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Hegel, the phenomenology of spirit, a guide in mp3 voice
22TheLawOfTheHeart.mp3
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The Law of the Heart
In the next subsection, entitled 'The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit', Hegel considers a form of consciousness that thinks it has an explanation for the pain and suffering that previously appeared to be an 'abstract necessity' and attempts to do away with it, thereby turning away from its own pleasure-seeking to a more high-minded interest in the pleasure of others and in 'promoting the welfare of mankind' . This form of consciousness holds that every individual ought to be able to find happiness, but cannot do so because the sovereign authority of the individual and his sensibility have not been recognized: the individual has not been allowed to follow 'the law of the heart', and instead has been subjected to the power of the church and state, 'that authoritative divine and human ordinance [which] is separated from the heart' . This form of consciousness (which commentators have generally associated with Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar) therefore maintains that the world is a rational place, because it thinks it can bring about a society in which all individuals will find the happiness they are looking for, once they are allowed to listen to what their hearts tell them. According to Hegel, however, this form of consciousness faces several difficulties. First, this social reformer will become increasingly alienated in the process of constructing his social programme, as it takes on a universalizing and generalizing aspect at odds with the particularity of 'the law of the heart': 'For in its realization it received the form of an [affirmative] being, and is now a universal power for which this particular heart is a matter of indifference, so that the individual, by setting up his own ordinance, no longer finds it to be his own' . Second, this consciousness comes to see that others may not identify themselves with its social programme, just as it did not identify with the social programme that already existed, leading it to adopt a contradictory dismissiveness to the 'hearts' of others:
'Others do not find in this content the fulfillment of the law of their hearts, but rather that of someone else; and, precisely in accordance with the universal law that each shall find in what is law his own heart, they turn against the reality he has set up, just as he turned against theirs. Thus, just as the individual at first finds only the rigid law, now he finds the hearts of men themselves, opposed to his excellent intentions and detestable' . Third, it also comes to find that others may oppose it in the name of the existing order, so it can no longer reject that order as alien to the will of individuals: 'It took this divine and human ordinance which it found as an accepted authority to be a dead authority in which not only its own self – to which it clings as this particular independent heart opposed to the universal – but also those subject to that ordinance would have no consciousness of themselves; but it finds that this ordinance is really annihilated by the consciousness of all, that it is the law of every heart' . Faced with these contradictions 'the law of the heart' becomes 'the frenzy of self-conceit' (where Hegel's most obvious model is Karl Moor from Schiller's play The Robbers). This form of consciousness is a crazed conspiracy-theorist, blaming the corrupting influence of evil social forces for the refusal of others to join it in its battle against the establishment: 'The heart-throb for the welfare of humanity therefore passes into the ravings of an insane self-conceit, into the fury of consciousness to preserve itself from destruction . . . It therefore speaks of the universal order as a perversion of the law of the heart and its happiness, a perversion invented by fanatical priests, gluttonous despots and their minions, who compensate themselves for their own degradation by degrading and oppressing others, a perversion which has led to the nameless misery of deluded mankind'. Abandoning the stance of an idealistic social reformer, consciousness now comes to view others in more cynical terms, as it sees that in their hearts, the behaviour of others is ruled by self-interest, and that this is the 'way of the world': 'What seems to be public order, then, is this universal state of war, in which each wrests what he can for himself, executes justice on the individuality of others and establishes his own, which is equally nullified through the action of others. It is the “way of the world”, the show of an unchanging course that is only meant to be a universality, and whose content is rather the essenceless play of establishing and nullifying individualities'. Thus, although the individual here in some sense sets the universal over himself, he does so in a simplistic manner, assuming that all must share his conception of what is right, leaving him to see nothing but the worst motives in those who do not.
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