The Philosophical Ideas Behind Political Power And Tyranny – Part Two

The citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law desires him to expose himself; and when the prince says to him: ‘It is expedient for the State that you should die,’ he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

As we saw in part one, author James Bovard writes in his outstanding book, Freedom in Chains, “Rousseau’s consecration of government power had vast influence on subsequent philosophers. German philosophers zeroed in on some of Rousseau’s more absurd ideas and refined them into sufficiently obscure language that they commanded respect among academics for generation to follow.”

We continue in part two, again with the help of Bovard, looking at key German philosophers and their contribution to the growth of statism in the 19th Century. Bovard writes:

Johann Gottlieb Fichte declared in 1809 in his ‘Address to the German Nation’: ‘The State is the superior power, ultimate and beyond appeal, absolutely independent.’ Fichte had earlier advocated sharply limiting government power. But, as German humiliation grew over Napoleon’s conquest and occupation of the German states, Fichte deified the State in order to give it the power to drive the French out of the German lands – and to purify the German people so that they would never again be conquered. Fichte wrote, ‘The end of the State is none other than that of the human species itself: namely that all its [humanity’s] relations should be ordered according to the laws of Reason.’ And since the government alone was able to know what Reason dictated, that meant that it must have unlimited power to ‘rationalize’ the citizenry. Fichte lifted the State above traditional moral standards: ‘It is the necessary tendency of every civilized State to expand in every direction…Always, without exception, the most civilized State is the most aggressive.’ Thus, the fact that a State successfully attacked its neighbors proved its moral superiority over its victims.”

G.W. F. Hegel, renowned as the ‘Royal Prussian Court Philosopher’ at the University of Berlin, matched Fichte and raised the ante of glorified servitude. According to Hegel, ‘The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth.’ Hegel praised the State as the ‘realization of the ethical idea’ and asserted that ‘all the worth which the human being possesses – all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.’ Hegel revealed that the State is ‘the shape which the perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes.’ Hegel opposed any limits on government power: ‘The State is the self-certain absolute mind which recognizes no authority but its own, which acknowledges no abstract rules of good and bad, shameful and mean, cunning and deceit.’ Hegel also declared that ‘the State is…the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the State.’ Hegel stressed the benefits of war, and stated that ‘sacrificing oneself for the individuality of the State is’’’a general duty.’ Hegel was also an early advocate of positive thinking: ‘In considering the idea of the State, one must not think of particular states, nor of particular institution, but one must contemplate the idea, this actual God, by itself.’

Hegel was followed at the University of Berlin by Friar J. Stahl, who revealed that the State is ‘a moral and intellectual domain…a moral authority and power exalted and majestic, to which the subjects must submit.’ Historian Heinrich von Treitschke, who became famous for his advocacy of Realpolitik, wrote that ‘if the State may not enclose and repress like an egg-shell, neither can it protect’ and stressed that ‘the moral benefits for which we are indebted to the State are above all price.’ Historian F. S. C. Northrup noted in his book, The Meeting of East and West, ‘The development of German thought and culture following Kant clearly shows the individual person becomes swallowed up in the Absolute.’

Hegel’s work increasingly dominated nineteenth- and early twentieth- century thinking about the State. German philosopher Ernst Cassirer observed in 1945, ‘No other philosophical system has exerted such a strong and enduring influence upon political life as the metaphysics of Hegel….There has hardly been a single great political system that has resisted its influence.’ Cassirer noted Hegel’s system ‘is an entirely new type of absolutism.’

On to the British philosophers in part three.

Once again, I want to credit James Bovard with this post since the material is taken from his book, Freedom in Chains: The Rise Of The State And the Demise Of The Citizen. If you have not read this book, buy it today, and read it.