The Individual vs. The Public Interest: Political Ideology and National Forest Policy by Richard M Alston

Author:Richard M Alston [Alston, Richard M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367293055
Google: jpapyQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 52056561
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Friedrich Hegel - The State and the Idea

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century.2 Hegel's concept of historicism and the dialectic proved of extreme significance, particularly in its adoption by Karl Marx. Our interest, however, lies in another idea of Hegel's.

Plato, as we have stated, felt that reality could not be perfection since the Idea, the basic form, existed outside and prior to man's perception. Aristotle reversed the order, suggesting that the Idea, the essence of a thing was in its End. For Hegel, elements had no such independent meaning, gaining it only through the collectivity of which they were moments (or components). For Hegel, it was the State that captured the meaning of the parts. It was the State that embodied the Idea, the realized meaning of the collectivity. The Nation and its collection of people with similar interests and place relationship was captured in the concept of State, which manifested the spirit of the nation and its people.

Hegel argued that one must investigate the perceived qualities of a thing (in detail), but always in relation to the links between these qualities and the whole of which they are a part. The parts, however, are only partial, incomplete, unfinished until placed in the context of far more than is immediately (both in space and through time) apparent. Identity exists only in relation to the whole. Truth is the whole.

Hegel saw in the struggles between States, therefore, not merely warfare but a struggle of Ideas. The central Idea of each people was thus at issue, and the outcome would be determined by the stronger, the more complete, the higher Idea. Through such struggle would emerge the Higher Idea, in a dialectical process toward the most universal Idea (or Truth) . Thus, we have his well known dialectical process: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

As Solo has interpreted the significance of this in our context:

Hegelian theory postulates a force that transcends the interests and volitions of the individual, and yet deduces, as the Classical analytic of history did, a process of reason realizing itself. Except that in the Hegelian case, the bearer of reason is not the individual, but the State; the State conceived as a reasoning, self-interested, trans-generational being. The bearer of reason is no longer Man, but Synthetic Man. State and Nation are, in Hegelian conception, species of Synthetic Man.3

In classical and neoclassical thought, the State had very little meaning within the conceptual framework of individualism, as we have seen. Hobbes justified the State because it could stand outside the system of individualized choice and be an arbiter of conflict. Outside and detached from the arena of choice, the State would be excluded from any activities except facilitating the choice makers. For Hegel, the opposite was the case. The State was not outside of, rather it was the community.

Hegel developed his philosophy in the Prussian society. It was in Prussia, unified into Germany under Bismark (1815-1898) in 1871, that the philosophy became most highly developed, albeit significantly changed in many ways.

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