Tedium and death are the eventual fate of all nations. Some, by their vigor and good fortune, will have a longer life than others, but all are subject to the laws of the dialectic. Custom does not challenge itself: it is opposed by forces outside the consensus. Internal revolutionary movements or external aggressors will bring down a state which no longer has the will to survive. The people and the territory are consumed in the dialectical onrush of a new political force. There may be death, but there will never be total destruction. The vanquished will transmit a portion of their civilization and customs to the victors and in so doing plant the seeds of a new decay. Ideas and institutions carry on from epoch to epoch: nations live and die, but the dialectic counts its losses and moves on.
The death of nations can be a mortal blow to the citizens who depend on the vitality of the national spirit. If a nation ceases to act with passion and vigor, if its enthusiasm for a national mission wanes over time, then it is robbing its countrymen of the will to exist which they so stand in need of. If a nation is dispirited, then the men will fail to rise to the common defense; or they may even emigrate to another soil. In either case, the toll will be a heavy one for the dejected and uprooted. The only solution, Hegel says, is that a new national spirit must rise from the decayed ruins of the old.
In order that a truly universal interest may arise, the spirit of a People must advance to the adoption of some new purpose; but whence can this new purpose originate? It would be a higher, more comprehensive conception of itself– a transcending of its principle– but this very act would involve a principle of a new order, a new National Spirit.
This, of course, is easier said than done. It is clear that nations such as Sweden and Spain will never again rise to the heights of national grandeur they once knew. Yet a country like Germany, after ignominious defeat in 1918 and harrowing inflation in the 1920’s, was able to adopt a new sense of purpose and a new conception of order under a new regime in the 1930’s, and they managed to accomplish it again following their defeat in the 1940’s. The rebirth of national spirit may take not a decade but many centuries. Both Egypt and China, after more than a thousand years on the sidelines of history, have become national forces to be reckoned with. In the case of China a new mission– “Marxism” has conjoined with emerging national power. Hegel, who opens his Philosophy of History with a description of the past glories of the Oriental world, would probably applaud the new spirit of the Chinese people as their nation advances to the adoption of a new sense of purpose.
Hegel’s theory is a radical one: it welcomes change and it sees struggle as the necessary condition of progress. The Hero and the nation-state, both instruments of energy and activity, are the central actors on his stage. So long as they are in motion and not at rest, they are bringing to human politics the principles inherent in the Idea. At the same time, the theory has the appearance of a conservative statement: it endows with moral authority the political conditions which exist at any given point and time. Men and nations are not called upon to choose between two alternative paths of action, because it is assumed that they will pursue their irrational and self-interested ways despite the exhortations addressed to them.
Yet if Hegel is a conservative, he is a conservative with a difference. While he applauds power and authority, they may inhere in a revolutionary movement no less than in an established state. There is no celebration of custom and habit, and the Heroes who are extolled are not noted for their wisdom or virtue. Furthermore, the dialectic itself defies the premise that there can be such a thing as a status quo: there is only ceaseless change, although it may be at work deep beneath the surface.
In the final analysis, Hegel’s theory is radical or conservative depending the uses to which it is put: on the time and place at which it is applied, and on the situation of the men who are wont to invoke it. In this case, however, it is ideology rather than political theory: a rationalization for national power which seeks to grow more powerful or for incipient power which claims to represent a new political order.
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1991), translated by J. Sibree, p.53.
Ibid., p.74
Ibid., pp. 52, 74.
Ibid., p.74.
Ibid., pp.74-75.
Ibid., p.75.
346