A Sequel to Hegel




The Will-to-Innocence and the Spirit of Mockery

(and their children):

The Further Adventures of the Absolute Spirit

I recently heard about The Owl at Dawn: a Sequel to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, by Andrew Cutrofello. I became so excited that such a book exists, that I immediately looked through the local library to see if they had it. They didn't, so I'm happy to pony up and buy a copy. It's on order. I haven't read it yet. But in the meantime, my mind can't help spinning tales of what it might say, what a sequel to The Phenomenology of Spirit might look like.

For me, Hegel is the philosopher of liberalism, par excellence. But what people like Francis Fukuyama miss, in their revival of the notion of the “End of History,” (or as Hegel himself put it, the “annihilation of time”) is that Hegel, good German enlightened limited monarchist that he was, never saw liberal democracy as the end of history. For Hegel, the end of history, or the purpose of history, was the realization of freedom, and for Hegel this meant Spirit, even the self-negation of matter itself – indeed, the annihilation of time was but one step in this progression, following the self-annihilation of space. Spirit, or as it is also translated, Mind, was Hegel's real focus, particularly in its negative, critical capability. Thus, it is not the realization of liberal democracy but the criticism of liberal democracy that has the last word, even if this criticism was purely ideal, putting forward no clear, positive alternative.

Indeed, some of Hegel's final writings, such as “On the English Reform Bill,” written in 1831 as the British Parliament was debating what eventually became the Reform Act of 1832, were withering, blistering attacks on liberal democracy, like that found in England. He ruthlessly criticized even these modest reforms which inched toward universal manhood suffrage – which Hegel, interestingly, considered irrational and based on a crude, anarchic misunderstanding which removed the necessary mediation (a favorite word of Hegel's, in many contexts; in some ways all of his philosophy was the defense of, and explanation for, mediation) between the people and the state. And along the way Hegel had some rather acute insults for the ideology of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Here and there, Hegel rises almost to the extreme of Plato's most nasty attacks on democracy. It may strike an odd note that Hegel was so virulently opposed to these English ideas - Hegel, who throughout his days pushed for reform, progress, freedom, and toleration, and who has the reputation of sinking into complacency, quietude, and the acceptance of the status quo at the end of his own life. But here we come across the paradox of justification embodied in a man as sarcastic as Hegel – the positivity of the Christian religion and German culture as revealed in its rational essence by one who knew that rationality is the negative.

If, as Fukuyama asserts, history ended at the Battle of Jena, then we have ever since lived in the Napoleonic age, and ever will - “a boot stamping on a human face forever.” And I think it was insightful of Hegel to focus on identity – even the identity of identity with non-identity – for this is the essence of liberalism, the belonging-to a regime of individuality. It has become customary lately to speak of “virtue signaling” - gesturing affliation to some great and noble cause, as a personal affectation, with which one acquires a certain distinction, attraction, and influence. Characteristically, this is used by critics of liberalism from the Right, but of course, by calling out the virtue signalers, these right wing critics thereby become simply another kind of virtue signaler, the kind that speaks truth and points out that the emperor has no clothes – an irony that Hegel would have appreciated. Perhaps the practice of virtue signaling is characteristic of all people who live under liberal regimes, including, especially, so-called conservatives - indeed, them more than anyone else. And it is difficult to see any way out of this knot.  This knot is constitutive of our contemporary identity, and this identity is constitutive of liberalism itself.  The spectacular character of liberal democracy implies that all virtue signals – even if, ultimately, only to itself. Perhaps this is part of what makes the expanding hegemony of liberalism so unstoppably powerful. (Alasdair MacIntyre, in this sense, does not go far enough. It is not simply that humanity has abandoned virtue. We must face a truth more radical and more dire: that the substance of virtue itself has changed.  Virtue is inside out.) And yet, there remains the need for criticism – liberalism itself demands it, as tribute. And the criticism has not ceased. It is in this sense that Continental Philosophy is in the wake of Hegel – in truth, both Analytic and Continental Philosophy are.

If there is a meaningful difference between “Analytic” and “Continental” philosophy, it is this. What is called Analytic Philosophy – or rather, something that far precedes the official advent of Analytic Philosophy and long before it lay deep within the bones of the Anglo-American tradition (or anti-tradition) and which, besides, has enormous, perhaps irresistible influence on every continent, including that of Europe – can be described this way: it is the desire to explain everything. For this reason, it is continually attempting to start over from the beginning, from nothing, from the blank slate, making no assumptions, as if teaching the cartography of the universe to a perfectly attentive student with infinite capacity that knows nothing and lives in a perfect void. Thus its most favorite tool is reduction – usually, it attempts to reduce everything to fundamental principles, even if these principles arrive via experience rather than established dogma. Thus Empiricism is born.

What is called Continental Philosophy has more modest expectations. It does not attempt anything quite so extravagant. It assumes a world with which we are familiar, and into which we are more or less embedded, a world of culture and history, and, besides, more to the point, a world to which we always already are caught in a web of responsibility. And it makes its gestures only against the backdrop of this fundamentally acknowledged world and its responsibilities, and indeed because of them. It may, from time to time, temporarily and provisionally question the existence of this world – most likely under perceived pressure from the Anglo-American tradition to do so – but only for the sake of immediately returning the world and its responsibilities back into place, establishing them all the more firmly, awakened from a dogmatic slumber to an even more assured being-in-the-world. From this assured position, which needn't be – and most likely couldn't be – ever fully articulated, ever made completely explicit – it makes its criticisms, however radical. Its primary tool is criticism, not reduction. It feels that it is not necessary to fully explain itself before it is permitted to criticize something else, and even may resist all attempts to fully explain itself or to be fully explained, restricting itself to a critical reading of other texts rather than imagining itself to be a fully self-contained and self-sufficient text that can do everything for itself. Whereas the Anglo-American tradition attempts to create works that are wholly independent, the Continental tradition does not mind frankly acknowledging its dependence.

It should be obvious (at least to someone from the Continental tradition) that the Anglo tradition I have sketched here tends to atomize, or rather that it is the product of an atomization, an attempt at reduction to the purely individual, self-sufficient consciousness, which no doubt has economic roots – it is the metaphysical counterpart to an ideology of individual economic self-sufficiency. But there is another side to it as well. The blank slate that is manufactured in the Anglo tradition is also a bright spot, a white, clean blamelessness, unblemished by Original Sin. No wonder that writers like Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume and Smith all, in addition to their economic ideas, put forward as their central idea, a Moral Sense, or Conscience. This tradition precipitates a crisis in Hegel, and is transformed into what I call the will-to-innocence.

It would be irresponsibly glib to characterize dialectics simply as anti-empiricism. It does not deny the findings of empiricism, but nonetheless it acknowledges that empiricism does not arise out of a vacuum, ex nihilo, but rather that there is something else, something absolute and real, from which empiricism rises, and to which empiricism returns – namely, reality itself – a historical, social reality, in which empiricism is constructed. Dialectics begins by showing that the supposedly presuppositionless sense-certainty in fact cannot even be stated clearly and the many tangles and mazes in which consciousness finds itself in attempting this articulation all stem from the ineptitude of recognizing that outside of this supposed void there is something else, namely, the Notion, the clarification of which requires a spirit that is determined towards the Absolute, in which it has been thrashing and grasping all along. In other words, Empiricism is true as far as it goes, but it is incomplete, and must recognize its incompleteness.

Yet the very incompleteness of Empiricism, as it is witnessed by the Absolute Spirit, is at the same time an incompleteness in this very witnessing, and thus an incompleteness in the Absolute Spirit itself. The will-to-innocence - or rather, the will that proclaims its own innocence - sets for itself the task of representing that which is not represented by the Absolute Spirit, which is impossible. At first, it may attempt to pretend that it is only an addendum to the Absolute Spirit, or that some part of the Absolute Spirit may be saved, that it is not rotten to the core. Then it performs a rebellion against the Absolute Spirit, a kind of mummer's play, but in a moralistic fashion, promising to include that which is external to the Absolute Spirit into itself, making proclamations about a "moral economy." But the will-to-innocence must be the rejection of Absolute Spirit, for it says, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," and "All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."

In effect, the will-to-innocence is the rejection of history, even if it is performed by a historian. It is the will to start things all over again, to act as if nothing ever happened. The progression of Subjective Spirit, Objective Spirit, and Absolute Spirit is lost – curiously, in its strange drive to repetition, the will-to-innocence is the necessary compliment to the annihilation of time. The will-to-innocence frantically attempts to represent itself as blameless, that is, to renounce its belonging to the Absolute Spirit, and to represent itself as an organic part of the unrepresented "part of no part," to which it artificially attempts to graft itself. It is an violently imposed peace, a coercive voluntarism, an enforced freedom, a highly sophisticated and learned immediatism, an artificial organicism, and above all a manufactured spontaneity, constantly cycling backwards and attempting to create its own origins. Ultimately, it is a reactionary movement, an attempt to patch over the fundamental rending of the heart of the Absolute Spirit, that is to say, of experience itself; recognizing the futility of the Absolute Spirit, it is the hysterical denial of the entire progression that led to Absolute Spirit, assuming a feigned naivete. It winds up saying no more than "That which appears is good, that which is good appears." But even if it manages to absorb some part of the unrepresented, this part thereby becomes represented, and thus divided from itself. Thus the will-to-innocence must spin faster and faster in ceaseless activity, or more to the point, activism, that is, in a relentless, permanent revolution that goes nowhere and solves nothing, and indeed exists ultimately only to perpetuate itself - or to perpetuate its appearance, a mere seeming that ultimately fails to mask its utter vacuity.

In contrast to this, and yet complimentary to it, is the spirit of mockery, the spirit of "the ruthless criticism of all that exists," the spirit of the “Great Despisers” who ultimately come to despise even themselves. At first, the will-to-innocence and the spirit of mockery seem allied, two sides of a "hyper- and pessimistic activism," the one emanating from the other as its protection, in the form of distraction: "We are blameless because we blame." Criticism is, however, quite different from critique, which sought to make trial for the sake of giving a firmer foundation for that which it critiqued. Criticism, in the sense of mockery, is sui generis; it makes a genuine opponent of its object and seeks to reduce it to nothing, or rather not even nothing - it is negation without achieving anything positive, negation without goal or purpose.

Mockery begins by demonstrating the contradictions in religion, and showing that consistent, literal belief is impossible. It continues similarly mocking all of ideology, religious, political, legal, philosophical, what-have-you, dismissing the State and the People alike as "spooks" with no real substantial reality, ultimately rejecting everything outside of itself and insisting on its own uniqueness. It began as an organ of the media, but in order to maintain this uniqueness, it must turn away from everything that is not immediate. So, at first, mockery and innocence are united in their reactionary affiliation. But as a unique one, it must reject all affiliation. So it turns inward and even mocks and rejects this unique self, dismissing individuality, consciousness, spirit, and its own soul, reducing all to science, to materialism, and in particular to economics. But the spirit of mockery cannot stop there - it must unravel the ideals and fetishisms that exist even within economics, and especially within economics, paltry and unsatisfying husks of spirit though they may be. Now the spirit of mockery and the will-to-innocence must confront the truth that they are, in fact, and always have been, implacable enemies, and a great schism opens up between them. The will-to-innocence, horrified at the accusations that have been thrown at it, in turn accuses the spirit of mockery of simply trying to grasp power.

And the hell of it is that when the will-to-innocence asserts this, it is not even wrong. On the contrary. Criticism – and especially the form of criticism that is mockery – is the highest and best hypostasis of the will-to-power. The noblest aspiration is relentless self-overcoming – including the overcoming of nobility, and of aspiration, and of the self, and of overcoming itself, and even of this relentlessness.

So the spirit of mockery must ironically acknowledge the truth – indeed, the innocence – of the will-to-innocence's will, and its accusation. Laying bare the emptiness and vacuuity of the moralism of the will-to-innocence, that is, its own vacuuity, the spirit of mockery ends up negating its own nihilism and must pass through a moment of gangsterism, perversely affirming a new tyranny, an oppression without limit, as in the work of Nechayev. Now the Spirit presents itself as an immense accumulation of rackets. Inevitably, the spirit of mockery exposes everything as the will-to-power. In a strange, inverted repetition of the beautiful soul, the spirit of mockery, which is ressentiment, sees ressentiment in everyone and everything else.

The spirit of mockery mocks everything, but it is not ultimately rebellious, because it even mocks rebellion. So as much as the spirit of mockery may lash out against the will-to-innocence, it is nonetheless identical to it – and knows it. Thus the spirit of mockery's critique of ideology becomes the ideology of critique. It has played the part of the court jester, who needs the King just as much – or rather, more – than the King needs him (Mockery was hired on an at-will basis, and exists only for the King's entertainment) and has therefore has always secretly been supporting and funding the regime. And its renunciation of "moralism" is, in truth, a form of moralism. (And, on the other hand, Dostoyevsky's anti-nihilism, or double-negation, is, in fact, the purest expression of nihilism.) Mockery is shown to be a disguised form of the spirit of the Enlightenment, the will-to-reveal. So now the spirit of mockery mocks itself, and learns to disguise itself. Ultimately, it, too, says, “That which appears is good, that which is good, appears,” but for different reasons....

...Which amount to the same reasons.

Meanwhile, the will-to-innocence goes on as if the spirit of mockery never revealed anything. But this going-into-hiding of the spirit of mockery is experienced everywhere as a terrible loss. It becomes perversely, painfully clear that it was in the spirit of mockery that the only remaining sparks of the Absolute Spirit still remained, and now they are gone, utterly and permanently, and it can no longer even fully be remembered what they were. Still, the will-to-innocence soldiers on, abandoned, pregnant, as it were, with the children of the spirit of mockery.

One form of this “going on” as if history were happening is the arising of a Brazen Spirit, child of the will-to-innocence and the spirit of mockery, which boldly violates all customs that we pretend to preserve. It says, “I will go on, I will be what I will be, I don't care if you mock me.” It carries on its tiresome transgressions, overturning every boundary, putting on quite a display, quite a farce. When it senses that it will mocked for its ugliness, it resolves that it no longer seeks beauty, or any form of the good – on the contrary, it wills ugliness, tastelessness, lack of refinement or sophistication, stupidity, cruelty, desublimation. “Evil, be thou my good.” This is the rebel without a cause. This spirit becomes the essence of high art, as well as much of popular culture (from Picasso to adult swim), and much else besides: social science, political science, philosophy, economics, even religion. It prides itself that it issues forth from the spirit of mockery, but in fact it is a disguised form of the will-to-innocence. It, too, is a side-effect of the necessity of the breaking of all the taboos and protections of traditional society for the sake of the entrenchment of the regime of capital. “Give us any rule, we'll break it,” say the commercial entrepreneurs. But this is the will-to-innocence in the form of its self-representation as courage, the ability to overcome and even invite risk. What this spirit does not realize is that it takes no courage to overcome the boundaries around customs that essentially died and disappeared long, long ago. Its public relations persona as a rebel is really only a hollow, empty show.

In addition to the Brazen Spirit, the will-to-innocence and the spirit of mockery have another child, the Cheerleader, a hollow husk with a forced smile and a glad handshake, that doggedly goes on desperately trying to revive the spirit of mockery, seeking it here, seeking it there, imagining that it sees it arising from its hiding spot. It cheers everyone on, every Brazen Spirit, hoping – or pretending to hope – that this will be The One. It is the true believer, utterly humorless, the card-carrying member of the organization, and it is extremely serious in its quest. Like Ahab, it searches everywhere, becoming all the more convinced and all the more enraged as time goes on without any whale in sight. What it doesn't realize is that you cannot be serious about finding the spirit of mockery. As it ages, it becomes more depressed, more jaded, and it learns to laugh a little at itself and at the world, but at heart it never stops being a Cheerleader. Its laughter is only an inverted form of cheerleading. It tries to convince itself that it is jaded and rueful, the sardonic old hand that has “seen it all,” and loves to tell itself and everyone else that “I was here first” - but even this is merely self-cheerleading.

A third child exists, one that is far more powerful and far broader in its effect than the first two, and ultimately includes them: Escapism. Deep in its heart, mockery betrays itself, going fully into hiding within itself, no longer even pretending to rebel or to be excited about rebellion, but, perhaps, pretending to pretend. It can affirm its fantasies, so long as it affirms them as fantasies. It adopts a position of profound passivity, but remains paradoxically extremely active in this passivity. This spirit becomes the brazen fan, no longer pretending to be anything other than a fan, fearless of being mocked for its fandom. At first this spirit poses as an ironist, and then it becomes, quite ironically, very serious.

Yet a fourth child arises: Mere Suspicion – that is, mockery devoid of all spirit, all levity. Bitter resentment weaves its complex conspiracy theories, in a form of spectator's activism that masks a deeper complacency. It sees its enemy in every face, and so splinter group breaks from splinter group, until Suspicion sees the enemy in its own face. Then it must smash the mirror, and break into a million shards.