never gave up his claim that philosophy covers the qualitative fields of Natur-
philosophie, this was never a prime interest, for he had uncovered a terrain
far more exploitable by historical-dialectical methods, in the human sciences,
which Hegel calls the realm of the Spirit.^39
Here the dialectic provides theoretical guidance for new realms of obser-
vation. The method of showing the one-sidedness of concepts and their de-
pendence on others, when applied to the ideals of morality and politics, leads
to the recognition that such ideals are always social. The freestanding individ-
ual and the moral absolutes of Kant are illusions arising when the viewpoints
of particular historical phases take themselves for absolutes. In Hegel’s eyes,
Fichte’s touting of freedom was superficial sloganeering. Although Hegel him-
self was an enthusiast of the French Revolution, he could express within his
system how the attempt to set up an absolute of freedom can lead to despotism
and Reign of Terror. Hegel opened up the social sciences as disciplines, and
made dialectical philosophy available as an instrument of social criticism.
Already in his Jena period he was arguing that the individual is free only in
the context of property relations; the production of commodities for the market
can lead to a higher unity only under the regulation of the collectivity embodied
in the constitutional state. Reflecting on the relation between nature and
humanity, Hegel broached themes to be taken up by Marx and Engels: the
externalization of the self through labor, thereby overcoming man’s estrange-
ment from the natural world. Hegel kept himself informed about the progress
of industrialization and parliamentary reform in England; the English factory
inspectors, agents of the rational state, constituted his image of what social
progress should look like.^40 Economics as an academic discipline in the German
universities was to follow in Hegel’s footsteps: statist, reform-oriented, anti-
mathematical.
Hegel reconnoitered the terrain of virtually all the social sciences. His
inaugural work for the Berlin chair, his Philosophy of Right (1820), was
especially successful at the time, striking a balance between liberals and con-
servatives and making good on Kant’s claim that philosophers should exercise
influence in the legal faculty as well as every other. His lectures during the
1820s, as the academic system settled into place, were devoted to the philo-
sophical (i.e., theoretical) interpretation of the history of the arts, to world
history, and to the history of his own discipline.
Hegel is like a bright child who has broken into a toy store, enjoying himself
playing in all the fields of knowledge opened up by the academic revolution.
Although he calls it philosophy, it is really the theoretical impulse of the
academic intellectual in a new research field. Once the specialized disciplines
were institutionalized, they would throw off philosophical direction from
above. Hegel’s philosophy became outdated by the conditions of its own
success.
660 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths