Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory For over 150 years G.W.F. Hegel’s ghost has haunted theoretical understanding and practice. His opponents first, and later his defenders, have equally defined their programs against and with his. In this way Hegel’s political thought has both situated and displaced modern political theorizing. This book takes the reception of Hegel’s political thought as a lens through which contemporary methodological and ideological prerogatives are exposed. It traces the nineteenth- century origins of the positivist revolt against Hegel’s legacy forward to political science’s turn away from philosophical tradition in the twentieth century. The book critically reviews the subsequent revisionist trend that has eliminated his metaphysics from contemporary considerations of his political thought. It then moves to re- evaluate their relation and defend their inseparability in his major work on politics: the Philosophy of Right. Against this background, the book concludes with an argument for the inherent meta- physical dimension of political theorizing itself. Goodfield takes Hegel’s recep- tion, representation, as well as rejection in Anglo-American scholarship as a mirror in which its metaphysical presuppositions of the political are exception- ally well reflected. It is through such reflection, he argues, that we may begin to come to terms with them. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and readers of polit- ical theory and philosophy, Hegel, metaphysics and the philosophy of the social sciences. Eric Lee Goodfield is Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory Eric Lee Goodfield Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Eric Lee Goodfield The right of Eric Lee Goodfield to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Goodfield, Eric Lee Hegel and the metaphysical frontiers of political theory / Eric Lee Goodfield. pages cm. – (Routledge innovations in political theory; 58) 1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831 – Political and social views. 2. Natural law. 3. State, The. 4. Political science–Philosophy– History–19th century. 5. Political science–Philosophy–History– 20th century. I. Title. JC233.H46G66 2014 320.01–dc23 2013050456 ISBN: 978-0-415-69847-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76803-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear The image on page iv is by Albrecht Dürer, Kleine Eule, 1508. Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Contents Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 PART I Background, history and critique 9 1 From Feuerbach to Moore: Hegelian metaphysics and the origins of positivist revolt 11 The word become flesh: Feuerbach, Marx and the German origins of the revolt against Hegelianism 11 The denial of experience: William James and Hegel’s “vicious intellectualism” 25 G.E. Moore’s “refutation of idealism”: the Anglo-American origins of the break with metaphysics 30 2 Origins of the prescriptive problematic: the behavioral revolution and the schism of political science and philosophical tradition 47 Charles Merriam 49 George Catlin 53 David Easton 55 The legacy and persistence of positivism: scientific and theoretical 60 Behavioralism, rational choice and the “post-positivist” era 65 3 Negating negation: twentieth-century revisionism, the rehabilitation of Hegel’s political thought and the descriptive challenge 73 Guilt by idealistic association: world war and Hegel’s place in the Anglo- American theoretical imagination 75 Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 viii Contents “For Hegel’s numerous critics the implications . are monumental.”: the defense and deformation of Hegel’s legacy 81 Conclusion 92 PART II 101 Metaphysics and politics in Hegel’s thought 4 Hegel’s metaphysics of thought: toward a logic of universals 103 Introduction 103 The problem of universals between antiquity and modernity 104 Why/how metaphysics? 110 Hegel’s metaphysical corpus and the context of the Encyclopedia Logic 111 Introduction to the Logic 115 Being 132 Essence 138 Concept 143 Syllogism and the problem of universals 160 5 Political dialectic: the metaphysical vocation of political philosophy 170 The metaphysical vocation of political philosophy 170 Political logic and the speculative presuppositions of the Philosophy of Right 174 The philosophical context of Hegel’s modern political project 180 Foundations of the modern state 182 Coordinating categories 197 The sovereignty of the metaphysical in Hegel’s political thought 200 Dialectic paralyzed: the distortions of the non-metaphysical reading 202 PART III 219 Political theory, thought and metaphysics 6 Political theory and the metaphysical presuppositions of thought 221 Metaphysical foundations and the theorizing subject of political thought 222 Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Contents ix Political theory and the metaphysical frontiers of the liberal- positivist paradigm 228 Political and metaphysical: analytic and continental 235 Select bibliography 239 Index 246 Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Acknowledgments There are quite a few people to thank and recognize for their generous assistance in the writing of this book. C.J. Berry, Michael Marder, William Bluhm and Henry Richardson all offered opinion and advice at different stages. Preston Stovall, Angela Harutyunyan, David Lay Williams, Thom Brooks, Ruth Groff, James Farr, John Gunnell, Melissa Lane, David Ricci, Matteo Morganti and Octavian Esanu offered readings and in- depth commentary on various chapters. Peter Steinberger, William Desmond and Catherine Hansen were active readers, commentators and intellectual comrades whose passionate interest and sympa- thies contributed to the overall design, argumentation and philosophical vision which permeates this book. In addition to the tremendous benefit and enjoyment that was gained from all of these supporters, the person of Robert Stern was of particular importance in the creation of a book that would deal with Hegel’s thinking and our own. His generous and reflective friendship was beyond account and saw me through the deepest and most difficult sections of the work—the chapters on Hegel’s logical and political thought—where few are able or willing to tread. Copyrighted material - provided by Taylor & Francis Eric Goodfield. American University Beirut. 23/09/2014 Introduction For over 150 years Hegel’s ghost has haunted theoretical understanding and practice. His opponents first, and later his defenders, have equally defined their programs against and in terms of his. In this way modern political theorizing has been both situated and displaced by his own. The dialectics of Hegel’s reception, representation as well as rejection, is a mirror in which our thinking is excep- tionally well reflected. My ultimate goal in this book is to make a case for the inherency and value of metaphysical questions and thinking for contemporary political theory. In order to do so, I rethink the relation of G.W.F. Hegel’s politics to his metaphysics in light of the controversy this issue has inspired over the last century. I read Hegel’s devotion to fundamental metaphysical problems as both useful and necessary to the progression of contemporary political thought. Recognition of the inseparability of core metaphysical and political questions amounts to a con- troversial approach on at least two counts. In the first place, it responds to a widespread prejudice in Anglo-American political theory that often dismisses the possibility of the practical and ethical import of the consideration of funda- mental philosophical and metaphysical questions. In the second, it calls for exchange across the theoretical gulf that often stands between post-metaphysical, analytical and empirically oriented political thought and a philosophical tradition that informs continental political thought and critique. To these