The most remarkable feature of Andrew Buchwalter’s latest work, devoted to the actuality of Hegel’s practical philosophy, is perhaps the balance struck between the vastness of the appointed subject matter and the relatively short length of the analysis. Indeed, the author’s proposed rehabilitation of Hegel’s ethical and political thought, in line with the recent work of American scholars such as Robert Pippin or Dean Moyar, is not anchored in a specific Hegelian text or in a definite philosophical or political issue. Although most of the discussion revolves around the Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences’ ‘Philosophy of Objective Spirit’, what is at stake is nothing less than the entirety of Hegel’s philosophical writings, confronted with an equally vast overview of the main themes that engage social and political theory today.
In order to accomplish such an ambitious task, Buchwalter offers what he dubs a ‘contemporizing approach’, that is, a reading that uses today’s political and social debate as a starting point to revisit and reiterate various Hegelian theses. Displaying a solid knowledge of the Hegelian corpus, his analysis is grounded upon two symmetrical convictions: firstly, the idea that Hegel’s thought, in spite of its outdated elements, has not lost its relevance and can help interpret and reform today’s social and political landscape; secondly, the contention that Hegel’s own doctrines are better understood in actu, through the concrete demands of today’s philosophical debate. This second conviction is especially meaningful, as it seems to define the author’s general take on Hegel’s thought. It might be said that Buchwalter’s Hegelianism is above all a holistic philosophy of action, which is only truly intelligible in a practical context.
Two important hermeneutical standpoints must be highlighted in order to grasp the tone and affiliation of Buchwalter’s work. First of all, the insistence upon the normative character of Hegel’s project. For Buchwalter, Hegel’s practical philosophy does not amount to a descriptive or merely comprehending evaluation of the basic structures of social reality. Indeed, ‘while affirming that truth consists in the correspondence of thought and object, [Hegel] understands correspondence re-constructively rather than mimetically: at issue is not simply the adequatio intellectus ad rei but rei ad intellectum as well.’ (10) This normative dimension allows Hegel’s writings to transcend the social and historical circumstances of their own time and live on as universal critical tools. It is this account of normativity that enables Buchwalter to link Hegel’s practical philosophy to contemporary issues as diverse as modern republicanism, globalisation or eurocentrism.
However, by the author’s own avowal, this kind of approach is not without its problems. The first and most immediate one concerns the systematic nature of Hegel’s philosophy and the risk of distortion involved in the separation of any one of its composing elements in favour of a more circumscribed analysis — or, in this case, a direct confrontation with authors and doctrines whose main concerns and methods are sometimes very distant from those of Hegel. Furthermore, it is far from evident whether Hegel’s very conception of philosophy would allow for such an exercise. His claims about the inability of philosophical analysis to transcend its day and age, or his infamous reference, in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, to the owl of Minerva, whose flight mirrors the belated arrival of philosophy in the scene of historical reality, seem to undermine any attempt to construe Hegelianism as a prospective or trans-historical undertaking.
The author’s response to these and similar objections is twofold. He argues, firstly, that Hegel’s philosophy, due to its focus on self-consciousness and self-apprehension, consists of the endless task of accommodating reflection and reality and is therefore naturally bent towards the future, and, what is more, to future versions of previously abstract, ‘undialectical’ forms of reality. Secondly, he is careful to distinguish a methodological appropriation of Hegel’s thought from a mere updating of his theses. To be sure, Buchwalter’s use of Hegel, when dealing with recent authors and contemporary social phenomena is reconstructive, for the simple reason that Hegel could not have addressed such authors and such phenomena in his own lifetime. But his reconstruction seems to follow the form of Hegel’s reasoning, rather than its specific content. And therein lies the most interesting aspect of his analysis: the question is not so much what Hegel would have claimed when faced with this or that particular thesis, nor even what his writings, when interpreted correctly, would force us to say about this or that particular phenomenon. The aim is to revisit and re-enact Hegel’s conception of dialectics in an attempt to dissolve modern-day antinomies and to help solve contemporary, non-Hegelian problems.
A second important hermeneutical standpoint, expounded at the outset of the analysis, concerns the shaky (and often shady) dialectical equilibrium opposing the immanent and the transcendent elements of Hegel’s social critique. Although, according to Hegel himself, the critical assessment of the social and historical conditions of a given society depends on external norms, the latter are in turn dependent on the living fabric of society itself and the immanent dynamics of its development. Indeed, the most frequent misconception involved in any general attempt to engage Hegel in today’s social and political debate seems to be the tendency to use his doctrines as a set of external standards of evaluation. Hegel’s critical apparatus can be devised as a universal critical tool, but only insofar as it aims to evaluate and transform society’s claims about its own identity. The primary goal of Hegelian social critique is therefore to assess and ultimately heighten the degree in which a given society matches its own concept or, in Hegelian terms, its degree of self-reflexivity.
Regarding its overall structure, Dialectics, Politics and the Contemporary Value of Hegel’s Practical Philosophy can be read as a collection of eleven independent essays, covering a wide pleiad of authors and topics. The work’s encyclopaedic structure is advantageous for Hegelian scholars focusing on a specific philosophical or political issue, as well as to a wider audience. The chapters are concise and clearly articulated and most arguments are backed by a comprehensive account of the original sources (Kant, Hegel, Hobbes, as well as Marx, Adorno, Rawls and Habermas, among others), ‘classic’ commentators, more recent critical contributions and even recently discovered lecture versions of Hegel’s political philosophy, which may point to new and exciting research directions.
The first two chapters are devoted to the reception and analysis, on the part of Marx and Adorno, of Hegel’s concept of social critique. In both cases the confrontation with Hegel is particularly useful to clarify key-elements of Marx and Adorno’s own philosophical projects. And in both cases the author argues that most of the alleged shortcomings of Hegel’s critical method are in fact misreadings on the part of his illustrious successors. As he sees it, Hegel’s nuanced conception of social critique, both immanent and transcendent, not only anticipates Marx’s dismissal of transcendence and Adorno’s denouncement of immanence as unsuited to address contemporary social reality, but offers in fact a more promising solution to both problems.
In Marx’s case, the bone of contention is not Hegel’s notion of immanent critique, as he himself champions the dialectical co-implication of reason and reality and reiterates the need for critical thought to reveal the contradiction between a given reality and its essential nature. What he does condemn is Hegel’s recourse to transcendent norms of judgement, in order to fit a ‘pantheistic mysticism’ whose main goal is not to transform reality, but rather to sanctify it with the aid of pre-assumed metaphysical principles. Against Marx, Buchwalter argues that every successful form of immanent critique is necessarily grounded upon a transcendent account of rationality. Moreover, it is Marx himself who betrays the principle of immanence by elevating the concept of essential contradiction to a downright exposure of the global falsity of the real, and by resorting to a utopian account of social relations.
For Adorno, on the other hand, immanent criticism is no longer possible, because the identity professed by Hegel between reason and reality no longer stands. In contemporary societies, dominated by totalitarian ideologies, reason has given way to complete irrationality and any affirmation of the identity principle corresponds therefore to an involuntary sanction of existing social conditions. Here, Buchwalter’s defence of Hegel is especially interesting, in that it rummages his sometimes seemingly irreconcilable writings in search of evidence to stress the transcendent nature of Hegel’s critical project. The purpose is to show that Hegel’s immanent method aims at a fundamentally transcendent, quasi-utopian redemption of modern rationality. In subordinating empirical data to an absolute standard of truth, it comes closer to Adorno’s ideas than the latter would allow, leaving room for a truly radical acknowledgement of the wholesale falsity of given reality.
In my view, this is one of the book’s most important discussions. It helps to exonerate Hegel’s practical philosophy from widespread criticism (not just Marxist) regarding its alleged incapacity to produce a truly critical speech vis à vis the historical, political and economic statu quo. Hegel’s views on transcendent critique are often ambiguous, and Buchwalter’s efforts are more than thorough in their attempt to stress Hegelianism’s potential for social and political transformation. However, instead of focusing exclusively on Marx and Adorno, Buchwalter could have addressed authors with different backgrounds and philosophical concerns who nonetheless share the same scepticism regarding the transcendent element of Hegel’s practical thought.
The fourth and fifth chapters deal with Hegel’s relationship to Habermas and Rawls. In the first case, the discussion focuses on Habermas’s neo-Kantian distinction between law and culture, and his subordination of ethicality and popular sovereignty to a core of pre-established legal principles. Buchwalter confronts this view with what he takes to be Hegel’s culturalist approach to law and constitutionalism, grounded upon his wide-ranging conception of Sittlichkeit, his notion of public sentiment (Gesinnung) and his correlate characterisation of a Volksgeist. The aim is to show how, against Habermas’s reproaches, the Hegelian account of law succeeds in rejecting the legal foundationalism inherent in a liberal account of positive law without degenerating into a form of legal populism.
The dialogue with Rawls revolves around the notion of pluralism and its role within a global political theory. Rawls sees cultural and religious differences as inevitably irreconcilable, and grounds upon this primordial ‘fact’ his theory of liberalism and overlapping consensus. Hegel, on the other hand, does not accept differences as irreconcilable, but rather sees them as the necessary manifestation of an underlying communal ethos. While allowing and indeed promoting difference and dissent, his account of plurality is much richer, for according to Buchwalter ‘cohesion and communality … are achieved because, and not in spite of, a commitment to pluralism’ (100-101). In his eyes, Rawls’s static opposition between a common right and different, irreconcilable notions of the highest good is exactly the kind of dichotomy Hegel seeks to surmount through his dialectical approach.
Next in line is Hegel’s rapport with the doctrine of expressivism, in its subjective and objective declensions. In the first case, the author challenges the expressivist readings of authors like Charles Taylor and Robert Pippin, arguing that Hegel’s theory of action, although dependent on processes of externalization, rests upon elements of inwardness and self-reflexivity irreducible to the mere embodiment of subjective determinations. This is not to say, however, that Hegel’s practical philosophy amounts to a specific mode of objective expressivism. In order to challenge this view, Buchwalter addresses and refutes the ‘externalist’ readings of Sabina Lovibond, Charles E. Larmore and Taylor himself.
Looking backwards, he goes on to discuss the vexata quaestio of Hegel’s debt to Kant’s practical philosophy, via Hobbes’s reform of political thought. At stake is Hegel’s critique of the naïve character of Hobbes’s ‘state of nature’, as well as his mechanical construal of moral and social relations. With Kant, on the other hand, practical philosophy becomes truly scientific, that is, entirely grounded upon a concept of reason able to determine itself without the recourse to external resources. However, Hegel’s praise of Kant goes hand in hand with a critique of the latter’s fundamental divorce between practical and theoretical philosophy. Kant’s formal doctrine of the highest good, due to its very formulation, remains trapped within a formal account of what ought to be, unable to reconcile the theoretical foundation of moral will with its socio-historical embodiment — a reconciliation only made possible, in Hegelian terms, through a Theory of Objective Spirit.
In keeping with the element of inwardness Buchwalter ascribes to Hegel’s practical philosophy, the following chapters focus on Hegel’s concept of virtue and its infamous claims about the divine character of the State. Although drawn to the Greek concept of virtue and its immediate fusion of individual interests and public duties, Hegel realised such doctrine had no place in modern social life, built around principles of economic individualism, political liberalism and Protestant subjectivity. Instead of denying modern dichotomies, modern political thought must develop the ‘reflective’ moment whereby subjectivity achieves actuality in and through communal life. In Hegel’s eyes, such transformation can only come about with recourse to a republican account of civic virtue that bypasses both the romantic idea of ‘self-sacrificing patriotism’ and the liberal understanding of social life as the atomistic conjunction of private interests.
Buchwalter’s defence of Hegel is put to the test by the latter’s conception of the State as an ‘earthly divinity’, arguably the most discredited aspect of his entire political system. Here, once again, the author appeals to an exegetical middle ground by emphasising Hegel’s secular understanding of Protestantism and its ties to modern Republicanism. For that purpose, he reinterprets Hegel’s explicit (and often misunderstood) reference to Spinoza’s concept of self-causation (causa sui), in order to stress the historical nature of the relationship between citizens and the State, as opposed to the ‘pantheistic mysticism’ ridiculed by Marx.
The last three essays, devoted to globality, global justice and interculturalism, are the most reconstructive in nature, drawing extensively on Hegel’s famous claim that the foundation of self-consciousness is inter-subjective — the ‘I that is We’ and the ‘We that is I’. The author starts out by sketching the main guidelines of what might correspond to Hegel’s depiction of an ‘international we’, against popular criticism of his emphasis on national sovereignty and the political self-sufficiency of nation-states. The analysis moves on to the notion of global justice, resorting to the Hegelian dynamics of inter-subjective recognition to address problems such as wealth distribution, poverty, warfare and cosmopolitanism. While Hegel does accept transnational norms of right and justice, he rejects Kant’s assertion of universal moral postulates. For Hegel, ‘it is in the activity of cultures reciprocally adjusting and adopting their self-understanding in processes of recognitively necessitated exchange that a global consensus on shared norms is shaped and shaped anew.’ (233)
The final essay challenges the charge of eurocentrism usually levelled at Hegel’s philosophy of history. Once again, the author draws attention to the normative character of Hegel’s account of political and social relations, in opposition to a merely objectivist portrayal of contingent historical phenomena. Although undeniably centred on ‘German-Christian’ values and cultural motifs, Hegel is critical of one-sided views of European modernity. Moreover, the very structure of his practical philosophy, grounded on the key-concepts of mutual recognition and the principle of freedom, not only promotes but in fact requires cultural plurality and openness to diverse historical contexts.
On the whole, Buchwalter’s work is clear, concise and convincing. Although limited in scope and length, the essays cover many of the relevant authors and doctrines related to Hegel and to the main topics addressed by his practical philosophy. A final criticism might be directed at the defensive nature of Buchwalter’s argumentations. His attitude is far from ambiguous: he sets out to rehabilitate Hegel’s ideas, defend them against spurious attacks and reiterate their sometimes overlooked contemporary value. However, such a stance, regardless of its actual truth or appropriateness to a given theory or topic, tends to narrow the debate’s malleability and its possible outcomes. What is offered, in most cases, is not a comparative analysis of different philosophical ideas, but rather a demonstration that Hegel is still ahead of most of his successors.
