Hegelian "unity of will": WTF?

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Sorel


Sorel's was a voluntarist Marxism: he rejected those Marxists who believed in inevitable and evolutionary change, emphasising instead the importance of will and preferring direct action. These approaches included general strikes, boycotts, sabotage, and constant disruption of capitalism with the goal being to achieve worker control over the means of production. Sorel's belief in the need for a deliberately-conceived "myth" to sway crowds into concerted action was put into practice by mass fascist movements in the 1920s. The epistemic status of the idea of "myth" is of some importance, and is essentially that of a working hypothesis, with one fundamental peculiarity: it is an hypothesis which we do not judge by its closeness to a "Truth", but by the practical consequences which stem from it. Thus, whether a political myth is of some importance or not must be decided, in Sorel's view, on the basis of its capacity to mobilize human beings into political action; the only possible way for men to ascend to an ethical life filled by the character of the sublime and to achieve deliverance. Sorel believed the "energizing myth" of the general strike would serve to enforce solidarity, class consciousness and revolutionary élan amongst the working-class.

What in blazes is the "unity of will" that has become a fetish on most of the left (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/495/marxism.html)?

[Hit The North]

Jacob, why not introduce this subject by providing a quote that actually mentions the "unity of will"?

As for your question I have no idea. But why do you ascribe it to Hegel?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

That phrase is from the article to which JR linked:


It was in this context, and not merely because of the war, that Lenin turned to the study of Hegel. In Lenin’s polemics against Kautsky and Plekhanov and accounts of the causes of the political collapse of the Second International in 1914-15 (CW Vol 21) we begin to find references to Kautsky’s and Plehkanov’s defective dialectics, and to the voluntarist turn of phrase, the “unity of the will” of the working class. There is here an implicit, partial, self-criticism of Lenin’s political alignments in the International movement before the war. The Communist International, when it was founded, grouped a section of the old centre which had moved to the left ... but also an important part of the old left, including elements from the old left syndicalists who had never been part of the Second International. The result was a tendency to downplay the historical differences between the Bolsheviks and this tendency. These, however, resurfaced in 1920-21 as ‘new’ differences between the majority and the ‘left’ communists on participation in parliament, attitudes to the trade unions, the party question, etc, discussed in Lenin’s Leftwing communism, an infantile disorder (1920).

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/495/marxism.html

Here is the reference in Hegel:


In his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel divides the section dealing with the philosophy of spirit into three parts: subjective spirit, objective spirit and absolute spirit. The part on objective spirit is then dealt with in much greater detail in the Philosophy of Right. It is this part which concerns itself with law, morality and ethical life (Sittlichkeit) as the objective, institutional expressions of spirit. (p132)

And what is the objective spirit?

"Objective spirit is the realm within which human consciousness comes into its own: 'Ethical life is the unity of the will in its concept with the will of the individual'. This unity of content and form when integrated into consciousness is freedom' "( p132)

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/bucknell.htm

I suspect this is a Kantian notion, and then ultimately an idea they both lifted from Rousseau.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't think an ultra-conservative like Hegel would take something significant from an ultra-radical like Rousseau ("general will").

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, he did, via Kant. The historical record is quite clear.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, here is what Hegel wrote in his 'History of Philosophy' (bold added):


d. ROUSSEAU.

In connection with the practical side of things this particular must also be noted, that when the feeling of right, the concrete practical mind, and, speaking generally, humanity and happiness were made the principle, this principle, universally conceived, had certainly the form of thought; but in the case of such concrete content derived from our impulse or inward intuition, even though that content were religious, the thought itself was not the content. But now this further phase appeared, that pure thought was set up as the principle and content, even if again there was lacking to this content the true consciousness of its peculiar form for it was not recognised that this principle was thought. We see it emerge in the sphere of will, of the practical, of the just, and so apprehended that the inner-most principle of man, his unity with himself, is set forth as fundamental and brought into consciousness, so that man in himself acquired an infinite strength. It is this that Rousseau from one point of view said about the state. He investigated its absolute justification, and inquired as to its foundation. The right of ruling and associating, of the relation of order, of governing and being governed, he apprehends from his own point of view, so that it is made to rest historically on power, compulsion, conquest, private property, &c.(9)

Rousseau makes free-will the principle of this justification, and without reference to the positive right of states he made answer to the above question (chap. iv. p. 12), that man has free-will, because “liberty is the distinguishing feature of man. To renounce his liberty signifies to renounce his manhood. Not to be free is therefore a renunciation of a man's rights as a human being, and even of his duties.” The slave has neither rights nor duties. Rousseau therefore says (chap. vi. p. 21): “The fundamental task is to find a form of association which will shield and protect with the power of the whole commonwealth combined the person and property of every one of its members, and in which each individual, while joining this association, obeys himself only, and thus remains as free as before. The solution is given by the Social Contract;” this is the association of which each is a member by his own will. These principles, thus abstractly stated, we must allow to be correct, yet the ambiguity in them soon begins to be felt. Man is free, this is certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it is first realised. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not anything real; for the state is the first realisation of freedom.

The misunderstanding as to the universal will proceeds from this, that the Notion of freedom must not be taken in the sense of the arbitrary caprice of an individual, but in the sense of the rational will, of the will in and for itself. The universal will is not to be looked on as compounded of definitively individual wills, so that these remain absolute; otherwise the saying would be correct: “Where the minority must obey the majority, there is no freedom.” The universal will must really be the rational will, even if we are not conscious of the fact; the state is therefore not an association which is decreed by the arbitrary will of individuals. The wrong apprehension of these principles does not concern us. What does concern us is this, that thereby there should come into consciousness as content the sense that man has liberty in his spirit as the altogether absolute, that free-will is the Notion of man. Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. Thought, as volition merely, is the impulse to abrogate one's subjectivity, the relation to present existence, the realising of oneself, since in that I am endeavouring to place myself as existent on an equality with myself as thinking. It is only as having the power of thinking that the will is free. The principle of freedom emerged in Rousseau, and gave to man, who apprehends himself as infinite, this infinite strength. This furnishes the transition to the Kantian philosophy, which, theoretically considered, made this principle its foundation; knowledge aimed at freedom, and at a concrete content which it possesses in consciousness.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpfrench.htm

Foot of the page.

Hegel was a Philosopher of freedom, and the most important recent philosopher of freedom in his day was Rousseau.