Initiation into Philosophy

by Émile Faguet

Here is the second advance. By war, by conquest, by annexations, by more gentle means when possible, the stronger cities subdue the weaker, and the great State is created. The great State has a more important part than the city; it continues to substitute the general will for the particular wills; but, in addition, it is an idea, a great civilizing idea, benevolent, elevating, aggrandizing, to which private interests must and should be sacrificed. Such were the Romans who considered themselves, not without reason, as the legislators and civilizers of the world.

THE IDEAL FORM OF STATE.—Putting aside for a while the continuation of this subject, what political form should the great State take to conform to its destiny? Assuredly the monarchical form; for the republican form is always too individualist. To Hegel, the Greeks and even the Romans seem to have conceded too much to individual liberty or to the interests of class, of caste; they possessed an imperfect idea of the rights and functions of the State. The ideal form of the State is monarchy. It is necessary for the State to be contracted, gathered up, and personified in a prince who can be personally loved, who can be reverenced, which is precisely what is needed. These great States are only really great if they possess strong cohesion; it is therefore necessary that they should be nationalities, as it is called—that is, that they should be inwardly very united and highly homogeneous by community of race, religion, customs, language, etc. The idea to be realized by a State can only be accomplished if there be a sufficient community of ideas in the people constituting it. However the great State will be able to, and even ought to, conquer and annex the small ones in order to become stronger and more capable, being stronger, of realizing its idea. Only this should be done merely when it is certain or clearly apparent that it represents an idea as against a people which does not, or that it presents a better, greater, and nobler idea than that represented by the people it attacks.

WAR.—But, as each people will always find its own idea finer than that of another, how is this to be recognized?—By victory itself. It is victory which proves that a people ... was stronger than another!—Not only stronger materially but representing a greater, more practical, more fruitful idea than the other; for it is precisely the idea which supports a people and renders it strong. Thus, victory is the sign of the moral superiority of a people, and in consequence force indicates where right is and is indistinguishable from right itself, and we must not say as may already perhaps have been said: "Might excels right," but "Might is right" or "Right is might."

For example [Hegel might have said], France was "apparently" within her rights in endeavouring to conquer Europe from 1792 to 1815; for she represented an idea, the revolutionary idea, which she might consider, and which many besides the French did consider, an advance and a civilizing idea; but she was beaten, which proves that the idea was false; and before this demonstration by events is it not true that the republican or Caesarian idea is inferior to that of traditional monarchy? Hegel would certainly have reasoned thus on this point.

Therefore war is eternal and must be so. It is history itself, being the condition of history; it is even the evolution of humanity, being the condition of that evolution; there-fore, it is divine. Only it is purifying itself; formerly men only fought, or practically always, from ambition; now wars are waged for principles, to effect the triumph of an idea which has a future, and which contains the future, over one that is out of date and decayed. The future will see a succession of the triumphs of might which, by definition, will be triumphs of right and which will be triumphs of increasingly fine ideas over ideas that are barbarous and justly condemned to perish.

Hegel has exercised great influence on the ideas of the German people both in internal and external politics.

ART, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION.—The ideas of Hegel on art, science, and religion are the following: Under the shelter of the State which is necessary for their peaceful development in security and liberty, science, literature, art, and religion pursue aims not superior to but other than those of the State. They seek, without detaching the individual from the society, to unite him to the whole world. Science makes him know all it can of nature and its laws; literature, by studying man in himself and in his relations with the world, imbues him with the sentiment of the possible concordance of the individual with the universe; the arts make him love creation by unravelling and bringing into the light and into relief all that is beautiful in it relatively to man, and all that in consequence should render it lovely, respected, and dear to him; religion, finally, seeks to be a bond between all men and a bond between all men and God; it sketches the plan of universal brotherhood which is ideally the last state of humanity, a state which no doubt it will never attain, but which it is essential it should imagine and believe to be possible, without which it always would be drawn towards animality more and much more than it is.

The Hegelian philosophy has exercised an immense influence throughout Europe not only on philosophic studies, but on history, art, and literature. It may be regarded as the last "universal system" and as the most daring that has been attempted by the human mind.

SCHOPENHAUER.—Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the will. Persuaded, like Leibnitz, that man is an epitome and a picture of the world, and that the world resembles us (which is hypothetical), he takes up the thought of Leibnitz, changing and transforming it thus: All the universe is not thought, but all the universe is will; thought is only an accident of the will which appears in the superior animals; but the will, which is the foundation of man, is the foundation of all; the universe is a compound of wills that act. All beings are wills which possess organs conformed to their purpose. It is the will to be which gave claws to the lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the most unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives extraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and touch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by their roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk upwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are "constant tendencies" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently term weight, fluidity, impenetrability, electricity, chemical affinities, are nothing but natural wills or inconscient wills. Because of this, the diverse wills opposing and clashing with one another, the world is a war of all against all and of everything literally against everything; and the world is a scene of carnage.

The truth is that will is an evil and is the evil. What is needed for happiness is to kill the will, to destroy the wish to be.—But this would be the end of existence?—And in fact to be no more or not to be at all is the true happiness and it would be necessary to blow up the whole world in an explosion for it to escape unhappiness. At least, as Buddhism desired and, in some degree, though less, Christianity also, it is necessary to make an approach to death by a kind of reduction to the absolute minimum of will, by detachment and renunciation pushed as far as can be.