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Sunday 16 April 2006

Hegelian freedom vs. Nietzsche

The version of 'freedom' which liberals usually faslely foist on Nietzsche, is more akin to Hegelian philosophy.
An excerpt from Hegel, such as the following three paragraphs, will show that this is antithetical to Nietzsche's viewpoint;
"The Orientals do not know that the Spirit is free in-itself, or that man is free in him-self. Because they do not know it, they are not free. They only know that 'One' is free; therefore such freedom is only arbitrariness, ferocity, obtuseness of passion or - by contrast - mildness and gentleness, which itself is merely accident or arbitrament. This 'One' is therefore a despot, not a free man, not a man.

"The consciousness of freedom arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free; but they, like the Romans, knew only that a Few are free, and not man as such. Neither Plato nor Aristotle knew it. Therefore the Greeks not only had slaves to whom their lives and their beautiful freedom was tied, but their freedom was itself only an accidental or contingent, undeveloped, passing and limited flower, involving a harsh servitude of the human and humanitarian sentiments.

"Only the Germanic nations have in and through Christianity achieved the consciousness that man 'qua' man is free and that freedom of the spirit constitutes his very nature".
['The Philosophy of History', Hegel, 1822]

We note to our modern surprise that Germanness is closely associated with Christianity in this period - hence Nietzsche's tendency to attack Germanity and Christianity in the same breath [of course, Hitler has subsequently laid this connection between Germany and Christianity to rest forever].
What to Hegel is a 'progress' towards 'Freedom' in history, is in reverse terms, a decline away from Strong Will to Nietzsche. Nietzsche extolls, as we have seen, the 'Oriental' attitude towards women; and elsewhere Nietzsche admires the Slave societies of the ancient Greco-Roman world saying that slavery is necessary for a High Culture.
For Nietzsche it is the encroachment of this liberal 'freedom' - which brings with it the emancipation of the Slaves and Women and other subject Races - that has put paid to the evolution of the Uebermensch.
What is required is the re-establishment of Distance between the es, the Races and the Castes: in short, an Order of Rank.

I am still left to wonder how so many can read Nietzsche and think they are reading Hegel.

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