Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution - Todd McGowan

Published in 2019 by Columbia University Press, New York, NY

270 pages

ISBN: 9780231192705 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN: 2018048909

LCC: B2948 .M3175 2019

If there is one philosopher whose work sends shivers of unpleasant memories down the spines of grad students and divides the field of continental philosophy so decisively, you would be hard-pressed to find a more suitable candidate than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, a seminal German philosopher in the early 18th century, has frustrated and delighted scholars and academics throughout the past two and a half centuries. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the history of Western philosophy in the 19th century was consumed by Hegelian thinking, either utilizing his thoughts for their philosophies (Marx, the German Idealists, etc) or outrightly arguing against him (Kierkegaard, Neitzche, Bertrand Russel, etc). His obtuse writings and confusing philosophical system are infamous in the field of philosophy, and many quickly dismiss his work as outdated and irrelevant for our contemporary society. Yet, in the past few decades, there’s been a resurgence of interest in the work of Hegel, revitalized by thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek, Catherine Malabou, and Adrian Johnston. Far from being irrelevant for our contemporary society, these thinkers argue that Hegelian dialectics is essential to moving beyond the bounds of capitalism and ideology. 

Adding to this discourse on Hegel, in his 2019 book Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution, professor of English and film studies at the University of Vermont Todd McGowan argues that Hegel’s thought, far from being outdated and consigned to the dustbins of history, is the source of great emancipatory potential in Leftist thinking and action. In combating a wide range of misconceptions about Hegel while unearthing the central kernel of his philosophy (namely, the contradiction at the heart of being), McGowan provides us with a framework for understanding Hegel’s potential for political action and emancipation. 

Overview:

McGowan introduces us to Hegel’s world by showing us how his thoughts have divided scholars and philosophers since his death. McGowan argues that while Left Hegelians took Hegel’s dialectical method, utilized it for Marxist revolutions, and inspired much of 20th-century philosophy (exemplified by the Frankfurt School and the existentialists), they also made a crucial misstep. In rejecting the roles of both Christianity and the state in Hegel’s philosophical system, McGowan argues that the Left Hegelians, while undoubtedly influential, ultimately missed what made Hegel’s philosophy truly radical: namely how Hegel’s conceptions of Christianity and the state reveal the central lack within all systems of authority. 

In the first chapter, McGowan works to clarify the role of contradiction in Hegelian thought, drawing on Heraclitus and Kant. As opposed to how Hegel is traditionally taught, McGowan argues that contradiction does not lead toward a higher synthesis, but rather toward more difficult and intractable contradictions (aka. the Absolute). One of the main reasons for a wide misunderstanding of Hegel’s writing, McGowan contends in the second chapter, is that Hegel was onto something that he didn’t quite have the words for (hence his dense, incredibly complex, and frustratingly difficult writing). McGowan argues that it was only with the advent of Freudian psychoanalysis (specifically the idea of the unconscious and drive) that Hegel’s thought could be articulated more clearly.

In the third chapter, McGowan clarifies the difference between reason and understanding by placing Hegel in conversation with Kant. Hegel has often been criticized as a defender of the status quo and traditional forms of power (conservatism). However, by clarifying what he means by reason, understanding, and actuality, McGowan argues that Hegel could be considered one of the most daring revolutionaries of his time, defending the universal over the particular. McGowan argues that Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, shies away from reason because it ultimately brings us to contradiction, whereas Hegel embraces it for this very reason. Hegel praises the ability of “understanding” to organize categories of difference out of the chaos of the universe, in which our capacities for Reason can then recognize contradictions. 

Dipping a bit into the political ramifications of contradiction, McGowan contemplates the nature of virtue and self-interest. Virtue can never be truly virtuous, as it reifies the individual act over the universal, just as self-interest can never only be solely individualistic, as it also serves the universal. McGowan connects this contradiction to the desiring subject (which is always a split subject) and the advent of psychoanalysis. McGowan then dives into Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Hegel’s defense of the king over the Estates Assembly and their individualized interest. Contrary to those who would argue that Hegel is defending the sovereign, authoritative figure (and thus the status quo of the monarchy), McGowan insists that Hegel is rather arguing for the advancement of the democratic universal (exemplified by a sovereign who allows the subject to recognize their freedom) over the particular private interest of the reactionary Estates Assembly (a position which McGowan later takes up and elaborates further in the final chapter).  

In the fourth chapter, McGowan emphasizes Hegel’s role as an ontological thinker, rather than merely epistemological like Kant (aka. Hegel is concerned with being/reality, rather than thinking/abstraction). McGowan posits that the amputation of Hegel’s ontology in the later 19th and early 20th century (via the Left Hegelians and specifically Alexandre Kojéve) allowed his philosophy to be taken seriously and contemplated within the realm of continental philosophy and existentialism. Yet, this amputation came at cost of the truly radical nature of his thought. Only recently, through the work of thinkers like Slavoj Zizek, Catherine Malabou, and Adrian Johnston has Hegel’s radical edge for contemporary thought via ontology been rearticulated and recovered. Instead of contradiction being a roadblock in thinking, Hegel instead takes contradiction to be an animating force in reality. Rather than contradiction remaining regulated to the realm of thought and speculation, Hegel’s radical reading locates contradiction within the heart of being (ontology) itself. Being is a contradiction discovered through the borders of our identity, and we are subjects through the self-division of speech. Hegel’s main departure from Kant comes from his insistence that reason contemplates contradiction not to get rid of it, but to hold it and reveal the nature of reality itself. 

In chapter five, McGowan describes Hegel’s shifting perspective on the relationship between Judaism, Christianity, positivity, and love in his earlier writings. For Hegel, love enacts and sustains contradiction (111), disrupting the subject’s identity and revealing the dependence on external contradictions. This is again a break from Kant in insisting that the external world is affected and constituted by internal contradictions rather than being a static object. Hegel, however, in his later writings, replaced this focus on love with the idea of “the concept.” McGowan argues that Hegel’s embrace of Christianity and its radical edge means that Christianity is markedly unique. For Hegel, Christianity is not just another religion among many, but one that recalibrates the subject's orientation in the world. In Hegel’s understanding of Christianity, love, in contrast to Kantian duty, identifies with the difference of the other without eliminating that difference (111). 

In chapter six, McGowan explores the distinction between experience and Hegel’s “concept,” noting the spatio-temporal considerations of sense experience. McGowan explores the phenomenology of Husserl and his attempts to achieve unmediated experience by bracketing the concept (aka, phenomenology aims to experience the world “as it is,” without such experiences being mediated by our preconceptions or thoughts we have about the world). Hegel turns this idea on its head, insisting that experience itself depends on the concept. Namely, we need the concept (our frameworks of thought) to experience anything out there in the world at all. As such, McGowan insists that the primacy of the concept allows us to maintain contradiction within identity, thus opening up a space (via negation) of radical transformation. In essence, this chapter sets up the tee for the political implications of McGowan’s Hegelian reading in the following chapters. 

Accordingly, before elaborating on Hegel’s potential for political emancipation, McGowan first dispels one of the central criticisms against Hegel’s philosophy as it's traditionally been understood. Anticipating criticism leveled against Hegel, McGowan explains that while much of historical critique arises from Hegel’s controversial Philosophy of History, this is only used by vehement critics because it is the easiest to conceptualize and has historically been used as a shortcut to summarize Hegel’s entire system. Yet, McGowan insists, it is not representative of Hegel’s philosophical system, and one must understand Hegel’s other work (namely, the Science of Logic) before reading Philosophy of History. 

One of the principal issues that have often been levied against the Philosophy of History is the concept of freedom and the end of history. As it's traditionally been taught, Hegel believed that society progresses toward the end of history as more and more freedom proliferates in society (ultimately finding its epoch in the French Revolution). Yet, historical events obviously still occur, so what does Hegel mean by freedom? McGowan contends that Hegel’s freedom is achieved by realizing that substance (the Big Other or the subject-supposed-to-know) is subject. Essentially, the authority that we see as consistent and free from contradiction is anything but; authority, whether it takes the guise of gods or kings, are divided subjects themselves, riddled with their own contradictions. This recognition of one’s freedom from authority is opposed to the liberal conception of freedom from constraint (which supposes a whole, undivided self or external Other, such as trusting in the forces of the free market in capitalism). 

Furthermore, extending this insight into the realm of theology, Hegel regards the role of Christianity as revealing the divided subjectivity of God --- the ultimate authority --- through the Crucifixion. According to Hegel, with Jesus’s pronouncement of “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in Mark 13:54), we see a God who is self-divided. Accordingly, heretical readings of this event deny this division of God and manifest in two forms: naturalism (ie. undivided genes are the sole source of our motivations and action) and fundamentalism (which often results in violence as an impotent response of attempting (and failing) to establish authority). Both of these deny contradiction and the “substance as subject,” which Hegel’s philosophy radically affirms.

In chapter eight, McGowan contrasts Hegel’s conception of freedom and authority to the works and thoughts of Kant, Heidegger, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Camus. McGowan argues that Hegel extended Kant’s philosophy of freedom, locating the locus of freedom and contradiction within the internal human subject as opposed to external forces. In regards to Heidegger, McGowan compares his biography to Hegel’s. Whereas Hegel took a teaching position in the center of power as a way to demonstrate the internality of freedom and the self-divided subject, Heidegger shunned this option in favor of camping out on the margins in the Black Forest. Yet, while this might seem like a more moral choice on the surface, McGowan argues that Heidegger ultimately formed a philosophical system that established a substantive Other that helped attract him to the Nazi’s rejection of modernity. While Heidegger externalizes the contradiction of life, Hegel internalizes the contradiction and positions himself in a position of power to embody the insubstantiality of authority, thus exercising a greater degree of freedom (similar to the role of the sovereign and the state, which he takes up in the next chapter). 

In regards to Marx, McGowan argues that while he revealed the subjectivity of capital through surplus value (ie, the market is not just a magical substantive force), he also formed a substantive Other through an ambiguous future freedom. Similarly, Kierkegaard maintained the substantiality and unknowability of God for his leap to faith, and Camus, through the figure of the rebel, relies on the authority it rebels against to maintain its own identity. Ultimately, McGowan argues, all of these forms shy away from the radicality of Hegel’s thought by reintroducing substantive Others, which curtail free acts even as they promote action over Hegel’s inaction and contemplation. 

In chapter nine, McGowan zeroes in on the political implication of Hegel’s philosophy of contradiction. McGowan emphasizes the role of the Absolute in Hegel’s system, arguing that it is not an overcoming of contradiction and realizing a harmonious whole, but coming to the end of contradiction with no alternative avenues left, which ultimately leaves us with the contradiction of being itself. McGowan relates this to the categories of universality, particularly, and singularity. For McGowan, any political movement that remains in the realm of the particular is always doomed to failure, for it misses the universal dimension of every particular claim. One finds their singularity by exposing their particularity to the universal, which reveals how an individual does not fit within the whole (which McGowan provides an example by comparing the articulation of black singularity by W.E.B. Debois over the insistence on particularity by Booker T. Washington). 

Following this comparison, McGowan takes a brief aside to address Hegel’s alleged racism, which largely occurs in his later work and thought (a point in which McGowan argues that Hegel betrays his philosophy). He then finishes the chapter by utilizing this framework to analyze the self-destructive nature of Nazi ideology. Nazism universalizes the figure of the Jew to express its particularity but then seeks to annihilate the very group against which they establish their particularity, rendering Nazism an impossible project. Thus, we see Nazism as a turn away from the Absolute, unable to reckon with contradiction and instead trying to overcome it by asserting its particularity. 

Finally, in the final chapter, McGowan elaborates on the political potential of Hegelian philosophy, despite Hegel’s withdrawal from politics. Hegel has often been misused as a conservative defender of traditional hierarchy and authority. As such, McGowan gives his interpretation of Hegel’s insistence on the state as a mediating force in society by reframing the establishment of the state as a necessary component for the recognition of freedom. For McGowan, Hegel believes in the necessity of the state to serve as a collective recognition of the universal that prioritizes the public individual (as opposed to civil society, which marks the individual as private and solely acting in self-interest). 

As such, Hegel deems the monarchical figure as a necessary means through which the contradiction of the political order is made apparent, a fact in which modern capitalism and contractual politics obfuscate. As McGowan writes, “Whereas civil society encourages the subject to immerse itself in its own private concerns, the state demands that the subject recognize itself first and foremost as a public being” (205). The state appears oppressive to us today only because it has become an arm of civil society, which has worked in tandem with capitalism. As such, the state forces us to recognize ourselves not as private beings, but public ones that are united in our alienation. Thus, the state allows us to recognize that our freedom is not found in pursuing our self-interest, but rather the destruction of our particularized attachments and our subjection to the state allows us to become invested in the public sphere and creates the possibility of freedom. Therefore, for democracy to resist the urges of turning into fascism (by turning contradiction into opposition), McGowan insists that democratic politics need a position that functions like a monarch, embodying the excluded Other in a single individual. 

At the end of the day, instead of proposing solutions, McGowan admits that Hegel’s politics are not quite as action-oriented as we might like them to be. Hegel’s insistence that contradiction is ontologically inherent in reality leads us not to posit solutions to these contradictions, but rather to move towards deeper and more difficult contradictions. As a final example, McGowan sets his sights on the failure of Marx, arguing that Marxism ends up as a right-wing deviation of Hegel. While Marx was right in expressing the contradictions of capitalism, instead of moving towards more difficult and intractable contractions, Marx reintroduces the substantial Other via the advent of Communism as a solution to the contradiction of capitalism. For McGowan, there is no point in trying to save the world and create a utopian society. Rather, our job is to embrace contradiction, moving toward increasingly difficult problems, not to necessarily solve them once and for all, but to find more complex and difficult problems. This reconciliation to contradiction, McGowan argues, affirms our values of freedom, equality, and solidarity. 

Commendations: 

There are several aspects of Emancipation After Hegel that are well-worth praising. First of all, McGowan is a clear communicator, especially in breaking down a thinker as complex as Hegel. He tends to repeat himself often and rephrases similar ideas in multiple ways throughout the chapters. While this can become a bit repetitive at times, he does a commendable job in approaching these ideas from different angles, and it is often helpful in reinforcing the main ideas of Hegel and following the line of argumentation. Rather than providing commentary on Hegel’s work or providing an in-depth biography, Emancipation instead opts to offer a unique interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy and its relevance to our contemporary world, while debunking and correcting the largest critiques and misreadings of Hegel.  

This book is rather broad in its scope, but it touches on so many cornerstones of Hegel’s thought that everyone, regardless of your familiarity with Hegel, will find something novel and interesting. Mcgowan has a keen talent for boiling the essential elements of Hegelian thought into a relatively accessible and enjoyable read, and he often relates Hegel’s key concepts to everyday experiences and relatable anecdotes. 

Finally, I find McGowan’s defense of Hegel’s thought to be well-articulated and rigorously argued. McGowan does a phenomenal job in debunking the common trope of Hegel as a philosopher of higher synthesis, arguing instead for a Hegel of intractable contradiction. McGowan also doesn’t shy away from Hegel’s less savory comments and writing (such as his turn towards racist stereotypes toward the later years of his life), while also offering context for his larger work. This is one of my most highlighted and annotated books that I’ve wrestled with in a long time, and one that I will undoubtedly return to and reference in the years ahead. 

Critique: 

On the other hand, there are a few aspects of Emancipation that just miss the mark. First of all, while McGowan is a lucid and clear communicator, this can still be a rather dense book for most people, and many paragraphs can be difficult to wrap your mind around (but alas, such is the nature of Hegel). As such, while a background in philosophy is not necessary to enjoy this book, it helps if you have at least a little familiarity with Hegel’s work. 

Furthermore, although McGowan defends Hegel admirably, I’m not sure I buy some of his defenses, such as the articulation of Hegel’s idea of sovereignty and freedom in the Philosophy of Right. McGowan at times seems to defend Hegel to the core, relying on the centrality of contradiction as a sort of ace-in-the-hole answer to everything. This becomes particularly contentious when McGowan criticizes Marx for being a right-wing deviation of Hegel (a stance sure to ruffle the feathers of many Marxist-Leninists). McGowan defends this by arguing that Marx puts faith in a substantial Other through the dream of revolution and establishment of utopian communism in the undetermined future, thus trying to get rid of contradiction. 

This is certainly an interesting critique, and one I think well-worth tarrying with. Yet, this sole focus on the irreconcilability of contradiction seems to preclude most forms of a positive political movement. While this reliance on contradiction helps provide pathways that break through polarization and stagnant discourse, the promise of “emancipation” after Hegel was a bit lacking at the end. McGowan admits that Hegel himself thought that his philosophy resulted in recognition over action, and while McGowan insists that contradiction as a solution is the path forward for the Left, what such a path looks like in practical terms remains rather obscure and vague. 

While I do understand the point that contraction helps us recognize that there are no grand, all-encompassing solutions, it would have been helpful to see how Hegel’s work could be utilized toward affecting tangible, material change. While deepening contradiction is certainly an interesting way toward breaking us out of our vicious cycles of promising solutions that ultimately fail to materialize, how this thinking could affect substantial change outside of our perspective shift remains woefully underdeveloped. This leads to a rather anticlimactic ending, but perhaps that disappointment might be part of the point of Hegel’s thought, pointing us back to the fact that there are no answers. While this is rather unsatisfying, how might we utilize this dissatisfaction toward constructive and emancipatory ends? This is a question that I’ll be thinking about for a while, and I would be interested to hear McGowan’s take on it in future work. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, Emancipation after Hegel gives us a relatively accessible and unique perspective into the work of Hegel and how it might be used in our contemporary political landscape. While the emancipatory ends remain a bit underdeveloped and unsatisfying, this book gives us a fantastic primer into the mind of Hegel, and why his work has been so ardently debated over the past two and a half centuries. If you’ve never read Hegel and are interested in joining the debate, or if you want to get a different, fresh perspective on his work, then I cannot recommend McGowan’s work enough. Regardless of whether you love or hate Hegel, McGowan’s book gives us a fascinating window into how Hegel’s insight might be a key component of creating a better world for us all.