The Sun Also Rises is, along with A Farewell to Arms, a key naturalist-modernist text by Hemingway. It certainly doesn't share with Arms a belief in the inevitability of the coming catastrophe. Arms ends up in a hyper-naturalist place; its protagonist ends up concluding that all existence is nothing but a steady march towards death.
But The Sun Also Rises does have a number of aspects which make it interesting for a consideration of naturalism. It's ultimately about impotence; Jake Barnes has come back from WWI with his balls blown off, which leaves an Italian military commander to tell him: "you...have given more than your life" (39). The out from the naturalist system that is denied in Farewell to Arms is denied here, and more thoroughly. Jake can never have offspring and perpetuate his genetics. The catastrophe has already come, once again delivered by WWI.
The novel is essentially the love story between Jake and Brett, the femme fatale who has dalliances and falling outs with her fiancee Mike, the Jewis novelist Cohn, and thtPerhaps is e ultra-masculine 19-year old bullfighter Romero. Each of them are a standin for the sexual relationship she cannot have with Jake, and she ends up with Jake in the end, having ruined all of her other relationships, but inevitably in a nonsexual way. Perhaps this is the most naturalist thing of all: neither jake nor Brett ever seriously consider being in love but not being able to have sex. It's just ont on the table.
Jake also advances a theory of morality which reminds me of Zola's belief that guilt is just a nervous reaction. Morality, or more accurately, immorality, is just "things that make you disgusted afterwards." This is a fully naturalistic system; only the gut can provide you with morality.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy, or Oh My God I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Damn Book
An American Tragedy is the longest slog I have every worked my way through. It is boring and poorly written, but is certainly worthy to stand as the most canonical text of American naturalism. It is a very pure form of naturalism - the essence of naturalism, which has not been reduced and strengthened in power but allowed to flow endlessly and thus blunted in its force.
It is essentially a novel of the American Dream, and how that Dream is thwarted by class. Perhaps moreso, it is a novel about how social strictures, particularly puritan methods of nobility, bring about tragedy.
The tragedy hear is no that Clyde Griffiths kills Roberta Alden. It's that society sets up a situation in which that could occur. Clyde doesn't love Roberta; he has a better life waiting for him. But she's pregnant. Society dictates that single mothers should be ostracized; society dictates that abortions are illegal (unless, as we hear about repeatedly, a wealthy woman of good stock is pregnant, in which case a physician can always be found). Society, then, brings about the tragedy by hypocritically insisting that Clyde must marry Roberta even though doing so would ruin both of their lives.
This determinstic viewpoint is pushed by Jepheson, one of Clyde's two lawyers (the other, Belknap, pushes the hypocrisy: he helps Clyde because he feels bad that, in the same situation, his wealth enabled him to get an abortion). Jephson says "You didn't make yourself" (710). He lays the blame for Clyde's problems outside of Clyde. That's the naturalistic way.
The introducer writes: "As a poor boy in his native Indiana, Dreiser avidly read the Horatio Alger stories and other self-help books about success. Unlike Chester Gillette (the historical precedent for Clyde), however, he had the talent, intellect, and drive to achieve it." (IX)
Drive, drive, drive. Here is Serres' thermodynamics - his engine. Over and over again, we're told that Clyde is handsomer than his cousin Gilbert, but lacks his drive and force. In other words, Gilberts was born with a more powerful reservoir than Clyde; he has a greater energy system to draw upon. This is what ultimately prevents Clyde from succeeding; although he could never be Gilbert, who was born to success, his lack of drive prevented him from rising on his own. Unlike Dreiser, or an Alger Hero, he simply doesn't have the motor for success. And lacking that motor, the classism and religious hypocrisy of his society dooms him.
An American Tragedy is the longest slog I have every worked my way through. It is boring and poorly written, but is certainly worthy to stand as the most canonical text of American naturalism. It is a very pure form of naturalism - the essence of naturalism, which has not been reduced and strengthened in power but allowed to flow endlessly and thus blunted in its force.
It is essentially a novel of the American Dream, and how that Dream is thwarted by class. Perhaps moreso, it is a novel about how social strictures, particularly puritan methods of nobility, bring about tragedy.
The tragedy hear is no that Clyde Griffiths kills Roberta Alden. It's that society sets up a situation in which that could occur. Clyde doesn't love Roberta; he has a better life waiting for him. But she's pregnant. Society dictates that single mothers should be ostracized; society dictates that abortions are illegal (unless, as we hear about repeatedly, a wealthy woman of good stock is pregnant, in which case a physician can always be found). Society, then, brings about the tragedy by hypocritically insisting that Clyde must marry Roberta even though doing so would ruin both of their lives.
This determinstic viewpoint is pushed by Jepheson, one of Clyde's two lawyers (the other, Belknap, pushes the hypocrisy: he helps Clyde because he feels bad that, in the same situation, his wealth enabled him to get an abortion). Jephson says "You didn't make yourself" (710). He lays the blame for Clyde's problems outside of Clyde. That's the naturalistic way.
The introducer writes: "As a poor boy in his native Indiana, Dreiser avidly read the Horatio Alger stories and other self-help books about success. Unlike Chester Gillette (the historical precedent for Clyde), however, he had the talent, intellect, and drive to achieve it." (IX)
Drive, drive, drive. Here is Serres' thermodynamics - his engine. Over and over again, we're told that Clyde is handsomer than his cousin Gilbert, but lacks his drive and force. In other words, Gilberts was born with a more powerful reservoir than Clyde; he has a greater energy system to draw upon. This is what ultimately prevents Clyde from succeeding; although he could never be Gilbert, who was born to success, his lack of drive prevented him from rising on his own. Unlike Dreiser, or an Alger Hero, he simply doesn't have the motor for success. And lacking that motor, the classism and religious hypocrisy of his society dooms him.
Ethan Frome
Ever since Madame Bovary, that first proto-naturalist work, naturalism has been the literature of adultery. Ethan Frome is no exception - although no sexual adultery takes place, it is the story of farmer who, saddled with a nearly invalid wife, loves her cousin, Mattie, who has come to stay with them.
It is without a doubt of story of degeneration. There is in fact a reference to technological advances as "degenerate," which I assume to be in the sense of decadence (5). But more prevalent is physical degeneration. When we meet Ethan, he has already degenerated. But this is no slow, gradual degeneration: he is permanently marred by a past accident, described as a "smash-up" (3). Eventually, we hear the whole story in flashback: how Ethan and Mattie grew close, how his wife Zeena kicked Mattie out of the house to make room for a hired girl who can do the work an invalid shouldn't, how Mattie and Ethan, unable to afford to run away, decide to commit suicide by running into a giant elm on a sled, and how they survive, Mattie paralyzed from the waist down, Ethan, with one side marred, to spend the rest of their lives together with Zeena.
This work seems to perfectly fit within Norris' definition of naturalism as a dialectic between the deep truths of romanticism and the surface accuracy of realism. In that way it recalls Garland's veritism as well - these are hardened people, beaten down by life, who long for escape, but they are not depraved murderers, incestuous, or adulterous.
But the mode of telling is romantic. The foreshadowing of the elm is repeated over and over again, and that particular method of suicide is deeply sentimental and romantic. Wharton has taken rural Massachusetts and made it into a snow-drenched land of mystery and secrets. And the final scene of the book, when we see the Frome's house in present day: broken down Ethan,
endlessly toiling Mattie (whose "complications" eased up when she had to work), and paralyzed, tortured Mattie. This is a romantic story with all the bleakness of real, hardbitten, hardworking people.
Two more notes: First, this is definitely a story of inertia. Our narrator is an engineer, and when he offers the scientifically minded Ethan a book about biochemistry "[Ethan] hesitated, and I had the impression he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then "Thank you- I'll take it," he answered shortly" (9). But if Ethan overcomes the tide of inertia that comes with his degeneration to accept the book, it is only because inertia let him down. Death by sled is undoubtedly death by intertia; this is a story that sees its characters inevitably sliding down a slope to their doom, and even dramatizes it in their method of suicide.
Secondly, a note on value: I have noted before that, in Age of Innocence, the van der Ludyens are the most prestigious family in New York, but their influence seems mostly based on the fact that they don't entertain - their value grows as their presence is absent, and upon seeing them, Ellen, who has no interest in New York social politics, finds them uninteresting.
In the same way, Mattie gets down and uses a pickle bowl while Zeena is away, and the cat breaks it. Zeena is away - it is her most precious and beautiful posession, and yet she has not used it a single time - not "even when the minister come to dinner" (63). Wharton seems to view these situations with derision; her sympathy is with Mattie and Ellen, who want to use beautiful things even if there are risks, and not with Zeena and the van der Ludyens, who see the withholding of a thing as its most powerful use.
Update:
The introducer writes:
"Ethan Frome has elements of romance in it, but Wharton radically refuses the Romantic's romance with time. Timer here is not the swift devestator [...] it is rather the gradual, relentless poisoner" (i would add: the bringer of degeneration)
And also: "The end of Ethan Frome is, in fact, the triumph of the realistic mode over the romantic one." (both quotes xiii).
The introducer is spot on, except she seems to be missing Norris' insight: this triumph is what we call naturalism!
It is without a doubt of story of degeneration. There is in fact a reference to technological advances as "degenerate," which I assume to be in the sense of decadence (5). But more prevalent is physical degeneration. When we meet Ethan, he has already degenerated. But this is no slow, gradual degeneration: he is permanently marred by a past accident, described as a "smash-up" (3). Eventually, we hear the whole story in flashback: how Ethan and Mattie grew close, how his wife Zeena kicked Mattie out of the house to make room for a hired girl who can do the work an invalid shouldn't, how Mattie and Ethan, unable to afford to run away, decide to commit suicide by running into a giant elm on a sled, and how they survive, Mattie paralyzed from the waist down, Ethan, with one side marred, to spend the rest of their lives together with Zeena.
This work seems to perfectly fit within Norris' definition of naturalism as a dialectic between the deep truths of romanticism and the surface accuracy of realism. In that way it recalls Garland's veritism as well - these are hardened people, beaten down by life, who long for escape, but they are not depraved murderers, incestuous, or adulterous.
But the mode of telling is romantic. The foreshadowing of the elm is repeated over and over again, and that particular method of suicide is deeply sentimental and romantic. Wharton has taken rural Massachusetts and made it into a snow-drenched land of mystery and secrets. And the final scene of the book, when we see the Frome's house in present day: broken down Ethan,
endlessly toiling Mattie (whose "complications" eased up when she had to work), and paralyzed, tortured Mattie. This is a romantic story with all the bleakness of real, hardbitten, hardworking people.
Two more notes: First, this is definitely a story of inertia. Our narrator is an engineer, and when he offers the scientifically minded Ethan a book about biochemistry "[Ethan] hesitated, and I had the impression he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then "Thank you- I'll take it," he answered shortly" (9). But if Ethan overcomes the tide of inertia that comes with his degeneration to accept the book, it is only because inertia let him down. Death by sled is undoubtedly death by intertia; this is a story that sees its characters inevitably sliding down a slope to their doom, and even dramatizes it in their method of suicide.
Secondly, a note on value: I have noted before that, in Age of Innocence, the van der Ludyens are the most prestigious family in New York, but their influence seems mostly based on the fact that they don't entertain - their value grows as their presence is absent, and upon seeing them, Ellen, who has no interest in New York social politics, finds them uninteresting.
In the same way, Mattie gets down and uses a pickle bowl while Zeena is away, and the cat breaks it. Zeena is away - it is her most precious and beautiful posession, and yet she has not used it a single time - not "even when the minister come to dinner" (63). Wharton seems to view these situations with derision; her sympathy is with Mattie and Ellen, who want to use beautiful things even if there are risks, and not with Zeena and the van der Ludyens, who see the withholding of a thing as its most powerful use.
Update:
The introducer writes:
"Ethan Frome has elements of romance in it, but Wharton radically refuses the Romantic's romance with time. Timer here is not the swift devestator [...] it is rather the gradual, relentless poisoner" (i would add: the bringer of degeneration)
And also: "The end of Ethan Frome is, in fact, the triumph of the realistic mode over the romantic one." (both quotes xiii).
The introducer is spot on, except she seems to be missing Norris' insight: this triumph is what we call naturalism!
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Karl Marx
On Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Every complaint I had about Hegel's philosophy of right is taken up by Marx in this brief piece. Most importantly, as the introduction in the Selected Writings of Marx points out, Marx takes issue with Hegel starting with abstract ideas and working out the way things should be, rather than taking the way things are and working from there to theory. As Marx puts it in a more philosophical manner: "Hegel gives the predicates an independent existence and subsequently transforms them in a mystical fashion into their subjects" (18). That's a mouthful, but I think it means that Hegel has taken what is supposed to be the acted upon and made it the actor. He's subordinated actually existing humanity to his abstract philosophy, which is obviously the opposite of Marx's project. Another quote makes this more concrete, whereas Hegel's Philosophy of Right (also translated as Philosophy of law) puts his theoretical conception of the law first and asks that the people conform to it, Marx writes "Man does not exist for the law but the law for man." (20)
The German Ideology
The German Ideology is a really great and clear philosophical enumeration of materialist philosophy, just as we'll see that the 18th Brumaire is an example of actually writing history using materialist philosophy.
The basic point of the German Ideology might boil down to this: the real world exists, and the world of consciousness is not a separate plane, but simply one aspect and manifestation of the physical/material world.
Marx starts, in a very un-Hegelian way, with dealing with what reality is. He begins at the very beginning: "The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human organisms" (149). Damn. That's a good first premise.
But how do you define the human organism? There are several ways (including consciousness and speech) which Marx mentions, but a materialist conception of humanity begins with production (150). Everything else in human society flows from the fact that they must work to produce their subsistence; every historical event stems from the play of intercourse - of trade - ie the course that production and exchange takes place.
This leads Marx to make some very big claims:
p. 155 - "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life." His method of philosophy starts with "real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness" (ie not as some vague, abstract spirit consciousness)
158 - "Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all."
160- Since the interaction of production leads to different classes, one of which must dominate at any given time, "It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought amongst each other."
Spirit-philosophers like Hegel might describe the march towards liberalism as democracy becoming consciousness, but Marx knows that's a bunch of bull. All democracy is is the lower classes, who do not control production, trying to get empower themselves politically so they can control production. And if they control production, they can better their lives materially - the only goal.
162 - "Communism is not for us a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things." Post-Soviet Union, I have a tendency to view Communism as a vague and unattainable abstraction. It's good to have this perspective - Communism as an active changer of the world.
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
I have to confess, I didn't get much out of this piece. This is definitely Marx at his most cogent and insightful; you could subtitle it "Marx for Bartlett's."
It includes the classic lines: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second as farce" (594).
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past" (595). The first part of this phrase gave us Sartre's existentialism; the second, Levi-Strauss' structualism.
Besides that, the 18th Brumaire is just a very well-reasoned and very specific analysis of the movement of history, as it works itself out through class. The most interesting thing is the introducer's description of it "as a prologue to later Marxist thought on the nature and meaning of fascism" (594). Statements about Louis' rise seem to support this, such as: "The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather the peasant who wants to consolidate it; not the country folk who want to overthrow the old order through their own energies linked up with the towns, but on the contrary those who, in stupefied bondage to this old order, want to see themsleves with their small holding saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire" (609).
Every complaint I had about Hegel's philosophy of right is taken up by Marx in this brief piece. Most importantly, as the introduction in the Selected Writings of Marx points out, Marx takes issue with Hegel starting with abstract ideas and working out the way things should be, rather than taking the way things are and working from there to theory. As Marx puts it in a more philosophical manner: "Hegel gives the predicates an independent existence and subsequently transforms them in a mystical fashion into their subjects" (18). That's a mouthful, but I think it means that Hegel has taken what is supposed to be the acted upon and made it the actor. He's subordinated actually existing humanity to his abstract philosophy, which is obviously the opposite of Marx's project. Another quote makes this more concrete, whereas Hegel's Philosophy of Right (also translated as Philosophy of law) puts his theoretical conception of the law first and asks that the people conform to it, Marx writes "Man does not exist for the law but the law for man." (20)
The German Ideology
The German Ideology is a really great and clear philosophical enumeration of materialist philosophy, just as we'll see that the 18th Brumaire is an example of actually writing history using materialist philosophy.
The basic point of the German Ideology might boil down to this: the real world exists, and the world of consciousness is not a separate plane, but simply one aspect and manifestation of the physical/material world.
Marx starts, in a very un-Hegelian way, with dealing with what reality is. He begins at the very beginning: "The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human organisms" (149). Damn. That's a good first premise.
But how do you define the human organism? There are several ways (including consciousness and speech) which Marx mentions, but a materialist conception of humanity begins with production (150). Everything else in human society flows from the fact that they must work to produce their subsistence; every historical event stems from the play of intercourse - of trade - ie the course that production and exchange takes place.
This leads Marx to make some very big claims:
p. 155 - "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life." His method of philosophy starts with "real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness" (ie not as some vague, abstract spirit consciousness)
158 - "Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all."
160- Since the interaction of production leads to different classes, one of which must dominate at any given time, "It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought amongst each other."
Spirit-philosophers like Hegel might describe the march towards liberalism as democracy becoming consciousness, but Marx knows that's a bunch of bull. All democracy is is the lower classes, who do not control production, trying to get empower themselves politically so they can control production. And if they control production, they can better their lives materially - the only goal.
162 - "Communism is not for us a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things." Post-Soviet Union, I have a tendency to view Communism as a vague and unattainable abstraction. It's good to have this perspective - Communism as an active changer of the world.
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
I have to confess, I didn't get much out of this piece. This is definitely Marx at his most cogent and insightful; you could subtitle it "Marx for Bartlett's."
It includes the classic lines: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second as farce" (594).
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past" (595). The first part of this phrase gave us Sartre's existentialism; the second, Levi-Strauss' structualism.
Besides that, the 18th Brumaire is just a very well-reasoned and very specific analysis of the movement of history, as it works itself out through class. The most interesting thing is the introducer's description of it "as a prologue to later Marxist thought on the nature and meaning of fascism" (594). Statements about Louis' rise seem to support this, such as: "The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather the peasant who wants to consolidate it; not the country folk who want to overthrow the old order through their own energies linked up with the towns, but on the contrary those who, in stupefied bondage to this old order, want to see themsleves with their small holding saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire" (609).
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Preface and Intro
Hegel's Philosophy of Right seems to provide some surprisingly ripe material for an examination of naturalism. It also seemed slightly more readable to me than much other Hegel.
The preface makes it clear that the project at hand is to prove that "the Right" - ie the concept of good and right laws in society - can be philosophically proven. And Hegel puts the idea that it can't be proven into the language of degeneration: his method (which he calls speculative, which is more philosophical than the "empirical" method but still scientifically based) "is essentially distinct from any other way of knowing" by virtue of its "mode of scientific proof." "It is only insight into the necessity of such a difference that that can rescue philosophy from the shameful decay in which it is immersed at the present time" (2). Hegel is attacking a philosophical method which- sense the old rules of logic seem to be in doubt - wants to toss scientific method into the dustbin altogether, and replace it with the belief that "that only is true which each individual allows to rise out of his heart, emotion, and inspiration about ethical institutions" (5). This transcendental way of knowing "the Right" is the enemy - it depends on "opinion and caprice" (6).
Hegel's manner of proving that "the Right" is considerably more difficult to follow, but it rests on a notion which is compatible with naturalism's vocabulary, if not in sync with its beliefs. Hegel does some very complicated stuff with the idea of determinism and free will, and ultimately produces something which sounds very much like Dreiser's famous opening to Chapter 8 of Sister Carrie.
Dreiser: "Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason."
Hegel's goal is to prove that, although the human will is constantly beset by these instincts, which he calls (anticipating Deleuze) "impulses, desires, inclinations, whereby the will finds itself determined in the will of nature" (25), the will can actually overcome these impulses and reach a state of greater rationality, which he calls both universality and the "essentially human."
P. 30: "This self-consciousness which apprehends itself through thinking as essentially human, and thereby frees itself from the contingent and the false, is the principle of right, morality, and all ethical life." I can't say I entirely understood Hegel's complex proof as to why this is possible, nor do I agree with him. But I think this overcoming is the core tenet in his belief in the Right; when he declares "An existent of any sort embodying the free will, this is what right is. Right therefore is by definition freedom as Idea" (33) he's articulating that Right is what happens when humanity achieves freedom, not by abandoning itself to its instincts, but by understanding that it can free to act not on instincts but in a purely rational manner - ie, when its subjectivity becomes the same as rational objectivity.
Wikipedia offers these thoughts: "The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the concept of the free will and argues that the free will can only realize itself in the complicated social context of property rights and relations, contracts, moral commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity. A person is not truly free, in other words, unless he is a participant in all of these different aspects of the life of the state."
I think this is just a more grounded version of what I was saying. In other words, if impulses drive us to be outside these structures, our reason drives us inside them. And thus "the Right" is achieved when we can reorient our will so that we subjectively desire to be enmeshed in the objectively useful framework just discussed by Wikipedia.
Finally, Wikipedia summarizes the rest of the book:
Erin Sez: Hegel (and Kant) seem to be frequently dealing with linguistic problems. they seem to believe that language can actually capture the truth. this pre-rupture (pre-wittgenstein?) approach is what leads them to believe they can answer these questions absolutely and universally - the very form of language leads them to them.
The preface makes it clear that the project at hand is to prove that "the Right" - ie the concept of good and right laws in society - can be philosophically proven. And Hegel puts the idea that it can't be proven into the language of degeneration: his method (which he calls speculative, which is more philosophical than the "empirical" method but still scientifically based) "is essentially distinct from any other way of knowing" by virtue of its "mode of scientific proof." "It is only insight into the necessity of such a difference that that can rescue philosophy from the shameful decay in which it is immersed at the present time" (2). Hegel is attacking a philosophical method which- sense the old rules of logic seem to be in doubt - wants to toss scientific method into the dustbin altogether, and replace it with the belief that "that only is true which each individual allows to rise out of his heart, emotion, and inspiration about ethical institutions" (5). This transcendental way of knowing "the Right" is the enemy - it depends on "opinion and caprice" (6).
Hegel's manner of proving that "the Right" is considerably more difficult to follow, but it rests on a notion which is compatible with naturalism's vocabulary, if not in sync with its beliefs. Hegel does some very complicated stuff with the idea of determinism and free will, and ultimately produces something which sounds very much like Dreiser's famous opening to Chapter 8 of Sister Carrie.
Dreiser: "Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason."
Hegel's goal is to prove that, although the human will is constantly beset by these instincts, which he calls (anticipating Deleuze) "impulses, desires, inclinations, whereby the will finds itself determined in the will of nature" (25), the will can actually overcome these impulses and reach a state of greater rationality, which he calls both universality and the "essentially human."
P. 30: "This self-consciousness which apprehends itself through thinking as essentially human, and thereby frees itself from the contingent and the false, is the principle of right, morality, and all ethical life." I can't say I entirely understood Hegel's complex proof as to why this is possible, nor do I agree with him. But I think this overcoming is the core tenet in his belief in the Right; when he declares "An existent of any sort embodying the free will, this is what right is. Right therefore is by definition freedom as Idea" (33) he's articulating that Right is what happens when humanity achieves freedom, not by abandoning itself to its instincts, but by understanding that it can free to act not on instincts but in a purely rational manner - ie, when its subjectivity becomes the same as rational objectivity.
Wikipedia offers these thoughts: "The Philosophy of Right (as it is usually called) begins with a discussion of the concept of the free will and argues that the free will can only realize itself in the complicated social context of property rights and relations, contracts, moral commitments, family life, the economy, the legal system, and the polity. A person is not truly free, in other words, unless he is a participant in all of these different aspects of the life of the state."
I think this is just a more grounded version of what I was saying. In other words, if impulses drive us to be outside these structures, our reason drives us inside them. And thus "the Right" is achieved when we can reorient our will so that we subjectively desire to be enmeshed in the objectively useful framework just discussed by Wikipedia.
Finally, Wikipedia summarizes the rest of the book:
The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing Hegel's three spheres of versions of 'right,' each one larger than the preceding ones and encompassing them. The first 'sphere' is abstract right, in which Hegel discusses the idea of 'non-interference' as a way of respecting others. He deems this insufficient and moves onto the second sphere, morality. Under this, Hegel proposes that humans reflect their own subjectivity of others in order to respect them. The third sphere, ethical life, is Hegel's integration of individual subjective feelings and universal notions of right. Under ethical life, Hegel then launches into a lengthy discussion about family, civil society, and the state.
Hegel also argues that the state itself is subsumed under the higher totality of world history, in which individual states arise, conflict with each other, and eventually fall. The course of history is apparently toward the ever-increasing actualization of freedom; each successive historical epoch corrects certain failures of the earlier ones, but Hegel does not seem to have figured out--and he admits as much--how the modern state can solve the problems of poverty and class division, something his successor Karl Marx would attempt to solve. At the end of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel leaves open the possibility that history has yet to accomplish certain tasks related to the inner organization of the state.Erin Sez: Hegel (and Kant) seem to be frequently dealing with linguistic problems. they seem to believe that language can actually capture the truth. this pre-rupture (pre-wittgenstein?) approach is what leads them to believe they can answer these questions absolutely and universally - the very form of language leads them to them.
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