God on Earth

It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State ... . The state is the divine ideal as it exists on earth.
- G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History

Which is prior, the state or-the individual?

It has been said that the Battle of Stalingrad, in World War II, was a struggle between the right and left wings of Hegel's philosophy. And though this statement might seem overly dramatic, there is a lot of truth in it. Right-wing Hegelianism grew into fascism (represented by the Germans) and left-wing Hegelianism developed, through Marx, into communism (represented by the Soviets), So philosophical ideas do indeed have force and reality: and, whether we know it or not, they shape our lives and the course of nations.

The philosophical underpinnings of the glorification of the state common to fascism and communism are to be found in Hegel's attack on individualism in The Philosophy of Right. It is a mistake, Hegel says, to suppose that the individual is prior to the state. On the contrary, the individual is a product of his family. his school. his church, his community, and his state (and in our own time we might add television, books and movies. A person can be an individual only within a state, with its laws and traditions and institutions.

The outlaw, on the other hand, is not free at all. His life is little better than that of an animal. Freedom does not lie in independence from the state, but in conformity to law and tradition.

Consider, for example, the difference between Bill Clinton and Ted Bundy. Which man was more free? Mr. Clinton has spent his life as a public servant, a servant of the state, in one capacity or another. He has taken on the tremendous burden of running the country of America. One might say that such a life of service is not free, but bound by weighty responsibilities. We perhaps imagine that Bush would like to get out from under the stress, relax and have a few beers and watch L.A. Law. But then we consider the life of Ted Bundy, whose life was a hopeless, tragic disaster-was he free? Free from the law, free from society's traditions and institutions? Free from conventional morality? We would hardly say Ted Bundy was free. Was he more the individual than Bill Clinton? The individual can only truly find himself in service to the state. The state, with its laws and institutions, is the highest expression of the ethical spirit to be found in the real world. And therefore Hegel concluded that the state is the closest thing we have to God on earth.

Which do you think is more important-- the individual or the state?

Bibliography

Friedrich, Carl J., editor, The Philosophy of Hegel, Modern Library , New York, 1954.