When on the streets it is probably safe to surmise that even the most sophisticated social theories barely reflect what originated in the mind of their originators. In other words, once something hits the streets it ceases being merely academic or theoretical, and becomes something concrete and fleshy. This doesn’t mean that attempting to understand Marx’s ideas, or Hegel’s, or Heidegger’s et al. is an engagement in futility, but it does mean that when we look to the streets, and attempt to place these theoretical frameworks on the backs of the grunts ostensibly enfleshing these ideas, that they immediately depreciate in their original value and become something else; something less sophisticated, and instead, more crude and vulgar. This is not to say that in their genesis, that these socio-historico theories were all that aesthetically pleasing either; but relatively speaking, once they are collapsed from the brow of the scholar onto the back of the ‘useful idiot’, I would posit, they tend to take on an unseemly character of their own. And so it makes it that much harder to engage in cultural pesher, and say this is that.

The aforementioned noted, let’s see how Michael Gillespie describes Hegel’s German Idealism, as that applies to socio-historico theoretical framework, and potentially begin to grasp how that might be playing out in the world even now. Gillespie writes:

German Idealism, especially in its culmination in the thought of Hegel, represents the first, the fullest, and perhaps the most profound attempt to come to terms with the meaning of history. Idealism had already accepted the Enlightenment doctrine of historical progress before the Revolution and even supported the Revolution at its beginning, but in light of its disastrous conclusion found it necessary to reconsider both history and progress. The result was a new view of historical progress based on a new understanding of the relationship of man and nature. Early modernity had given precedence to nature and natural law while the late Enlightenment had recognized human freedom and revolution as decisive. Idealism attempted to reconcile these two elements in a new understanding of reality. Nature according to Idealism, does not dictate laws to animalistic man, nor does man stand as the absolute master of nature. Both are necessary to one another and are reconciled in consciousness and reason. History thus is no longer understood as the total liberation of man and the utter subordination of nature but as the dialectical process of their reconciliation. The end of history is thus not a self-positing humanity free from all natural constraints but a humanity whose freedom is coincident with a rational nature. History itself is thus conceived not as a linear development or the mere accumulation of knowledge but as the dialectical development of consciousness. History thus repeatedly leads man into contradiction and guides him to his goal only by first misguiding him through every possible error. It is, therefore, impossible to extrapolate from the present on the basis of mere calculative reason in order to predict the future because such a prediction is always only a universalization of the present and that means the universalization of one particular error. Consequently, any revolution that seeks to establish total or radical human freedom is necessarily misguided.

Hegel, however, claims that history has come to its end and fulfillment in his own time and that it is possible to retrospectively survey the totality of historical development and to know absolutely. This knowledge is not, however, the basis for a revolutionary transformation or fundamental reformation of society and leads in fact only to the completion of the basic changes that have already occurred. Idealism thus ends in the notion of acceptance and reconciliation.[1]

Thesis ––> Antithesis ––> Synthesis ––> Thesis::Geist. This is Hegel’s theory of history.

I live next to Portland, OR (PDX). PDX has been in the news more than other cities lately because of the rioters, and their attempt to thwart the Federal building, and its protectors. When I attempt to place their philosophy next to what we just learned from Gillespie about Hegel, in particular, and German Idealism, in general, it makes for an interesting experiment.

We often hear, and I have propounded it myself, that the organization Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization (and this, because its founders claim it to be). Personally, I think, whatever they are, they are being exploited by a greater international agenda to reconstruct the world into the machination its gods wish it to be. No matter, is what is happening on the streets in PDX (and elsewhere) fitting with what we just learned of Hegel? It does seem to operate with the sort of confidence Hegel had about where he was in history (at his time)—As if the practitioners in PDX ‘claims that history has come to its end and fulfillment’ and that because they are able to see the errors of the past, and now have ostensibly advanced beyond those in a new found consciousness, they can usher in a world of ‘acceptance and reconciliation.’ This seems to be the ideology, the spiritual aspect of it all. But then they seem to take a Marxist turn, a materialist turn, and believe that it isn’t simply a matter of ushering in a world of acceptance and reconciliation, but that this world must be busted through via revolución. It’s ironic in a way: Marxism is just the immanentization of Hegelianism into materialistic dress. Once reality is reduced to a crass materialism, there is less ‘spirit’ (geist), and more brute force, like cogs in a machine, that wants to force a new world order into existence. Maybe the spirit that is left over from Hegel, is that these revolutionaries hope that the new world order is one based on acceptance and reconciliation; or equality and equity for all, but an equality and equity that is shaped by the forces of a classless materialism that ultimately, and ironically, has an inhumane character that cares less about the people and more about the machine (and the machine is really just the technological mastery and manipulation of nature) that is, indeed, the greater good.

I’m just spitballing.

[1] Michael Allen Gillespie, Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 14-15.