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Brad West
Professor Anne Charney Colmo
Reason in 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
Hegel believed Reason to be that driving force in History, describing History as the
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
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
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,
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
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
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