RATHER than seek to apply Absolute Idealism to anti-authoritarian principles, as I have proposed elsewhere (see National-Anarchism: Continuing the Romantic Tradition), there is a good reason why Hegel’s socio-political writings ended up steering Romantic philosophy towards the formation of the Absolute State and this is due to an unfortunate presentation of the interactive relationship between what he describes as morality (moralität) and ethics (sittlichkeit).
Whilst the former relates to the conscientious behaviour of the individual in terms of one’s personal understanding of rights and duties, particularly those of a religious nature, the latter is concerned with those aspects of human conduct – politeness or good manners, for example – which correspond with a person’s relations to society as a whole. This, at least, is what Hegel intended when he employed such terminology in his Philosophy of Right (1820). Now, consider what Frederick Beiser says in his own work on Hegel’s philosophy:
“Morality is an abstract universal, it makes the part prior to the whole, as if each individual were self-sufficient or independent. Ethical life is a concrete universal: it makes the whole prior to the part, such as the very identity of the very individual depends on its place in the whole.”
Whilst there is nothing wrong with this statement, herein lies the crux of the problem. Hegel fundamentally disagreed with this analysis on account of the mistaken view that what he describes as the moral dimension is one-sided and abstract, thus separating the individual from his place in the Whole. In other words, for Hegel it is the Absolute State which provides the individual with his actual identity.
By way of contrast, I would contend that there is no good reason why Hegel’s socio-political vision should have ended up taking the form of the Absolute State at all. After all, National-Anarchism also allows for an individual to practice his or her own particular way of life within the context of something greater. The “abstract universal” of individual moralität, which allows freedom of self-expression, is both protected and reinforced by the “concrete universal” of a wider Anarchist sittlichkeit. Unlike the centralised imposition of Hegel’s socio-political superstructure, therefore, National-Anarchism acts as an overarching theme that can offer a more holistic solution to one’s place in the universe.
