No More Learning

The content of iusnaturalism is present not only in the Hegelian sys- tem: it is the content of the system itself and it is devoid of the myth of natural man which made it vulnerable. If Hegel claims that the State is end in itself, it is because the State consists of the set of my neighbors: "The reality of State is the self-conscious individuals," (WL II 410) "the essence of the State is the alive ethical" (VG 112).
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Someone could say that the State is end in itself and that citizens are its means. But here the means-end relationship is absolutely inappropriate. The State is not something abstract, in front of the citizens. These are rather its constituents as in organic life, where no member is an end in itself and none is means either (VG 112).
"[. . . ] individuals have something absolutely unsubordinated, some- thing that is in itself eternal and divine [. . . ] they are part of the end of reason itself, therefore they are ends in themselves [. . . ] Man is an end in itself only due to the divine that is within him" (VG 106).
"Particular interest should not be ruled out and much least re- pressed, but harmonized with the universal, so that both it and the universal can be preserved" (Rph no. 261 A).
5. famiLy, Society, State
Every confusion and debate about the relationship between civil society and State fade away once we consider that the State is not the government but "the State in itself and by itself is the set of the ethical," (Rph no. 258 Z), "the universe of the ethical" (Rph xxii).
In so far as they surpass animality and constitute a human phenome- non, i. e. , an ethical phenomenon, family and civil society are part of such universe of the ethical which is the State. Just as morality and Right are true because of their ethicity and only that is the true morality and the true Right, so family and society are true because of the State and only in it they are true family and true society. "Every relation that due to form is private Right, are conceptually part of the State" (WG 917).
In civil society: "agents have in their activity finite ends, particular interests; but they also know and think. Therefore the content of their ends is pervaded by essential and universal determinations of Right, of duty, of the good. The mere desire, savagery and coarseness of will are left out of the stage and scope of universal history" (VG 95).
Even within the most basic economical relation --apparently pure egoism and the search of own benefits- there is and operating ethical relation: at least the ones required for communication through lan- guage (Cf. VI, 3), the one of not attacking, not fooling and 'keeping one's word'. A minimum degree of trust and gullibility is essentially required. Transactions are not between two savages carrying spears
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that with their free hand give and receive the object of trade. The day laborer is not paid after each stroke of their shovel; he has to trust and believe in his employer's word all day long. Workers are not paid every hour and not even every day; it is not give-and-take between belligerent parties. The entrepreneur believes too in the worker's im- plicit word that he wants to work and not to destroy the means of pro- duction. Without the ethical there would not be any collaboration or coexistence, without the State there would not be society.
Abstractly speaking, civil society is distinguished from the State, since "within civil society everyone is an end for his/herself and everything else is nothing" (Rph no. 182 Z), in civil society "all the waves of pas- sion overflow" (ibid. ).
Nevertheless, in reality civil society and the State are the same, since without the warp of the ethical, i. e. , the State, without the entwine- ment of individuals by duties and rights, civil society would scatter, would stop existing, it would not be society. "Particularity gives the impression to subsist by itself, but it is supported and maintained by the whole" (Rph no. 270 Z).
This was showed perfectly clear by Plato (Rep II 361C; Laws VII 790B; 793B) and Aristotle almost twenty five centuries ago. Modern man should not be amazed that Hegel claims the same; thing are just like that. For example, Aristotle remarks: "In every association there is some Right;" (EthNic VIII, ix 1) from which follows that "it seems that every association are part of the State association. " (Ibid 6) And it is what I was saying: as far as they constitute a human phenomenon and not a merely animal one, family and society are parts of the State.
Hegel puts it as follows: "In reality it is rather the State absolutely the first; only within it family develops in civil society; it is the idea itself of State which divides into these two elements" (Rph no. 256 A).
"The State is the self-conscious ethical substance--the unification of the principle of family and civil society" (EPW no. 535).
I have just mentioned why civil society, which is in the abstract a war of all against all and the mere quest of own benefits, in the concrete requires duties and rights to exist. This explains why Hegel claims: "Wherever there is civil society there is State [. . . ]. " (EPW no. 527 A). And also: "Civil society [. . . ] presupposes the State, it needs it existence in order to survive" (Rph no. 182 Z).
Regarding family it might seem prima facie that such relation is not so obvious. But, if it is not an animal family, it is undeniable that among
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its members there are duties and rights and that it is in such ethical relation that the consistency of family as such really lies. I have already said (VI, 2 fine) that the relation between husband and wife is some- thing quite superior to mere sexual instinct, and it is self-evident that if such tie were just sexual, the relation would not be stable nor conjugal society would properly exist. It is also evident that the duty of feeding, educating and looking after the children demands from the parents lots of things which cannot be in any sense reduced to the search of their own benefit. "It is through family that mans gets inside society, thanks to the reciprocal relation of social dependency, and this tie is ethical" (WG 888). Aristotle claims: "the State is essentially prior to household (oiki? a) and even to each one of us" (Pol I 1253a19).
It does not matter that marriage has to do with love and sentiment; it is distinguished from the natural sensation of love, since it recognizes well- known duties independent from it even when love is gone. The concept and awareness of the substantiality of marital live [. . . ] constitutes the beginning of the State as a realization of the rational and free will (A? sth II 496).
There is no need to insist more after the accurate analysis of Aris- totle: in every human group a relation of justice takes part, and hence every group is part of the State. If this scandalizes some theoreticians it is because, infected with legal positivism, they believe it has something to do with the government; it is because they imagine that there are no duties and rights until they are in black and white and positively decreed by some authority.
In fact, "the State [. . . ] is alive in so far as its two components --family and civil society-- are developed within it. The laws that govern these components are institutions of rationality that shine in them" (Rph no. 263 Z).
"Life of civil society constitutes the ground of duty; individuals have their vocation pointed out, hence their duty is pointed out; their morality consists in behaving according to it" (VG 95).
Hegel does not admit that State is reduced to civil society (cf. Rph no. 182 Z), i. e. , that a State is conceived following the abstract con- cept of civil society, whose content is the quest of one's own benefit and having each one as an end in itself. Plato and Aristotle already insisted in the fact that the State is not a means for the satisfaction of material necessities; the value of the State is not merely instrumental.
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Such a conception of the State would mingle it with a private company or a military alliance. Holding that the State is a means would be pure and sheer immorality since the State is my fellowmen. Intersub- jectivity and bonds among people is an end in itself, not means for something else:
Unification as such is itself the true content and end, and the fate of indi- viduals is to realize a universal life; this, which constitutes the substantially and universally valid, constitutes both the starting point and the upshot of any other particular desire or activity or behavior (Rph no. 258 A).
"The State is not one of those unions whimsically decided by indi- viduals" (GP III 307).
Theoreticians like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau explain the ori- gin of the State by means of a contract, they never understood that the State essentially precedes man, but they never understood that the State makes the man, not vice versa. They never understood that by nature man would be animal and not man, they did not even under- stood that language, which is required for making the contract, is al- ready a result of the organic intersubjectivity called State and it is even a constitutive part of the it.
"The highest duty of an individual is to be member of the State;" (Rph no. 258); "only from a spiritless perspective the State could be something merely finite" (Rph no. 270 Z).
"Today is known that the ethical and fair in the State is also the di- vine and God's commandment; and regarding its content there I nothing higher or holier" (WG 888). The State is an end.
Let us repeat it: the distinction between civil society and the State is abstract. In concrete reality civil society is identified with the State: "Wherever there is civil society there is State [. . . ]" (EPW no. 527 A).
Now, it would be a mistake to believe that this depends on the defi- nitions each one wants to come up with. The work of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel are science, not literature. They explain how things are.
On one hand, I showed (VI, 4) that the existence of the State does not depend on the existence of a government or on the existence of posi- tive laws, but, on the contrary, it is presupposed for government and positive legislation can exist. Therefore, the State consists on the set of duties and rights that tie persons or, if one prefers, on a set of persons in so far as they are tied by duties and rights.
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On the other hand, a mere cluster of individuals is not a society, and the intertwinement by mere economic relations or transactions is no way enough for constituting a society. For example, the inhabitants of Mexico's Northern borderline zone have greater economic rela- tions with Americans than with Mexicans, but they still form part of Mexican civil society. Aristotle already defended this: Etruscans and Carthaginians which make continuous economic transactions among them would be one and the same society. (Pol III 1280a31ss).
Material self-sufficiency is neither enough nor required in order to constitute a society, since nowadays almost no society is self-sufficient. Racial, linguistic or moral homogeneity cannot be imagined as the essential trait of a civil society or a State; it would be too easy to refute through facts. Territorial unity, whatever that means, cannot be postulated as an essential trait either; the existence of Pakistan refutes it. But, more importantly, one cannot make sense of the expression 'territorial unity': even when divided by the sea or the mountains, persons can form part of the same civil society. Mexico and the Philippines demonstrate it. Saying that people should not cross over a territory pertaining to an- other civil society would be a definition where the definiendum appears in the definiens making it a circular definition that defines nothing.
No single physical datum is useful for corroborating the existence of civil society. Therefore, it is impossible to define civil society except as a set of persons intertwined by specific duties and rights. And that is the definition of State.
6. two iSSueS about humanity
I will talk about a theological and an epistemological issue quite close related with what I have said in the present chapter as to leave them aside.
It could be thought that the idea of salvation does not concern us [philoso- phers], because salvation is a future end, one of the afterlife. But then, the existence in this life would be just a preparation for that end. [. . . ] Individu- als would have no alternative but to see as a mere means whatever leads them to salvation. But things are absolutely not like this, we should defi- nitely rather conceive it as the absolute. Now, according to religion the end --both the natural existence and the spiritual activity-- is God's glorification.
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And, indeed, that is the most praiseworthy end of spirit and history. [. . . ] The end of spirit is to achieve consciousness of the Absolute, in such a way that this consciousness is the only truth and everything is arranged according to it, so that it is what reigns and has reigned in universal his- tory. To know this as a matter of fact is what is called praise God or glorify the truth (VG 181s).
There cannot be two ends in the proper sense of the word. When the mind focuses on one, the other one turns into means. To call 'sub- ordinated end' something that really is means would be a linguistic chicanery with no content, since subordination consists precisely in it being means. But a philosophy that goes deep into morality cannot ac- cept that the State and universal history become means, because both the State and history are my fellowmen, the set of my fellowmen.
I explained (VI, 2) that the 'other' end, which theologians have in- vented despite it contradicts the Bible, is simply impossible.
Now, on that other end is based the notion of supernatural: super- natural is defined as whatever has to do with that other end.
If anything has been demonstrated in the previous pages is that man as man, precisely in as much as it differs from animals, has no nature. But then the idea of something supernatural for man is based on a false supposition: its content pretends to be something in contrast with man's nature, something that is over and above what is natural in man. But what is natural in man is not human but animal, man as such is always over and above and in contrast with what is natural, if not he would not be man.
We discussed (VI, 1) that naturalness is egoism, and sin consists in "deepening-on-self in nature", and every man commits that sin in his first free action. Every man needs irreplaceably divine assistance, divine imperative appeal, for being man and not animal. Abstract theology, on the contrary, makes the original sin to consist in the lack of a 'super- natural' grace which is not required for being man. Such conception in untenable, since it can only be called sin the lack of whatever man ought to be.
Such a theology, in the end, attributes to God a sin which pertains to man, since man is not liable for lacking such blessed supernatural grace. What really happens is that theologians do not accept the origi- nal sin; they do not admit that man is evil from the first moment. The Jahwist undoubtedly would say to them: Abandon all excuses and
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self-justifications, the truth is that I sinned of egoism from the first mo- ment, I am the sinner; I deepened voluntarily my animality; it is not that such sin is attributed to me, but I rather personally committed it myself.
If it was not tragic for the historical consequences it has had, what happens with such theology would be funny: it turns out humanity needs Christ only to be able to convince God to stop attributing to us a sin that we did not commit but that God fancied to attribute to us.
The reader might allow me the following incidental remark that does not pretend to point out the cause of this theology: capitalism has been benefited by theologians' consideration that natural egoism is not sinful, the search of one's own benefit. Such egoism is what capitalism uses as the engine of the whole system, and justifies it based on its pre- sumed lack of culpability.
In one of the deepest ever written paragraphs, Hegel calls pantheism the traditional denial of the original sin:
If man is God immediately, i. e. , if as an individual he considers himself God, that is pantheism. It is coherent with this the opinion that man is good by nature, that as an individual he is affirmative [. . . ] This is why it has been said of such self that God is not within him nor he is within God, and that is has to do with God just in an extrinsic fashion (PR I 255).
In other words: if I am not evil, I am the true God; I do not need God for anything. If my self am self-sustained, that is, if my self-conscious- ness gets to exist without God's intervention, I am not a creature, I am God.
It is worth noticing that still during the fifth century the Church taught that grace and divine assistance are required for fulfilling the commandments, which means in order that man can truly be man. (See Denzinger 137-138). Under this conception, faithful to the Scripture, grace is not conducive to a 'supernatural' end.
Theology, like other particular and specialized disciplines, did not bother to criticize its own concepts and to ascertain if they have meaning or not (cf. II, 7 initio). Human nature would be the same as human essence, but as a principle of activity, not as a principle of being. It is an explicative concept, not a descriptive one. But I have already established (V, 4) that those explicative words, specially 'essence', are just tautologies and smokes and mirrors. Regarding man, however, the
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argument against an alleged explicative factor has more weight, since man's activities and actions would not be self-determined, they would not be free, but determined by human nature. If it is a free act, any other factor but itself can explain it. And if nature does not fulfill any explica- tive function, it does not fulfill any function and it is idle, it is a concept lacking content.
Someone might rebut: human nature influence, it does not deter- mine. I answer: if it only influences, it is something exterior, since lots of thing influence, e. g. , what we see, hear, feel, etc. What is natural in man is the animality, but man is man only in so far it is free from nature; such nature is not man's nature, but animal's. The concept of human nature is incompatible with free will, with the concept of spirit.
They might say that for human nature one should understand 'what is characteristic of man'. But what is characteristic of man is being spirit, and he shares that with God, which is precisely what theologians would like to contrast with man's nature and hence speak of the 'supernatu- ral'. And the only meaning that such an adjective can really have is what cannot exist because of natural causes. But that is what man is, the spirit. "Only the spirit is the absolute interruption of nature; only it is the true miracle against the course of nature, what is really affirma- tive against it" (EGP 176).
Notice that the moral use of the expression 'human nature' is quite widespread and it has nothing to do with the ontological use or mean- ing that I have contested. Since they still do not understand that the im- perative emerges from the infinite dignity of the neighbor and hence the criterion is evaluating if an action treats the neighbor as a subject or as an object, there are moralists that use as criterion of morality the confor- mity or not with the alleged human nature. Evidently there is Rousseau in the middle, since it is supposed that what is natural in man is good.
Even if we can do without every supposition, it is time to denounce the deep immorality of such a moral criterion, regardless of how wide- spread it is among moralists and theologians. There are natural ten- dencies towards incest, there is a natural tendency towards egoism, there is a natural tendency towards aggression, irresponsibility, sloth, cowardice, infidelity, etc. Founding morality in nature is one of the most resounding mistakes ever made. It is tantamount to affirming an obligation to resemble animals.
The epistemological question concerns all human sciences, histori- ography included. It would be interesting to know how people within
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these disciplines would react if told that their object of study, man, is not an empirical datum. Most of the time, of course, we immediately intuit if the object that we have in front of us is a human being or not. But this is not the question; the real question is: How do we intuit it? What kind of knowledge is it? Is that intuition an empirical perception or rather intellectual knowledge?
It is not a fact perceived through the senses that the body in front of us possesses thought. As Hegel remarks, "only the spirit perceives the spirit" (EGP 176). We know that the object is a human being only when we acknowledge its capacity to think. "Everything that is human is such only in so far there is operating thought in there, and outer look can be anyhow; it is human only to the extent it possesses thought" (EGP 81).
In everything human the active part is thinking, the thought. The animal lives too, just like man has needs, feelings, etc. If there is a distinction be- tween man and animal, the feeling has to be human, not animal, i. e. , there has to be a thought involved [. . . ]. In close inspection, we conclude that thinking is not a particular trait, some special capacity, it rather is what is essential, the universal that produces everything else (EGP 82).
A blind person is able to distinguish when he is dealing with a hu- man and when not. Hence, it is not visual data which allow us to iden- tify a man. A deaf personal is able too to make the distinction. Hence, it is not sound which make us confirm the existence of a man.
It might be convenient to recall the testimony of a good anthro- pologist, Leslie White: "It is the symbol which transforms an infant of Homo sapiens into a human being; deaf mutes who grow up without the use of symbols are not human beings. " (1964, 41) "A baby is not a human until he begins to symbol" (ibid. 52). The existence of a symbol is something empirically indemonstrable. One can see certain physi- cal data, hear certain sound, but we do not see, nor listen that such material thing represents something; it is a relation that we can only grasp with our understanding. Therefore, the fact that the body we have in front of us is using symbols is not an empirical datum but fact perceived by reason. It is only then when we know that the body is a human being.
It amazes me that anthropologists do not even seem to suspect what the epistemological implications are of the procedure by which --based
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on common sense certainties-- (they think) they learn a posteriori what is man. According to them, every behavior, configuration and institu- tion man has or have had constitutes an a posterior datum. It is from this datum that, by whole induction, one should figure out what is man. But, how do they know which behaviors are human and which are not. According to which criterion should they be included or excluded from the set? They will say: it is enough that man has them. But how can they determine that is man an organism with certain behavior? Evidently because before the experimental inquiry they already possess a criterion for determining which bodies are men and which not. Hence, it is absolutely false that experimental inquiry teaches them what man is, since they knew it beforehand.