WEBVTT NOTE Is History Going Anywhere? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Alright, I have a few copies in my paper, if anybody wants some, I can give them to you after the talk. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:09.000 My paper is an investigation into the question, is history going anywhere? 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:13.000 It would take a lifetime of research and writing to even get close to a satisfactory answer. 4 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:16.000 This paper has been a chapter in that grand exploration. 5 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Its scope focuses on the thought of Hegel and two of his more contemporary critics, Mises and Eric Vogelin. 6 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Everyone here is familiar with the work of Mises, but many of you may not be familiar with that of Vogelin. 7 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:29.960 I won't talk about him much in this presentation, but for those of you interested in the philosophy 8 00:00:29.960 --> 00:00:34.080 of history, you might want to take a look at his writings, they might be beneficial. 9 00:00:34.080 --> 00:00:39.200 So why should we be interested in Hegel today, more than 150 years after his death? 10 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:42.160 Although he still has some influence in the continental philosophical tradition, there 11 00:00:42.160 --> 00:00:46.720 is very little, if any, Hegelian influence in the Anglo-American or analytic tradition. 12 00:00:46.720 --> 00:00:50.080 Philosophers of science rarely cite Hegel, so why should people working in the social 13 00:00:50.080 --> 00:00:53.800 sciences worry too much about this figure in the history of philosophy? 14 00:00:53.800 --> 00:00:57.560 It seems to me that although Hegelianism has probably already seen its better days, there 15 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:01.040 are still Hegelian ideas that influence those who work in the social sciences. 16 00:01:01.040 --> 00:01:05.560 Hegel's main idea regarding the philosophy of history is that world history is inexorably 17 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:08.600 leading in a certain direction. 18 00:01:08.600 --> 00:01:12.880 He then sets about describing this progression toward his idea of freedom, but this of course 19 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:16.020 means that all of history was determined and couldn't have happened differently. 20 00:01:16.020 --> 00:01:19.400 The force that drove all the great figures in history according to Hegel is the Weltgeist 21 00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:20.400 or the World Spirit. 22 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:27.400 And we'll talk a little about Hegel's Geist more later, but for now I just want to describe some of the Hegelian influences in the contemporary social sciences. 23 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:36.400 Hegel, along with Comte, in later Marx, established within the Western philosophical tradition the notion that society evolves or progresses in stages. 24 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:45.400 This is important because just by virtue of the fact that one stage, with all of its abstractions and characteristics, is followed by another stage, with other characteristics and abstractions and so on, 25 00:01:45.400 --> 00:01:49.440 and so on. All of this presupposes that there is some direction toward which history or 26 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:54.280 social development is aiming. This all means that there is some end state of affairs, the 27 00:01:54.280 --> 00:01:58.320 stage is up to that point, presumably served to progressively set up or bring about that 28 00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:04.120 end state. So whenever we hear thinkers talk about successive stages of historical or social 29 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:09.560 development, a teleological conception of history is implicit in their analysis. Teleological 30 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:19.280 Let's take Marxism as an example. In Marx's social theory, there's first predative communal 31 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.880 societies, then feudal economic systems, and then pre-industrial economic development followed 32 00:02:23.880 --> 00:02:29.240 by capitalism and socialism, and finally the classless communist society. The material 33 00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:34.600 productive forces are what drives this development or progression. Each stage gets history closer 34 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:38.600 to the goal. Hegel's philosophy of history is very similar. Marx was actually Hegelian 35 00:02:38.600 --> 00:02:44.400 in itself. While Hegel's universe is populated by ideas, Marx simply applied Hegel's philosophical 36 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:49.120 system to a materialistic cosmos. For Marx, the final goal, the telos of history is the 37 00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:54.640 utopian communist state. For Hegel, the telos of history is his idea of freedom. The guy 38 00:02:54.640 --> 00:02:58.840 used to work through the stages of history to bring about this end, and Hegel and his 39 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:03.440 follower Marx want to study history in the way that the scientist studies nature. They 40 00:03:03.440 --> 00:03:07.960 believe that they have found a theoretical framework necessary to make philosophical 41 00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:17.960 In the same way that the scientist looks at nature, the scientist seeks to apply a theoretical framework to natural phenomena. 42 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:22.960 Hegel's philosopher-historian does the same thing with history. History is his phenomena to be studied. 43 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:30.960 Furthermore, any sort of theory that describes stages of historical development, where one stage is followed by another until some end state is reached, 44 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:35.960 such a system must necessarily describe the force that brings about the success of stages. 45 00:03:35.960 --> 00:03:39.960 I believe that the argument I make in this paper would apply to any such system. 46 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:44.960 I chose to center my paper around Hegel's philosophy of history because his system is, in my view, 47 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:49.960 the first systematic and philosophically robust teleological analysis of history and social development. 48 00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:57.960 Consequently, it has either directly or indirectly influenced every major teleological analysis of history and social development since. 49 00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:02.960 I'll try to illustrate how Hegel's system works by looking at a major world historical figure as Hegel does. 50 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:14.960 He gives the example of Caesar. Some of what follows may sound strange, but we must keep in mind that Hegel thought Rome's transition from republic to empire was a crucial development in the advance of freedom. 51 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:20.960 He says that before he took over the entire Roman Empire, Caesar was struggling to maintain his equality with the other leaders. 52 00:04:20.960 --> 00:04:25.960 About to lose his position, he resorted to fighting the others in the interest of maintaining his own position. 53 00:04:25.960 --> 00:04:30.160 By defeating the others, he came to be the sole leader of the whole empire, although 54 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:33.720 the Constitution and the Republic's legal framework remained intact. 55 00:04:33.720 --> 00:04:37.480 What spurred him to action was not merely self-interest, but more importantly, an unconscious 56 00:04:37.480 --> 00:04:42.440 impulse toward a state of affairs predetermined to come about at that time. 57 00:04:42.440 --> 00:04:46.480 This is one of his quotes from the lectures on the philosophy of history. 58 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:50.560 He says, such are all the great historical men, whose own particular aims involve those 59 00:04:50.560 --> 00:04:54.480 large issues which are the will of the world's spirit. 60 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:58.440 Man is a means to the end of history. 61 00:04:58.440 --> 00:05:03.160 The spirit works through the actions of individuals, brought about by the passions to actualize 62 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:05.400 its greater end. 63 00:05:05.400 --> 00:05:12.000 Man's passions spur into action, man's reason makes it possible to achieve the ends he chooses. 64 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:16.520 In the Geist, the world spirit is the force, the principle that ties all of history together 65 00:05:16.520 --> 00:05:19.320 into a comprehensible and intelligible whole. 66 00:05:19.320 --> 00:05:23.040 Without the Geist, Hegel says that history would be unintelligible, we would not be able 67 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:34.700 On the theoretical level, Hegel says that there are three basic stages that the Spirit 68 00:05:34.700 --> 00:05:35.700 passes through. 69 00:05:35.700 --> 00:05:40.760 In the first stage, where the Spirit is immersed in nature or the passions of man, it seems 70 00:05:40.760 --> 00:05:42.880 that the Spirit has no conception of himself. 71 00:05:42.880 --> 00:05:47.560 Only one is free, the ruler, emperor, or whatever, and all the others are subject to his rule. 72 00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:50.760 Ancient China is the example he uses to typify the stage. 73 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:55.760 In the second stage, only a few are free. Ancient Greece and Persia are the examples he uses. 74 00:05:55.760 --> 00:06:02.760 In this stage, the principle of freedom is present in a few, but their freedom depends on the toil of others who aren't free. 75 00:06:02.760 --> 00:06:11.760 As he says, the spirit emerges into consciousness, but this emergence is impartial due to the spirit's close relationship to its previous naturalness or basicness. 76 00:06:11.760 --> 00:06:17.760 In the final stage, the spirit rises from the limitedness of the previous stage up to the rank of the universal. 77 00:06:17.760 --> 00:06:20.260 Hegel uses the Prussian state as an example. 78 00:06:20.260 --> 00:06:26.060 He thought his Prussian state was a culmination of all historical development since ancient China. 79 00:06:26.060 --> 00:06:28.120 This is a general form that the process takes. 80 00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:33.220 The job of the historian, according to Hegel, is to describe in these terms the progress in history. 81 00:06:33.220 --> 00:06:39.360 In other words, the facts of history, the historical phenomena, must conform to this basic scheme. 82 00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:43.320 So nobody's ready to leave yet? 83 00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:48.320 Even if we accept the Hegelian thesis that history is inexorably heading towards some final end, 84 00:06:48.320 --> 00:06:56.320 the idea of freedom, it can never be applied to materialist metaphysics or even the physical world as we apprehend around us. 85 00:06:56.320 --> 00:07:04.320 If we're going to be materialists, we can't apply any kind of a priori reasoning, including Hegel's dialectical logic to the material world around us. 86 00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:06.320 This is what Mises says on this topic. 87 00:07:06.320 --> 00:07:16.320 Hegel didn't contradict himself in applying the logical a priori to the interpretation of the universe, but it's different with a doctrine that indulges in naive realism, materialism and empiricism. 88 00:07:16.320 --> 00:07:24.320 Such a doctrine ought to have no use for a scheme of interpretation that is derived not from experience but from a priori reasoning. That's from theory and history. 89 00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:38.320 He continues, it's a gratuitous pastime to apply the terminology of logic to the phenomena of reality, propositions about phenomena, events and facts can be affirmed or negated, but not the phenomena, the events and the facts themselves. 90 00:07:38.320 --> 00:07:42.320 We are horribly mistaken if we think we can substitute the word negation for change. 91 00:07:42.320 --> 00:07:51.320 This is the mistake that Engels did in his, I think it's called Anti-During, in his book where he tried to apply the dialectical method to biology. 92 00:07:51.320 --> 00:07:54.320 I think I said it's an utter failure. 93 00:07:57.440 --> 00:07:59.560 Negation, indeed the entire dialectical method 94 00:07:59.560 --> 00:08:02.040 applies only to ideas and propositions about reality, 95 00:08:02.040 --> 00:08:03.160 not reality itself. 96 00:08:03.160 --> 00:08:05.400 It seems to me that for Hegel's system to work, 97 00:08:05.400 --> 00:08:07.340 we have to assume that all of our experiences, 98 00:08:07.340 --> 00:08:12.040 all the reality around us, these are all just ideas. 99 00:08:12.040 --> 00:08:13.600 This may not be a problem for Hegel, 100 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:16.700 for as he stresses, the only real thing is a belgeist. 101 00:08:16.700 --> 00:08:19.020 But insofar as we think the physical material world 102 00:08:19.020 --> 00:08:49.020 We cannot use a dialectical method to explain phenomena we experience. Instead, we must use the methods of the sciences. In short, if we wish to cling to materialism, or metaphysical dualism, or anything like that, Hegel can tell us nothing about the end of history, or the means by which we will get there. We cannot apply the rules of logic and reasoning to phenomena themselves. Only ideas conform to those rules. Hegel's philosophy of history only works in a world constituted by ideas, not a world populated by material objects. 103 00:08:49.020 --> 00:08:56.180 In Mises's article, Sociology and History, first published in 1929, he criticizes the 104 00:08:56.180 --> 00:09:02.420 view that we can explain historical development or progress and make future predictions through 105 00:09:02.420 --> 00:09:05.120 a scheme or a law of stages type analysis. 106 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:10.340 In other words, his argument is against a view that economic development progresses 107 00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:12.100 through historical stages. 108 00:09:12.100 --> 00:09:15.980 The import it has in our discussion about Hegel and the teleological view of history 109 00:09:15.980 --> 00:09:17.340 will become clear momentarily. 110 00:09:17.340 --> 00:09:33.340 The first I'll briefly outline Mises' argument. The model that Mises attacks is Carl Bucher's Theory of Stages, but Mises notes this theory is representative of a whole class of similar theories and that his criticism should apply to the rest of the members of this class. 111 00:09:33.340 --> 00:09:41.340 According to Bucher, history has progressed from the self-sufficient home economy, then to the town economy and finally to the modern industrial economy. 112 00:09:41.340 --> 00:09:47.340 These progressions came about through the principle of lengthening routes that the goods travel between producers and consumers. 113 00:09:47.340 --> 00:09:52.340 In other words, these stages come about through the dynamic functioning of the division of labor. 114 00:09:52.340 --> 00:09:58.340 By dynamic, I mean that Booker conceives of the division of labor as a law that progresses or expands throughout history. 115 00:09:58.340 --> 00:10:06.340 A dynamic interpretation claims that the lines of production lengthened over time is to claim that there will be more and more specialization in manufacturing, 116 00:10:06.340 --> 00:10:12.340 expanding distribution networks, etc. over the course of time just by virtue of the fact that time has progressed. 117 00:10:12.340 --> 00:10:21.340 A static interpretation of the division of labor, on the other hand, simply states that work performed under the division of labor tends to be more productive than isolated work. 118 00:10:21.340 --> 00:10:26.340 This static interpretation is what allows us, as Mises says, to make sense out of historical phenomena. 119 00:10:26.340 --> 00:10:35.340 We can look at some historical event like the shortening routes between producers and consumers in the late Roman Empire and understand that it came about because of a diminishing division of labor. 120 00:10:35.340 --> 00:10:48.340 These kinds of static laws or principles allow us to make sense out of the past, but they tell us nothing about the future other than the fact that we'll recognize future states of affairs as being explainable by these static principles. 121 00:10:48.340 --> 00:10:55.340 To use our example, we can't imagine a case, for the most part, where work in isolation will be more productive than work under a division of labor. 122 00:10:55.340 --> 00:11:01.180 Waiver. Mises writes accordingly, the realization of the higher productivity of work performed 123 00:11:01.180 --> 00:11:07.220 under the Division of Waiver places at our disposal the indispensable means for the construction 124 00:11:07.220 --> 00:11:12.900 of ideal types necessary for intellectual comprehension of this event. And for more 125 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:17.340 on ideal types, I recommend that article, Sociology and History, by Mises. I think it's 126 00:11:17.340 --> 00:11:22.900 in the Epistemological Problems of Economics, but he sort of gives a nice little introduction 127 00:11:22.900 --> 00:11:35.900 The historian constructs these ideal types, for instance, the self-sufficient household economy, the town economy or the national economy, etc., because he just sees how the division of labor works. 128 00:11:35.900 --> 00:11:42.900 He can organize different patterns of historical phenomena according to a scale based on the intensification of division of labor. 129 00:11:42.900 --> 00:11:49.900 These ideal types are useful for intellectual comprehension and pedagogical purposes, but we must be careful in using them for other means. 130 00:11:49.900 --> 00:11:59.900 The decisive and fateful error lies not in their construction but in the attempt to connect them with a schema of stages and to base this schema on the law of the division of labor. 131 00:11:59.900 --> 00:12:00.900 He continues, 132 00:12:00.900 --> 00:12:05.900 This law makes only one statement about the objective result that can be attained through the Division of Labor. 133 00:12:05.900 --> 00:12:12.900 It does not say that the tendency toward further intensification of the Division of Labor is operative. 134 00:12:12.900 --> 00:12:20.900 In other words, we cannot say that one stage necessarily follows another and then base this progression on a static law like the Division of Labor. 135 00:12:20.900 --> 00:12:24.900 This law is not the kind of law that says something about an operative force. 136 00:12:24.900 --> 00:12:29.900 These kind of laws only say something about a class of phenomena that apply universally. 137 00:12:29.900 --> 00:12:32.900 The phenomena that fall into this class will be explained by that law. 138 00:12:32.900 --> 00:12:37.900 The confusion arises when we confuse a static law with a dynamic or an operative law. 139 00:12:37.900 --> 00:12:45.900 It's my claim that Hegel's idea of reason as guiding the realm of human events is another instance of this confusion. 140 00:12:45.900 --> 00:12:50.900 Like Bouquet, Hegel outlines what he understands to be stages in human development across history. 141 00:12:50.900 --> 00:12:55.900 These stages are the various empires going back in time to pre-historical China, as he calls it, 142 00:12:55.900 --> 00:13:00.180 and outside history because they were without freedom through the Persians and the Greeks 143 00:13:00.180 --> 00:13:05.180 in whom the idea of freedom first appeared and finally in the Germanic age where the 144 00:13:05.180 --> 00:13:07.380 end of history was approaching. 145 00:13:07.380 --> 00:13:09.640 Reason guides this entire process for Hegel. 146 00:13:09.640 --> 00:13:13.900 His idea of freedom is when we choose to do the right thing through the influence of nothing 147 00:13:13.900 --> 00:13:15.080 else but reason. 148 00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:19.400 For Hegel reason is the operative force through which the idea of freedom passed through the 149 00:13:19.400 --> 00:13:22.860 ages and eventually onto its own self-consciousness. 150 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:25.780 But is the principle of reason really an operative force? 151 00:13:25.780 --> 00:13:30.500 I contend that it's not. The laws of reason tell us something about the way our minds work. 152 00:13:30.500 --> 00:13:34.460 When ideas conform to the laws of reason, we are able to make sense out of them. When 153 00:13:34.460 --> 00:13:38.380 ideas don't conform to these laws, they are unintelligible. We cannot comprehend a square 154 00:13:38.380 --> 00:13:43.860 circle that's green all over and red all over at the same time. But these laws were discovered 155 00:13:43.860 --> 00:13:47.460 and developed over time. As people learned to use them, they were able to make better 156 00:13:47.460 --> 00:13:51.740 sense out of the world. Science developed as a result. Perhaps another development due 157 00:13:51.740 --> 00:13:55.740 Due to the use of these laws was the emergence of freedom throughout Western Europe. 158 00:13:55.740 --> 00:14:02.740 We're able in the present to look back at these moments and perhaps even assign to them ideal typical names as Hegel does. 159 00:14:02.740 --> 00:14:08.740 It certainly helps us to categorize errors in history according to common qualities across societies. 160 00:14:08.740 --> 00:14:16.740 And again, we are only able to do this because we recognize certain ideas like freedom, reason, etc. to be homogeneous across time and society. 161 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:21.620 For this reason, we don't include the past deeds of, say, a particular herd of buffalo in our history. 162 00:14:21.620 --> 00:14:27.460 Those ideas don't apply. The ideas like reason and freedom and stuff don't apply to such a group. 163 00:14:27.460 --> 00:14:31.780 But we have no reason to think that these ideas are operative in history. The laws of reason are not 164 00:14:31.780 --> 00:14:36.100 the kind of laws that can be operative. They are static. If the emergence of freedom indeed comes 165 00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:40.340 about when man applies the rule of reason to his actions, then freedom will wane when man 166 00:14:40.340 --> 00:14:45.380 forgets the rule of reason. At the end of the day, Hegel wants to study history as we study the 167 00:14:45.380 --> 00:14:47.140 and Natural Sciences. 168 00:14:47.140 --> 00:14:48.940 He wants to apply a theoretical framework 169 00:14:48.940 --> 00:14:50.720 to the subject matter of history. 170 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:52.980 My view, and I believe it's the Austrian view, 171 00:14:52.980 --> 00:14:54.500 is that history is only the collection 172 00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:56.020 of human events, phenomena, et cetera, 173 00:14:56.020 --> 00:14:59.220 that conform to all the fractiological laws. 174 00:14:59.220 --> 00:15:01.140 Those events and phenomena could have been different, 175 00:15:01.140 --> 00:15:03.220 and in that case, they would have also conformed 176 00:15:03.220 --> 00:15:05.260 to the law, to the fractiological laws. 177 00:15:05.260 --> 00:15:07.380 But economic laws, or any other kind of laws 178 00:15:07.380 --> 00:15:10.100 that govern human action, don't determine human history. 179 00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:13.100 They certainly eliminate some otherwise logical possibilities. 180 00:15:13.100 --> 00:15:20.100 For example, we can eliminate the possibility that raising the minimum wage will causally increase employment. 181 00:15:20.100 --> 00:15:29.100 In this limited sense, the future will look like the past, but economic laws or any other laws governing human action no more determine the future than they determine the past and the present. 182 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:34.100 Those are all my remarks for right now, so I'll hand it over. Thanks.