I truly enjoyed perusing and reading my past notes of the book “Truth and Method” (written by the German hermeneute Hans Georg Gadamer) as well as my past notes in my graduate course, Modern German Philosophies. Tonight, I would like to share to my readers my reflections from what I read coming from these past two notebooks I had of the topic: “Hegelian Dialectics”. Hans Gadamer strongly criticized what he considers to be a “naivete” and dogmatism characterizing Germanic political philosophy, ethos and worldview. Gadamer calls this Teutonic/Germanic tendency towards hyper-rationalism, extremist idealism and overconfidence on rational procedurality as “the Germanic dogma of Transcendental Hyper-Idealism”. He said that these naïve or fond (yet unwarranted) German belief on the capacity of reason to fully explain Reality, and Reason’s capacity to logically synthesize all disparate and philosophically opposing theses, comes from the all-pervading influence of G.W.F. Hegel in the history of modern German philosophy. The German ethos is mesmerized as it were by this Hegelian penchant for synthesis because synthesis suits the German frame-of-mind; but this does not mean that this over-emphasis on the power of synthesis is always and all the time justifiable and valid. The German people by the strength of their character is prone to worship Reason much like the Greeks, but for Gadamer, the former went overboard in their rationalist adulation compared to the latter because, the cold rationality of the subsequent German rationalist philosophers had replaced the warm, emotive and passionate activism of a Martin Luther, who Gadamer feels should be the best model of a quintessential German volk kultur (folk culture) compared to those ivory-tower and arm-chair social philosophers ensconced within the walls of Teutonic university campuses (See the Prefatory introduction of “Truth and Method”; pp. xv-27). For Gadamer, the Hegelian deterministic approach to history lies in Hegel’s belief that the ultimate synthesis of all philosophical conflicts about Reality happens when the summation of all the conflicts of all individual geists (spirit=rationality) is overcome the moment it gets unified into a global/cosmic communitarian geist (weltgeist or universal reason); as this human communitarian reason eventually transcends itself into the Pure Geist (Pure Reason) as it unfolds itself in human history. I wholeheartedly agree with Gadamer that this Hegelian overly/overtly synthetic understanding of ultimate Reality is in effect nothing but a Germanic naivete since by forcing-out a synthesis, Hegel may unwittingly and artificially reconcile views and things that may not be truly reconcilable (such as for example evil can only be evil and it will never be good [but then again, Hegelians are prone to say that something good will come out of evil—but that is just a semantic misappropriation of the terms “evil” and “good”]). I also agree with Kierkegaard when he calls the Hegelian Pure Spirit (Geist) and Synthesis as “nice Germanic terms” for dictatorship, totalitarianism and hegemony. For Kierkegaard, the Hegelian supposition that everything can be reconciled or be transcended (aufhebungen) by rational dialectics remains an unproven dogma of German philosophical orthodoxy—and it is devoid of experiential and even ontological proofs. Kierkegaard attacked Hegel’s tendency to hegemonize everything under Reason while accusing Hegel of making Reason/Telos/God as slave to the latter’s deterministic understanding of history. By subsuming Reason and the whole “March of History” into a predictable, deterministic and overly idealistic dialectic/synthesis, Kierkegaard believes that Hegel is implying that there is no freedom or autonomy left of the individual, and that history is itself nothing but a “cunning play of Reason” a sort of an illusory play dictated by the “tyranny of Reason forcing itself on us and on our existence” (See, “Kierkegaard and the Autonomy of Individual Existence”, Surrey: Anglican Socio-pastoral Module for Teens, pp. 37-50). Likewise, Nietzsche feels that Hegel’s philosophy is the culprit of what he calls “ivory-tower” mentality and intellectual “day-dreaming” found among German intellectuals who naively think that right and reasonable procedures of governance by and of themselves can effectively solve societal ills. As per Nietzsche, this German naivete of hyper-rationalism or overconfidence of Reason “to make everything under the sun all right” made German idealist philosophers oblivious if not consciously uninterested in discourses of the “real-world” and to treat discourses of practical pursuits with contempt. This is the reason why Germans tend to look down with disdain on both “the hedonistic Frenchman and the unsophisticated (read down-to-earth/practical minded) Englishman”. (See, “Nietzsche Without Tears”, Surrey: England, p. 111-112). I feel that Nietzsche’s criticism is perfectly echoed in Karl Marx’s ironic criticism of Hegel when Marx said that by obsessing and extremely privileging on the hyper-rational and hyper-theoretic laden discourse characterizing Hegelian idealism, the German society had become “unreasonably metaphysical to the point that Hegelian systematic speculation has come to replace the Roman pope of the papists and the ‘paper-pope’ (i.e. the Bible) of the Lutherans. Marx poignantly added: “For whereas Luther struggled to change the society using the language of common folk spirituality; these sophisticated rationalist priests of Hegel never lift-up a finger to help alleviate Germany from all her woes.” (The Hidden Spirituality of Marx. Jamestown: Christians for Integral Liberation, p. 60). I really enjoyed reading these scathing criticisms—fair or unfair—of Gadamer, Nietzshe and Marx against Hegel, German idealism and the German idealist-laden ethos and worldview. However, I cannot help but laugh and laugh very hard at these shenanigans. Just look! These people who criticized the German Hegel and German naivete of idealism are themselves Germans (of course, Kierkegaard is Dane, a Teuton like any other Deutsch)! And they all used the same philosophical mode (or shall I say tone) of idealism to lambast, downplay and castigate the incorrigible Hegel—these three German philosophers are using the very criterion of Reason to discredit him! Now this should show us a whole lot about the German ethos that is steeped in hyper-rationalism and hyper-idealism: that the three critics of these two Germanic tendencies became themselves enmeshed in the very net of Hegelian Reason! Germans are after all very interesting volks—more so if they are philosophers, enjoying their mug of beer and debating ceaselessly over a philosophical issue that means nothing much to us, yet really means everything to them. Germans are philosophers after all—and this alone makes them ironically interesting… Care for another mug of German beer? (Written by Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu on June 29, 2013 at 5:22 PM. Re-posted tonight in his Facebook Page.)
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 14:46:40 +0000
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