Hegel without metaphysics?

Relativity of politics

Under the modest appearances of a collection of articles (certainly significantly increased, refounded and supplemented by substantial introductions on the occasion of this publication), the latest book by Jean-François Kervégan nourishes an ambitious project: propose a reading “ non -metaphysical »Of Hegel’s political thought, thought which seems, however, more than any other, inseparable from its metaphysical base, as evidenced by the famous slogan of Principles of the philosophy of law : “ What is rational is effective ; And what is effective is rational. The work opens elsewhere (p. 17-32) on a remarkable analysis of this so ambiguous formula and the many misunderstandings that it did not fail to arouse. Sometimes understood as a conservative justification of status quo Political (the Prussian State would be in accordance with reason, therefore unsurpassable), sometimes assimilated to the expression of a “ panlogism Deliring (all reality, even if it is the most derisory or the most tragic, would be founded because of, therefore legitimate), the Hegelian equation of the workforce and the rational would be the emblem of absolutism both ideological and speculative of Hegelian idealism. According to Jean-François Kervégan, this formula, which is to be understood in a way dynamic (what is rational must become effective, so that what is effective may become rational), on the contrary, reflects a concern to put into perspective the scope of the political moment within a philosophy which takes its succession to the “ dusk “, When a historical form of political life reaches its development and must admission the inevitable limits of the” Objective reconciliation That she offers. The historical reality, an unstable mixture of necessity and contingency, rationality and unreason, cannot constitute the place conducive to reconciliation absolute ; This is why there is a need for philosophy to articulate, after the fact, the unaccompted rationality.

There is therefore according to Hegel a Relativity of politics and, thereby, a relativity of the speeches which would be tempted to absolit its meaning ; or, to use the now classic formula of Bernard Bourgeois, “ Hegel’s philosophy is, in its result, the philosophy of the relativity of political philosophy. But if Hegel’s political thought finds its relativization in metaphysics which underlies it and goes beyond it, conversely, one might wonder if a non-metaphysical reading of this one does not imply to delete any relativization instance, therefore, inevitably,absolit In one way or another the political moment of Hegelian thought, thus reviving the bicentennial spectrum of “ official philosopher of the Prussian state ». One of the most constant concerns of contemporary neo-Hegianism will be to neutralize such a risk, in particular by taking into account what, within political space, cannot be reduced to politics (law, civil society, corporations …): “ Theory policy de Hegel has the center of gravity this novelty that is the constitution of an organization not immediately political social world (P. 308).

The metaphysical deflation of Hegel’s thought is thus accompanied by a more nuanced vision of its conception of the State, centered on what constitutes in its eyes the specificity of modernity: existence, existence, existence, existence, existence, existence, existence, existence within of the political sphere, of a civil society relatively independent of the State (2^e part), structured by legal principles whose abstraction, far from being a defect, guarantees the efficiency of standards on individual behaviors (1^D part). If from the perspective that is proposed to us here, the politician is no longer put into perspective by metaphysics, at least he now includes him in him His own relativityin the person of the free individual to represent himself not politically his relation to the community. The hierarchical articulation of the State and civil society thus leaves a place (certainly subordinate) to a relatively autonomous social space in which the individual will see his private initiative recognized and instituted, with the risks of social pathologies and economic drifts that this involves (ch. Vi).

Hegel today

How to read not metaphysically what presents itself as a metaphysics of politics ? Here, we can distinguish two main strategies. The first is to make funds at the anthropogenic moment of the wrestling for recognition (the famous “ Dialectic of the master and the servant » Phenomenology of the Spirit) in order to clear the premises “ post-metaphysics »Of a critical theory of society which is rooted in human intersubjectivity: this is the way once opened by Alexandre Kojève in his lessons asIntroduction to Hegel readingprosecuted across the Atlantic by thinkers such as Charles Taylor and Robert Williams, in Germany by Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. The second strategy is placed at a more general level: it amounts to separating more explicitly the great Hegelian theses from the logical and religious presuppositions which constituted their philosophical base. In this sense, reading Hegel in a non -metaphysical way would return neither more nor less to cut his theoretical conclusions of their speculative premises, namely, for the most part, of the dialectical monism of the Logic and the section “ Absolute spirit »Encyclopedia. Following Klaus Hartmann, this second way was growing success, particularly thanks to the development of American neo-pragmatism whose works by Terry Pinkard and Robert Brandom constitute the most recent examples.

The strength of the approach of Jean-François Kervégan is not to choose between these two approaches, but to rely in turn on their respective forces: if his masterful interpretation of Hegelian theory of law, civil society and the State (parts I to III), by resolutely echoing any untimely reference to the most questionable presuppositions of the thought of the Berlin master (to say it quickly: the subordination of the history of the world with the eternal truths of the absolute spirit), is mainly inspired by the second path, its extremely innovative reformulation of Hegelian institutionalism (4^e part), by subtlely articulating the objective side of social institutions and the intersubjective slope of the individual provisions, seems clearly to make their own the acquired of the first path.

The spirit against the letter

The impulses of these two strategies thus confluence in a single hermeneutic position that our author describes as “ Choice Young Hegelian “: Faced with temptation, characteristic of” old Hegeliens », To remain faithful to the letter of the system, even if it means making it inaudible to a contemporary ear, J.-FR. Kervégan decides on the contrary of “ Playing the spirit of the work against the letter (…) at the risk of depriving it of what makes its power and its coherence (9). More serious, this choice of an explicit selective reading of Hegel seems incompatible with the highly systematic requirement of Hegelianism (“ the real one is all ), Why the intellectual honesty will force to ask: “ The Hegelian statements (…) do they still make sense when they are abstracted from the logico-speculative context of their justification ? (11) All the merit of the work is to expose themselves with loyalty to the threats involved by this formidable question and to manage to make this deadlock an outcome.

There would be a lot to say about the magnitude and the depth of the field traveled in this demanding book: let us remember here the notable reassessment of the theory of “ abstract law », Usually disdained by lawyers and philosophers, whose author shows in detail the wealth and modernity ; also mention the final analyzes of civil society, which make it possible to considerably nuance the idea of ​​a “ strong institutionalism (Dieter Henrich) ignoring subjective freedoms. Finally, let us talk about the author’s decisive insistence on the theme of institutions, which makes it possible to considerably soften the face-to-face of the State and the individual by considering the reciprocal generation of political normativity and the ethical dispositions of individuals: “ Subjective provisions of mind (…) are certainly aroused by the functioning of institutions, but themselves feed on these and allow operation, which means if necessary: ​​contribute to their transformation (P. 373).

We will have understood, The workforce and the rationaldedicated to becoming a reference work on the political thought of Hegel, offers us an extremely engaging reading of it: once relieved of its most inconvenient ontological commitments, the Hegelian philosophy of law is endowed with an unsuspected flexibility which allows it to marry the outlines of contemporary political philosophy without too much effort. Undoubtedly we will be able to regret-it is in our eyes the only limit of the work-that the author does not approach the formidable question of whether it is legitimate to unknail the most beautiful fruits of the Hegel tree without worrying about its metaphysical roots: from this point of view, the justification proposed as a preface has only a programmatic value. We bet that it will come back to a subsequent opus to formulate positively what is guessing here in hollow, in the furrows of the commentary. Hegel’s non -metaphysical reading now has his ethical treatise: there is only one discourse of the method.