The Hero, Action, and Metaphysics in Hegel’s
Philosophy of World History
Mark Sentesy
One Year B.A. in Philosophy
For Professor Karin de Boer
1 March, 2001
A) INTRODUCTION
Hegel wrote while revolutions and tumult were changing the face of the western world. In the French revolution, the
old society fell, or was supposed to fall. A feeling of sheer human creativity threatened to engulf every aspect of European
life: spontaneously organized councils appeared in which every man could appear in public before his fellows, where his
acts were significant. They changed the calendar. Napoleon’s exploits promised the same total liberation to the rest of
Europe. Hegel saw in him the new national spirit, helping to bring the history of nations to what he thought was its
culmination in the total freedom of every man. To him, everything Napoleon did was justified, because he was fulfilling
the demands of Spirit, which lay unconscious in the bottom of every soul in Europe, and wanted to come to consciousness.
He did not think the heroes of the revolution perverted the spontaneous self-organization of the people, and bent the course
of events to their own inferior ends 1, let alone acted criminally. Why not? Beheading King Louis XVI, and thousands of
others was to him a positive act of liberation, necessary to clear the way for new spirit. This essay will first explore Hegel’s
account of the hero to discover the criteria with which to distinguish between criminals and heroes. The elements that will
allow the distinction are: how they relate subjectively to their actions, the nature of the objective medium in which they act,
and their relationship with it, and the identification of their passions with the universal. We must explore Hegel’s
description of passion to see the relationship of a man with his actions. Charles Taylor’s Hegel and the Philosophy of
Action will give insight into how a person’s identity is revealed through his actions, and from this we can see how a hero
relates to his actions. But he acts in the medium of a society, and so in and through that medium, his actions have meaning
beyond the actor’s intentions and awareness. A. S. Walton’s Hegel: Individual Agency and Social Context will help us
explore how a person’s identity is constituted by his society, and society by people, and thus how actions can carry their
meaning with them. This is essential to understanding heroic action as the objective unity of the hero with his insight into
the universal, how it founds a new medium of society, and remains a model for it throughout its life. Finally, we will
examine the absolute unity of man with universal in passion, the essence of the hero. This has implications for the every
level of meaning that inhabits his actions. At the end of this metaphysical account of the hero, we will have criteria for
distinguishing him from the criminal. No matter how he behaves, the ultimate criteria we need to make this distinction is
that the hero does the will of the Spirit in History. The distinction between hero and criminal is one of absolute
justification, not of ethics, but our interest in distinguishing between the two is ethical. However, if we examine his
account of Spirit in History, some ethical problems spring to light, which should make us suspicious of the confidence with
which Hegel identifies the will of the world spirit in the hero. In this light, we will consider the alternatives to Hegel’s
assumptions about the metaphysics of History. Under these conditions, his assertions about history are such that that the
criteria with which he identifies the heroes of world history is reduced to mere assertion as well.
B) SPIRIT, AND THE DIREMPTION OF SPIRIT IN HISTORY
Since for Hegel the hero is defined by the many forms of interaction he has with his spiritual ground, before we can
understand Hegel’s description of world historical individuals, we need to make a few remarks about Spirit. It is the
substance, fulfilment, and reality not only of the hero, but of all external activity (Hegel, 78), so it is immanent in the
phenomenal world (Hegel, 74). It is concrete because it makes its own content and medium for that content by formulating
itself. It has a necessary, internal development, but its implicit determinations develop in and through the external world,
which is the medium in which it grows. It is like the seed of a maple tree, which has every stage of the emergence, growth,
and maturity of the tree implicit in it, but which seeks and requires nourishment from the external elements of soil, sun, and
rain in order to fully realise itself as a tree.
In History, from the perspective of the Idea of Spirit, the Idea dirempts into two moments: a divisive moment, and a
unifying moment. In the first moment, the inward universal and external atom are two opposing poles, the basis for the
struggle toward absolute unity in the second moment. Hegel describes the inward Universal as Reason insofar as it is
empty and abstract (Hegel, 69)2 in itself. It is made up of laws and principles and so it is present first in thought.
The opposite principle is Will, the external activity of the individual thinking atom and the external means by which
the inward universal is actualized. It is the empty, subjective, formal activity of internal reflection (Hegel, 73) of
humankind (Hegel, 69) This abstract quality of free volition (Hegel, 78), which is the abstract basis of freedom (Hegel, 71),
is the bridge between the internal and the external. The division already implies a unification of the inner universal and the
outer individual. As a formal cause, the subjective atom is passionate (Hegel, 71). What is actualized through passion is
decided by absolutely free choice (Hegel, 92). Therefore individuals as free arbitrators are responsible for their actions and
the consequences of these actions. This content can be of the universal, but it can also be particular, contingent, and
subjective content, though the latter makes them unfree.
Remarks
The nature of this moment is infinite activity, infinite tension. The inward universal is for the outward atom and vice
versa (Hegel, 79). Just as, according to Heraclitus, a bow is only useful to fire arrows insofar as its ends oppose one
another, so the tension between these opposites is the basis for the development of history. For Spirit, the medium of its
self-formulation and realisation is individual will and freedom. For the individual, the medium in which he can be fulfilled
is his substance, the inner Idea (Hegel, 71).
The second moment of the Idea of Spirit in History is the impulse toward a concrete unity of universal and individual,
which can be seen from either the objective or subjective pole. From the point of view of the universal, the urge to manifest
the implicit determinations of the Idea must be satisfied in and through the external world. The totality of the Spirit’s
conceptual determinations unfold in and through individuals in the phenomenal world. From this perspective, individuals
are mere tools for its determination in externality.
Though from the point of view of the universal a person’s consciousness is in fact Spirit reflecting upon itself, from
this perspective it appears that by a moment of abstract mediation, an individual determines the Idea in the world. From
this second point of view, the impulse toward unity is individual interest, or passion. It is the formal cause of all external
manifestations of internal content. From the point of view of the universal, the concept of the ruse of reason explains how
an individual’s particular content is used by Spirit to produce itself in the world, and how the pain of formulation is felt by
the subjective individual, who is abandoned along with his particular interests (Hegel, 89). Spirit is like an army general in
the First World War, sending troops over the top to suffer and gain ground, and suffering nothing himself. Yet the troops
are valuable in themselves: the general gives them the infinite right to win for themselves the ground for which they fight
(which would be theirs only because it would then belong to the army), since by winning this ground the army advances.
That is, individual desires and interests have an infinite right to be satisfied, because they participate in the universal. They
do this in two ways: 1) Means conform to their ends and share in them. A man is a formal end in himself because his
passion is the tool by which reason unfolds its determinations. Passion is thus an aspect of the formal reality of the
Absolute, of reason. 2) In ethics and religion, a man’s ends can be the universal itself, so he can be an end in himself by
sharing in this rational content (Hegel, 90, 93).
c.f. Hannah Arendt “The Revolutionary Tradition and its Lost Treasure.”
All references to Hegel are to the Introduction: Reason in History in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World
History.
1
2
2
Remarks
Rather than having reason as their content subjectively, substantial actions have the content of the universal by
embodying its determinations in objectivity (Hegel, 57). But subjective thought can reveal the universal in the particular,
and actions can be inhabited, as it were, by the universal, though only subjectivity can see their unity with it.
The engine of history is the struggle between freedom, the essence of spirit, and actual determination by desire. In
other words, from the perspective of the Idea, the difference between what it is (universal, empty) and what it longs to be
(unfolded in its determinations) is sublated in the state, which is the objective unity of the universal and the individual.
From the perspective of the individual, the difference between what it is (determined) and what it longs to be (universal) is
sublated in passion, which is the absolute unity of individual and universal (Hegel, 86), whereas, the objective unity of
individual and universal is the state (Hegel, 104): the ethical whole, and the condition of ethical freedom (Hegel, 71).
C) A METAPHYSICAL ACCOUNT OF THE HERO
Heroic actions determine the universal in the world, and so are somehow inhabited by it, but only because through
acting, the hero, as it were, infused them with the universal. The hero is related to his acts, and not merely as a cause: by
formulating himself on the objective canvas the hero comes to understand himself, and through this activity the universal
Spirit also comes to understand itself. Taylor’s account of the actor as one who formulates himself in a medium allows us
to see how the hero is united with his action.
The Subjective Hero
Considered subjectively, knowledge and will are both thought. Insofar as I think, then, what I know and will is the
universal, objective concept (Hegel, 104), which is present first in my thought and intentions (Hegel, 69). But though it is
not reasoning when it does so, my thoughts and my will can occupy themselves with subjective content as well.
The formal, subjective cause of action is twofold: 1) the universal or subjective content of the action is chosen by a
person’s free, abstract deliberation, and 2) the formal energy by which the content is manifest in the phenomenal world is
passion. When the action has substantial content, ultimately these are not different, except insofar as they emphasize two
aspects of the formal cause: the utter freedom of the person’s choice of content, and the free act by which he incarnates the
content. A person can be passionate about an end without deliberating every time whether to choose it. But every time she
acts on it, she affirms that original choice in the face of her awareness that there are other possible choices. She is one with
the substantial cause insofar as she is passionate for it. Here we already see the unity of form and content in substantial
acts: the unification of universal with individual is found in the subjective cause of action insofar as the subject is elevated
toward the universal into the objective, public realm.
In the content of these passions, particular and universal interweave: 1) a woman desires only to gratify her particular
ends, which are, 2) interwoven with universal ends such as goodness, justice, and duty (Hegel, 79). Normally, one’s
particular ends more or less differ from universal ends, but when a person’s particular ends coincide with the universal
ends of spirit or national spirit, his ends are substantial and valuable. People are interested in the cause itself, but only
insofar as it is their own cause (Hegel, 75-76). Thus, passions are not devoted to a general value, but a particular goal. But
the satisfaction of these aims can satisfy the aims of reason, which transcend the individual’s particular actions. As an
analogy, Hegel gives the example of a burning house: the action of setting fire to a beam is only the beginning of a huge
conflagration. What the individual does not intend or accomplish himself takes place of its own accord (Hegel, 75), and
transcends the action itself.
A better example might be a woman’s desire to have an abortion. In order to satisfy her particular aim, and must fight
current legislation to be able to do so. But by satisfying her aim, she also makes it possible for others to do the same. By
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her passion, she and her actions enter into the fabric of society, into the universal substance. But her subjective content, and
her passions and suffering, is expendable: she may change the legislation, or inspire others to do so, but only after she has
already had the baby. Meanwhile, she desires only her particular satisfaction. The end that will satisfy her lies in a cause
which has universal meaning. Her actions can even intend to accomplish a universal goal, such as the emancipation of
women, but they are particular in that she seeks her personal satisfaction by them, which means by her particular
formulation of the problem, freeing particular women, for example. Her impulse is to accomplish an end which is itself the
means of her satisfaction (Hegel, 49). Passion is that by which individuals strive for substantial goods and freedoms, such
as goodness, justice, and duty, which are universal, but accomplished only in the particular. Thus, passions of any
substantial reality are directed to actions with universal significance, so Hegel defines passion as “determinate aspects of
character and volition in so far as they do not have a purely private content but are the effective motive force behind
actions whose significance is universal” (Hegel, 72-3).
Hegel says that nothing significant is ever accomplished without personal interest (Hegel, 70). In and through
passion, then, the individual and the universal interpenetrate in action. But how do the hero’s actions reflect on the hero
herself? As Charles Taylor shows in Hegel and the Philosophy of Action, Hegel maintains that actions are animated by the
purposes that direct them, so purposeless or meaningless movement is not action as such. According to Taylor, “we may
never be without some sense of what we are doing, but coming to have knowledge is coming to formulate that correctly,
and we may do this in a partial or distorted fashion” (Taylor, 5). The knowledge of the purpose in our actions, and hence of
ourselves is never immediate, but always “mediated by our efforts at formulation” (Taylor, 5). Self-understanding is
“something that is brought off in a medium, through symbols or concepts, and formulating things in this medium [is] one
of our fundamental activities” (Taylor, 9). The content of my understanding of myself is what I formulate in this medium
(Taylor, 9). In this way a painter comes to understand himself through action by representing or formulating things (and
thus himself) on the canvas. Our formulations can begin become increasingly accurate as a result. Taylor calls this an
expressive understanding of meaning (Taylor, 11-13). A thing is how it is formulated; a person is his deeds. By expressing
his ideas in works of art, for example, an artist comes to recognize himself in them, but what he recognizes is himself as
artist, as the creator of those things.
Remarks
Since all action is in a medium, it is evident that something else is achieved by action beyond what the individual
intends, or is conscious of. This larger meaning of his actions, and hence of himself, is present to the actor’s awareness
only in the particular form of the cause for which he acts: an assassin can murder Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo for the
Black Hand’s nationalist purposes, ignorant of its significance to the rest of Europe, and so also how it would lead to the
Great War. Similarly, Martin Luther can nail 95 theses to a church door with no inkling that this would lead him to found a
new church. These examples differ, but we must understand more about the relation of the actor with his medium, and
between the actor and the universal before we can fully distinguish which man is the hero, and which the criminal.
The hero understands himself as an actor, that is, he understands his identity is disclosed through his actions. His
actions consistently promote a particular end, so they are defined by it. Since his self-understanding is disclosed in relation
to an end, his identity is determined by it. Thus he takes responsibility for the cause by incorporating it in his personality.
Unlike a criminal or a vagabond, who may be inconsistent in his ends, yet accidentally bring about great change, the hero
himself stands for the end, and the end is united with him. Yet how does this have meaning outside of the subjective view
of the hero? Since his actions carry their purposes with them, implicit in Hegel’s position is that, as long as they understand
it in a conceptual medium, others can have equal or better knowledge than the hero himself of the purpose of an action. We
will examine in more detail how actions can, as it were, carry their meaning, and how they have more than one meaning.
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The Hero in the Objective World
The problem before us now is how the actions of the hero can have real significance outside of his own
understanding. Heroes act on the world stage, and only there do their actions have real significance. Yet how can this
significance be objective, if subjective understanding is where the purpose of the action is found? The answer is implicit in
Taylor’s interpretation of Hegel: the medium itself interprets its content. A. S. Walton’s discussion of the individual’s
relationship with his society makes this explicit. Action occurs in the medium of the state, and its conceptual meaning there
derives from the national spirit, which is immanent in the state. From this point of view, the unity of inner concept and
external determination is the conceptual meaning that animates actions and gives them their objective meaning.
According to Walton in Hegel: Individual Agency and Social Context, Hegel’s position that an individual relates to
his society as to a conceptual medium can be likened to how a person relates to his language. An heuristic key with which
to understand his point is that in order to understand action in the qualitative sense as inhabited by a purpose or meaning,
we must see society as providing a mise-en-sens and mise-en-scene for action.3 First, society allows the actor to formulate
his action in terms of a coherent, intelligible purpose, which from his perspective will inhabit the action; second, it
provides a setting in which that purpose appears in the action and can be identified by others as embodying the substantial
meaning that inhabits it. In the hero, this substantial meaning is the same as his subjective purpose. The content of an
action is thus inextricable from the content of the national spirit, and so with the medium of the state.
The National Spirit is the Universal Spirit in an individual yet universal form (Hegel, 53). It is the inherent, rational,
substantial essence of individual people. Since it is spiritual, it is a conceptual, internal, active concrete whole, which is
translated into reality by individual people (Hegel, 56). The state is the concrete ethical whole (Hegel, 93), the objective
unity of the universal Spirit and the individual will (Hegel, 104). It is the universal spiritual life to which we react with
trust and habit (Hegel, 197). From the perspective of the individual, then, the national spirit is the medium of society into
which we are enculturated. The difference between the National Spirit and the state is that the state lags behind as an
expression of the national spirit, just as, compared to her awareness of how it would feel to make the perfect dive, an
athlete’s body lags behind in the perfection of its action. When the diver is at her best, however, mind and body coincide,
and move as one. Hegel calls the national spirit “a kind of Hermes… the guide and leader of all individuals within the
nation” (Hegel, 102). The national spirit, the objective content of individuals thoughts, is the only motive force behind the
deeds of the nation (Hegel, 56), which means its content inspires passion in the people. The state and the individual are
already a unity if the individual acts in such a way as to translate the objective content of spirit into reality. He can, of
course, choose to translate his particular interests into reality, in which case he is not united with the state.
Therefore the National Spirit should be seen as the conceptual medium in which actions are given meaning.
According to Walton, Hegel understands the relationship between person and society as the relation between an individual
and a medium which he freely draws upon to determine and pursue his own ends. There are two moments to this analysis:
1) a man’s interests are freely chosen by him, but are informed by the interests of the society in which he lives, and 2) a
man can use societal tools to pursue his interests: that is, he seeks satisfaction for his interests in the medium of society,
using its concepts and sensibilities.
Walton proposes that society is a form of conceptual intersubjectivity: “social actions are both explicable in terms of,
and significant in respect of, the meanings and concepts expressed in them” (Walton, 83). That is, society understands
action in Taylor’s qualitative sense. The individual will determines itself, but self-determination is constituted by both
individual and society, since “it is only in virtue of being a participant in a complex of shared social concepts that the
capacity for self-determination is aquired” (Walton, 83). Society is “an intersubjective complex of concepts and meanings
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that are drawn upon, implicated in, and invoked in justification and rationalization for action [by the individual]” (Walton,
84). On the other hand, the national spirit exists only in and through “the consciousness and agency of its participant[s]”
(Walton, 84). The relationship of this context with the individual is analogous to one’s relationship with a language. Both a
language and a language of concepts can be designed to exclude radical criticism (as Orwell’s Newspeak limits thought by
removing words like freedom), but can also allow for it (as in the tradition of the Jewish Prophets, or modern democracy).
Insofar as it is not conceptual, the medium of society is the concrete ethical whole: the state. Walton observes that
individuals, drawing on the medium of the state, constitute and alter it by their action (Hegel, 89). This type of change is
like flux in the meaning of words. But for Hegel, the changes in content all derive from the implicit determinations of the
national spirit, though the form of the state can be influenced by subjective, contingent elements.
It is quite possible that a person only understands his own interests or actions through the eyes of his society, as it
were. If a man has nightmares, or hits his girlfriend, he may understand what happened only by referring to events in his
childhood which he may not remember, especially in relation to his current situation. In this case, his self-understanding is
mediated by society: it would derive from society’s representation of psychoanalysis as useful for exactly this purpose.
But in order to use this rational context, one must have some theoretical knowledge of it. A good example is Grey
Owl, a British man who moved to Canada, changed his name, and assumed the life of a Native Indian. In order to protect
the wilderness in which he lived, he wrote several books, which were very effective in changing the British idea of Natives
and the wilderness. The reason is that he used a European medium and concepts: he wrote books, instead of dancing or
telling myths as an Indian might, and he played on romantic sensibilities, while an Indian’s concepts would be
unintelligible to them. However, while the great men of a nation must have substantial theoretical knowledge of the
nation’s principles, but the new national spirit with which the hero occupies himself is still implicit, and very little
theoretical knowledge of the new medium is necessary in order to found it through action by acting in it.
Insofar as actions exhibit the particular mode of self-determination of the Absolute Concept that is the national spirit,
they are intelligible in and constitute the particular conceptual medium of the state. Hence actions performed outside of
society are meaningless (Hegel, 52), because the meaning that inhabits them and makes them actions, derives from and
adheres to them in the context of a particular society. Actions can be understood only in context.
Actions have specific meanings that appear to be universal in virtue of the universal nature of the national spirit. For
Asian Indians, divorce means the annihilation of family, and is avoided at all costs, whereas in the United States it can
often mean an improvement in relations between family members because of their increased freedom. The North American
action with a meaning equivalent to that of divorce in India might be something like murder. So on the one hand, the same
actions have different meanings according to the conceptual medium in which they are seen to act, and on the other, though
this is not always possible, in order to have a similar meaning in a different context, different actions are required.
Remarks
So according to Hegel, only positive freedom has real value: freedom is not just to do what you like, but is rather the
space to freely affirm the substantial, universal aims of the community, to identify personal freedoms, aims, and interests
with the objective ones of the state. Freedom is ethical life in the state. Insofar as it is merely private it is meaningless.
Substantial freedom is the particular formulation of the content of the national spirit in the medium of the state. But in
order to understand the nature of this freedom, we must examine the nature of the content upon which he acts.
According to the principle of free, abstract deliberation, any person can choose to ignore his relation to his immediate
culture or nation. Assuming he also determines himself outside the medium of the state, his freedom is utterly
insubstantial, avoiding as he is his own real, objective content. However, if he manages to convince others that the cause he
3
I am using the terms of Claude Lefort in a different frame of reference. Lefort uses them to express how the
symbolic order of a society legitimates (mise-en-sens) and produces (mise-en-scene) its own internal divisions.
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is formulating in the new medium (for the cause and the medium, the content and form, are inseparable), as for example in
a religious cult, he may establish a community on that basis. In this case, what distinguishes a cult leader from a hero,
except the scale of his community’s success? Though mere mortals may freely affirm the values of their community and
act meaningfully in the context of society, the subtle modifications they may make, differs considerably from the founding
a new societal medium. How is it possible for a hero to found a new medium, even if it is based on the old?
Sociologists and philosophers today may deny that a person can choose to elude or throw off his enculturation, which
gave him the conceptual tools with which to formulate his choices in the first place. But Hegel does not assert that this is
possible, strictly speaking. Rather, his analysis emphasizes that the individual constitutes and because of an absolute
freedom can alter the conceptual medium (which exists in and by the activity of his formulating things) and vis versa: the
tension between the universal and the individual thinker constitutes both.
The Hero in the Absolute, the Absolute in the Hero
We now turn to the content of the hero’s actions, what it means for the national spirit, on the one hand, and on the
other, for the state. A hero’s intended purpose coincides with the substantial meaning of his actions, which means that his
particular goal, which inhabits those actions, is the same as the goal of reason. This goal is freedom, or self-consciousness.
According to Hegel, world historical individuals appear at moments of transition between the old national spirit and
the new spirit that replaces it. In this situation, the inward development of the world spirit has outgrown the external world.
Implicit in the old national spirit is a new universal, a new national spirit that sublates the inner oppositions and conflicts of
the old. The time is ripe for the new spirit, but it must be translated into externality through people’s individual agency.
The transition from one national Spirit to the next is the work of the hero, who is the bridge to the new, and
overthrows the old. From his perspective, there are two moments of the relation with the new spirit. The hero chooses its
principles as the ground of a new way of understanding himself and the state, and so of accomplishing his personal goals,
and the principles come to ground a new societal medium through his energy.
The first moment is the hero’s choice of a new conceptual medium in which actions are understood. His actions are
based on theoretical insight into one-sidedness of the old national spirit: the hero recognizes the particularity of the
previous national spirit. From the perspective of the new spirit, its universality and hence legitimacy have vanished and
therefore it is dead. The hero seizes on the new national spirit, which is waiting to actualize itself (Hegel, 82), and proceeds
to realise it in the world.
What is the nature of his insight? Is it possible for someone to be passionate about abstract, empty concepts? If
conceptual art is any indication, then it is possible: artists like Kandinsky are dedicated to creating some thing based on
theoretical insight into aesthetics, that is, they are passionate about translating the universal into reality. But the aesthetic
theory itself does not appear in reality. What does appear is rather the artist’s unique unity with it. Just as an artist can
formulate a new concept of aesthetics that he does not yet understand, so a hero can, by seizing on what is available in the
new national spirit, try to realise its determinations without understanding much about it: the realisations are it.
The passion of the hero and conceptual artist, the determinate aspect of his will, is the energy of the end itself (Hegel,
86). This is the essence of the hero, and of the absolute unity of individual with universal: the distinction between the
energy of his passion and its rational content blurs. Hegel points out that this unity seems to have an animal character to it:
there is no separation between one’s passion and the ends of spirit. In the hero, “that which is necessary in and for itself
assumes the form of passion” (Hegel, 86). An individual’s subjective will, his passion, is a formal aspect of the Absolute.
The Absolute understands itself with a subjective motion: by formulating itself in a medium and by understanding what it
formulates as itself. This is how passion is the absolute unity of the individual character and the universal. Spirit is
something that formulates itself in the medium of externality. In the hero the motion of his self-formulation is exactly the
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motion of Spirit. His content coincides with the form it takes. The hero wants his actions to be understood in a new way: he
may want new kinds of actions (e.g. equal access to political freedom) or simply new ways of thinking (that all people are
free and equal, and infinitely valuable before god). In the end which the hero desires, they are both the same. In his actions,
form and content are also united, because they are united in him. The content is the format in which it appears, just as
today the style of the best films is one with the content of the film. This is the only way to found a new medium. He founds
a new societal context: his actions require new content, a new medium of society in order to be understood, and the new
content of his actions leads to new forms of action and self-formulation. Moreover, the establishment of the new content is
the raw motion of Spirit.
The new universal appears to come from within the hero, because he is one with it. The justification of his actions
finds its source in the new spirit (Hegel, 83). But at the same time, he is compelled to do things he had not intended: Luther
founds a new church instead of reforming the Catholic Church as he wanted. What he does not do himself takes place of its
own accord: he sets a beam on fire and the rest of the house begins to burn, and so do the neighbouring houses. The hero is
carried by the events to new, greater achievements. The hero’s passion is precisely his theoretical insight into the fledgling
spirit. Since this spirit is still barely developed, full insight into it is so far impossible. He can have insight into the previous
spirit, but this is unnecessary. The hero only needs to know what to do to improve his current situation, that is, to satisfy
his goals, he does not need to know the ends of the world spirit, but merely choose it.
The hero’s end is the establishment of a new, positive medium of society and so a new understanding of reality.
According to Hegel, if the man is actually a hero, this society will eventually increase freedom in the world, for this is the
goal of spirit in history. Tyranny is justified as a means to establish the new society, but only as a moment of its
actualization (Hyppolite, 66). This is a precarious ethical stance, but is the only possible conclusion if for ethics the
ultimate condition of possibility is the state.
Remarks
The new national spirit then begins to show a life apart from the hero does so according to its principles, which are
the principles that inhabit his actions. In this way, the founder of a nation is the true source of its spirit, for he was literally
its embodiment. For example, according to Hegel, Abraham’s rejection of his natural world is paradigmatic for Israel, and
defines them as a nation. This differs from a mere criminal or assassin, whose actions may have a profound effect on the
world, but whose action is not paradigmatic for the results. If the hero’s deeds remain significant, they are so because they
are representations in which the society and its participants mediate their self-understanding. A good example is Rome,
which through religion, art, and literature (e.g. Virgil), understood events and leaders by linking them symbolically with
the foundation of Rome by Aeneas. Christianity also understands itself through Christ. Thus heroes are a kind of symbol,
seed, or work of art upon which the nation will continually ponder, because their actions are pure manifestations of the
national spirit. Needless to say, their actions are inhabited by the emerging society’s values and concepts.
This raises a number of very difficult questions, which cannot be answered here. To what extent do the actions of a
hero represent a concept (which even the hero may not understand until he mediates it through society)? Or do we rather
understand actions by mediating them through a set of concepts? What if these actions are symbols which provoke the
intellect to thought (le symbole donne a pensée) yet remain beyond concepts? Hegel’s argument is that these actions and
symbols are formulations of reason, and are therefore only explainable by reason. Could a national spirit spring out of, and
be continually nourished by, a symbol behind which there was no concept? In this case, the power of the symbol of Christ
dying on the cross forces its interpretation in concepts, so it takes on widely divergent meanings.
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D) CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING HEROES
This criteria is retrospective: how can the preceding discussion of Hegel’s hero allow us to identify one in history, in
the present, and in the future? So far, the main way to recognize the hero is to understand the movement of the world spirit,
and then identify him in the bosom of that movement. The criteria so far are ample, but for the purpose of discernment,
they seem loose, for the hero may not know much about what he is doing, let alone how to disclose its metaphysical
ground. Anyone who interprets the hero’s actions using the wrong conceptual medium (i.e. not that of the hero, or of the
absolute) will misunderstand them, and could easily go wrong in the decision. Even if one’s retrospective relation to the
hero privileges him with some awareness of the movement of the world spirit, it is not knowledge. The criteria presuppose
that the absolute discloses itself to the philosopher in its entirety, who thus has knowledge that transcends his society’s
particular phrasing of the Idea. Somehow he is thus the only person who can truly identify the hero, except by instinct. The
presupposition is that the motion of the absolute is one of complete disclosure: that nothing is hidden at the same time. 4
That said, world historical individuals appear at moments of transition between one national spirit and the next. This
distinguishes them from great figures of society, who also translate the spirit into externality, but, by drawing on
theoretical insight into a particular spirit, merely draw out its implicit determinations. The latter are bound by ethics, and
their insight into the absolute is circumscribed by their society. In contrast, the hero chooses an emerging spirit as the
ground of a new way of understanding himself through his actions, which allows him to accomplish his personal goals in
new ways. This ground is a new phrasing of reality and it founds a new state. It is the energy of this new medium that
drives the hero to greatness, and gathers other people to support his cause. This is not mere modification or further
determination of the national spirit, but a complete replacement of spirit in his concepts. It is possible to grasp a new spirit
only because its principles are implicit in the contradictions of the previous spirit.
So, to find heroes in history we first have to identify moments of transition between national spirits. This may not be
as easy as it sounds, for wars and struggle do not always mean the death of the old spirit, and the beginning of a new. The
hero recognizes the particularity of the national spirit: he is disenchanted with it, and seeks some way of resolving the
problems in it. Thus he chooses the implicit, new national spirit, which offers him the solution not only of his particular
goals, but of the conflicts revealed in the the state. The energy of the new spirit becomes his passion, and his ends are
united with its ends for a while. This energy attracts others to his cause, and he necessarily establishes the national spirit in
the world in a barely developed form. In the hero, the formal energy of his passions and the content of his actions are the
same. Therefore his subjective ends are the same as the objective aims of spirit, though he seeks his own satisfaction in
their accomplishment. Thus his actions are perfect, absolutely justified by spirit and amoral, and they become the unity of
image and concept upon which the society models itself. His self-understanding is is bound up in the ends of spirit as well,
so he follows its ends to completion as far as possible, and taking complete responsibility for them, for they are his own.
E) AN ETHICAL CRITIQUE OF SPIRIT IN HISTORY
From the perspective of the hero, we can discern several ethical problems in Hegel. According to him, the hero is
beyond ethics, and the justification for his action comes from the world spirit (Hegel, 84-85). Spirit is right also, for it is
reality itself, but this does not necessarily mean Spirit or Hero are morally right. This is not the place to speculate on the
possible ground of an ethical critique of God, or of Spirit. Nevertheless, Job questions the morality of God’s actions
without a theoretical ground, and so we should be justified in questioning the role of Spirit in History.
Why is the hero beyond ethics? During the period of transition in which the hero appears, the Idea as a fledgling
national spirit is natural but not yet rational, and its ultimate goal, its prime mover, is not known. Since the established
4
Nietzsche will attack exactly this prejudice in his essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.”
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nation is the context of ethics (Hegel, 84), for the hero, ethics do not exist as such. Tyranny, oppression, and murder can be
justified in the name of the new spirit, and until the new spirit is mature (when is that?) the actions of its patriots are
beyond morality. If the insurgents are successful in taking over a country, murdering the king is not regicide in the negative
moral sense, because the action is necessary to realise the content of the new national spirit.
After the hero has established something of the new society, he is often destroyed: his work is finished. The tyranny
by which Robespierre establishes the society is judged unethical by the standards of that society. Even Napoleon’s actions
can be questioned not in light of his personal ethical character, but in light of his public actions, and the campaign itself. If
his actions are unethical, their content is as well, for these are united in the hero. In this case, the national spirit is unethical.
Though Hegel preaches vehemently against it, a society can question its own content on ethical grounds. He says that
ethics blossoms from a certain maturity of the relationship between state and individual. But ethical principles are the
principles of reason, so must come from the national spirit, or from the absolute itself, of which the hero is the avatar. So it
seems that the hero and the state can be evaluated ethically in comparison with these principles.
The new national spirit must increase freedom by sublating the internal contradictions of the old spirit. It is not by
success (though the new spirit is necessarily successful), but by freedom that we can identify the new spirit. Then it seems
that totalitarianism would slip into the history of Spirit, along with its mass slaughter, oppression, and coercion: its
principle is that it throws off all class distinction that would reduce the freedom of its members.
If we consider states empirically, it is quite apparent that their character is far from that of a discrete, independent
object, derived entirely from a single principle. Rather, they continually interpenetrate with their surrounding and
inhabiting cultures: Spanish culture is profoundly influenced by Roman, Moorish and gypsy cultures. In contrast, Hegel
declares that states are independent (Hegel, 77). From an empirical perspective, Hegel’s metaphysical derivation of the
content of a state directly from its principle seems wrong outright. The national spirit is plastic. Hegel would reply that true
character of the state is unchanging. But it seems that content changes significantly. If national spirits intermingle, how
can we speak of heroes and a transition between spirits? Finally, if the state is not absolutely independent, and if Hegel
does not in fact argue this, then the universality and authority of an ethics based on it is undermined from the start.
If we assume that Hegel’s dialectic of history is in fact the movement of history, would a higher national spirit
contain within it the seeds of a more brutal opposition? Hegel says that “no interest is possible without some kind of
opposition” (Hegel, 59), and freedom itself only exists in the positive overcoming of un-freedom. Either opposition to
freedom is eliminated and everyone loses interest in freedom itself, destroying it and pulling history to a halt, or, in order to
maintain enough interest to develop and have freedom, Spirit formulates the implicit contradictions of society in a very
serious, dangerous way, such as anarchy, war, etc.5 In this case, it makes sense that oppression could serve the
development of freedom, for this opposition would be sublated in a better society. In order to advance, spirit may produce
more and more extreme contradictions. Perhaps the national spirit becomes its opposite. As Lyotard has argued, democracy
is now totalitarian, but far worse since its coercion is no longer external: everyone complies in promoting the totalitarian
principle of development. Hegel may be able to swallow totalitarianism as a new national spirit, but it is thorny with mass
slaughter, oppression, and coercion. He may say also that our ethical judgement of its practices and our understanding of
the freedom in it derives from our society, and is therefore not applicable as absolute criteria.
For Hegel, contingency always has a negative role in history. He condemns the particular, contingent individual as
something to be escaped, or overcome in favour of an objective unity with the universal. Thus individual happiness (which
exists only in private life) and suffering are irrelevant to world history (Hegel, 79). If a man organized dogfights between
his own dogs, encouraging them to kill one another for his pleasure, fame, and profit, we would call it morally repugnant:
5
For totalitarianism to be the developed conflict, it would have to spring from the same national spirit. For this to be
possible, this national spirit must embrace much of the world: globalization, so to speak.
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he certainly doesn’t seem to value the dogs in and for themselves. This is the ruse of reason, though Hegel portrays its ends
as more glorious. The dogs are merely particular means to the man’s end, even if despite their wounds they take some
pleasure in pleasing him. What is essential is what is gained through their suffering. In their particularity, mere people are
sacrificed and abandoned. The sacrifice has no meaning to a woman as particular, for she has only two divine principles:
infinite right (a negative right) and dissolution in the universal, which in that moment is for her only while she abandons
her particularity for it. People share in the ends of Spirit, but, even for heroes, the special way in which those ends belong
to them are irrelevant, and discarded with the rest. Human beings are left with nothing but a universal which is not, in the
end, theirs, but rather the hand of the divine that works through them. Spirit does not love the particular as particular.
If on some absolute ethical grounds we have reason to dislike Spirit, this does not mean that it can or should be
discarded: Job may be morally superior to God, but he is nonetheless God’s subject. On the other hand, like Job, we should
not refrain from being angry at God. Spirit, however, is a concept of Hegel, and we should examine his assertions to see if
it could be otherwise.
F) A METAPHYSICAL CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORY OF SPIRIT
We already have some reason to doubt Hegel’s metaphysics of history. There are a number of assumptions that Hegel
makes about History, which we can easily question when we see the alternatives to them. Along with these doubts, the
criteria for identifying the hero loses its footing.
A different way of understanding the sublation of a society’s contradictions involves a new understanding of their
source. Rather than a single principle from which we can derive the complete character of a society and all of its problems,
perhaps several, or many principles co-exist in a society, and the combination and recombination of their determinations
constitutes their conflicts, and their solutions. This produces a society with a dynamic character that derives from multiple
origins. A person’s perspective on the principles constitutes or fabricates the conflicts between them and hence the
solutions he or she responds with. After all, is not the freedom of choice and action also the freedom to make one’s criteria
oneself, that is, to choose the problems that one is going to address together, and also their solutions? In this model, a
particular resolution is not necessitated by an absolute opposition in a previous national spirit, since they can be formulated
in a myriad of ways. Hegel might respond that insofar as there are many sources of contradiction, those sources are not
rational, but contingent. Moreover, he asserts that multiple principles imply a relation between them which is prior to them,
and unites them, which is their principle. This alternative asserts that the relation is posterior to the principles and is
constituted by the mediation of whoever looks on them. Both positions are defensible, but perhaps neither can be proved.
For Hegel, the sublation of previous oppositions is cumulative and teleological. This position must be defended as
well, for change in a direction does not necessarily imply an end of that direction. This is well shown by Charles Darwin’s
theory of the origin of species through modification with natural selection. For him there is only adaptation through
repeated natural selection of random variations. The net effect is adaptation by reconfiguration and recombination, and is
not cumulative. For example, an animal gains speed to hunt rabbits and so loses the strength to hunt deer. For Darwin,
contingency is the engine of biological life. Adaptation may be the engine of history, or at least alongside Spirit (Hegel,
60-63). Darwin presupposes that a creature’s habitat is other than it, and intimately related to it. This is the opposite of
Hegel’s assumption that one’s habitat is precisely oneself, and created by oneself: out of itself Spirit produces its medium,
which is itself. At this level they just assert contrary points of view.
From Darwin’s point of view, all changes are gradual, and often imperceptible. For Hegel also, Spirit makes internal
advances, gradually unfolding itself in the world. The spirit that is about to be replaced has already died in the world before
the new spirit will emerge, but lingers on in spirit. Yet in history there seem to be abrupt transitions between national
spirits: are these momentous clashes between contradictory faces of the old society? Are these spiritual death throes? Why
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is there a conflict between the old and the new societies? Is it just the impotence of contingency, which clings to its
particular spiritual life? In his various discussions of Antigone, Hegel seems to say otherwise, for the spirit of the old
society is still alive, and is implicated in these conflicts. But the clash between internal elements in the previous spirit is
precisely how the sublation of the two comes about. Is the clash the moment of transition between one universal principle
and the next? Why is there this clash?
There is definite rupture in the transition between spirits: revolutionaries cut off the king’s head, and the old society
dies. The revolutionaries make a new society, but can they truly understand the act that founded their society, if they see
only one side of it, and cannot know how the king was the state itself? Has their action sublated the opposition implicit in
the monarchy, namely that between the king and the divine authority invested in him, which guarantees that he does what
is good for society? Or has their action just replaced it with another opposition, namely between parties, the conflict
between which is supposed to guarantee the good of the society. But rupture could also be the sign of a loss, or an absolute
absence. In a car accident or suicide there is somehow no sense: even detailed mechanical or psychological accounts do not
explain the effect of their irruption into one’s life. Hegel would reply that loss is loss of the contingent, and has nothing to
do with reason, but saying saying: “just ignore it: it’s meaningless” cannot explain the spiritual strife of the victims. If this
is the case, then the rupture in the transition between spirits could still be due to contingent causes, and not spiritual. But it
is suspicious that an abyss of contingency appears at the moment of sublation, which is the highest activity of Spirit. This
suggests at least that there are other, viable accounts of the metaphysics of history. In every transition is there some loss?
It seems that Hegel’s understanding of history by metaphysics is grounded on assertion. If this is so, the hero’s
justification disappears, and Hegel’s choice of this or that person as a hero is arbitrary. If the particular problem that is
resolved in the new spirit is not absolute, but determined by perspective, the transition between one spirit and the next can’t
be discerned, for the spirit is no fixed identity, and nearly anyone could be a hero. If history is not teleological, but merely
adaptive, then the new spirit has no absolute right that the previous one lacks: the principles of society would be merely
provisional, and the hero is anyone who alters them. If the transitions between spirits can’t be identified, there are no
heroes. Finally, if the rupture in the transition between spirits is due to contingency, then true heroes may be minions of the
contingent.
G) CONCLUSION
In this essay I have tried to describe Hegelian heroes in a metaphysical way in order to be able to identify them in the
world, whether in the past, present, or future. I have also tried to show how there is some reason to question the
metaphysics upon which Hegel’s account of the hero is based, and hence, to question the criteria as useful beyond mere
assertion. We have seen how humans relate to their actions, and how the hero must identify with the ends of his actions,
thus taking responsibility for them. Furthermore, we saw how the meaning of human action is preserved in them by virtue
of the medium in which they appear. This medium is society, or the state, which is modified by and which itself modifies
the content that appears in it. But in this medium, action is observed and understood by others as well, and so action also
has a level of meaning separate from the actor’s understanding. Hegel says that these mediums develop of their own accord
by formulating themselves in themselves. They also have principles that differ from one another and which resolve the
conflicts implicit in the concepts of the previous mediums. The transition between one principle and its context to the next
principle is made by the hero, who seizes the new principle and establishes the new context. He does this through his
passion, which is the absolute unity of the form and content of spirit, so he acts with the energy of the content. Thus the
meaning he intends his actions to have is precisely what they have in the new medium, for his action constitutes the space
of the medium and, which is the same thing, fills it with content. Thus, while the hero can be identified by his creativity, he
is best identified by his content, which is the will of the World Spirit. We saw then that, though Spirit may exist, and may
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be the way Hegel describes it, on ethical grounds we have some reason to dislike it. Examining some few problems with
his metaphysics of history, we found that he lacks justification for his assertions. This undermines the surest means Hegel
provides to identify the hero, and it seems we could find heroes among both saints and trolls, for our criteria seems to
dwindle to dedication, self-identification with and responsibility for the cause, success, and the establishment of concrete
symbols that represent a new way of understanding the world.
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REFERENCES
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species:A Facsimile of the First Edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. Nisbet, H. B. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977.
Hyppolite, Jean. Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History, trans. Harris, Bond, and Jacqueline Bouchard Spurlock.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.
Taylor, Charles. “Hegel and the Philosophy of Action” in Ed. Stepelevich, Lawrence, and David Lamb, Hegel’s
Philosophy of Action. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983.
Walton, A. S. “Hegel: Individual Agency and Social Context” in Ed. Stepelevich, Lawrence, and David Lamb, Hegel’s
Philosophy of Action. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1983.
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