Hegel and His View on Living History

Like Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel sees human history as a story of progression, moving towards a final goal of ultimate freedom. Unlike Kant, Hegel examines the political sphere in far greater detail than Kant does. In fact, Hegel uses the political as the starting point, using macrosocial forces (zeitgeist) to explain the progression of society.

Hegel’s view of zeitgeist explains his philosophical outlook to history, and why he sees it as fundamental to human development. Several of the philosophers we have seen use history to their own ends, mostly in the form of “states of nature.” Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau each form a state of nature, formulated on little more than their own ideas. Hegel uses an actual narrative to reflect on history, and what he sees as the larger, social developments.

What are those developments, you may ask? The answer is one I am not entirely sure of. What I can say, with certainty, is that Hegel feels history tracks the progress of a society, and that a society remains in stasis without it. The most vivid example to me is Hegel’s view on India, a culturally rich society that maintains no codified history. As Hegel explains on pages 65 and 66, the Indians have a self-conception, but have not narrowed it down because they do not have a proper view of themselves.

What I do find disturbing is that he views Protestant Germanic society as the pinnacle of human progress. While I (a staunch Catholic) do feel the Protestant ethos has helped Western society flesh its views of individualism, I nonetheless find Hegel’s attitudes towards other societies as dangerous, bordering on racist. I just feel that Hegel’s views may lay the framework for a German superiority complex, which can help justify all sorts of nastiness over the next century (German imperialism and Naziism come to mind).