4º Encontro Nacional da Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais De 22 a 26 de julho de 2013. THE STATE, THE INTERNATIONAL, AND WORLD HISTORY Hegel s historical theodicy and modern (international) politics Instituições Internacionais Trabalho avulso Paulo Henrique Chamon IRI/PUC-Rio Belo Horizonte 2013
Paulo Henrique Chamon The State, The International, and World History Hegel s historical theodicy and modern (international) politics Trabalho submetido e apresentado no 4º Encontro Nacional da Associação Brasileira de Relações Internacionais ABRI. Belo Horizonte 2013
Resumo The argument about the spatialization of time in the constitution of modernity has been a powerful one in IR theory. According to such position, modernity is marked by a containing of the imaginary of time within the boundaries of spatial-territorial visualization, resulting in the demarcation between the inside and the outside of the State. Such inside/outside dichotomy provides for the possibility of political community and progress inside the State, while the outside remains bounded to contingency and stagnancy. In this paper, I want to start looking to the obverse side of this argument, that is, the temporalization of space. In other words, how time has, itself, also authorized space. More specifically, I am interested in how modern temporal constitution and exclusion of alterity, predicated upon linear time and its correlate teleological understanding of History, has been a necessary element of the constitution of modern politics. In order to do so, I propose a reading of parts of Hegel s philosophy the Introduction to the Philosophy of History and the final sections of his Elements of the Philosophy of Right as a mirror to contemporary politics. In addition to providing a remarkable formulation on constitution-exclusion highlighting its inseparable character from politics, Hegel writes at the apex of an epochal movement of reconfiguration of time from Christian eschatological and early-modern cyclical temporalities to its modern secularized and linear conception crystalized in the idea of progress. Therefore, in analyzing how some of Hegel s formulations constitute the State, the state system and world history, I expect to provide a better understanding of modern politics contradictions, exclusions and costs. Particularly, these are elements explicated by Hegel as foundational, differently from important trends of contemporary IR theory, which attempts to think politics avoiding such claims through tropes of modernization and inclusion. Palavras Chave: Progress; International Politics; Hegel; Exclusion
1. INTRODUCTION We begin this paper on the lead of two theorists of modern politics that write on the spatiotemporal relations articulated between the state, the international and the world in modern politics. From Jens Bartelson (1995), we take the hint that the modern international emerges with the futurist predicament of a prophecy of expansion, in other words, that the International is, by birth, a project which must assert its expansion beyond its own boundaries. From Rob Walker (2002; 2006a; 2006b), we acknowledge the double outside of the international, that is, the boundary of the state system which is authorized by the sovereignty of the International on the basis of a discourse of progress and modernization. We understand these arguments to point to a reading of the International that explicates how its constitution always implicates a logic of discrimination 1 of Otherness on a temporal basis. To be sure, the argument about the spatialization of time in the constitution of modernity has been a powerful one in recent scholarship (FABIAN, 1983; WALKER, 1993). According to such position, modernity is marked by a containing of the imaginary of time within the boundaries of spatial visualization. This result in a strong division between the Inside and the Outside of the State, a division predicated upon sovereignty as the organizing principle of political life. Such Inside/Outside division provides for the possibility of political community and progress inside the State, while the Outside remains bounded to eternal contingency and stagnancy (WALKER, 1993). The argument we draw on this paper would like to highlight, at such level of abstraction, the obverse side of this argument, that is, not only how space has authorized time, but also how time has authorized space. Specifically, how the modern temporal exclusion of Otherness, predicated upon a teleological understanding of history, is a necessary element of the International. Following such understanding, we propose to provide in this paper a reading of some works of Hegel, one of the authors who best summarize such constitution-exclusion, in order to highlight its inseparable character from modern understanding of politics. Furthermore, we intent to point how the costs of such politics are often hidden from modern discourse on International Relations, while our interlocutor made them explicit throughout his thought. We argue that Hegel can be a powerful entry point to the matters at hand due to his specific construction of politics inside a temporal dynamic of progressive dialectical History. This means that, first of all, he is at the apex of an epochal movement of reformulation of time from a Christian eschatological and cyclical temporality to its modern secularized linear conception. Furthermore, his threefold determination of the State locates dialectics and Universal History at the core of the very constitution of modern politics. Therefore, in analyzing how Hegel constitutes the State, the state system and world history in dialectical 1 Discrimination is understood here in its double meaning: on the one side, delimitation and identification and, on the other, the exclusion and denigration.
relations, we expect to provide a better understanding of the contradictions of modern politics, its exclusions and its costs, all elements that Hegel explicates as foundational results of his philosophy, while most contemporary authors attempt to think or do politics avoiding such claims through tropes of modernization and inclusion. Finally, working with and against Hegel allows us to locate our argument about modern politics and teleology as a challenge to the realist argument that a progressive rationality is an intrinsic and problematic part of liberal thought. Indeed, in our reading of Hegel, exclusion through progress appears as constitutive of modern politics as a whole, both on realist and idealist sides of the specter. At this point, it is necessary to stress what this paper does not intent to do. Firstly, this is not a work on Hegel s philosophy, but a very specific (and limited) reading of some of his works deployed in order to provide an argument about political dynamics through themes explored in contemporary International Relations theory. Due to our focus on temporal exclusion, we will concentrate on his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History as well as the final sections of his Philosophy of Right in which he approaches matters of the state system and World History. Our main concern will remain the place of (World) History as an authorization aspect of Hegel s construction of the dialectics of the state and the state system. Though this clearly opens us to critiques from any serious exegesis of Hegel s work, we believe that this first approach can shed light upon the political dynamics that interest us. Secondly, and more critically, this paper does not claim that the international system s contemporary reality is equivalent to Hegel s statements on World History. Indeed, this would have to assume that reality exists as external to discourses about it and that we have an empirical ground on which to assert right and wrong. This is not our stance on knowledge. On the contrary, Hegel is relevant to our understanding of the modern international for three reasons: first, he is part of a framework of thought which persists to our days; second, his dialectical approach highlights some of the contradictions which are often overlooked by contemporary IR; third, he is explicit about the costs of the dynamics to which he points. Our claim, therefore, is that Hegel is most clear about his assumptions and their result that contemporary thought that starts from the same point. Thirdly, this paper does not offer a plural reading of Hegel or an extensive entry into his interpreters. Indeed, while the reading in this paper draws Hegel towards the specific teleological history presented in this introduction, it is far from the unique construction possible: there are other voices in his philosophy which are at least as powerful. One of them, drawing on the distinction between implicit and explicit that the philosopher traces predicating the implicit as an ever present totality that nonetheless realizes itself progressively in time in order to reach its already implicit fullness can be seen as a trend of dialectics that blurs the past/present distinction of
history and its associated progressive logic 2. That being said, the specific construction of the author approached here is both enough and the necessary one to our objective to shed light upon some of the assumptions and costs of modern politics associated with progressive history. In order to present our argument, we will proceed in three parts. On the first section, we take a detour through the debate over the issue of time in modernity. Our intent will be to point how the emerging of history is itself already connected to a reconfiguration of the world and of our understanding of ourselves and of politics. Therefore, looking at Hegel s historical claims and authorization is not fortuitous; it means looking at a specific aspect of modern thought which shapes its understanding of itself and the very conception of politics and the State. Furthermore, we present Hegel s particular stance on History as a way to locate him within such ontological condition. On the second section, we enter into Hegel s universe by approaching, first, his construction of the matter of History and the State and, second, his three-tiered determination of the state, in order to highlight the contradictions that are the logical consequences of his system. In our third section, we turn to the specific process of discrimination that is at play in Hegel s work and how such discrimination works to produce difference, inequality and exclusion. Furthermore, we present the author s conscience of the costs of the theodicy upon which his system relies. 2. ENLIGHTENMENT TEMPORALITY AND HEGEL S HISTORY Time, History, Politics Giacomo Marramao (1995; 1997) draws attention to two different trends of studies on the transition from Christian time to modern time 3. According to the author, the genealogy of such temporalities can be made either around the concept of secularization or around the concept of Cogito. The first approach best represented by Karl Löwith understands linear progressive time as a secularization of the eschatology of Christianity. Indeed, while Christian time already pointed at futurization (the consideration of temporality according to a point in the future), the Enlightenment linearized time in turning eschatology into a utopia to be achieved by human activity in an irreversible historical process. The other approach, defended by Mazzarino, criticizes the thesis of secularization for ignoring the epochal break that the emergence of the Cogito represents and focusing on continuities between premodern and modern times. Marramao, however, criticizes the polarization of this debate 2 For examples of these alternative readings, see Barnett (1998) and Laclau & Mouffe (1987). 3 We use modern time here in a rather loose sense. Indeed, modernity can be seen as involving different temporalities from, for example, the XVI th to the XIX th centuries. Nonetheless, as we present the process of transition until the XIX th century (Hegel s period) instead of the different articulations fixed in specific authors, we argue that little is lost in tracing one general scheme that links Christianity to the Enlightenment.
arguing that the political transition represented by the emergence of progressive time should be analyzed through the recognition that the emergence of Cogito depends on a specific secular temporality which, on itself, is posited upon its capacity to authorize progress. Therefore, neither continuity nor rupture alone catches the complexity of this process. Thus, secular modern time associates with Man the responsibility for its progress. While the secularized eschatology points to a definite direction towards which History runs, it also leaves to immanent activity the duty of performing the trekking of this road. Furthermore, as knowledge is itself historicized, the infinite chain of causation becomes the only mechanism of signification available. As we will see in the sections below, the play of identity and difference in the determination of the State and the State system is an essential element of the Hegelian philosophy and the conclusions we draw from it. It is the positing of knowledge and ontological being in history that is at the core of this period s logic and of the argument we draw. The other side of this matter is brilliantly raised by Constantin Fasolt (2004). Indeed, the author argues that the founding principle of history is the separation of past and present, and that this same principle is the foundation of politics. According to him, past/present distinction constitutes the past as gone and immutable while the present as happening now and amenable to be changed at every step it opens into the future. Therefore, it also avows the modern subject as the ultimate site of responsibility and authority: he is both the one that imprints legitimacy to the evidence and the one who acts upon present reality to change it. Thus, history can only exist within the modern subjectification of the sovereign human being. As the modern subject is itself at the heart of the modern political community, Fasolt argues that [i]f history is the form in which we contemplate a past that is immutably divided from the present, then citizenship, sovereignty, and the state are the categories by which we declare our freedom to change the present into the form that we desire for the future (FASOLT, 2004, p. 7). Thus, the predominant temporality of the Enlightenment is marked by a double characteristic. On the one hand, it is a specifically linear, progressive, immanent temporality which unfolds homogeneously and irreversibly without the assumption of the activity of a supernatural power, though assuming a sacro-secular finishing point. On the other hand, it is strictly connected to the subjectification process intrinsic to the emergence of the modern subject. These specific aspects are captured by Koselleck s history of concepts in the emergence of the German term Geschichte over Historie to address history as a unique and universal process of progressive unfolding (KOSELLECK, 2004). The relevance of such
transformation for the analysis of Hegel becomes clear in his usage of such concept of Geschichte to refer to History (which places him within this particular temporality) 4. History, Philosophy, Dialectics Hegel presents in the beginning of his Lectures the specific Method of History that guides his thought, that is, his specific take on the discussion over History. This is the first instance in which his dialectical scheme is played out and we deem necessary to understand it in order to avoid a reading of Hegel which charges his History of being the substitution of real facts for an a priori philosophical scheme or a project whose closure is already stated. We start our reading of Hegel, therefore, presenting his proposal of a Philosophic History. According to the author, there have been two traditions of history. The first one is original history, which is the register of facts present to the author, that is, a history in which the Spirit of the author and the Spirit of the events are the same. The second is speculative history, the narration by a present author of events which happened in the past. In such method, the Spirit of the historian and the Spirit of the facts are distinct. According to Duncan Forbes, the common character of these different methods is that they belong to the realm of what Hegel calls the Understanding, that is, the reason of the ordinary rationalist, the sort of thinking that is especially appropriate to natural science and history, that must analyze and separate: everything is what it is and not another thing (FORBES, 1991, p. xii). For Hegel, philosophic history is the only method which goes beyond the explication of facts (present or past) or the full abstraction from them to an understanding of the whole process of History s unfolding as Reason. This is done through dialectics. Indeed, the Philosophy of History sits at a disjuncture: it must put together the a posteriori factual principle of history with the a priori speculative principle of philosophy (HEGEL, 1998, p. 10). Therefore, philosophic history is not about an abstraction imposed on facts, it is about the dialectical play of an ever present Spirit (the abstract principle of Freedom) and its realization in specific outward and determinate existences: Geist is ever present and has no past, yet it comes to full self-consciousness in history; it is ever the same, but, as manifested in each unique Volksgeist or culture, ever different (FORBES, 1991, p. xix). Something always is and was; at the same time it is also becoming. Hegel cannot, therefore, be 4 Indeed, Hegel develops further the use of Geschichte in his Lectures in the Philosophy of History: In German, the term for history (Geschichte) is derived from the verb to happen (gescheheri). Thus the term combines the objective and the subjective sides: it denotes the actual events (in Latin, res gestae) as well as the narration of the events (in Latin, historiam rerumgestarum). This union of the two meanings must be regarded as something of a higher order than mere chance. We must therefore say that the narration of history is born at the same time as the first actions and events that are properly historical. A shared inner source produces history in both senses at the same time (HEGEL, 1998, p.64).
categorized as simply an idealist reader of philosophy, a liberal. Any serious attempt to understand his thought must consider the dialectical relation of abstract and concrete. Philosophic history, therefore, is an embodiment of Hegel s dialectic of an abstract principle which realizes itself through its own particular determinations succeeding each other as they can never bind the universal in their particularity. Such characterization clears the way to Hegel s concepts of the implicit and the explicit. Indeed, the Spirit is implicitly present in every explicit stage of the process: [j]ust as the germ of the plant carries within itself the entire nature of the tree, even the taste and shape of its fruit, so the first traces of Spirit virtually contain all history (HEGEL, 1998, p. 21). 3. READING HEGEL S POLITICS World History, Universal Spirit, and the State A rational reading of History has as its universal principle the necessary realization of the World Spirit, the substance of History. The essence (implicit) and end-goal (realization) of the Spirit is Freedom, understood as independence and self-knowledge (idem, pp. 20-1). As an abstract potential, however, Freedom must emerge from its inwardness into outward existence in particular determinations (explicit); the dialectical process that Hegel presents in his discussion on the methods of History guides history s unfolding. Thus, the direction and meaning of World History is the realization of Freedom as the essence of the Spirit; World History in general is thus the unfolding of Spirit in time (HEGEL, 1991, p. 75). The means for such realization is dialectics: the realization of the Spirit relies on the play of individual activities and passion, arisen from particular interests. As the individual conscious will is limited, it cannot itself will the Universal Spirit; it is always bounded to the particular. As individuals act toward the realization of such particular interest, however, they serve as unconscious means to the realization of the Universal Spirit: those very life-forms of individuals and nations, in seeking to satisfy their own interests are at the same time the tools and means of something higher and greater (of which they know nothing and which they fulfill unconsciously) (HEGEL, 1998, p. 28). This is the struggle of freedom (human conscious will) and necessity (the development of the Spirit) that fuels dialectics in its practical embodiment. The result of such struggle is the realization of the universal within the particular. However, such realization is never complete as the antagonism renews itself at every step in which the universal realization is fixed within a particular determination. The sole locus of resolution of this tension of universality and particularity is the Idea of the State. At this point, emerges a reading that points to the State as the entity of the resolution of the antagonism of freedom and necessity. Hegel does point to such position in part of his Lectures: Insofar as the State, our country, constitutes a community of existence, and
insofar as the subjective will of human beings submits to laws, the antithesis between freedom and necessity disappears (HEGEL, 1998, p. 42). The State, in its determination of our country, allows for the reconciliation of freedom and necessity. Furthermore, such reading presents History as a process of development of the Spirit from the immanent dialectic of different States and world historical individual passions. The State takes part in World History as a totality that always contains its own negation inside and, therefore, the means for the realization of the Universal Freedom. As stagnation is the death of the State, the dialectics of world historical passions keep its movement in World History. For a truly universal interest to arise, the Spirit of a people must come to the point of wanting something new. But where could this new thing or purpose come from? It would be as if the people had a higher, more universal idea of itself, going beyond its present principle but in this there would be a new and more determinate principle, a new Spirit. (Hegel, 1998, p. 78) Though such statist reading is defendable, it seems to us that another vision is also present in Hegel, specifically in his Philosophy of Right. We follow Duncan Forbes interpretation according to which The Philosophy of Right does not in fact end with the state. The achievement of freedom in the rational state is not an end in itself; the political/moral freedom possible in the state is only a relative freedom (FORBES, 1991, p. xxvii). This, we argue, is a much more powerful and fruitful starting point to think about matters of international politics. Such reading is founded upon Hegel s dialectics of implicit and explicit as it posits the differentiation between the State as an abstract Idea and the State as an empirical entity. Indeed, as an abstract totality, the State is the embodiment of the resolution of Freedom and Necessity. However, the abstract State must realize itself in history, which demands his determination into outward existence; a determination which cannot simply be internal. The State, the International, and World History The State is, for Hegel, first of all, an ethical totality, an abstract entity which is the necessary place for the realization of the Spirit (BARTELSON, 1995). As we ve seen, however, as an abstraction, it must realize itself in particular determinations. It is in the process of such realization that the State is actualized as an acting self-conscious subject. Hegel points to three elements of this determination: the internal, the external and the historical. In its internal determination, the State is self-related and its internal differentiations are realized into existence; in its external life, the State is determined as an exclusive unit in relation with Otherness outside; in its historical determination, the State is the universal Idea above individual states realizing itself in World History (HEGEL, 1991, 259 and 271).
In everyone of these dimensions, a particular dialectic is constitutive of the order itself and of the necessity of its sublimation into a higher order. Indeed, the State is actual, and its actuality consists in the fact that the interest of the whole realizes itself through the particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of universality and particularity, the resolution of universality into particularity (idem, 270 addition). It is to the specific construction of the resolution of universality and particularity in those three levels that we now turn in order to present some of the dilemmas of modern international politics and, more precisely, the temporal exclusion that the historical construction predicates. The first of the three-fold determination of the State is the internal one. Here, the state is self-related and determined as the resolution of universality and particularity within itself. Indeed, the individual is allowed to be free within the State as he is deemed only to follow the rules of the State, rules that are issued from the will of the people. Therefore, in obeying only to his will, the individual can both be free and will the universal (HEGEL, 1991, 3**). Furthermore, the State is the resolution of universal and particular as he is not only the locus of the realization of Freedom (both in its objective and subjective form), but also the sole configuration that allow for the individual to attain the universal while willing the particular. Indeed, the State is predicated upon the non-destruction of individual conscious will; as a matter of fact, it cannot be more than a crippling entity unless the particular wills remain within it. According to Hegel: The principle of modern states has enormous strength and depth because it allows the principle of subjectivity to attain fulfillment in the self-sufficient extreme of personal particularity, while at the same time bringing it back to substantial unity and so preserving this unity in the principle of subjectivity itself (HEGEL, 1991, 260). Thus, in its internal determination, the State is related only to itself allowing the differences and particularities existent within it to take form while also sustaining its universal character. In other words, within the State, freedom and necessity can be reconciled; the particular can take form within the universal and act upon itself while also willing the universal. Such construction of the State as the sole possible political community allows Hegel to claim that [i]t is the reality wherein the individual has and enjoys his freedom but only insofar as he knows, believes, and wills the universal (HEGEL, 1998, p. 41). Note, however, that the author s depiction differs from contractualists positions which claim that the State allows for Freedom in restraining individual excesses. Indeed, the role of the State is not the limitation of individuals in order for some space of existence to be authorized in their mutual restriction. This would place the objective of the State as the protection of goods such as the security of life and property; while this can be an objective for Civil Society, it cannot be so for the State as an embodiment of the Universal. Therefore,
the positive reality and satisfaction of Freedom is rather Law, ethical life and the State (HEGEL, 1998, p. 41). The freedom limited is that which relates to the particularity, not the individuality of human being, that is, that aspect which connects them to world history, not that which posits them as individual entities 5. This distinction between a particular character and an individual one is stated explicitly by Hegel: [i]ndividuality should be distinguished from particularity; it is a moment within the very Idea of the state, whereas particularity belongs to history (HEGEL, 1991, 259 addition). We come back to such distinction in the analysis of the second and third determination below. Thus, in its first determination, the State authorizes the Freedom of human beings in reconciling their particular interests, passions and volition with the universal will of the Spirit. Only within the State can the individual will both the particular and the universal, unite freedom and necessity and, therefore, be free while also being universal. However, as the State constructs itself as a bounded entity, it meets others equally bounded entities in an inter-state arena. Such situation affects the possibility of Freedom within the State, demanding another determination, the external one, in order to fully realize its objective. The second determination of the State is external: the individualization of the State in its relationship with other equals. While moments of the State are differentiated out of the internal resolution of freedom and necessity, Hegel speaks of internal sovereignty. However, the Spirit, which in its freedom is infinitely negative reference to itself, is just as essentially being-for-itself which has incorporated the subsistent differences into itself and is accordingly exclusive (HEGEL, 1991, 321, emphasis in the original). Hence, in this determination, the State becomes an individual, becomes Same within itself and Other towards its outside. Bartelson draws attention, at this point, to an often overlooked aspect of Hegel s theory: the role of the sovereign. Though it receives no systematic treatment in his system, the sovereign appears as the guarantor of the individuality of the State: the state has individuality, which is [present] essentially as an individual and, in the sovereign [Souverän], as an actual and immediate individual (HEGEL, 1991, 321, emphasis and additions in the original) 6. Indeed, in Hegel, it is the presence of the immediate will of the sovereign which draws the line in water between the inside and the outside of the state (BARTELSON, 1995, 5 Such position brings attention into the distinction that Bartelson (1995) provides between the role of history in the XIXth century s thought and the mathesis of earlier contractualists. In Hegel, the beginning of the State is also the beginning of History, there is no contract that can be made outside of Time and, therefore, of the universal drive of the Spirit. In Hobbes, on the other hand, the contract between individual is that which take them away from the state of nature, instituting both the Leviathan and time within it. 6 Also: subjectivity attains its truth only as a subject, and personality only as a person, and in a constitution which has progressed to real rationality, each of the three moments of the concept has its distinctive [ausgesonderte] shape which is actual for itself. This absolutely decisive moment of the whole, therefore, is not individuality in general, but one individual, the monarch (HEGEL, 1991, 279, emphasis and addition in the original)
p. 218). The division of the Inside/Outside which constitutes the State in the first place 7 is predicated upon a sovereign that can draw a limit and determine the State s individuality. Such distinction of inside/outside constituting the State as an individual affirms, at the same time, its independence and freedom. Indeed, according to Hegel, in this external determination, [t]he nation state is the spirit in its substantial rationality and immediate actuality, and is therefore the absolute power on earth; each state is consequently a sovereign and independent entity in relation to others (HEGEL, 1991, 331, emphasis in the original). As the principle governing the mutual relations of States is their own sovereignty, no private right can be applied upon them; international law is never more than obligations on the States, obligations that might always be derogated. The logical consequence, drawn by Hegel, is that conflicts between States particular wills can be settled only by means of war; since those particular wills are always the welfare of the whole in general, self-interest drives international politics. Kant s Perpetual Peace can never be reached, as a federation of State is always the result of obligations, that is, always carries the taint of individual sovereignty (idem, 330, 333, 334, and 336). However, we believe that the emphasis in this part of Hegel s argument underplays how his characterization of the individuality of the State in its external relations can be seen as an instance of the duality of sovereignty between the State and the International as pointed by Rob Walker (2010). According to Walker, Kant seems to express an exemplary uncertainty about whether, as a condition of the possibility of any sovereign state, the system of sovereign states is to be located in a vertical plane above the sovereign state or in a horizontal plane of sovereign states. Crucially, so to speak, neither location seems possible (WALKER, 2010, p. 167). We see this same uncertainty in Hegel as a dissonant voice; one that is underplayed by readings that understand his international politics as a defense of realpolitik. Indeed, while in many different sections the author points to the sovereign as the one who draws the line in water, he also points to another essential element to the state s individuality: recognition: on the one hand, the legitimacy of a state, and more precisely in so far as it has external relations of the power of its sovereign, is a purely internal matter (one state should not interfere in the internal affairs of another). On the other hand, it is equally essential that this legitimacy should be supplemented by recognition on the part of other states (HEGEL, 1991, 331). and recognition, ( ) also depends on the perception and will of the other state (idem). Therefore, recognition enters Hegel s second determination of the State as besides being Same in relation to others, the State must also be recognized as such by these 7 The primary authority which states possess when they make their appearance in history is quite simply this independence, even if it is completely abstract and without any inner development (HEGEL, 1991, 322)
Others. At play we see a double constitution of the State: the line in water cannot solely be drawn by the sovereign, it must be drawn simultaneously by the society of states to which the individual pertains. Indeed, if the sovereign demarcation of the individual State affirms its absolute independence and freedom of action (which results in international law being never more than an obligation subject to the State s right of derogation), [t]he fact that states reciprocally recognize each other as such remains, even in war as the condition of rightlessness, force, and contingency a bond whereby they retain their validity for each other in their being in and for themselves (idem, 338, emphasis in the original). This double differentiation, of internal sovereignty and external recognition represents one of the most basic contradictions of international politics: where is the state s individuality and sovereignty authorized? If on the one hand such authorization comes from sovereignty as the schmittian capacity to draw the boundary, on the other hand, such authorization comes from the international capacity to draw the line between those who are recognized as individuals and those who are not. As both the inside and the outside are themselves elements that arise from the drawing of these boundaries, the impossibility of a definite relation of super- and subordination between the State and the State system depicted by Walker seems most prescient. We argue that the attempt to characterize Hegel s politics as realpolitik misses the important paradox that is developed in this second determination, that is, the uncomfortable disjunction of self-determination and hetero-determination of the individuality of the State. There is, furthermore, a second and more important to our specific argument moment of the critique of any depiction of Hegel as a precursor of contemporary realism. Indeed, such arguments miss the fact that Hegel lodges Realpolitik in a broader theory of the ethical purpose of history, though it is clearly not an embrace of a global civil society (BLANEY & INAYATULLAH, 2010, p. 126, note 71). This point to the third and final determination of the Idea of the State in Hegel s three-fold schema: history. While in its second determination, the State has been depicted as an individual in relation with others, the State is also a particular existence of the World Spirit. Therefore, war between individual states is also the play of particular wills in the realization of the universal. Indeed, the situation of war that arises from the State second determination is an ambiguous one. On the one hand, the higher signification of war is that, through its agency, ( ) the ethical health of nations is preserved in their indifference towards the permanence of finite determinacies (HEGEL, 1991, 324); war assures that stagnation never freezes the State s second determination, it is the guarantor of the dialectical conciliation of universal and particular in the State. On the other hand, however, such state of war threatens the State: the ethical whole itself the independence of the state is exposed to contingency (idem, 340). Therefore, war is both an instrument to the revitalization of the State and a menace to
it. These two elements are united in the third determination of the State, that is, in World History. If as individuals States clash with no higher praetor, as particulars their relations are mediated by the highest authority of all: World History as the universal Court of Judgement. Therefore, in its historical determination, the State is not only one among others anymore; it is a particular in relation to the higher universality of World History the necessary development of self-consciousness and freedom. Again, in acting to fulfill its particular interests and passions, the Spirit of the Nation is the unconscious instrument of the World Spirit; reason acts cunningly for its self-realization in the continual change of world historical determinations. Hegel substitutes a progressive process of destruction and higher rebirth for the principle of cyclical self-renovation (HEGEL, 1998, p. 76). In World History, thus, the State is realized within a specifically teleological history that runs in a progressive process towards a determinate direction. States actualization is, therefore, a historical process informed by the relations that arose from the preview two determinations: In their consciousness of this actuality and in their preoccupation with its interests, they are at the same time the unconscious instruments and organs of that inner activity in which the shapes which they themselves assume pass away, while the spirit in and for itself prepares and works its way towards the transition to its next and higher stage (HEGEL, 1991, 344). This is, we argue, the killer point that Hegel s philosophy explicates and that permeates modern political thought. The contradictions that arise from the necessity to reconcile Freedom and Necessity within the political community can only be resolved when placed upon the logic of a Universal History. Indeed, the State and the State System, in their inherent contradictions, cannot resolve the issue of Freedom through further spatial sublimations. Any attempt to create a new space of politics, as Kant s federation of states, is doomed to assert its own spatial negation and, therefore, the restatement of the paradox of freedom and necessity: Thus, even if a number of states join together as a family, this league, in its individuality, must generate opposition and create an enemy (HEGEL, 1991, 324). The sole possible resolution to the dilemma posed is the temporal predicament of a Universal History, that is, a specific direction of the political process upon which the realization of the contradiction can be avowed 8. Therefore, we argue that the Hegelian system is, at its limit, authorized by a temporal claim about progressive history. As a construction which is entirely founded upon the principle of history, its authorization has itself to go through an historical element. However, it 8 This is not arguing that a specific End of History must be posited as reached or reachable for such authorization to be claimed. It is the historical determination of the direction of time which serves as the authorization principle of which we speak. The linearization of time which, Fabian (1983) argues, is constitutive of the exclusive determination of Otherness as Backward is the crux of the matter.
must be noted, this is not saying that History is brought in by Hegel in order to mend a wound in his political system. On the contrary, History is an essential element of the very dialectical constitution of this wound in the first place. Therefore, it plays the double role that is necessarily assigned to negativity in Hegelian philosophy: it is both the cause of a break and the assurance of a truer unity (FORBES, 1998, p. xxviii). This is the place of History as Hegel s ultimate authorization. 4. THE THEODICY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROPER 9 If recognition from the state system in the lack of a higher praetor points to the necessity of determining who is a State beyond internal sovereignty individualization, World History determines where this line is to be drawn among them: if the nation, as ethical substance ( ) does not have this form [stateness], it lacks the objectivity of possessing a universal and universally valid existence for itself and others in laws as determinations of thought, and is therefore not recognized (HEGEL, 1991, 349). As stated above, World History is about States and States are the subject-matter of History by definition. This statement is founded upon both a logical argument about the character of the resolution of Freedom and Necessity and on a history of beginnings that links the State to History and the History to the State (HEGEL, 1998, p. 64-7). As long as one is a State, it can be part of the bond that unites every individual state entity in their mutual relations of recognition and war; otherwise, it dwells outside History and politics. This specific movement of exclusion by Hegel constitutes what we call the International Proper. Indeed, the author turns a characterization of the proper State, the proper political community, into a characterization of the proper relation among them. Thus, the International Proper is constituted by the group of all duly recognized, civilized, proper States. Among them, the bond of sociability understood as recognition must be sustained even in times of war. However, in proper States relations with other nations, no such equality is predicated. The State Proper becomes our International Proper as the group of States which differentiates itself from the non-proper barbarian nations, and towards which the Right is not of international law anymore, but of World History: [t]he same determination [the absolute right of the Idea to make its appearance in objective institutions] entitles civilized nations to regard and treat as barbarians other nations which are less advanced than they are in the substantial moments of the state (as with pastoralists in relation to 9 We use the adjective proper here as an explicit reference to Hegel s distinction of Africa from Africa Proper. While Africa has an important role in Hegel s philosophy as an element excluded from History and any possibility of Progress (BERNUSCONI, 1998), the author is cautious to declare that his statements only relate to sub- Saharan Africa, what he calls Africa Proper. Therefore, the adjective Proper is used as a tool of differentiation that draws the line between the Inside (historical, civilized, recognized) and the Outside (ahistorical, barbarian, excluded). We reproduce such wording to explicate how the same logic is at play at the level of the International.
hunters, and agriculturalists in relation to both of these), in the consciousness that the rights of these other nations are not equal to theirs and that their independence is merely formal the wars and conflicts which arise in these circumstances ( ) are struggles for recognition with reference to a specific content. (HEGEL, 1991 351) The divergence of historical time is translated as a difference of Right. While the properly recognized most advanced entities in the temporal realization of the Idea, deal with each others as clashing equals (second determination) or clashing particulars (third determination), the civilized nations and the barbarians nations interact according to another principle: difference, more specifically, difference understood as inferiority. Here, just as the State could become an individual in relation to its external Other, the group of civilized States becomes one in relation to its own external (i.e.: backward) Other. In this sense, Africa plays a central role in Hegel s argument. Indeed, Africa Proper (i.e.: sub-saharan Africa) is deemed outside of History, incapable of any kind of progress and civilization by and for itself. It is the inner beginning point, the constitutive outside of Hegel s History as that null-point in which the absolute lack of progress or culture authorizes claims of progressiveness (BLANEY & INAYATULLAH, 2010; BERNUSCONI 1998) 10. Furthermore, it reinforces Hegel s history of beginnings with the State: before the existence of this entity, there was no history and, therefore, nothing of value; only Africa Proper. The role of such constitutive outside can, nonetheless, be extrapolated beyond Africa in the objective sense. Indeed, Hegel s dialectical process has as its logical consequences that any positing of a totality will have to present both an internal and an external other; in Duncan Forbes words [i]f reality, which is not just substance but active subject as well, is a perpetually re-enacted process of self-realization, and the result includes the process, then Spirit's other, which is necessary to the process, must always remain other (FORBES, 1975, pp.x-xi). Thus, every affirmation of an International Proper needs to produce its external negation, its own Africa Proper as a site outside of History which cannot be realized in and for itself. Towards such outside, the International Proper can act within its absolute right of civilization, of internalization. Surely, just as slavery have, in Hegel, its moment of usefulness in the specific relation with the African barbarian that have in it a road for freedom and selfconsciousness (BERNUSCONI, 1998), then also the pedagogical aspect of expansion and colonization can have its positivity: the coming to stateness and, therefore, subjectivity and objectivity, of those outsides. In this process, the subject remains nonetheless the Universal 10 In their discussion of political economy, Blaney & inayatullah (2010) points to the African null-point as also necessary for Hegel s mending of the wound of poverty that emerges from its constitution of Civil Society. To be sure then, as history of beginnings and constitutive outside, Africa Proper plays a central role in Hegel s entire system. The same dismissal of Africa as a crisis continent in contemporary international imaginary bears the question of how much our own constitutive outside differs from Hegel s.
Spirit which justifies all the sacrifices [that] have been brought upon the broad altar of the earth in the long flow of time (HEGEL, 1998, p. 22, emphasis added) 11. In this sense, we argue that Bartelson s argument of the emergence of the International with an always present prophecy of expansion is made explicit in Hegel s construction of politics in World History. Indeed, the predicament of the realization of the State in History needs the assumption of different status of political entities in order for the State to have an Other against which to construct itself as the latest stage of development and for the International to have an Other against which to posit itself as a definite group of mutually recognized units. Such differentiation, sustained on the absolute right of the most advanced over its lesser counterparts, is at the heart of the constant need for expansion into an outside space which is subject to such determination due to its asserted temporal backwardness. There is, thus, a doubled recognition process at play. On the one hand, inside the International Proper, recognition forms the foundation of a society beyond mere Realpolitik. On the other hand, outside the International Proper, recognition takes the form of a progressive project of the affirmation of universality in successive particular forms. This line of argument also points to important meditations on the relationship between freedom, equality and inequality. On the one hand, it embodies Walker s argument that the International contains, at its emergence, a specific relationship of equality to inequality (WALKER, 2002). Indeed, as we ve argued, the International as a specific organization of political life is authorized by a specific discourse on the equality of States. However, it is also predicated upon the differentiation between an International Proper, where such equality takes place, and a Backward Outside which stands in relation of inequality towards its proper counterpart. Such play of Inside/Outside of the International is the final frame of authorization of modern politics. Likewise, we acknowledge Walker s statement that claims of equality and inequality are themselves strictly connected to claims of freedom (WALKER, 2002). And in Hegel, once more, such relationship is explicit. Indeed, the entire construction of equality and inequality derives from an a priori claim of the realization of Freedom. If Hegel s entire system converge into the exclusionary conclusion we present and, as we argue, contemporary international politics, in taking the same assumptions of Freedom and Equality/Inequality, share the same conditions of possibility, then the former is explicit about the costs involved in its scheme, while the second do its best to hide such clarity of thought. Indeed, Hegel realizes that the cost of its philosophical predicament is that History carries in its back the ruins of numbers of particular nations and civilizations. Hegel s theory is, therefore, a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God, of the existence of Evil in the 11 Hegel s specific wording is telling. Indeed, the author speaks of the sacrifices, which frees any particular state (in his case, European states) of the responsibility for historical ruins. Only the Spirit is responsible, and the Spirit is absolute Freedom. (Blaney & Inayatullah,2010, p. 131-2).