SMITH, STEVEN B.

“Hegel and the French Revolution: An Epitaph for

Republicanism.” Social Research, vol. 56, no. 1, 1989, pp. 233–261. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/40970541. Accessed 4 Dec. 2020.

We have two model to measure the French revolutionary change. One was
proposed by Burke, who saw the FR as “an attempt, motivated by misguided theory,
to remake the world and human nature itself according to its own vision”. The second
is Tocqueville’s reading centered on the institutional changes that led to the modern
administrative state, instead of Burke’s emphasis on revolutionary ideology. We
showed that this was a slow process that started 700 years before the FR itself. –
234 – Hegel gives us a third perspective. Between Burke’s characterization of the
“absolute unprecedented character” of the FR and Tocqueville’s “dissolving it into a
kind of loungue durée”, “Hegel wanted to celebrate the revolution, but only after it
had been firmly located and hence ensnared within his own philosophy of history.
Once he had done this, I suggest, it became possible to honor the memory of the
revolution precisely because and to the degree that it no longer represented a
threat.”
“It was Hegel's attempt ultimately to domesticate the revolution by regarding it as a
"moment" but only a moment in the collective Bildung of humanity that constitutes in
my opinion his unique contribution to the interpretation of the French Revolution.” –
235
(…)
For Hegel, the FR was an “apocalyptic ‘moment’ in the destiny of humanity, its
liberation from bondage and servitude” and, at the same time, “a great moral and
political tragedy”. – 241 – Hegel derisively calls the revolutionaries Prinzipienmänner
as they “destroyed the fabric of traditional politics by appealing from the ‘is’ to the
‘ought’, from actually existing but imperfect regime to the one naturally sanctioned
social order”. This was a consequence of the Enlightenment’s concept of natural and
inalienable rights, instead of rights as deriving from a person’s political community. –
242
“Hegel believed that the problems of the French Revolution were caused by its
attempt to instantiate the principles of natural rights enveloped by the philosophers of
the Enlightenment. The problems with the philosophy of rights were threefold: they
rested on (1) a methodologically faulty conception of the self or the subject of rights,
(2) a politically faulty conception of the common good, and (3) a morally faulty
conception of civic virtues”. – 243
In his text on Natural Law, Hegel already attacked the Enlightenment’s theory of
natural right as static, not perceiving the dynamic aspect of human history. The
individual would be something primary and given, instead of a “being in the making,
that is, a creature with a history”. He rejects two different version of natural rights
theory. An “empirical” or naturalistic view, as expressed by Hobbes and Locke –
natural rights could be deduced from certain natural propensities of human beings. –
244 – And a “formal” approach, as expressed by Rousseau and Kant, who presented
natural rights as an “absolute presupposition” grounded in the will.
For Hegel, however, rights are “part of the dynamic structure of history”. – 245 –
“Rights are not, then, a gift of nature but are rooted in the prereflective customs and
habits (Sitten) of a people.” Seeing ourselves as agents capable of autonomous
action is not a natural condition, but as historical achievement. There are no rights
outside context and history. – 246 – There are no rights prior to the community. - 247
(…)
“Hegel's reason for rejecting the revolution's attempt to create the conditions
necessary for the realization of the general will is precisely its lack of attention to the
particularities of context and situation.” The general will can abolish, but never
create. It can destroy, but not build. – 249 – Since everyone should take part in the
decision-making process of the general will, any representative institution would be a
violation of the right to self-legislation. That creates a permanent and implacable
opposition between the people and their government.  
“The inability of the revolution to create a cohesive republican community is not only
related to an empty conception of the common good but to an equally vacuous
notion of civic virtue. Following Rousseau, the revolutionaries saw the new French
republic as based on an austere, self-sacrificing conception of virtue in which private
goals were ruthlessly subordinated to the pursuit of the public good.” – 250 - Since
the only standard for man’s virtue is his own sincerity, they are now judged by their
subjective convictions and not their actions. – 251 – The idea of virtue proposed by
Robespierre was the immediate identification of oneself with the “immense poverty
and suffering of the majority of the French people”, but this was a compassion
towards an abstract other. This, following Arendt’s interpretation, led to despotism
and terror, a “pious cruelty”. – 252
“Hegel's critique of the French Revolution should be seen, then, as an epitaph for
republicanism. The language of republicanism, as Montesquieu had demonstrated
before him, belongs ineluctably to the past. The failure of the revolution to create
anything faintly resembling the Greek polis or the Roman res publica stemmed from
its utter lack of connectedness to the present. In its original form republicanism was
animated by the goals of political comradeship, fraternity, and communal solidarity.
But as the two greatest republican theorists of modernity, Machiavelli and Rousseau,
acknowledged, these virtues could also be narrow, particularistic, and intolerant.
Valuing public freedom above all else, republicanism as led to act with a kind of
punitive zeal against all those who fail or refuse to participate in the corporate
project.” – 253
Hegel’s treatment of the revolutionary hero is also important to understand what he
identifies as the FR’s contribution to world history. The revolutionary hero is the
“person responsible for large-scale social and political change”, but there is no direct
connection between his intentions and the objective consequences of his or her
deeds. Hegel’s names this the “cunning of reason”. – 254 – (…) – Once History is
done with them, they are abandoned to their own fate, as happened with
Robespierre. – 256
(…)