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Hegel as a Social Scientist*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
Abstract
The purposes of this essay are (1) to identify Hegel's role in the propagation of certain philosophic principles essential to the development of an interpretive social science, (2) to demonstrate in what ways Hegel himself can be understood as an early sociologist, and (3) to indicate those aspects of Hegel's thought that might be of greatest use to contemporary philosophers of social and political inquiry.
The first part of the exposition relies on the Preface to The Phenomenology of Mind in order to outline Hegel's epistemological and methodological recommendations. The second part demonstrates the practical meaning of these recommendations by looking at the analysis of ancient Greece found in the Philosophy of History. It is concluded that this analysis is indeed a social scientific analysis and, moreover, is suggestive of subsequent work by such interpretivists as Weber, Schutz, and G. H. Mead.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to John L. Stanley for his many valuable criticisms and suggestions; and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments.
References
1 I will henceforth refrain from using the term idealist which is, I think, too strongly suggestive of Kantian formalism. While idealist conceptions of social inquiry probably should be included in the “nonpositivist” tradition, the more proper emphasis is on the interpretive kinds of knowledge resulting from various sorts of human action. Part of my effort will be to show that Hegel was not simply an idealist.
2 A practical or policy-oriented social science is all that David Easton was able to find in the “post-behavioral” movement. See Easton, David, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 63 (December, 1969), 1051–1061 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Among the few attempts to synthesize these disparate approaches, see Friedrichs, Robert W., A Sociology of Sociology (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1970)Google Scholar; and Gouldner, Alvin, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Avon Books, 1970)Google Scholar. For an important critique see Popper, Karl R., The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Harper Torch-books, 1964), chaps. 1 and 3Google Scholar.
4 This point is made by Gunnell, John, “Deduction, Explanation and Social Scientific Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 63 (December, 1969), at p. 1233 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Such phrases are inspired by Hacker's, Andrew “Capital and Carbuncles: The “Great Books' Reappraised,” American Political Science Review, 48 (September, 1954), pp. 775–786 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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7 Plant, Raymond, Hegel (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973)Google Scholar. See also, Plamenatz, John, “History as the Realization of Freedom,” in Hegel's Political Philosophy, ed. Pelczynski, Z. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.
As will be shown, some of the arguments contained in the present paper are considered by Plant, though in a somewhat different context. This is especially so when he discusses similarities between Hegel and Wittgenstein (pp. 202–203). Plant, however, only sketches these similarities in the most general of terms, for his main purposes lie elsewhere, viz., in Hegel's political or ideological motives. My effort, on the other hand, is to determine, pointedly and systematically, the philosophic sources of Hegel's social science, considered as a method, and to relate this social science not merely to Wittgenstein but to an entire tradition of social theory.
8 This conclusion is at least implicit in Avineri, Shlomo, “Consciousness and History: List der Vernunft in Hegel and Marx,” in New Studies in Hegel's Philosophy, ed. Steinkraus, Warren (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), especially pp. 108–115 Google Scholar.
9 Dahl, Robert, “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest,” American Political Science Review, 55 (December, 1961), 763–772 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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11 Ibid.
12 See, for example, Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962)Google Scholar; Banfield, Edward, Political Influence (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961)Google Scholar; Lipset, S. M., Trow, Martin, and Coleman, James, Union Democracy (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1956)Google Scholar.
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14 The relevance of Burke here as a theorist of positive law is suggested by Pelczynski, Z. A., “Introductory Essay,” in Hegel, G. W. F., Hegel's Political Writings, ed. Pelczynski, Z. A., pp. 37–39 Google Scholar.
15 See Foster, M. B., The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965)Google Scholar.
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17 Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 70–71, 95, and 129 Google Scholar. See also Hegel, , The Philosophy of Right, pages 14–15 and 225 Google Scholar.
18 For a provocative discussion of Hegelian dialectics see Kojeve, Alexander, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 44–60 Google Scholar.
19 Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 80–01Google Scholar. I should emphasize that the words “mind” and “spirit”, as used in this paper, should be read as translations of Geist.
20 Perhaps the best contemporary discussion of the positivist theory of causality is Lazarsfeld, Paul F., “Interpretation of Statistical Relations as a Research Operation,” in The Language of Social Research, ed. Lazarsfeld, P. F. and Rosenberg, Morris (New York: The Free Press, 1955), especially pp. 121–125 Google Scholar.
21 Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, p. 95 Google Scholar.
22 For a different view, which links Hegel with a more positivist brand of sociology, see Pelczynski, , Hegel's Political Philosophy, pp. 238–241 Google Scholar.
23 Among the classic formulations of this critique are Dilthey, Wilhelm, Pattern and Meaning in History (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), especially chaps. III and IVGoogle Scholar; and Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harvest Books, undated), pp. 290–291 Google Scholar.
24 Many contemporary writers have argued along these lines. Among the best sources are Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960), chap. 1Google Scholar; John Gunnell, “Deduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry”; Miller, Eugene, “Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 66 (September, 1972), 796–817 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jung, Hwa Yol, “A Phenom-enological Critique of the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics,” paper presented at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Google Scholar. Another interesting argument is found in Voegelin, Eric, The New Science of Polifics(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar. Voegelin of course is arguing from a somewhat different perspective. But his analyses of the inadequacy of natural science methods (p. 4) and of the role of human creativity (p. 27) are strikingly suggestive of the tradition here discussed.
25 See Winch, , The Idea of a Social Science, pp. 7–24 Google Scholar.
26 See Maier, Josef, On Hegel's Critique of Kant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939)Google Scholar.
27 Lichtheim, George, The Concept of Ideology (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 13 Google Scholar.
28 A brief discussion of these points, though with a different focus, can be found in Mclntyre, Alisdair, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic (New York: Viking Press, 1970), pp. 22–25 Google Scholar.
29 See Bernstein, Richard, Praxis and Action (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), part 1Google Scholar.
30 Hegel, G. W. F., The Phenomenology of Mind, page 80 Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., p. 86.
32 Hegel, , Phenomenology of Mind, p. 70 Google Scholar. See also Plant, , Hegel, p. 126 Google Scholar.
33 Phenomenology, p. 61.
34 Ibid., p. 93.
35 Ibid., p. 112.
36 Ibid., p. 95.
37 Ibid., p. 106.
38 Ibid., p. 96.
39 Ibid., p. 105.
40 Plant, , Hegel, p. 88 Google Scholar. See also, Avineri, Shlomo, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 63–65 and 87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 A major discussion of this aspect of the history of thought is found in Lowith, Karl, From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964)Google Scholar. A more recent work is Bernstein, Praxis and Action.
42 Of course, finding an epistemology in Marx is not that simple. I am here emphasizing the “early” Marx in which the influence of German philosophy upon his thought is beyond question. See “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Feuer, Lewis (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1959), pp. 243–246 Google Scholar.
43 See Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (Garden City: Double-day, 1956), pp. 23 and 126–127 Google Scholar.
44 See Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (New York: Collier Books, 1972), pp. 120–125 Google Scholar; also “The Utility of Pragmatism,” in From Georges Sorel, trans. Stanley, John (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.
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46 Garfinkel, Harold, “A Comparison of Decisions Made on Four Pre-Theoretical Problems by Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz,” distributed by the Department of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, 1972 Google Scholar.
47 An even more specific example is Dewey, John, who wrote: “Knowledge is a function of association and communication.” The Public and its Problems (Chicago: The Swallow Press, undated), p. 158 Google Scholar.
48 Perhaps a fundamental exception is to be found in the ordinary-language approach to philosophy. The early arguments of Hobbes's Leviathan are pertinent in this sense. More recent are the Philosophical Investigations of Wittgenstein. The relationship of these ideas to the present subject matter is discussed in Ihara, Randall, “Phenomenology and Political Science” (paper presented at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association)Google Scholar. See also, Eugene Miller, “Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry.”
49 See Lichtheim, The Concept of Ideology, chap. 1.
50 Relationalism is Mannheim's word, and he explicitly opposes it to relativism. See Mannheim, , Ideology and Utopia, pp. 78–79 Google Scholar.
51 For a discussion of such variables see Nisbet, Robert A., The Sociological Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1966)Google Scholar.
52 This phrase is borrowed from the book by Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966)Google Scholar, one of the best discussions of the kind of social science presented here.
53 This is, to be sure, an excessively facile way of dealing with Weber. Despite a great deal of exposition by social theorists, I think his methodological position remains unclear. Nonetheless, Weber felt that social scientists can “accomplish something which is never attainable in the natural sciences, namely, the subjective understanding of the actions of individuals in interaction…. This additional achievement of explanation by interpretative understanding, as distinguished from external observation is of course attained only at a price-the more hypothetical and fragmentary character of its results. Nevertheless, subjective understanding is the specific characteristic of sociological knowledge” ( Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Parsons, Talcott [New York: The Free Press, 1969], pp. 103–104)Google Scholar.
54 See Cicourel, Aaron, “Basic and Normative Rules in the Negotiation of Status and Role,” in Recent Sociology No. 2, ed. Dreitzel, Hans Peter (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), pp. 4–45 Google Scholar.
55 See Gurwitsch, Aron, “Problems of the Life-World,” in Phenomenology and Social Reality, ed. Natanson, Maurice (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970)Google Scholar.
56 See Kariel, Henry, Saving Appearances: The Reestablishment of Political Science (Belmont, Calif.: Duxbury Press, 1972), chaps. 6 and 7Google Scholar.
57 Mannheim, , Ideology and Utopia, p. 60 Google Scholar.
58 For a discussion of the relationship between philosophy and science see Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, pages 86–92 Google Scholar.
59 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 238 Google Scholar.
60 See Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 224–240 Google Scholar.
61 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, p. 226 Google Scholar.
62 Ibid., p. 238.
63 Ibid., p. 113.
64 Ibid., p. 238.
65 Ibid., p. 113.
66 Ibid., p. 114.
67 Ibid., p. 225–226.
68 Ibid., p. 241.
69 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, p. 242Google Scholar.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., p. 243.
73 Ibid.
74 See Hegel, , The Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 758–764 Google Scholar. See also, Tucker, Robert, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; also Lowith, , From Hegel to Nietzsche, pp. 47–50 Google Scholar.
75 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, p. 244 Google Scholar.
76 Ibid., p. 245.
77 Ibid., p. 246.
78 Ibid., p. 249.
79 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, p. 250 Google Scholar.
80 Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University, 1946), p. 56 Google Scholar.
81 Hegel, , The Philosophy of History, pages 235–237 Google Scholar.
82 See Feigl, Herbert, “The Scientific Outlook: Naturalism and Humanism,” in Readings in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Feigl, Herbert and Brodbeck, May (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953), especially pp. 10–14 Google Scholar.