Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge Philosophy Classics)

Taylor is a wonderful, comprehensive thinker but this is not his best book. Better read Sources of the Self or even the much dated Collected Papers, Volume 2: The human and social sciences. - This book on Hegel still has some great ideas: see the conflict between and effort to unite expressivism and human freedom, with which he starts the book. However, Taylor is demonstrably wrong about Hegel, misunderstanding him as a World-Soul metaphysician. See Robert Pippin's Hegel's Idealism, Terry Pinkard's biography of Hegel and his commentary on the Phenomenology, or even an older thinker like Hyppolite (whose Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology is much more perceptive about Hegel's aims).

Charles Taylor claims this isn't merely a summation of his earlier tome on Hegel. That's not really true. A number of pages are lifted but I think he succeeds in succinctly tying Hegel's ontology to Hegel's politics and showing the latter's relevance for the modern age.Hegel's OntologyHegel sought to synthesize the Romantic desire for freedom and expression with the Rationalist desire for Reason. The Romantics saw Enlightenment science severing man’s unity. Man can only be self-conscious when he abstracts himself from the world. But when he does that, he severs himself from the organic unity of life. Reason and Life are thus opposites. But they are opposites which can’t exist without the other.This leads us to Geist (God, sort of) as the Embodied Subject. A rational subject must be embodied because their must be an opposite pole in which it may flourish. Hegel rejects both Christian theism (God independent of the world) and naturalism (God as not absolute). Self-positing: God eternally creates the conditions of his existence. Hegel is not so much arguing for an existent reality, but for the conditions that Geist be.What is the Dialectic?we start with the most elementary notion of what consciousness is, “to show that this cannot stand up, that it is riven with inner contradiction and must give way to a higher one, which is also in turn shown to be contradictory” (55).Politics as Alienation OvercomeModern society has seen the proliferation of Romantic views of life along with the rationalization and bureaucratization of collective structures and an exploitive stance toward nature (71). The adequate form of Spirit (remember, Spirit must be embodied) is social. Man has to be part of something larger than himself, since man cannot exist by himself.alienation: this happens whenever the public existence no longer has meaning for me: e.g., the perceived futility of voting; nominal religious belief in Church-States. Individuals then strike out on their own to define their individuality. They then (ironically) come together as a new social unit.Negative freedom would require that the whole outcome be decided by me. Yet, the whole outcome is a social one, so it cannot be decided by me alone. Thus, negative freedom is impossible.The Modern DilemmaHere is why modern liberal society is doomed: radical participation in civic structures is only possible if there is a ground of agreement, or underlying common purpose (Augustine’s common objects of love).Democracy and participation cannot create this; they merely presuppose it. The demand for absolute freedom by itself is empty.Modern ideology and equality leads to homogenization [Taylor isn't always clear on what he means by homogenization] of society. It is an acid drip on traditional structures, yet it cannot replace them.Hegel and MarxThis is where Charles Taylor, using Hegel's analysis, cuts Marxism to the bone. The Soviet view sees the proletarian party as “engineers of building in conformity with the laws of history…[combining] two opposed pictures of the human predicament. It shows us man, on one hand, imposing his will on the course of history...On the other hand dialectical materialism sets out the laws which govern man and history with an iron necessity” (151). “The laws of history cannot be the basis of social engineering and reveal the inevitable trend of events” (152).Analysis and ConclusionA Christian cannot accept Hegel's ontology. It echoes pantheism and is openly process theology. Hegel's analysis of epistemology on lower levels is sometimes interesting. Hegel's insights on politics (if not his conclusions!) are occasionally brilliant.The concepts of social alienation are more pronounced today than ever before. Hegel was spot on. His critique of Negative Freedom of the French Revolution applies equally to Marxism (and its body count) and the Cultural Leninism of today's America.

Hegel is an extremely tough read, and many think that he is of no more than historical interest; after all, no one finds Hegel's overarching doctrines remotely plausible.Charles Taylor not only makes Hegel intelligible, he also persuasively argues that Hegel's philosophy has much to contribute to today's social and political philosophy. Taylor's exposition of Hegel's philosophy is very helpful for understanding Marx (who both inherited and radically altered Hegel's philosophy), the French Revolution (of which Hegel offered an analysis that situates it in social movements still dominating Western society today), the rise of fascism, contemporary liberalism, the failure of communism, and more.Of course, as with any book undertaking to explain so much history and philosophy, Taylor's work leaves unexamined any number of potential objections, and one gets the feeling, particularly towards the end, that Taylor's brush strokes are getting so broad as to obscure the subject matter. Nevertheless, Taylor's book is filled with fascinating insights, highly thought-provoking, and accessible to those with a general familiarity with the history of modern philosophy. It's a pleasure to read.

Hegel is notoriously difficult to understand. When an exposition of his philosophy, entitled "The Secret of Hegel", was published in the 19th century, a critic accused its author of "keeping the secret." Charles Taylor, by contrast, without academic arrogance--in fact, with characteristic humility--makes brilliantly accessible this abstruse philosopher. Taylor eloquently extracts the essence and logic of Hegel's arguments; and shows the relationships between Hegel's metaphysics and social philosophy; thereby revealing to the reader the whole system of Hegel's philosophy, rather than its isolated components. Along the way, he dispels many of the false myths that surround Hegel's often quoted but rarely read philosophies. And not only does Taylor make sense of Hegel in the philosopher's own historical and intellectual contexts, but, as the title of the book implies, Taylor shows the relevance that Hegel's ideas still hold today. This is a gem of a book for people studying Hegel, for people studying philosophy, political science, or history. Highly recommended.

The book does deserve five stars--but there is a need to call attention to the preface of "Hegel and Modern Society," which is absent from the free, searchable content available here. Professor Taylor candidly puts it, in the preface, that this book is substantially the same as the various chapters in his excellent "Hegel" dealing with Hegel's relation to contemporary society. In short, if you own a volume of Taylor's "Hegel" you already have the content of this book--you needn't buy both.

Taylor is amazing

I do not understand why people leave out the page count in those digitally published books. Simply put the page count in some brackets and insert them in the text. Come on guys, you really can do better than that.