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Brad West
Professor Anne Charney Colmo
Reason in History

Two Ideas Regarding What Moves Human History

The many millennia of which we are aware of the existence of Homo Sapiens have

contained many civilizations, ways of life, cultures, governments, and economic structures. One

may be driven to wonder: was the development of human history a chain of random occurrences

or is there some sort of pattern, a driving force which led our species through the ascensions and

declines of many civilizations, and will carry us to a certain future. Both Marx and Engels, as

well as Hegel believe that there is such a force which has moved human history and will guide it

to a certain inevitability. However they differ in what they believe that force is, how it has been

operating in history, and where it will eventually take us. Both embrace the dialectic: the idea of

the contrast of a thesis with an antithesis forming a new identity through synthesis. The

differences between Hegel's Reason and Marx and Engel's economic laws, the two competing

ideas they believe are the moving factors in history, will be evaluated in this paper. The paper

will also evaluate the ends of History which the two models imply, as well as how it is to

evaluate history through these lens.

Hegel believed Reason to be that driving force in History, describing History as the

"awakening of the consciousness of freedom." Freedom is Hegel's idea of Reason actualized in

human beings, and it manifests itself in what he calls "World Historical States", which each

serve to actualize one component of what it means to be free. Tragically, this very aspect of

Freedom that a World Historical State embodies ultimately will be embodied to an excess and

effect the fall of that State. For example, the aspect of Freedom Sparta embodied was that of
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militarism, and it was therefore made great and powerful as its citizens embodied this aspect in

campaigning across the world expanding their wealth and territory, enslaving many of those they

captured. But though being warlike made Sparta great, its excess brought its ruin. As the warlike

citizens campaigned out of country, inevitably many perished, while their slaves increased in

number. The population disparity eventually became so great that the Spartan warriors couldn't

maintain dominion over their captured. As war was Sparta's actualization of Freedom, it was also

its demise.

Reason is comprised of the subjective will, or the passion, as well as the objective will,

or the law, and is itself a synthesis of these antithetical notions. The means by which Reason acts

through history is the Spirit, through the peoples of history, when they express the freedom that

their state embodies, is that of the objective will. However, there are also individuals which serve

as Reason's unwitting handmaidens. These are called World Historical Individuals. A World

Historical Individual is one who does not embody the Spirit of his State, but rather pursues his or

her own passions. But it must also be the case, if he is a genuine WHI and not just someone non-

participant in his or her State's embodiment of Freedom, that he or she brought humankind to a

new stage in which a new facet of Freedom may be developed. This development of History

through the unwitting WHI is considered the "Cunning of Reason." Julius Caesar is an example

of a WHI. He created a united war through conquest for his own gain, but it was in Rome that a

new facet of Freedom developed.

Although the Hegelian concept of individual World Historical States (WHSs) is tragic, it

portends well for humankind over the entirety of History. For as one WHS decays and dies, its

contribution to Freedom persists, and mankind continues to collect aspects of Freedom,

inexorably approaching the complete actualization of Freedom, which Hegel considers to be the
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end of History. Hegel believes that this final manifestation of Freedom will follow from the

synthesis between the Thesis of Church Spirituality with Secular Rationalism. This will be the

end of History, where humankind has finally actualized the full spectrum of Freedom.

There are, potentially some problems with Hegel's idea as it applies to World History.

For instance, why should it be that so few States contribute to this development of Freedom?

Furthermore, why are there so many states of unreason in History, in which it seems like

oppression is prevailing over freedom? Hegel explains the latter question by locating such states

of unreason as the antithesis of the dialectic in freedom, explaining that they are transient. To the

former criticism, I am not sure what Hegel would say. I however, cannot help but find the notion

of a "End of History", forming an insular course of events, to rest uncomfortably within Hegel's

philosophy. Hegel's philosophy finds meaning from synthesis, and I don't understand why the

dialectic process of History would stop and become a thesis without antitheses, without further

synthesis. If anything, it seems as though humankind will ever approach the fullness of reason,

but never attain it, because of the necessity of the dialectic.

Marx and Engel's posit a idyllic end of History as well, however this end will be brought

about by the economic laws, and not Hegelian reason. Unlike Hegel, they begin with a sort of

utopian prehistory, in which an entire tribe was considered to be family. The advent of wealth

accumulation gradually whittled the community down until it reached a monogamy in which the

woman was essentially the slave of the man. Males fought to secure this social status as they

wished to ensure their personal progenies success by endowing their wealth on their own

children. Without securing the monogamy of women, the men could not be sure that they were

passing their material possessions to their own progeny or that of another man. This is one
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example of how Marx and Engel's explain economic laws governed social interaction. The

ability to amass wealth prompted men to subordinate the other sex.

Marx and Engels describe how the economic laws molded society as technology

developed throughout history. In the middle ages, prior to the development of complex

machines, laborers would retain their products, except for a small part which they could barter

for other goods. Serfs would work the land for nobles, however Marx and Engels note that

although the serfs were subordinate to their nobles, there was an awareness that the conditions of

these serfs were their responsibility. This will later be contrasted with the attitude of the grand

bourgeoisie toward the proletariat. The advent of the factory allowed for a much cheaper product

to be developed through social production, which would drive individual laborers out of

business. At this point, capital, or the machines which allowed for the cheap development of

commodities, became concentrated within a small part of the population, the bourgeoisie.

While before private work had resulted in private ownership, now the social work of the

wage-workers resulted in the private gain of the bourgeois. Technology had become inimical to

the quality of lives of the majority of the populace, because as the machines and factories

became more developed, the workers role became more simplistic. Not only did this result in the

most mundane of toil for the wage-worker, but it also removed all barriers to entry. As the

worker cannot produce goods at a price competitive to those of the bourgeois with his advanced

capital, he is forced to compete with his fellow workers for a position within the factory. The

supply of workers far exceeds the demand for them, and consequently, the wage-worker must

work for mere subsistence in a cycle which never allows for any accumulation of private

property, or a future.
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All the while, a new policy called "Freedom of Trade" renders the proletariat simply a

commodity. At least under slavery and serfdom, Marx and Engels reason, there was the

expectation of a paternalistic role between the worker and the master. As the bourgeoisie

compete against each other for the finite market, they are left with no choice but to pay their

workers a mere subsistence wage to remain in economic contention.

However, Marx and Engels believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the

proletariat. The same laws of economics which have subjugated so many throughout history will

create the conditions by which their liberation is inevitable. As the oppressed and starving

proletariat population increases, while the competition among the bourgeoisie renders it smaller

and smaller, eventually the proletariat will take power, creating a classless society without

private property. Under a regulated economy, Marx and Engels posit that there will not be the

rampant inefficiency of capitalism, and the technological gains acquired through history will no

longer imply a worse existence to the laborer, but allow him or her to toil less, and spend more

time participating in activities he or she enjoys. So while the dialectic of rise and fall occurs

throughout the Hegelian dialectics through World Historical States, it is one long fall in the

conception of Marx and Engels, and this fall allows for the eventual rising into a state of utopian

international Communism.

The conceptions of World History by Hegel as well as Marx and Engels illustrate how

radically the same world history can be integrated into different ways of thinking to result in a

dramatically different ideas regarding the course which our species has taken. More generally, I

see how much our conclusions are influenced by the lens we look at the world through. What

then, is wisdom? Do we profit from evaluating the different ways of looking at the world or do

we necessarily just form a new and different lens from them. Is this what history amounts to: an
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agglomeration of different ways of looking at the past without any conception regarding it

having the privileged status of truth?