History and Freedom: Lectures 1964-1965

Editor’s Foreword xii

Part I History

Lecture 1: Progress or Regression? 3

Notes: The relationship of the lectures to Negative Dialectics; the concept of freedom in Kant and Hegel; the diminishing consciousness of freedom; the meaning of history refuted by Auschwitz; the philosophy of history implies that there is a meaning; cultural morphology (Spengler) and idealism

Lecture 2: Universal and Particular 10

Trend and individual fact • Distance from and closeness to detail; progress as a particular • Rationality as a universal; rationality as the mastering of nature • The concept of universal history; rationality as a form of conflict; ‘Faustian technology’ and modes of production • Hegel’s concept of spirit [Geist]; spirit and technical rationality; spirit not primary, but a product • The immediate experience of the universal and the universal itself denounced as metaphysics; negativity as a universal

Lecture 3: Constitution Problems 19

The truth of facts • Immediacy and mediation; individuality and the ‘untrue’ universal • Simmel’s philosophy of history; the problem of constitution (I) • The problem of constitution (II) • De Maistre; the grounds of knowledge and grounds of reality • Hegel’s ‘world spirit’ and the spirit of the age • The logic of things and heteronomy

Lecture 4: The Concept of Mediation 29

Facts as a cloak • The experience of the speculative; experience of committees • Formal sociology; group opinion and social totality • French Revolution (I) • French Revolution (II); underlying cause and proximate cause: course of history and individual moment • French Revolution (III); primacy of the course of history: ‘economy based on expenditure’ instead of ‘economy based on acquisition’; the theory of historical categories

Lecture 5: The Totality on the Road to Self-Realization 39

Philosophy of history and historiography • Parti pris for the universal • Hegel’s class standpoint • In defence of Hegel • Reason as unreason; individual interest and species; humanity: ‘public company for the exploitation of nature’ • Conflict in the concept of reason • The odious totality

Lecture 6: Conflict and Survival 49

Ambivalence of totality; Marx’s optimistic view of history • Conflict and totality • Theodicy of conflict • Conflict and the reproduction of life • Conflict and prehistory; the economy or relations of domination • Contemplative and revolutionary conceptions of history; the problem of anarchism • Defence of nonconformism

Lecture 7: Spirit and the Course of the World 59

The concept of conformism • Critique of the hypostasization of concepts; the concept of reason; the irrationality of reason • Law and ‘emotional warmth’ in Hegel; universality in the particular • The course of the world and individual conscience; methesis [participation] of the spirit • Theodicy of rupture and concrete possibility

Lecture 8: Psychology 69

The concept of the character mask • Individuation and socialization • Identity and the semblance of reconciliation • ‘Sowing one’s wild oats’ • Intellectual forms of self-preservation and human breakdown; identification with the aggressor • Acquiescing in selfdestruction; concretism; psychology as cement

Lecture 9: The Critique of Universal History 79

The course of the argument • The concept of universal history (I) • The concept of universal history (II) • False mastery and vindication of induction; Hegel’s theory of history • Freedom and the individual in Hegel • The individuality in antiquity and the early modern age • History from the standpoint of the victor

Lecture 10: ‘Negative’ Universal History 89

Benjamin’s XVIIth thesis • Temporal core and non-identity • Continuity and discontinuity • History as a gigantic exchange relationship • The total state and the rule of competing cliques • Dialectic of the particular • The concept of chance; the utopia of knowledge • Hegel’s critique of the totality; course of the argument

Lecture 11: The Nation and the Spirit of the People in Hegel 99

Notes: Spirit of the people and universal spirit; universal history as universal tribunal; pseudo-concreteness; repressive archaisms; anti-Cartesian elements in Vico, Montesquieu, Herder and Hegel; cult of the nation

Lecture 12: The Principle of Nationality 105

The nation: a bourgeois form of organization; departure from natural forms of association • The path to delusions of race • Progressive aspects of the nation • The principle of nationality and natural history • The equality of the organization of life today • Hegel’s theory of national spirit viii contents obsolete; decentralization through technology • Germany ‘the belated nation’ • Predominance of the universal over the individual; objective reason split off from subjective reason • ‘Infernal machine’; natural history in Hegel

Lecture 13: The History of Nature (I) 115

Notes: Nature and history; history as spirit; the history of nature as a critical concept; Marx, the ironical Social Darwinist; mythical nature of history; first and second nature

Lecture 14: The History of Nature (II) 120

The concept of second nature • Nature and history mediated • Critique of ‘historicity’; meaning and chance • Philosophy as interpretation (I); transience and allegory; philosophy’s transition to the concrete; history as secularized metaphysics • Philosophy as interpretation (II); hermeneutics • Practice thwarted; critique of the metaphysics of time

Part II Progress

Lecture 15: On Interpretation: the Concept of Progress (I) 133

The history of nature, allegory, criticism • Secularized melancholy; theory of interpretation; Hölderlin’s The Shelter at Hardt • Immediacy as the product of history; Hegel and Marx; art • The pleasures of interpretation • The concept of progress as a link between philosophy of history and the theory of freedom • Critique of nominalism • ‘Whether progress exists’

Lecture 16: On Interpretation: the Concept of Progress (II) 142

Towards conceptual synthesis • Progress as a way of averting catastrophe; the global social subject • Kant’s idea of humanity • Benjamin’s critique of progress • Progress and redemption in St Augustine • Escaping the trammels of the past • Progress mediated by society • Reconciliation and conflict in Kant; progress as absolutely mythical and anti-mythical

Lecture 17: On Interpretation: the Concept of Progress (III) 153

Jugendstil, Ibsen • Decadence and utopia; bourgeois coldness and privileged happiness; dialectics of individuation • Decadence and the defamation of sex; Jugendstil and expressionism • The domination of nature and the flowering of reason; Kant and Hegel’s concepts of reason; myth and demythologization in one • The idea of progress in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries • Two concepts of progress • The dialectics of inwardness; critique of the decisionism of existentialist spontaneity • Spirit as the repository of progress

Lecture 18: On Interpretation: the Concept of Progress (IV) 164

Static elements of the spirit • Progress and mastery of material • Philosophical progress • Programme of reflection on the nature of philosophy • The concept of exchange; exchange and myth • Correcting progress • Speaking on my own behalf

Part III Freedom

The concepts of freedom and the spell; concentration on free will; freedom as the epitome of resistance to the spell

Lecture 19: Transition to Moral Philosophy 177

Non-existence of freedom in history • Individual freedom, social unfreedom • Freedom as a historical concept • The possibility of freedom in unfreedom • The current state of the forces of production • Reason and freedom • Model and constellation; free will and interiority

Lecture 20: What is Free Will? 187

Notes: Inside and outside reciprocally mediated; will and freedom not to be hypostasized; on pseudo-problems [Scheinproblem]; will and freedom synthesize individual impulses

Lecture 21: Freedom and Bourgeois Society 190

Towards a definition of will: the substratum of freedom • Will as the ordered unity of spontaneous and rational impulses; will and a strong ego; non-ego as model of the ego • Freedom and emancipation of the bourgeoisie; freedom and psychology • The scientific impulse versus demystification; bourgeois ambivalence • Theory of freedom as Sunday sermon • Freedom in the service of oppression; the psychoanalysis of the super-ego

Lecture 22: Freedom in Unfreedom 200

Freedom as problem and cliché • Auschwitz as absolute negation of freedom • Guilt • Freedom and excessive demands • ‘Evil’ as unfreedom • The ageing of moral categories; society and the individual

Lecture 23: Antinomies of Freedom 209

The narcissistic interest in freedom • Conformity as the dark side of freedom • Impulse, mimesis, irrationality • Kant’s concept of spontaneity • Spontaneity as something transcendental • The dialectics of spontaneity; Marx, Rosa Luxemburg • Obsessional neurosis; the egoalien ego

Lecture 24: Rationality and the Additional Factor 219

Freud’s theory of repression; blindness of the ego • Ideology of inwardness • The ‘sphere of absolute origins’ and the subject • Critique of the experimenta crucis • Kant’s ‘gallows in front of the house’ • Kant’s card-sharp • A priorism or the empirical as determining factor; the construction of the intelligible character

Lecture 25: Consciousness and Impulse 229

Consciousness versus causality • Without consciousness, no will • Hamlet (I) • The medieval ordo: critique of Romanticism; Hamlet (II) • Hamlet (III); the additional or the irrational factor • The archaic element of the will • The archaic transformed • Reason and impulse

Lecture 26: Kant’s Theory of Free Will 239

Evidence of impulse • The problem of theory and practice in Kant; lectures as a genre • Kant’s historicization of reflections on the moral law • Freedom as the determinate negation of unfreedom; Kant’s doctrine of freedom as fiction • Freedom a paradox in Kant; natura naturans and natura naturata • Kant’s ‘borrowed’ ideas of goodness; mediation repressive in Kant • Freedom as consciousness of the law

Lecture 27: Will and Reason 249

The dual character of Kant’s concept of reason • The ontologizing of the will in Kant • Kant’s false definition of will • Defence of formalism, misuse of the concrete; Scheler • The concept of character • Character and the ‘dissolute’ [Aufgelöste] • Will and reason

Lecture 28: Moral Uncertainties 258

Ontological validity and ontic genesis mediated • Voluntarist and intellectual elements • Morality as self-evident; good and evil • Will and violence; no moral certainty • Solidarity and heteronomy in matters of conscience • Universal and individual in moral philosophy • Free and unfree • Lectures on ‘Metaphysics’

Notes 267

References 334

Index of Names 337

Index of Subjects 343