I

In her Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit, Sally Sedgwick sets out to:

In the first part of the book Sedgwick is concerned with freedom being temporally conditioned. The second part consists of the last two chapters and is concerned with the claim that ‘all our thought is indebted to this actual realm as well’ (TH: 8). Hegel repeatedly asserts, Sedgwick notes, ‘that none of us can escape our time in thought’ (TH: 143).

There is much to admire and appreciate in this book on Hegel’s philosophy of history. Previously Sedgwick (Reference Sedgwick2010) noted that all major works of Hegel are histories, but in this book the focus is on Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, which is one of its attractive features, as it is a relatively ignored text in the vast literature on Hegel. The book raises several questions and criticisms. I have a few to offer here, some in the margin of the text and one or two being more fundamental. They do not, however, detract from the book’s many merits.

The questions whether Hegel’s account is true and whether there is still any use or value for it are not raised by Sedgwick. The reception and influence of Hegel’s views and their criticism too are not discussed, except for a few comments in its introduction. This is perfectly fine: there are different ways a scholar may want to engage with the mighty dead. I would, however, have liked to have read more about the contents of Hegel’s philosophic history and about the context in which he developed it. Not discussing these are, I think, missed opportunities, as both pertain to the aims Sedgwick set herself.

II

Reason and freedom emerge out of our natural capacities—our animal instincts and feelings for example (TH: 5; Sedgwick expands on this point in §5.1)—but, and more specifically, they are temporally conditioned:

This also explains the limit of freedom in Sedgwick’s view. Freedom is limited by arising out of our nature on the one hand and is limited with respect to its laws and concepts on the other (TH: 124). This she understands thus:

Self-motion is understood as self-development which is typical of organic beings and their inner drive or purpose (TH: 94, 118). What sets human beings apart from other organic beings is their capacity to think (TH: 119; see, e.g., PH: 74/95). So far so good. We come back to the organic beings. But what about freedom being an achievement? What sort of achievement is Sedgwick thinking of and an achievement by or for whom?

In as much as freedom is not an inborn capacity but depending on historical forces, it is an achievement (TH: 3–4). This is somewhat of an open door. Few would doubt that our ‘freedom must be achieved because, in a state of nature, we do not have available the conditions necessary for the full realization or expression of its laws and concepts’ (TH: 127). But what makes, for instance, modern subjective freedom an achievement? How did Spirit arrive at this stage in history? Or what laws or concepts of freedom is Hegel speaking of in his lectures on the philosophy of history?

What comes closest to an answer to these questions is when Sedgwick asserts that:

Sedgwick does not specify the sort of determinate content that our capacity for freedom acquires, nor what makes it typically modern. Apart from that I doubt that the journey from a natural condition to the ethical state is what concerns Hegel in his lectures.

History, in Hegel’s view, starts with states,Footnote ² with China and the Mongols (PH: –/143)—empires under theocratic rule. The first states in the Oriental world already had as their principle ‘the substantiality of its ethics [Sittlichen]’ (PH: –/142). So how, then, are we to understand the journey towards the ethical state if the ethical state is what history starts with? An answer is not called for. Instead we should look more closely at the contents of Hegel’s philosophic history to see what journey he has in mind. In the first states, laws are coercive, whereas in Hegel’s time, apart from being coercive, ethics (das Sittliche) lies in one’s state of mind (Gemüte) and compassion (Mitempfindung) (PH: –/142). Hegel has much more to say about the history of Spirit of course, but here the point is that the passage just quoted from Sedgwick’s book erroneously suggests that freedom, in as much as it arises out of our animal desires (and this I do not question), plays an important role in Hegel’s philosophic history, but it does not, as Hegel is not interested in the transition from natural history to human history. The journey Hegel is interested in is the journey from the states in the Oriental world to those in the modern Germanic world in which when ‘I reflect upon the object of my activity, I must have the consciousness that my will has been called upon’ (PH: 42/57).

The attention to the transition from natural to human history seems a contemporary concern that Sedgwick reads in Hegel, but which cannot be found in it. Hegel’s concern with geography in his lectures, on the other hand, and how it affects the development of communities, is however left unmentioned, although that concern is typically not contemporary to us though it was still to Hegel.

III

I want to return to the passage I quoted above (TH: 5). Sedgwick does not address any historically locatable institutions, nor any engagements of ‘temporally located thinkers and agents’. She extensively discusses passages from the introduction of Hegel’s lectures, but she does not discuss the more expansive parts on the four worlds—the Oriental, Greek, Roman and Germanic worlds. That is, the parts in which Hegel discusses historically locatable institutions and temporally located thinkers and agents. Analysing those parts would have allowed Sedgwick to debate the sort of laws and concepts of freedom Hegel is interested in. It would have provided historical knowledge of what makes modern subjective freedom a social-historical achievement, or what, for example, Socrates individually achieved by discovering morality.

To give but one example of the ways Hegel makes his view concrete, think of the following. At the start of his lectures, Hegel defines Spirit as ‘autonomous and self-sufficient’, that is, a Bei-sich-selbst-Sein: a being with oneself.Footnote ³ This sort of language is used by Hegel in several of his works, but of interest here is how he connects it to his philosophic history. There is first the general and central idea of the lectures: since the essence of Spirit is freedom, history is Spirit becoming conscious of its freedom, and it does so in the state which is the shape in which Spirit realizes itself in the world (PH: 20/30). This Sedgwick adequately reminds us of throughout her book. She ignores, however, the concrete and historical parts where Spirit manifests itself, when Hegel, for instance, returns to the conception of freedom as being-with-oneself in his chapter on Protestantism, which he associates with the free Spirit who is ‘with herself in the truth only’ (PH: –/496). Hegel continues: ‘This is the core content of the Reformation; human beings are destined by themselves to be free’ (PH: –/497; see also PH: –/501).Footnote ⁴ Hegel subsequently details how this is so. This is one of the key moments in Hegel’s philosophic history, as far as I can tell. Why does Sedgwick not discuss these sorts of world-historical developments of Spirit?

The contents of Hegel’s philosophic history remain undiscussed in Sedgwick’s book, even though it is what the book is said to be concerned with. Sedgwick is solely interested in some of the philosophical ideas underlying it, limiting herself to Hegel’s introduction to his lectures. But if you aim to specify how according to Hegel freedom realizes itself in time, should you not be interested in—well—the way freedom realizes itself in time according to Hegel?

We may apply what Sedgwick writes (in TH: 5) to Hegel himself. He after all too is a temporally located thinker responding to actions and events in his world. To limit ourselves to his lectures, here Hegel’s thoughts on the Enlightenment establishing the last phase of history (PH: –/524) and the course of the French Revolution and why it is of world-historical significance (PH: –/529) would have allowed Sedgwick to make clear what she means by the claim that ‘expressions of reason and freedom rely for their very being on the engagements of real, temporally located thinkers and agents with nature and history’ (TH: 5).

IV

It is always easy to criticize an author for not including this or that in her book, and the comments I made about it do not downplay the many merits of the book. But apart from the point raised so far, I also would have liked to have read more about its philosophical context. Take the following example that connects to Sedgwick’s interest in the purpose of history, which is one of the central themes of her book, and rightly so, as the idea of the historical process having a (secular) purpose is what makes the German idealists stand out from their predecessors.

Sedgwick emphasizes that connections between (contingent) actions and events in the past are purposive rather than mechanical. She adds:

Sedgwick adequately stresses that ‘The idea of purposive connection that is suitably internal, then, is a specific idea of freedom’ (TH: 95). It is unclear, however, what specific idea of freedom Sedgwick has in mind here. But here our focus is on the context of the idea of purpose. Several times Sedgwick underlines the importance of understanding purpose in terms of the inner drive or self-development of organic beings (see, e.g., TH: 3, 70, 118, 133–35).

The understanding of purpose in organic terms is not typical of Hegel but is also found in other scholars of his time (notably in Johann Gottfried Herder). It has to do with the influence of Aristotle in German thought and his idea of entelechy which is the inner drive of organic beings, a potentiality aiming to realize itself, which, in terms of Hegel’s philosophy of history, has to do with what Sedgwick refers to as Hegel’s a priori, with ‘the effort to reveal the “inner guiding soul [innere leitende Seele]” of events and actions (PH: 10/19)’ (TH: 65). This does not escape Sedgwick, as she refers to Aristotle’s influence on Hegel in a footnote (TH: 78, n.103), but the context of said influence would have not only further substantiated Sedgwick’s reading of purpose in Hegel’s philosophy of history, but it would have also located his views in its time, which is the typical Hegelian claim she herself argues for. There are sparse contextual nods in the book here and there. Nowhere, however, does Sedgwick present Hegel as a temporally located thinker.

Sedgwick is not interested in the political-historical context of Hegel’s philosophic history: the events of his day are conspicuous by their absence. Nor is she interested in the contents of Hegel’s philosophic history, which she ignores.Footnote ⁵ She also is hardly interested in its philosophical context, except for its connection to Kant in her first chapter. In Sedgwick’s book, Hegel appears to be operating in a vacuum. But if you want to substantiate the claim that ‘none of us can escape our time in thought’ (TH: 143), should you not take the opportunity to do so with the author you are writing a book about? Surely Hegel too cannot escape his time in thought?

V

Most of the space in Chapter 2 is given to the distinction between original, reflective and philosophic history. Sedgwick returns to it later in her book (TH: 158–61). She misrepresents in part the forms of history that Hegel discusses.

Sedgwick correctly points out that original history is concerned with the present instead of with the past. This also explains why original history is relatively narrow in scope (cf. TH: 48). Its defining feature, as Sedgwick notes, is according to Hegel thus:

Such original histories thus describe what the author has witnessed and lived through herself (PH: 4/12). This leads Sedgwick to call original histories ‘autobiographical’ (TH: 49), which is rather misleading, as the works of original historians are not concerned with the lives their authors have been leading. This is a minor criticism.

Later in his introduction Hegel specifies what he means with ‘the Spirit of the author and of the actions he tells of’ being one and the same:

I quote this latter passage because it opposes the understanding Sedgwick has of original history. For instance, Sedgwick calls original histories ‘largely descriptive. At least, this is its aim’ (TH: 49; see also, e.g., 48, 52). Although this qualification is supported by a comment of Hegel’s also referred to above, Hegel does not want to suggest, as Sedgwick erroneously believes, that the original historian ‘simply reports what she sees’ (TH: 58) and that her work is ‘an exercise in purely passive observation’ (TH: 66). As the passage just quoted indicates, the work of Thucydides is one in which ‘Greek Spirit has apprehended itself in representation and thought’, which obviously entails more than being an ‘exercise in purely passive observation’.

It is important to note that Hegel has real works of history in mind when he distinguishes between different types of history. The work of Thucydides is an example of an original history with which Hegel was well acquainted and which he deeply admired. He calls Thucydides’s history an ‘immortal work’ and an ‘absolute win’ of the war between Athens and Sparta (PH: –/325). Would he call it that if it were a mere ‘exercise in purely passive observation’? Sedgwick misrepresents the distinction between original and reflective histories by calling the latter a ‘thoughtful consideration of history’ (TH: 56) and denying that qualification for the former.

As said, key to Hegel is that original histories express the same spirit as the actions they relate. This is different with reflective histories, as Sedgwick correctly notes. Reflective history is concerned with the past, and hence ‘a gap opens up between the historian’s own “spirit” and that of the age he describes’ (TH: 50). With the spirit of one age the spirit of another is studied. This is what makes it reflective: the original historian ‘is not concerned with offering reflection on these events, for he lives within the spirit of the times and cannot yet transcend them’ (PH: 4/12). So far so good.

Sedgwick also misrepresents Hegel’s understanding of reflective history. Sedgwick is mostly interested in the so-called critical variant of it.Footnote ⁶ In his lectures, Hegel criticizes the German historians of his day, who, in his view, at times came up with ‘a priori fabrications’. Sedgwick mentions several of these fabrications, among which the idea that ‘there was a Roman epic from which the Roman historians drew their earliest history’ (PH: 13/22; TH: 60). The latter idea was stubbornly defended by the first historian at the newly founded university in Berlin, Barthold Georg Niebuhr. Niebuhr indeed did have little evidence for his claim. So Hegel’s criticism is certainly justified. But this does not mean that critical reflective history is best qualified as coming up with a priori fabrications, dismissing distinguishing facts from fiction, as Sedgwick suggests. How could it be? Up until today the emergence of history as a discipline is associated with Hegel’s colleagues at the history department of the university of Berlin, and it is typically associated precisely with them distinguishing between fact and fabrication. Sedgwick writes such things as: reflective history is ‘insufficiently concerned with accurately representing the facts. In this respect, critical history is excessively subjective’ (TH: 54); ‘reflective history condemns itself to excessive subjectivity’ (TH: 58); ‘critical reflective history is the most excessively subjective because it altogether abandons the effort to describe the facts’ (TH: 59); ‘reflective history is excessively subjective insofar as it fails to sufficiently respect the distinction between fact and fiction’ (TH: 66); and reflective history results in ‘a priori fabrication’ (TH: 68). All these statements have little if nothing to do with the reflective historians Hegel has in mind. The distinction between fact and fabrication is at the heart of the emergent discipline of reflective history and fully endorsed by the German historians of his day. What one can conclude is that proper historical knowledge for Hegel requires evidence to support the claims it makes. This criterion is something all historians, including Niebuhr and such original historians as Thucydides, accept.

We also read that critical reflective history is ‘the study of the historian’s method’ (TH: 53) and that it ‘confines its attention to methodological matters’ (TH: 65). Nowhere in his lectures does Hegel assert that this is what critical reflective history is typically concerned with. The passage Sedgwick bases her claim on is the one she quotes:

Here too, Hegel most likely has Niebuhr in mind and his Römische Geschichte, which in part is concerned with correcting the histories written by Roman historians. Elsewhere Hegel complains that Niebuhr’s history is a mere ‘series of treatises, which by no means have the unity of history’ (PH: –/342). Hegel also criticizes some of Niebuhr’s other empirical claims, for example the one on land laws in Roman times, which was of specific interest to Niebuhr. The point here is that Hegel constantly engages with real works and has a clear sense of what in his mind the proper historian should be up to.

I also do not think that associating original history with empirical accuracy, reflective history with subject interpretive narration, and presenting philosophic history as some sort of combination of both (TH: 63) captures what is at stake in Hegel’s distinction. What is at stake is what philosophic history has to offer in comparison to the histories written by historians, and that has to do with ‘the progress [Fortschritt] in the consciousness of freedom’ (PH: 22/32).

Sedgwick also discusses the passage where Hegel notes the contradiction between the concern of the historian and that of the philosopher:

As for the proper concern of philosophy, philosophy ‘has thoughts of its own, brought forth by speculation from within itself and without reference to what is’ (PH: 10/20). §2.2 of her book is concerned with resolving this contradiction. Given what we said above, it is erroneous to claim, as Sedgwick does, that:

Thucydides could not conceive of his work as the negation or contradiction of Niebuhr’s work, and Niebuhr, who calls Thucydides the Homer among the historians, does not too. They both are reflective in the sense of acknowledging the mediating role of concepts and both aim to describe actions and events accurately. The difference is, as we have seen Sedgwick too notes, that one of them studies the events he lived through, and hence is concerned with the present, whereas the other starts when a certain period has come to an end, and hence is concerned with the past. The sort of reflection typical of reflective history has not to do with the mediating role of concepts but with the gap between manifestations of Spirit in the past and Spirit as enacted through the historian. The contradiction between the historian and the philosopher of history is between confining oneself to what is given and the ‘simple thought’ that ‘Reason [Vernunft] rules the world’ (PH: 12/20). But Hegel’s philosophic history is, on an empirical level, like the work of historians, true to what happened in the past (and he at times feels the need to criticize Niebuhr in his lectures for not being as true to the facts as a proper historian should be).

VI

Another central topic in Sedgwick’s reading of Hegel’s lectures is how his philosophic history is both necessary and contingent. The latter means that the course of history is not ‘settled in advance’. The former that Hegel believes that events ‘are linked by an idea of purposive unity, an idea that accounts for history’s necessity’ (TH: 14), and this idea, as we know, is the idea of freedom. This is what Chapter 3 is concerned with. As Hegel puts it: ‘World history is the progress [Fortschritt] in the consciousness of freedom—a progress that we must come to know in its necessity’ (PH: 22/32).

The idea that the course of history is not settled in advance means that the course of history could have been different (TH: 117, 137, 142). But what does that mean? I am not sure how Sedgwick answers this question. She does not want to suggest that, instead of moving from the East to the West, Spirit’s development could have moved from West to East. Nor does she want to suggest, I suspect, that subjective freedom could have been first realized in the Oriental world rather than in the Germanic world. The passage that comes closest to answering the question posed is when she writes:

This hardly specifies what ‘not being settled in advance’ means. Once more we are not informed about ‘actual interactions with this-worldly events’, and therefore it is unclear what shapes of freedom Sedgwick is thinking of. We do find such throughout Hegel’s lectures. Think for instance of what we said about freedom above and claims such as:

In what sense could the course of history have been different? In one sense in terms of specific decisions at particular moments in time, when governments started instating constitutions on a rational basis for instance. It is also contingent what, for example, Martin Luther and Charles V did and brought about. History is to Hegel, as Sedgwick puts is, ‘to a significant degree up to us’ (TH: 73). But at some point, human beings will take themselves to be persons, turn inwards, and discover their autonomy. And at some point, they will strive to bring their inner knowledge of what is right and wrong in agreement with the laws and customs of their community, which entails, among other things, the removal of any arbitrariness (Willkür) in the state’s decisions. Spirit cannot but come to know itself, realize that it is free, and aim to realize that freedom in the state. In that sense, the course of history is settled in advance, but this necessary course operates behind the actual contingent acts and events. This is also what Sedgwick claims: ‘it is a specific idea of freedom that gives world history its necessity’. But she fails to discuss any ‘manifestations or expressions of reason and freedom’ and the ‘specific idea of freedom’ she thinks Hegel had in mind.

There is a second point that needs emphasizing. Hegel suggests that the first traces of the Germanic tribes, when they were still roaming their dark forests, already showed their love of freedom (PH: –/425). Does this mean that the course of history moving from its birth in the East to its elder age in the West is settled in advance? Hegel nowhere suggests that modern subjective freedom could have been realized elsewhere than in the Germanic world—perhaps except for the Athenian world of Socrates. The Germanic tribes needed the encounters with the Romans and their conquests to make them part of the world-historical development of Spirit, but Spirit would find fertile ground in their lands as ‘the pure inwardness [reine Innigkeit] of the Germanic nation was the true [eigentliche] soil for the freeing of Spirit’ (PH: –/501).

In today’s world, statements such as these would be frowned upon, to say the least, though they would not in Hegel’s time. We too cannot escape our time in thought. But if our interest is in Hegel’s philosophic history as presented in his lectures, and more specifically in how freedom depends for what it is on its historical trajectory, we cannot ignore its contents.