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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” As a critique of Feuerbach, which is what it primarily is, this verdict of Marx's seems to me fair enough. But to what extent does it also apply to that other great philosopher with whom Marx is preoccupied: Hegel?
Superficially, it might appear that Hegel too is only an ‘interpreter’ of the world. Does he not, after all, repudiate any ambition to ‘give instruction as to what the world ought to be’ in his Preface to the Philosophy of Right? And does he not then famously go on to argue that
philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed […] The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk —?
Well, yes. But the particular sort of ‘instruction’ in question here is the devising of political Utopias, or the drafting of detailed programmes of government. And this is by no means the only way in which thinking may move beyond simple ‘interpretation’ to become strategically effective in worldly terms.
1 Marx, Karl, Theses on Feuerbach, XI Google Scholar.
2 Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox, T. M., pp. 12–13 Google Scholar
3 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. III, The Consummate Religion, ed. Hodgson, Peter C., pp. 161–2Google Scholar.
4 The scattered references in the Aesthetics scarcely amount to much.
5 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Book II, Part 1.
6 Eine Duplik (1778); in Lessing, G. E., Werke, Vol. 8 (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), pp. 32–3Google Scholar. My translation.
7 English translation in Chadwick, H., ed., Lessing's Theological Writings (London: A. & C. Black, 1956)Google Scholar.
8 Briefe von und an Hegel, ed. Hoffmeister, J. (Hamburg, 1952), Vol. I, p. 307 Google Scholar.
9 In general I see no reason why an English version of the Phenomenology should not actually aim to be a good deal clearer and more readable than the original; with a much bolder use of paraphrase than has hitherto been attempted. The genius of the work, after all, is far more a matter of substance than of style. And here perhaps above all!
10 The ‘spiritual animal kingdom’ being Eden. C.f. the remark in Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J., p. 321 Google Scholar: ‘Paradise is a park, where only brutes, not human beings, can remain’.
11 C.f. Harris, H. S., Hegel's Ladder (Indianopolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1997), II, p. 103 Google Scholar: where he actually identifies Lessing as ‘the outstanding representative of the Sache selbst’. Lessing, I think one might indeed well say, is the great pointer-beyond here.
12 As regards the various different interpretations of this concept by the commentators, I still hold fast to the basic view expressed in my book Hegel's Political Theology (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1991), pp. 17–34 Google Scholar.
13 Is it odd to speak of Lessing as a champion of ‘honesty’? Certainly, he is seldom frank: he seldom says everything he thinks — he is too much of an ironist. But the whole point of the irony is always to stick pins into the dishonest. Here, then, we have a perfect illustration of the elementary difference, not only between honesty and simple sincerity, but also between honesty and simple frankness.
14 See Chadwick's, Henry comments in the introduction to Lessing's Theological Writings, pp. 10–14 Google Scholar. The two main works in question are the essays, ‘Leibniz on Eternal Punishments’ and ‘The Objections of Andreas Wissowatius against the Trinity’, both of them couched as vindications of Leibniz against his liberal Socinian critics. For what Lessing thought he saw here was the emergence of a new rationalist dogmatism, if anything even more dishonestly complacent than the conservative sort to which it stood opposed.
15 Ernst und Falk: a series of dialogues, in Werke, Vol. 8, pp. 451–88Google Scholar.
16 The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 224 Google Scholar.
17 Albeit, certainly, with some tensions — above all, when it comes to the very one-sided discussion of ‘conscience’ in the latter work; in particular the extensive commentary to para. 140. Although Hegel concludes here by explicitly inviting us to compare the account in the Phenomenology, this passage still reads almost as if — justifiably, perhaps, enraged by J. F. Fries — he himself has now become a philosophic spokesman for the hard heart! True, he has earlier, in para. 137, made it clear that he is not talking in this context about the true religious conscience. But then, surely, he needs to remedy that omission somewhere in what follows. Which, in fact, he fails to do.
18 As I have also argued at length in my book God and Modernity: A New And Better Way To Do Theology (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar.