12.3.5Division of powers within the state in accord with the concept of freedom – Hereditary monarchy “outside human freedom” true to the hermeneutic cast of productionist metaphysics – The concept of freedom does not come to a unified closure – The people’s (mis-)trust of the state

Individualized human being in its truth (in Hegel’s sense) remains an open, contradictory, loose and ragged unity of the concept of freedom, whose moments — universality, particularity, singular — can never ‘close together’ into a final, tranquil, uni-focal unity and standing presence. The “apodictic judgement” which serves as the transition in Hegel’s Logik from the concept’s primal split between singularity and universality in the judgement to its closing-together in the conclusion251 cannot be transferred without further ado to the concept of freedom. That is, it is not true (to the ontological concept) that a singular, individual human being having particular qualities of such-and-such a kind (e.g. non-egoistic) is truly free in corresponding to the universal of freedom concretized in the state. Rather, the determination of the state’s concretely organized will as the embodiment of the universality of freedom can only ever be in part, the provisional and revocable outcome of the ongoing strife among a plurality of singular versions of the universal good and in part, the surveillance of these debatable and debated conceptions for signs of deformity through particular self-interests of individuals and groups. This implies in particular that the perpetual, and constitutionally-institutionally sanctioned mistrust of the exercise of political power is not only a corollary of even Hegel’s admission that the state, existing as it does in the finite world with its arbitrariness and contingency, or rather, being infected as it is by the particularity of self-interest, is not necessarily up to its philosophical concept, corrupted by the particular interests of mortal human beings, but is also a consequence of the socio-ontological circumstance that freedom, in order to be actually real, concrete freedom, has to be mediated by a plurality of finite, individual, singular human beings and a corresponding controversial plurality of conceptions of even the universal good itself. This plurality is only ever mediated by some sort of compromise or transitory consensus, but remains basically in power play. The constitutionally sanctioned division of powers within the state by virtue of which one organ of state provides a check on another therefore corresponds to the concept of concrete freedom as sociating power play rather than being, as Hegel claims, an unwarranted destruction of the unity of the state in a single (monarchical) will.

The power play that infuses all social power thus carries over also to the state itself. Hegel, however, insists on the unity of the state’s will, i.e. that the state attain the moment of singularity in the individuality of the hereditary monarch (§ 281). The hereditary character of the monarch ostensibly removes the determination of the head of state from the realm of will and leaves it to nature (that is, for as long as a power struggle does not wipe a monarch or a dynasty from the stage of world history). Thus, Hegel claims, the head of state as “pure decision” and “moment of the idea” must be “rooted outside human freedom” (das unvermischte, reine Entscheiden [...] Als Moment der Idee [...] außerhalb der menschlichen Freiheit wurzelnd, § 279 Add.) as “fate” (Fatum, § 279 Add.) and that “the right of the monarch [is] based on divine authority” (das Recht des Monarchen als auf göttliche Autorität gegründet, § 279 Add.). Since the monarch remains an individual, finite human being, however, and despite Hegel’s endeavours to remove the determination of the head of state from the realm of mere “contingency” (Zufälligkeit, § 279 Add.) and, remarkably, even from the realm of freedom itself, whether the monarch deserves the name of sovereign or succumbs to despotism to a greater or lesser degree, or is simply a poor, ungifted head of state, itself becomes a matter of the contingency of nature. The monarch then has the final and absolute power of decision and is the single point into which the power of state is ultimately gathered as the “groundless self-determination of the will” (grundlose Selbstbestimmung des Willens, § 279) in which the initially “abstract concept of will” comes finally to its “singularity” as “sovereignty” (§ 278 Add.).

Such a constitutional monarchy is conceived to put an end to the interminable power play (which, however, nonetheless corresponds to the ‘divine’ concept of freedom as a cast of the beingness of beings) within the given society, making of sociating polyarchic power interplay a monoarchic productionist power with a single ἀρχή, namely, the monarchical ruler, the ἄρχων, thus remaining true to the covertly ruling hermeneutic cast of productionist metaphysics’ ontology of movement. That Hegel has to resort, ironically, to anchoring the singularity of state power “outside of human freedom” in contingent nature, instead of in Geist, in itself indicates the deep socio-ontological dilemma of human freedom which by virtue of its very essence as estimating interplay inevitably remains infused with a power play among a plurality of human beings. That is the ontological “fate” that overcomes human being as free.

Hegel therefore assigns to the monarch “the absolute [part ME] in the final decision” (den absoluten [Anteil ME] der schließlichen Entscheidung, EnzIII § 544 Note) within the “legislative power” (gesetzgebende Gewalt, Enz.§ 544 Note) and also claims that “to imagine the set-up of the state [...] as the mechanism of a balance of powers in its [the set-up’s ME] interior that are external to one another goes against the basic idea of what a state is” ([d]ie Einrichtung des Staats [...] als den Mechanismus eines Gleichgewichts sich in ihrem Innern einander äußerlicher Mächte vorzustellen, geht gegen die Grundidee dessen, was ein Staat ist. Enz.§ 544 Note). The conception of the state in its interior being constituted as an ongoing power play “goes against the basic idea of what a state is” only within the traditional metaphysical hermeneutic cast of all movement as effective movement which demands, in particular, that the concept of freedom, too, come to a unified mono-archic closure, even though freedom is a social, sociating concept that can never conform to the productionist cast without doing violence to the very phenomenon of human freedom in its socio-ontological truth.

Hence, once not only the shortfall of reality vis-à-vis the concept of freedom in its universality, but, more decisively, the contradictory disunity of the concept of freedom itself in its unity of moments in perpetual power interplay is seen, it can no longer be argued, as Hegel does, that the nature of the state as an organic, articulated whole demands that it must not be fettered by the disunity of a division of powers instituted to control how the state’s power is factually exercised. The state itself is therefore truly, i.e. according to its concept, a power play, an ongoing power struggle, and the state’s constitution must provide for this circumstance. This power struggle within the state itself and in its relation to civil society, as provided for by a true constitution with its stipulated rules of play for the power struggle, is not entirely the open-slather power struggle among particular interests, which may be provided for in restricted areas of the constitution such as democratic elections to parliament as the legislative body organized in a party-political way, but above all the constitutionally admissible and organized conflict over the determination of concretely realized freedom in which one organ of state can question another or individual citizens can question the state’s concrete will as expressed, say, in a specific law or government decision. There is therefore a constitutional ethos for the ongoing power struggle within the state. Moreover, the power struggle among political parties cannot be regarded purely as a struggle among various interest groups in civil society, but also as a fight over genuinely different conceptions of the concrete universal good in which mere blatant self-interest is put to one side. The media themselves, as one set of players in the political power play, have an important role in monitoring the various political parties with a view to judging whether their policies cater too blatantly merely to the self-interests of particular sectors of the electorate, their ‘client’ voters.

It is not sufficient for the state to be unified in a monarchical will and the members of society to find their satisfaction in the “trust and confidence” (Zutrauen, RPh. § 268) they experience that the state secures the framework within which they lead their habitual daily lives without having to be concerned about their security. Such “patriotism” (§ 268) lies in the awareness “that my substantial and particular interest is preserved and included in the interest and purpose of another (here, the state) [...] and with this, this other is not an other for me and I am free in this consciousness” (daß mein substantielles und besonderes Interesse im Interesse und Zwecke eines Anderen (hier des Staats) [...] bewahrt und enthalten ist, womit eben dieser unmittelbar kein anderer für mich ist und Ich in diesem Bewußtsein frei bin. § 268).

This describes a relation of trust to a caring, paternal instance and not a relationship of freedom, as Hegel claims, but of grateful dependence associated with the feeling of being looked after. The state is not an “other for me”, is not alien only through an identification with the state that cancels out the inviolability of individual sites of freedom. It may well be that people are entirely willing to subjugate themselves to a superior power that guarantees order, and Hegel indeed claims that “what keeps [the state ME] together is solely the basic feeling of order that everybody has” (das Haltende [am Staat ME] ist allein das Grundgefühl der Ordnung, das alle haben, § 268 Add.) The order upheld by the state with its superior power is not an end in itself, however, but is for the sake of the free interplay of the members of civil society, which certainly requires an order, but one that is inconspicuously in the background rather than overbearingly in the foreground.

A similar comment can be made about the trust the people are supposed to place in “the highest state officials [who] necessarily have deeper and more comprehensive insight into the nature of the institutions and needs of the state” (die höchsten Staatsbeamten[, die] notwendig tiefere und umfassendere Einsicht in die Natur der Einrichtungen und Bedürfnisse des Staats [haben], § 301 Note) and who are therefore allotted the task of knowing “what [...] reason wills, [...] the fruit of deep knowledge and insight which is precisely not a matter for the people” (was [...] die Vernunft will, [...] die Frucht tiefer Erkenntnis und Einsicht, welche eben nicht die Sache des Volks ist, § 301 Note). This is a truly patronizing remark on Hegel’s part. Of course the “highest state officials” have superior insight into the workings of the state, but this has to do with the implementation of a concrete conception of the universal good, and it is the leaders who emerge from the ranks of the people who forge conceptions of the concrete universal which can never be authorized top down, but must arise from the ongoing conflict and struggle precisely over a people’s historical, ethical life. That is, if the concept of freedom as sociating, mutually estimating power interplay is to be concretely realized, this is something other than an orderly conception of the concrete universal as thought out by a more or less well-meaning, patronizing bureau-technocracy imposed from above. It is not simply a matter of state bureaucrats possibly being themselves corrupt or overly self-interested, but of the concept of groundlessly sociating freedom per se, i.e. true freedom, being stifled in its presencing in an historical people.

12.3.6The transition from civil society to state reconsidered: The power play over sociating estimation and identity in belonging to a political whole — Constitutional rules of play for the ongoing political power struggle

The concept of freedom itself demands that a power play remain in play even within the state. Such a power play is indissolubly also a process of sociating estimation in which the players estimate each other as possessing certain powers. In the transition from civil society to the state, these powers become expressly political powers associated with holding some office or other within the state, whether it be as parliamentarian, state official, minister or (elected or hereditary, empowered or titular) head of state. An individual holding public office does so only because and only so long as its status as office-holder is mirrored and affirmed by others.

Let us retrace our steps to Hegel’s treatment of the civic corporation, which he claims forms the dialectical transition in thinking to the state in which the gulf between particularity and universality starts to be bridged. How far does this bridge carry us? There is one aspect of this transition which has not yet been discussed, namely, that the civic corporation is the social locus where the member of society as a member of an “authorized”, “legally constituted and recognized” (berechtigt, [...] gesetzlich konstituiert und anerkannt, RPh. § 253 Note) corporation “has honour in its social status” (es hat so in seinem Stande seine Ehre, § 253). This is the aspect of social estimation through which an individual comes to stand in a social status as somebody more than merely a self-interested individual, as somewho with a sense of civic duty who has something resembling the social good in view. The other as mirror is essential to the phenomenon of estimation. The estimation of status as member of a civic corporation is the integration of the individual into an association, to which it then ‘belongs’, that raises the individual above and beyond its merely narrow, egoistic interests, giving it a social standing and identity as a socially concerned, civic-minded somewho.

This can only happen because even the so-called egoistic individual is ‘always already’, i.e. in essence, a sociated being belonging to an association, a community, in short, a social world for which it cares, and is therefore susceptible in its very self-identity to the social estimation of a social status as somewho reflected by the others. But even more than that: in truth, the individual is not merely susceptible to its estimation in the socio-ontological dimension of whoness; its very being as presencing in three-dimensional time is constituted by the mirror play of whoness. Social estimation is an interplay, a mutual exchange in which individuals come into their own self-standing as social members by identifying their selves in a “shining-back” from the world (cf. Chapter 3.3.1.4 and Chapter 11.2). The individual self is essentially also sociated, i.e. mediated by the sociating mirror-interplay of estimation which constitutes an identity of difference.

It would seem that Hegel chooses the civic corporation as the point of transition to the state precisely because it is the raising of the individual beyond its particularity to the universal not only of common, shared, aligned interests as a bundling of particularity, and not only by educating it beyond its limited horizon of understanding so that it gains an appreciation of the greater, interconnected whole, but also by raising it to belonging to a universal social nexus within which it finds its own identity, i.e. its being as self within the dimension of whoness. In being a estimated as member of a civic corporation which in turn is recognized by the state (as the agent of the universal will) in law as authorized, the individual itself is estimated in its stand within a universal, social nexus. Therefore, for Hegel, “the state is the actual-reality of the ethical idea” (Der Staat ist die Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee, § 257) and “association as such is itself the true content and purpose, and the determination of individuals is to lead a universal life” (Die Vereinigung als solche ist selbst der wahrhafte Inhalt und Zweck, und die Bestimmung der Individuen ist, ein allgemeines Leben zu führen, § 258 Note). As ob-jects ‘thrown toward’ the openness of the 3D-temporal clearing and claimed by it, individual human beings cannot escape the socio-ontological destiny of being sociated as social beings, and their social being has the “infinite” and “divine” socio-ontological status of whoness. To be a social outcast does not mean being outside whoness altogether, but amounts to non-existence, to death as somewho, i.e. to a deficient mode of whoness.

The status of person is an abstract form of whoness which the members of civil society mirror to each other in their interchanges with one another and which enables them to pursue their particular interests under the mantle of this state-guaranteed form of mutual estimation. Now, however, the satisfaction of being estimates as somewho becomes more concrete as estimation of one’s standing on universal issues concerning the whole community, or even the entire society. The concern for political issues ranging from the local to the national and global arises itself within civil society, and the struggle over political issues is simultaneously a struggle over the who-standing of those engaged in those issues, and such a who-standing is then invariably reflected in the political power that an individual attains, which is always only possible as the ongoing outcome of a conflictual struggle also over social estimation.

Someone can only wield political power because it is mirrored, validated and thus legitimized by others. The power interplay of civil society over particular interests thus becomes a political power play over concrete conceptions of the universal good, more or less tinged by particular interests, but imbued also with the striving to be estimated as a worthy, civic-minded who. The power play that is an essential look of (the ontological structure of) sociated freedom spills over to and infuses the interior of the state as the instance whose task it is to wield power for the sake of the universal good. Civil society serves as a recruiting ground for the selection of politicians on all levels, those civic-minded individuals who engage in and commit themselves to issues with a narrower or wider social horizon.

Whereas in civil society it is the right of personhood and its concretization in state-posited laws that are to serve as the framework within which the power play of self-interests is played out fairly, now, within the state, it is the constitution that is to regulate the power struggle over offices of power within the state by laying down the rules of play for such an ongoing struggle. As we have seen above, it goes against the concept of freedom for the head of state to be an hereditary monarch, supposedly situated entirely above the power play and “outside human freedom” (§ 279 Add). Rather, the head of state, too, in whom the state attains the singularity of an individual, must be elected out of the contenders for that office if the never-attainable settled unity of social freedom, its irradicable plurality is to be respected, i.e. if actual social reality is to correspond to the concept of sociated freedom. The political parties, the politicians, the members of parliament, the ministers and the head of state must all vie for political power in various kinds of struggles of estimation of their status as worthy holders of certain powers.

The constitution that lays down the rules of play for such political struggle does not have the relative simplicity of guaranteeing the abstract equality of persons in fair struggles over particular interests in civil society, but nevertheless must accord with a conception of fairness for the political power play in which no one instance, such as the head of state or the military, is given too much power. If the inner state is in its essence a power play, such an interplay must be kept in play through a balance of powers, and not degenerate into a totalitarian set-up in which one power-centre dominates or even quashes the others. Each people has its own constitution with its own idiosyncrasies that has evolved out its own historical experience. A people’s democratic constitution lays down the rules of play according to which it will acknowledge and honour the holders of political office, thus according them popularly legitimated political power. Only on the basis of constitutionally legitimated political power can a state rule its people peaceably because in such a state of affairs, the people lives in the consciousness that its state is in joint, and hence it itself is free.

12.3.7The reality of freedom as the shared, ethical social living of a people and its fracturing, through which free societies remain in flux

In the above quotation, “the state is the actual-reality of the ethical idea” (Der Staat ist die Wirklichkeit der sittlichen Idee, § 257), the German “sittlich”, one of whose standard translations is “moral”, has been rendered as “ethical”. ‘Sitte’ is ‘custom’, ‘usage’ and refers to a customary way of a shared social life and not merely to the subjective, conscience-regulated inwardness of morality. Hegel distinguishes between Sittlichkeit und Moralität, between ethical life and morality. Ethical life consists above all in a shared, practised way of life ruled by customary usages and, according to Hegel, as this universal it must be concretized and safeguarded by the state above all through posited law. Such a concretizing of ethical life can take the form, for instance, of a social consensus, based on genuine insight into the universal, regarding some aspect of social life (such as the education of children), which has to be binding on all members of society and therefore also enforced in law by a superior power as the agent of the universal. Social consensus inspired by an appreciation of the well-being of a free people and the legitimate rule of men over men necessarily go hand in hand.

The (speculative, ontological) insight of reason into the beingness of beings, however, consists first of all in seeing that human being itself is essentially, from the start, i.e. a priori, customary, social, ethical and can never be truncated to merely isolated, individual existence pursuing its particular self-interest. This means that the state has its actual-reality (Wirklichkeit, ἐντελέχεια) first and foremost not in institutions, laws or some such thing, but in knowing, insightful self-consciousness itself: “The state, as the actual-reality of substantial will, which it [the state] has in particular self-consciousness that has been raised to its universality, is reason in and for itself” (Der Staat ist als die Wirklicheit des substantiellen Willens, die er in dem zu seiner Allgemeinheit erhobenen besonderen Selbstbewußtsein hat, das an und für sich Vernünftige. § 258). Seen in this way, the state is first and foremost a ‘state of mind’, albeit a state of thinking, reason-imbued mind or Geist that sees that it is essentially universal, an idea, a cast shape of the beingness of beings, the presencing of occurrents. As this cast of being (Seinsentwurf), the state’s perfect presence, its ἐντελέχεια or actuality, is achieved first of all in reason, since it is reason and being that fundamentally belong together in the idea (τὸ γὰρ αὐτό νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι Parmenides, Frag. 3).

Reason in this sense can be taken both subjectively and objectively: subjectively as the way of thinking of the members of society, and objectively as the ethical usages and institutions within which people customarily live their lives. It cannot be demanded, however, that every citizen be a philosopher; it suffices that the citizens appreciate and cherish the “infinite” forms of freedom they enjoy in a free society in which the forms of free power interplay among individuals are protected, or the way in which laws are made according to principles that enshrine civil liberties. In this way, they inkle pre-ontologically the speculative concept of freedom, living with a feeling for freedom within its realization, its presencing. A pre-ontological appreciation of freedom cannot be calculated by understanding in terms of its utilitarian usefulness, but arises by cherishing an established way of life.

The social practices and institutions that constitute an historical way of living of a people are the concrete reality of an idea of the state in the sense of a customarily practised and dearly valued way of sociated living. Society is never conceivable as an “atomistic heap of individuals” (atomistischer Haufen von Individuen, RPh. § 273 Note), nor as a set of Leibnizian monads as power centres interacting like billiard balls on a level billiard table, but only as an interplay among human beings regulated by both law and custom, but remaining a power play nonetheless. People are held to these customs not just by a respect for tradition, but in the first place by the mirror play of sociating estimation that censures conduct which violates customary practice. Any such conduct therefore has to justify itself if it is not to be dismissed as unruly, rebellious, asocial and unethical. The break with social usages, through which free societies remain in flux, therefore has to articulate itself rhetorically in such a way that shows that it is in conformity with freedom in a certain respect, whereas accepted customary practice in truth is shown to be in violation of freedom, i.e. that customary practice does not correspond to the concept of freedom. A public debate is thus ignited in which a more or less clearly understood concept of freedom is invoked rhetorically and serves as a touchstone. This is the way in which freedom remains ultimately forever singular, never allowing itself to be finally tied down once and for all in accepted, universal ethical usages. Singularity must seek a closing-together with the universality of ethical life if it is not to be mere caprice, and it can only do so by arguing in favour of a new play of freedom, i.e. another historically possible constellation of free interplay that now, through public debate, comes to appear in a socially fair and favourable light.

12.3.8Hegel’s critique of the liberal conception of state – Kant’s “idea of the original contract”

Hegel fears and mistrusts nothing more than the “mob” (Pöbel, § 301 Note) and insists on placing the care of the universal in the hands of those with “deep knowledge and insight”, above all, the monarch whose hereditary right to rule ostensibly places him above the fray of the conflicts in civil society. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right thus cements the rift between particularity and universality, offering only the solace of a relationship of paternal trust, instead of building mediations whereby the people, including perhaps even parts of the so-called mob, could be drawn into, and elevated and cultivated in the concrete matters concerning the well-being of a people living its historically embedded way of life. Today, with the coming of everybody as member of the people, the mob no longer exists. The organs of public opinion, especially the mass media perpetually pandering to a sham democratic ‘we’, become vital in any concretely practised mediation between civil society with its bewildering conglomeration and friction of particular interests and views of the universal, on the one hand, and the state which, through its articulation into its particularized organs of power (the government, the head of government, the head of state, the legislative assemblies, the judiciary, the bureaucracy with its public servants, etc.) is dedicated to realizing a (perpetually disputed and changing) concrete conception of universal well-being, on the other.

The very conception of concrete, universal well-being remains in movement, driven by the ongoing debates in politics and civil society over universal issues as they inevitably arise in ever new situations and conjunctures. Such a movement of constant, conflictual debate conforms well with Hegel’s conception of the Bildung, i.e. the cultivation and education, of civil society. The liberal way of thinking — for the lack of an alternative for finite mortals thrown together and sociated willy-nilly in a world they have to share — puts its trust in the concrete, institutionally secured, two-way mediation between civil society and state in a power play, despite all the drawbacks and human defects of such a democratic constitution, whereas Hegel wants to insulate the universal state organs against the clamouring of public debate and the fights among the myriad self-interested social groupings and instead calls on the people to put its trust in this constitutionally insulated, superior instance of the universal which thus assumes a paternalistic character. Hence Hegel’s low regard for “English” liberalism and parliamentarianism.

The late Hegel had a mistrust of the individual whose freedom he tended to abhor as akin to the capricious freedom of the mob. In an article written in 1831, the year of his death, he clearly favours a paternalistic model of state rule that avoids the disorder of unruly democratic struggles through parliament: “As much as a centuries-long, quiet work of scientific [i.e. philosophical ME] education and cultivation, of wisdom and the love of justice on the part of princes has effected in Germany, the English nation has not achieved through its people’s representation...” (Soviel als in Deutschland eine mehrhundertjährige stille Arbeit der wissenschaftlichen Bildung, der Weisheit und Gerechtigkeitsliebe der Fürsten bewirkt hat, hat die englische Nation von ihrer Volksrepräsentation nicht erlangt...252) Hence, although he allows for the rights of particularity in civil society, Hegel gives priority to the supposedly more insightful ‘powers that be’, who may dilute and override the rights of particularity as required by state-posited universal interests.

In his commentary on Aristotle in the Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (Werke Bd. 19), Hegel uses the opportunity to formulate once again his critique of the liberal conception of state, viewing the “modern principle” (dem modernen Prinzip, W19:226) of individuality through quasi-Greek eyes. After citing the famous Aristotelean definition of essence, according to which the human being is “a political animal that has reason” (ein politisches Tier, das Vernunft hat, W19:225), and Aristotle’s claim that the “state” (properly speaking, πόλις) is conceptually prior to both the family and the individual, Hegel proceeds:

Aristoteles macht nicht den Einzelnen und dessen Recht zum Ersten, sondern erkennt den Staat für das, was seinem Wesen nach höher ist als der Einzelne und die Familie und deren Substantialität ausmacht. Der Staat ist wesentliche Existenz in Ansehung des Guten, Gerechten. ‘Denn das Ganze ist das Erste (Wesen) gegen den Teil. Wird das Ganze aufgehoben’ (der ganze Mensch), ‘so gibt es weder Fuß noch Hand außer dem Namen nach, wie eine steinerne Hand; denn eine vertilgte Hand ist eine steinerne’ (ist der Mensch tot, so gehen alle Teile unter). ‘Denn alles ist durch die Entelechie und die Möglichkeit bestimmt; so daß, wenn diese Entelechie nicht mehr vorhanden ist, nicht mehr zu sagen ist, etwas sei noch Dieses, sondern nur dem Namen nach. So ist der Staat Entelechie, das Wesen der Einzelnen; der Einzelne ist so wenig etwas an und für sich, getrennt vom Ganzen, als irgendein Teil vom Ganzen.’ Dies ist gerade entgegengesetzt dem modernen Prinzip, was vom Einzelnen ausgeht; so daß jeder seine Stimme gibt und dadurch erst ein Gemeinwe

sen zustande kommt. Bei Aristoteles ist der Staat das Substantielle, die Hauptsache;... (W19:226)

Aristotle does not make the individual and its right into the primary moment, but recognizes the state as that which is, according to its essence, superior to the individual and the family and constitutes their substantiality. The state is essential existence in view of the good and the just. ‘For the whole is primary (essence) as against the part. If the whole is annulled’ (the entire human), ‘then foot or hand continue to exist in name only like a stone hand because a destroyed hand is a stone hand’ (if the person is dead, all the parts perish). ‘For everything is determined by entelechy and possibility; so that if this entelechy no longer exists, it can no longer be said that something is still this, but only in name. Thus the state is entelechy [perfected presence ME], the essence of the individual; the individual is just as little something in and for itself separated from the whole as any organic part of the whole.’ This is precisely opposed to the modern principle that proceeds from the individual; so that each individual gives its vote and only through this does a community come about. For Aristotle, the state is what is substantial, the main thing;...

The “state” as a rendering of πόλις is, to say the least, misleading because the πόλις refers precisely to the whole of a society in its way of life which includes its polity, its political institutions and social usages which, in the case of the ancient Greek city-state, included also each (free, male) citizen’s involvement in the affairs of the polis. The (justified) objection against the modern way of conceiving the state is that the individual can only be an individual within the entelechy or actual, perfect presence of a whole political order. The individual is an individual only within an historical world in which the individuality of individuals has been cast as individual rights and freedoms along with the pursuit of individual self-interests through the exercise of such individual rights in mutually estimating power plays or, as Hegel puts it, such an historical world (our own liberal Western world) is “dirempted into the particularity of need and enjoyment reflected into itself and the universality of abstract right” (zur in sich reflektierten Besonderheit des Bedürfnisses und Genusses und zur abstrakten rechtlichen Allgemeinheit entzweit, RPh. § 255). We have seen that the free individual is first historically possible in a society sociated through abstract, reified value that enable sociation primarily through a bewildering variety of market interplay.

The individual of liberal natural right theory, however, is an abstract construction abstracted from such an historical world, i.e. from a whole, which provides the individual as such with its “substantiality”, i.e. its οὐσία, its standing presence. The individual is such only as part of this dynamic whole in which the idea of “the good and the just” can exist in the state considered now as a concrete, stable state of affairs in which good living is possible and in joint, justice being nothing other than the state of affairs in which the goods of life are interchanged through a social interplay whose lawful fairness enables the whole metabolism of social living to be in joint. The whole of the state, or society, is an organism in the sense of a living whole in which each part has its specific function.

As we have seen, Hegel is right to point out that it is a fiction to suppose that the state could ever arise from individuals giving up their vote, for whence could an ‘idea’ of living together arise? Any such ‘idea’ can only be a shape of the beingness of beings that must be fore-seen by human understanding and must be concretized in the practised, habitual usages of an historical world. Thinking and the shaping-up of sociated being in a state conceived as a social whole form an inseparable unity and identity. This view of the whole as a Gestalt of being is prior (in thought and in reality) to any individual and, in particular, it is prior to any individual ‘voting’ on any such thing as a social contract. As Immanuel Kant puts out, what is important is the “idea of the original contract” (Idee des ursprünglichen Vertrags253), not some actual, historically, empirically concluded contract.

The import of liberal thinking on the state, properly understood, is only the demand that reason has the individual ‘right’ to insight into the state as an historical shape of shared, historical sociated being and that such a state is not to be accepted merely on authority, but rather must be demonstrably compatible with individual freedom in its exercise as ongoing power interplay and also with the formal equality of individuals before such a state. Such an insight is not merely a matter of pre-ontological understanding that could justify the existence of the state in terms of its necessary ‘practical usefulness’ for preserving life and liberty, peaceableness and order, but must go beyond such mere finite reasoning or understanding to the affirmative insight of reason into the state as a ‘look’ of free sociated being itself. Freely sociated being, however, is a living movement, an estimative power play, and the metabolism of society is a manifold of various kinds of social interplay that are simultaneously power plays.

12.3.9Pre-ontological ethical ‘second nature’ and ontological insight into the political realm

What kind of knowledge with respect to the political is attainable? In the first place there is the pre-ontological plane. Aristotle writes with regard to knowledge of the political (ἡ πολιτική) as a realm of practical action:

Λέγοιτο δ’ ἂν ἱκανῶς εἰ κατὰ ὑποκειμένην ὕλην διασαφηθείη· τὸ γὰρ ἀκριβὲς οὐχ ὁμοίως ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς λόγοις ἐπιζητητέον, ὥσπερ οὐδ’ ἐν τοῖς δημιουργουμένοις. [...] ἀγαπητὸν οὖν [...] τύπῳ τἀληθὲς ἐνδείκνυσθαι, καὶ περὶ τῶν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ καὶ ἐκ τοιούτων λέγοντας τοιαῦτα καὶ συμπεραίνεσθαι. [...] πεπαιδευμένου γάρ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητεῖν καθ’ ἕκαστον γένος ἐφ’ ὅσον ἡ τοῦ πράγματος φύσις ἐπιδέχεται·

One could say that it is sufficient if one clarifies in accordance with the underlying matter, for the same degree of precision is not to be demanded in all discourses, just as it is not to be demanded to the same degree in all crafts. [...] We must therefore be content if [...] we succeed in demonstrating the truth in broad types, and if when speaking about things which are thus for the most part and starting from things which are thus for the most part, we also bring about conclusions which hold also only for the most part. [...] For it is the mark of an educated person to demand that amount of precision corresponding to each genus which the nature of the thing admits. (Eth. Nic. I iii 1094b11–25)

If the underlying subject matter of ἡ πολιτική is “that which is thus for the most part” (τὸ επὶ τὸ πολύ) in contradistinction to what does not admit being otherwise (οὐκ ἐνδεχόμενον ἄλλως ἔχειν), i.e. that which is necessarily so and always so (τὸ ἀεὶ ὄν), then it would be more appropriate to speak of an art of politics rather than a science of the political or political science (as standard English translations of Aristotle do). Science for Aristotle is that knowledge that can be deduced from first principles, and it is applicable only to those areas of phenomena, notably natural — and among those, celestial — phenomena, that cannot behave, i.e. presence and present themselves, in any other way. The realm of politics, by contrast, is the realm of human action, human practices, which depend on decisions based on human freedom to act. “...the final end [of politics ME] is not knowing, but practical action.” (τὸ τέλος ἐστὶν οὐ γνῶσις ἀλλὰ πρᾶξις Eth. Nic. I iii. 1095a6)

Deliberations and interchanges may lead to one outcome or another for action, and we have investigated the deepest socio-ontological ground for this in Chapter 5, which at the same time provides the socio-ontological basis for making the usual traditional distinction between art and science. The political is also the realm in which practical experience of life counts, because life experience teaches “that which is thus for the most part” in all its endless and continually surprising diversity. For this reason Aristotle says that “a young man is not a suitable auditor for the subject of the art of politics” (τῆς πολιτικῆς οὐκ ἔστιν οἰκεῖος ἀκροατὴς ὁ νέος· 1095a3). The art of politics is concerned with how constitutions come about, institutions are set up, governments empowered, political struggles fought out and issues deliberated for the sake of the well-being of society and its members. The understanding of what constitutes a ‘good life’ in a given society is always finite, (what Hegel would call mere understanding operating in his oft-invoked realm of Willkür und Zufälligkeit, arbitrariness and contingency) and above all, it is contentious, and hardly has in view divine, absolute reason (understood here as theological insight into a supreme being or, more down to earth, ontological insight into the prevailing hermeneutic casts of the beingness of being) but studies how people practically lead their lives and what ends they pursue in doing so.

Reason, by contrast, has the task not of running or deliberating everyday political affairs or of guiding social action, but of bringing necessarily simple and abstract socio-ontological structures to light as ‘looks’ of the hermeneutic casts of beings as such. In the present context, this means that the political realm as an ontological structure has to ‘come to its concept’, namely, the concept of free will, which, in turn, and according to Hegel’s conception of truth, is realized as idea in a correspondence of the concept with reality. This is the polity or the political structure of an historical way in which a people lives together, but only in mutually estimative power interplay.

The above-quoted Aristotelean description of what politics is about preontologically rightly points to the necessity of having life-experience to be able to understand it, and it is also true that politics is not a science that could be derived from first principles, because it deals only with phenomena that are so only “for the most part”, and that, in turn, because they have no single, governing point of origin. But this still leaves open the question as to the socio-ontological ground for this ‘inexact’ nature of politics which is not to be regarded as a deficiency compared to some sort of ideal of exact science such as mathematics, but in its own right as the socio-ontological, fathomless complexity and richness of the political realm itself, whose fundamental socio-ontological structure per se, however, can be rigorously brought to its concept. Despite the ‘messy’ and bewilderingly diverse ontic-factual character of the political, it is nonetheless possible to attain deep, socio-ontological clarity about key political concepts such as freedom (ἐλευθερία), justice (τὰ δίκαια 1094b14) and what is good for living together (τἀγαθά 1094b18). As investigated in preceding chapters, there are traces in Aristotle’s political-ethical thinking on, say, esteem and value, of deeper socio-ontological insights that have been taken up and further worked out.

In the present chapter section we have seen, first of all, that the state can be understood as arising from the diremption of particularity from universality in civil society, and such diremption results necessarily from both the concept and the reality of individual freedom as plural power play. The diremption has its socio-ontological roots ultimately in the sundering of spirited mind itself “into different selves who are completely free, independent, absolutely aloof, resistant in-and-for-themselves and for each other — and nevertheless at the same time identical with one another and thus not independent, not impenetrable, but, as it were, confluenced, flowed-together.” (Enz. § 436 Add. as cited in Chapter 11.2) The individual is therefore essentially also not an individual, inevitably infected by dialectical negation, and therefore penetrable, divisible. Furthermore, we have seen that Hegel does not bring the moment of the singularity of freedom into play in making the dialectical transition from civil society to the state, and doing so makes for a never-resolved tension between civil society and state in a power play that is of the essence of politics. The singularity of the concept of freedom does not come to be embodied in the monarch, but remains plural in the plurality of singular conceptions of the universal good which engage in the ongoing political power struggle proper.

The socio-ontological reason for the nature of politics as an art rather than a science rests therefore ultimately upon the nature of social, sociating power itself. As has been shown in earlier chapters (Chapters 5 and 10), social power does not conform with the ontological structure of effective power (δύναμις) investigated by Aristotle in Book Theta of his Metaphysics, but rather has to be thought as a polyarchic power play that can never be unified into a single ἀρχή without perverting the concept of freedom itself. The power play of dynamic human togetherness has the character also of a mirror play of mutual estimation in which the players estimate each other as who they are. The realm of politics as a whole is a mirroring power struggle over standing within the ontological dimension of whoness, and this essential ontological character lends it its unpredictable, groundless, even capricious nature. In contrast to things, which have a relatively constant standing presence for the mind as what they are, human beings can only struggle and strive, in the power play of mutual estimation, for an always revocable standing presence as who they are.

A social world is a form of Sittlichkeit, of ethical life, of “objective spirited ming”, of world-play which is played out within habituated social practices or ethical usages in which the individuals are ‘always already’ embedded as social beings sharing a world, and, at least in the liberal conception which demands, according to the very concept of freedom, that the state justify and legitimate its very existence and its superior power to individual insight, the state’s legitimation and highest function is to guarantee and preserve an historical way of living with its usages for the well-being of the members of society. Such a legitimation of the state is a philosophical, ontological, speculative one which is not for everybody.

The usages, in the first and fundamental place, are the manifold forms of free exchange and interchange among people, which constitute the true, vital metabolism of society as an interplay. The affirmation of social usages is not merely a matter of common (or so-called ‘intersubjective’) agreement and convention but involves fundamental, universal issues of human freedom. Common agreement or common interests cannot decide or clarify what human freedom in society is, and human freedom itself is an issue that is not up for political debate or a matter for the expression of public opinion, even of widely shared opinion, but is implicitly always already presupposed by these practices. Rather, it is philosophy as social ontology that has the task of clarifying the nature of human freedom as something “infinite”, i.e. as granted by the historical time-clearing as a ‘look’ of the beingness of beings, i.e. as an idea. Such an idea of freedom cannot be clarified merely against the background of a socio-historical context as scholarly endeavour in the history of ideas, for this amounts to historical relativism.

As has been shown, especially in Chapter 6, according to the concept of freedom, the ethos of social interplay is fairness. The power play that is sociating interplay must be fair in order to be just, and this justice is not simply a matter of laws being posited and enforced by the state, but of the usages practised by the members of society as ethical ‘second nature’, so that the interplay is fair when it is beautiful, i.e. when the players in the interplay themselves live up to and also enjoy a fairness in mutually beneficial intercourse with others. Such fairness applies not only to civil society, thus making it civil, but also to the political power struggles both within the state and in the state’s relations to civil society. As such, fairness of interplay as power play is a fundamental concept of social ontology that, however, may come to serve preontologically as a lived ethical principle within society that is itself adopted unconsciously, unknowingly by its members as second nature.

12.3.10The dispensability of the philosopher king and the precipitation of socio-ontological structures in historically lived, ethical usages

I now take up the question regarding the venerable notion of the philosopher king, which is related to the question concerning the difference between pre-ontological ethical “second nature” and ontological knowledge of the political dimension. First of all, it must be conceded that insight into the beingness of beings is not for everybody. Those dedicating themselves to the endeavour of philosophy, leading a way of life which Aristotle calls the theoretical, speculative or contemplative life — ὁ βίος θεωρητικός — are rarities. For the affairs of practical political life, philosophy is out of place and useless, and anyone proposing philosophical knowledge as the unmediated foundation for the state and the polity, starting with Plato, is misguided in demanding too much of both the art of politics and of philosophical thinking. Hegel indeed points out that “it is not necessary that those governing have the idea.” (Es ist nicht nötig, daß die Regierenden die Idee haben.254), because the shapes or ‘looks’ of politico-social being made out explicitly by philosophical reason (in a co- and fore-casting of history, or in an aftermath at dusk when the owl spreads its wings, but in gliding out into the future) precipitate historically into ethical life through the actions of subjects pursuing their “particular purposes” (besondere Zwecke, W19:34) “not with any co-knowing awareness of the idea” (nicht mit dem Bewußtsein der Idee, W19:34):

... wenn Platon sagt, die Philosophen sollen regieren, [meint] er das Bestimmen des ganzen Zustandes durch allgemeine Prinzipien. Dies ist in den modernen Staaten viel mehr ausgeführt; es sind allgemeine Prinzipien wesentlich die Basen der modernen Staaten [...] es ist allgemein anerkannt, daß solche Prinzipien das Substantielle der Verwaltung, der Regierung ausmachen sollen. Die Forderung des Platon ist so der Sache nach vorhanden. Was wir Philosophie nennen, die Bewegung in reinen Gedanken, betrifft die Form, die etwas Eigentümliches ist; aber auf dieser Form allein beruht es nicht, daß nicht das Allgemeine, die Freiheit, das Recht in einem Staate zum Prinzip gemacht sei. [...] Die Philosophen sind die μύσται, die beim Ruck im innersten Heiligtum mit- und dabeigewesen; die anderen haben ihr besonderes Interesse: diese Herrschaft, diesen Reichtum, dies Mädchen. — Wozu der Weltgeist 100 und 1000 Jahre braucht, das machen wir schneller, weil wir den Vorteil haben, daß es eine Vergangenheit [ist] und in der Abstraktion geschieht. (W19:36, 489)

... when Plato says that the philosophers should rule he means the whole state of affairs being determined by universal principles. This has been carried out much more in modern states; universal principles are essentially the bases of modern states [...] it is generally recognized that such principles should constitute the substance of administration, of government. What we call philosophy, the movement in pure thoughts concerns the form, which is something peculiar; but that the universal, freedom, right is not made into a principle in a state rests not on this form alone. [...] The philosophers are the μύσται who went along and were present in the innermost sanctuary at the jolt; the others have their particular interests: this reign, these riches, this girl. — That for which the Weltgeist needs a hundred or a thousand years we do more quickly because we have the advantage that it is a past and takes place in abstraction.

Philosophical truth concerns the casting of the beingness of being, i.e. their presencing in presenting themselves in the time-clearing, the Gestalt in which an historical world comes into the open and takes shape. This is the same as

what Hegel calls Weltgeist, the mind of the world in which individuals may participate. The peculiar element in which such truth of the beingness of beings comes to light philosophically is that of pure speculative thinking which sees past the empirically given in its bewildering ontic diversity and contingency to the simple, pure, abstract outlines of the beingness of beings, the simple ontological elements which make up the scaffolding of the world in its worldliness. The kind of disclosive truth possible in the realm of practical political affairs where people act in pursuit of their particular, finite interests, by contrast, is often self-serving, dissentious truth tied to specific, concrete issues having practical effects on how people live.

Even universal issues in politics are invariably coloured by self-interest or are at least, as singular perspectives on the universal good, eternally contentious in political struggles. Furthermore, political reasoning, being bound to concrete political situationsa and temporal conjunctures, cannot give room to the disinterested pursuit of socio-ontological reason that demands above all abstraction, i.e. a drawing-off or withdrawal from any particular, all-too-empirical, given situation. The politician or states(wo)man, as a singular, well-intentioned agent of the universal good, does not need speculative, theoretical insight but has to know how to provide leadership in line with firmly held political principles that are nothing other than the translation of abstract ontological structures or contours of the beingness of beings into actual social reality which is understood pre-ontologically. These political principles serve as a guideline for political action, so it has to be said, contra Hegel, that insofar political action is not merely a play of particular interests, but also has the universal as a shape of the beingness of beings in view in a form amenable to political understanding embodied by singular political players. In the power play that politics is, political leaders and states(wo)men have to use forceful rhetorical means to sway opinion and instil confidence in a proposed course of political action, presupposing in the background certain political principles, especially concerning notions of freedom and security, that serve as rhetorical cornerstones.

The abstractness of philosophical thinking, as practised by those few pursuing a contemplative life, has its place in history in playing midwife to (contentious) truths that trickle down quietly in history without those who ultimately adopt them as commonplaces, convictions, fixed prejudices or self-evident axioms (e.g. the idea of individual liberty or universal, inalienable human rights), without ever knowing whence they came. They have become unquestioned and seemingly unquestionable ‘second nature’. When Hegel does philosophical battle with Kant, for instance, not only a matter of scholarly interest is at stake, but the very question of historical human being-in-the-world, which is, more deeply, a presencing in the 3D-temporal clearing. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaims, “It is the stillest words that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet steer the world” (Die stillsten Worte sind es, welche den Sturm bringen. Gedanken, die mit Taubenfüssen kommen, lenken die Welt, Friedrich Nietzsche Also sprach Zarathustra 2. Die stillste Stunde).

Philosophical thinking as such is out of place in the context of the struggles of practical political life, only surreptitiously providing the fundamental ways of thinking of an age, including its range of fundamental, contentious political principles, and thus only setting the universal scene for an historical world to gain shape, unbeknowns to and behind the backs of those caught up in it. Even the philosophers themselves can scarcely inkle what concrete cast their thoughts on the whatness of whats and the whoness of whos will take in a future historical everyday life. The historical truths that percolate down from philosophical Geist take shape in the institutions, customs and habits and ways of thinking of an historical way of living that hold a world open in which the universal “constellation of being” (Heidegger) has assumed a concrete, lived form. Even though the exceptional historical figure of a “philosophical king” (philosophischer König, W19:36) like the Prussian Friedrich II instituted universal forms in that

... er einen ganz allgemeinen Zweck, das Wohl, das Beste seines Staates sich selbst in seinen Handlungen und in allen Einrichtungen zum Prinzip gemacht hatte, [...] wenn dann später so etwas zur Sitte, zur Gewohnheit geworden ist, so heißen die folgenden Fürsten nicht mehr Philosophen, wenn auch dasselbe Prinzip vorhanden ist, und die Regierung, die Institutionen vornehmlich, darauf gebaut sind. (VGPII W19:36)

... he made a completely universal purpose, the well-being, the best for his state into the principle for himself in all his actions and in all institutions, [...]. when later suchlike has become custom and habit, the following princes are no longer called philosophers, even though the same principle still exists and the government, especially the institutions, are built thereon.

The figurations of objectified, objective spirited mind take on a life of their own, apart from individual human actions and intentions, thus constituting, without the aid of a philosopher king, historical forms of a We:

Man muß wissen, was Handeln ist: Handeln ist Treiben des Subjekts als solchen für besondere Zwecke. Alle diese Zwecke sind nur Mittel, die Idee hervorzubringen, weil sie die absolute Macht ist. (W19:34)

One has to know what action is: action is the activities of the subject as such for particular purposes. All these purposes are only means for bringing forth the Idea because it is the absolute power. Here Hegel repeats a figure of thought according to which particular, self-interested purposes are tied back to the universal contours of being behind the backs of the actors. Insofar, individuals are implicitly singularities realizing the universality of the concept. Despite Hegel’s admiration for Friedrich II’s achievements (which include winning wars), Hegel would concede that he was not historically necessary, but a convenient, contingent tool of the Weltgeist in instituting a post-medieval German state. Hegel’s Idea is only another name for the ontological casting of an historical world in which beings as such show up and present themselves as what they are and human beings show themselves off to each other as who they are in customary forms of mutual estimation. In the present context, it is a matter of the idea of freedom, of the correspondence between the socio-ontological concept of freedom and social reality in the modern age. It is questionable whether Prussian military discipline corresponds to this concept.

The principles of the modern world — including, above all, individual freedom, private property, freedom of expression, etc. — were inaugurated at the beginning of the modern age and have long since been firmly established as the Western ethos. Such principles constitute the fundamental rules of play for sociating power interplay in the Western world. We have seen, following Hegel, that the interplay of particular interests is willy-nilly tied back to the universal connection of an economy by an “invisible hand” serving as the ‘religion’ (from L. religare, ‘to tie back’) of civil society, and also that, by extension, the interplay of politics itself is a power play fought out, not just among particular interests but among contesting singular conceptions of the universal, within the rules of play of a constitution that represents a concretization of the principles of the modern world.

The ethos of fair interplay in civil society in the pursuit of particular interests and also respect for the constitution that provides the framework for the political power struggle suffice to keep social and political interplay compatible with freedom, without the players needing to have philosophical insight into the speculative dialectic of freedom. In particular, the head of state does not have to be a ‘philosopher king’, nor would this be desirable. The ongoing political power struggles are partly a struggles within the rules of play laid down by the constitution, partly struggles over whether these constitutional rules of play are being abused by particular interests, and partly over the interpretation of the constitution itself. Since the state exists in the world, it can always fall short of its concept which nevertheless serves as its yardstick and is lived out implicitly in certain ethical usages.

The task of the philosophers themselves, by contrast, is to carry on the strife over the concept of freedom itself without having any pretension of ‘applying’ it to the ‘real world’. The concept of freedom and its relation to other concepts such as fairness, justice, solidarity, security remain also philosophically contentious, whilst the criteria for carrying on such a philosophical debate are the ‘abstract ideas’ which ground socio-ontological thinking.