Would the Real Hegel Please Stand Up?

In response to a few thoughts I had jotted down on the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), one reader was so kind as to point out that I was dead wrong in my understanding of Hegel. That’s entirely possible, since I’ve only dabbled in Hegel rather than seriously studied him.

But perhaps my lacking expertise on Hegel is not the only possible explanation for why my critic considered my view on Hegel dead wrong. It is a curious fact that even great Hegel fans have wildly disagreed on what their master was about. Take Hegel’s political philosophy, for instance. From very early on in the spread of Hegelianism, there were the Left Hegelians and the Right Hegelians. The left ones, principally Marx and Engels, understood Hegel’s politics as one of a revolutionary utopia that humanity is supposed to achieve. The Right Hegelians saw in his politics almost the exact opposite: an apologia for Prussia, monarchy, and conservatism.

In his guidebook on Hegel and the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Robert Stern points out more areas of disagreement among his followers. Some viewed him as a Romantic thinker critical of the Enlightenment mission, whereas others viewed him as a rational thinker critical of Romanticism. For some Hegel was almost more of a theologian than a philosopher, working within a Christian framework of thought, while for others he was a militant atheist set on destroying faith. Some considered him a Kantian idealist, others an opponent of Kant.

It’s not exactly encouraging that people who were more familiar with Hegel than I am had such divergent views on him. Is it simply because Hegel is so difficult to read?

While acknowledging the difficulty of reading Hegel, Robert Stern suggests two other reasons for the many opposite readings of Hegel.

(1) How you view Hegel depends what you compare him with.

The different Hegelians in the 19^th century came from radically different backgrounds against which they placed him. For those who compared him primarily with Voltaire and other authors of the Enlightenment, Hegel seemed an anti-Enlightenment figure. But when seen from the background of more radical critics of the Enlightenment, such as Herder, Hegel seemed very much an exponent of Enlightenment ideals. The same goes for his political philosophy, his view on religion, and other areas of his thinking. Context is everything.

(2) Hegel is hard to pin down because he stresses dialectical thinking.

Another reason that it’s difficult to find out what Hegel “really” thought about a given subject is his dialectical approach to thinking. His very way of thinking stresses bringing together two apparently opposing viewpoints for a fruitful meeting out of which a new thought can arise. He sees many dichotomies as false dichotomies. Thus he can be both defended and attacked as a Christian or an atheist philosopher, a romantic or a rationalist, a liberal or a conservative. In other words, Hegel tried to subvert antithesis to bring about a new synthesis (though he did not actually use those words to describe his way of thinking).

That’s my few thoughts on Hegel for now, mostly derived from Robert Stern. But perhaps even Stern is dead wrong. Would the real Hegel please stand up?

Voltaire: Is God at Work in This World of Suffering?

When I was on a Voltaire kick last month, I also read his story Zadig, or The Book of Fate, published in 1747, and it, too, is related to some of the themes we’ve been discussing lately in this blog.

The basic plot of the tale takes place in ancient Babylon, where a virtuous citizen by the name of Zadig rises in the esteem of the king but is betrayed by envious neighbors. Consequently, he falls out of favor with the king and becomes a wanderer in the Middle East, enduring injustice, ingratitude and all manner of suffering. After a while, a civil war breaks out in Babylon, which gives Zadig the opportunity to return and conquer his enemies. In the end, Zadig is king and rules with justice.

That’s the basic plot. But there are several philosophical questions raised by the experiences of Zadig, some of them implicit in the storyline and others explicitly asked by various characters.

When I wrote about Voltaire’s Micromegas, I quoted Professor Kors. Let me quote him again now to list the questions he sees in the text:

1. What are the ethics (not the form) of good government? What matters under any form of government are the morals, civic virtues, and compassion of whoever rules and the ruler’s capacity to remain above flattery.
2. Why does so much human injustice exist in the world?
3. What might be remedies of human injustice?
4. What is the role of chance in human justice?
5. Why does chance seem so opposed to divine providence?
6. Can one look at the human condition and find divine justice?

As is typical of Voltaire, he raises these questions without giving a definite answer to any of them. Rather, he shows the dilemmas of our human condition and thus creates empathy in the reader. Voltaire is foremost a humanist, not a system builder or even at all a systematic thinker.

Although justice triumphs in the end, much of Zadig is dominated by injustice, and it raises the old question of Plato’s Republic: What is justice? What would justice look like? How can we achieve a just society? Is it possible to achieve justice on earth or is injustice so deeply engrained in us that all we can do is to create a few safeguards against the inevitable abuse of power? Should we have an optimistic or a pessimistic view on human nature? Should we go with Hobbes or with Rousseau? And finally, how are we to reconcile God’s justice and providence with the obvious injustice within human civilization?

Voltaire: Science-Fiction Inspired by John Locke

Last week, I read another work by Voltaire. It might well be called a science-fiction story, though Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are often credited with having created the genre. The story is called Micromegas and is a philosophical tale in which Voltaire tries to show the implications of John Locke’s empirical epistemology.

Micromegas is a giant alien of truly humungous proportions. Not only is he a few thousand times taller than we are, he also has 1,000 senses and is nearly one million years old. Together with a “small” companion from Saturn, who only has 72 senses and is but 15,000 years old, Micromegas travels through space and makes a little stop-over on the earth. The earth is so tiny to them that Micromegas and his Saturnian companion almost miss it, and at first they do not think that that the earth is inhabited, let alone with intelligent creatures.

Through this tall tale, Voltaire addresses a question that Locke raises in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, namely: How would we experience the world if we had more than five senses or if our perspective of reality were changed in some other significant way?

Finally, with the help of a microscope, Micromegas and the Saturnian discover living beings on the earth, first whales and then a ship with French scientists on board. The scientists represent different philosophical schools, some of them Cartesians, some Lockeans. The aliens learn to communicate with the scientists and are astonished to learn that these tiny creatures also have scientific knowledge of the universe. They are equally astonished that, though humans have achieved knowledge of universal truths, they nevertheless quarrel and kill each other over completely insignificant matters.

The book ends with the humans asking Micromegas to tell them the ultimate essence of the universe (prefiguring somewhat the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything” in A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Micromegas promises to write them a book, but tells them not to open it until he is gone. When the scientists return to France and open the book, they find that all the pages are blank. To which the Lockean among them says: “That’s just what I expected.”

In his course on Voltaire and the Triumph of the Enlightenment, Prof. Allen Kors lists six themes in Micromegas that are central to Voltaire’s corpus as a whole:

1. The relativity of experience and knowledge;

2. The limitations of human knowledge;

3. The folly of pure metaphysics;

4. The scope of scientific knowledge;

5. The human implications of Lockean philosophy;

6. The arrogance of human nature.

Thus far my diminutive thoughts on this great work.

Rousseau’s Letter to Voltaire: Defending Leibniz and God’s Providence

In my last post, I mentioned Voltaire’s philosophical novella Candide. Though the target of the satire is the Leibnizian doctrine of divine providence, it was actually written in direct response to a letter that Rousseau had sent Voltaire.

As I also mentioned in my last post, Voltaire wrote a poem after the devastating Lisbon earthquake, and in that poem he asks why God, being all-powerful, could not have created a world without such huge catastrophes.

In reply, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote him a letter in 1756 in which he defended the Leibnizian view and attacked Voltaire for robbing humankind of the concept of divine providence and thus of hope. Voltaire used a false standard, Rousseau maintained, because our rational understanding of God’s nature completely outweighs the appearances of our everyday life.

Plus, God has actually created the natural world in wonderful harmony. It is cities, not nature, that are the source of corruption. God never intended for us to build huge cities, but to live a simple life in the countryside. If we lived more simply, an earthquake would wreak little havoc. That, Rousseau said, is the very reason why God put earthquakes in nature, namely to show us how we ought to live. Complaining that cities are destroyed in earthquakes is like building a house on water and then complaining that it sinks.

Rousseau’s letter had a deep emotional effect on Voltaire, and he thought long about how to respond. Finally, he found a way of saying what was on his mind (and heart!), and the result was Candide.

Leibniz vs. Voltaire: Can an Omnipotent, All-Benevolent God be Reconciled with this World of Suffering?

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, but one important point I did not mention is his theodicy. Leibniz firmly believed that this world of ours was “the best of all possible worlds,” because an all-powerful, all-benevolent God would never create the second or third best possible world. He would choose the best of all possible worlds.

Shortly after reading Leibniz, I also re-read Voltaire’s philosophical novella Candide. One of the characters in the story is Doctor Pangloss, who is a Leibnizian philosopher that keeps preaching the doctrine of the “best of all possible worlds” even in the face of the most outrageous suffering. Through his sometimes quite funny parody, Voltaire sharply criticizes Leibniz. If this is the best possible world, he wants to know, then what do the other worlds look like?

Another thinker who criticized theodicy was Immanuel Kant. He thought that all philosophical attempts at a theodicy had failed, and I tend to agree with him. The only theodicy that I find at all tenable is not a philosophical one but simply the cross of Christ. This is a cautious Christian approach to suffering, admitting that ultimately we do not understand it. We might never know why God lets us suffer so much, but we know one thing: If there was any way around it, God Himself would not have come to suffer. Since He did, since He suffered indescribably and even died, the picture has changed. He has taken His own medicine, so to speak, and therefore we can trust Him.

The cross of Christ is thus the only credible theodicy. One cannot argue with a martyr. And if God Himself is a martyr, well, then there is no arguing with Him, is there?

Of course, you actually have to believe in the incarnation of Christ to be convinced by this. But it shows how someone who believes in God can find in the picture of the suffering God a solution to the problem of theodicy—not a solution that answers all intellectual questions, but one that satisfies on a more emotional level. And I would suggest that the main problem people have with theodicy is an emotional one, not a purely intellectual one.

Beyond this picture of the suffering God, a traditional theodicy has been the story of the Fall. In that view, the world was utterly perfect until we humans messed it up. It’s all our fault, including earthquakes and diseases and itching noses. God, in his infinite grace, is in the process of restoring the world, and he paid the ultimate price for it. So what are we complaining about?

Nowadays, this line of thinking can only be maintained by Young-Earth Creationists, that is, by people who believe that God created the world a few thousand years ago and that all modern scientific views on the age of the earth and of life on earth are completely wrong. Even most Intelligent-Design (ID) advocates affirm that the earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, that during the Cambrian period more than 500 million years ago invertebrates spread widely in the oceans, trilobites became common, and the first mollusks appeared. ID advocates generally embrace the earth’s history as now understood, from the Precambrian to the Cenozoic, including dinosaurs and all. Consequently, they also believe that death, pain, and discord existed in the world long before humans came into existence.

This, so to speak, throws the ball of the problem back in God’s court. We are not to blame for the basic fact of suffering after all. “Why, God, did you create a world of discord, pain, and death—not just for us humans, but long before we ever appeared on the scene?” This is the new question of theodicy that modern science has pressed on the theist.

The traditional answer that this earth is a kind of training ground for better things to come is hard to believe in light of earth’s long and long-suffering history. If one were to hunt for answers to theodicy in the Book of Revelation, for instance, this is one of the answers you would get (in addition to the more important “answer” of the Lamb of God, the suffering divinity nailed to a cross, which is probably the most central aspect of Revelation).

In Revelation 8 and 9, there are seven angels blowing seven trumpets, and at each blast of a trumpet a horrible disaster befalls the earth: natural catastrophes, pollution of oceans, shipwrecks, contamination of drinking water, harmful changes in the atmosphere, demonic attacks, yes, even Satan himself wreaking destruction. And then it says in chapter 9,20-21: “The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts.”

Now I want to stress that Revelation was an “occasional” letter, meaning it was written for a specific occasion of real people that the author believed were either undergoing terrible suffering or were about to undergo terrible suffering. It is not a philosophical treatise or an intellectual answer to the problems of theodicy. But were one to approach the text in this way, it would suggest that people suffer because God wants to warn them of even greater suffering to come. It is His way of pouring cold water on the heads of sinners and waking them from their spiritual slumber.

Proclaiming this pain-stricken earth to be God’s training ground for eternity, however, has mostly failed to bring the skeptic to his knees. Instead, it has caused outrage or at least a lively discussion on why such an idea is problematic.

The first problem is that it completely ignores non-human suffering. Is the deer expected to repent of its sins when chased by a lion? And is a torn deer supposed to serve as a warning to its comrades that eternal torment is awaiting the unbelieving deer soul? Hardly. No verse in the Bible promises eternal life to animals. Why then, from a purely theological perspective, do they need to suffer? Evolution does provide a sensible biological answer here, but not Revelation.

Second, there are ethical limitations on how much suffering one can inflict for a future good. If I see a group of people approaching a mine field and find myself in the position to warn them, am I justified to issue my warning by mowing down half of them with a machine gun and maiming the rest? Is there any court in the world that would sanction my action? And what are the many diseases, epidemics, earthquakes, floods, and storms but a constant killing and maiming of earthly life?

Third, suffering as a way of steering people away from future suffering only makes sense when they know the good that will come of it. Unless you tell a child that a vaccination will prevent disease, it is hardly going to turn its naked shoulder to the pointy needle. Granted, you sometimes have to force someone into their own good, such as with a baby or a mentally handicapped person. But with them you are not aiming at voluntary submission, which is what Revelation is aiming at.

To take a different example, every soldier-to-be knows the purpose of recruit training. He can therefore interpret its hardships in the right light, knowing that they are necessary for his successful career as a soldier. Applying this to humanity as a whole, one can imagine all people being born in another sphere where God instructs them about His purpose for their eternal lives, before sending them to this earth as a temporary training ground. If this were the case, life on earth would still be a test so hard as to border on cruelty, but at least people knew what they were in for. As it is, however, we are born on this earth and know no other. Different people say different things about the purpose of our planet. There is little agreement on whether this is a boot camp for something better or as good as it gets. And as long as there is still any disagreement on why we are here, Revelation’s take on suffering falls flat.

Forth and last, Revelation itself admits that the whole scheme simply does not work. A minority starts believing in God because of their suffering, yes. But only a minority. For many people, it was not only the Jews and gypsies who died in the Holocaust, but God, too.

Let me reiterate that a more cautious Christian approach to suffering is to admit that ultimately we do not understand it. But in the cross of Christ a believer can see a God who has taken His own medicine and is therefore trustworthy. This can be a comfort to believers, but probably is not something that would convince a skeptic.

Either way, I am with Voltaire not to gloss over the suffering in this world. It is real, and as human beings we all sit in the same boat—on the same Titanic, one could say. Let me close this all-too long post therefore with an excerpt from a poem that Voltaire wrote after the disastrous Lisbon earthquake, an earthquake that, one can argue, had a huge impact on European discussions of theodicy:

Horror on horrors, griefs on griefs must show,
That man’s the victim of unceasing woe,
And lamentations which inspire my strain,
Prove that philosophy is false and vain,
Approach in crowds and meditate awhile
You shattered walls, and view each ruined pile,
Women and children heaped up mountain high,
Limbs crushed which under ponderous marble lie;
Wretches unnumbered in the pangs of death,
Who mangled, torn, and panting for their breath,
Buried beneath their sinking roofs expire,
And end their wretched lives in torments dire,
Say, when you hear their piteous, half-formed cries,
Or from their ashes see the smoke arise,
Say, will you then eternal laws maintain,
Which God to cruelties like these constrain? …
But when like us Fate’s rigors you have felt,
Become humane, like us you’ll learn to melt,
When the earth gapes my body to entomb,
I justly may complain of such a doom.

- Translated by Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)