CHAPTER VI

SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY: KANT AND HERDER
§ 1. General Features
T HE term "philosophy of history" was generally understood
a hundred years ago in a sense very different from that given it
in the preceding chapters. We have taken it to designate a
critical enquiry into the character of historical thinking, an
analysis of sorne of the procedures of the historian and a
comparison of them with those followed in other disciplines,
the natural sciences in particular. Thus understood, philosophy
of history forros part of the branch of philosophy known as
theory of knowledge or epistemology. But the conception of it
entertained by most writers on the subject in the nineteenth
century was entirely different. "The" philosophy of history,
as they called it, had as its object history in the sense of res
gestae, not historia rerum gestarum; and the task of its exponents
was to produce an interpretation of the actual course of events
showing that a special kind of intelligibility could be found
in it.
If we ask why history was thus thought to constitute a
problem for philosophers, the answer is because of the appar­
ently chaotic nature of the facts which made it up. To nine­
teenth-century philosophical eyes history appeared to consist
of a chain of events connected more or less loosely or accident­
ally, in which, at first sight at any rate, no clear plan or pattern
could be traced. But to accept that description of history, i.e.
to take it at its face value, was for many philosophers of the
period a virtual impossibility, for it meant (so they thought)
admitting the existence in the universe of something ultimately
unintelligible. To persons brought up to belicvc with Hegel
119
120 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

that the real is the rational and the rational the real, this was a
very shocking conclusion to come to, one which ought to be
avoided if any way of avoiding it could be found. The way
suggested for avoiding it was by the elaboration of a "philo­
sophy," or philosophical interpretation, of history which would,
it was hoped, bring out the rationality underlying the course of
historical events by making clear the plan according to which
they had proceeded.
A "philosophy" of history in this special sense meant, as
will be evident, a speculative treatment of detailed historical
facts, and as such belonged to metaphysics rather than theory
of knowledge. In Hegel himself it was only part of a compre­
hensive project conceived with incredible boldness-to display
the underlying rationality of all sides and aspects of human
experience. The philosophy of history took its place in this
project alongside the philosophies of Nature, Art, Religion and
Politics, to all of which the same general treatment was applied.
But though it is with the name of Hegel that this type of
speculation is now most readily connected, it would be wrong
to suppose that Hegel was its originator. To make such an
assumption would, in fact, be doubly erroneous. For firstly,
philosophy of history as treated by Hegel in his famous lectures
in the 1820's had been familiar to the Gennan public at least
for the best part of half a century: Herder, Kant, Schelling and
Fichte had all made contributions to it, and their questions and
conclusions had a profound effect on Hegel's own views. And
secondly, as Hegel well knew, the basic problem with which
both he and they were concerned was a very ancient one, which
had occurred to philosophers and non-philosophers alike.
"That the history of the world, with all the changing scenes
which its annals present," we read in the concluding paragraph
of Hegel's lectures, "is this process of development and the
realization of Spirit-this is the true Theodicaea, the justifica­
tion of God in history." To justify God's ways to man, and
in particular to show that the course of history could be inter­
preted in a manner not inconsistent with accepting divine
providence, had been a recognized task for theologians and
Christian apologists for many centuries. The writers of the
Old Testament had been aware of its importance, it had been
 KANT AND HERDER 121
treated at length by St. Augustine in his City of God, and it had
provided the theme for Bossuet's Discourse on Universal
History, published in 1681, as well as for Vico's New Science
( 172 5-30 ). To produce a philosophical interpretation of history
along these lines was, it had long been thought, an obvious
requirement in any solution of the general metaphysical
problem of evil.
Nor is this all. For if these speculations, as the foregoing
remarks will suggest, had a theological origin and a recognized
place in Christian apologetics, they had their secular counter­
part too-in the theories of human perfectibility and progress
so dear to the thinkers of the Enlightenment. The writers who,
like the French Encyclopaedists, propounded such theories
were also in their way engaged on the construction of philo­
sophies of history. They too were attempting to trace a pattern
in the course of historical change; they too, to put it very
crudely, were convinced that history was going somewhere.
And despite their many differences from the theologically­
minded, they felt the same need on being confronted with the
spectacle of human history, the need to show that the miseries
men experienced were not in vain, but were rather inevitable
stages on the way to a morally satisfactory goal.
The last point is, I suggest, worth special emphasis, if
only because it serves to explain the recurrent interest of
philosophy of history of this kind (for example, the interest
in Professor Toynbee's writings today). On the face of it the
programme mentioned above-the project for penetrating
below the surface of history to its hidden meaning-seems
scarcely respectable. lt savours of a sort of mystical guesswork,
and thus has its execution appeared to many hard-headed men.
But we miss the point of these enquiries if we leave out of
account the main factor which gives rise to them. It is the
feeling that there is something morally outrageous in the notion
that history has no rhyme or reason in it which impels men
to seek for a pattern in the chain of historical events. If there is
no pattern, then, as we commonly say, the sufferings and
disasters which historians narrate are "pointless" and "meaning­
less"; and there is a strong element in human nature which
revolts against accepting any such conclusion. No doubt it is
 122 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF H ISTORY

open to critics of the programme to argue that those who

devise it are guilty of wishful thinking; but this is a charge
which cannot be accepted without an investigation of the
results alleged to be achieved.
§ 2. Kant's Philosophy of History
We must pass from these generalities to particular examples
of the speculations in question.
I propose to discuss first the essay contributed by Kant to
the periodical Berlin Monthly, in November 1784, under the
title "Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan point
of view"; and I must begin by giving reasons for what sorne
may think a curious choice. It could not be claimed for Kant
either that he was first in the field in this subject or that his
work in it (which amounted in all to no more than two short
papers and a lengthy review) was of primary importance in
determining the course of subsequent speculation: on both
counts he must clearly yield pride of place to Herder. Nor
again could it be maintained that Kant had a genuine interest
in history for its own sake, or any grasp of the possibilities of
historical research: as has often been remarked by critics of his
general philosophy, his outlook was singularly unhistorical,
and he remained in this as in other respects a typical product
of the Enlightenment rather than a forerunner of the Romantic
Age which was shortly to follow. But for all that his work on
philosophy of history, and in particular the essay we are to
study, remains instructive for the modern reader.
It is instructive, I suggest, for two main reasons. First,
because it enables us to grasp with singular clarity just what it
was that speculative philosophers of history set out to do.
Kant's natural modesty and sense of his own limitations make
him especially valuable in this connection. He saw that no
one could undertake a detailed philosophical treatment of
history of the kind he had in mind without a wide knowledge
of particular historical facts; and since he made no pretence of
having such knowledge himself, he confined himself to sketch­
ing the idea of (or, as he put it himself, "finding a clue to") a
philosophy of history, leaving it to others to carry the idea
out. In reading Kant on this subject we are not faced, as we
 KANT AND HERDER 123
are when we read, e.g. Herder or Hegel, with the problem of
disentangling a theory from its application, nor with that of
making due allowance for inadequate empirical knowledge.
Secondly, Kant's work is instructive because it brings
out in an unmistakable way the moral background to this kind
of speculation. With him at least philosophy of history was a
pendant to moral philosophy; indeed, there is little to suggest
that he would have treated of history at all if it were not for
the moral questions it seemed to raise. Just what these ques­
tions were is indicated with force and clarity more than once
in the essay. Thus in the introductory section 1 we read:
"One cannot avoid a certain feeling of disgust, when one
observes the actions of man displayed on the great stage of the
world. Wisdom is manifested by individuals here and there;
but the web of human history as a whole appears to be woven
from folly and childish vanity, often, too, from puerile wicked­
ness and love of destruction: with the result that at the end one
is puzzled to know what idea to form of our species which prides
itself so much on its advantages."
And in a later passage 2 he asks:
"What use is it to glorify and commend to view the splendour
and wisdom of Creation shown in the irrational kingdom of
nature, if, on the great stage where the supreme wisdom
manifests itself, that part which constitutes the final end of the
whole natural process, namely human history, is to offer a
standing objection to our adopting such an attitude?"
If history is what it appears to be, a belief in divine pro­
vidence is precluded; yet that belief, or something like it
(the argument runs) 3, is essential if we are to lead a moral
life. The task of the philosopher as regards history is ac­
cordingly to show that, first appearances notwithstanding,
history is a rational process in the double sense of one pro­
ceeding on an intelligible plan and tending to a goal which
moral reason can approve.
How is this result achieved? The "clue" to the philosophical
interpretation of history which Kant has to offer turns out to
1 Berlín edi tion of Kant's works, VIII, 17-18.
2
VIII, 30.
3
Compare the argument in § 87 of the Critique o/ judgmenl.
124 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

be very simple: it is, in effect, a variation on the common

eighteenth-century theory of progress. History, he suggests,
would make sense if it could be seen as a continuous, though
not perhaps straightforward, progression towards a better
state of affairs. Have we any ground for assuming that such
a progression is real? Certainly not if we confine ourselves
to looking at historical happenings solely from the point of view
of the individuals concerned: there we meet with nothing but
a chaotic aggregate of apparently meaningless and unconnected
events. But the case may be different if we transfer our atten­
tion from the fortunes of the individual to that of the whole
human species. What from the point of view of the individual
appears "incoherent and lawless" may none the less turn out
to be orderly and intelligible when looked at from the point of
view of the species; events which previously seemed to lack
all point may now be seen to subserve a wider purpose. It is
after all possible that in the field of history Nature or Providence
(Kant uses the two terms interchangeably) is pursuing a
long-term plan, the ultimate effect of which will be to benefit
the human species as a whole, though at the cost of sacrificing
the good of individual human beings in the process.
We have now to ask whether this is more than an idle poss­
ibility. Kant proceeds to develop an argument to show that we
not only can but must accept the idea. Man has implanted in him
(the standpoint adopted is throughout teleological) a number of
tendencies or dispositions or potentialities. Now it would be
contrary to reason (because it would contravene the principie
that Nature does nothing in vain) to suppose that these poten­
tialities should exist but never be developed, though in the case
of sorne of them (those particularly connected with reason, e.g.
man's inventive faculty) we can see quite well that the full
development cannot take place in the lifetime of a single
individual. We must therefore imagine that Nature has sorne
device for ensuring that such potentialities get their develop­
ment over a long period of time, so that they are realized so
far as the species is concerned, though not in the case of all its
individual members.
The device in question is what Kant calls1 "the unsocial
1 Op. cit., VIII, 20.
 KANT ANO HERDER 125

sociability" of man. He explains himself in a passage from

which I will quote at length:
"Man has an inclination to associate himself with others,
since in such a condition he feels himself more than man, thanks
to his being able to develop his natural capacities. On the other
hand he also has a strong propensity to cut himself off (isolate
hirnself) from his fellows, since he finds in himself simultane­
ously the anti-social property of wanting to order everything
according to his own ideas; as a result of which he everywhere
expects to meet with antagonisrn, knowing from his own experi­
ence that he himself is inclined to be antagonistic to others.
Now it is this antagonism which awakens ali the powers of man,
forces him to overcome his tendency to indolence and drives
him, by means of the desire for honour, power or wealth, to
procure for himself a position among his fellows, whom he can
neither get on with nor get on without. Thus it is that men take
the first real steps from the state of barbarism to that of civiliza­
tion, which properly consists in the social worth of man; thus it
is that all talents are gradually developed, that taste is formed,
and a beginning made towards the foundation of a way of
thinking capable of transforming in time the rude natural
tendency to moral distinctions into determinate practica!
principies: that is to say, capable of converting in the end a
social union originating in pathological needs into a moral
whole. But for these anti-social properties, unlovely in them­
selves, whence springs the antagonism every man necessarily
meets with in regard to his own egoistic pretensions, men might
have Iived the life of Arcadian shepherds, in perfect harmony,
satisfaction and mutual love, their talents all remaining for ever
undeveloped in the bud." 1
lt is, in fact, precisely the bad side of human nature-the very
thing which causes us to despair when we first survey the
course of history-which Nature turas to account for the
purpose of leading man from the state of barbarism into that
of civilization.
The transition is, or rather (since it is not supposed to
be complete) will be, effected in two main stages. The first
consists of a passage from the state of nature to that of civil
society. But not every form of civil society is adequate for the
1 VIII, 20-22.
134 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

interplay of two sets of forces: the externa! forces which con­

stitute human environment, and an interna! force which can
only be described as the spirit of man or, more accurately, as
the spirit of the various peoples into which the homogeneous
human species is broken up. To understand the history of a
nation we must certainly take account of its geographical and
climatic background; but we cannot hope, as sorne writers have
done, to explain its whole development in these terms. On the
contrary, we must recognize that every nation is animated by
a certain spirit, which finds expression in whatever its members
do.
The importance of this idea should not be judged by the
crudity of its present expression. In putting it forward Herder
was not only pointing out the unsatisfactoriness of any purely
materialistic theory of history; he was also taking an important
step towards breaking away from the unhistorical outlook
characteristic of his age. lt was common in the eighteenth
century to think of human nature as a constant, which did not
vary fundamentally but merely behaved differently in different
circumstances. The important distinction between roen, it was
thought, was that between civilized and barbarian; but
civilized roen were the same at all times and in ali places.
Now this assumption had important practical effects-it
meant, for instance, that Orientals were treated on their merits,
without racial prejudice; but its bearing on historical studies
was less fortunate. lt fostered an attitude to the past which
was altogether too uncritical and simple-minded. Herder's
observation1, obvious as it seems today, that the histories of
Greece and China would not have taken the courses they did
if the Greeks had lived in China and the Chinese in Greece,
drew attention to this uncritical spirit, and in so doing made
possible the modern concept of civilization as being, not
uniform and unchanging, but differently specified among
different peoples. 2
The details of Herder's treatment of the facts of world
history, which occupies the remainder of the Ideas, need not
1 Ideas, Book XIII, Ch. VII.
• Herder, in fact, may be said to have invented the idea of a civilization
as opposed to that of civilization itself. Altematively, we might ascribe to
him the notion of national character.
 KANT AND HERDER 135
detain us, though it is worth remarking that his way of organ•
izing his material seems to have been the model followed by
Hegel. Of more interest are the general reflections with which
he intersperses his narrative at regular intervals, for it is in
these that what he himself takes to be the philosophical lessons
ofhistory are brought out. In seeking for a philosophy ofhistory
he seems, to judge from these passages, to have been doing two
things. First, to have tried to show that historical events are
not lawless, but proceed according to laws just as natural events
do. To this end he reiterates constantly the assertion that the
key to any historical situation is to be found in the circum­
stances (including the interna! circwnstances mentioned
above) in which it took place: we have only to enumerate those
circumstances, discover the forces at work, to see that things
must have happened in the way they did. The flowering of a
civilization is for Herder as natural as the flowering of a rose,
and an appeal to the notion of the miraculous is no more
needed in the first case than the second. And secondly, to have
tried to discover a general purpose in history, something to
lend point to the whole historical process. Such a purpose, he
argues 1 , cannot be thought of satisfactorily (here once more
we meet with the moral twist of speculative philosophy of
history) as something externa! to man: man's destiny must lie
in his own potentialities. Somewhat vaguely, Herder announces
that the purpose of history is the attainment of humanity, i.e.
(presumably) the attainment of a state of affairs where men are
most truly themselves. And he speaks at times as if this was
an end which men could deliberately help to bring about;
though how that could be if things must happen as they do is
not apparent.
Herder's conclusion is thus not substantially different from
Kant's, though he would not himself have liked the comparison.
His reaction to Kant's theory would be to condemn it as
a priori, a piece of metaphysics in a sense of the term thought
disreputable then as now. His own views, by contrast, claimed
to be grounded in a careful scrutiny of the facts. But we may
well ask whether Herder is not perhaps too sanguine in this
matter. Like other writers of a speculative turn of mind, he
1
Book XV. Ch. I
136 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

starta from the facts, but uses them as a springboard rather

than a final resting-place, developing analogies and bold
hypotheses in a way which strik.es more sober persona as
unwarranted. The criticism that greater caution was needed
struck him, when it was made by Kant\ as the reaction of a
narrow and unimaginative mind, one which lacked the insight
necessary for the philosophical understanding of history. It
is on the genuineness or otherwise of the insight here claimed
that Herder must finally be judged.
1 In his reviews (Berlin edition, VIII, 43-66) of the fint two parts of the
lúas, the sceptical tone of which mortally offended the author.
 CHAPTER VII

SPECULATIV E PHILOSOPHY OF
HISTORY: HEGEL
§ 1. Transition to Hegel
T HE purpose of the present discussions is to illustrate the
character of speculative philosophy of history, not to write
a complete history of the subject. I shall accordingly omit
at this point ali reference to such writers as Schelling and
Fichte, and proceed at once to an examination of the relevant
views of Hegel, despite the fact that there is a fifty-year gap
between the publication of Herder's Ideas and that of Hegel's
Lectures on the Philosophy of History. The transition need not,
however, appear unduly abrupt, since Hegel's theories can
easily be represented as continuous with those we have just
considered. Hegel, indeed, might well have claimed to have
embodied the virtues of both his predecessors, combining the
passion and strength of iníagination admired by Herder with
the precision of mind demanded by Kant.1
To expound and comment on Hegel's philosophy of history
in a few pages is an undertaking which requires sorne bold.ness,
since it involves giving a sketch, however briefly, of the
Hegelian philosophy as a whole. As was pointed out at the
beginning of Chapter VI, history is only one of a series of fields
which Hegel propases to "comprehend" rationally; and it is
the general principie behind this activity which we must
attempt to make clear, as well as its particular application.
But befare following this procedure we must put in an im­
portant proviso. In Hegel's completed system the march of
1 According to Hegel, Kant's philosophy embodied the outlook of the
scientific understanding, whilst Herder belonged to the reaction against
that outlook which expressed itself in the.Romantic philosophies offeeling.
Hegel's own philosophy was intended to synthesize these two in a new
stand point, that of speculative reason. See further below.
137
138 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
history is explained as a di_�ectical progr�s; and t.o understand
dialectic we are referred to the most abstract of all philosophica]
disciplines, namely logic. This may suggest that we can im­
mediately object to Hegel, as we did to Kant, that the stand­
point he adopts towards history is an extemal one; and the
criticism rnust, indeed, in sorne rneasure be sustained. But it is
important to notice that the logical order of Hegel's writings
does not correspond with the historical order of bis own philo­
sophical developrnent. Everything goes to show that the
problems which preoccupied hirn in the years when his views
were maturing were not questions of abstract logic and rneta­
physics, but much more concrete issues, in particular the
question of the philosophical interpretation of the nature and
history of religion. 1 lt is thus misleading to suggest that Hegel
first worked out the dialectic a priori and then proceeded to
apply it, Procrustes-like, to the sphere of empirical fact.
Whatever the truth of the matter in other fields, it is clear
enough that in the case of history a genuine interest in the facts
preceded the discovery of their dialectical connections.

§ 2. Dialectic and the Philosophy of Spirit

Be this as it may, Hegel's philosophy of history can be
understood only if it is located within a wider context, and
we must begin by giving sorne account of that context. The
philosophical sciences, as Hegel called them, comprised two
main divisions: logic, or the science of the Idea, and the
philosophies of Nature and Spirit, the sciences of the concrete
embodiment of the Idea. Logic dealt with the formal articula­
tion of the concepts of pure reason, those concepts which
(Hegel thought) were predicable not of particular things or
classes of things, but of reality viewed as a whole. There were
certain predicates (in a wide sense of the term) such as "exis­
tence" and "measurability," which applied, or were thought
to apply, to whatever is; and logic, conceived on this view
quite differently from the formal logic of tradition, was said
to be the study of these crucial predicates. lts airn was to
1 Compare the works (not published by Hegel himself) from the period
1795-1800, translated by T. M. Knox and R. Kroner in Hegefs Early
Theological Writings.
 HEGEL 139
establish b<>th what concepts fell into this particular class and
how they were connected together.
Both problems, in Hegel's view, could be solved, thanks
to the dialectical nature of thought. lt is extremely important
that the reader should have sorne idea of what is meant by
"dialectic" in this context. One way of approaching this very
difficult subject is by considering the way in which the con­
cepts of pure reason are held to form, not merely a series, but
a self-generating series. Suppose we employ one of the con­
cepts in question in an effort to make a satisfactory statement
about reality as a whole; suppose, for example, we judge that
the real is the measurable. Then, it is said, reflection on the
concept employed will, if sufficient attention is given to the
question, reveal certain inadequacies or contradictions in it;
and this will lead us not merely to abandon the judgment that
the real is the measurable, but to commit ourselves to the
opposite point of view, that the concept of measurement cannot
be properly applied to reality at ali. We might reach this
position if we argued, for instance, that to measure anything
involves breaking it up into separate parts, whilst one feature
which we know reality to possess from our immediate experi­
ence is continuity.
But the new judgment, when we scrutinize it carefully,
tums out to be no more satisfactory than the first: it too
involves us in difficulties and contradictions. To say that
reality is beyond measure is as misleading as to say that if is
essentially capable of measurement; the truth is that we want
to make both assertions at once. We are therefore led to
make a fresh characterization of reality which will do justice
to the good points, and avoid the errors, of both. Should we
attain to this new point of view (and Hegel holds that its
attainment is always in principie possible) thought has made
a definite advance; but it does not follow that it has attained
permanent satisfaction. On the contrary: the whole process
will repeat itself, and a fresh series of ideas be produced, when
the resulting concept is critically examined.
To say that the concepts of pure reason, the categories
or Denkbestimmungen, as Hegel called them, are dialectically
related is to call attention to this peculiar property they
140 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

have of giving rise one to another. The contention is that

their content is such that they fall naturally into triacls of
thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and that the synthesis-concept
of each triad becomes a thesis-concept for a new triad. And it
is perhaps worth noticing in this connection that the relation­
ship is said to hold in the first instance not between facts or
events, but between concepts or ideas. In current politice we
hear much of the alleged "contradictions" of capitalism, and
it is to the Hegelian logic that this way of speaking must be
traced back; but it was not to this sort of sphere that the
dialectic was originally applied at all.
The business of logic, as conceived by Hegel, is to follow
the dialectic to its conclusion; it can be carried out because it
is possible to assign an upper and a lower limit to the series of
ideas through which thought naturally passes. There can be no
idea more simple than that of pure being; and when the
thinker arrives at the notion of the Absolute Idea, as the
culminating category is called, there is no further step in
the field of logic for him to take.
But here the words "in the field of logic" must be empha­
sized. When the logician fi.nally attains the notion of the Absolute
Idea he has, as a logician, done everything that is required of
him: he has followed out the whole dialectical progress of the
categories, and no further contradictions confront him. But
Hegel holds that his satisfaction will even so not be complete.
For he will be troubled by the abstract character of all the
ideas studied by logic; he will want to show that their content
exists, not merely in sorne sort of Platonic heaven, but also,
and properly, in the world of fact. He will be confronted in
e:ffect with the problems of the philosophies of Nature and
Spirit, that of the concrete or "phenomenal" embodiment of
the Idea.
It is highly important for the understanding of Hegel's
attitude to history to grasp, in a general way at least, what
lies behind this strange-sounding notion. Perhaps we can make
it clear, or clearer, by the following considerations.
Reality for Hegel is spirit: the universe is, in a sense,
the product of mind and therefore intelligible to mind. Hegel's
philosophy is thus rightly characterized by the epithet "ration-
 HEGEL

alist." But we must ask what mind cognizes when it tries to

think the world. So far as logic is conceroed, ali it would seem
to grasp is a series of purely general characters, merely possible
predicates whose attribution to concrete situations is wholly
contingent. Thus what logic appears to present us with is, in the
picturesque words of Bradley, "a ghostly ballet of bloodless
categories." Such a result struck others besides Bradley as a
cheat and a sham, among them Hegel himself. In his own day
Hegel saw the way the abstract conception of reason favoured
by Kant and (in general) the pre-Kantian rationalists had been
countered by the many philosophies of feeling; and hostile as
he was to those philosophies, he was anxious to incorporate in
his own system the truth he held them to embody. It was to this
end that he tried to devise a new form of rationalism, one for
which specifically rational concepts were something more than
empty abstractions, one which looked on ideas as in sorne way
containing the seed of their development in the concrete. If
such a standpoint could be justified, the categories might be
shown to have blood in them after ali, and the reproaches of
the philosophers of feeling be answered.
It was this need to avoid an abstract rationalism which led
Hegel to take the step we are endeavouring to explain. So far
we have spoken as if dialectic were confined to the sphere of
logic; and this was indeed its original home. But now we leam
that, in addition to ali the interna} triads of logic, logic or the
Idea is itself part of a super-triad, of which Nature forms the
antithesis and Spirit (mental life) the synthesis. The Idea, to
be fully itself, demands concrete embodiment, which it finds by
"externalizing" itself as Nature and "returning to" itself as
Concrete Spirit.
It follows from this that the key to the philosophical under­
standing of empirical facts, whether of the natural or the
mental world, is to be found for Hegel in the categories of his
logic, and that the dialectical transitions of the latter find their
counterpart in the former. But the relationship should not be
misunderstood. Though Hegel would probably accept the
statement just made, he would protest with the utmost vigour
against any attempt to represent him as holding that the world
of fact is but a pale reflection of the world of intellectual
142 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORT
ideas. That sort of view had been held by previous philosophers
with whom he had sorne affinity, for example by Plato; but it
was emphatically not Hegel's view. For him Nature and Spirit
were not mere imitations of the logical Idea, they were develop­
ments of it; and that meant that to understand them something
more was required than knowledge of the Idea. In other words,
for Hegel as for the rest of us the suggestion that philosophers
might deduce empírica! truths a priori was absurd. Logic
could offer the philosopher a guiding-thread through the
labyrinth of experience, but it could not serve as a substitute
for experience itself.
§ 3. Hegel's Philosophy of History
The reader should now be in a position to consider sorne of
the details of Hegel's treatment of history.
Philosophy of history, for Hegel, is part of the philosophy
of Spirit, and the problem which confronts its exponent is that
of tracing the working of reason in a particular empírica! sphere.
That reason is at work in history-that in this as in other
fields the real is the rational-is a proposition which the
philosophical historian does not undertake to prove or even
examine: he takes it as demonstrated by logic or, as we should
prefer to say, metaphysics. His task is to apply the principie,
showing that an account of the facts can be given consistently
with it.
This gives us the differentia of philosophical as opposed
to empirical or everyday history. Ordinary historians, whether
they are "original" writers like Thucydides and Julius Caesar,
confining themselves for the most part to the narrative of
contemporary events, or ••reflective" historians painting on a
broader canvas such as Livy, feel their first duty to be the
accurate delineation of the facts. They may brighten up their
narrative by presenting it from a distinct point of view, or
they may season it with reflections of topical interest; but
particular facts remain their paramount concem. The philo­
sophical historian, by contrast, is struck by the fragmentary
and inconsequential character of the results thus achieved, and
looks for something better. This something better is the
divination of the meaning and point of the whole historical
 HEGEL 143
process, the exhibition of reason's working in the sphere of
history. To accomplish this task the philosopher must take
the results of empirical history as data, but it will not suffice
for him merely to reproduce them. He must try to illuminate
history by bringing his knowledge of the Idea, the formal
articulation of reason, to bear upon it, striving, in a phrase
Hegel uses elsewhere 1, to elevate empirical contents to the
rank of necessary truth.
This sounds an imposing and exciting programme, but
before we attempt to discuss it we must sketch Hegel's theories
in a little more detail.
The clue to history, in Hegel's view, is to be found in
the idea of freedom. "World History," in the words of the
lectures, "exhibits the development of the consciousness of
freedom on the part of Spirit, and of the consequent realization
of that freedom. ":l This principle is capable both of abstract
logical proof and of empirical confirmation. Historical phe­
nomena, as we know, are manifestations of Spirit as opposed to
Nature (though Hegel does not overlook the importance of the
natural background to men's actions), and
"lt is a result of speculative philosophy that freedom is the
sole truth of Spirit. Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its
tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite, con­
sisting of parts which exclude each other. It seeks its unity, and
therefore exhibits it'lelf as self-destructive, as verging towards
its opposite. If it could attain this it would be matter no longer,
it would have perished. It strives after the realization of its
idea; for in unity it exists ideally. Spirit on the contrary may be
defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity
outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with
itself. Matter has its essence out of itsclf. Spirit is sclf-contained
existence. Now this is freedom exactly."•
A glance at the actual course of historical events confirms
these abstract considerations. In the Oriental World (the
civilizations of China, Babylonia and Egypt) despotism and
1 Encyclopaedia, § 12 (The Logic of Hegel. translatt:d by W. Wallace
,
p. 19).
• Lectures on the Phi{osophy u/ History. translated by J. Si bree (Bohn 's
Libraries), p. 66.
• Op. cit., p. 18.
144 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
slavery were the rule: freedom was confined to a single man,
the monarch. But the Greco-Roman world, although retaining
the institution of slavery, extended the area of freedom,
claiming it as the right of citizens if not of all individuals.
The process has been completed by the Germanic nations of
modern Europe, who have accepted the Christian principie of
the infinite worth of individual men as such, and so have
explicitly adopted the idea of liberty; though, as Hegel notes,
this does not mean that they have carried it to full effect in
their institutions.
It remains to determine in what sense "freedom" is to be
understood in this account; but the main lines of Hegel's
attitude are already clear. Like Kant and the philosophers of
the Enlightenment, he is proposing to "make sense" of history
by means of the notion of progress; he differs from them only
in importing the dialectic, thus professing to give the theory an
a priori ground.
We must now enquire into the stages of the progression of
which history, in Hegel's view, consists. Here he shows signs of
having learnt from both his main predecessors. From Kant he
takes over the notion that philosophical history must concern
itself with sorne larger unit than individual rnen, and he
identifies this unit, following Herder, with different nations
or peoples. Every nation has its own characteristic principie or
genius, which reflects itself in all the phenornena associated
with it, in "its religion, its political institutions, its moral code,
its systern of law, its mores, even its science and art, and the
leve! of rnechanical aptitude it attains." 1 And every nation
has a peculiar contribution which it is destined, in its turn,
to make to the process of world history. When a nation's hour
strikes, as it does but once, all other nations must give way
to it, for at that particular epoch it, and not they, is the chosen
vehicle of the world spirit. 2
A philosophical approach to history thus puts us in pos­
session (i) of the main motif of the drama of which history
consists, and (ii) of the fact that the drama is divided into
distinct acts. Can it take us any further? Here Hegel is for
1 Op. cit., pp. 66-7.
1 Cf. Philo,ophy of Right, § 347.
 HEGEL 145
a moment cautious. "That such and such a specific quality
constitutes the peculiar genius of a people," he says,1 "is
the element of our enquiry which must be derived from ex­
perience and historically proved." As we saw before, philosophy
does not profess to be able to anticipate the details of experience.
But it seems all the same to have something to tell us about
them, for the passage immediately continues: "to accomplish
this presupposes, not only a disciplined faculty of abstraction,
but an intimate acquaintance with the Idea." And in the
Philosophy of Right, 2 where the contents of the lectures are
anticipated in summary forro, we are offered an argument
which purports not only to show that the main stages of
the historical process must be four in number (correspond­
ing to the four "world-historical" realms, Oriental, Greek,
Roman and Germanic, which empirical enquiry establishes),
but further to deduce a pri"ori the main characteristics of
each.
There is one further feature of Hegel's philosophy of
history which no account of it, however brief, should omit:
his doctrine of the moving forces in historical change. Here
too he appears to be indebted, in an unexpected way, to Kant.
Just as Kant had argued (cf. p. 125 above) that Providence takes
advantage of the bad side of human nature to accomplish its
purposes in history, so Hegel contends that reason's great
design can be carried out only with the co-operation of human
passions. Certain individuals, great men like Cresar or Alexa:n­
der, are chosen instruments of destiny. They pursue their
purposes, seeking each his individual satisfaction, but in
doing this produce results of a far-reaching importance they
could not themselves have foreseen. Such roen are indispen­
sable if the plot of history is to be worked out, for ideas are
impotent until will-power stands behind them. Hegel adds that
they must not in consequence be judged by ordinary moral
standards:
"Such men may treat other great, even sacred, interests
inconsiderately; conduct which indeed is obnoxious to moral
1 Lectures, p. 67.
1 Philosophy of Right, §§ 352-3.

K
 146 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HlSTORY
reprehension. But so mighty a form must trample down many
an innocent flower, crush to pieces many an object in its path." 1
In their case at least., the end, of which they are not themselves
fully conscious, justifies what would be otherwise objectionable
means.
The apparently cynical nature of this conclusion, and of
other parts of Hegel's doctrine, provokes the question whether
a philosophy of history conceived on these lines can commend
itself to moral reason. This is a point about which Hegel was
himself quite properly sensitive, since for him as for others
to demonstrate the rationality of history is to offer not only
an intellectual explanation of the course of events, but a moral
justification of it too. His main way of dealing, or attempting
to deal, with the difficulty was by arguing that the true ethical
unit is not the isolated individual but the "moral organism,"
the state or society in which he was brought up, and that the
claims of the latter must take precedence over those of the
former. That the individual should perish for the good of the
"whole" does not strike him as morally outrageous. And if it is
said that this involves the condonation of much that con­
science condemns, his reply is that it is not self-evident that
individual conscience is the highest court of appeal in these
matters. Morality of conscience must in fact be replaced by
an ethics based on the good of society, and if we adopt that
standpoint and take a long view of events much that formerly
seemed reprehensible will be seen to have its point. 2
lt may be added that it is in the light of this doctrine
of "social ethics" that Hegel's conception of freedom must be
interpreted. It is certainly paradoxical that one whose political
outlook was markedly anti-liberal should have made progress
towards the realization of freedom the goal of history. But by
"freedom" Hegel certainly did not mean mere absence of
restraint: he vigorously repudiated the doctrine of natural
rights. The difficult passage quoted on p. 143 shows his ten-
1 Lectures, p. 34.
• Hegel developed these views on ethics at an early stage of his philo­
sophical career: compare the essay on natural law contributed to Schelling's
Critical Journal of Philosophy in 1802. Bradley drew extensively on this
essay for his well-known discussion of "My Station and ita Duties" in
Ethical Studiu (1876).
 HEGEL 1 47

dcncy to identify the free with the self-contained or self-sufficient,

and he found this condition fulfilled not in the individual but
in society. The freedom towards which history was moving was
therefore the freedom of the community as a whole, whose
requirements might (though they should not) strike individual
citizens as externally imposed. It would, however, be wrong to
press the antithesis of individual and society too far in Hegel's
case, since a society which imposed a blank uniformity of
behaviour on its members would have struck him as no better
than one in which complete licence prevailed. Here as elsewhere
his ideal was unity in diversity, a whole which realized itself in
its members and was not to be thought of as separate from
them.

§ 4. Criticism of Hegel's Theories

The alarmingly contemporary ring of sorne of these
opinions makes impartial criticism of the whole theory far from
easy. Nevertheless, we must attempt to break through the fog
of emotion with which the name of Hegel is now surrounded,
and assess his views on their merits.
That Hegel himself made a substantial contribution to
historical studies is not in doubt. He was one of the first to
write a history of philosophy, and his work in this connection
had a powerful influence on his successors. Moreover, he shows
throughout his writing a sense of the importance of the past fot
the understanding of the present which is entirely, or very
largely, wanting in the thought of most eighteenth-century
philosophers. lf the Hegelian school had little or no effect on
the development of the natural sciences during the nineteenth
century, it certainly gave a considerable fillip to the prosecution
of social studies in that period.
But all this might have been true had Hegel written nothing
on the subject of philosophy of history. Could it be claimed that
his work in this field really did what it set out to do, namely,
to make history intelligible as it had not been made intelligible
before?
To judge by the reactions of professional historians the
proper answer to this question would seem to be "no." For them
the Hegelian philosophy of history, and for that matter specu-
150 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

the historian a further explanation once the procedurcs have

been applied, he will simply get more of the same sort of thing:
the origins of the process will be followed up further, its details
more fully explored. In either case, the process will be said to
be explained when the historian thinks himself in a position to
construct what we previously called a "significant" narrative
of the events in question.
Now when Hegel speaks of world history being a rational
process, he is without doubt implying that it would be possible
to construct a "significant" narrative (as opposed to an un­
connected chronicle) of the events of which it consists; but
he appears to be implying something more too, namely, that
we could, in principie at any rate, say something not merely
about the causes of what happened but about its grounds too.
The suggestion that we explain an historical event when we
sort out the different causal factors at work in it and estímate
their importance would not content him: he wanted more
explanation than that. And by "more" in this connection he did
not mean more explanation of the same kind as before. It was
not the incompleteness of the story told by working historians
which distressed him; it was its essential superficiality. To
understand history in the proper sense we needed to get
beyond the empirical standpoint altogether and approach it in
quite another way.
The point will perhaps become clearer if we say that Hegel
asks the question "why?" about history in a sense different from
that in which it is asked by working historians; or rather, that
he asks "why?" first in the straightforward historical sense
or senses, and then in a further sense of his own. His doing so
is to be connected with his desire to penetrate behind the
surface of historical phenomena to the reality which he has no
doubt underlies them. This is an achievement which we cannot
expect of ordinary historians, whose thought, in Hegelian
jargon, "moves at the level of the understanding"; but it is
one which falls very clearly in the province of the philosopher,
who has knowledge of the Idea at his disposal to deepen bis
insight into facts.
But if this is what Hegel is after, how could he set about
reaching concrete results? So far as I can see, only two courses
 HEGEL

were open to him. One was to try to deduce the details of history
from the categories of his logic. History would be a rational
process in Hegel 's strong sense of the term if it could be shown
to be entailed by the abstract dialectic of the Idea. But, as we
have seen, Hegel himself was under no illusions about the
possibility of carrying such a deduction out. He therefore chose
the alternative procedure, which was to try to deduce not the
details of history, but its outline or skeleton plot, from purely
philosophical premises.
Yet in choosing this alternative does he not lay himself
open to the very charge of a priorism he so vehemently seeks to
repudiate? And can he in fact produce a convincing answer to
the charge? Is it not clear that Hegel, on his own showing,
knows a good deal about the course history must take before he
knows any historical facts at all? He knows, for instance,
that history must be the gradual realization of freedom; he
even knows that this process must complete itself in four
distinct stages. If required, he will produce philosophical
proofs of these propositions. If this is not determining the
course of history apart from experience it is hard to know what
is.
Hegel might reply that the criticism is ill-conceived: that
it assumes the standpoint of the "understanding" and fails
to allow for the special nature of philosophical reason, a faculty
which is not barely discursive but has intuitive powers too.
But, we must ask, how and where are these intuitive powers
supposed to be exercised? Is it suggested (as Herder, for
example, might have suggested) that the philosopher can dis­
cem the pattern to which the empirical facts necessarily con­
form by scrutinizing them intelligently? lf it is, then the
question arises why working historians cannot discern the
pattern too. And if the reply is that they lack acquaintance
with the Hegelian logic, our comment must be that the logic
appears on this showing to be very much the deus ex machina
its critics allege it to be.
There is a point in this connection which is worth further
consideration. It is sometimes said that Hegel thought history
a rational process because it culminated in the Prussian state
in whose service he himself worked. The jibe is a cheap one
 152 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

and attributes to Hegel a provincialism which was not among

bis defects. 1 But a serious difficulty does lie behind the criticism.
Hegel professes to tell us the plot of world history, and denies
that his account of the matter is speculative in the bad sense of
the term. But since history is an uncompleted process, how can
its overall plot be empirically discovered? At the best we could
say, with Kant, that experience so far as it t"s available confirms
the interpretation of history which pure reason suggests. But if
we did that we should be wise to put the goal of history in the
future, and not regard it, as Hegel does, as culminating in the
present. It is interesting to notice that he himself observes in
one passage in the lectures that "America is the land of the
future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of
the world's history will reveal itself;" 2 but how these ages
are to be fitted into his scheme is not obvious.
It appears from this that the philosophy of history of Hegel
is open to much the same objections as the philosophy of
history of Kant; and indeed a cynic might say thaf it offers
little more than an elaboration of the Kantian thesis, tricked
out with a logical apparatus which makes it seem a great deal
more profound. Hegel was certainly far more historically­
minded than Kant, and the Phi/osophy of History is doubtless a
more interesting work than any that Kant could have written on
the subject; but the agreement in principie nevertheless remains.
With both we find ourselves asking the question, what it is
they suppose philosophy can contribute towards the under­
standing of history, and from neither do we get a satisfactory
answer. If we concentrate on the direct effects of philosophy on
history it seems that only two answers are possible, one so
obvious as to be uninteresting, the other so wild as to be
incredible. The first is that philosophy assures historians that if
they try long and hard enough and are lucky enough to find
the appropriate evidence they will in the end make sense of any
historical situation. This is a "truth" which ali historians assume
whether philosophy tells them it or not. The second is that if we
look at the facts of history we shall see that they conform to a
1 It should be noted that it is die germanische Welt, and not die deutsche
Welt, which constitutes the fourth stage of world history for him.
1 Sibree, p. 90.
 HEGEL 1 53

pattern which pure reason can- work out independently of all

experience. This is a suggestion which no genuine historian
will believe. Neither Kant nor Hegel makes any third altemative
clear.
To put the matter in this way is misleading, for it will
inevitably be taken to imply that the whole search for a specula­
tive philosophy of history was, from the theoretical point of
view at least, a fantastic waste of time, on the same plane as,
for example, efforts to foretell the future by measuring the
Great Pyramid of Egypt; and this it most certainly was not.
The sharp dichotomy, so acceptable to the simple-minded,
between a useful activity called science carried on by sane men
and a useless one called metaphysics carried on by knaves and
fools is no more applicable here than it is elsewhere. The truth
is that the speculations we have discussed did indirectly have a
salutary effect on historical studies. By emphasizing the need
to present historical facts as a coherent and intelligible whole,
they provoked dissatisfaction with the loose chronicles and
empty moralizing which still largely passed for history at the
end of the eighteenth century, and so contributed substantially to
the immense development of the subject during the nineteenth
century, when the complex and critica} study we know as
history today finally took shape. And sorne of the ideas of the
speculative philosophers of history, Hegel in particular, showed
a depth of insight which later historians were to turn to good
account. To give one instance only, the suggestion that, -in
studying the history of a given nation at a given time, we can
find in the conception of a national spirit the connecting link
between phenomena previously thought to be wholly separate,
has proved a fertile source of empirical hypotheses, and may
thus be said to have thrown real light on sorne dark places in
history.
Our verdict on speculative philosophy of history must accord­
ingly be a mixed one. In a way, we are forced to characterize
it as utterly wrong-headed, since its programme amounts to
an attempt to comprehend history from the outside; an attempt
which, as Croce made clear long ago 1 , cannot have any appeal
for working historians. On the other hand, its most celebrated
1 Theory and History of Historiography, Ch. IV.
15-4- INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
exponents certainly did make an important indirect contribu­
tion to the development of historical studies, as we have just
tried to show. Whether there is any future in this type of
philosophizing is another question, dependent, it would seem,
on what chance there is of anyone's producing a tenable moral
justification of the course history has taken. On this we can
remark only that though all previous attempts at such a justi­
fication-Kant's, for example, or Hegel's-have been bitterly
criticized as instances of special pleading, this has not caused
the abandorunent of the general project. Philosophies of history
of this sort continue to appear, and presumably will do for so
long as evil is looked on as constituting a metaphysical problem.