Latest posts tagged with #RichardBourke on Bluesky
Where Kant called this process “Kultur” and Rousseau the “faculty of self-perfection,” Hegel saw in it the gradual schooling of the human will, as natural inclinations came under rationalisation—an accumulated “discipline” unfolding as history itself.
#RichardBourke
#BookReview by #RichardBourke
The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin
By #DanEdelstein
Princeton University Press 432pp £30
Revolutions: A New History
By #DonaldSassoon
Verso Books 432pp £30
literaryreview.co.uk/19609-2
Hegel traced Germany’s fate to a ‘German’ idea of freedom: on major matters all deliberated, fostering autonomy that resisted impersonal authority. This self-willed individuality, he argued, became a European norm, since Europe itself had been created by Germanic peoples.
#RichardBourke
The discipline of the history of political thought is an investigation of what ideas from the past are continuous with the present and which are discontinuous in the present. It's exactly the same question as: "How our past has constituted us?"
#RichardBourke
#PrincetonUP
#IdeasPodcast
For #Hegel, Campo Formio merely capped a long decline begun at Westphalia: Germany, he declared, was “no longer a state.” Rejecting moralistic politics, he argued for hard realism and unified power, blaming imperial fragmentation and French-imposed restructuring.
#RichardBourke
Revolutionary breaks in thought processes did not only apply to the mathematical world and the world of empirical science but could also apply to metaphysics, and had also applied to the moral history of mankind.
#RichardBourke
#Kant
#IdeasPodcast
#PrincetonUP
10:00
The birth of modern science, as far as Kant is concerned, is not simply a collection of new observations. Kant believed that people developed new hypotheses which transform our way of seeing things.
#RichardBourke
#IdeasPodcast
#PrincetonUP
9:00
It must be the terrestrial sphere, it must have only a secular perspective. Why is moral and political action not futile? The answer can only come from a focus on what history has delivered. Hegel's question then becomes has human history been justified?
#RichardBourke
#PrincetonUPIdeas
31:20
The key moment for Hegel’s search for reconciliation between subversive righteousness and stable institutions was the shift from feudal monarchy to the constitutional state.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
#Hegel sought to offer a complete analysis of the causes behind successive missteps in the progress of ethical life. This focused his attention on the historical transitions from Judaism and Christianity to the Reformation and the French Revolution.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
This image of government as serving the common good reconciled populations of #Protestant countries to their public institutions.
On the other hand, in #Catholic countries—in Spain, Ireland, France and Italy—criticism had descended into violence against the state.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel
In the aftermath of #TheReformation, the sovereignty of the will occupied the centre of human conduct.
These developments in religious life led to a transformation in attitudes in all sections of German society. Yet equivalent moral progress was denied to #Catholic France.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel
Chastity yielded to the sanctity of marriage; the cult of poverty gave way to the pleasure of work; and unquestioning obedience was replaced by the value of conscience located in the recesses of the heart.
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
#Hegel
#RichardBourke
#Hegel was aligned with the official position in his criticisms of #Catholicism, which he claimed undermined conscience through the exercise of clerical authority. Hegel argued, that this divided the world into two polar kingdoms: one secular and the other in the great beyond.
#RichardBourke
In carrying the kingdom of virtue in his heart alone, Christ relinquished actual life in favour of another possible life. This severance from happiness took the shape of a war on impulse, which passed through innumerable brutal conflicts unleashing atrocities and devastations.
#Hegel
#RichardBourke
Christ fled relationships in the actual world on the grounds that all available ties were fatally compromised. This resolution became an integral if ominous part of his embassy: ‘Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’
#RichardBourke
Overcoming the cleavage between sensible inclinations and self-imposed universal norms, which involved the ‘fulfilment’ or ‘plērōma’ ( #πλήρωμα) of duty in the practical sphere, became the principal objective of #Hegel’sEthics and the basis for his repudiation of #Kant.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel
In #Hegel's view, #Christ rejected #Kant’s opposition of natural #sensible inclinations to inner #universal norms, which in essence was a self-inflicted subordination to an alien standard that took love itself to be pathological.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
As #Hegel asserted, while Jesus sought to transcend the #Judaism’s alienation from the rest of humanity and restore ‘completeness’ ( #Ganzheit) to humanity by overcoming its degradation, instead he became a victim of this plight, with #Christianity developing a new form of alienation.
#RichardBourke
The #Moses's legislation, Hegel alleged, was a further extension of the ‘soul’ of #Abraham: it pitted the Jewish nation against the remainder of the human race, as they were afflicted by a tragedy of Macbeth: defecting from the path of humanity.
#Hegel
#RichardBourke
#Abraham maintained his distance from nature and, fencing himself off from others, detached himself from all community outside his immediate progeny.
His spirit determined his fate, which became a rebellion against the natural disposition of humanity.
#Hegel
#SpiritOfChristianity
#RichardBourke
#Christianity, like #Judaism, was a revolt against nature, although both turned against reality in different ways.
Abraham, Hegel asserted the true progenitor of the Jewish people, sought to tame the elements through belief in a higher being, thus the absolute subjection to God’s law
#RichardBourke
The very term #morality acquired a negative connotation, distinguishable from the richer idea of an ethical relationship designated by the word #love:
‘a man that is only moral is a miser who accumulates and preserves without enjoying anything’.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
"His mode of persuasion made use of the full panoply of devices: the idea of a Messiah, the image of resurrection, and the wizardry of miracles. Purity of principle lapsed into ‘positive’ forms of authority."
#RichardBourke #Hegel
#Judaism was descending into slavish obedience to rigid formulae, which #Jesus had to appeal to as the existing norms invoking the will of God, demanding faith in his own person, and so in effect reducing his audience to tutelage.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
#Hegel
The idea of the #FrenchRevolution was self-evident for #Kant and reducible to two principles: first, that a #constitution should by right enjoy popular approval; and second, that it should aim to realise justice by rejecting #OffensiveWarfare.
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
Hegel's World Revolutions Richard Bourke
The basis for the transition to the new order of things must be in the principle of the pure religion of reason, as a revelation (though not an empirical one) permanently taking place within all human beings, and this basis, once grasped after mature reflection, will be carried to effect, inasmuch as it is to be a human work, through gradual reform; for as regards revolutions, which can shorten the advance of the reform, they are left up to Providence and cannot be introduced according to plan without damage to freedom.
«Just as a moral religion was contradicted by an ethos of ecclesiastical service, so a republican constitution would be destroyed by its despotic implementation. Any effort to establish freedom by a process requiring its intermediate eradication was bound to miscarry».
#Kant
#RichardBourke
All this is not to be expected from an external revolution, which produces its effect, very much dependent on fortuitous circumstances, in turbulence and violence: what is thus for once put in place at the establishment of a new constitution is regrettably retained for centuries to come, for it is no longer to be altered, not, at least, except through a new revolution (which is always dangerous).
For #Kant, what was for once put in place by revolution at the establishment of a new constitution, was to be retained for centuries. As for how to correct political miscalculation, Kant advocated for gradual change, considering a revolution against the revolution dangerous and costly
#RichardBourke
![Now if a propensity to this [inversion] does lie in human nature, then there is in the human being a natural propensity to evil; and this propensity itself is morally evil, since it must ultimately be sought in a free power of choice, and hence is imputable. This evil is radical, since it corrupts the ground of all maxims, as natural propensity, it is also not to be extirpated through human forces, for this could only happen through good maxims - something that cannot take place if the subjective supreme ground of all maxims is presupposed to be corrupted. Yet it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it is found in the human being as acting freely.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:o6lt4wpa2ld5atdj26r7lbg4/bafkreigq2wn5ckozh4nmgxar73c62easjozq6damhs7kcvk4yxb6tal4ae)
Now if a propensity to this [inversion] does lie in human nature, then there is in the human being a natural propensity to evil; and this propensity itself is morally evil, since it must ultimately be sought in a free power of choice, and hence is imputable. This evil is radical, since it corrupts the ground of all maxims, as natural propensity, it is also not to be extirpated through human forces, for this could only happen through good maxims - something that cannot take place if the subjective supreme ground of all maxims is presupposed to be corrupted. Yet it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it is found in the human being as acting freely.
How is this possible that a naturally evil human being should make himself into a good human being surpasses every concept of ours. For how can an evil tree bear good fruit? But, since by our previous admission a tree which was (in its predisposition) originally good did bring forth bad fruits, and since the fall from good into evil (if we seriously consider that evil originated from freedom) is no more comprehensible than the ascent from evil back to the good, then the possibility of this last cannot be disputed. For, in spite of that fall, the command that we ought to become better human beings still resounds unabated in our souls; consequently, we must also be capable of it, even if what we can do is itself insufficient and, by virtue of it, we only make ourselves receptive to a higher assistance inscrutable to us.
While #Kant was deeply convinced of the depravity of the will, he was equally committed to the hope of regeneration. No matter how all-encompassing the impulse to self-love might be, the germinal concept of meritorious action remained indelible within consciousness
#RichardBourke
Religion,AA6:37,44
"Nothing is more remarkable in the philosophy of #Kant than his adherence to the hope of future progress in moral refinement together with an abhorrence of the products of civilisation."
#RichardBourke
#Hegel'sWorldRevolutions
