Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History

234 Pages·1984·9.661 MB·English

by  Michael Allen Gillespie

Hegel, Heidegger,
and the Ground
of History

Heidegger.
m
and the ground of ^^ ^^
• • • • Michael
History AEU
The University of Chicago Press • Chicago & London
MICHAEL ALLEN GILLESPIE is assistant professor of political science at Duke
University
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1984 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1984
Printed in the United States of America
93 92 91 90 89 88 87 86 85 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gillespie, Michael Allen.
Hegel, Heidegger, and the ground of history.
Based on the author's thesis.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. History—Philosophy—History—19th century.
2. History—Philosophy—History—20th century. 3. Hegel,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. 4. Heidegger, Martin,
1889-1976. I. Title.
D16.8.G535 1984 901 84-2472
ISBN 0-226-29376-9
To my parents,
Charles and Eileen Gillespie

Contents
Preface ix
1. The Question of History 1
2. The Question of the Ground of History 24
The Question of the Ground of History in
Rousseau and Kant as the Antinomy of
Freedom and Natural Necessity
Hegel's Reception of the Antinomy: The Revolution
of Freedom and the Tyranny of Natural Desire
The Collapse of Spiritual Unity in Germany
From Antinomy to Dialectic
3. The Ground of History as Phenomenology 56
The Search for Reconciliation in Hegel's
Early Thought
Hegel's Science of the Phenomenology of Spirit
The "Introduction"
4. The Philosophy of History and the Question of Its
Ground 85
The Phenomenology and the Philosophy of History
Absolute Knowledge, Science, and the Ground
Critique and Conclusions
viii Contents
5. History as Being 116
Heidegger's Critique of Modernity
Heidegger's Critique of Metaphysics
as the History of Being
The Revelation of Being as Nihilism
and History
Critique and Conclusions
List of Abbreviations 177
Notes 179
Bibliography 205
Index 213
Preface
W
hat is history? The importance and scope of this question for our
times is only vaguely and then only imperfectly understood. De
spite this lack of comprehension, and whether we like it or not, we dwell in
the midst of this question, only rarely, if ever, experiencing it as a question
but continually confronted with and challenged by its various answers. The
question itself permeates all of our thinking about ourselves and our
civilization, but it would be erroneous to assume that its importance is
therefore merely theoretical—or to believe that the theoretical and spir
itual, however distinguished from the practical and material, can in this case
be completely or even largely dissociated from them, or that the political
and economic well-being of man and his civilization is not inextricably
bound up with his reflective consideration of himself, his political circum
stances, and the state of his civilization.
There are two great intellectual forces in the modern world, science and
history, and while they often seem mutually antagonistic they are in fact
fundamentally complementary. Modern science determines the causal laws
that govern the motions of matter but, in contradistinction to ancient
science, eschews teleology and thus any determination of human ends.
While it may thus present humanity with supreme knowledge of the
mechanism of nature and open up the possibility for the technological
conquest of the natural world and indeed of human nature itself, it does not
and in principle it cannot tell us what we ought to do or how we ought to
live. It is this question that history answers.
History of course is not modernity's only answer to this question. Empir
icism for example answered this question with the doctrine of natural
rights; rationalism discovered a solution in rational theology; humanism
and classicism looked to ancient concepts of virtue and individuality; and
ix