Death in Berlin: Hegel on mortality and the social order

ABSTRACT

It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is well-known, one of its most surprising implications is rarely explored: namely the implication that, for Hegel, a rational social order also has to reconcile us to the inevitable fate of everything natural and organic – it needs to reconcile ourselves to our own mortality. This paper explains this largely unknown dimension of Hegel’s view, as well as its implications for contemporary social philosophy. The main contemporary upshot is going to be that Hegel’s argument can be read as presenting the case for a ‘politics of mortality’: for a type of social critique that holds society to the standard of how easy it makes it for social members to face death with a reconciled attitude.

KEYWORDS:

• G.W.F. Hegel
• nineteenth-century German philosophy
• mortality
• Samuel Scheffler
• David Velleman

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Borhane Blili-Hamelin, Daniel Brinkerhoff-Young, Conor Cullen, Thomas Frisch, Gal Katz, Tuomo Tiisala, and Leonard Weiß for comments on this paper. My special thanks to Fred Neuhouser and Gal Katz for inspiring me to write on this issue in the first place, as well as to Katja Vogt for inviting me to present an earlier draft at her Munich-NYC Ethics workshop. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to the editors and reviewers for this journal for their helpful observations and objections.

Notes

1 This view is, for example, helpfully explored by Frederick Neuhouser (Neuhouser, Hegel’s Social Theory, esp. 153–154) or by Dudley Knowles (Knowles, Hegel and the Philosophy of Right, Ch. 10). Recently, Gal Katz has forcefully brought these kinds of issues into relief and into the focus of Hegel scholarship (Katz, “On What is Alive (and What is Dead) in Hegel’s Account of Marriage”).

2 In this paper, I cite Hegel’s works in the way indicated in the bibliography. All translations are my own, although I have profited from consulting the Nisbet translation of the Philosophy of Right.

3 Bernard Williams’ discussion of the tedium of immortality is pertinent here (Williams, “The Makropulos case”, 82–100).

4 For a helpful discussion of the reconciliation to death as Hegel sees it happen in religion, see – for example – Dieter Wandschneider’s discussion (Wandschneider, “Schmerz der Negativität”).

5 Indeed, this ancient line of thought has been famously revived in Montaigne’s Essais, particularly essay 19.

6 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for prompting this important clarification.

7 My explication of this term is indebted to Andreja Novakovic (Novakovic, Hegel on Second Nature, 64–68).

8 Classic discussions of this matter can be found, e.g. in Neuhouser, Hegel’s Social Theory, 169–170, in Knowles, Hegel and the Philosophy of Right, 247–252, in Bockenheimer, Hegels Familien und Geschlechtertheorie as well as in Katz, “Hegel on Shame and Sexual Recognition”.

9 Nisbet’s translation of Geschlechtsverhältnis simply with ‘sexual relationship‘ eliminates, probably for lack of a better alternative, this dual meaning with which Hegel plays here.

10 For a much more thorough discussion of the notion of shame in Hegel, see also Katz, “Hegel on Shame and Sexual Recognition”.

11 This raises the question whether Hegel then thinks there is absolutely no place for legacy formation within the family. My sense – but this is not a particularly obvious aspect of the text – is that this is not quite true. Hegel does recognize the work that goes on within the household – on his misogynistic view a work that is primarily carried out by women (PR § 171) – as a type of work, and in that way, it probably gives individuals the chance to leave ‘something behind’ in the products of their labour (in the general sense in which I describe this in section (b) below).

12 This part of Hegel’s argument makes his notorious view that women should be primarily constrained to the household particularly noxious, by his own lights. Of course, as I already stressed in fn. 14, Hegel recognized domestic labour as labour and therefore would probably want to argue that women can at last ‘immortalize themselves’ – along the lines described above – in their creation of a domestic life and world. Yet, from our contemporary perspective, this line of argument cannot be nearly sufficient or satisfying. There can indeed be no question that Hegel, by the lights of his own argument as reconstructed above, excludes women in significant ways from having the opportunity to make legacies for themselves, thereby overcoming the challenges of their own mortality.

13 For an analysis specifically of Hegel’s discussion of Adam Smith’s famous example of ‘pin manufacturing’, see Waszek, “Adam Smith and Hegel on the Pin Factory”. For a more general exploration of Hegel’s relationship to Adam Smith, see Henderson and Davis, “Adam Smith’s Influence on Hegel”.

14 Dudley Knowles already pursues this dimension of Hegel’s theory of personal property, albeit without reference to Hegel’s argument about mortality (Knowles, “Hegel on Property and Personality”, 45–62).

15 Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife, especially 18–19.

16 For a comprehensive reading of this particular phrase, see also Schülein, “Die Korporation als zweite Familie”, 101–116.

17 There seems to be yet another idea in play here, which is suggested by Hegel’s generally organicist way of talking about the political state (e.g. PR § 158+Z and passim), but which is – as far as I can see – not spelled out explicitly anywhere. This idea is that, by coming to identify with the political organism, individuals come to see the value of generational change within this organism: just like a natural organism, the spiritual organism of the state relies on a cycle of perpetual inner renewal, in which the same kind of functions (i.e. roles) are being filled out by new people: this brings divergent perspectives to the different roles and prevents the accumulation of institutional power in just one individual. And, indeed, seeing the value of such generational change might help individuals see a certain value to ageing and mortality: it facilitates and brings along generational change in a natural way.

18 Indeed, Hegel seems to hold the view that giving citizens the opportunity for such sacrifice is part of the rational significance of war. For a discussion of this highly problematic part of Hegel’s view see, e.g. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy, 230–236 or Black, “Hegel on War”.

19 This discussion is, of course, the locus of Hegel’s perhaps most famous discussion of death outside of his social philosophy. For a discussion of this see, for example, Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness or Neuhouser, “Desire, Recognition, and the Relation Between Bondsman and Lord”, 37–54.

20 The idea of sacrifice as ultimately victory over death is deeply connected to the Christian motive of Christ’s sacrifice as a way of overcoming death. For Hegel’s theology of divine sacrifice, see Williams, Death of God, 296–302.

21 In this point about the sacrificial dynamics inherent in marriage I’m indebted to Adams, Eclipse of Grace, 41.

22 Bubbio, Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition, 61–85 gives a very helpful overview over the general significance of the motif of sacrifice for Hegel. I’m indebted to an anonymous referee for pointing me to this reference.

23 Indeed, a line of argument like this is famously unfolded in Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus, which culminates in the famous claim that – if things are considered from the right perspective – ‘death is nothing to us’.

24 See Velleman, “So It Goes”, 371–382. It is worth noting that Velleman himself pulled back from some of these earlier ideas, e.g. in Velleman, “Dying”.

25 I will not take a stand on this issue here, as well as on the notoriously difficult interpretation of the Doppelsatz that is connected to it.

26 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for prompting me to reflect on the implications that a politics of mortality might have within the family.