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Tous droits réservés © Laval théologique et philosophique, Université Laval, 1995 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 6 fév. 2022 03:31 Laval théologique et philosophique How Philosophy “Instructs the World” Henry S. Harris Hegel aujourd’hui Volume 51, numéro 2, juin 1995 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/400916ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/400916ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Faculté de philosophie, Université Laval ISSN 0023-9054 (imprimé) 1703-8804 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Harris, H. S. (1995). How Philosophy “Instructs the World”. Laval théologique et philosophique, 51(2), 311–321. https://doi.org/10.7202/400916ar Laval théologique et philosophique, 51, 2 (juin 1995) : 311-321 HOW PHILOSOPHY "INSTRUCTS THE WORLD" Henry S. HARRIS RÉSUMÉ : Cet essai s'efforce de déterminer la relation de la Préface de la Philosophie du droit de Hegel avec l'œuvre elle-même. L'auteur y montre qu'en dépit de la déclaration explicite « que la philosophie arrive toujours trop tard » pour enseigner comment doit être le monde, la structure rationnelle que la philosophie systématique découvre dans le monde est un idéal qui n'est parfaitement réalisé nulle part. Ainsi la philosophie, de fait, « enseigne » (ou guide l'action et dirige les attitudes) d'une certaine manière importante. SUMMARY : This essay examines the Preface of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in its relation to the work itself. It is shown that, in spite of the explicit declaration that "philosophy always comes too late to instruct the world how to be", the rational structure that systematic philosophy uncovers in the world is an ideal that is not perfectly realized anywhere. Thus philosophy is in fact, "instructive" (or action-guiding and attitude-directing) in certain important ways. A mong the passages that have attained the status of proverbs for readers of Hegel (because they express what even the non-readers know of his philosophy) one of the best known is the paragraph at the end of the Preface to the Philosophy of Right (1821) where we are told that "philosophy always comes too late to teach the world how it ought to be." The image of the "owl of Minerva beginning her flight only with the falling of the dusk" is what everyone remembers (even those who have not read the book). Those who have read the book ought to be puzzled ; for in simply "understan- ding" the rational State as it "actually" is, Hegel describes to his Prussian audience a State which manifestly was not actual in their world in many respects. He did not try to "jump over Rhodes," certainly, since everything that he described existed somewhere in the "Christian-German world" of his time. But it was nowhere put together in the way in which he put it together as "the thought of the world which first appears in time when actuality has completed its process of formation." Philosophy, he says, "is its own time grasped in thoughts" ; and only what is fully formed in life can be properly "grasped" in thought. One can only pick the 311 HENRY S. HARRIS apple of knowledge when it is ripe. But that is when it is ready to fall in any case. It is too late, then, to be telling the apple how to grow. The world that can be "grasped in thought" must be on its death bed ; and the only advice that one can give to a dying man is to make his peace with God. Instead of the apple in the Judaic myth of human disobedience, however, we find in Hegel's text a rose to be recognized in the cross of Christian obedience ; and instead of the religious task of making our peace with God, philosophy offers us a "peace with actuality" which Hegel says is "warmer" than "the cold despair which concedes that in this temporal life things go quite badly, or at the best, no better than middling well." Yet even in Hegel's account of the rationally-actual State, things do not go better than middling well : for the "inner dialectic" of civil society (PR, 246) guarantees the truth of the saying of Jesus "the poor ye have always with you" (cf. PR, 244). And from the fact that the Hegelian State is not completely actual anywhere, we could infer that in this temporal world things actually do go quite badly. The Left Hegelians and the Marxists solved the riddle of the Preface (as they thought) by identifying the evening star with the morning star, or the flight of the twilight owl with the crowing of the cock at dawn. The "gray in gray" that Philo- sophy paints for the world that has grown old, becomes the project of the new day ; and one must be bolder and more radical than Hegel was. One must follow the dialectic of civil society to its necessary conclusion and resolve the problem of poverty once and for all, by showing that the Reason in the world is moving necessarily towards a classless society in which the needs of all will be met. Then at last we shall have the rational world in which everyone contributes to the best of his (or her) abilities. The first step in this "solution" seems to be indisputably correct. The world to which philosophy can give no advice is the one that can be comprehended only because it is dying. But philosophical comprehension takes the step into a new world beyond that death. In the cross of death, it recognizes the rose of Reason ; and, at that point, the proposed "solution" goes wrong. For unless the apple in the older myth is plucked and eaten, it must fall and rot — and so go to waste as an object of enjoyment. But the rose in the new myth can only bloom properly for so long as it is not plucked. The rose of "absolute knowledge" is a mystic rose in the sense that if it is left unplucked, it will bloom for ever, and will never fade. So in Hegel's myth it is obedience to the divine prohibition that is rational, just as disobedience was both rational and necessary in the case of the Judaic apple. The Marxists would have us pluck the rose ; but then it is bound to wither. For Hegelians it is apparent that Engels spoke more wisely than he knew when he said that in the world of Communism "the State is not abolished, it withers away." He did not realize that the State was the social "rose," and that once it was gone there would only be thorns. We cannot have the rose without the thorns ; but we can have the thorns without the rose. Nor is it only in the world of those who claim to follow Marx that this situation visibly exists. The truth is, rather, that in Hegel's own 312 HOW PHILOSOPHY "INSTRUCTS THE WORLD' "German-Christian world" the rose of Hegelian "Science" has still not bloomed. So we live mainly among the thorns for a different reason. My ultimate aim is to say what the "cognition of the rose in bloom" means in the most ordinary and literal terms that I can command. But for the moment, I must pursue Hegel's metaphors a little further. The metaphor of the rose comes into his Preface through the punning transformation of the name of Rhodes — the island in the boast about the fabulous leap. Just as any place is "Rhodes" for the repetition of that leap, so the impossibility of leaping out of one's time can be demonstrated at any time. But Philosophy does not have to leap out of time ; it recognizes the rose of eternal blessedness in the cross of "this temporal life." And this recognition is not a vision, but an activity. It is not a leap, but it is a dance. The challenge "Here is Rhodes, and here the leap" refers to an impossibility. Hegel translates the Greek proverb into Latin, but both languages are dead and gone. We are no longer trying to leap into a philosophical Heaven that is outside of time. "Here is the rose, here dance" is not a challenge at all, but an invitation in the vernacular. Saltus, the impossible leap in the Latin, is translated into "dance" as if it were Salta, the imperative of the verb saltare.1 The Latin translation was necessary so that this second pun could be made, and the heritage of Rome, Imperial and Papal, could be added to that of the Greek island/rose, to produce the living dance of truth in German. Anyone who has been properly taught can dance anywhere ; and anyone who uploads/Philosophie/how-philosophy-quot-instructs-the-world-quot-henry-s-harris.pdf