Contrary to my Blog's Title...

Ever since I read Hegel, I have become fascinated by the very real happening of the change of historical era and sentiments. At the fall of Rome you had a shift from high politics and nuanced civilization to tribal autocrats and Christian morals. Coming out of the medieval period, nations begin to be the supreme repositories of power, citizens began to see themselves as individuals who were part of something bigger and a turn to science began the slow decline of mythology – including, to some degree – Christianity. Moving towards the modern era, the citizenry began to act on their new power (coupled with the decline of absolute morality) and create a more liberal and less power delineated society, which, I would argue, began with the Enlightenment and came to ultimate fruition with the heady days of the mid-1960’s.

What is fascinating about these traditions, and in keeping with Hegel, is that, it seems, these eras were pushed along by the philosophers and writers that were a part of them. St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas moved the intellectual bent of Europe away from the secular musings of Socrates and Aristotle towards a Christian ideal. Machiavelli and Descartes began looking at individuals as the ultimate source of power and existence and book ended the Renaissance. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Payne, Hume, Kant and Adam Smith tried with scientific rigor or poetic rhetoric to give ‘power to the people’ and incite various revolutions. Closer to our own time, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault, John Dewey, Richard Rorty…and so many others, have acknowledged the absurdity of the human life and crisis of existence. They have given up on absolute knowledge but have retained a certain sense of hope and the belief that man, as the most curious animal of all, has the power to shape its own life and create itself in the image that each man, each individual, sees fit.

Hegel saw this process as inevitable, the constant movement of Geist through history. Geist, according to Hegel, would always act according to the dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) but at the end, no matter how painful the process, the result would always be an increase of freedom from one era to the next. Hegel called history a ‘highway of despair,’ but his Geist is always moving us towards absolute freedom. It is a hard thing to understand, but a hopeful one.

Yet, now I look at the world and I feel as though Geist has abandoned our humble planet. We are not moving towards freedom and there seem to be no minds left trying to push us towards it. Those who attempt such a feat are summarily executed – if not literally then professionally.

Let me take a moment to flesh out this idea of freedom. I am not talking about anarchic, libertine, do as you wish freedom. Nor am I talking about “democracy” or “social democracy.” Rather, I am talking about the freedom that humans are meant to obtain. The state in which humans are able to live their lives to the best of their ability, to create themselves in the most productive fashion possible and to interact with other persons in meaningful and non-threatening ways.

Admittedly, this sounds uber poetic and therefore might imply a certain impracticality. It necessitates a power structure which is both protective and individually encouraging. It requires human restraint in some form, as some may argue, left to our own devices, humans would run amok and wreak havoc for their own self-serving, if short-sighted needs. Whether this restraint comes from logical principles, self-interest provocation or a bend towards altruistic compulsion I have yet to figure out. However, I do know that it is this exact freedom which much be the end goal of humanity.

I also know (as much as anyone can “know”) that the general direction of the power flow in our current society is moving away from this type of freedom. The tide has pulled back from the historical shore and left words such as “democracy” and “justice” traced in the sand – but they are empty and another strong wave will wipe them out completely. Those in power are very savvy. They have realized that humans desire freedom and that they will not live without the appearance of it. However, they have also become aware that the type of freedom I have outlined above is hard to achieve, especially for the lowly individual, and so, they dangle a ghost of it before our eyes and hope we take the bait.

Hegel has another appropriate analogy – the story of the master and the slave. For Hegel, he sees the slave as a slave only if the slave acknowledges that his master has power over him. Certainly, a master can beat a slave or kill him, but in no way can he actually make the slave recognize his authority in the slave’s own mind. (see Descartes). Once the master realizes his futility, he either becomes a slave to the original slave’s refusal to acknowledge him or he makes the slave autonomous and grants both he and the original slave autonomy – or freedom.

It seems to me in modern times that we have forgotten this lesson. We have become so fearful of pain and death that we cower to our masters, we give them the power they crave and they become all the more masterful while we, in essence enslave ourselves. Until this cycle is broken, history cannot move forward. Perhaps Geist has not abandoned us, but we have abandoned it. The wheel of history will keep turning, but it cannot get traction as there is nothing for it to get a hold of. Humans have given up our inherent rights to be a part of history and instead have become spectators – waiting for whatever comes.

I write this as a spectator myself. Somehow the world has been lost to me. I self-create for periods at a time and the world opens up in bright glory, but, inevitably, I become bogged down in the roles that the power structures have determined for me and I once again enslave myself. Even professional philosophy, the place where I wish to be taken in and cared for most of all holds no hope for me. They, more than anyone, have accepted their slavish roles. They have let their compelling magic over humanity diminish into scientific analyzation or incoherent bickering. The problems of men remain not only unsolved, but, for many years now, untouched.

But all is not without hope. As long as history continues there is the possibility of freedom and of dialectic movement. It only takes on slave not to recognize its master to get the process started again. Perhaps I should look inward and see if I am that type of human and reject both slavery and mastery for the sweet and simple beauty of autonomy.