Siding with Freedom: Towards a Prescriptive Hegelianism Jim Vernon Philosophy, York University, Canada [email protected]

Siding with Freedom: Towards a Prescriptive Hegelianism Jim Vernon Philosophy, York University, Canada Jvernon@Yorku.Ca

[CRIT 12.1 (2010) 49-69] Critical Horizons (print) ISSN 1440-9917 doi:10.1558/crit.v12i1.49 Critical Horizons (online) ISSN 1568-5160

Siding With Freedom: Towards A Prescriptive Hegelianism Jim Vernon Philosophy, York University, Canada [email protected]

Abstract: My goal in this essay is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Hegel’s theory of right for contemporary emancipatory politics. Spe- cifically, my contention is that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right can and should be read as defending the possibility of principled, decisive side-taking in political struggles. By revisiting Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, I seek to demonstrate four interconnected theses: that the will’s freedom is both (a) the fundamental principle upon which genuinely political change can be grounded, and (b) essentially external to, or subtractable from, any and all social alignments; but is nonetheless (c) necessarily actualized in specifically political institutions, and finally (d) only truly actualized through emancipatory reforms of such institutions. In combination, these four theses demonstrate that politics is the principled, decisive and emancipatory reform of existent political institutions through historically determined political movements. Having established these basic theses, I will examine how the philosophy and politics of “prescriptive reform” operates in practice. Keywords: emancipatory politics; freedom; Hegel; institutional reform; political prescription.

My goal in this essay is to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Hegel’s theory of right for contemporary emancipatory politics. Specifically, I aim to defend Hegel as a philosopher of political prescription. Accordingly, my contention will be that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right1 can and should be read

1. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, H. B. Nisbet (trans.), A. W. Wood (ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)/Werke 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970). Citations will be to numbered paragraph in the form §23, and Hegel’s own remarks will be denoted by an R, in the form (§24R). In order to avoid controversies surrounding their authenticity, I refrain from citing the student lecture notes. Given the progressive account I will defend, this can be read as an indirect response to K. H. Ilting’s thesis regarding an “esoteric” Hegel of the lectures subverting the “exoteric” published text, cf. “Der exoterische

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF. 50 Jim Vernon as defending the possibility of principled, universalist, decisive side-taking in specifically political struggles, and thus that Hegel can and should be understood as a dialectical rival to contemporary prescriptive thinkers like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek and Peter Hallward.2 of course, this is not a common reading of Hegel. In fact, when not construed as denoting a kind of mystical, acquiescent apoliticism,3 “Hege- lianism” generally refers in contemporary debates to the dialogic politics of consensual reform.4 Rorty, Habermas, and others who (albeit critically) carry forward the “Hegelian” legacy generally hold that political change should be limited to defending or progressively developing the essential character- istics of parliamentary democracy as it has historically developed (freedom of conscience, pluralism of opinion, rational consensus, institutional and legal recognition, etc.), rather than decisively taking sides in contemporary

und der esoterische Hegel (1824–1831)”, introduction to G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, Vol. IV, K-H Ilting (ed.) (Stuttgart-Bad-Canstatt: Friedrich Fromann, 1974), 45-66. 2. For an overview of some central tenants of contemporary prescriptive philosophy, as well as an indication of his own original contribution, see P. Hallward, “The Politics of Prescrip- tion”, South Atlantic Quarterly 104:4 (Fall 2005), 769-89. Following his definition, I argue that Hegel’s theory is prescriptive in so far as it advocates the direct, divisive application of a universal, subtractive principle in specifically political situations. 3. Hallward, for example, reinforces this false reading by connecting Hegel with his controver- sial, apolitical reading of Deleuze, cf. Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing Between the Singular and the Specific (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 3 and Out of This World: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso, 2006), 6. Here, he follows Ernesto Laclau, “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity”, in Emancipation(s) (New York: Verso, 1996), 20-35. However, such a reading is not limited to Hegel’s critics. In Duty and Hypocrisy in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind: An Essay in the Real and the Ideal (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Jonathon Robinson claims that “the practical lesson of Hegel’s thought is basically conservative” for it essentially defends the preservation of existing communal alignments (130). Individual conscience, therefore, must be subsumed under a kind of mysterious “‘group mind’ […] dominated by the aspect of the community” (124-25). 4. The obvious exception here is Žižek, who constantly describes his (famously patchwork) theory as “Hegelian”. While he is right to emphasize Hegel’s theory of negativity, by identifying freedom with the “violence as such” (The Parallax View [Cambridge, MA.: MIT, 2006], 282) which determinately negates the space of existing politics by “undermin[ing] the coordinates of the very system from which it subtracts itself” (In Defense of Lost Causes [New York: Verso, 2008], 409) he forsakes any continuity with Hegel’s theory of freedom. As we shall see, it is precisely by conflating the determinately free act with the “radical act” of totally “withdrawing from participation in [the] legitimizing rituals” of the current alignment and in order to completely alter “the coordinates of the field itself within which the struggle [for freedom] is taking place” (Lost Causes, 410) that Žižek slips into what Hegel calls the unjustified politics of terror. Of course, as his most recent work shows, Žižek appears more than happy to accept the label, for he mistakenly sees terror as constructive of political space. The actual Hegelian view will be discussed presently.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 51 struggles based on prescriptive principles.5 Mainstream Hegelians like John Russon hold that Hegel’s philosophy articulates “a political vision that can endorse only a cross-cultural communication that seeks not to enlighten but to be educated by the other into a new language of self-consciousness within the context of a mutual pursuit of free rationality”.6 In short, most contemporary political discourse on Hegel, critical or supportive, tends to read his thought – one-sidedly – as basically immanent to and guided by the concepts and institutions of the current political and social alignment. However, Hegel’s text has become infamous precisely because its theory of right has served as the ground and/or foil for almost all positions in sub sequent political theory, from the most conservative, even reactionary, to the most progressive, even revolutionary.7 The diverse legacy of Hegel’s text arises from the fact that it paradoxically asserts both that philosophy can only comprehend the rationality of its own time, and thus makes no vain claims to ahistorical foresight into what ought to exist (thus validating the dominant reading), and that one must not confuse the “prevailing circumstances and existing […] institutions” of right with that which is right in itself, thus allowing philosophers to develop decisive political prescriptions grounded in the timeless essence of right (thus undermining current “Hege- lian” discourse).8 In what follows, I will argue that Hegel’s position is not paradoxical at all, but arises directly from the only plausible ground for emancipatory politics: the freedom of the will. The first section of this paper accordingly aims to demonstrate four interconnected Hegelian theses: that the will’s freedom is

5. See, for example, R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), esp. 58-60, or Jürgen Habermas’s critique of the militant student revolt against the existent order in Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and Politics, J. J. Shapiro (trans.) (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1970). 6. J. Russon, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 209 (my emphasis). For similar treatments, see, for example, Kimberly Hutchings, “Hegel, Ethics and the Logic of Universality”, in Hegel: New Directions, K. Deligiorgi (ed.) (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 105-23 and N. Andersen, “Con- science, Recognition, and the Irreducibility of Difference in Hegel’s Conception of Spirit”, Idealistic Studies 53:2-3 (2005), 119-36. 7. This, of course, describes the manner in which Hegel’s immediate followers split into the conservative/reactionary Right and progressive/revolutionary Left. For discussion, see the editor’s “Introduction” to L. S. Stepelvich (ed.) The Young Hegelians: An Anthology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 1-15. While there is (justly) little contemporary interest in the Hegelian Right, a compelling case for the continuing importance of the various strains of Left Hegelianism is made by the papers collected in D. Moggach (ed.) The New Hegelians: Politics and Philosophy in the Hegelian School (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 8. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §3R.

(a) the fundamental principle upon which genuinely political change can and should be grounded, and (b) essentially external to, or abstractable from, any and all existent individual and social alignments; but is nonetheless (c) necessarily actualized in specifically political institutions; and finally (d) only truly actualized through emancipatory reforms of such institutions. In combination, these four theses constitute a political philosophy that prescribes the principled, decisive, emancipatory alteration of existent political institutions through immanent, historically determined political movements. I will then (in the second section) examine how this philosophy of “prescriptive reform”, operates in practice. That is, I will formulate and defend the lin- eaments of a principled, Hegelian program for taking sides within existent social struggles for institutional change. of course, I readily acknowledge that an account couched in these terms was not explicitly developed by Hegel. In fact, such a reading may only have been possible to develop in the wake of the recent wave of prescriptive philosophies. However, philosophers who seek to understand the enduring import of Hegel’s theory of right for political philosophy will need to distinguish the essential from the contingent in his theory, or the Hegelian ground and essential actualization of right from the particular institutional prescriptions Hegel drew from them in his time. In short, one must move from the temporal letter of Hegel’s text to the eternal spirit of his theory of right – from what is merely in Hegel to what remains consistently Hegelian, as it were. Thus, while much of the argument that follows is admittedly somewhat speculative, I contend that it flows directly from Hegel’s core account of freedom, properly understood.

The first thesis on freedom is arguably the most intuitively plausible: the free will is the essential ground of all political change because freedom is the condition for the latter’s possibility. As everyone knows from Kant, all non-empirically conditioned change (i.e., all change that originates from subjects, rather than mere causal alterations) presupposes the existence of a will unconditioned by the empirical, and a will so unconditioned is by definition free.9 It is, after all, at least logically possible to achieve formal

9. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Mary Gregor (trans. and ed.) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 3-13. Of course, for Kant such an unconditioned will only can be said to have positive freedom when determined by the pure law-giving form of the categorical imperative. Unlike Kant, who ultimately makes freedom a postulate of practical

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 53 and substantive legal equality, territorial integrity, status for workers without papers or the content of any other particular institutional alteration within the organic, unwilled development of an existent social alignment (e.g., as the unconscious result of market forces or through human actions grounded in biological, emotional or social dispositions/causes). The fact that subjects possess a free will is an essential condition for any and all political (as opposed to merely economically, socially or biologically determined) change. It is thus not surprising that Hegel famously opens his Philosophy of Right by simply – almost axiomatically – asserting that the “basis of right is the realm of spirit in general and its precise location and point of departure is the will; the will is free, so that freedom constitutes its substance and destiny [Bestimmung]”.10 Because any genuinely political determination essentially presupposes the freedom of the will, any and all political determinations proceed from the nature of the will’s freedom. Thus, no political philosophy worthy of the name can be founded on anything but the nature of the free will, because no genuinely political action is possible without it. In short, if politics is possible, then the will must be free. What, then, would constitute the freedom of the will? The will is only truly free (i.e., unconditioned) if it can be abstracted in principle from any and every possible willed content, that is if it possesses the “limitless infinity of absolute abstraction or universality”.11 If the will’s freedom were essentially linked to any particular objective determination (e.g., one’s specific desires, particular actions, certain goods, etc.), then it would by definition be conditioned by something other than itself and therefore externally limited and un-free. In other words, the unconditioned will must be in principle separable from any particular content that it might will, and thus necessarily presupposes my will’s “absolute possibility of abstracting from every determination in which I find myself or which I have posited in myself [or], the flight from every content as a limitation”.12 By extension, a will is free if and only if its freedom is not strictly that of a

reason, Hegel elsewhere argues for the positive existence of unconditioned freedom. The demonstration of mind’s development from feeling and intuition through representation and language to free thought as the actualization of spirit as will is the task of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, W. Wallace (trans.) (New York: Oxford, 1971)/Werke 10, esp. §440-82. While these arguments are too intricate to rehearse, here, suffice it to say that, contrary to the common view that, for Hegel, freedom arises historically with developed Christianity, he holds that knowledge of one’s universal, infinite, free thought is available to all subjects that reflect sufficiently upon their capacity for linguistic representation and/or thought. For discussion, see my Hegel’s Philosophy of Language (London: Continuum, 2007), esp. Ch. 2. 10. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §4. 11. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §5. 12. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §5.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 54 Jim Vernon particular will, but is that of willing in general, and thus can be said to be equally possessed by any and every willing subject. Every willing subject possesses the same infinite, abstract, universal freedom as any other subject and in equal share, and thus any determinations that proceed from the free will are valid for all such subjects, irregardless of time, place or disposition. Freedom is the essential, impersonal ground of willing in any and every possible political subject. A more contemporary way of saying the same thing (and this is our second thesis), is that the free will is essentially subtractable from all existent alignments,13 for in its universal abstraction “every limitation, every content, whether present immediately through nature, through needs, desires and drives, or given and determined in some other way, is dissolved”.14 The free dom of the will is essentially and irreducibly subtractable from all concrete subjective, natural and political determinations whatsoever, and as such stands as the universal principle of willed change in general, or the transhis torical ground from which all particular political actions must proceed.15

13. The terminology of subtraction and its universality comes from Alain Badiou, for example “A Speculative Disquisition on the Concept of Democracy” , in Metapolitics, J. Barker (trans.) (London: Verso, 2005), 78-95. Of course, Hegel and Badiou hold different universals to be subtractable from political situations, and different consequences to result from affirming them. 14. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §5. 15. The subtractive aspect of freedom is essential, here. There is, of course, a long tradition of “progressive” readings of Hegel’s theory of right which, as will become clear, overlap to a degree with the account I am defending, in that all defend the gradual actualization of freedom over time through institutional change. For a discussion of the historical development of the “Hegelsche Mitte”, see R. Cristi, Hegel on Freedom and Authority (Cardiff: University of Wales, 2005), 26-40. However, lacking a subtractive dimension, most “progressive” commentators read Hegel’s account as more historicist than it actually is. For example, in his recent Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Robert B. Pippen, while offering a gradualist account of institutional change, also claims that in “Hegel’s view […] human subjects are, and are wholly and essentially, always under way historically and socially, and even in their attempts to reason about what anyone, at any time ought to do, they do so from an institutional position” (265). As such, Pippen’s account makes the abstract freedom that grounds Hegel’s a historically developed, Western ideal (cf. 276). Unless one grasps freedom as an unconditional, universal ground, one weds Hegel’s theory of right – even its ground and general progressive tendency – to the immanent development of particular historical alignments. The same could be said, e.g., of the progressive “historicized naturalism” in Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and even the “substantive immanent critique” developed by Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). This not only contradicts Hegel’s claim that freedom (qua unconditioned) must in part be abstractable from all particular contingencies; it fails to defuse the traditional charges of Hegel’s cultural relativism or chauvinism. In terms of institutional outcome, of course, the practical differences between my view and other pro-

However, while the subtraction of the will from all particular contents is essential for its freedom, the “transition from undifferentiated indeter- minacy to differentiation, determination, and the positing of a determinacy as a content and object” is essential for its willing.16 A will that rests in the subtracted purity of its own universal infinity is not an actual will at all, but a merely implicit potency. A will that is (in Hegel’s jargon) only in itself, is a merely implied, rather than actual will, for a will whose freedom is only available by implication behind actuality is not free at all, but conditioned by an outside that limits it (i.e. it is only free in so far as it is not affected by an outside, and thus is held un-freely within limits set by something external to it). Thus, a free will which only existed as free in subtraction would be neither willing (i.e., not actualized), nor free (i.e., conditioned/limited by something external to it). As such, the universal freedom of the will presupposes its subtraction from all particular contents, but its free willing power essentially demands actualization through some particular determination(s), through which the free will “steps into existence [Dasein] in general”.17 Thus, on the one hand, the free will is transhistorical, universal, and indifferent to all concrete determinations, while on the other hand it must be actualized through specific, historical willed contents. “The will is [thus] the unity of both these moments”, abstract and concrete, universal and particular and as such exists neither in the purity of subtraction, nor simply in determinately willed actualizations; it is only in their dialectical unity (what Hegel calls the “Idea” of freedom) that the free will is both willing and free.18 It is important, however, not to mistake the truly free, unified will with what he calls the “commonest idea [Vorstellung] we have of freedom [that is] arbitrariness” of the will, or the limitless power we have to contingently select determinations from a pre-existent slate of choices (e.g. being free to purchase a given commodity, affirm a particular opinion, etc.). 19 Such a will would never actualize itself as determinately free, but only implicitly so, for in affirming pre-given determinations it maintains a “dependence on an inwardly or externally given content”.20 Since the will would not be actualized through determinations of its own, its existence would have to be somehow discerned by implication from some radically un-willed con-

gressive readings may in fact amount to mere details; however the theoretical divide between subtractive freedom and freedom as historically developed conception runs deep and affects political praxis. 16. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §6. 17. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §6. 18. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §7. 19. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §15R. 20. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §15.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 56 Jim Vernon tent. In other words, there is no distinction in actuality between a willed “arbitrary action” and an unwilled one, for both simply affirm a content that exists independently of the will, which therefore cannot concretely reveal the presence of the will in the affirmation. As such, the “subjective side [that is, willing] is still something other than the objective [that is, action]; the content of this self-determination [of the will] therefore also remains purely and simply finite”.21 In short, merely affirming the pre-given essentially fails to concretely actualize the will, for every such content is external to, other than, and therefore a limitation to, the will as free. Thus, if there is to be a truly free will, then it must actualize itself in and through determinations that proceed from, and yet are objective actualizations of, the free will, that is “its object [must be] itself, and therefore not something it sees as other or as a limitation”.22 To be clear, the will must actualize itself through particular concrete determinations, but these determinations cannot be anything external to the free will. Such determinations, then, must (qua willed) neither pre-exist the willing actualized through them, but (qua objective) they must nonetheless exist independently of that willing. In short, the genuinely free will’s “activity […] consists in cancelling [aufzuhe- ben] the contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity [by] translating its ends from their subjective determination into an objective one, while at the same time remaining within itself in this objectivity”.23 It is for this reason, Hegel argues, that the will essentially achieves actualization in the institutions of right, for “[r]ight is any existence in general which is the existence of the free will”.24 Abstract right, moral conscience and especially the institutions of what Hegel calls ethical life [Sittlichkeit] (i.e., family, civil society and the state) both objectively exist independently of the subjects who fill them (i.e., they are the objective, determinate structures that form custom and law), and yet simultaneously do not exist except insofar as individuals willfully actualize (themselves through) them (i.e., they only exist in and through the willful actions and attitudes of free individuals). For example, the institution of property (not objective things as they pre-exist our contact with them, or as they are immediately used by us, but determinate, enduring ownership by individuals) arises from the free deci- sion of a willing individual to determine something external as “mine”. As such, property does not pre-exist the will to own; something only becomes property when it “becomes mine and acquires my will as its substantial

21. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §15R. 22. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §22. 23. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §28. 24. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §29.

[…] determination”.25 Simultaneously, however, merely willing ownership is not enough to guarantee it, for others may have the same will, and thus may claim ownership of it, eclipsing my claim or at least throwing it into uncertainty. As such, property requires specific, inter-subjective structures (i.e., rights of possession, spoken agreements, contract law, etc.) through which the “existence which my willing thereby attains includes its ability to be recognized by others”.26 Property, then, exists only through individually willed actions, but also only through structures of recognition independent from the willing agents. Similarly marriage (not as a biological reproduc- tion/rearing arrangement, religious obligation, or socially functional unit for reproducing labour, but what Hegel calls ethical marriage) arises from the “free consent of the persons concerned […] to constitute a single person” in a union of mutual love and support.27 Nevertheless, such marriages can only so arise in so far as each partner takes up, and places on the other, binding familial responsibilities, and thus “their union is a self-limitation”.28 Marriage, in short, exists only through a free choice, but as a specific social institution binding on those who make it. While there is no room, here, to sufficiently explicate, let alone defend the specific institutions that Hegel cites as essential for the actualization of freedom, we can say that any such institution would be an objective determination that arises from the free will itself, and it is this dual nature (subjective and objective, willed and existent) that makes it an essential actualization of the will. Thus (bringing us to the third thesis), the will is only and essentially actualized through its relationship with what can only be called political institutions. While not an explicit claim of Hegel’s, these institutions are political in several senses. First and foremost, they are political because they are both actualized by, and actualizations of, free human will, and as such are not reducible to a merely economic, historical or biological base. These institutions reflect human beings as free and willing, rather than as determined and behaving, and as such reflect our specifically political actions. Moreover, such institutions do not proceed from contingent, dis- positional freedom (i.e., from the arbitrary wills of discreet individuals, their beliefs, desires or contingent choices, etc.) but the universal freedom equally and essentially possessed by every willing subject. As such, they

25. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §44. 26. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §51. 27. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §162. For an account of Hegelian marriage developed in accor- dance with this reading of his theory of right, see my “‘Free Love’: A Hegelian Defense of Same-Sex Marriage Rights”, The Southern Journal of Philosophy XLVII:1 (Spring 2009), 69-89. 28. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §162.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 58 Jim Vernon reflect not individual caprice, but the universal, transhistorical ground of willed human actualization in general. As actualizations of genuine free will, these institutions are thus not idiosyncratic to any particular individual, culture or era, but reflect humanity qua human. Finally, and by extension, these institutions actualize particular wills within structures that are not individual, but inter-subjective. As the examples of property and marriage indicate, no particular individual alone can erect such an institution, and the objective existence of any of them requires and is determined by the actual will of all who “fill” it. Thus, the abstract, universal will possessed by all individuals is essentially and only actualized in willed structures shared with other such wills in an institutional community. In sum, political institutions proceed from free willing subjects and willing subjects freely posit the communal institutions that constitute the political. As such, the essential, “absolute determination, or, if one prefers absolute drive, of the free spirit […] is to make freedom into its object” – that is to actualize itself by positing the political institutions that actualize human freedom in general.29 Thus, it is imperative that we get a clear sense as to how these institutions actually arise. It should be obvious that the will cannot immediately develop these political institutions out of universal, subtractive freedom, and not simply because they are inter-subjective. The abstract freedom that grounds the concrete will has no determinate content, and thus nothing, let alone a political institution, can immediately arise from it. In fact, as Hegel famously argues, precisely because the abstract will is unconditioned, any attempt to directly bring it into determinate actuality without mediation by the given, can only result in “the fanaticism of destruction, [i.e., the] demolishing of the existing social order […] and annihilating any organization which attempts to rise up anew”.30 This is becauseall existent contents limit totally abstract freedom, and thus all attempts to immediately actualize freedom in its infinity would result in the terroristic destruction of existing structures. Abstract freedom cannot be immediately actualized in the world as anything constructive and thus if the will is to be actualized through political institutions, it would initially appear that such institutions must pre-exist the will’s actualization through them. This appearance, of course, has led superficial critics and even sympathetic commentators to claim that the Hegelian free will can be actualized only by choosing to make ourselves at home within contemporary institutions

29. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §27. 30. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §5R.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 59 as they exist.31 However, merely affirming existent institutions as they are – choosing to affirm a slate of pre-existent determinations – would clearly be the activity of the merely arbitrary will, which as we have already seen cannot actualize the will as free. Although all political institutions proceed from the will, they also achieve objective determination apart from it, and as such, when pre-existent, constitute an external limitation to freedom. Thus, the truly free will cannot immediately produce political institutions, and yet equally cannot simply affirm pre-existent ones, no matter their nature. The truly political will, in short, can neither simply reject the given in free, negative destruction, nor arbitrarily align itself to it. As such, the very idea of freedom appears to be self-contradictory, because the institutions that actualize it can proceed from neither the abstract, nor the concrete side of the free will. This, of course, leads to the paradox with which we began, wherein freedom can neither affirm the given as it exists, nor abstractly prescribe what ought to be in its place. How, then, can the sides of the idea of freedom be unified through the willing of political institutions? How, in short, can the will actualize itself as free? While Hegel is unfortunately not precisely clear on this point, there is only one solution consistent with his fundamental premises: the will must actualize itself through existent political institutions by mitigating the determining effect that they have on freedom by altering their determinations, thus grounding them again in the will. The will is only actualized (i.e., not abstractly terrorist/mystical) through existent institutions, but it is only actualized as free (i.e., not arbitrary) in so far as they do not externally determine the will through their existence. Conversely, an institution is only truly political (i.e., not externally conditioning of, but grounded in and justified by the universal freedom of the will) insofar as its determinations not only can be, but actually are produced by the wills which “fill” it. The free will requires existent political institutions through which it can actualize itself, but it is only so actualized, and the institutions thus only truly political, insofar as the determinations of the institutions can and do arise through the actual, free willing of agents. Thus, it is only by altering, without destroying, existent institutions that the free will can be actualized through them, for therein it achieves objective concretion through particu-

31. Charles Taylor, Hegel (London: Cambridge, 1975), for example, argues that the “crucial char- acteristic of Sittlichkeit is that it enjoins us to bring about what already is” (376). ThePhiloso - phy of Right, of course, occasionally lends itself to such a reading (e.g., §146-47). However, given Hegel’s complex relationship with the emancipatory movements of his day, it seems implausible to read him as being fundamentally conservative. See, for example, J. D’Hont, Hegel in his Time, J. Burbidge, with N. Roland and J. Levasseur (trans.) (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1988), esp. 83-177.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 60 Jim Vernon larity without thereby being determined by it. This is how, I think, we are to understand Hegel’s admittedly enigmatic phrase, “[t]he will is the unity of both of these moments – particularity reflected into itself and thereby restored to universality”.32 Altering the given determinations of the existent institutions of right actualizes the will through determinations of its own while mitigating the limiting effect of such institutions, thus restoring the will to universality in and through particular institutional changes. Because these changes are required in order to limit the external deter mination of existent institutions on freedom, such changes only actualize the will in so far as they decrease institutional restrictions on freedom and increase the degree of our freedom to change the essential institutions of politics. In other words, political institutions must be altered, and they must be altered to concretely increase the possibility for freely altering them. Of course, because such alterations produce institutions which then (by virtue of their very objectivity) become limitations to freedom, this process is perpetual. As Hegel writes, the actualized will “is universal, [just] because all limitation and particular individuality are superseded within it […] it is the concept of the free will as the universal which extends beyond its object, which permeates its determination and is identical with itself in this determination”.33 It is, thus, not the institutions themselves that actualize freedom, but the supersession of their limiting determinations, or the process of institutional reform. This, of course, gives us our fourth and final thesis: the actualization of freedom occurs only in and through the principled, emancipatory reform of existent political institutions. Before exploring the practical consequences of this view, let us take stock of the two inextricable sides of this Hegelian theory of right: on the one hand it recognizes and defends the necessity of grounding politics in a universal, unconditioned, transhistorical principle that applies equally and inherently to all willing subjects and all political institutions in all cultures and eras (what we might call subtractive freedom); on the other hand it holds that this principled ground can only be actualized in and through concrete alterations to existent, historically determined institutions (what we can call immanent reform). Politics proceeds from a subtractive ground, but this ground essentially manifests itself within the existent alignment of institutions as emancipatory reform. Political change, then, is prescriptive, in that it demands the decisive application of an unconditional principle which is valid for any and every political subject and situation precisely because it is abstracted from the contingencies of personal disposition, historical

32. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §7. 33. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §24; 24R.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 61 circumstances, etc.; however, it is also reformist in that it essentially must use the political resources presently available to alter the already existent institutions of right, rather than radically eliminating or withdrawing from the basic institutional co-ordinates of its time. True politics is strictly neither revolutionary nor reactionary; it is the decisively universal, yet historically situated procedure of prescriptive reform. To tie freedom exclusively to either subtractive universality (mere principle without concern for actuality) or immanent reform (mere alteration without universal principle) is to propose a one-sided and ultimately restricting, rather than emancipatory, politics. Thus, what at first appears to be a paradox in Hegel’s text actually signifies the dialectically unified idea of freedom actualized in the world, or the practical outcome of “the free will which wills the free will”.34 However, precisely because freedom (in its subtractive side) is abstract and infinite, the free will is essentially able to produce that which is not adequate to actualize its essence. That is, while the free will is only truly actualized when it unifies its abstract and concrete sides in prescriptive reform, the will’s infinite freedom inherently implies the ability to concretely thwart its own actualization. As such, nothing in this theory demonstrates that all institutional reforms actualize freedom, that institutional reforms will take place or even that political institutions will exist. The free will, being in part infi- nitely free, is able to will anything, not just itself, and thus its actualization is never guaranteed, and the institutions we erect and reform can determine our wills to greater or lesser degrees. This account of emancipatory politics, essentially, but only, allows philosophy to prescribe reforms for contemporary institutions that accord with the universal ground of the political; it does not imply that those who will reform (or fail to will it) actually do or will grasp which reforms are objectively emancipatory, or that those who do so will successfully implement them. Let us take a step back, then, and re-examine the interaction of free individuals and political institutions in order to better grasp how prescriptive Hegelianism functions in practice.

Political institutions arise from the universal will equally possessed by all individuals. However, no individual (as we have seen) can actualize the universal will in itself, both because universal freedom cannot be immediately actualized, and because institutions are essentially inter-subjective. Nonetheless, because universal freedom only exists in concrete willing, it

34. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §27.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 62 Jim Vernon can only be actualized through the willed actions of particular individuals, and thus it is through these actions that the determinations of the essential political institutions arise. Of course, freedom being infinite, individuals are free to act towards political institutions in a wide variety of ways. As we have seen, many take their freedom to be merely arbitrary, and thus either affirm political institutions as they are, or only select some institutions to alter or embrace (skipping, e.g., family and state life to focus on self-aggrandizement through paid work in civil society). Others, as Hegel notes, understand freedom as only abstract and infinite and seek to eradicate the influence of all institutions that limit their will, either through terror, apolitical mystical withdrawal35 or some other fashion. Freedom can only be actualized through the actions of such individuals towards political institutions, but their actions need not accord with their universal freedom, and need not seek either to alter or even address political institutions at all. Nonetheless, because they only exist in and through our willed actions, it is only through our actions (or lack thereof) that institutions arise, undergo change, are eliminated or maintain their current forms. The determinations of political institutions, in other words, are produced through the combined efforts, whatever they may be, of the free individuals within a given collective (community, state, globe, etc.) to actualize their freedom, as they currently understand it (e.g., as arbitrary, as requiring current or former institutional determinations, as requiring submission to gods, etc.). Thus, given the shifting, various reac- tions of the populace to political institutions, the determinations of these institutions shift correlatively. In other words, individual willing subjects are free to interact with contemporary institutions in a wide variety of ways, from the most reactionary to the most revolutionary, and the net effect of these interactions (consciously or not) determinately produces the “objective” contemporary political institutions of right for any given society, all of which are inherently prone to a wide array of alterations.36 Given the contingency of individual action, the infinite nature of the freedom which grounds it, and the centrality of political institutions to the actualization of human freedom, it should come as no surprise that the institutions in flux are the site of continual struggles (ranging from fearful preservation and repression to rational debate and negotiation to revolutionary activism and terror) in every society. These institutions only exist as a result of particular

35. Hegel sees withdrawal into the “fanaticism of pure contemplation” (Philosophy of Right, §5) as the flipside of nihilistic terror. 36. As Hegel writes, “the spirit of a nation, is both the law which permeates all relations within it and also the customs and consciousness of the individuals who belong to it, [and thus] the [institutional] constitution of a specific nation will in general depend on the nature and development of its self-consciousness” (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §274).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 63 struggles, and yet are distinct from all particular debates and actors and thus remain a continual source of social strife. Thus, while there are always “pre-given” political institutions at any time, they are the continual, shifting target of various struggles between free subjects who contingently act out of their own limited, relative viewpoint as to how such institutions best actualize their freedom. The historical outcome of these struggles manifests itself in temporarily stable determinations for the central institutions of political life, which form the basis for further struggle and debate, ad infinitum. Political institutions, then, arise, alter and even fall as a result of the combat between sides struggling over their nature, and these sides are composed of particular individuals who make partial, often contingent judgments as to how best to politically actualize freedom. Again, given the infinite nature of freedom, there is no guarantee that freedom is actualized through such struggles. However, freedom is only truly actualized when the particular alterations that are made decrease the restrictions pre- existent institutional determinations place upon freedom in general, thus re-grounding them in the free will by enhancing that institution’s ability to actualize freedom for all. In other words, freedom is actualized in its time when the side objectively struggling for freedom wins, or when emancipatory political reform objectively occurs. From this several consequences (few explicitly drawn by Hegel) follow: First and foremost, because all free individuals implicitly bear responsibility for the nature of political institutions, all have a duty (whether they recog- nize it or not) to struggle for their emancipatory reform.37 More precisely, because freedom must be actualized in and through alterations to historical institutions won through struggles over their determinations, it is the duty of all free willing agents to side with contemporary movements that seek to enhance the freedoms enshrined in the institutions of right. Hegel’s theory of right, then, both affirms our inalienable right, and calls us to our duty, to side with the social movements that (if successful) would expand the actualization of freedom afforded by contemporary institutions against the existent forces which would either hinder such expansion, or eliminate the institutions that actualize it. In short, the Hegelian theory of right calls all to take sides with freedom in any and all contemporary struggles over political institutions, and against the forces of both repressive reaction and destructive revolution. Correspondingly, Hegel neither contents himself with demon- strating the rationality of contemporary institutions as they exist, nor seeks to overreach his own time through prescriptions grounded in some utopian future; to the contrary, the task of the philosopher is to comprehend both

37. See Hegel’s discussion of liberation through duty, Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §148-49.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 64 Jim Vernon the vital struggles over institutions of right, and the emancipatory side(s) to be taken in them, within one’s own time.38 Second, and by extension, the role of political philosophy is limited to identifying the nature of freedom, the essential political institutions that proceed from freedom and the contemporary political movements that actually side with freedom. Political philosophy itself cannot vainly prescribe which political movements should exist: these always and only arise through concrete historical struggles, whether theoretically defensible or not. How- ever, philosophy can play the role of determining which of the contingent political movements that have arisen will increase the freedom actualized by an essential political institution; that is it can determine the “rational” movements of its own time. This may explain why thePhilosophy of Right takes so many sides in contemporary institutional debates (for divorce against perpetually imposed marriage;39 for religious toleration against state religion;40 for constitutional monarchy against its various rivals, etc.). Political philosophy, then, articulates the ground of right, and then prescribes the sides to be taken in existent political struggles over its essential institutions. Of course, this does not decrease the responsibility of political philosophers to actively struggle over the future determinations of institutions; it simply asserts that concrete struggles for human emancipation arise independently of philosophy, rather than being grounded in it. As Hegel says, philosophy neither overreaches its own time, nor is determined by its prevailing customs; rather, philosophy is charged with describing the free essence of right, and then to identifying which contingent struggles within its own time would actualize that essence. Third, because freedom is actualized in and through contingent historical movements forged through the relative, partial judgments of particular individuals, those who objectively fight on the side of freedom need not do so in the name of freedom. That is, emancipatory politics does not require struggling subjects that give explicit voice to freedom; rather it simply requires the victory of those sides that concretely actualize freedom through emancipatory institutional reform without concern for the reasons those struggling have taken up the fight. It matters not, then, whether those who struggle for

38. While not a currently popular reading of Hegel, this was roughly the political stance of the Young Hegelian closest to Hegel, Eduard Gans: “I belong to those people who sympathise with the advances of their own time”. This citation, along with an important reconstruction of his principled yet progressive “theory of opposition”, can be found in N. Waszek, “Eduard Gans on Poverty and the Constitutional Debate”, in Moggach, (ed.), The New Hegelians, 24-49 (quote from Gans, 47). 39. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §176. 40. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §270.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 65 emancipatory reforms do so to take revenge on their oppressors, merely to feel less guilty about their social position, out of pity for the abused, out of an egotistical desire to shape history, out of a love of God, to impress potential lovers, or any other conscious or unconscious motivations. Those who struggle for political change generally have more pressing things to do than to read philosophy or reflect on the essential conditions of their freedom, and philosophers should not expect their reasons to be coherent, justifiable or even voiced. In short, while affirming that all political actors (qua free)can grasp the objective nature of their struggle, prescriptive Hegelianism does not require that they do so in order for their struggle to be emancipatory. This is, I think, how we should now understand Hegel’s references to “world historical individuals”, whose actions “are the living expressions of the substantial deed of the world spirit [and yet] cannot themselves perceive it [as] their object and end”.41 Hegelians, then, can and should side with those who fight for freedom, without expecting them to have grasped or embraced their own unified free will, let alone to have read or understood Hegel, and no political actor should expect Hegel (or any genuine political philosopher) to consider, let alone defend, their beliefs or desires in evaluating their fight. Political action is objectively gauged in terms of an increase or decrease in actualized freedom through institutional change, and by this increase or decrease alone. It is in this sense that philosophical “[w]orld history is a court of judgment”.42 Fourth, this obviously means that there are no particular sources essentially linked to genuine political change (the universal class, the proletariat, the peasants, the “part-of-no-part”, etc.). Emancipatory movements can spring from anywhere, and may just as easily arise from majorities as from minorities, or from the ruling classes as from the ruled. NGOs may be the source of repression or progress, as may unions, street gangs, political parties, monarchs or any other movements either sanctioned or rejected within the contemporary political order. In evaluating existent sides caught in struggle, political philosophy must be as indifferent to the social origin of a side as it is to the beliefs and desires of those struggling for it. What matters is the concrete actualization of freedom, and to secure it, we should take sides with any movement – and anyone – whose struggle is objectively emancipatory. It is results, rather than intentions, justifications or subject positions that determine the emancipatory nature of political movements. As an aside, and for the same reasons, we should note two things: (a) political philosophy can make no ultimate judgment regarding the superior ity of representative democracy over other forms of governance (direct

41. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §348. 42. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §341.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 66 Jim Vernon democracy, proletarian dictatorship, etc.).43 At different times and in differ ent places, different alterations will actualize freedom, some democratic, some otherwise. Thus, parliamentary or other forms of democracy neither inherently guarantee emancipation, nor inherently block it. And (b) politics seeks emancipatory reform of existent institutions, wherever they may be. Some of the institutions Hegel identifies are what we normally call political (the state, constitutional law, property relations, etc.), while others might be identified with what we might call “everyday life” (marriage, child-rearing, moral conscience, etc.). Political struggle can occur at a wide variety of levels, from personal relationships to international diplomacy and war, and each makes a distinct and often essential contribution to political freedom. Moreover, because freedom is possessed by all, and should be actualizable by all, our interest lies in seeing freedom in general increase, not simply our own freedom or even merely that of our community, nation, religion, and so on. Political philosophy must identify all of the relevant institutions that actualize freedom, and all of the sides to be taken in every local and global struggle over such institutions, and it remains the duty of all to take the emancipatory side(s) in each. In short, there is no essentially emancipatory group, struggle or state-form and politics is simultaneously personal, communal and global; emancipation occurs here and now, at all levels, and in terms determined by the contingent social movements responding to the institutional status quo, whatever they may be. Fifth, nothing in this theory dictates that there must be a unique emancipatory side to take, or even which methods to take in struggling for freedom. Given the infinite capacity for human action, there will be diverse political movements in existence at any time, and many of them would, if successful, increase the degree of freedom afforded by contemporary institutions. While one might seek to determine which would bring the greatest total increase in freedom there is no absolute hierarchy of struggles within or between institutions, that is there is no “most pressing” political struggle or emancipatory site (reform of marriage, e.g. is no more or less pressing than reform of property rights, for they actualize our freedom differently, but equally essentially). Similarly, there are no necessary paths for concrete struggle. Signing petitions, donating cash, writing governmental represen- tatives, holding the street, occupying the factory and waging war each can

43. Hegel himself was largely ambivalent regarding, and often sharply critical of, representative democracy (see, for example, his critique of voter apathy, and suggestion that more representative structures of governance would make elections “completely superfluous”, Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §311). This is, of course, what we should expect of a theory which seeks to actualize freedom within its own time, rather than in some utopian eternity.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Siding With Freedom 67 play a distinct, incomparable and often vital role in securing the victory of an emancipatory side and none is essentially more “political” than another. We can say, however, that while grounded in a subtractive concept of freedom, the dialectical unity of the free will ensures that genuine struggle requires no absolute break or rupture with the given; to the contrary it must proceed through concrete, existent movements. We can also say that those forms of struggle which strip institutions of their current actualization of freedom (e.g. terror, “principled withdrawal”, etc.) are politically both useless and unjustifiable, for reasons already indicated above. Besides these limited rules, however, there is no necessity for the content or form of any institutional struggle; decisions here are tactical, not philosophical. All Hegelianism requires is that the actualization of freedom through institutions be increased in the successful struggle of that movement. As such (and sixth), there is no essential contradiction between principled prescription and dialogic consensus. Those who find in Hegel both the universal grounds of, and justified call for, rational, immanent, political consensus are not mistaken; they simply identify one of the many methods of struggling for freedom. Because freedom is equally possessed by all, and because all can come to know their duty to actualize it through emancipatory reform, dialogic consensus may, in fact, be a preferred first method of achieving political change, for through it all have the potential to grasp the contemporary requirements of freedom. However, nothing in the idea of freedom indicates that all will come to know that duty, and thus, if freedom is to be actualized, dialogue and consensus cannot be the only, or even the main, political options available.44 Presupposing mutual openness and reconciliation as the essential path of emancipation binds freedom to the particular wills of individuals, in their particularity, and thus eliminates the abstract, universal side of Hegel’s theory of right. It should instead be read as a rival to prescriptive philosophies like those of Badiou and Hallward, but one that never denies the political potential of the reformist and dialogic political philosophy of Rorty, Habermas and Russon. Seventh, and finally, because politics is essentially the actualization of freedom in its time, the sides taken must be those which have a reason- able chance of taking hold. Philosophy does not side with freedom in the abstract, but in its concretion through prescriptive reform.45 Thus, it should

44. For discussion of the benefits and limits of consensual dialogue, see my “The Moral Neces- sity of Moral Conflict in Hegel’sPhenomenology of Spirit”, Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 13:1 (Fall 2008), 67-80. 45. Given this, the most productive encounter may be that between Hegel and Hallward, who – despite his occasional straw man anti-Hegelianism – continually seeks to dialectically unite universal abstraction and concrete alteration: “freedom is nothing other than an abstraction

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 68 Jim Vernon discern those movements which not only propose and struggle for emancipatory reforms in their time, but which, in the very nature of the struggle, propose actualizable reforms. No matter how small its reduction, any struggle that actually reduces the external determination of an institution is more emancipatory, and thus more political, than one which fights for greater, but pragmatically un-winnable, reforms. We must not simply side with freedom in general, but with freedom in our own time, and therefore freedom that can be concretely won. This list is by no means exhaustive, and remains somewhat abstract, but it isolates the central principles of prescriptive Hegelianism. Hegel’s core theory of right grounds politics in subtractive freedom, which is only actualized through its dialectical unity with concrete institutions, and thus demands the emancipatory reform of the institutions that proceeds from the unified idea of freedom. As such, it amounts to a program for identifying the objectively emancipatory sides to be taken in current struggles over the central institutions of right, regardless of the intentions, desires or subject positions of the actors within those sides. It posits a politics that is principled and prescriptive, while remaining justifiable within and per- tinent to the here and now; it is reformist and rational, while remaining decisive and antagonistic. Hegelian politics concerns itself with taking sides in the actual struggles of individuals over the future of political institutions, while steadfastly refusing to either romanticize struggling peoples’ grasp of the nature of political truth, or to belittle their fight when not coherently theorized. Prescriptive Hegelianism fully understands the contingent, historical nature of its political world, and yet resolutely seeks in a principled, actualizable way, to perpetually and incessantly produce genuinely political struggle and progress.46

Jim Vernon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University. He is the author of Hegel’s Philosophy of Language (Continuum, 2007) and articles on Hegel and twentieth century Continental philosophy.

from the prevailing regime of specification and automation: [but] the essential question is simply how we are to distinguish a merely abstract abstraction from a more effectively concrete abstraction, that is, one that works through these relations, qua relation, in order to transform them” (Badiou: A Subject to Truth [Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2003], 285). 46. I am grateful to Jay Lampert, Antonio Calcagno and the anonymous referees from Critical Horizons for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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