No More Learning

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The civilizations that today have acquired it by contagion and uni- versalisation from a civilization that discovered it. Even back in his time, Hegel claimed:
Whole continents, Africa and the Orient, never had that idea and they still do not have it. The Greeks and the Romans, Plato and Aristotle and some Stoics did not have it. On the contrary, they just thought that man was really free depending on birth (as an Athenian citizen, Spartan, and so on) or by resolution of character or by education or by philosophy (the wise man is free even if he is made slave and gets shackled). Such idea was born by means of Christianity according to which the individual as such has an infinite value because he is object and end of God's love and is destined to have an absolute relationship with God as Spirit and to be inhabited by the Spirit, which means that by essence he is destined to supreme freedom. When within religion man acknowledges as his own essence the relation- ship with the Absolute Spirit, when entering the scope of mundane existence he also acknowledges that the divine Spirit is the substance of the State, family, etc. (EPW no. 482 A).
There is no historical objectivity in the political scientist that refuses to recognize that the idea of infinite dignity of all men is recent, con- sidering that the human race exists since half a million years ago. There is no objectivity if he refuses to acknowledge that the idea has been spread recently from one region of the planet, exactly in the same way as anthropologists have tracked the historical local origin of certain discoveries that have become univesal, and they do not build up their hopes on some kind of spontaneous generation all over the Earth. The wheel, for example, was never discovered by Native Americans and they knew it by the diffusion which originated somewhere else.
Actually, the idea we are dealing with commenced existing for the first time in Europe, and its birth was due to the conviction that Jesus Christ, true God, had suffered and died for all men and it was because of this that it was discovered that everyone has infinite dignity.
Subjectivity --regarding its infinite value-- has suppressed every external difference, of dominion, of power, of social rank, even of sex and wealth. Before God all men are equal. This presents for the first time here and now unto consciousness, through the reflection and negativity of the infinite suf- fering of love. It is there that possibility resides, the root of a truly universal Right, which is the realization of freedom(PR III 178s).
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It is, by the way, in this moment when the West discovered too that man by nature is not as he should be, since what man really is only in the Man-Christ had it been realized, in a total commitment for everyone's good. But there is nothing as forceful and revolutionary as the persua- sion that one is not as one should be. This persuasion made the West unbearably upset with itself, it moved it in such way that the remain- der cultures, in comparison with it are quite, static and inert. The West has set the whole world in motion.
We are now able to answer our old question. We said that not only historically but also logically, democracy supposes everyone's infinite dignity. The reason of being of democracy is the infinite dignity of everyone. Consequently, a democratic decision cannot condemn any- one to slavery. It would be a contradiction to itself and to undermine the only logical foundation that underlies it.
We are supposing, of course, that political thought pertains also to rationality. We are supposing that when we demand democracy and reject totalitarianism and dictatorship we do it rationally and not for aestheticism or whim or taste or strength, but because of reason. We are supposing that the demand of democracy has to demonstrate to be with fundament before those (and they really are out there) who prefer dictatorship and totalitarianism. It is not about oratory or poetry or strength, but of demonstration and objectivity. If the demand for de- mocracy were not rationally justified, democracy and totalitarianism or slavery would be the same.
And well, the justification is that all human beings are subjects and not objects, which is a way of claiming that they have infinite dignity. Were not everyone to decide their own concerning issues, the few de- ciders would be treating the rest of the population as objects and not as subjects. Not only historically, but also logically democracy, presup- poses a strict iusnaturalism.
How desirable it would be that the banal left-wing critique of 'for- mal democracy' at least understood it first considering its true consis- tency and its reasons, and only after that criticized knowing what it is about. If means of production are private property, the main economic decisions of the country are being made by a few individuals, who are treating the rest of the population as objects and not as subjects. Likewise, since there is no objective foundation (supply and demand is not) for assessing differently the different kinds of work that are necessary for society, it would be violating the equality and dignity to
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condemn the executers of certain kinds of work to an inferior way of life having them committed no crime. (It is another issue if I perform wrong my trade: that does deserve a sanction). One can even suspect intellectual dishonesty in the silence kept by liberals regarding the only possible justification of democracy, since that justification logically im- poses conclusions incompatible with capitalism and with any classist society. On the other side, the revolutionary movement, if it is about ratio- nality and not caprice, can not lay aside the infinite dignity of all human beings, for this is the only possible justification for their struggle.
Hegel denounces the incongruence of democrats that refuse to go to the rational bottom, to the ultimate reason of democracy's necessity: "Today we see the world full of the principle of freedom, and the latter specially related with the constitution of the State; these principles are true, but influenced by formalism they are mere prejudices because knowledge never gets to their ultimate reason" (PR I 309).
"The course that is in the grip of abstraction is liberalism, which is always beaten by the concrete and always goes bankrupt with the con- crete" (WG 925).
If it really is reason responsible of discovering these principles, it proves them so far as they are true and they do not remain purely formal, taking them to the knowledge of absolute truth, which is object only of philosophy. But Philosophy must get to the ultimate analysis, since if knowledge does not complete in itself, it is exposed to the unilaterality of formalism; but if it reaches the ultimate reason it reaches what can be considered supreme, it reaches God (PR I 309).
If liberals (and left-wings) realized how comical they look cau- tiously silencing the only possible justification of the demand of equality among men, sheltering at the irrational formalism that says 'we de- mand equality and democracy because we want to', political science will not be reduced nowadays to the enunciation of certain prejudices confronted with certain other prejudices.
Fortunately there is, as Hegel says, "the Right of the Absolute Spirit" (VG 147) and history laughs at the face of relativists and skeptics. The belief that every human being has infinite dignity has spread though the whole world. The essence of true civilization has won the battle against its rivals; it is still necessary to structure and articulate it in lots of places and in lots of aspects, but no one can doubt that we
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are heading towards it. "We should consider the Right of the Spirit of the world against the States. " (VG 148). This is why Hegel told us that liberalism is in the grip of abstraction and the lack of content and always goes bankrupt with the concrete. The conviction of the infinite dignity of every human being, born in fact from the meditation of Jesus Christ's passion and death is an inalienable conquest of humanity.
The semi-anonym reviewer Z. C. (1822) of Hegel's legal philosophy considered inappropriate that in a treatise on Right as the realization of freedom Hegel meddled with universal history. With extreme naivete? , Z. C. asked: What does freedom care about universal history? (cf. Rie- del ed. I 1975, 117)
On the margin notes Hegel points out afterwards, not without mockery: "Hugo is amazed that universal history is discussed along with the State. " (Rph, Notiz zu no. 33)
In fact, only legal positivism and liberal formalism could come up with the simplicity of making static and timeless state science. There might be an underlying conviction, which I have already refuted (VI, 1), that man is free by nature and not by the tough work of history.
For Hegel there is no sovereignty that can stop the advance of the Spirit of the world. Regarding a savage tribe, a horde of barbarians that enslave and kill each other, he tells us: "their autonomy, as merely formal and lacking objective rights and firm rationality, is not sover- eignty" (Rph no. 349).
It is a political and legal topic of enormous relevance and its intrinsic logic is the same that we saw regarding our question about democracy. Skepticism about the Hegelian Spirit of the world has worked here too as a pretext for neglecting an extremely actual and rationally irrefutable message. The existence of a State can only be justified if that State is the concrete realization of ethics and justice; the existence of a govern- ment is justified if it is indeed an instrument for that realization, since a man that rules over his fellow men evidently requires a justification. When international pressures demand that inside the country persons be treated as persons, what they demand is that the State be a State. It lacks of every rational support the government that gets shocked by those demands crying: interference! Its own authority does not exist if it does not consist in making that personas get treated like persons.
The principle of no intervention is positivist, and I demonstrated (VI, 3) that positivism is false. When someone says 'this is a State' or 'this is the government', he does not make an empirical observation but a
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moral judgment (true or false), since it is saying that certain set of men ought to proceed in such and such ways. But if the structure and the functioning of that certain set of men are violating human dignity, it is false that they ought to be obeyed and therefore it is false that there is State or government.
A government that systematically impedes the advancement of man towards justice and freedom is automatically illegitimate, is a shear of outlaws. History laughs in the face of positivists that claim that the world legitimacy has no meaning or that its meaning can be reduce to the possession of the necessary force in order to maintain certain 'order'. To affirm that there is order is a moral judgment, not an empirical obser- vation. Hence, the positivist cannot reject the idea of legitimacy saying that it implies a moral judgment. Today everyone considers not only licit but mandatory pressing and interfering with the South African apartheid, despite that Peter Botha has the force to keep the population subjected. The UN General Assembly has just interfered nothing less than with the South African elections, rejecting almost by unanimity the results of municipal elections. Today everyone considers licit 'meddling' with the Chilean internal affairs and international pressures have forced in fact Pinochet to recognize his defeat by the supporters of the 'no'. If Hitler came back, the other countries would know they are not just authorized but obliged to interfere in defense of the German people. "The Right of the Absolute Spirit" (VG 147) demonstrates that it is over and above the Rights of nations, it scoffs at the anachronistic term called sovereignty.
International organizations just pretend to be positivists feigning that different governments actually "give their consent" for intervention due to the signing of international treatises. In fact, the health organization, for example, makes reports for all countries, even for those that have not sign anything and even reports on issues that are not mentioned in such treatises. Actually, smallpox has been almost eradicated de- spite the protests of some countries for the WHO's intervention in their territories. International organizations for education, food, childhood, work, and specially human rights 'intervene' all the same. Interferences exist, and its existence is good, and if only they were more vehement. That 'interference' does not have today a lot of means for self-affirming beyond condemnatory world opinion; this does not mean that it would not use them if it could.
The real danger of superpowers distorting Absolute Spirit in favor of imperialist ends contrary to world spread dignity and equality does
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not turn a true proposition into a false one. When we hear pain and panic cries at our neighbor's house we have the right and duty of getting in and stop a murder. The possibility that some perverted minds in- terpret and twist this right for other ends does not eliminate this right. If someone asks, what can guaranties that we do not get misinterpreted, we just answer that nobody. But rights and duties exist even if no one guaranties them.
It is blatantly obvious that it is not just for Mexicans the obligation to judge Mexico's affairs. Judging the truth or falsity of a proposition cor- responds to any person endowed with reason and disposed for study- ing the issue with objectivity.
I suppose that other countries (perhaps not so many) have an equivalent for the Mexican Constitutional article number 33, second paragraph, according to which "foreigners could by no means inter- fere with the country's political issues". Jurists evidently have been too passionate when dealing with the rhetorical subject of sovereignty since they have not seen that every similar legal text is null and void for it is a praeceptum de re impossibili. The following question should be enough: what is exactly prohibited by such precept? Obviously that foreigners influence Mexican national political issues. So, even interna- tional news influence national politics, as public opinion polls and elec- toral outcomes demonstrates in developed countries. Hence, Hertzian waves should be prohibited over the national airspace or we should destroy every single radio and TV set along with the international section of every newspaper and magazine, as well as forbidding inter- national travels both inbound and outbound.
Particularly, it should be prohibited importing and translating books as well as the spreading of their ideas since anything influence politics more than ideas. Edi- tors, translators and university teachers turn out to be infringing the aforementioned precept because they allow foreign thinkers to influ- ence the political affairs of the country. The whole issue is ludicrous. If sovereignty lies on such precept, worst for it. Two centuries ago Hegel asserted that such a rhetorical vacuity was impotent against the ad- vance of history's reason.
This is precisely why he held that "the rational is real" (Rph xix), i. e. , that the rational ends up imposing sooner or later in the world, because "it is not as impotent as for ought to be and not being real. " (EPW no. 6 A) I was said that the conviction in the fact that every human being has infinite dignity has been extended to the whole world and all
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peoples appeal essentially to it. So this is what is rational, the most rational that is and that it could be. "In contrast with all this, which is by itself and for itself the universal and substantial, everything else is subordinate and works as mere means. " (VG 87)
The second half, "and the real is rational" (Rph xix) has provoked a sensational scandal among political thinkers and moralists. Against it they allude to alleged irrational empirical facts. Hegel replies: "Who is not cleaver enough to see that around him lots of things are not as they should be? " (EPW no. 6 A) The objectors believe that Hegel was some kind of fool unable to see what they see. On the contrary, they should wonder if they have actually understood Hegel's phrase. But "a sensi- ble consideration of the world distinguishes, throughout the vast realm of interior and exterior existence, what is a mere apparent, transitory and insignificant phenomenon, from what in itself deserves to be called reality" (EPW no. 6).
The objectors overlook that it is about universal history. If the abstract intellect moors to its conceptual stiffness, even the flight of a fly is real: but since when a merely anecdotic, fortuitous and inconsequential event deserves to be called 'historic reality'? Beside all this, there is the fact that the objectors cannot define 'real', which is the most ludicrous thing of all this issue.
Hegel's renowned phrase also makes sense in the epistemological setting of the preceding chapters. True reality, from which the concept of 'real' is originally extracted, is reason, spirit (cf. III, 3); in this sense the rational is the more real that exists. On the other hand, it is just from the concepts of reason that we have access to reality; sensibility does not apprehends being. "No sooner man speaks; there is already a concept there" (GP I 336). In this sense, whatever is real for us is auto- matically rational.
A last word should be said in this fourth section. A good deal of historians of political ideas have been unable to understand the true common denominator of every iusnaturalist. Plato, e. g. , is a iusnatu- ralist and does not appeal to nature but to eternal ideas of good and evil. Descartes is too a iusnaturalist and he does not appeal to nature but to innate ideas of good and evil. Also Sua? rez too, but his criterion is reason, not the whole human nature. Obviously, for iusnaturalism it should be understood the following: the fair or unfair, good or evil character of an action does not depend on any positive law. Every iusnaturalism shares this unique thesis; the name 'iusnaturalism' is
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completely accessory. The name produces equivocation, as if Right and morals have anything to do with nature, but it is too late to coin a new name since no one would pay attention to me.
Now, since Hegel's attack against natural is implacable, some su- perficial authors have believed that Hegel rejected iusnaturalism. They overlook that Hegel, while professing vehemently the content, he was aware of its name inadequacy and actually said where this inadequacy came from: "Those that cannot reach the universal take what is by itself to be something natural, just as they take the necessary elements of Spirit to be innate ideas. " (GP II 107; my emphasis)
The science of fundamental concepts of Right has been called natural Right, as if there was a Right that could concern man because of nature, and a Right, different from the latter, that originates in society; in the sense that society had to sacrifice natural Right as the true one. But in fact, [. . . ] society is the suppression of the unilaterality of such principle and the true realiza- tion of it (NH 60s; my emphasis).
The expression natural Right, which has been common within the philo- sophical doctrine of Right, leads to the ambiguity of whether Right exists naturally and immediately or if it is determined by the nature of the thing, i. e. , by the concept. The former was the common usage and with it was created the fictitious state of nature in which natural Right would prevail. While, on the contrary, the condition of society and State would demand and bring with it a limitation of freedom and a sacrifice of natural rights. When the truth is that Right and all its decisions are founded only on free person- hood, a self-determination which is rather the contrary of determination by nature (EPW no. 502 A).
It could not be said clearer that Hegel champions the true content of natural Right ("true realization of it"), but obliterating the equivo- cation of the expression; and also being quite aware of the fact that objective rights exist only in virtue that man is person, self-determi- nation, which is achieved only thanks to intersubjectivity, society, as I have said (III, 7). It is about, Hegel says, "laws and institutions that exist by themselves and for themselves" (Rph no. 144). When I was talking about ethics I alluded to them and I said that they are innumerable, they are imperatives such as "You shall not murder", "you shall not deceive", etc. , which are necessary for life in common.
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We have a system of ethical relations; these are duties and are within a system; every determination in place, subordinated one to other and the higher rules over the rest. This is how consciousness, which is higher than Stoic freedom, is obliged; determinations are secured to the Spirit; objective determinations called duties are kept as state of rights and they are valid in consciousness as firm determinations (GP II 295).
Those are the determinations that do not depend on any authority legislating or not, because the existence itself of society and persons requires them. The prototype of such contents is the small set of laws called the Decalogue: "The Universal Law was all the time the Ten Commandments," (Rph no. 216 Z) "the Ten Commandments which are the fundamental, universal, ethic and legal determinations of legis- lation and morality. " (PR II, II 96)
Hegel highlights the iusnaturalist character of the innumerable set of duties and laws we are dealing with, i. e. , its independence from any positive legislator, when discussing something about constitutions: "The mere existence of a people [. . . ] presupposes a constitution, an organic condition, an ordered life of the people itself" (NH 530). This is why Hegel finds ludicrous the question that asks for the maker of a constitution: "It is easy to put forward the question: Who should make the constitution? It seems a clear question, but when we look closer, it shows immediately senseless. This is so because it presupposes that there is no constitution and that, hence, we only have an atomistic collec- tion of individuals. " (Rph no. 273 A) "Great laws, those properly signifi- cant, already exist; whatever is missing is insignificant" (WG 623).
"A constitution is not something merely done; is the effort of centu- ries and the idea and consciousness of the rational inasmuch as it has developed by a people" (Rph no. 274 Z).
Regarding the set of indispensable duties and institutions Hegel says: "Those institutions conforms the constitution, i. e. , rationality de- veloped and realized in the particular, and that is why they are sustain of the State" (Rph no. 265).
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. ).