. Nisbet, 173. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huggan, Graham, ed. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies, 143. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knox, T.M., trans. 1967. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, A.V., trans. 1979. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 17–18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2002. Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative. Trans. J. Smith and S. Miller, 3. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Noyes, John K. 2003. Hegel and the Fate of Negativity after Empire. Postcolonialism Today: Theoretical Challenges and Pragmatic Issues. http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/postcolonialism/Noyes%20Hegel.htm
Obi Oguejiofor, J. 2007. The Enlightenment Gaze: Africans in the Mind of Western Philosophy. Philosophia Africana 10 (1): 33.
Rose, Paul Lawrence. 1990. German Question/Jewish Question Revolutionary Anti-Semitism from Kant to Wagner, 109–116. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tibebu, Teshale. 2008. Hegel and Anti-Semitism. Pretoria: Unisa Press.
Wood, Allen W. 1991. Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. H.B. Nisbet, 45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Young, Robert. 2004. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, 34. London: Routledge.
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Habib, M.A.R. (2017). Introduction: Hegel and History. In: Hegel and Empire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68412-3_1
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