ABSTRACT
The cloud of suspicion that hung over the political philosophy of German Idealism for much of the twentieth century has almost fully dissipated. The connections, real and imagined, to communism and to German nationalism no longer stand in the way of a sober assessment of the texts of these thinkers. I focus in this essay on the major works of the three most important idealists, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and on the extent of their continuity with the classical liberal tradition. Their ideas are developed from the tradition of modern political philosophy, and each of them critiques and extends that tradition. In this introductory section I lay out four of the main themes of modern political philosophy. This will allow me in the rest of the essay to analyze the moves in the idealists’ texts as appropriations and transformations of these themes. One of the de…ning moves of modern political philosophy is to separate political right from morality. Machiavelli tried to separate the question of political freedom from a Christian morality that urges people to care more for their souls in the afterlife than their freedom in this life. In The Prince he wrote that politics should be oriented by how we actually live, and by the general unreliability of humans to do the right thing, rather than by philosophical theories or religious teachings of how we ought to live. This is not only advice to rulers who want to secure their power, but it is also an assumption Machiavelli thought necessary for securing republican freedom. He writes in the Discourses on Livy, “it is necessary to whoever disposes a republic and orders laws in it to presuppose that all men are bad, and that they always have to use the malignity of their spirit whenever they have a free opportunity for it” (Machiavelli 1996; 15). Rather than basing politics on trust and morality, a political order should instead be based on coercive laws and the motives of self-interest and fear of punishment. In Hobbes and Locke, the separation of political right from morality is less oriented by an antipathy to religion in general (though one can certainly detect that in Hobbes), and more from a concern that religious differences make orderly
political life impossible. Writing in the context of the English Civil War, Hobbes sought to build a political system on the basic human passions, with the idea that if the basis of political authority could be traced to the (amoral) desires common to all humans, there could be no grounds for civil discord based on scriptural interpretation or moral ideals. John Locke also had religious discord in the forefront of his thoughts in his “Letter Concerning Toleration,” in which he sought to distinguish the purview of government from that of religion. On Locke’s view the commonwealth has to do with securing the private property of each individual and with regulating trade and industry. It is not the business of the government to legislate matters of faith or private morality, but only to adjudicate the external conditions of freedom. Two more themes come out quite clearly in the social contract theory of Hobbes’s Leviathan. Hobbes’s argument begins with an account of the human passions and of the pre-political “state of nature.” This state is characterized by a war “of every man against every man,” in which there is “continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 1994: 76). There is no justice, no right or wrong, and no morality in the state of nature. The …rst and second “laws of nature” are to seek peace and contract with others for peace. There is no moral basis for the move from the state of nature to civil society, but rather simply the strategic concern that one’s life will be longer and better: “the motive and end for which this renouncing and transferring of right is introduced, is nothing else but the security of a man’s person, in his life and in the means of so preserving life as not to be weary of it” (Hobbes 1994: 82). To gain this security one seeks agreement with others to constitute a coercive power that gives ef…cacy to the contract by instituting a system of punishments. This “motive and end” de…nes the second major theme of modern political philosophy, which I call securing property through a common coercive force. The coercive force is administered by a sovereign political authority with the power to legislate and judge the legality of particular actions. The third main theme concerns how individual freedom is embodied or expressed in the action of the sovereign, especially in the action of making laws. I call this theme personal freedom through the will of the sovereign. According to Hobbes, once I have given my consent to the social contract, every action of the sovereign is by de…nition also my action, so in obeying the sovereign I am obeying myself. Hobbes relies on this claim in arguing against the right of resistance. He holds that the sovereign must be granted absolute power, for otherwise there would always be the possibility of war and a return to the state of nature. There can be no rightful rebellion or resistance to the sovereign, for there is no judge above the sovereign who could say whether a claim against the sovereign’s authority is legitimate. We are to accept this result because of the absolute misery of the state of nature, which makes the relative misery of living under a bad sovereign tolerable. The social contract theorist with the greatest impact on German Idealism is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His in¶uence on the idealists stems from the importance he places on freedom and his analysis of the social conditions that make freedom possible. The focus on freedom is evident in his basic formulation of the challenge
of political philosophy: “To …nd a form of association that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate with the full common force, and by means of which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before” (Rousseau 1997: 49-50). Rousseau’s formulation captures neatly the goals of securing property through a common coercive force and personal freedom through the will of the sovereign. Rousseau’s answer to this challenge is a social contract in which each individual completely alienates his powers to the sovereign “general will.” The general will has “full common force,” and since the general will is also the universal will of the individual, obedience to the sovereign will of the united whole is a form of self-obedience. Though republican and egalitarian, Rousseau’s theory shares many structural features with Hobbes’ account of absolute sovereignty. Like Hobbes’s sovereign, Rousseau’s general will is infallible and has complete power over an individual’s property and even over the individual’s life. The general will has this power because it expresses the will of each individual considered as a citizen. Each person is subject to the law as a person, and each is author of the law as a citizen possessing a general will. Rousseau admits that these two perspectives can diverge, and he requires that “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free” (Rousseau 1997: 53). One is free when the laws treat everyone equally and state action is oriented by the good of all. Rousseau’s general will is an ideal standard of political legitimacy, and a government which did not follow the general will can for Rousseau (unlike for Hobbes) be legitimately resisted by the sovereign power of the people. Yet the statement that one can “be forced to be free” is worrisome for liberals because it puts personal freedom too much in the hands of the collective will. Rousseau gives some indications of how this will is determined, such as through democratic voting procedures, but for many liberal political theorists he does not do enough to secure the rights of individuals against the collective will. It seems that one exercises personal freedom only in willing the general will, which leaves the individual’s particular attachments and projects in a precarious position under the authority of the whole. Whereas the Hobbesian (and Lockean) model of a state that sets external boundaries between individuals left personal morality outside the purview of public power, Rousseau’s conception of the general will and his requirements for a healthy polity pull him away from modern political philosophy’s strict divide of morality and right. Rousseau moralizes about the sel…shness and corruption of modern bourgeois agents, which he takes to be a major obstacle to the genuine political freedom available under the general will. In his “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,” he takes Hobbes to task for modeling natural man on the Englishmen of his day rather than on truly natural, primitive man. The most prominent feature of Rousseau’s natural man, and of the young Emile in his book on education, is a wholeness and integrity that Rousseau thinks is missing in the bourgeois man. The bourgeois civilized man has a split personality because he cares primarily for himself and his own interests, while having to look to other agents in society for con…rmation of who he is. But Rousseau does not give up on civilized man, and he argues for the malleability of human nature and the transformation of human nature within civil society. One of Rousseau’s revolutionary ideas
is that individuals are constituted as free moral beings by entering the social contract and submitting themselves to the general will. This is our fourth major theme, which I call the social constitution of free agency. Individuals who enter the social contract do not remain the same as they were before, for entering “the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct” (Rousseau 1997: 53). Rousseau introduces an alternative strand in modern political philosophy in giving social conditions the role of constituting free agency. The main signi…cance of this move is that it provides another motive, potentially even more important than securing property, for entering and remaining in society. He holds out the promise of a society in which one …nds moral ful…llment in the public sphere because through public action one’s deepest values are realized in a way that is af…rmed by others. This strand in Rousseau’s thought stands in obvious tension with our …rst two themes (separating morality from right), for it highlights the alienating and inegalitarian tendencies of a non-moral politics based exclusively on protecting private property. The moral dimension of Rousseau’s view comes out most clearly in his claims about the need for a polity to have good customs if the general will is to actually be expressed in the community’s actions. To achieve this condition, Rousseau invokes the “lawgiver” as a mythic character, modeled on the great founders of peoples in ancient societies, who unites a people by instilling common customs. Rousseau was clear that only a small city-state or commonwealth with shared values could realize his ideal. Yet large-scale revolutionary movements, beginning with the French Revolution, have attempted to recreate society and citizens along Rousseauian lines. The German idealists were generally sympathetic to Rousseau and to the French Revolution’s ideals, but each in his own way attempted to correct for the de…ciencies of Rousseau’s conceptions of freedom and self-determination. Kant and Fichte were truest to Rousseau’s ideas in their elevation of morality to the highest point in philosophy. In their mature political philosophies, however, they both returned to a Hobbesian line about the separation of morality and right, and both strongly emphasized securing property through a common coercive power. They are not oriented by a social condition of shared value, but rather they take right to be an “external” relationship of mutual constraint, a set of rules for restricting actions that is neutral to speci…c moral values. Hegel rejects Rousseau’s contract theory, but he is much closer to Rousseau in thinking of ethics (which for Hegel includes politics) as public action that expresses shared values. There are legitimate liberal concerns about Hegel’s rejection of the right/morality dichotomy, but his theory remains among the best resources for thinking through liberalism’s hopes and discontents.
