Ping Pong 31: The End of History (Again)
The last rant ended with a deep problem. In Britain two rather different accounts of collective life were formed. Each appeared valid, and yet it felt unlikely they both could be true or both could be reconciled with one another. The one pitched communal life in terms of a construction of the future in which everyone took a part, whilst the other assumed that collectivity was simply a given, and then examined the problems of inhabiting this given. However the very viability of each account was essentially a provocation to philosophy, a provocation which Hegel responded to.
Hegel no doubt needs to be seen as one of the very great synthesisers of philosophy. He sought to gather together in a single system almost all the strands of though that have been considered separately within this series on Collectivity and Justice. All the points which I have examined, would more properly be understood as part of a single apex, which culminated with the Post-Enlightenment Post-Napoleonic, world of Hegel (or even with Hegel himself). It is so easy from our position to lampoon such an egocentric model, and yet to do so is to ignore actually what is so useful in Hegel’s account. In particular, it is to ignore the power of Hegel’s understanding of the nature of Dialectics. Hegel himself spread his understanding over three major works. The first considered the nature of dialectics in terms of human thought, the next human history, and the final one, human political states. In this Rant I will consider in some detail the first and the last of these three dimensions, and reserve Human History for the following Rant.
What then is a dialectic? At its core the notion of the dialectic has two rather profound (although quite distinct) observations.
Firstly, it is impossible for an idea to stand alone. On the contrary, every idea is caught in a shifting kaleidoscope of other ideas, and other thoughts, from which it cannot be simple torn. These thoughts then have a history of their own. They come into being at a certain time, and fade into other thoughts at other times. Therefore to live in nineteen fifties’ Britain and to live now are two different affairs. The entire way that one begins to tackle a problem is different. Britain of the nineteen fifties got to nationalise everything apart from the banks (and therefore the hub of capitalism); while we now get to nationalise the banks, while apparently privatising everything else…
Moreover Hegel suggests that there is a natural dynamic to this system. Ideas that appear opposed, are not truly opposed, and this is so for two reasons. On the one hand each, and relatively simply, each element of the system has its natural opposition. Thought therefore, devolved into making contrasts, such as capitalism and communism, freedom and oppression, the free world and the terrorist world, bad and worse. The list is absolutely endless. Each element of this system then proclaims that it is, through its contrast to the other element within it. Each is what it is, through studying the other. This study will warp that which undertakes it, so that from any point external to the system, each element within it will appear no more than just the reflection of the other; it will also appear in part complicitous to the other. The deep problem of the very notion of the war on terror is that those who fight it on the side of ‘freedom’ end up looking rather like terrorists. Or again, the difference between bankers who lose our money (and demand more) and robbers (or muggers) which were the initial reasons for which one had banks (as a secure place for money) is currently rather academic. Bankers have started to look like the worst sort of robbers. Systems of thought therefore, Hegel insists, breed strange complicities between opposed elements. Indeed their very opposition is itself a part of the system. It opens up communication that warps each in the direction of the other.
However the process is further destabilized, Hegel suggests, because each of these oppositions is not simply all that there is to any one element in that thought. On the contrary each element in the dialectic captures in its own particular constellation of thought, a dimension of ‘truth’ beyond the system in which it is caught; An element which is distinct to that idea itself, and which will outlast it. The problem then being, that within the context of the dialectic, two distinct truths are only allowed to relate to one another across conflict. It is then out of such conflicts that a new series of truths, which are capable of reconciling the point of the dialectics, and spanning their different truths, gradually emerges.
At one level such an account is very clearly a philosopher’s story. Philosophy is pock marked with rival schools of philosophy which were then synthesized by subsequent generations, and their different truths became subsumed into sharp synthetic focus with one another. However Hegel would certainly want to apply this account to a world beyond the school room. Take as an example, the complex conflicts between and inside political parties. Successful political parties appear currently to be the ones that can claim that they represent the modern synthetic position. Each party will therefore seek to portray the other, as somehow akin to what they were before they changed (before they moved to the synthetic position): the truths which the other party holds dear, then become a mere fragment in a greater history, a history that has been (partially) resolved by the ‘New’ party. This move has the deep advantage that not only does it allow one party to destroy the other through toleration, but also glorifies the very real conflicts internal to any one party. These conflicts are merely the natural effects of moving towards a synthetic position (which is only achieved through conflict). Capturing control of the single dialectic narrative becomes the key to modern political success…
Secondly, Hegel suggests that it follows that there are real tensions within any attempt on the part of an individual to be a simple Self. One never simply encounters a ‘me’ (or even a you) wandering down the street. On the contrary, what I am is endlessly constructed out of the complex interactions, and small conflicts within which any individual is constantly engaged. In this move, Hegel in effect seeks to reverse the collectivist problem; the problem for and of humanity is not that it is not collective but rather that it is! That is, that the Mind is born caught up with other experiences and only very painfully comes to learn that It is, and that Others also are. The implication (which Hegel certainly draws) is that as the set of possible experiences shifts and changes across time, what individuals are (or could be) also changes. To be an Ancient Roman is not to think in the same way, not to call the same thing an ‘I’ as it is to be a modern European.
Individuality will therefore pitch its home within a shifting series of likes and dislikes. However these likes and dislikes are of course far from stable, as they are linked by the rules of dialectics discussed above. Hence one will therefore have a tendency to implode, and the mind will need to perpetually face the problem of whether to defend what it is or embrace the change (wherever it might do). In this of course the current American Presidential election is almost totemic. The problem comes down to a very simple one. Does one entrench a viewpoint, and defend it (and its polar opposites) against the winds of change; or does one leap on a dialectic and hope for the best (and hope that it is actually going somewhere, and is not merely wind and bad air) - a genuine and very real problem for us all.
This problem is moreover, Hegel insists, caught up with another problem. The oppositions of a dialectic are far from simple. One might be very firmly on one side of a dialectic, and theoretically opposed to the other side. And yet if one’s position is declared the simple victor, one might all the same feel cheated. Take as an example the fate of Sir Ian Blair. On the one hand this was the fool who defended the shooting of an innocent man (and who has been immersed in endless scandals since). On the other hand, this was the man to reform the police service (which certainly needed it). As long as he was in place it was the fashionable view of the left to remember the former and forget the latter. However the minute that the powers that be (well, Johnson) undermined Blair’s position, the situation changed. One started to suspect that one had been caught up in a right wing witch hunt, and wonder confusedly whether one was on the ‘correct’ side of the dialectic.
The dialectic, and which dialectic one gives oneself to be a part of, are then rather unstable affairs. This fact leads of course immediately to the deep problem of what force is actually powerful enough to stabilize them? Hegel has an answer. A State (correctly understood). This resolution in the state needs to be understood on two levels. On the one hand the state presents a system of dialectics within which an individual can be fixed: Or better, in which the current series of dialectic exchanges can be located and interrelated within one another. In the above example Hegel might remark, one lurched from hating Blair to worrying about him, because one lurched from one dialectic set up to another. A properly arranged state will then mitigate this lurching. One will know where one is, when one espouses one set of prejudices, and what one is changing into, by thinking another series. States therefore matter, as they arrange ballets or fields within which the mental flip-flops that allow a self to be, can function.
On the other hand, the state ties any one individual to a community, and does so with the deepest bonds of trust. This trust is ultimately rooted in the fact that it is the state’s role to ensure (partially from the above process) that every individual remains happy within their own skins. A state’s power therefore lies in this claim to represent and ensure that individuals can be at all. It is no surprise therefore that states think the current global financial turmoil is a thing for them to solve. Or rather that they should seek to take as their own responsibility, the problem of trust. When all else fails, they appear to claim that one can trust them, to keep your money valuable and your lives viable.
What is so nuanced in this move is that this guarantee in the end only resolves on trust. Ireland certainly could not guarantee all the savings in all the bank accounts held in the country. They do not have the money (or at least would not) if the ‘crunch’ actually came. That is, they would either have to renege on the promise or go bankrupt (the tragic Icelandic solution), if their bluff was ever actually called.
But this is not really the point. The point is the guarantee. Or even more critically, the point is that a guarantee made by a state is rather different from that made by a bank. A bank is merely a promise of something (unspecified) - one can lose faith rather easily in that future therefore. A state embodies all the struggles of people getting up in the morning and working, within a system which necessarily has each individual doing specific tasks (and so not a mass of peasants). The power of the state to guarantee a currency, is therefore an embodiment of our failure to be able to envisage any other life than the one we ourselves lead. The state allows us to root what we are within its soil, and in making promises uses that rooting, in the form of trust, and hence the very lives it necessarily creates, as its own collateral. We have of course all hope that it works.
For Hegel therefore, the states peculiar power lies in this ability to arrange collective thoughts and to mitigate (or even contain) a series of complex dialectics. Individuals are therefore allowed not just a home, but also in finding that home, to develop their own minds as a consequence of the world in which they find themselves to be. Their power is therefore always the power to contain that which is, which is themselves. And yet of course this cannot be all that there is. The very logic of Hegel demands that states themselves in their relation to one another, and in their very history are caught up in their own dialectics. It is these dialectics and that history which form the state, and allow it to take up its functions and powers. And if this history is problematic or faulty in some way, or dependent on forces other than the state, then the hope which Hegel might offer us, could well prove to be of a limited nature (or come with very considerable strings attached to it). That is the promise that Hegel offers, that the states working individually or together should be enough to allow us to resist the pressures of the outside (the pressures of globalization), is only as good as is the claim that states are the actual answer to the ‘riddle’ or narrative of history itself. If then that riddle has many answers, or that narrative a different conclusion, then the guarantees which states are currently offering to us, that all will be well, might itself be challenged and even destroyed. A topic for next week’s Rant.
