Why Hegel is So Important
Hege is daunting and difficult, yet is still so important.
Why Hegel is So Important
Author: Nicholas R. Gonzalez
Published: July 12th, 2021
Student at the City College of New York
Introduction
George Wilhelm Hegel, born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1770, is one of the most important, influential, and intellectual people who have graced the fields of philosophy and politics. Despite this, Hegel’s theories, thoughts, and concepts which we will discuss later in this text are often known to be drowned in difficult-to-read prose and famously hard to understand. The unfortunateness of this is that his work is arguably some of the most important in understanding our modern times, almost more than anyone else’s. Hegel has also influenced the likes of Karl Marx, Simeone de Beauvoir, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Engels, some of the most critical thinkers the world has seen. Hegel is known for his texts titled “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” “Lectures on the Philosophy of History,” and “Science of Logic.”
These works are tremendously important with “the Phenomenology of Spirit” having the utmost importance for many people. Through his texts, Hegel is known for influencing the likes of many, as previously mentioned, and especially known for influencing Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors of The Communist Manifesto. Often Hegel can be found or featured in any discussion involving communism, Marxism, and far-out political ideologies. While almost all of Hegel’s writing is important, as there is a reason he is discussed almost 200 years after his death, despite being extremely difficult to read and understand, two concepts stand out amongst the rest. Those concepts being Hegel’s “Dialectical Thinking” and Hegel’s “Master-Slave Relation,” or sometimes called Master-Slave dialectic, as it takes form via his method called the “dialectic.” The Master-Slave dialectic is also most accurately translated from German as "Master-Servant". This text will attempt to discuss the two concepts in detail and discuss their importance and current relevance in modern times, especially Hegel’s concept of the master and the slave.
“The Dialectic”
The dialectic, or dialectical thinking for that matter, is not exclusive to Hegel. The term is used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves a contradictory process between opposing sides. In the most classic version of "dialectics," the Greek philosopher Plato presented his philosophical argument as a back-and-forth dialogue or debate. This manner is how his most famous work, The Republic, was constructed. In The Republic, the dialectic was performed between the character of Socrates on one side and some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking to on the other. The back-and-forth debate between sides produces a type of linear progression or evolution in philosophical views or positions. In Plato's work, Socrates' interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates' challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato's way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones.
When transitioning to focus on Hegel's dialectic, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Hegel’s dialectic, like Plato’s, relies as well on a contradictory process between opposing sides. However, whereas Plato's "opposing sides" were people, in Hegel's work, while it depends on the subject matter, by and large, the process follows one of a linear progression combined with fluidity throughout the text. In doing so, the connecting web is formed, and through that, more significant, more robust, and more precise definitions that are, in theory, are better than their predecessors, is given.
The dialectic for Hegel can also be broken down into three simple yet not so simple but distinctive parts. This process will also sound tremendously similar for those who have ever been instructed to write a college-level essay. These three parts without further or do are the Thesis, the Antithesis, and the Synthesis. A thesis is defined as a statement or theory put forward as the premise of an argument, and it is attempted to be maintained or proved. For example, a thesis could be "The notion that man is innately evil, is wrong, and man is constructed to be evil by society because as Rousseau says, man is born free yet everywhere in chains." The thesis here being that man is not innately evil, and then the text would likely follow suit with attempting to prove this. The antithesis examines the logical counterargument from the other side. This is why it is often said that one should know the other side of their argument just as well as their own, if not better. The antithesis being officially defined as a person or thing that is the direct opposite of something else. So the antithesis we would attempt to argue against in this text, staying with the Rousseau thesis, would be that Thomas Hobbes is indeed correct, and man is innately evil.
Then finally, the text would end with a synthesis, which combines the idea to form a theory or system. During this stage, the dialectic concept becomes profound because people often attempt to rebuke complete statements or theses, but the point of the dialectic is to help prove that is not the case. There is always merit of truth in something that is indeed logical and not outlandish.
The synthesis can be defined and discussed more academically as the "speculative" or what may be titled "positively rational." The latter wraps the first two determinations together and produces the singular result. This synthesis is where Hegel as well, comes into his own. Hegel rejects the traditional argument of "reductio ad absurdum," which states that when the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, it must be thrown out in its entirety.
For Hegel, what is true is simply the whole. The stages, phases, or moments that are partial, even if untrue, are therefore only partially untrue. It does not dissolute the whole. Hegel's grand idea is "totality," which is preserved within each idea and or stage. Overcoming is a developmental process made up of stages or phases. This totality is the byproduct of the process that preserves the partiality that may be true, despite the other partials being untrue. The whole of history is one tremendous dialectic for Hegel. A history of major stages in which lay out progression. This way of thinking is tremendously important and contributes significantly to our further understanding of humanity. Hegel himself stated that the purpose of dialectics is "to study things in their being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of the partial categories of understanding." One important dialectical principle for Hegel is the transition from quantity to quality. As such, dialectic is the medium that helps us comprehend a world that is filled with paradox.
The dialectic is also necessary because it shares a place with Karl Marx and many other intellectuals who aim to answer questions and find resolutions to exploitation, inequality, and other injustices. Marx shared Hegel's interest in modeling subjectivity as a dialectical relationship. Dialectical materialism is the first important transposition of the Hegelian dialectic, and how it departs from Hegel can be summarized by a glance at the fundamental difference between Idealism and Materialism. In short, Hegel's dialectic assumed that rationality was the driving force in the universe, whereas Marx focused on material forces as the driving factor of our world. However, they both share the most crucial aspect: the form of "dialectic thinking" still runs in their blood. The dialectical method is a way of thinking about the reality that can be crucial for revealing the issues of a social system that seem as immovable as a car is for an ant.
For Marxists, the dialectical method consists of going beyond recognizing this or that instance of inequality and injustice in capitalism. It is not just one instance. A dialectical approach to oppression explains how such oppression is part of a larger social whole rather than a static and unchanging fact independent of other social factors. A rational examination into oppression reveals how systems of oppression are connected. Moreover, the dialectical method describes how oppression and the ideas that sustain it interact in turn with the rest of the moving parts of capitalist society as a whole, including the economy and the media, the family, and the criminal justice system. All aspects intermingle.
As discussed in this text, the approach via a dialectic has been referenced and used as a tool since the times of Plato, to Hegel, then after to Marx, and is used almost every day in modern times. Everything affects everything. Karl Marx brought together dialectics and materialism to understand the world as a totality driven by inherent change and contradictions rooted in the material world. Hegel invented the Master-Slave dialectic which we will get to, and made the dialectic profound. Many of others have conspired something similar, or something radically different — all however using some of the same dialectical principles.
The dialectic concept has significantly contributed to society and has been redefined, repurposed, and retooled by many. Despite this, its potency still stands the test of time. We must use the dialectic presented by Hegel, not only as Marx did, but to continue to reaffirm the notion that there is not a universal key that can be used for all questions of life. The line that is drawn to answers, theories, and conceptions is not merely linear. While the rewriting and working of them may be, once they are presented, the journey to get to them is certainly not. The only universal key there is in the field of logic, explanation, and theory is the key that unlocks the notion that everything indeed serves a purpose in finding the answer, and the answers are found along the way, and must be sewed together, and are not solely found simply just at the end. The aforementioned is why Hegel was so fascinated with history. He understood that there was something we could take from every part of it. Things need not be written off because of one wrongdoing. We can go back and attempt to find things that we no longer have through history, for example, the development of honor in medieval times. We can examine their use of honor while also accepting their poor treatment of children and women. The latter does not simply distinguish the former.
Master-Slave Dialectic
The Master-Slave Dialectic is the common name for a famous passage in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and is the second primary logic and concept of Hegel's we will discuss in this text, with our aim to demonstrate how important he is as well as highlight his contributions. The passage that contains the dialectic describes the development of self-consciousnesses constituted in being each recognized as self-conscious by the other. This movement takes the form of a "struggle" in which one is the master of the other, only to find the master is the one who must bend the knee. The reason for this is quite simple in hindsight, but it is truly a revelation in philosophy to this day and something that is not widely understood or something that people are confident in believing/accepting.
The master's consciousness decides that the most important value is freedom. To the master, without freedom, life is not worth preserving. To the slave, however, the opposite is true. Freedom is worthless if one's life is lost. The conflict of the two, the master and thy slave, is resolved because of this. The master can live freely, while the slave is free because he can live. Nevertheless, they need each other, or so is thought. Initially, it does seem so that the master has won, however as we progress, a contradiction emerges. While the master's needs and desires rule the slave's life, the master's life is ruled by the slaves who want to fulfill these desires. Eventually, however, the master's desires become insatiable and improbable to fulfill.
While this is happening, the slave also develops a reality in which is independent of the master. While the master's desires become consuming and demand them at all cost, the slave becomes increasingly independent by obtaining knowledge about the world through the lens of the master's unfettered consumption and enjoyment. Through their work as well, the slave begins to find meaning. Their labor provides them with purpose, while the master's insurmountable lust begins their downfall. As the tables continue to turn, the slave realizes that the master is dependent on their labor for their existence. Their needs and desires have become so overwhelming that the master's very existence depends on everyone else, yet the slave rises as the independent.
For Hegel, in the end, a deal is made. This deal being an economical solution to the contradiction in which two mutually dependent self-consciousnesses emerge as two parts of a unity called human spirit, hence the title of Hegel’s work. This, however, is truly what is most important in the dialectic. Not the awakening of self-consciousness, but realizing we are two parts of a whole.
Understanding our consciousness and realizing we are parts of a whole is essential because we must repurpose this dialectic and understand it to view it in issues like a class struggle. We can first see this with the Haitian revolution in the late 1700s; something is discussed deeply by City College of New York Professor Susan Buck Morris in Hegel e Haiti. In 1791, the blacks of Saint-Domingue mounted a series of armed struggles against the island's white slaveholders and the insurgents would eventually abolish slavery in Haiti.
Buck-Morss in Hegel e Haiti discuss how eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers were focused on slavery as an idea, and this allowed them to build the core points of modernity based on the aspects of freedom. The antithesis of freedom played a crucial role for Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant as well as many others. However, these same thinkers ignored the substantial growth of slavery, which played a central role in the world economy when they were writing. A role that became so big, the whole world became dependent on it. Just as the Master became dependent on the Slave in Hegel’s passage. This is what made Hegel different for her, and for many others. He understood that power was indeed one sided, but resided within the classes deemed the lesser.
In her essay, Buck-Morss offers historical evidence of Hegel’s awareness as well as deep interest in the Haitian revolution, as well as makes a strong case for the Master-Slave dialectic alluding to the freedom of Haiti, and the freedom of the “Black Jacobins”. A jacobin being a member of a radical political group. In her text she argues that Hegel especially, was able to move past chauvinistic approaches and viewpoints to understand the events in Haiti, and recognize their world importance. The Haitian revolution especially, which was the first revolution which provided blacks with freedom from colonizers and oppressors, and became recognized as the first non-African black nation.
In essence, the core principle of the dialectic is that yes, it is indeed one-sided, but not one-sided in the way one believes so. The master becomes overly dependent on the slave. Once this is acknowledged, the power of rebellion lies in the hands of the slave or servant. Just as the working class, in the modern era, holds all of the power the ruling class believes they hold. It may seem that every year the relation to the ruling class and the working class becomes rather slavish, but with the development of class consciousness, a similar consciousness development as the slave in Hegel's dialectic, the working man or wage laborer can rebel, and assume his power.
This parallel is essential for understanding Hegel's importance in the modern-day not just because of Karl Marx and other communistic thinkers but also because of the current prevalence of far-left ideologies. Especially in the post-COVID 19 world, where class and worker consciousness begins to trend upward, after acknowledging the insane wealth inequality that continues to balloon in most developed countries, and certainly in impoverished ones, that are often exploited by developed nations.
This type of awakening of one's consciousness is not exclusive to the working class in modern times, or slaves in Hegel's dialectic, or even the revolutionaries of Haiti. While all of the latter are critical players in understanding this topic, this Master-Servant perspective can be applied to anything with an overseer that assumes all of the power. There cannot be any power for the said overseer to assume if the people he claims dominion over recognize their independence from him. An Officer can conduct missions if his troops do not recognize his command. The capitalist can not exercise his path to profit via exploitation if his workers assume their power and independence through class consciousness.
Conclusion
Wilhelm Hegel is so vital because his contributions to philosophy have not only seeped into other liberal art realms, especially social sciences, such as politics, but he dared to question the most complex. His profound work in developing and crafting his view on the dialectic has emphasized how we debate, write and discuss almost everything in the modern world, whether it is realized or not. It should also be said he has made it no longer trivial, at least to those who understand Hegel and support his ideas, to look at history from a non-finite perspective. Something is everything, and we must always attempt to find the “something” that is important, which is another aspect of his dialectical outline of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis emphasizes.
More importantly, however, his Master-Slave dialectic, or Master-Servant if translated directly from German, is a tool for those attempting to further our society. His thoughts and thinking surrounded the lesser class, and describing their pathway to consciousness independence, the ruling class’ unrelenting lust, and greed are more critical than ever, as previously discussed. While it would be naive to say Hegel was a flat-out communist, socialist, or anything of the sort, and it would be naive to even view Hegel as an anti-racist, it does not mean his sentiment is essential and should not be a building block for the liberation of the working class and exploited peoples of our world. There is a reason why Marx took after his words and rationalized them in his communistic works, and more importantly, rationalized them to support the working man.
In conclusion, it fits us to say there is something to take from all of Hegel, as Hegel would say there is something to take from everything himself, even if it is not taken verbatim. There is a reason why he inspired the likes of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and many others. Hegel made the evolution of ideas a cornerstone in philosophy and our world, which is remarkable and forever important. However, it is more important that we continue that evolution, because progress is everlasting. Just as the world is ever-evolving, so are ideas, and that should be accepted, encouraged, and supported.
Sources:
Buck-Morss, Susan. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 4, 2000, pp. 821–865. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1344332. Accessed 13 July 2021.
PHILOSOPHY - Hegel. (2015, July 10). [Video]. YouTube.
Maybee, Julie E., "Hegel’s Dialectics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/hegel-dialectics/>.
Johnson, J. C. J. (1983). J.R. Johnson: From the Master-Slave Dialectic to Revolt in Capitalist Production (January 1946). Marxists.Org. https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/james-clr/works/1946/master-slave.htm
Johnson, J. C. J. (1946). J.R. Johnson: From the Master-Slave Dialectic to Revolt in Capitalist Production (January 1946). Marxists.Architexturez.Net. https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/james-clr/works/1946/master-slave.htm