The Gospel According to... Hegel?!
Since Bush couldn't ever find those gosh-darned weapons of mass destruction (remember them?) he's turned to a new rationale for going into Iraq. Now he's saying that it was, all along, a mission to promote "freedom" in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Let's leave aside the fact that this is grossly incongruous with all sorts of other US policies in Central and Western Asia. Let's also leave aside the fact that the words "freedom" and "democracy" are so nebulous that they can mean pretty much anything depending on who is using them (remember, the proper name of East Germany was the Democratic Republic of Germany).
What I find interesting is that Bush is casting this whole thing in quasi-religious terms. He talks about freedom being the "almighty's" gift to everyone. Now presumably Bush's opinion of the "almighty" is Christian, and yet, I don't believe you can find that sentiment anywhere in the Bible - at least as far as it refers to temporal political freedom (again, whatever that means). In fact, the idea that Bush is now expressing most closely resembles Hegel. In Hegel's view history is unfolding in a rational way to bring about increased human freedom.
Looking at that, it appears that you can draw a much more direct line from Bush's new excuse for war to Hegel than you can to anything in the Bible. But what does this mean? Well, I think it would be instructive to remember that Hegel's thinking had a huge influence one Karl Marx. Marx's mistake was to think that he had the solution for attaining Hegel's ultimate human freedom. Communism was the ultimate solution, history's dialectic would end with global communism. He was, history has shown, somewhat mistaken. Ironically, it seems that Bush and the neocons want to set the United States on a similar course. The neocons, like Marx, have been overcome by hubris. Instead of communism, they have unlimited faith in a new dialectic-ender, free-market capitalism with some kind of democratic form. They feel that they have the ultimate path to total human freedom and that the force of history is on their side. This is the kind of arrogance that makes people do dangerous and stupid things.
What I find interesting is that Bush is casting this whole thing in quasi-religious terms. He talks about freedom being the "almighty's" gift to everyone. Now presumably Bush's opinion of the "almighty" is Christian, and yet, I don't believe you can find that sentiment anywhere in the Bible - at least as far as it refers to temporal political freedom (again, whatever that means). In fact, the idea that Bush is now expressing most closely resembles Hegel. In Hegel's view history is unfolding in a rational way to bring about increased human freedom.
Looking at that, it appears that you can draw a much more direct line from Bush's new excuse for war to Hegel than you can to anything in the Bible. But what does this mean? Well, I think it would be instructive to remember that Hegel's thinking had a huge influence one Karl Marx. Marx's mistake was to think that he had the solution for attaining Hegel's ultimate human freedom. Communism was the ultimate solution, history's dialectic would end with global communism. He was, history has shown, somewhat mistaken. Ironically, it seems that Bush and the neocons want to set the United States on a similar course. The neocons, like Marx, have been overcome by hubris. Instead of communism, they have unlimited faith in a new dialectic-ender, free-market capitalism with some kind of democratic form. They feel that they have the ultimate path to total human freedom and that the force of history is on their side. This is the kind of arrogance that makes people do dangerous and stupid things.
posted by Dan at 1:27 PM
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