DOSSIER: Violence and Conflict in Hegel’s Philosophy

Front matter

Foreword

By Tomáš Korda 

Hegel’s Criticism of Revenge: A Defence 

Mark Tunick

Abstract: Hegel criticizes revenge (Rache), which he contrasts with justice: revenge provides only subjective satisfaction and leads to destructive cycles of violence, whereas justice is objective, meted out with due process by a rational modern state to vindicate right (Recht). I defend Hegel’s position against two recent criticisms: Shai Lavi argues that revenge can be used positively to overcome a history of victimization and assert a new national identity, pointing to the use of violence by Jews against Nazis after WWII; and Christian Uwe challenges Hegel’s claims that a state has a monopoly of ‘full rationality’ and objectively metes out justice. I argue that Hegel recognizes that a modern state may fail to live up to its ideals and may be imperfectly just, but this does not undermine his view that revenge is not justice and is destructive. 

Hegel’s Polizei

Andrew Johnson

Abstract: G.W.F. Hegel delineates two functions of the police (Polizei). The modern, narrow conception is a security institution, characterized as a law enforcement body dedicated to the prevention, detection, and punishment of crime. The historical, generalized conception was a welfare institution, whose functions were limitless. Hegel is wary of the increased stress given to security. Hegel’s distrust is best represented by his dismissive criticism of J.G. Fichte. Despite his own suspiciousness, Hegel refuses to limit the security purview of the police. On the other hand, Hegel is an enthusiastic spokesman of welfare provisions. Hegel’s devotion to a robust, activist state is a veiled critique of Adam Smith’s free-market liberalism. The greatest danger to the security of the state is the inescapable inequality produced by the market, the threat of disorderly impoverished masses, and the possibility of a breakdown in the general welfare of civil society. Despite his zeal and apprehension, Hegel admits that the alleviation of poverty can never be fully guaranteed. Hegel wants to limit the security-state and expand the welfare-state, but between these two poles, he can do neither. Hegel is caught in a trap of his own making: reluctantly permissive regarding the increasing security-state, and enthusiastically powerless to provide for the general welfare of the population.

The Hegelian Concept of Cultural Violence

Matthieu Frémont

Abstract: We would like to show that the Phenomenology of Spirit outlines a new conception of violence in its analysis of culture. The struggle between the Enlightenment and faith, even though analysed in similar terms as the Doctrine of the Concept, points to a different logic of violence due to its own mediation. The violated consciousness (superstition) can only consent to the inflicted violence if the offender (the enlightened consciousness) has previously alienated and identified himself with the offended. This violence refers to the power with which a representation of reality, claiming to be rational, disintegrates all other forms of representation, to the point of manifesting them as superstitions.

Violence as a Symptom: Hegel’s Account of Gewalt in the Science of Logic

Alexandros Daskalakis

Abstract: This paper discusses Hegel’s account of violence as presented in the penultimate section of the Logic, “Objectivity,” where violence plays a pivotal role in the passage from formal to absolute mechanism. Immanently, there is no reason for this transition. Nevertheless, there are symptoms that indicate that another paradigm is possible. This is addressed by Hegel in the passages devoted to “Real Mechanism.” The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structural character of violence within the Science of Logic and explore its possible applications in the socio-political domain.

Causality and Violence

Vittorio Morfino

Abstract: The essay analyzes the concept of violence in the Hegelian system as a necessary moment in the process of the becoming-subject of substance, that is, in the becoming of spirit. Violence (Gewalt) is investigated as a symptom of an oriented movement, which emerges in certain threshold-moments of the Hegelian system, the shift from objective logic to subjective logic, the shift (within subjective logic) from the objective idea to the absolute idea, the shift from consciousness to self-consciousness in the Phenomenology and, finally, in the objective spirit, the shift from external state law to world history. Finally, by showing the proximity and distance in relation to the Spinozian model of immanent causality, the essay highlights the stakes of the Hegelian discursive strategy.

Contributing Authors