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The French Revolution
As most commonly and simply understood, Hegel's treatment of the French Revolution is structured around a critique of Rousseau, and of his conception of freedom; this seems clear, given the numerous indirect and occasional direct references to Rousseau in Hegel's discussion of the French Revolution elsewhere. However, in the case of Hegel's analysis of the Revolution in the Phenomenology, it is in fact not a simple matter to identify what exactly it is about Rousseau's position that Hegel is criticizing here, and thus to show that it is Rousseau's notion of freedom that is central in this text. On some accounts, Hegel's argument is supposed to rest on a critique of Rousseau's contractarianism, where freedom in society is preserved through the social contract, as freedom to do as one likes is exchanged for freedom to live by laws of one's own making. Textual support for this reading comes mainly from the Philosophy of Right, where Hegel's criticism of Rousseau appears to be that individuals here remain committed merely to their own interests, so that the result is a factional war of all against all. However, defenders of Rousseau have pointed out that this criticism is misguided: for it seems to overlook his crucial distinction between 'the will of all' and 'the general will', where the latter is taken to be the more fundamental to a free society, and to consist in more than just a collection of individual interests. (See Rousseau, Wokler 'Hegel, following Fichte before him, never noticed that Rousseau's account of the general will pertained specifically to a collective will, resembling [Hegel's] own notion of the allgemeine Wille, rather than to a compound of particulars which, as Rousseau described it, would have been merely the will of all.' also Franco, Riley and Taylor.) Thus, even if Hegel is right to see the Revolution and the Terror as arising out of a kind of individualistic frenzy, it seems wrongheaded to trace the roots of this individualism back to Rousseau, when his conception of the 'general will' is self-consciously and fundamentally collectivist (as Hegel himself acknowledges). Moreover, even if Hegel can be defended on this point, there is also an interpretative issue here, for in the Phenomenology at least, Hegel's critique of Rousseau does not appear to focus on his supposed individualist contractarianism (although Hegel's remark concerning 'a general will, the will of all individuals as such' may perhaps be taken as a reference to it). Rather, if any implicit criticism of Rousseau is being voiced (he is not mentioned by name), it is the opposite one: namely that it is Rousseau's conception of the general will that is problematic (the term 'allgemeine Wille' is used several times, though sometimes Miller translates it as 'general will', and sometimes as 'universal will'). On this reading, Hegel's objection is that because according to Rousseau every autonomous individual can transcend the distortions of desire, self-interest, and social position, he is then given the right to speak for all, as it appears that nothing now stands in the way of his claim to discern the general good: 'Each, undivided from the whole, always does everything, and what appears as done by the whole is the direct and conscious deed of each'. Taking this to be Hegel's objection, Judith Shklar puts Hegel's diagnosis of the problem raised by the Revolution as follows:
Each individual not only decides for himself what is useful for him but also what is generally useful. Each will regards itself as a perfect expression of the general will, which alone is valid, but which cannot be found except in the perfect union of all wills. That precludes compromise and submission. Indeed, the two seem identical now. For each one speaks for all, not only for himself. To accept the decision of another person is, thus, to betray the general will, of which one's own is an inseparable and surely perfect part. Unless all agree, there is no general will; for each one regards his own will as the correct general will. Since agreement is impossible, given the multiplicity of actual wills, only anarchy is conceivable. Anything else is a limitation upon one's will.
On Shklar's reading, Hegel appears to be arguing that Rousseau's doctrine of freedom encouraged individuals to believe that they could each speak for the general will and thus act on behalf of all, with the disastrous result that when difference and disagreement emerged, no compromise was possible, because no one was prepared to accept that they might be mistaken: 'What remains is an anarchy of wills, which Hegel imputed to Rousseau's teachings'.
However, once again, if Hegel is read in this way, it leaves his treatment of the Revolution unpersuasive as a critique of Rousseau. For it seems clear that Rousseau never thought that each individual could claim direct and unproblematic access to the general will. Indeed, in Book II, Chapter 3 of the Social Contract, Rousseau goes out of his way to emphasize that each of us as individuals must accept our fallibility in discerning the general will, so that we can only know what it is when the distortions created by our particular interests are 'cancelled out' through agreements arrived at between us. Likewise, in Book IV, Chapter 2, he famously claims that where a citizen finds himself in a minority, this shows that he was mistaken about the general will, and that as such he should accept the democratic decision. Thus, Rousseau himself seems to warn against taking seriously the idea that we could ever be able to say that as individuals, we know what is in the public interest prior to any sort of political process: 'If there were no differing interests, we would scarcely be aware of the common interest, which would never meet any obstacle; everything would run by itself, and there would no longer be any skill in politics'. It would therefore seem misguided to claim that Rousseau's doctrine of the general will means that individuals should see themselves as capable of ruling on behalf of all, and thus to associate Rousseau directly with the 'anarchy of wills' that such a doctrine might bring about.
A third option is to argue that Hegel objected to Rousseau's doctrine of the general will, not because it made it too easy for individuals to claim to speak on its behalf and thus set themselves up as sovereign, but because it made it too difficult, so no individual or set of individuals could claim legitimacy for their political authority or actions. For the problem now is how such individuals can claim to speak for the general will, when others may see them as representing merely particular interests and not the 'universal will': 'On the one hand, [the government] excludes all other individuals from its act, and on the other hand, it thereby constitutes itself a government that is a specific will, and so stands opposed to the universal will; consequently, it is absolutely impossible for it to exhibit itself as anything else but a faction'. Thus, on this reading, Hegel's critique of Rousseau is that he does not show how, from the point of view of the individual, an authority within the state can claim to represent the general will and thus operate legitimate political power, as the individual can always say that that authority is acting on a merely individualistic basis, and so can resist and seek to overthrow it. (Hinchman, 'Thus for Hegel the problem of how the general will can take on a determinate form is tantamount to asking whether legitimate authority can be exercised at all. How can the general will direct the actions of the state if it is always real, flesh-and-blood individuals who must act and decide matters of common interest?') Again, however, it is arguable that this criticism is unfair to Rousseau: for he tries hard to overcome this problem, by explaining, for example, how it is that particular kinds of democratic procedure can and should be taken by citizens as determining the general will, so that the general will has a content that must be accepted by all and can legitimately be acted upon. Hegel does not engage with these suggestions, so as a critique this looks uncharitable and ill-founded. A fourth option is to argue that Hegel blamed Rousseau for the Terror because of the kind of constitutional arrangements Rousseau supported, in particular his hostility to the idea of political representation, most famously and forcefully expressed in Book III of The Social Contract: 'Sovereignty cannot be represented, for the same reason that it cannot be transferred; it consists essentially in the general will, and the will cannot be represented; it is itself or it is something else; there is no other possibility. The people's deputies are not its representatives, therefore, nor can they be, but are only its agents; they cannot make definitive decisions. Any law that the people in person has not ratified is void; it is not a law'. Now, in the Phenomenology Hegel makes a number of references to this Rousseauian idea that the general will cannot be represented, stating that for the Revolutionaries 'a real general will' 'is not the empty thought of a will which consists in silent assent, or assent by a representative', and that 'self-consciousness [does not] let itself be cheated out of reality' 'by being represented in law-making and universal action'. Moreover, in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel goes out of his way to defend the legitimacy of representation within the state and to reject direct democracy. Nonetheless, while Hegel may here be justified in taking Rousseau to be hostile to the principle of representation, and while he may have thought that opposition to representative structures played a central role in the Revolution and its collapse into the Terror, Hegel in fact traces this opposition back to a conception of freedom that appears to have little to do with Rousseau, so that once again Rousseau is arguably less significant here than is traditionally supposed. To see what this conception of freedom is, it is necessary first to look at what Hegel says about the Revolution in the Introduction to his Philosophy of Right, where Rousseau is not mentioned.
Hegel's reference to the Revolution occurs here as part of his general discussion of the will, during which he tries to resolve a tension in our conception of the willing subject. On the one hand, he argues, we see the subject as 'finite' and 'particularized': that is, in acting the subject does one thing rather than another (chooses red paint over green paint, chooses to become a philosopher rather than a statesman), and hence is 'determinate' and differentiated from other subjects through its actions and life-choices. On the other hand, he argues, we also see the subject as 'infinite' and 'universal', in so far as nothing prevents the subject from acting differently, from picking another course of action (I could have chosen green paint, and I could have chosen to be a statesman). Now, the tension arises, because it may appear to the subject that if in fact it does choose to do A rather than B, then this will compromise its 'universality', because this choice will rule out various options for it (once I have decided to become a philosopher, becoming a statesman will be extremely difficult if not impossible for me). As a result, Hegel claims, the subject may be tempted to think it would be better to refrain from making any choices at all, and to act in such a way as to 'keep all options open'; but, he points out, this will also exclude certain options. Rather, Hegel argues, the way to overcome this tension is for the subject to identify itself with its choices, so that even though option A rules out option B, this does not appear to the subject as any sort of limitation, because in A it sees a reflection of its own essential nature, which it does not see in B. As Hegel puts it in his preferred terminology: 'Freedom is to will something determinate, yet to be with oneself [bei sich] in this determinacy and to return once more to the universal'. He puts the same point less formally but at greater length as follows:
A will that resolves on nothing is not an actual will; the characterless man can never resolve on anything. The reason [Grund] for such indecision may also lie in an over-refined sensibility which knows that, in determining something, it enters the realm of finitude, imposing a limit on itself and relinquishing infinity;
yet it does not wish to renounce the totality which it intends. Such a disposition [Gemut] is dead, even if its aspiration is to be beautiful. 'Whoever aspires to great things', says Goethe,
'must be able to limit himself'. Only by making resolutions can the human being enter actuality, however painful the process may be; for inertia would rather not emerge from that inward brooding in which it reserves a universal possibility for itself. But possibility is not yet actuality. The will which is sure of itself does not therefore lose itself in what it determines.
As his references to 'inward brooding' and the 'aspiration . . . to be beautiful' indicate, Hegel was here in part engaging with a Romantic longing for the 'whole man', who has not become 'limited' by the increased specialization of modern existence: but (as his later discussion of the 'beautiful soul' in the Phenomenology will show) for Hegel, this longing was misplaced, as he believed that only with some limitation does the individual take on a meaningful life. As he puts this point in the Logic: 'Man, if he wishes to be actual, must be-there-and-then, and to this end he must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger lost in abstraction, and their light dies away'. (For further discussion, see Stern.) Now, Hegel's comments about the French Revolution come before he has reached this resolution of the tension between 'universality' and 'particularity'; rather, he treats the French Revolution as paradigmatic of just the kind of 'over-refined' sensibility that sees anything 'particular' or 'determinate' as a limitation on its freedom, and as something from which it should 'step back':
Only one aspect of the will is defined here - namely this absolute possibility of abstracting from every determination in which I find myself or which I have posited in myself, the flight from every content as a limitation. If the will determines itself in this way . . . this is negative freedom or the freedom of the understanding. - This is the freedom of the void, which is raised to the status of an actual shape and passion. If it remains purely theoretical, it becomes in the religious realm the Hindu fanaticism of pure contemplation; but if it turns to actuality, it becomes in the realm of both politics and religion the fanaticism of destruction, demolishing the whole existing social order, eliminating all individuals regarded as suspect by a given order, and annihilating any organization which attempts to rise up anew. Only in destroying something does this negative will have a feeling of its own existence [Dasein]. It may well believe that it wills some positive condition, for instance the condition of universal equality or of universal religious life, but it does not in fact will the positive actuality of this condition, for this at once gives rise to some kind of order, a particularization both of institutions and of individuals; but it is precisely through the annihilation of particularity and of objective determination that the self-consciousness of this negative freedom arises. Thus, whatever such freedom believes [meint] that it wills can in itself [fur sich] be no more than an abstract representation [Vorstellung], and its actualization can only be the fury of destruction . . . [During] the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution . . . all differences of talents and authority were supposed to be cancelled out [aufgehoben]. This was a time of trembling and quaking and of intolerance towards everything particular. For fanaticism wills only what is abstract, not what is articulated, so that whenever differences emerge, it finds them incompatible with its own indeterminacy and cancels them [hebt sie auf]. This is why the people, during the French Revolution, destroyed once more the institutions they had themselves created, because all institutions are incompatible with the abstract self-consciousness of equality.
This brief discussion in the Philosophy of Right is helpful, because it shows what for Hegel underlies the mistaken outlook of consciousness at the time of French Revolution, in a way that involves no reference to Rousseau: namely, that this standpoint holds that the subject is free only if it is in a state in which all 'particularity' (such as social roles, classes, and constitutional functions) is abolished, whereas for Hegel the proper conception of freedom allows that the subject can live within these structures without being 'limited' or diminished. According to Hegel, a subject may find that its place within society is very different from those of other subjects, without thereby feeling that it is rendered 'unfree', in so far as the subject can be 'bei sich in this determinacy'. Thus, while Rousseau opposed the idea of political representation at the legislative level because he saw it as involving an unacceptable transfer of sovereignty from the people to their representatives, on Hegel's account this opposition has a very different source. For Hegel, it comes from the unwillingness of individuals to tolerate any 'particularization' and hence any identification with the kind of concrete social structures and differentiation that representative government involves.
As we shall now see in more detail by looking at the Phenomenology, Hegel wants to trace back the 'fanaticism' of the Terror to just this conception of 'universality', that treats 'particularity' as something the subject must escape or overcome. First of all, Hegel argues, consciousness moves from seeing itself as a desiring subject, to seeing itself as a willing subject, as it abandons the ideology of utility in favour of a doctrine of freedom based on the will; thus, rather than wishing to satisfy its particular desires, the individual now sets them aside and sees itself as 'the universal Subject':
The object and the [moment of] difference have here lost the meaning of utility, which was the predicate of all real being; consciousness does not begin its movement in the object as if this were something alien from which it first has to return into itself; on the contrary, the object is for it consciousness itself. The antithesis consists, therefore, solely in the difference between the individual and the universal consciousness; but the individual consciousness itself is directly in its own eyes that which had only the semblance of an antithesis; it is universal consciousness and will.
Once it thinks of itself as 'universal' in this way, Hegel argues, the individual will no longer accept that society is properly structured around different social groups, for it rejects any kind of 'particularization' of this sort, which treats the subject as defined or fixed by its place in the social order; rather, it thinks the subject is able to 'rise above' this kind of determination, and adopt a purely universal standpoint:
each individual consciousness raises itself out of its allotted sphere, no longer finds its essence and its work in this particular sphere, but grasps itself as the Notion of will, grasps all spheres as the essence of this will, and therefore can only realize itself in a work which is the work of the whole. In this absolute freedom, therefore, all social groups or classes which are the spiritual spheres into which the whole is articulated are abolished; the individual consciousness that belonged to any such sphere, and willed and fulfilled itself in it, has put aside its limitation; its purpose is the general purpose, its language universal law, its work the universal work.
Now, Hegel argues here, just as he does later in the Philosophy of Right, that this conception of the 'universal subject' is problematic, because it seems to have no room for 'particularization': for it finds that qua subject, it is unwilling to tolerate any determinate action, or constitution, or role within the state, as this seems to limit its freedom:
'When placed in the element of being, personality would have the significance of a specific personality; it would cease to be in truth universal self-consciousness . . . Universal freedom, therefore, can produce neither a positive work nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the fury of destruction'. At the same time, the subject loses all respect for the 'mere' individuality of others, as particular selves with their own meaningless lives, and so slides into the Terror: 'The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated [i.e. the individual] is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water'. However, those in power quickly find that the citizens see them as limiting their freedom by attempting to impose some sort of social structure upon them: 'The government, which wills and executes its will from a single point, at the same time wills and executes a specific order [Anordnung] and action': these rulers therefore appear to represent merely factional interests, while the rulers themselves suspect everyone of plotting against them. Out of the fear of death that the Terror brings, individuals eventually come to terms with a less one-sided self-conception, in which they now accept that the state may require them to occupy specific roles with it: 'These individuals who have felt the fear of death, of their absolute master, again submit to negation and distinctness, arrange themselves in the various spheres, and return to an apportioned and limited task, but thereby to their substantial reality'. However, Hegel insists that this restoration of the social order is no mere return to what went before: for now the consciousness of freedom that under-pinned the French Revolution takes a new form, in 'the moral Spirit'. Thus, as Hyppolite puts it, 'Hegel interprets the Terror in the language of his dialectical philosophy' (Hyppolite). For Hegel, the Terror poses a deep and highly significant problem, which is that once the modern individual has discovered that he has 'this power to give himself universality, that is, to extinguish all particularity, all determinacy', how can this be prevented from making the individual feel alienated from all the structures that make up the state and society (its social roles, its constitutional institutions, its representative mechanisms, its decision-making procedures)? As Hegel's discussion of the French Revolution shows, he thinks that once this alienation has occurred, then anarchy follows, including the anarchy of direct democracy, which in Hegel's presentation seems to have its source not in Rousseauian qualms about the transfer of sovereignty, but in the unwillingness of modern individuals to identify themselves with any particular constituency, which is required if representational structures are to have their proper constitutional significance. On the other hand, he sees that previous ways of reconciling the individual to their social position are no longer applicable, once the self has recognized its capacity for reflective separation between the self qua particular and the self qua universal. Hegel needs to show how the reflective modern subject can be reconciled to 'particularity', by showing how in the modern world, these roles and institutions need not compromise the subject's strong sense of universality and equality. Hegel sets out to realize this project in the Philosophy of Right, to which this discussion in the Phenomenology is designed to lead us, via Hegel's further analysis of the categories of universal, particular, and individual in the Logic. He aims to show that customs, laws, and social institutions are not simply constraints, but are enabling conditions for human freedom, because they both provide necessary resources for human development, and enable us to identify and obtain various ends and goals we can set ourselves. (For further discussion of how this project is meant to work in the Philosophy of Right, see Hardimon and Westphal.)
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