Working Paper Series
Papers available in the Working Paper Series are works in progress. Please do not cite without permission. Any comments should be addressed directly to the author
Reference WP006
Title Realism and Utopianism in Hegel’s Political Thought: National Sovereignty, International Relations and the Idea of a ‘World State’
Author Tony Burns
Email: [email protected]
Tony Burns
Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice School of Politics & International Relations University of Nottingham
Realism and Utopianism in Hegel’s Political Thought: National Sovereignty, International Relations and the Idea of a ‘World State’
Introduction
W. Warren Wagar, in a work devoted to H. G. Wells’s views on the idea of a ‘world state,’ has claimed that ‘Wells always considered Hegel a humbug, and Hegelianism a past-time for wool gathering dons.’1 This suggests that Wells’s attitude towards the philosophy of Hegel is one of contemptuous dismissal. The implication is that Wells owed very little to Hegel as a source for his own philosophical beliefs. At least he claimed not to do so. It is not clear to me, however, how seriously this claim is to be taken. After all, the title of one of Wells’s works is Science and the World Mind (1942) and Wells did undertake what might be considered to be essentially an ‘Hegelian’ project, the writing of a brief excursus into world history.’ With the title A Short History of the World (1922). Moreover, there is a distinct ‘Hegelian’ tone to what Wells says about the emerging ‘world state’ in his (1902) Anticipations.2 And there is also the way in which Wells’s employs the philosophical categories of ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ in his A Modern Utopia.3
If it were carried out comprehensively this would be a major project, as there are a number of issues which would need to be discussed. In order to make things more manageable I shall focus on Hegel’s views on world history, and the idea of the ‘end of history.’ This discussion will lead to an examination of the idea of a ‘world state,’ the precursor to that of H. G. Wells, an interest in which, as in the case of the idea of ‘cosmopolitanism,’ has been the subject of a revival of late, largely as a consequence of the phenomenon of ‘globalization.’
The structure of the argument is as follows. In Section I shall discuss utopianism and realism in Hegel’s political thought, in connection with what might be referred to as ‘domestic’ or ‘national’ affairs. In Section 2 I shall do the same thing in connection with questions of international relations. Whether one is talking about national or international politics, in both cases there are arguments for and against associating Hegel with both ‘realism’ and ‘utopianism.’ Sections 1 and 2 will, therefore, be structured accordingly.
In Section 3 I relate a discussion of Hegel’s views on international relations in particular to the recent debate between ‘communitarians’ and ‘cosmopolitans’ within the discipline of political theory. I suggest that this debate is connected to the parallel debate between the advocates of the ‘realist’ and ‘utopian’ readings of Hegel. I argue that one possible way of reading what Hegel has to say about international relations in the final sections of his Philosophy of Right, would be to think of him as being neither a ‘strong’ cosmopolitan thinker, that is to say, in the present context, someone who would have been sympathetic to the idea of a ‘world state,’ nor on the other hand a strong ‘communitarian’ thinker, but rather as attempting to steer a via media between these two opposed extremes. This way of thinking suggests that the ‘logic’ of Hegel’s argument in the Philosophy of Right, if it is developed in a slightly different way from the way in which Hegel himself develops it, leads to the view that some kind of higher political community might be thought of as being brought into existence at the global level by the onward march of world history. The component elements of this political community would be individual nation-states. The framework of international relations which would exist between these states might be characterized as a condition of peace rather than a Hobbesian condition of war. However the idea of such a global political community falls far short of a commitment to the idea of a ‘world state’ in the sense in which H. G. Wells uses the term, that is to say a situation in which individual nation states, and national sovereignty, have disappeared altogether. I do not think that such a reading of the final sections of the Philosophy of Right could be plausibly be presented as an interpretation of Hegel’s own views. They are, rather, an appropriation of some of them. 4 It would, however, be legitimate to claim that they are in some sense ‘Hegelian’ in spirit.
Section 1 Hegel and National Politics
1.1 Hegel as a ‘Realist’ Critic of Utopianism
Argument 1: The Inherent Conservatism of Hegel’s Political Thought
Let us begin by considering the evidence that Hegel was a ‘realist’ who rejected all forms of political ‘utopianism’ focusing specifically on the arena if national politics. On this reading, as is indicated by the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel had nothing but contempt for ‘utopian’ theorizing, which he considered to be ‘other worldly’ and ‘unhistorical.’ He did not consider his own ideas to be ‘utopian’ at all, in any sense. As Hegel puts it:
1 • ‘This book, then, containing as it does the science of the state, is to be nothing other than the endeavour to apprehend and portray the state as something inherently rational. As a work of philosophy, it must be poles apart from an attempt to construe a state as it ought to be.’5
• ‘It is just this placing of philosophy in the actual world which meets with misunderstandings, and so I revert to what I have said before, namely that, since philosophy is the exploration of the rational, it is for that very reason the apprehension of the present and the actual, not the erection of a beyond, supposed to exist, God knows where, or rather, which exists, and we can perfectly well say where, namely in the error of a one-sided, empty, ratiocination.’6
See also the following, similar passages from Hegel’s Science of Logic:
• ‘Kant regards the Idea as a necessity and as the goal which, as the archetype, it must be our endeavour to set up for a maximum and to which we must strive to bring the condition of the actual world ever nearer.’7
• ‘But having reached the result that the Idea is the unity of the Notion and objectivity, is the true, it must not be regarded merely as a goal to which we have to approximate but which itself always remains a kind of beyond; on the contrary, we must recognise that everything actual is only in so far as it possesses the Idea and expresses it. It is not merely that the object, the objective and subjective world in general, ought to be congruous with the Idea, but they are themselves the congruence of Notion and reality; the reality that does not correspond to the Notion is mere Appearance, the subjective, contingent, capricious element that is not the truth.’8
• ‘When it is said that no object is to be found in experience that is perfectly congruous with the Idea, one is opposing the Idea as a subjective standard to the actual; but what anything actual is supposed in truth to be, if its Notion is not in it and if its objectivity docs not correspond to its Notion at all, it is impossible to say; for it would be nothing.’9
• ‘But if an object, for example the state, did not correspond at all to its Idea, that is, if in fact it was not the Idea of the state at all, if its reality, which is the self-conscious individuals, did not correspond at all to the Notion, its soul and its body would have parted; the former would escape into the solitary regions of thought, the latter would have broken up into the single individualities.’10
Hegel was critical of the ‘abstract rationalism’ which is usually associated with both the (liberal) political thought of the Enlightenment and with utopianism, a style of thinking which, as is clear from the passages above, he associates with the philosophy of Kant. He associated this attitude of mind with a tendency towards ‘civil disobedience’ on the part of individuals, who often appeal to ‘conscience’ or the ‘laws of reason’ as a higher court, or higher law, than that of the laws of the society in which they live. 11 A parallel tendency towards political ‘radicalism’ and a willingness to use violence as a means for achieving political ends: especially in the case of the Jacobins in France: such an attitude led to ‘the terror’ of 1793. Hegel’s views on this subject are similar to those of Edmund Burke.12 This amounts to saying that, again like Burke (and Montesquieu) Hegel had a strong sense of history, and of the importance of historical context when discussing political affairs. He was a ‘constitutionalist’ in the historical sense which is usually associated with Burke and traditional conservatism, rather than in the liberal, individualist sense which is associated with, for example, Tom Paine, or the French Revolutionaries, or Kant.13
Hegel attaches importance to history, both at the ‘local’/’national level and at the ‘global’ level, or the level of ‘world history.’ So far as the latter is concerned, the ‘historical reason’ which Hegel associates with ‘world history’ is one which does not call for the overthrow or complete destruction of existing constitutions. Rather, it calls for (1) the codification of existing constitutions, 14 and (2) the reform of existing constitutions, 15 the purpose of which is to bring them ‘up to date,’ in the light of the latest developments associated with the course of world-history (especially the developments associated with Napoleonic France after The French Revolution of 1789).16
This can be connected to the suggestion that Hegel is quite critical of the notion of natural law and natural rights as these are understood by ‘liberal’ thinkers, including Kant and Paine. This has led to the suggestion that he is some kind of moral and legal positivist.17 There is some truth in this, although in my opinion this reading is ‘one-sided.’ It goes too far by focusing on just one aspect of Hegel’s thinking and ignoring an other equally important one. In fact Hegel’s position attempts to synthesise the insights of the ‘rationalist’ and the ‘positivist’ approaches to questions of politics and right. This attitude is one which I associate this with a ‘conservative’ conception of natural law, which can be traced back to Aristotle.18
Argument 2: Hegel’s Tragic Outlook on Life and Politics
This argument is based on a particular understanding of the relationship which exists between Hegel’s philosophy and ancient Greek tragedy. This understanding reverses, and amounts to a theoretical ‘inversion’ of
2 a more traditional view. According to that view if anyone is seriously interested in studying ancient Greek tragedy then it is necessary that they acquaint themselves with Hegel’s philosophy, especially but not only the Lectures on Aesthetics. This is so because, despite the employment of the technical jargon of his metaphysical system there, Hegel’s understanding of ancient Greek tragedy is nonetheless a profound one. Whether one likes or dislikes Hegel’s analysis, then, it is arguable that no serious student of tragedy can afford to ignore it; although some scholars have of course dismissed it.19
On this reading, then, Hegel’s views on tragedy are central for anyone wishing to understand ancient Greek tragedy. However, that is not to say they are of any great significance for anyone seeking to understand Hegel’s own philosophy. On the contrary, they might be said to be peripheral to that particular enterprise. One can perfectly well understand Hegel’s philosophy, broadly understood (including therefore his social and political thought) without engaging with his aesthetics – either his philosophy of aesthetics in general, or his views on tragedy in particular.
The understanding of the relationship between Hegel’s philosophy and his views on tragedy presented here, however, is different from this. This is so because it maintains that Hegel’s views on tragedy are not peripheral but central for any adequate understanding of his philosophy as a whole, at least in so far as that philosophy incorporates a social theory which touches specifically on human existence and the ethical and political problems associated with ‘the human condition,’ problems which, by their very nature, are to be found in all societies everywhere, and not just in ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE.
This reading of Hegel attributes to him a ‘tragic vision’ which informs all of his thinking, from his thinking about abstract questions of metaphysics, to his views on questions of morality/ethics, to his views on world history, and on international relations (especially his views on war). 20 It can be connected to the reading of Hegel associated with the writings of Jean Wahl and Jean-Paul Sartre in France in the 1930s and 40s. (See above).
Drawing his inspiration from Hegel, Georg Lukács has made the extremely interesting, though also somewhat surprising remark, given his association with the tradition of Marxist aesthetics, that ‘the contradictoriness of social development’ and the ‘intensification of these contradictions to the point of tragic collision,’ has to do not so much specifically with the capitalist mode of production, but is rather a ‘general fact of life.’ It is a feature of all human existence in society. Lukács takes this notion of a ‘tragic collision’ from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Like Hegel, Lukács associates it with the parallel notion of a fundamental ethical dilemma. 21 Moreover, again like Hegel, Lukács considers the classic example of such a tragic collision to be the works of Sophocles, especially the Antigone.22
Hegel’s views on tragedy have been neatly summarized by F. L. Lucas who maintains that, so far as the moral conflict depicted by Sophocles in Antigone is concerned, Hegel is of the opinion that both of the play’s two central characters, Antigone and Creon, ‘were right.’ At the same time, however, Hegel also insists that they were ‘both wrong,’ because they were ‘not right enough,’ or rather because they were ‘too one-sided in their righteousness.’23 Similarly, Una Ellis-Fermor has made the interesting claim that the moral outlook associated with Greek tragedy is associated with an attempt on the part of the dramatist to maintain an ‘equilibrium’ between two ‘opposite readings of life, to neither of which the dramatist can wholly commit himself.’24 This seems to me to capture very well the outlook of Greek tragic drama as understood by Hegel.
D. D. Raphael has rightly said that ‘although tragedy does not have a directly moral purpose,’ it is nevertheless ‘deeply concerned with morality.’25 For although, Raphael goes on, the tragic author is not a preacher or a propagandist, and his aim is not an overtly didactic one, to provide some ‘proof’ or ‘demonstration’ which will actually solve the fundamental moral problem being dramatized in the play for his audience, nevertheless tragic drama can be seen as an attempted ‘exploration’ of such fundamental moral problems.26 According to Raphael, it is in this sense only that it could be said that tragic drama ‘was the moral philosophy of fifth-century Athens.’27
If this attitude is applied to other works of literature, specifically novels today, then on this view it is the task of the novelist also, just as it was that of the tragic dramatist, to capture and evince the complex and contradictory nature of the ethical dilemmas which lie at the very heart of all human existence, not to attempt to resolve them. Indeed, from this standpoint, being genuine moral dilemmas, they just cannot be resolved as there is no rational solution to them. It is obvious that, considered from this standpoint, a novelist is not and could not be a utopian writer, or a writer of literary utopias, at least as the notion of a literary utopia has often in the past been understood. For utopian texts are ‘one-sided,’ whereas on this view a good novel could not possibly be. Indeed, from this standpoint, the form of the novel is necessarily associated with a critique of utopianism, on both aesthetic as well as moral grounds. According to Frederic Jameson, for example, Lukács maintains that although it is true that the novel ‘has ethical significance,’ the reason for this is because the form of the novel is that of ‘concrete narration’ rather than that of the ‘abstract thought’ traditionally engaged
3 in by the authors of works of utopian literature. In Jameson’s opinion, the ‘great novelists’ of the 19th century were, therefore, even in the ‘very formal organization of their styles’ engaged in a critique of utopian thought and writing, which from their point of view offered what is merely a ‘pallid and abstract dream’ or an ‘insubstantial wish-fulfilment.’ By adopting the form of the novel the nineteenth century realists offered a ‘concrete demonstration of the problems of Utopia.’28
Although he was a philosopher, and not a creative writer, nevertheless Hegel might be thought of as someone whose general outlook provides a philosophical justification for the attitude towards utopianism, and utopian writing, which is adopted by the tragic dramatist and the novelist. This is another reason for thinking that Hegel should not be thought of as a utopian writer.
Argument 3: The ‘Struggle for Recognition’ and/in World History
There is a reading of Hegel’s views on the ‘struggle for recognition’ which is ‘pessimistic’ rather than ‘optimistic’ about the possibility that this particular source of conflict/strife, which is assumed to exist in society and not in a ‘state of nature,’ might be or could be resolved, either in the present or at any time in the future. According to this reading Hegel condemns slavery. But he does not think of slavery as being a matter of legal status, or something which can ever be historically overcome. After all he associates ‘slavery’ with the development of ‘self-consciousness’ in general, and therefore, presumably, in all societies everywhere, including all possible future societies.
On this view selves cannot come into being, in any society, without the existence of that ‘struggle for recognition’ which Hegel associates with mastery and slavery, or the master-slave relationship. Thus a certain kind of ‘slavery’ is endemic to all human society, and to all social institutions. These are inevitably/necessarily ‘hierarchical,’ based on a ‘division of labour’ between socially designated/identified ‘unequals,’ etc. For ‘self- consciousness’ to exist it is necessary that ‘self’ and ‘other’ have determinate social identities, associated with a definite division of labour, and a particular framework of social institutions. But it inevitable that these will be hierarchical, structured around the principle of inequality and not equality. On this view, Hegel is of the opinion that for something to exist at all as an ‘individual’ it is necessary that it be different from other individuals. But to be different is to possess one or more of a range of possible identifying characteristics, to a greater or lesser degree. Difference and inequality are the same thing. Thus inequality and not equality is a fundamental principle of the cosmic order of the universe, without which individual things could not exist. For without inequality they could not be differentiated from one another. This idea might be associated with the medieval notion of the scala naturae, or what A. O. Lovejoy refers to as ‘the great chain of being,’ a principle which, in modern times, has often been associated with the standpoint of traditional conservatism.
This reading also associates Hegel with ‘conflict model of society.’ On this view, though, this is a kind of conflict which could never be resolved. There is no condition of peace, harmony, stability, justice, etc which could be associated with the ‘end of history,’ or which could be found at ‘the end of history.’ Human existence in society is a ceaseless/perpetual struggle between erstwhile ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’ to dominate or be dominated – a struggle which neither can win and neither must lose. This is ‘the human condition.’ This reading of Hegel’s general philosophical outlook can be associated with the idea that he possesses a ‘tragic vision,’ and the view that his outlook on life generally has much in common with that of ancient Greek tragedy.29 Historically it is associated, in France, with the work of Jean Wahl, 30 and of Jean-Paul Sartre, 31 rather than with that of Alexandre Kojève, with which it is incompatible. 32 It has to do, not with the idea of ‘the unhappy consciousness,’ or the unhappiness of some consciousnesses, but rather with the idea ‘unhappiness of consciousness,’ that is to say, the unhappiness of all consciousnesses.
On this reading, there are logical difficulties associated with the attempt to connect this reading of Hegel with any kind of critical theory which might be connected to a ‘utopian’ vision of a society which does not (yet) exist but which ought to be. Moreover, it is difficult to argue that something which is inevitable (social conflict of the kind associated with the ‘struggle for recognition’), because it is to be found in all societies everywhere, ought to be morally condemned. Again, this is ‘life.’ Again, it is a fundamental aspect of the tragedy which is human existence.
4 1.2 Hegel as a Utopian Thinker
1.2.1 The ‘Struggle for Recognition’ and/in World History
There are two readings of Hegel’s ambiguous remarks about the ‘struggle for recognition’ in relation to world history, or the history of the human race, which might be appealed to in support of the view that Hegel’s philosophy is associated with at least some form of political utopianism.
According to the first of these readings, Hegel is of the opinion that the ‘struggle’ for recognition does not take place within the ‘state of nature,’ but within society itself and its institutions, specifically of course within the institution of slavery. This reading is therefore associated with a conflict model of society and of its history. The ‘struggle’ (conflict) ends at a certain point in ‘world history,’ or in the historical evolution of human society, when slavery is legally abolished. On this reading, Hegel thinks that this is the great achievement of the modern world, where, as he says in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, not just ‘one’ is free, or ‘some’ are free, but ‘all are free.’33 Thus, through the course of world history, humanity has, in the European society of his own day, within the confined of the individual nation-state, finally achieved that condition of mutual or reciprocal recognition, or ‘freedom,’ which Hegel suggests in the Phenomenology is the ‘end,’ that is to say the ultimate or final goal, of history. Hence, on this view, with respect to this particular issue at least, there is no further improvement which could be made. Perfection has been achieved.
Politically, Hegel associates this ‘ideal’ state of affairs with the principle of ‘constitutional monarchy,’ to a systematic defence of which he devotes his Philosophy of Right (1817). For present purposes the most significant aspect of this political system is association with ‘constitutionalism,’ ‘the rule of law,’ the equal respect owing to all those who are ‘citizens,’ and the extension of ‘citizenship’ to include all those who are deemed worthy of it because of their possession of that ‘moral personality’ which, in Hegel’s view, is to be found in all human beings. The ideas developed in the Philosophy of Right are, therefore, entirely consistent with what Hegel has to say about the ‘struggle for recognition’ in his Phenomenology of Spirit. They are associated with a normative ideal which Hegel considers to be the best possible.
On this account, then, Hegel thought that the type of ‘free society’ which he considered to be the ultimate goal of the historical development of the human race had in fact, broadly speaking, been achieved in the post- revolutionary (post-1789) European society of his day with its commitment to the principle of ‘constitutional monarchy,’ which (without obvious irony) Hegel thought was ‘the achievement of the modern world.’34 Hegel did, therefore, think that the human race had arrived at the ‘end’ of world history. It had created both a society which is based on the principle of mutual or reciprocal recognition between citizens, and a society within which all (sic) human beings have (allegedly) been accorded the legal status of citizenship. Hence it had also created a state of affairs within which the ‘struggle for recognition,’ as a major source of social and political conflict, and even the driving motor’ of world history, at least in the domestic arena, no longer existed. Hegel suggests, rightly or wrongly (wrongly!) that a society, or a ‘nation state,’ the internal or domestic social relations of which were based on the principles of peace, order, harmony, stability and justice, rather than on conflict, war, instability, injustice, domination, oppression, and so on, had in fact been achieved in Europe after the French Revolution.
Although, on this view, there is certainly a ‘utopian’ dimension to Hegel’s thinking, nevertheless, because this is connected to Hegel’s philosophy of history, and with the idea of ‘progress’ as Hegel understood it, it follows that in Hegel’s thought this particular view of ‘utopia’ became associated not with a critical theory of society, but rather with a ‘conservative’ defence of the status quo. For Hegel what ‘ought’ to be came to be identified with what ‘is,’ rather than to be completely separated from what is and located in ‘another world,’ as in the case of the traditional literary utopia. As we have seen, the locus classicus for this attitude of mind is the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. This particular reading of Hegel’s philosophy, and of its relationship to utopianism, might be associated with ‘Right Hegelianism,’ or with ‘Old Hegelianism,’ in the sense in which these expressions were used in Germany and France in the 1830s and 1840s.
Now let us consider the second of the two readings referred to above. I have suggested that the views associated with this ‘Right Hegelian’ reading of Hegel’s philosophy were criticized in the 1830s and 1840s by one wing of the ‘Left Hegelian’ movement, namely the wing associated with a certain type of 19th Century anarchism and its rejection of ‘utopianism.’ But they were also criticized by a second branch of the ‘Left Hegelian’ movement. The ideas associated with this second group of Left Hegelian thinkers are in a sense (intellectually, at least, though not necessarily politically) more ‘moderate’ or less ‘radical’ than those associated with anarchist Left Hegelians like Bakunin.
5 According to this second branch of the Left Hegelian movement, there is nothing in principle wrong with the Right Hegelian notion of the ‘end of history,’ or with speculating about the kind of society with which it is associated. According to the advocates of this kind of Left Hegelianism, however, this is a society which so far as the present is concerned does not yet exist. It is therefore very much a society which stands in the future. As such it is something which represents an ‘ought to be’ for all those who inhabit the society of the present. What is wrong with the Right Hegelian reading of Hegel’s philosophy, therefore, is simply the fact that it identifies this ideal state of affairs, or this ideal society, with the society of the present in post-revolutionary Europe. For those Left Hegelians associated with this group the ‘free’ society based on the principle of mutual or reciprocal recognition promised by Hegel’s philosophy of history has in fact still to be achieved. Moreover, its achievement will require much more than constitutional monarchy and the rule of law. Indeed, as Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right suggests, it will require the abolition of private property (communism) and the implementation of radical or true form of democracy.
According to the second reading of Hegel’s philosophy, as with the first reading, the ‘struggle for recognition’ does not take place within an alleged ‘state of nature,’ but within society itself, within the individual nation- state, and its institutions. This second reading, too, is therefore associated with a conflict model of society. Here also the ‘struggle’ ends at a certain point in ‘world history,’ or in the historical evolution of human society, when slavery is abolished. On this second reading, though, slavery is not simply a matter of legal status, and it is not to be abolished by doing away with the legally sanctioned institution of slavery. Here ‘slavery’ is considered to be as much a sociological as a legal phenomenon. And it is possible for individuals to remain in some importance sense ‘slaves’ even after the institution of slavery has been legally abolished. Indeed, the legal abolition of slavery might serve as a mask to disguise the existence of these ongoing/continuing forms of slavery in society. E.g. what Marx refers to as ‘wage slavery’ in his Paris Manuscripts.
This is a reading of Hegel views on the ‘struggle for recognition’ in the Phenomenology which is inspired by a familiarity with the writings of the young Marx, and perhaps also by a familiarity with the economic thought of the young Hegel also. It is a reading which, famously, was developed by Alexandre Kojève in the lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology which he delivered at the Sorbonne between 1933 and 1939.35 It is a soi-disant Marxist or materialist reading of Hegel’s views on history and of the role which the ‘struggle for recognition’ has to play within it.’36 As Kojève puts it:
• ‘The historical “dialectic” is the “dialectic” of Master and Slave. But if the opposition of “thesis” and “antithesis” is meaningful only in the context of their reconciliation by “synthesis,” if ‘History (in the full sense of the word) necessarily has a final term…the interaction of Master and Slave must finally end in the “dialectical overcoming” of both of them.’37
• ‘Man was born and History began with the first Fight that ended in the appearance of a Master and a Slave….Man - at his origin - is always either Master or Slave….true Man can exist only where there is Master and Slave. And Universal history, the history of the interaction between men and of their interaction with Nature, is the history of the interaction between warlike Masters and working Slaves. Consequently, History stops at the moment when the difference, the opposition between Master and Slave disappears.’38
In Kojève’s ‘appropriation’ of Hegel’s philosophy, the society which stands at/as the ‘end of history’ is associated with what Kojève himself refers to as the idea of ‘the universal and homogeneous state,’ something which, in his view, Hegel (wrongly) associated with the Napoleonic state in the history of European society:
• ‘History can end only in and by the formation of a Society, of a State, in which the strictly particular, personal, individual value of each is recognized as such, in its very particularity, by all..Now such a State…is possible only after the “overcoming” of the opposition between Master and Slave…[Moreover this Particular]..is no longer a Particular: he is an Individual…[i.e.]…a Citizen of the universal and homogeneous State.’39
• ‘[T]he Master-Slave opposition’ is ‘the motive principle of the historical process…[U]niversal history, therefore, is nothing but the history of the dialectical – i.e. active – relationship between Mastery and Slavery. Hence, History will be completed at the moment when the synthesis of the Master and the Slave is realized, that synthesis that is the whole Man, the Citizen of the universal and homogeneous state created by Napoleon.’40
In his Lectures Kojève explicitly associates this ‘universal and homogeneous state’ with the idea of ‘perfection’ and that of a ‘perfect state.’ Thus, for example, at one point he maintains that:
• ‘As long as History continues, or [what is the same thing] as long as the perfect State is not realized’41
Moreover Kojève also maintains, against Hegel himself as he understands him, that this universal and homogeneous state is something which is yet to be created. The idea of it is associated with the ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ society of the future, a society which is yet to come:
6
• ‘[W]e must see..if the current state of things actually corresponds to what for Hegel is the perfect State and the end of History..The answer to the…question seems very easy at first sight – the perfect State? Possible, of course, but we are indeed far from it. However, at the time of writing the Phenomenology in 1806, Hegel, too, knew full well that the State was not yet realized indeed in all its perfection. He only asserted that the germ of this State was present in the World and that the necessary and sufficient conditions for its growth were in existence.’42
On this second reading of Hegel’s philosophy, the notion of ‘true recognition,’ as Hegel understands it, does provide a means for subjecting existing societies to critical evaluation from the moral point of view. It provides at least an outline sketch, grounded in a particular understanding of ‘world history,’ of how all societies ought to be. From the standpoint of this moral ideal, no society should be a ‘slave society.’ On this view, there would be/will be no ‘slaves’ in any sense of the term in the ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ society which stands at the end of history. Or what amounts to the same thing, at least on this view, there will be, or there will no longer be, any ‘slaves’ (again in any sense) in the society which stands at/as the ‘end of history,’ and which is yet to be achieved.
Thought of in this way, Hegel’s ideas might be associated with the second kind of utopian thinking referred to above, namely the utopian thought of the Enlightenment. This reading of Hegel postulates the existence of a vision of an ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ society in the future, a vision which might indeed be used to criticize the society of the present. But this is a vision which is in some important sense rooted in world history, and therefore by implication in the society of the present. It is assumed that the seeds for the existence of this ‘ideal,’ or at least ‘better,’ society of the future are already here, germinating in the society of the present. There is, therefore, a sense in which this critique must be said to be an historical critique of the society of the present. It is an immanent rather than a transcendent critique of that society. On this view, however, this is not a reason for thinking that this critique is not ‘utopian.’
To summarize, the important point for present purposes is the connection which exists between this particular reading of Hegel’s philosophy, and of Hegelianism, and the idea of utopia or utopianism, as this is understood by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. On this view, Kojève’s reading of Hegel is one which does, in a sense, present Hegel as a ‘utopian’ thinker. It locates him, in effect, within the utopian tradition, at least within what I have referred to as the tradition of Enlightenment utopianism.
So far as the relationship of Hegel’s philosophy to utopianism is concerned, it should perhaps be noted that Kojève’s pronouncements on this subject are ambiguous, and they are ambiguous because they are inconsistent. On the one hand there is evidence that Kojève does not associate the particular reading (‘appropriation’) of Hegel’s philosophy which he himself endorses with ‘utopianism.’ The reason for this is that Kojève insists that, strictly speaking, the idea of utopia ought to be associated only with forms of speculation which imply a ‘transcendent’ as opposed to an ‘immanent’ critique of existing society. In his view, therefore, neither Hegel nor Marx could/should be said to be contributors to the ‘utopian’ political tradition. As Kojève himself puts it:
• ‘The history of the Christian world…is the history of the progressive realization of that ideal State…But in order to realize this State, Man must look away from the Beyond, look toward this earth and act only with a view to this earth. In other words, he must eliminate the Christian idea of transcendence. And that is why the evolution of the Christian world is dual: on the one hand there is the real evolution, which prepares the social and political conditions for the coming of the “absolute” State; and on the other, an ideal evolution, which eliminates the transcendent idea, which brings Heaven back to Earth, as Hegel says.’43
In his Lectures, although Kojève does maintain that this universal and homogeneous state might be associated with a ‘perfect’ society which stands at the end of history, nevertheless he never uses the word ‘utopia’ or ‘utopian’ to characterize it. Nor does he refer to it as a ‘utopia’ in his debate with Leo Strauss. Indeed, in that debate, he expressly denies that the vision which the philosopher has of this universal, homogeneous State is ‘utopian.’ 44 This is one of the points of disagreement between Kojève and Strauss. Moreover, the reason why Kojève denies this is that, in his view, the universal and homogeneous state which was first postulated by Hegel is a real, practical possibility which has been generated by the course of world-history. So we are indeed talking here about an immanent rather than a transcendent political ideal. In Kojève’s view, however, to be ‘utopian,’ in the strict sense of the term, a political ideal has to be transcendent and not immanent. Thus, in his opinion, Hegel’s political vision could not and should not be characterized as ‘utopian.’ On the other hand, however, Kojève also states that:
• ‘[I]n our day the universal and homogeneous State has become a political goal as well….[Thus]…the tyrant [Stalin?] who here initiates the real political movement toward homogeneity consciously followed the teaching of the intellectual [Marx?] who deliberately transformed the idea of the philosopher [Hegel?] so that it might cease to be a
7 “utopian” ideal (which, incidentally, was erroneously thought to describe an already existing political reality: the Empire of Napoleon).’45
Here the type of society which Hegel associated with the ‘end of history’ is indeed characterized as constituting a utopian vision/ideal, albeit one which already corresponded with the existing reality of the Napoleonic state. But it follows from this that if we were to argue, as Kojève does, that although Hegel’s universal and homogenous state is indeed an ‘ideal’ or even a ‘perfect’ state, albeit in Kojève’s case one which is thought of as not yet existing, then there is no good reason for thinking that this state and the society associated with it should not be characterized as ‘utopian.’
In short, Kojève is uncertain in his Lectures as to whether the universal and homogeneous state which he associates with Hegel’s ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ society at the end of history could or could not be said to be ‘utopian.’ Sometimes he says it is not a utopian, society because it is associated with an immanent and not a transcendent political ideal. At other times he says that it is a utopian society, because it is associated with an ideal which has not yet been achieved/realized and which, in consequence, can be used to criticize the society of the present.
Kojève agrees with what he takes to be Hegel’s view, namely that the struggle for recognition is not just the motor of history and historical development, but also the key to understanding politics, insofar as politics has to do with the management and/or resolution of conflict in society. For example, he states in his debate with Leo Strauss that:
• ‘the desire to be “recognized”..is, I believe, the ultimate motive of all emulation among men, and hence of all political struggle.46 It follows from this that were the universal and homogenous state postulated by Kojève’s appropriation of Hegel ever to be achieved, this would amount in effect to the cessation of conflict in (domestic) society and, consequently, to the end of (national) politics as this has traditionally been understood.
This is an attitude which, in the sphere of international relations rather than domestic politics, is usually associated with the name of Carl Schmitt,47 whose views I shall discuss in the next section. So far as domestic politics is concerned, this attitude has been adopted more recently by Chantal Mouffe, whose thinking owes a good deal to that of Schmitt.48 Not surprisingly, despite Kojève’s protestations to the contrary, commentators like Schmitt, Strauss and Mouffe have suggested that this kind of thinking just is ‘utopian’ in some sense of the term. Indeed, Kojève’s ideas, which might be identified with a certain reading (‘appropriation’) of Hegel’s philosophy, have been criticized by Leo Strauss, precisely because Kojève, in Strauss’s view, is a closet ‘utopian’ thinker who refuses to acknowledge explicitly the value of the idea of utopia, and of ‘utopian’ thought, in his own writings.49
As we shall see, Strauss’s critique of Kojève also has an affinity with the thinking of Carl Schmitt.50 This is interesting because it is clear that Schmitt’s political thought, in its turn, is in at least some respects heavily indebted to a particular reading of the philosophy of Hegel, and of the views on international relations which were developed by Hegel in Part Three of his Philosophy of Right.51 In other words, the debate between Kojève, on the one hand, and Strauss (Schmitt) on the other,52 might plausibly be characterized as a debate about the interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy, specifically in relation to the issue of whether or not Hegel’s views on international relations might be associated with ‘utopianism.’ In this debate, one reading of Hegel (that of Schmitt) is employed to criticize the views associated with another (that of Kojève).
I shall end this section by making a few remarks about the relevance of this for those who are interested in the history of utopian/dystopian thought and literature, specifically in relation to the work of H. G. Wells and Zamyatin. It is not difficult to think of, for example, Wells’s The Time Machine or his The Sleeper Awakes, or about Zamyatin’s We, as being attempts, in works of literature, to speculate about the nature of the society and state which ‘Hegelian’ thinkers postulate as constituting the ‘end of history,’ a society and state which, in the view of both Wells and Zamyatin, are thought of by the Hegelians in question as being ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect, in short as ‘utopian.’ In other words the society and state portrayed in, say, Zamyatin’s We just is Kojève’s unified and homogeneous state as Zamyatin understands it. The difference between Zamyatin and Kojève, of course, is that in Zamyatin’s opinion this is very far from being an ideal society or a ‘utopia.’ Rather, to the contrary, it should be thought of as a dystopia. In the words of Mark Hillegas, it represents ‘the future as nightmare.’53 It is a commonplace to think of the idea of ‘dystopia,’ in contrast to the idea of ‘utopia,’ as being associated with the notion of ‘extrapolation,’ the imaginative projection into the future of trends which already exist in present society, but which are considered by the author to be morally and/or politically undesirable. Although there are of course other ways of thinking about it, in my view the origins of this idea might fruitfully be thought of as having arisen as a consequence of a critical engagement with the philosophy of Hegel by writers such as Wells and Zamyatin at the beginning of the 20th Century.
8
Section 2: Hegel and International Relations
As a number of commentators have noted, a good way in to a discussion of Hegel’s views on international relations is to relate them to the contemporary debate between ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘communitarianism.’54 Within this debate ‘utopianism’ is usually associated with a commitment to cosmopolitanism and an enthusiasm for Kant’s approach to international relations, especially his views on the possibility and the desirability of a condition of ‘perpetual peace.’55 Conversely, the rejection of utopianism is associated with a commitment to communitarianism, a critique of Kant’s views on perpetual peace, and with the ‘realist’ view that conflict and war in the international arena are either inevitable, or desirable, or both. According to Derek Heater, communitarians ‘believe that the central role of the community (usually equated with the state) as the provider of ethical political standards should at all costs be preserved.’56 But where does Hegel stand in this debate? Is he a cosmopolitan theorist, and therefore a utopian thinker, or is he a communitarian and therefore a ‘realist’ so far as questions of international relations are concerned?
When discussing this question, it is again convenient to distinguish between views which might be said to be ‘Hegelian’ because they are the ones which Hegel himself actually held, and views which might be said to be ‘Hegelian’ because, although Hegel did not himself hold them, it is arguable that he could have done, because these views are logically consistent with his own basic philosophical principles, and perhaps even that he should have done because they are more consistent with his own philosophical principles than the views which he actually held. To employ the terminology I have developed elsewhere, a reading of Hegel which focuses on the views which he actually held is what I refer to as an ‘interpretation’ and a reading which does not do this, indeed makes no attempt to do it, but focuses on developing Hegel’s views in a particular direction, or down a path which Hegel himself did not follow and perhaps deliberately chose not to follow, is what I refer to as an ‘appropriation.’
2. 1 Hegel as a Realist Critic of Utopianism in International Relations
According to one reading of Hegel’s philosophy, which is the traditional reading of Hegel’s views on international relations held by most commentators, Hegel decisively rejects all of the ideas associated with cosmopolitanism. On this view, Hegel is not a cosmopolitan thinker at all, in any sense, but an ‘out-and-out’ communitarian. This reading of Hegel is held by a number of commentators, including Chris Brown, David Boucher, Derek Heater and Janna Thompson. In a survey of international relations theory structured around the debate between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism published in 1992, Brown chose Hegel as the best representative of the standpoint of communitarianism. Hegel, Brown claims, offers ‘the most complete account of the world from a communitarian position.’57 This is also the view of Derek Heater, who insists that Hegel is a communitarian thinker, and therefore one of the arch-critics of cosmopolitanism, especially as this is to be found in the writings of Kant.58 Finally, David Boucher has cited with approval Janna Thompson’s claim that Hegel’s approach to international relations is associated with a ‘radical rejection of universal morality’ and with a corresponding ‘assertion of the “moral primacy” of the community.’59
On this reading, it is arguable that Hegel is strongly critical of Kant, both so far as moral philosophy in general is concerned, and so far as Kant’s views on international relations are concerned. Hegel, therefore, emphatically rejects the idea of a cosmopolis or a ‘world state.’ Rather, his views on international relations focus on the nation-state, and on relations between nations states, which he considers to be essentially conflictual – one of ‘perpetual war,’ not perpetual peace. Indeed, on this view, the source of intellectual inspiration for Hegel’s views on international relations is not the philosophy of Kant but that of Thomas Hobbes. Following Hobbes, Hegel maintains that within the international arena individual nation-states are in a ‘state of nature,’ which again is a condition not of peace, but of war, or at least the ever-present possibility of war.60
This attitude leads Hegel to prioritize positive law over natural law, in the domestic arena, and therefore to reject the notion of natural law in anything like the liberal/Stoic/Kantian sense completely. More to the point for present purposes however, so far as international relations are concerned, although Hegel does acknowledge the existence of such a thing as ‘international law,’ he does not think of it as a ‘higher’ substantive standard of justice which might be appealed to as a normative standard for the regulation of the conduct of individual nation-states in the international arena. For Hegel, international law is a matter of treaty or convention.
9 In short, on this reading, Hegel’s views on international relations are robustly ‘realist’ and not at all ‘utopian.’ He has more in common with Callicles, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Nietzsche and, more recently, Carl Schmitt, than he does with Kant or Kant’s predecessors, the great natural law theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries. At least, as Robert Williams as suggested, even if he is not an out and out ‘realist’ in this sense it is arguable that Hegel’s attitude towards international relations is one which is informed by his ‘tragic vision’ generally. On this view, if war exists this is not so much because of a conflict of ‘interests,’ but rather because of a conflict of different conceptions of ‘right’ between individual states, in a situation where there is no ‘higher’ right to which one can appeal in order to resolve the conflict in question.61
Hegel’s approach to questions of international relations in the Philosophy of Right is analogous to his approach to the understanding of the relations between individuals. The ‘individual’ in each case is seen as an ‘autonomous’ entity,’ a ‘person.’ This individual seeks recognition from ‘others,’ and in the case of an individual state these are other states. Hegel alludes to the Hobbesian idea that these individuals are in a ‘state of nature’ with one another, which is a condition of at least potential conflict and war (§333). There is a’ law of nature,’ here, which is the principle of pacta sunt servanda – ‘perform your covenant’s made’ (§333). However, there is no ‘praetor,’ or equivalent of the sovereign at the national/domestic level, to make sure that these contracts/treaties are kept (§333R). There is no international equivalent of Hobbes’s civil law, understood as the command of a sovereign. There is no international law in that sense. That is to say, on one reading of Hobbes, there is no law at all, in the strict sense of the term ‘law,’ in the international arena.
This amounts to an admission, on Hegel’s part, that there is no ‘world state,’ or ‘cosmopolis,’ at least not yet. So there is no ‘global political community,’ in what might be referred to as the ‘strong’ sense of that term. But this does not mean that there could not be such a community in some weaker sense than this. For there are shared characteristics and relationships of ‘identity’ between individual nation-states, which lead them to enter into peaceful relations with one another, as well as those relationships of ‘difference’ which Hegel associates with their proclivity for conflict and war. Hegel’s views on international relations generally, and on war in particular, in The Philosophy of Right are informed by his notion of ‘recognition,’ and his account of the ‘struggle for recognition’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The demand to be recognized is a principal source of conflict in the international arena also. Nor, it would seem, does Hegel think that such conflict will ever be resolved, or could ever be resolved. For Hegel there is no equivalent at the global level of the state of ‘mutual or reciprocal’ recognition which he associates with the ‘end of history,’ at what might be termed the domestic or national level. If the struggle for recognition, between masters and slaves, at the lower level results in the creation of a certain kind of state within which masters and slaves no longer exist, but all are ‘citizens,’ free and equal, under one and the same law, Hegel is adamant that this has not happened, and sometimes suggests that it could not possibly happen, within the international arena.
If for Hegel the emergence and development of one’s identity is associated with the ‘struggle for recognition,’ if one sense of self is defined in relation to one’s comprehension of that which is ‘other,’ and if one’s identity does have something to do with nationalism and culture, then it would seem that it is not possible to separate domestic from international relations. I am who I am, or we are who we are, because we stand against ‘others’ who are different from ourselves. This for Hegel, on one reading, is inevitably a relationship of antagonism and conflict. Indeed, Hegel suggests at one point that cohesion, peace, order and stability ‘at home’ are created and sustained precisely by war ‘abroad.’ The latter is therefore a necessary precondition of the former:
• ‘[S]uccessful wars have checked domestic unrest and consolidated the power of the state at home.’62
On this reading, Hegel emphatically does not postulate the emergence or even the possibility of the emergence of a cosmopolis or ‘world state’: (1) of which each and every human being is a citizen; (2) within which all human beings are subject to one and the same law, which regulates their interactions with one another; and (3) which is associated with the demise of sovereignty and of the ‘nation state,’ the entity which Hegel thinks of as being the basic ‘unit’ actor within the sphere of international relations.
So far as Hegel’s views on international relations are associated with the notion of the ‘struggle for recognition,’ one interesting question is whether, as at the level of the nation state, so also in the international arena Hegel thought that the ‘struggle for recognition,’ this time between individual nation-states, had ‘ended’ when he wrote The Philosophy of Right. Did Hegel think that in European society after the Treaty of Westphalia that the relationship between individual states, also, was one of true/reciprocal recognition and mutual respect? At times Hegel does suggest this, although it should be noted that in his view this does not necessarily imply an end to conflict and war. Hegel did not seem think that the end of conflict and war is a necessary precondition for the existence of relationships of mutual recognition and respect between states (§338). At other times, however, Hegel talks as if the principles of ‘mastery’ and ‘slavery’ still existed in the international arena of his day. For example when talking about colonialism in the Philosophy of Right (§351) he seems to be suggesting
10 that colonial peoples have been enslaved, and will continue to be slaves until they have achieved independence, with an autonomous nation-state of their own, something which all peoples or all ‘nations’ have a right to do (§§322, 331, 349).
It is arguable that Hegel’s views on international relations have a striking affinity with those of Carl Schmitt, who might indeed be said to be in some sense an ‘Hegelian’ thinker. Both Hegel and Schmitt take the view that cohesion, unity and social stability ‘at home,’ the creation of a ‘we’ or an ‘us,’ depends on the existence of something which is ‘other,’ an ‘enemy’ abroad which will unite ‘us’ against ‘them.’ In both cases, therefore, one reason for being sceptical about the possibility of the emergence of a ‘world state’ of which all human beings are the member citizens is the fact that to postulate the existence of such a thing appears to presuppose (wrongly) that it is possible for there to be a ‘self’ without an ‘other.’
See for example Hegel’s claim that:
• ‘[P]erpetual peace is often advocated as an ideal towards which humanity should strive. With that end in view, Kant proposed a league of monarchs to adjust differences between states, and the Holy Alliance was meant to be a league of much the same kind. But the state is an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy.’63
Compare this with Schmitt’s assertion, in The Concept of the Political, that:
• ‘[R]ationally speaking, it cannot be denied that nations continue to group themselves according to the friend enemy antithesis, that the distinction still remains actual today, and that this is an ever present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere.’ 64
And with Schmitt’s claim that:
• ‘the solemn declaration of outlawing war does not abolish the friend-enemy distinction…Were this distinction to vanish then political life would vanish altogether.’65
• ‘be a mistake to believe that a nation could eliminate the distinction of friend and enemy by declaring its friendship for the entire world or by voluntarily disarming itself. The world will not thereby become depoliticalized, and it will not be transplanted into a condition of pure morality, pure justice, or pure economics.’66
• ‘Were a world state to embrace the entire globe and humanity, then it would be no political entity and could only be loosely called a state.’…[It]…would altogether lose its political character.’67
For Schmitt, politics or ‘the political’ has to do with conflict and the ever present possibility of war between individual nation states. To think that these things can and should be ‘abolished,’ is to demand that politics itself be ‘abolished’ It is to seek either ‘at home’ (Plato) or ‘abroad’ (Kant), that is to say in the sphere of international relations which is Schmitt’s main concern, a situation in which there is no longer any conflict.
As Leo Strauss has observed, Schmitt does not explicitly deny the possibility that the entity which is usually referred to by the expression ‘world state’ might come into existence. Indeed, he states that:
• ‘The political entity cannot by its very nature be universal in the sense of embracing all humanity and the entire world. If the different states, religions, classes, and other human groupings on earth should be so unified that a conflict among them is impossible and even inconceivable, and if civil war should forever be foreclosed in a realm which embraces the globe, then the distinction of friend and enemy would also cease. What remains is neither politics nor state, but culture, civilization, economics, morality, law, art, entertainment, etc. If and when this condition will appear, I do not know. At the moment, this is not the case. And it is self-deluding to believe that the termination of a modern war would lead to world peace.’68
All that Schmitt claims is that if a ‘world state’ did come into existence it could not properly speaking be called either a ‘political’ entity or a ‘state,’ in the strict sense of these terms.69 It is difficult to believe, however, that Schmitt took seriously the suggestion that such a state would or even could in fact emerge. Nor does it seem unreasonable to suggest that in Schmitt’s view, as in that of Leo Strauss, the idea of such a state is ‘utopian’ in the sense of being impractical or unachievable, quite irrespective of whether it might or might not be said to be desirable.
Schmitt uses ‘Hegelian’ ideas to criticize the notion of a ‘cosmopolis,’ or a ‘world state,’ as he understands it, and therefore, by implication, a ‘utopian’ society or a ‘utopian’ state of affairs in the area of international relations which might be thought to lie at the end of history. As he puts it:
11 • ‘The political entity presupposes the real existence of an enemy and therefore coexistence with another political entity. As long as a state exists, there will thus always be in the world more than just one state. A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist. The political world is a pluriverse and not a universe.’70
• ‘But besides this highly political utilization of the nonpolitical term humanity, there are no wars of humanity as such. Humanity is not a political concept, and no political entity or society and no status corresponds to it. The eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the privileges accompanying it. Humanity, according to natural law and liberal individualistic doctrines, is a universal, i.e. all embracing, social ideal, a system of relations between individuals. This materializes only when the real possibility of war is precluded and every friend enemy grouping becomes impossible. In this universal society there would no longer be nations, in the form of political entities, no class struggles, and no enemy groupings.’71
Schmitt evidently took the view that those who think that such a state of affairs might arise, or even could possibly arise, are ‘utopians.’
2.2 Hegel as a Utopian Theorist of International Relations
The views of Alexandre Kojève regarding the idea of a ‘universal and homogeneous state’ in the philosophy of Hegel provide a convenient transition from a consideration of domestic or national politics to a consideration of questions of international relations. In particular they bring to the fore the idea of a ‘world state,’ an idea which lies at the heart, not just of some contemporary thinking in relation to the phenomenon of globalization, but also of a number of works of utopian/dystopian literature and/or science fiction.72
Kojève’s views on this subject are ambiguous. There are numerous occasions when the reader of his lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology has the impression that the universal and homogeneous state which, according to Kojève, Hegel associates with the ‘end of history’ is in fact a certain type of ‘nation state,’ similar (if not identical) with the Napoleonic state, or the type of constitutional ‘monarchy’ which Hegel appears to be recommending to his readers in the Philosophy of Right. On the other hand, though, there are also occasions (less frequent) when Kojève suggests that the universal and homogenous state is not a particular type of nation-state at all. It is, rather, what today we would refer to as a global state, or a ‘world state,’ in something like H. G. Wells’s understanding of that term. Consider, for example, the following passage:
• ‘Man is truly human – that is “individual” – only to the extent that he lives and acts as “recognized” citizen of a State….But at the moment of its appearance, and during its whole historical evolution as well, the State does not fully satisfy the human desire for Recognition….Such is the case because in the real, historical conditions of his existence, a man is never only “this particular man here,” recognized by the State as citizen in his unique and irreplaceable particularity. He is always also an interchangeable “representative” of a sort of human “species”…And only as such...is he universally recognized…In fact…the desire for Recognition can be completely satisfied, only in and by the universal and homogeneous State. For, in the homogeneous State, the “specific-differences” of class, race, and so on, are “overcome”…And this recognition is truly universal, for, by definition, the [this] State embraces the whole of the human race.’73
Kojève suggests here that what lies at the ‘end of history,’ so far as his own reading (‘appropriation’) of Hegel’s philosophy is concerned, is the demise of the ‘nation state’ and the emergence of a ‘state’ which encompasses the entire planet and which contains the entire human species as its member citizens. It is a ‘cosmopolis,’ in the sense in which the ancient Stoics understood the term. Although Kojève is reluctant to employ the notion of ‘utopia’ in this context he does, as we have seen, associate the universal and homogeneous state, understood in this specific sense, with the notion of ‘perfection.’ He also associates it with a situation within which there would not be, and could not possibly be, any ‘war,’ understood in the specific sense of a conflict between two or more nation states.
A similar view to that of Kojève has also been put forward by Shlomo Avineri, who does not simply advance it in his own name but also (unlike Kojève) attributes it specifically to Hegel, that is to say he offers it as an ‘interpretation’ rather than an ‘appropriation’ of Hegel’s views. According to Avineri, Hegel was not by any means as hostile to the ideas of Kant on perpetual peace as is commonly assumed. Avineri’s evidence for this view is taken from Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, where Hegel states that ‘despite all the differences between the individual states…there also obtains a unity among them.’ The ‘trend of the states is, therefore,’ Hegel continues, ‘towards uniformity.’ 74 Avineri concludes from this that Hegel thought that, as Avineri puts it, ‘the world is about to enter an era of cooperation and universalism.’75 In the end therefore, Avineri concludes, Hegel ‘emerges with a vision of One World, united by culture and reason, progressing towards a system wherein sovereignty, though acknowledged, will wither away, and wars, though immanent, will gradually disappear.’76 Like Kojève, then, Avineri takes Hegel’s remarks about the uniformity of states in the
12 modern era in the passage just cited to imply that there is at least some evidence to support the view that Hegel thought that a unified ‘world state’ was emerging at the global level.
Not surprisingly, for those commentators who adopt the more traditional reading of Hegel’s views on international relations outlined above, the suggestion advanced by Kojève and Avineri that Hegel’s philosophy might be associated with the principles of cosmopolitanism, and hence also a form of ‘utopianism,’ is to be rejected. From the point of view of the more traditional ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ reading, Avineri mistakenly takes Hegel’s remarks about the uniformity of states in the modern era to imply that Hegel thought that a unified ‘world state’ was emerging. As Robert Williams has put it, if it were true that for Hegel ‘sovereignty’ is something which ‘withers away,’ as Avineri appears to suggest in his discussion of Hegel’s views on war, then ‘Hegel would have to revise his fundamental point that international law remains an ought to be, and its implication, that nations are destined to remain in a state of nature towards each other.’77 In William’s opinion, this is a reason for not accepting Avineri’s ‘cosmopolitan’ reading of Hegel’s views, as it is a reading which is inconsistent with what Williams argues is the ‘tragic vision’ which provides the basis for Hegel’s fundamental outlook so far as questions of human existence in society are concerned.78
Section 3 A Compromise: Hegel as a ‘Weak’ Cosmopolitan Thinker
As we have seen, so far as Hegel and international relations is concerned, there is at least some evidence which supports the view that there is a ‘utopian’ dimension to Hegel’s thinking, but there is also some evidence which counts against this reading and in favour of the view that he is an ‘anti-utopian’ realist. Discussion of Hegel’s attitude towards ‘realism’ and ‘utopianism’ in international relations can be connected to another debate, that between ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘communitarians’ generally, and between advocates of ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘communitarian’ readings of Hegel in particular. The ‘realist’ or ‘anti-utopian’ reading of Hegel’s views on international relations is closely connected to the ‘communitarian’ reading of Hegel’s political thought more generally, whereas the ‘utopian’ reading of Hegel’s views on international relations can be connected to the claim that he is some kind of ‘cosmopolitan’ thinker.
When discussing this issue it is convenient to make a distinction between what I shall refer to as ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of the doctrines of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. In its strong sense cosmopolitanism is associated, in the first instance, with the endorsement of the idea of a substantive natural law, understood to be a set of timeless, rationally apprehensible and universally valid juridical principles, which is ‘higher’ than positive law, and by appeal to which individuals can critically evaluate positive law from the point of view of its justice or injustice and, in certain circumstances, find it wanting. It is also associated with an approval of at least the idea or ideal of a ‘cosmopolis,’ or a ‘world-state,’ of which every human being or moral person is a member citizen who is respected as such, or reciprocally recognized as being so, by all fellow citizens, that is to say all other human beings. In this community what Hegel refers to as ‘true recognition’ exists in its fullest possible sense, not just between those who happen to be citizens of a particular nation-state, but between all human beings in a situation where there are no longer any nation-states.
If he were a ‘strong’ cosmopolitan then in the present the idea of such a state would represent, for Hegel, a moral and political ideal, an ‘ought to be.’ It is the idea of an ‘ideal’ society of the future, a society which does not yet exist, but which ought to exist and which could possibly exist. In this society of the future the nation- state, the basic unit of contemporary international relations, will have ‘withered away,’ and together with it the primary source of international conflict and war. This is the ‘utopian’ society which, according to some commentators (though not many), either Hegel himself, or if not Hegel then at least later ‘Hegelians,’ associate with the ‘end of history.’ Should it ever actually come into existence, the ‘positive law’ of this society and its ‘state’ would be identical in substance with the principles of natural law as these have been interpreted and applied by the same positive law, and in exactly the same way, for all of the human beings on the planet.
By contrast, not surprisingly, ‘weak’ cosmopolitanism does not go so far as this. If he were a cosmopolitan thinker of this second and weaker kind then Hegel would be committed to the view that the basic principle of morality and of natural law is the principle of ‘true recognition,’ namely be a person and respect other persons, which is also the most fundamental principle of ‘abstract right.’ He would also be committed to the view that, in some much looser sense, it is appropriate to talk about the existence of a global political community which incorporates every member of the human race as its member citizens.
The most significant difference between this view and what I have referred to as ‘strong’ cosmopolitanism is the fact that on a ‘weak’ cosmopolitan reading of his views, Hegel rejects the idea of a ‘world state,’ both in theory and in practice; both as a normative ideal and as a likely, or even possible, historical outcome. Thus he retains
13 his commitment to the idea of the ‘nation-state’ as the basic unit actor within the sphere of international relations. Consequently, on this view, there is for Hegel no agency for creating and enforcing that positive law which would be required for the ‘concretization’ of the principles of abstract right at the supra-national or global level if they are to be an effective guide to action, not just for the citizens of a particular nation-state, but for all human beings in their reciprocal relations with one another. In my view, so far as questions of international relations are concerned, Hegel is neither a communitarian thinker, nor a strong cosmopolitan thinker, but a weak cosmopolitan thinker in just this sense.
The view that Hegel is a ‘strong’ cosmopolitan thinker, in Kant’s sense, the sense which is usually associated with Cicero, Stoicism and the Stoic natural law tradition, which would in effect be a ‘utopian’ reading of his views on international relations, is I think untenable, although there are some commentators who appear to interpret Hegel in this way. Richard Mullender, for example, appears to interpret Hegel as someone who subscribes to something like the Stoic conception of natural law, that is to say a substantive standard of justice which might be used by individuals to critically evaluate positive law. Thus, Mullender claims that ‘Hegel’s political philosophy evaluates norms and practices within particular cultures by reference to the higher order and universal criterion of abstract right.’ Such a reading of Hegel’s views on natural law/abstract right and its relationship to positive law is consistent with the interpretation of Hegel as a strong cosmopolitan thinker who embraces the Stoic idea of a cosmopolis, a ‘world state,’ or a universal community embracing the entire human race, the conduct of all of the members of which is regulated by the same substantive principles of justice or law. In my view, however, this reading of Hegel completely misunderstands Hegel’s notion of ‘abstract right,’ and Hegel’s view of the relationship which exists between the principles of abstract right and the positive or civil laws of particular (national) political communities.79
On the other hand, however, the suggestion that Hegel is some kind of ‘weak’ cosmopolitan thinker, and hence not an extreme communitarian, has something to be said for it. Such a reading could hardly attribute to Hegel the idea of the possibility/desirability of the emergence of a ‘world state,’ but it could countenance the attribution to him, or to ‘Hegelianism’ in international relations, the suggestion of the possibility and desirability of the emergence of some kind of ‘global community, in a much weaker sense than would be associated with a ‘world state.’
This is what is suggested by some of the advocates of a ‘neo-Hegelian’ approach to international relations, such as Chris Brown, Mervyn Frost, Charles Jones and Richard Vincent. 80 Charles Jones, who is a self-confessed ‘Neo-Hegelian’ thinker, has argued that it is possible to offer a ‘reconciliation between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism in international political ethics.’81 Moreover he suggests, in my view rightly, that such a reading might be associated with the philosophy of Hegel properly understood. On Jones’s reading, which in this respect seems to me to be correct, those who interpret Hegel as an out-and-out communitarian thinker ignore completely what Hegel has to say about the notions of ‘abstract right’ and moral or legal ‘personality’ in Part One of his Philosophy of Right. Thus, they advance a partial and ‘one-sided’ reading of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole. Jones’s understanding of Hegel’s philosophy is much more nuanced, and more accurate, than this. Jones suggests, again rightly, that Hegel is best thought of as someone who is attempting to steer a middle way between the two extremes of cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and communitarianism on the other.
One might talk about a cosmopolitanism of principles and a cosmopolitanism of persons. In both cases we can distinguish between strong and weak cosmopolitanism. And in both cases Hegel is best thought of, in my view, as a ‘weak’ cosmopolitan thinker. So far as cosmopolitanism of principles is concerned, weak cosmopolitanism is associated with the view that although there are indeed certain principles of morality or right which are timeless, universally valid, apprehensible by reason, and so on, nevertheless if these principles are to be followed in practice then they need to be interpreted and applied by positive law in a manner which takes into account the character of particular historical circumstances. Most importantly, these principles are interpreted and applied differently in different societies because of their different ethical and cultural values, and their different historical traditions.
This is in fact Hegel’s view, but it is also a view which has been associated with a certain kind of cosmopolitan thinking by a number of recent commentators, for example Simon Caney, Charles Jones, Gerard Delanty, Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam and (last but not least) Jurgen Habermas, whether or not they mention Hegel in this connection. 82 I shall cite just one example, that of Hilary Putnam, who does in fact refer to Hegel explicitly:
• ‘[I]n the absence of such concrete ways of life, forms of what Hegel called Sittlichkeit, the universal maxims of justice are virtually empty, just as in the absence of critical reason, inherited forms of Sittlichkeit degenerate into blind allegiance to authority. Tradition without reason is blind; reason without tradition is empty.’83
This remark seems to me to capture very well the ‘weak’ or ‘situated’ cosmopolitanism associated with the philosophy of Hegel, as this is developed especially in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which does, as Putnam here
14 suggests, attach importance to both universal ‘reason’ and to particular customs and traditions and suggests that there is no necessary incompatibility involved in doing so. On this reading the standpoint of reason and that of tradition might be thought of as supplementing or complementing each other.
As a number of commentators have noted, it might be suggested that although Hegel was not an advocate of the idea of a ‘world state’ in the strong cosmopolitan sense of the term, nevertheless the suggestion that some alternative form of ‘global political community,’ based on the continued existence of the nation-state, but premised on the assumption that the relations between the individual members of this community will be associated with a condition of peace rather than war, is at least compatible, not only with Hegel’s general philosophical principles, but also with what he says about international relations in his Philosophy of Right.
For Hegel there is an air of artificiality about the distinction between ‘national’ and ‘international’ politics. For example, the very fact that Hegel talks about ‘world-history’ in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History and his Philosophy of Right suggests that he thinks about ‘international’ relations in a ‘totalizing’ way. He considers the individual ‘nation state’ both in abstraction from its relationship to other nation states and in its relations with other states, in a situation where all of the states concerned are thought of as being component elements of just one over-arching totality or whole. In other words, even if Hegel did not have in mind a ‘world state,’ in the sense indicated earlier, which is unified and (as Kojève notes) ‘homogeneous,’ it is arguable that he did have in mind some kind of global political community. This would be a much looser kind of political ‘community’ than that associated with the notion of a ‘world state.’ Such a community would be a ‘totality’ which is internally differentiated or ‘articulated,’ the component #parts’ of which would continue to be the existing individual nation-states.
On this reading, if we are speculating about the ‘end of history’ so far as international relations is concerned, then what we are really talking about is the significance of ‘world-history’ for the relationship which exists between the individual member states within a global political community, understood in just this sense.
It is interesting that, although the line of reasoning developed in the preceding paragraph appears to be a logical possibility, given Hegel’s basic metaphysical assumptions, and is perhaps arguably even a logical requirement for anyone speculating about international relations who starts with those assumptions, nevertheless it is not the line of reasoning which Hegel himself pursued in the final sections of his Philosophy of Right.
In §259 of the Philosophy of Right Hegel talks about ‘the Idea of the state’ in ‘triadic’ terms, in what is often thought (rightly or wrongly) to be a typically ‘Hegelian’ development, one of ‘thesis,’ ‘antithesis’ and ‘synthesis.’ He says that this Idea:
• ‘has immediate actuality and is the individual state as a self-dependent organism – the Constitution or Constitutional Law;
• passes over into the relation of one state to other states – International Law;
• is the universal Idea as a genus and as an absolute power over individual states – the mind which gives itself its actuality in the process of World-History.’
Here in the first place the state is thought of as an isolated, separate entity, and therefore not in its relations to other states. The idea of the state, thought of in this way, is therefore an ‘abstraction.’ The insights gained by this way of thinking about the state are important, even necessary, if we wish to understand the Idea of the state. But they are partial and one-sided. Something equally important, just as necessary, is being left out. This missing element is captured by a second way of thinking about the Idea of the state, which in its turn is also and equally ‘one-sided.’ This second view focuses entirely and exclusively on the state insofar as it enters into relations with other individual states within the international arena, within which the conduct of states is regulated by international law (such as it is). Hegel evidently thinks that there is a third way of thinking about the Idea of the state which is superior to either of these first two considered on their own, independently of the other. This third way of thinking involves an attempt to consider the Idea of the state both in so far as it might be thought of, abstractly, as an isolated, autonomous entity and, at the same time, as it might be thought of in its relations to other states, all of which are considered to be the component elements or ‘parts’ of some higher ‘totality’ or ‘whole’ within the international arena at what today we would refer to as the ‘global’ level.
The really interesting question here, though, is how does Hegel conceive of this last entity? What language does he employ when attempting to characterize its nature? In particular, does he think of this entity as being what today we would refer to as a ‘world state’? A moment’s thought about the argument reproduced above indicates that he does not. Rather, at least when he wrote the Philosophy of Right, Hegel took the view that this higher totality or whole should be thought of by reference, not to the notion of a ‘world state’ which is in the process of
15 being brought into existence by the onward march of ‘world history,’ but simply by reference to the notion of ‘world history’ itself, whatever that means.
Further light on what this does mean, for Hegel, is provided by the ‘remark’ to this particular paragraph, where Hegel goes on to associate an adequate understanding of the Idea of the state, not just with an understanding of ‘world history,’ but also with an understanding of the notion of the ‘absolute mind’ which, in his view, should be thought of as operating there:
• The state in its actuality is essentially an individual state, and beyond that a particular state. Individuality is to be distinguished from particularity. The former is a moment in the very Idea of the state, while the latter belongs to history. States as such are independent of one another, and therefore their relation to one another can only be an external one, so that there must be a third thing standing above them to bind them together. Now this third thing is the mind which gives itself actuality in world-history and is the absolute judge of states. Several states may form an alliance to be a sort of court with jurisdiction over others, there may be confederations of states, like the Holy Alliance for example, but these are always relative only and restricted, like ‘perpetual peace’. The one and only absolute judge, which makes itself authoritative against the particular and at all times, is the absolute mind which manifests itself in the history of the world as the universal and as the genus there operative.”84
Here again Hegel suggests that in the first place we need to consider the state in isolation from other states. This is to consider the state from the standpoint of the notion of ‘identity.’ In the second place we need to consider the state in its interaction/relationship to other states. This is to consider the state from the standpoint of the notion of ‘difference.’ But, finally, Hegel also suggests that there is a third way of looking at this situation which incorporates the insights of these first two. To adopt this third point of view is to look at the state form the standpoint of the notion of ‘identity-in-difference.’ Those who do this must concentrate first on what Hegel refers to as the ‘Notion’ of the state, and second on what he refers to as the Idea of the State, as it actualizes itself in and through world history.
When discussing this third approach to the understanding of the state, Hegel could have related his discussion of the state either to the notion of a ‘world state,’ or to the notion of some different kind of global political community. In fact, however, what he actually does is talk about the state and its relationship to other states within the context of a particular understanding of ‘world history,’ and of the ‘absolute mind’ which operates there, an understanding which appears to attach much more importance to the idea of conflict and war than it does to the emergence and development of any kind of supra-national, global political community, either of a stronger kind associated with the notion of a ‘world state,’ or of a weaker kind associated with some looser form of peaceable political community at the global level. In this respect the views on international relations expressed in the Philosophy of Right might indeed be said to be resolutely ‘anti-utopian.’
It is arguable that what Hegel could have done in the Philosophy of Right, and what perhaps he should have done, because it would have accorded better with his own metaphysical principles, is to think about ‘world history’ in a somewhat different way, focusing less on the principle of ‘difference’ and more on that of ‘identity.’ Had he done so then his conclusions would have harmonized better with his general endorsement of the principle of ‘identity-in-difference.’ Had he presented an argument of this kind then Hegel would have suggested that above the idea of the individual nation-state, which represents the principle of ‘identity,’ and also above the idea of a framework of such states which are connected to one another in relations of conflict within the international arena, which represents the principle of ‘difference,’ there is again a third idea, which represents the principle of ‘identity-in-difference,’ or unity-in-difference. This third idea is the idea of an entity which constitutes a ‘totality’ in the technical sense in which Hegel employs this term in his metaphysics. This entity is a unified entity, though one which is also, at the same time, internally differentiated or ‘articulated.’ This unified entity is some kind of global political community which emerges and develops over time as it actualizes its potential. This process is associated by Hegel with ‘world history.’ Hence the emergence and historical evolution of this entity can be associated with the notion of a ‘world history,’ or just one world history, and even, if one is so minded, with the workings of ‘absolute mind’ within world history.
In §343 of his Philosophy of Right Hegel explicitly associates what he refers to as ‘world history’ with the notion of ‘absolute mind,’ or with a ‘world mind,’ that is to say, just one world mind. He states that world history is the ‘necessary development’ of the ‘self-consciousness and freedom of mind, or the ‘actualization of the universal mind.’ 85 In world history mind gains ‘consciousness of itself as mind’ and comes to ‘apprehend itself in its interpretation of itself to itself.’
Interestingly, however, Hegel also states that it is precisely here that ‘the question of the perfectibility and Education of the Human Race arises.’86 (The italicized book title is to the work of Lessing, which was published in 1780. It is clear from the context that Hegel approves of Lessing’s idea that we might talk about the perfectibility of the human race). For Hegel, then, the ‘absolute mind,’ or the ‘world mind,’ which develops consciousness of itself in and through the process of world history is none other than the mind of ‘the human race,’ the mind of
16 humanity. It is this which Hegel evidently thinks of as being in some sense at least a coherent, unified, entity, which is ‘perfecting’ itself becoming first conscious and then eventually self-conscious, that is coming to gain a knowledge of itself, in and through the course of world history, and especially of course in and through the history of philosophy. On this reading, it is the mind of the human race, the self-consciousness of humanity as ‘humanity,’ when humanity which up to that had been an ‘in-itself’ finally becomes also humanity ‘for itself,’ which for Hegel constitutes the ‘end’ of world history.
It seems obvious that this idea could be connected to a commitment, on Hegel’s part, to at least some kind of cosmopolitan thinking, and indeed a corresponding commitment to some kind of utopian speculation. The idea of utopia, understood in this sense, is somewhat different from the ‘classical’ way of thinking about utopias we find it in the writings of, for example, Sir Thomas More and his Utopia. It has more to do with the way in which the concept is employed at the end of the 18th century by Enlightenment philosophes such as Condillac and Turgot, who had an interest in the notion of historical ‘progress’ and who, before Hegel, developed their own versions of what after Hegel is usually referred to as the speculative ‘philosophy of history.’87 The type of thinking which Hegel associates with the ‘end’ of history, understood in this way, might be thought of as having a correlation with a particular historical stage of development of the history of the human race, understood not intellectually or philosophically, but specifically in terms of its social and political organization, in terns of its relationship to the idea of the state. On this view, however, the idea of the state would be thought about somewhat differently form the way in which Hegel himself thinks about it in the final sections of his Philosophy of Right.
So far as the issue of cosmopolitanism of persons is concerned, from Hegel’s point of view it is obvious that there is more to all of those individuals who are quite rightly thought of by cosmopolitan thinkers as ‘moral persons’ than the fact that they are simply ‘human beings.’ For in addition each individual also possess the specific characteristics of being, for example, males, aristocrats, Aryans, whites, Muslims, and so on. For Hegel this is not an ‘either-or’ situation. For each and every individual who falls into one or other of these categories is also a human being. On this view, ‘strong’ cosmopolitanism precludes the possibility of our being sensitive to the importance of the differences which separate individual moral agents form one another as well as the similarities which bind them together into the one universal, moral community which is the human race. In this connection, Simon Caney has again captured (unwittingly!) Hegel’s view of the matter:
• ‘A third error is to assume that to posit a common human nature is to deny the historicity of persons. Again, though, this is misconceived for, as was noted above, to affirm a conception of human nature is to affirm some properties that persons have in common. As such it does not deny the many ways in which person’s membership of cultures render them different.’88
There is nothing in this remark with which Hegel would wish to disagree. Caney’s view here is basically the same as that of Hegel. It is interesting that Caney associates this view with a particular type of cosmopolitan political thought. If these ideas can legitimately be said to be ‘cosmopolitan’ ideas then it is legitimate to think of Hegel as being some kind of cosmopolitan thinker.
This suggests that there are indeed two views which are in some respects quite different from one another, both of which Caney would characterize as ‘cosmopolitan.’ There is a ‘strong’ or ‘extreme’ view which sees moral agents as being solely abstract ‘persons’ and which ignores completely questions relating to historicity and or determinate social identity. It is cosmopolitanism of this kind which Caney associates with the views of Charles Jones, Henry Shue and. Occasionally, Thomas Pogge. 89,90 Thus, for example, he refers to the views of Jones and Shue in the following way. According to Caney:
• ‘[T]he arguments considered all invoke a universalist moral personality. Shue and Jones’s arguments rest on the moral personality of all persons as rights bearers and attribute no moral relevance to persons’ nationality or ethnicity or civic identity.’91
In addition to this ‘strong’ or ‘extreme’ cosmopolitanism, however, there is also the weaker or more moderate form of cosmopolitanism outlined above, which I have associated with the philosophy of Hegel, and which is defended by Caney himself at times. This way of thinking, if applied to Hegel, has definite advantages. In particular, it allows us to get away from the ‘one sided’ view which sees Hegel as an extreme ‘traditionalist,’ an extreme ‘communitarian,’ or an extreme ethical ‘relativist.’
It might be suggested that there are three ‘levels’ which need to be considered in Hegel’s thinking about cosmopolitanism generally. First, Hegel accepts that, in a manner of speaking, there is indeed a kind of society which contains all human beings as its member ‘citizens.’ There is also some kind of law associated with this society. However, the law in question is ‘abstract’ in nature. Its basic principles are the principles of ‘abstract right,’ as outlined in Part One of the Philosophy of Right, the most fundamental principle of which is to be a person and to respect others as persons. This is the basic principle of ‘true recognition.’ Within the territorial boundaries of a particular nation-state this principle demands that one citizen respect his fellow citizens, and
17 that all should obey the laws of the community of which they happen to be citizens. In order to respect another as a human being, a moral person who is one’s own equal, one must treat that person as one’s equal before the law of the particular society of which both are member citizens. These are the ‘laws of freedom’ – the laws of their freedom. In respecting an ‘other’ as a fellow citizen one also respects him as a human being and vice versa. For this amounts to the same thing. This there is a connection between moral personality and citizenship in Hegel’s thought.
At a second and higher level than this we have the international arena. Here Hegel is predominantly interested in the relationship which exists between nation states, or moral ‘persons’ in that sense, whether they could be said to be members of a higher or wider political community, for example, and if so in what sense. For example, if such a community does exist, could it be said to be a ‘world state’ the laws of which possess the same characteristic features as those which Hobbes associates with ‘civil law’ at the domestic or national level? Hegel’s answer to this question is emphatically ‘no.’ Here one of Hegel’s main targets is Kant and the type of ‘cosmopolitan’ political thought associated with Kant’s notion of ‘perpetual peace.’ Hegel does not address the issue of cosmopolitanism in any other sense, and it seems not to have occurred to him that ‘world history’ might possibly be leading in the direction of a ‘world state,’ a development which, if it occurred, would go beyond even what Kant had envisaged (and Hegel evidently thought that Kant’s views were ‘utopian’ in the derogatory sense).
But what the account offered so far leaves out is a third level, or a third issue, which Hegel rarely (if ever) discusses, namely how the individual member citizens of one nation state, who are of course human beings or moral persons, ought to relate to the individual member citizens of another state, who are also human beings and therefore moral persons, in a situation where it is presumed, as Hegel does presume, that precisely in the absence of a ‘world state,’ there is no substantive natural law, or enforceable international law, in existence which could possibly regulate their behaviour in relation to one another. Hegel’s emphasis on the absence of such a ‘world state,’ and his doubts about either the possibility or the desirability of its emergence, imply that no matter how ‘utopian’ his views on domestic or national politics might be his views on international politics, even if they are those of a weak’ cosmopolitan thinker rather than a ‘realist,’ remain resolutely ‘anti-utopian.’
I will conclude by citing a remark of Carl Schmitt’s. As we have seen, in The Concept of the Political Schmitt employs what might legitimately be described as ‘Hegelian’ arguments to criticize rather than defend the idea of a ‘world state.’ One of Schmitt’s reasons for thinking that the idea that such a state, encompassing the entire human race, might actually come into being in the course of world history is ‘utopian’ is because, like Hegel himself at times, Schmitt conceives of international politics at least by reference to the conceptual distinction between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy.’ In the case of the entire human race, however, there can, Schmitt suggests, be no ‘enemy.’ There can be no ‘other’ which could possibly serve as the mirror within which is reflected a ‘self,’ or a community of ‘selves,’ which is specifically ‘human.’ If there is to be a ‘we’ which encompasses all human beings, then according to Schmitt this would requires the existence of an ‘enemy’ of the human race, an entity which is truly ‘alien’ or ‘other’ and, in consequence threatening, to endangered humanity. As Schmitt puts it:
• ‘Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being – and hence there is no specific differentiation in that concept.’92
For Schmitt, to think that a ‘political community’ or a ‘state’ incorporating all human beings as its member citizens might exist is to leave the realm of practical politics and to enter, not perhaps the realm of ‘utopia,’ but rather, as Schmitt’s reference to ‘this planet’ in the passage cited above suggests, that of science fiction. Nor is it so far-fetched to relate a discussion of Schmitt’s ideas to the genre of science fiction. Indeed, the similarities and differences between Schmitt’s of ‘friend/enemy’ distinction and the parallel notion of ‘self/other’ are well worth exploring, both in connection with Hegel’s philosophy is concerned and in connection with the literature on science fiction and international relations. But, of course, what Schmitt had in mind is a certain type of science fiction, one which others at least (if not Schmitt himself) would consider to be specifically dystopian science fiction, the type of science fiction that might be discerned in a work such as Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers by those who do not share the militaristic social and political vision of its author.93
In the light of the developments associated with the phenomenon of globalization, more than one commentator has suggested that at some point in the remote and distant future we might yet have a global political community, or even a ‘world state,’ perhaps premised on the emergence of some (external or internal) threat to the survival of humanity at the global level, the nature and extent of which is such that it brings all of humanity together and ‘unites’ them in some common effort to counter it. As Oscar Wilde once observed, what is considered to be ‘utopian’ by members of a society living at an earlier time often turns out, at a later time, to be a practical possibility. As Wilde puts it, historical ‘progress’ just is ‘the realization of utopias.’94 Reasoning along similar lines, it is arguable that what is considered to be ‘science fiction’ by the members of a society living at an
18 earlier time might also turn out, at a later time, also to be a practical possibility. It remains to be seen if speculations about the historical emergence of a ‘world state’ at a global level are, or are not, science fiction.95 Whether the nature of such a ‘state,’ should it emerge, ought to be associated either with the idea of utopia, on the one hand, or that of dystopia on the other, is a different matter altogether and something about which it is possible to come to a judgment now.
NOTES
1W. Warren Wagar, H. G. Wells and the World State (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 107. Wagar goes on: ‘See the satirical portraits of Hegelians in New Machiavelli, pp. 102-04, and Bealby (New York, 1915), pp. 36-38.’ 2See H. G. Wells, Anticipations: Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (New York: Dover Publications, 1999 [1902]), esp. Chapter VIII, ‘The Larger Synthesis,’ pp. 138-56 and Chapter IX ‘The Faith, Morals and Public Policy of the New Republic,’ esp. pp. 161-63 and pp. 167-72. For Wells on the idea of a ‘world state’ in general see again Wagar, H. G. Wells and the World-State; also George Orwell, ‘Wells, Hitler and the World State,’ in The Collected Essays and Journalism of George Orwell, Volume 2, My Country Right or Left: 1940-43, eds., Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 166-72; and the chapter on Wells in Derek Heater, World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). 3I make some tentative allusions to Wells’s ‘dialectical’ outlook, without going into the issue of his relationship to Hegel in ay detail, in Burns, Political Theory, Science Fiction and Utopian Literature: Ursula K. Le Guin and The Dispossessed (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 24-28. 4For the conceptual distinction between ‘readings,’ ‘interpretations’ and ‘appropriations’ see Tony Burns, Political Theory, Science Fiction and Utopian Literature: Ursula K. Le Guin and The Dispossessed, pp. 70-71, 92. See also Tony Burns, ‘Hegel and Anarchism,’ a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Political Studies Association of Great Britain, University of Bath, 11th-13th April 2007; and Tony Burns, ‘Reading Texts in the History of Political Thought,’ unpublished Ms. 5Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans., Preface, p. 11. 6Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Preface, p. 10. 7George William Frederic Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1996 [1969]), §1633, p. 756. 8Hegel, Science of Logic, §1634, p.756. 9Hegel, Science of Logic, § 1635, p. 756. 10Hegel, Science of Logic, § 1636, p. 757. 11One of Hegel’s targets here is Kant, whose moral philosophy, in Hegel’s view, attaches far too much importance to the conscience of the individual. In Part Two of The Philosophy of Right, Hegel refers to this as the standpoint of ‘morality’ (Moralitat), or of ‘subjective freedom.’ This is to be contrasted with the standpoint of objective duties or ‘objective freedom,’ which in Part One of The Philosophy of Right Hegel associates with the notion of ‘abstract right.’ Hegel suggests that the standpoint of ‘ethics’ or ‘ethical life’ should be thought of as a theoretical synthesis of these two other opposed approaches. He does not, therefore, reject the principle of subjective freedom outright. Far from it. For this issue see Tony Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 50-52, 56-57, 61-62. 12Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 119-22, 133-34, 137-40, 147-49. 13See Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 140-42. 14See Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 150-52. 15See Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 142-46. 16See Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, pp. 152-56. 17It is, for example, arguable that Hegel’s reading of Sophocles’ Antigone is consistent with his negative attitude towards abstract rationalism. In Hegel’s view, Antigone (and by implication Sophocles) is the defender of an approach to the problem of legal or political obligation which depends on the principle of a concrete Sittlichkeit rather than on the principle of an abstract Moralitat. For this see Tony Burns, ‘Sophocles’ Antigone and the History of the Concept of Natural Law,’ Political Studies, 50, 3 (2002), pp. 545-57. 18For this see Burns, Natural Law and Political Ideology in the Philosophy of Hegel, Chapter 2, pp. 42-74; Burns, ‘Hegel and Natural Law Theory.’ See also Tony Burns, “Metaphysics and Politics in Aristotle and Hegel,” in Contemporary Political Studies: 1998, eds. A. Dobson and G. Stanyer (The Political Studies Association of Great Britain, 1998), Vol. 1, 387-99; Tony Burns, “Aristotle and Natural Law,” History of Political Thought, XIX, 3 (1998): 142-66; and in Tony Burns, Aristotle and Natural Law (Continuum Books, 2010). Forthcoming. 19For example see D. D. Raphael’s somewhat contemptuous remarks about Hegel in his significantly entitled The Paradox of Tragedy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), 19-20, 23-24, 37, 109-10. Despite being so dismissive of Hegel at times, Raphael’s debt to him is evident throughout this book. 20For some interesting reflections on the connection between Hegel’s views on war and his views on tragedy see Robert R. Williams, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and War,’ Chapter 14 of Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 335, 347-48, 357, 361, 363. The connection is readily apparent to those readers of one of Hegel’s early works, The German Constitution, who are also familiar with his views on tragedy. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that this is overlooked by Shlomo Avineri in his otherwise excellent treatment of Hegel’s views on war. See Shlomo Avineri, ‘War,’ Chapter 10 of Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: CUP., 1979 [1972]), pp. 202-03; also Shlomo Avineri, ‘The Problem of War in Hegel’s Thought,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 22 (1961), pp. 463-74. 21See Hegel, Hegel on Tragedy, 280-81. D. D. Raphael has stated, The Paradox of Tragedy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), 25, that “tragedy always presents a conflict. The proposition needs no defence. It is familiar enough.” Despite Raphael’s dismissal of Hegel’s views on tragedy, this view is so familiar in modern times largely because of the influence of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Raphael’s own account of what the “conflict” dealt with by tragedy is about is different from that of Hegel. Surprisingly, it makes no reference to what Hegel considered to be essential, the notion of a moral dilemma.
19
22Lukács, The Historical Novel, 105-13, 108-09. For the relationship between political theory and Greek tragedy generally see Tony Burns, “Sophocles’ Antigone and the History of the Concept of Natural Law,” Political Studies, 50, 3 (2002): 545-57; Peter J. Euben ed., Greek Tragedy and Political Theory. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988; and Peter J. Euben, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road not Taken. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990; Christopher Rocco, Tragedy and Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of Modernity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. 23F. L. Lucas, Tragedy: Serious Drama in Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics, 2nd ed. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972 [1927]), 64. 24Una Ellis-Fermor, The Frontiers of Drama (London: Methuen, 1945), 17-18, cited Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy, 39. 25Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy, 57. 26Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy, 101-02. 27Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy, 89-90. See also Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 12: “[E]pic and tragic poets were widely assumed to be the central ethical thinkers and teachers of Greece.” 28Frederic Jameson, “The Case for Georg Lukács,” in Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974 [1971]), 173-74. 29For Hegel’s views on tragedy see the texts collected together in Georg William Frederic Hegel, Hegel on Tragedy, eds. Anne Paolucci and Henry Paolucci (New York: Doubleday, 1962). See also A. C. Bradley, ‘Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy,’ in Paolucci and Paolucci eds., Hegel on Tragedy, pp. 367-88; and Walter Kaufmann, ‘Hegel’s Ideas About Tragedy,’ in Warren E. Steinkraus ed., New Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy pp. 201-29 30Jean Wahl, Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (Paris: Rieder, 1929). 31Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans, H. Barnes (London: Methuen, 1974). For Sartre’s relation to Hegel see also Christopher Fry, Sartre and Hegel: The Variations of an Enigma in “L’ Étre et le néant” (Bonn: Bouvier, 1988); George Kline, ‘The Existentialist Rediscovery of Hegel and Marx,’ in Sartre: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Mary Warnock (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 284-314. 32As is suggested by Bruce Baugh, French Hegel: From Surrealism to Poststructuralism (London: Routledge, 2003), p. For Hegel in France generally see, additionally, Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999 [1987]); Michael Kelly, Hegel in France (Birmingham: Birmingham Modern Languages Publications, 1992); Michael S. Roth, Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); David Sherman, ‘The Denial of the Self: The Repudiation of Hegelian Self- Consciousness in Recent European Thought,’ in Leo Rauch and David Sherman, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Self-Consciousness (New York: SUNY Press, 1999), 163-222; Robert R. Williams, ‘Recent Views of Recognition and the Question of Ethics,’ Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 364-412. 33G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), ‘Introduction,’ p. 19. 34Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §273, p. 176. 35Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, assembled by Raymond Queneau, wd. Alan Bloom, trans. James H. Nichols jnr. (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1996, [1969, 1947]). 36For Kojève’s suggestion that the universal and homogeneous state which for Hegel constitutes the ‘end of history’ is a ‘classless society,’ in something like Marx’s sense, see Alexandre Kojève, ‘Tyranny and Wisdom,’ in Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, revised and expanded edition, eds. Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 [1961], pp. 146, 172. Marx’s Paris Manuscripts were first published in German in 1932. 37Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. p. 9. 38Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 43. 39Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 58 and fn. 40Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 44. 41Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 72. See also Kojève, ‘Tyranny and Wisdom,’ p. 168: ‘Truth emerges from this…historical dialectic, only once it is completed, that is to say, once history reaches its final stage, in and through the universal and homogeneous State.’ 42Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 97. 43Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 67. 44Kojève makes two points about utopianism in his debate with Strauss, which pull in different directions. The first is that what at one time might be considered to be ‘utopian,’ in the sense of being impractical, unrealizable, or unheard of/unthought of, at another (later) time might actually be achieved. The second is that not all political ideals are ‘utopian.’ Only those transcendent ideals which are at the present time not achievable, practical, etc., should be classified as utopian. Immanent ideals which have been generated by world history, which have not yet been achieved, but which could be because their ‘germs’ or ‘seeds’ have already been sowed, should not be classified in this way. See Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, pp. 137-39, 145-47, 165, 173, 175. For discussion of the relationship between Strauss and Kojève see also Robert Howse and Brian-Paul Frost, ‘The Plausibility of the Universal and Homogeneous State,’ in Alexandre Kojève, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, eds. Robert Howse and Brian-Paul Frost (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); and Robert Howse, ‘Europe and the New World Order: Lessons from Alexandre Kojève’s Engagement With Schmitt’s Nomos der Erde,’ Leiden Journal of International Law, 19 (2006), pp. 1-11. 45Kojève, ‘Tyranny and Wisdom,’ p. 173. 46Kojève, ‘Tyranny and Wisdom,’ p. 143. 47Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political was published in 1927, five years before Kojève started his lecture series on Hegel at the Sorbonne. So far as the relationship between the two thinkers is concerned, Heinrich Meier’s book on Strauss and Schmitt indicates that Schmitt was aware of the existence of the Strauss-Kojève correspondence. See Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans J. Harvey Lomax, Foreword Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 [1988]), fn 8, p. 8. See also ‘Alexandre Kojève-Carl Schmitt Correspondence,’ trans. Erik de Vries, Interpretation 29, 1 (2001), pp. 91-115
20
48See Chantal Mouffe, ‘Pluralism and Modern Democracy: Around Carl Schmitt,’ in The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 117-34; Chantal Mouffe ed., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 1999); Chantal Mouffe, ‘Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy,’ in The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 36-59. There is a systematic tendency in Mouffe’s writings to employ Schmitt’s ideas to condemn those ideas, so far as domestic politics are concerned, which, although she rarely employs the term, Mouffe evidently considers to be ‘utopian’ because they are associated with a vision of a society within which ‘politics,’ that is to say conflict, has been eliminated. To cite just one example, see Mouffe, ‘On the Articulation Between Liberalism and Democracy,’ The Return of the Political, p. 104: ‘The idea of a perfect consensus, a harmonious collective will, must therefore be abandoned, and the permanence of conflicts and antagonisms accepted.’ See also Mouffe, ‘On the Articulation Between Liberalism and Democracy,’ pp. 113-15; ‘Democracy, Power and the Political,’ The Democratic Paradox, pp. 29, 34; and ‘For an Agonistic Model of Democracy,’ The Democratic Paradox, pp. 93, 101-03. Amongst contemporary thinkers, Mouffe’s main targets are Rawls and Habermas, both of whom she thinks of as representing the continuation of undesirable trends which can be found in the philosophy of Kant. 49See Leo Strauss, ‘Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,’ in On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, pp. 187-88. Although he has no objections to the idea of utopia in general, Strauss thinks that the universal and homogeneous state which Kojève has in mind should not be thought of as being a ‘utopia.’ He has two reasons for this. The first is that there is nothing at all impractical about it. ‘It is,’ he says, ‘perhaps possible to say that the universal and homogeneous state is fated to come.’ The second is that, in his view, such a state is undesirable. Far from representing the actualization of our essential ‘humanity,’ it would amount to a condition in which ‘man loses his humanity,’ because within it ‘the basis of man’s humanity withers away.’ According to Strauss, if the universal and homogeneous state which Kojève has in mind is indeed ‘the goal of history’ then history should be thought of as being ‘absolutely “tragic”.’ Cf. Strauss, ‘Restatement,’ pp. 208-09. 50For the relationship between the views of Strauss and Schmitt see Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue: Including Strauss’s Notes on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political and Three Letters from Strauss to Schmitt, trans J. Harvey Lomax, Foreword Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 [1988]); Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and the Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Robert Howse, ‘The Use and Abuse of Leo Strauss in the Schmitt Revival on the German Right: The Case of Heinrich Meier’ (unpublished Ms, accessible from Howse’s web-site); Robert Howse, ‘From Legitimacy to Dictatorship – and Back Again: Leo Strauss’s Critique of the Anti- Liberalism of Carl Schmitt,’ in Dyzenhaus ed., Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, pp. 56-91; John P. McCormick, ‘Fear, Technology and the State: Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and the Revival of Hobbes in Weimar and National Socialist Germany,’ Political Theory, 22, 4 (1994), pp. 619-52. 51For some comments by Schmitt on Hegel see Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: With Leo Strauss’s Notes on Schmitt’s Essay, Intro. George Schwab, Trans. George Schwab and J. Harvey Lomax, Foreword Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 62-63. For discussion of the relationship between Schmitt and Hegel see Jean-Francois Kervegan, Hegel, Carl Schmitt: Le Politique Entre Speculation et Positivite (Paris: PUF, 1992); Andrew Norris, ‘Carl Schmitt on Friends, Enemies and the Political,’ Telos, 112 (1998), pp. 68-89; Mika Ojakangas, ‘Philosophies of “Concrete” Life: From Carl Schmitt to Jean-Luc Nancy,’ Telos, 132 (2005), pp. 35-36; R. D. Winfield, ‘Rethinking Politics: Carl Schmitt vs Hegel,’ Owl of Minerva, 22 (1991), pp. 209-17. 52The interchanges between Kojève and Strauss and between Strauss and Schmitt bring Kojève and Schmitt together, if only indirectly. But there is also a direct connection between Kojève and Schmitt. Heinrich Meier’s book on Strauss and Schmitt indicates that Schmitt was aware of the Strauss-Kojève correspondence. See Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans J. Harvey Lomax, Foreword Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995 [1988]), fn 8, p. 8. Additionally, see ‘Alexandre Kojève-Carl Schmitt Correspondence,’ trans. Erik de Vries, Interpretation 29, 1 (2001), pp. 91-115. 53Mark R. Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) 54See, for example, Sharon Anderson-Gold, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), ‘Introduction,’ p. 1; Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 14-15; Derek Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and its Opponents (London: Continuum, 2002), p. 15; Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism, p. 203. 55Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,’ in Kant: Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss, trans. H B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 1991 [1070]), pp. 93-130. For Hegel’s views on Kant’s idea of ‘perpetual peace’ see Philosophy of Right, §324, pp. 209-10, 295-96; and §333, pp. 213-14. See also Thomas Mertens, ‘Hegel’s Homage to Kant’s Perpetual Peace: An Analysis of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, §§321-40,’ The Review of Politics, 57, 4 (1995), pp. 665-91. 56Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and its Opponents, p. 15. 57Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches, p. 14. See also pp. 52-81. 58Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and its Opponents, pp. 53-56. 59Boucher, ‘Hegel’s Theory of International Relations,’ in Political Theories of International Relations, p. 340. See also Janna Thompson, Justice and World Order: A Philosophical Inquiry (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 112. 60 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13: ‘for war consisteth not in fighting, but in the ever present disposition thereunto’…etc. 61Robert R. Williams, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and War,’ Chapter 14 of Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 335, 347-48, 357, 361, 363. 62Hegel, Philosophy of Right for this, §324, p. 210. 63Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §324Zuz, p. 295. 64Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 28. 65Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 51. 66Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 51-52. 67Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 57. 68Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 53-54. 69 Leo Strauss, ‘Notes on The Concept of the Political,’ in Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 98: ‘Schmitt – while recognizing the possibility in principle of the “world state” as a wholly apolitical “partnership in consumption and production”
21 of humanity united – finally asks “upon which men will the terrible power devolve that a global, economic and technical centralization entails”; in other words, which men will rule in “the world state”?’ Thus, like Schmitt, Strauss questioned the desirability of such a ‘world state.’ Although Strauss was not necessarily opposed to ‘utopian’ theorizing as a matter of principle, and indeed associated all programmes of social and political reform with an implicit acceptance of some ‘utopian vision’ or other, he was opposed specifically to Kojève’s idea of a ‘universal and homogeneous state,’ a ‘world state,’ the present vision of which he evidently thought should be considered to be dystopian rather than utopian. Strauss was willing to accept that this vision might be called ‘utopian’ by some people, on the grounds that it is an imaginative projection of an allegedly better society which does not (yet) exist which might be used to criticize present society, and he criticizes Kojève for his refusal to accept this, but he does not himself think that this vision is ‘utopian,’ in the specific sense of being something which ought to be recommended because it represents a desirable state of affairs. 70Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 53. 71Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 55. 72For some remarks about the relationship between globalization and utopian/dystopian thought and literature see Jutta Weldes, ‘Globalization is Science Fiction,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30 (2001), pp. 647-667. 73Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 237. 74Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, p. 207. 75Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, p. 207. 76Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State, p. 207. 77Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition, pp. 361-62. 78Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition, p. 362. 79Richard Mullender, ‘Hegel, Human Rights and Particularism,’ Journal of Law and Society, 30, 4 (2003), pp. 554-74. 80See Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992); Chris Brown, ed., Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1994); Chris Brown, ‘International Political Theory and the Idea of a World Community,’ in Ken Booth and Steve Smith eds., International Political Theory Today (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 90-109; Mervyn Frost, Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: CUP, 1986); Mervyn Frost, Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: CUP, 1996); Charles Jones, ‘Neo-Hegelianism, Sovereignty and Rights,’ Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 [1999]), Chapter 8, pp. 203-26; Thomas Mertens, ‘Hegel’s Homage to Kant’s Perpetual Peace: An Analysis of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, §§321-40,’ The Review of Politics, 57, 4 (1995), pp. 665-91; Andrew Vincent, ‘The Hegelian State and International Politics,’ Review of International Studies, 9 (1983), pp. 197, 200. 81Charles Jones, ‘Neo-Hegelianism, Sovereignty and Rights,’ in Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism, p. 203. 82 Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, pp. 40-41, 44, 91; Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism, pp. 175, 215; Gerard Delanty, Citizenship in a Global Age (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000), p. 77; Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, p. 314; Hilary Putnam, ‘Must We Choose Between Patriotism and Universal Reason,’ Nussbaum et. al, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, p. 94. For a discussion of this issue in connection with Habermas see my ‘Morality, Ethics and Law in Habermas and Hegel’ (unpublished MS). 83Hilary Putnam, ‘Must we Choose Between Patriotism and Universal Reason,’ Nussbaum et. al, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, pp. 91-97, cited p. 94. 84Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Knox, pp. 160, 279-80. 85Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Knox, p. 226. 86Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §343, Remark, p. 216. 87For this see Frank Manuel and Fritzie Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975); Frank Manuel, The Prophets of Paris (Cambridge, Mass; Harvard University Press, 1962); Keith Taylor, The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (London: Routledge, 1982). 88Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, pp. 39-40. See also p. 31: ‘A person’s identity might be defined in terms of their religion, gender, class, ethnicity, profession, nationality, religion, or citizenship.’ 89For the relevant texts see Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism, pp. 61-62; Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (London and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 247; Pogge, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,’ in Brown ed., Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives, p. 198; Thomas Pogge, ‘Loopholes in Moralities,’ Journal of Philosophy, 89, 2 (1992), pp. 89-90, 92-95; Thomas Pogge, ‘An Egalitarian Law of Peoples,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23, 3 (1994), pp. 195-224, esp. p. 198; Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd ed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 61-62. 90Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, fn 54 to p. 121 given on p. 144. This is not Caney’s own view, at least his more considered view. This is interesting because in his preliminary account of the beliefs associated with his own version of cosmopolitanism, Caney simply cites the views of Pogge without demur. At that point he does not indicate that he has any reservations at all about Pogge’s understanding of cosmopolitanism. As we see here, however, elsewhere in his book Caney is more circumspect. 91Caney, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, p. 121. This criticism seems implausible in the case of Jones. 92Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 54. 93Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (New York: Ace, 1987 [1958]). 94 Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism,’ in The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Collected Critical Prose (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007), p. 127: ‘Is this utopian? A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of utopias.’ 95For this see again Jutta Weldes, ‘Globalization is Science Fiction,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30 (2001), pp. 647-667; and Jutta Weldes ed., To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring the Links Between Science Fiction and World Politics. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), especially Geoffrey Whitehall, ‘The Problem of the ‘World and Beyond’: Encountering ‘The Other’ in Science Fiction.’ See also Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘American SF and the Other, in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Susan Wood (New York: Perigee Books, 1979); Carl D. Malmgren, ‘Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters,’ Science Fiction Studies, 20 (1993): 15-33; Ziauddin Sardar and Sean Cubitt eds., Alien R Us: The Other in
22
Science Fiction Cinema, eds. (London: Pluto Press, 2002); Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994).
23