In VI A. c., “The Condition of Right”, Hegel discusses the Lord of the world (God). Hegel understands the Lord of the world to be the being who encompasses within himself all other beings. The Lord of the world is “the solitary person who has confronted all others” (33). The Lord of the world is the only being who knows himself completely, that is, he has a perfect account of his relationships with other beings. Being that this being knows his surrounding world totally, he knows exactly his position in the world, and he knows exactly what is best for himself and his community and he knows exactly how to achieve this. Hegel claims that this being is an actual conscious being, but I think this idea might be better understood as an ideal to strive for. I’m not sure if Hegel has earlier, or will later discuss the reason for believing there exists an actual “Lord of the world“, but I think the implications of this idea are the same whether or not this being exists in reality. If I’m not mistaken, I think what Hegel is suggesting here is that in becoming more acquainted with one’s position in the world, one’s actual existence, one will become closer to God (perfection), closer to living a life of harmony.
Ideally speaking, this idea makes very much sense. If it were the case that I knew everything perfectly, then I would have a perfect grasp of my situation, that is, I would know exactly what implications my actions had, and therefore I would know how to accomplish what I want, and I would not desire anything impossible because this would be irrational. Basically, if I were God this would work. Unfortunately I am not God, and I have a very limited perspective on things compared to the absolute. I am involved in countless relationships with people I don’t know (on the subway, etc.). Each and every one of these people has the power to change my life drastically; one might mug me, one might punch me, one might even kill me. Even in my personal relationships, I know my friends and family to a certain degree, but they have such complicated independent relationships, as do I, that I could not possibly have a good grasp of what they will do in certain situations. I don’t even know myself in this sense! There are times I surprise even myself with my own actions. At any moment in my life, there may occur an event which I had no possible way of foreseeing which changes everything, in fact this happens very often in real life. It is this dynamic, unpredictable aspect of life which is potentially devastating to the idea of (nearly) absolute knowledge. Despite all this, I think it is a good idea to understand ones own world. While this might not always work out to one's own benefit, or even the whole’s own benefit, generally it is beneficial to attempt to understand your position in life. My main problem with Hegel so far is that he is overly optimistic about the power of knowlege, but then again it may be this style of his which leads people to follow his instruction (to know the world) which I think is generally a good thing.
A writer once commented that most of the cruelty in the world comes from ignorance and/or stupidity and that very few people are cruel on purpose. That is, I think, true. People say and do awful things not out of true malice but out of pure stupidity and cluelessness. And the people in this world who are doing the most harm often actually think that they are doing the right thing. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, absolute knowledge of the type that an omniscient being has WOULD be a great help in circumventing all of that. If you knew the mind of someone else, you would be much less likely to hurt them over what you THOUGHT was the right thing to do. How many times have you heard "But I thought...", "But I figured..." or "But I thought WE HAD AN AGREEMENT!!" as an excuse? People would not screw up so much if they had knowledge outside of themselves.
As Prof. Vaught already mentioned last week on Wednesday, by the Lord of the World Hegel does not mean the idea of God but of a King. The King, in Hegel's interpretation and as seen in history, was the God of the world because he had a divine right to rule. It was believed that the King had a direct connection with a divine being and thus people did not have the right to object to his rule. This was the reason why so many people (i am not implying that ALL were but SOME) who lived under the power of the King were truly devoted to his rule, (or more like rejected the idea of questioning his authority) seeing him as the maximum power on earth, accepted his rule until his death. Later accepting the rule of the family member who was next in line to the throne.
ReplyDeleteAs we progressed in the readings I have definitely come to agree with your general statement of Hegel’s optimism. To backtrack¬, a teleological view of history would seem to inherently be subjected to either an optimistic, pessimistic, some weird variation or neutral (indifferent) view. Yet looking through Hegel’s examples: the optimistic basis of gender roles and the family in Greek society, designation and acceptance of this L.O.T.W in the Roman society and the self-imposed nature of moral will all seem to be radically contingent. That the individuals of these respective times are representative of those working towards the absolute makes sense to me (as opposed to the entire population of the society). Yet there seems to be a conflation between these individuals and the rest of the society (or a lack of acknowledgement of the rest of society); this conflation I find, often distracts me and others (I would presume) from the overarching concept of Spirit. Ultimately I’ve come to question the creative choice (though as a writer I give him props for originality) of using highly questionable historical examples to explicate his theory because at times it feels as if I have to block out the examples entirely (because they are painfully optimistic at times) and just focus on the broader concept of Spirit’s development.
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