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Time and History in Hegelian
Thought and Spirit
Time and History in
Hegelian Thought
and Spirit
S A L LY SE D G W IC K
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 In memoriam

Graham Bird
Axel Kopido
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty
Judith Jarvis Thomson
 Contents

Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction1
1. History and Human Finitude: Kant versus Hegel 18
1.1 Kant on World History and Finitude: Introduction 20
1.2 Principal Theses of Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History” 23
1.3 Comparing Kant and Hegel on World History: Points of Intersection 35
1.4 Hegel versus Kant on World History 39
2. Hegel’s “Philosophic” Approach to World History 45
2.1 Three Methods for Considering History: Original, Reflective,
Philosophic47
2.2 Resolving the Contradiction Between Original and
Reflective History 58
2.3 Our a priori Idea of History must Submit to the Test of History 65
3. Necessity in Hegel’s Philosophy of History 67
3.1 The Necessity of History: Three Initial Interpretations 69
3.2 History’s Necessity: Further Precision 73
3.3 External versus Internal Purposes 89
3.4 On the Subjectivity and Resulting Externality of Kantian Purposes 93
3.5 Conclusion: The Idea of Freedom Gives History Its Necessity 95
4. Hegel’s Fatalism as a Theory of Freedom 98
4.1 Ancient versus Modern Conceptions of Necessity 101
4.2 Reconciling Ourselves to Necessity: Three Interpretative Proposals 108
4.3 Conclusion 113
5. Freedom’s Necessary Limits 117
5.1 Human Freedom: In but not Reducible to Nature 118
5.2 Freedom: Achieved versus Given 124
5.3 Generating Freedom’s Content 128
5.4 Contingency in the Course of Human History 132
5.5 Conclusion 137
6. Thought’s Temporality 139
6.1 Preliminary Evidence of Hegel’s Commitment to Thought’s
Temporality143
6.2 The Knowability Thesis 151
viii Contents

6.3 Hegel’s “Philosophic” Method Revisited 158

6.4 The Realizability Thesis: The Actuality of the Rational
and the Rationality of the Actual 161
6.5 Conclusion: A “Rose in the Cross of the Present” 166
7. Coda: Permanence in Hegelian Thought and Spirit 169
7.1 Roles for Permanence in Hegel’s System 171
7.2 Further Roles for Permanence 174
7.3 Philosophy’s Debt to Its History 178

Works Cited 183

Index 191
 Acknowledgements

This book has been about a decade in the making, and I have accumulated many
debts along the way. I began turning my attention to the philosophy of history
during a research leave in 2011–2012 as a Humanities Institute Fellow at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. In the first half of 2015, I had the good fortune to
spend a semester at the Freie Universität of Berlin, thanks to the Fulbright Scholar
Research program. I enjoyed a further research leave at the Freie Universität in
the spring of 2017, supported by the generosity of the Alexander von Humboldt-­
Stiftung and my hosts Professors Georg Bertram and Dina Emundts. In Chicago,
I benefitted from conversations especially with Mark Alznauer, Karl Ameriks,
Elizabeth Millán Brusslan, Nicolás García Mills (who gave me extensive com-
ments on Chapter 5), and Rachel Zuckert. Over the years, my thinking about the
subject matter of this book has been enriched as well by conversations with fur-
ther friends and colleagues, including Giulia Battistoni, Willem deVries, Thomas
Khurana, Daniel Feige, Rolf-­Peter Horstmann, Stephen Houlgate, Claus Langbehn,
Francesca Menegoni, Dean Moyar, Angelica Nuzzo, Julia Peters, Terry Pinkard,
Paul Redding, Michael Rosen, Birgit Sandkaulen, and Allen Speight. I am also
indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press whose sug-
gestions guided me in making improvements to the manuscript. I owe thanks to
my editor, Peter Momtchiloff, for his professionalism and encouragement. Finally,
I wish to express my love and gratitude to my two most constant personal sources
of support, Peter Hylton and Robert Sedgwick.
Earlier versions of some of my discussions have appeared elsewhere. Chapter 2
draws heavily from my paper, “Philosophy of History”, Oxford Handbook on 19th
Century German Philosophy, eds Michael Forster and Kirstin Gjesdal (Oxford
University Press, 2015), 436–452. Material of Chapter 3, section 3.2, appears in my
papers, “Two Kantian Arguments for the Speculative Basis of our Science of Nature”,
in Ethics and Religion between German Classical Philosophy and Contemporary
Thought, eds Luca Illeterati and Michael Quante (Padova University Press, 2020),
39–57, and in “Remarks on History, Contingency and Necessity in Hegel’s Logic”, in
Hegel on Philosophy in History, eds Rachel Zuckert and James Kreines (Cambridge
University Press, 2017), 33–49. Sections 3.3 and 3.4 of Chapter 3 draw from my
paper, “Innere versus äußere Zweckmäßigkeit in Hegels Philosophie der
Geschichte”, Hegel-­Studien 51 (2017): 11–28. Material from my paper, “Reconciling
Ourselves to the Contingency that is a Moment of Actuality: Hegel on Freedom’s
Transformative Nature”, makes its way into Chapter 4, section 4.1. In Wirklichkeit:
Beiträge zu einem Schlüsselbegriff der Hegelschen Philosophie, eds Luca Illetterati and
x Acknowledgements

Francesca Menegoni (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 2018), 249–261.

Finally, Chapter 5 draws from three papers: “On Becoming Ethical: The Emergence
of Freedom in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, in The Freedom of Life: Hegelian
Perspectives, ed. Thomas Khurana (Berlin: Der Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter
König, 2012), 209–227. Published in German as, “Die Emergenz des sittlichen
Charakters in Hegels Philosophie des Rechts”, Akten des Hegel-­Kongress Stuttgart
2011, Veröffentlichungen der Internationalen Hegel-­ Vereinigung, Bd. 25, eds
Gunnar Hindrichs and Axel Honneth (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag
2013), 513–527; “Our All-­Too-­Human Hegelian Agency”, Palgrave Handbook of
German Idealism, ed. Matthew C. Altman (Palgrave-­Macmillan, 2014), 648–664;
“Hegel’s Encyclopedia as a Science of Freedom”, Cambridge Critical Guide to Hegel’s
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, ed. Sebastian Stein and Joshua Wretzel
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 28–45. I thank the publishers of
these works for their permission to reproduce the above-­mentioned material.
 Abbreviations

In the body of this work and in footnotes, I provide page references first to English and
then to German editions of primary texts, and separate pages of the two editions with an
oblique (/). Below, are the abbreviations I use for works of Kant and Hegel that I cite most
frequently. I list the English translations I most often consult (and occasionally modify).

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Although I have consulted Hegel’s Gesammelte Werke, ed. Rheinisch-­Westfälische Akademie
der Wissenschaften (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968– ), my references to Hegel’s works in German
are to the Werke in zwanzig Bänden, eds Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969–1970). I have chosen to cite the Suhrkamp
edition because it is the edition my readers are most likely to have at hand.

Aesth I Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. I, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975).
Vorlesung über die Ästhetik I. In Werke vol. 13.
EL The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris
(Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1991). This is a
translation of the third edition of Hegel’s Enzyklopädie (the Philosophische
Bibliothek edition of 1830, an expanded version of his first edition published
in 1817).
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic
Outline: Part I, Science of Logic, trans. Klaus Brinkman and Daniel O. Dahlstrom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrissen (1830), erster
Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik. In Werke vol. 8.
EG Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical
Sciences (1830), trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrissen (1830), dritter
Teil: die Philosophie des Geistes. In Werke vol. 10.
PH Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis and
Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1988).
Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. In Werke vol. 12.
PhG Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. and trans. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2018).
Phänomenologie des Geistes. In Werke vol. 3.
PR Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allen Wood
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
xii Abbreviations

Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im

Grundrisse. In Werke vol. 7.
SL Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
International, Inc., 1991).
WL I Wissenschaft der Logik I. In Werke vol. 5.
WL II Wissenschaft der Logik II. In Werke vol. 6.
Theol. Early Theological Writings: G. W. F. Hegel, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981).
Frühe Schriften. In Werke vol. 1.

Immanuel Kant
References to Kant’s works in German are to the Akademie edition [“Ak”], Kants gesammelte
Schriften, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900–1942).
In the case of the Critique of Pure Reason, I provide the pagination of the “A” and “B”
Akademie editions, respectively.

CJ Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987).

Kritik der Urteilskraft. In Ak vol. 5.
CPR Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and eds Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Kritik der reinen Vernunft. ‘A’ edition in Ak vol. 3; ‘B’ edition in Ak vol. 4.
Idea “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”, in On History:
Immanuel Kant, trans. and ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-­
Merrill Company, Inc., 1963), 11–26.
AK vol. 8.
 Introduction

“Nothing in the past is lost [to philosophy] . . .”

(G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History)

A conspicuous feature of Hegel’s major works is that they are developmental

­narratives. His narratives are moreover progressive: they invariably advance from
less to more perfect, abstract to concrete, indeterminate or empty to determinate.
In some of Hegel’s writings (for example, his lectures on aesthetics and on the
history of philosophy), the developments quite obviously track stages of ‘real’
chronological progress, from one historical epoch to the next; they tie moments
in the history of ideas to actual figures and events. There is development even
when Hegel’s discussions seem barely connected to world history. Although his
most abstract work, the Science of Logic, contains very few references to historical
figures and hardly resembles what we would typically consider a history of logic,
Hegel nonetheless describes its principal object, the “Concept [Begriff ]”, as
unfolding in stages. The story has a beginning, middle, and end; it is unified by a
certain plot. The Concept itself and our knowledge of it is presented as a series of
transitions from abstract and empty to increasingly concrete or determinate.
Hegel discovers development everywhere: in organisms, in our concepts,
philosophical systems and assumptions, and in our freedom. It is safe to say
that development in the form of transitions from lower to higher stages or
moments is a key feature of his entire system. There appears to be a connection,
too, between his interest in development and his commitment to the “dialectical”
nature of “everything”, for dialectic seems to be what moves the various pro-
gressions along.1
Why is it so important for Hegel to structure his various philosophical works
as developmental narratives? Is this simply a stylistic preference? Has he con-
vinced himself that he is more likely to capture his readers’ attention if his discus-
sions are written after the fashion of coming-­of-­age stories, or Bildungsromane? Is

1 “Everything around us can be considered an instance of the dialectical [Alles, was uns umgibt,
kann als Beispiel des Dialektischen betrachtet werden]” (EL §81A1). Here, and frequently in this work,
I quote from an “Addition [Zusatz]”, in this case Addition 1. The Additions to Hegel’s texts are compi-
lations of student notes taken during his lectures; they should not be assumed to represent his words
verbatim.
2 Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit

this how he hopes to ensure that even his dauntingly abstract Science of Logic will
be a lively read?
It might be thought that, especially in the case of Hegel’s most obviously histor-
ical works, the answer to these questions is relatively banal: he structures his dis-
cussions developmentally because he is a philosopher who takes a serious interest
in history. He immerses himself in studies of the past, discovers differences in the
thinking of his predecessors and contemporaries, and sets out to catalogue the
vast variety in the history of ideas. This explanation becomes even more plausible
if we add to it an acknowledgement of Hegel’s faith in progress. It then seems that
we can account for his preoccupation with the past by noting his confidence that
the present is an improvement. Whether the focus of his attention is religion,
logic, or living organisms, his story is not one of mere change but of growth. He
looks back and records development in order to reassure us that, despite the
abundant conflict and suffering in our midst, the arc of history is bending towards
justice. He aims to establish that there has been progress in our thinking, in our
self-­consciousness and freedom.
No doubt, Hegel was both keenly interested in history and convinced that it
contains evidence of progress; but there is nonetheless more to say about why he
crafted his major works as developmental stories. Although he defends the
thesis that his own age is in significant respects an improvement over the past,
his purpose in structuring his philosophical works as progressive narratives
is presumably not just to please or comfort us. His motivation is as much
metaphysical as it is practical. That is, Hegel intends his developmental
accounts to reveal something significant about who we are as thinking, willing
natures. He wishes to demonstrate that, in a certain respect, our reason and
freedom themselves have ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ forms. Expressed differently, he
undertakes his study of past or ‘lower’ forms in order to establish how there
have been advances in the nature of human thought or reason itself and in our
resulting freedom.
It is this metaphysical lesson that I am principally concerned to explore in the
present work. If we assume, as I think we should, that Hegel is committed to the
assumption that there is development in human reason itself, then questions such
as the following arise: Is it his view that everything about human reason develops,
including the features that distinguish it as a capacity from our other capacities?
Or, does he rather hold that what develops is merely our idea of reason, or per-
haps reason’s laws and concepts? And how does the development come about?
Development cannot for Hegel be the product of mere chance, if by this we mean
that there are no necessary connections among thoughts or events. If there are
only accidental connections, then there is nothing by means of which we can dis-
cover a pattern or unifying idea; and without a pattern or unity, there can be
nothing identifiable as development. There has to be a pattern, but how and out of
what does the pattern emerge?
 Introduction 3

Hegel sometimes conveys the impression that he is convinced not just that
there is a pattern but that the pattern is set in advance. It is as if he takes the pro-
gressive unfolding of our thought and freedom to be predetermined, perhaps
planned—­or at least as if planned—­by a sub specie aeternitatis or divine intelli-
gence. After all, he frequently describes his developmental tales as unfolding with
“necessity”.2 He refers to his philosophy of history as a “theodicy [Theodizee]”—a
“justification of the ways of God”—and portrays world history as the “march of
God in the world” (PH 16–18/26–33, 39/53; PR §258A). He compares the journey
of Spirit to the growth of a plant whose properties are originally contained in a
simple seed (PH 82/75; EL §161A). Spirit’s “first traces [ersten Spuren]”, he says,
“virtually contain all history” (PH 21/31).
There is a long tradition of interpreting Hegel in this way, that is, as committed
to the thesis that the course of reason’s development is to a significant extent fixed
in advance. Whether cast in theological or in secular terms, the basic idea is that
the basic forms or concepts of Hegel’s Logic and philosophy of Spirit have a pre-
determined content, a content set by nature or pure reason or perhaps by a tran-
scendent and all-­powerful cause (a “puppet-­master”, as Stephen Houlgate aptly
terms it).3 On this reading, Hegel awards history no role in generating our most
basic laws and concepts of reason or freedom. History is the theater in which the
predetermined forms unfold. In some instances, history supplies the impetus for
their activation or expression.
This general line of interpretation motivates for example Karl Marx’s charge, in
The German Ideology, that the Hegelian deploys presumably ready-­made ideas in
its consideration of nature and human activity, and in this manner “descends
from heaven to earth”.4 It underlies John Dewey’s remark, in The Quest for
Certainty, that Hegel locates the human mind and its forms wholly outside
­history, “outside what is known”, and therefore clings to a “spectator” theory of
knowledge.5 The assumption that Hegel considers the mind to have pre-­given and
fixed concepts and laws is evident in contemporary readings as well. It shows up,
for instance, as resistance to the suggestion that basic Hegelian concepts (such as
Being and Essence) are empirical or changeable.6 It is responsible, too, for a cer-
tain skepticism about the thesis that Hegelian freedom, rather than an inborn

2 The “immanent development [inneren Gang] of Spirit”, Hegel asserts in his Lectures on the
Philosophy of History, is “necessary [Notwendige]” (PH 28/41).
3 In Freedom, Truth and History: An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1991), 38.
Frederick Beiser provides a useful overview (and critique) of such “Platonic” readings of Hegel in
“Hegel’s Historicism”, in Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. F. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 276–278.
4 In Part I, section A.
5 In The Quest for Certainty (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929), 23.
6 In “Hegel and Brandom on Norms, Concepts and Logical Categories”, Stephen Houlgate chastises
Robert Brandom for ignoring the special status of certain Hegelian concepts, namely those that “con-
stitute the implicit preconditions of the employment of empirical concepts”, 143. In German Idealism:
Contemporary Perspectives, ed. E. Hammer (New York: Routledge, 2007), 137–152. Houlgate would
4 Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit

capacity responsible for unchangeable a priori laws, is an achievement that is

highly dependent upon historical forces.7
As I hope to establish in this study, however, the necessity Hegel attributes to
Spirit’s and reason’s development is not evidence that he endorses the assumption
that our basic forms or concepts have a predetermined content, a content that is
determinate enough to significantly fix in advance the course of world history. On
my reading, Hegel argues instead that the advances are propelled forward by
causal and/or conceptual interactions that obtain between our powers or faculties
and the actual world in which they get expressed. Borrowing his vocabulary, we
could describe this interaction as occurring between what is “rational [vernünftig]”,
on the one side, and what is “actual [wirklich]”, on the other. What Hegel’s devel-
opmental narratives reveal is that even reason’s most abstract products—­the laws
and concepts that appear maximally stable and unchangeable—­come into being
in response to real events in human time, the time we measure by calendars and
clocks. Although he frequently describes the advances as proceeding according to
reason’s or Spirit’s “immanent” nature or principle, I will argue that this claim is
consistent with his commitment to the thesis that this actual world, this realm of
generation and destruction over which we possess only limited control, has a sig-
nificant role to play in moving the progressions along.
I can now provisionally formulate my central objective in this book. My aim is
to specify the extent to which we can accurately attribute to Hegel the view that
human reason and the freedom it affords us are indebted for their nature to this
temporal order of nature and history. Hegel’s concern with our reason’s develop-
ment conveys not just his fascination with the past but his interest in how reason
responds to and is anchored in and shaped by its past. On the reading I defend,
Hegelian reason has its basis not beyond but rather in our actual world; it is
indebted to its past for what it essentially is. One of my main challenges will be to
make this thesis precise.
In a moment, I will expand on what I mean by the “nature” of reason and free-
dom, but I first want to mention a corollary to my central thesis. Although Hegel
argues for the “necessity” of reason’s development, he also appreciates that much
that happens in this actual world is outside our control. In his view, the necessity
of the forward movement is compatible with forces that are in this respect acci-
dental or contingent.8 As we will see, the compatibility Hegel sets out to defend

therefore seem to be on the side of those who insist that certain concepts are for Hegel absolutely a
priori. I assess the extent to which Houlgate is right about this in Chapter 6, section 2.
7 For a good recent example of this debate, see John McDowell’s critique of Robert Pippin’s
“achievement” interpretation of Hegelian Spirit, in “Why Does it Matter to Hegel that Geist has a
History?”, in Hegel on Philosophy in History, eds R. Zuckert and J. Kreines (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017), 18, 21. I return to this issue in section two of Chapter 5.
8 It is not the case, then, that Hegel is out to eliminate contingency entirely. In defending this posi-
tion, I ally myself with, among others, John W. Burbridge, Hegel’s Systematic Congingency (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 190; Emil Fackenheim, Religious Dimension: “the entire Hegelian
 Introduction 5

should not be understood as obtaining between two distinct forces (necessary

and contingent) operating side by side, as if on parallel tracks. Rather, the forces
are compatible because, although distinguishable, they are somehow intimately
interconnected.
As for the “nature” of Hegelian freedom and reason, I mean to refer, first, to
their being as capacities. In the case of freedom, for example, I argue that Hegel
describes our freedom as a faculty indebted to this actual world for its origin. Our
freedom has emerged out of our ‘lower’ animal powers (such as feeling and
instinct) and owes its properties to this developmental process. Human freedom,
then, is for Hegel a natural (versus “noumenal”) power. Its features and function-
ality are produced in human time, and we can give an account (a history) of its
emergence, as Hegel does especially in his anthropological reflections.9
This is one respect in which our freedom’s nature is indebted to what is actual,
and I consider Hegel’s defense of this assumption in Chapter 5. By the “nature” of
freedom and reason, however, I also mean to refer to the products of these powers.
I argue in addition, then, that Hegel holds that the laws and concepts of our
­freedom and reason come to be as responses to the interactions of real, tempo-
rally located thinkers with events occurring in this actual world. His position is
not just that laws and concepts of our freedom and reason show up in historically
locatable institutions such as practical laws, systems of philosophy and religion,
and the arts. He holds, in addition, that manifestations or expressions of reason
and freedom rely for their very being on the engagements of real, temporally
located thinkers and agents with nature and history.
To convey the gist of the line of interpretation I will be defending, it may help
to describe my project as that of exploring the implications, for Hegelian reason
and freedom, of his one-­world ontology, or monism. Hegel nowhere denies that
we take ourselves to be capable of imagining worlds other than or outside this

philosophy, far from denying the contingent, . . . seeks to demonstrate its inescapability” (p. 4, see also
p. 19); Dieter Henrich, “Hegels Theorie über den Zufall”, Kant-­Studien 50 (1958–1959): 131–148;
Houlgate, Freedom, Truth and History, see especially, 18; Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel:
Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, trans. L. During (New York: Routledge, 2005); Terry Pinkard,
Does History Make Sense? Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice (Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press, 2017); see also Paul Redding, who characterizes Hegel’s system as “radically fallibilist”,
in Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 228f.
9 A moment ago, I characterized Hegel’s concern as “metaphysical”. My point in that context was
that his developmental narratives serve not just practical ends but are intended to reveal something
important about the very nature or being of reason and Spirit. My reading of Hegel nonetheless
belongs among those typically classified as “non-metaphysical”. The “non-­metaphysical” reading
assumes that Hegel’s system avoids reliance on a purportedly transcendent or extra-­temporal reason.
Of course, this leaves open just how and to what extent Hegelian reason is of nature (or naturalized).
Leaving that complication aside for now, the non-­metaphysical (or anti-­Platonic) reading has a long
list of adherents, and much has recently been written about Hegel’s “naturalism” especially by those
who read Hegel as much more of an Aristotelean than a Platonist. In this work, which foregrounds
Hegel’s philosophy of history, I have been most influenced by the views of Emil Fackenheim, Stephen
Houlgate, Walter Jaeschke, Joseph McCarney, and Terry Pinkard.
6 Time and History in Hegelian Thought and Spirit

actual one. He grants that we can in a certain respect coherently articulate the
idea, for instance, of a noumenal realm lurking behind this empirically accessible
realm of phenomena. On the interpretation I defend, however, Hegel holds that
even our thoughts of other possible worlds are rooted in and therefore beholden
to this actual world. None of us is able to wholly transcend our time in thought.
For this reason, none of us can generate an idea of a world beyond this one that is
entirely adequate to its object. Strictly speaking, then, it is not possible for us to
think about other possible worlds.10
As I just mentioned, my proposal that Hegelian reason and freedom are
indebted to and anchored in this actual world should not be taken to imply sim-
ply that it is in this actual world that these capacities manifest or express them-
selves. I am making the more controversial suggestion that, in a certain respect,
these faculties owe their nature to this actual world. This thesis is more difficult to
clarify as well as defend. We can appreciate some of the difficulty if we bear in
mind that the thesis cannot be reformulated as the suggestion that the nature and
content of human reason cannot for Hegel be fully accounted for with reference
to the physical forces governing nature and human behavior. On the interpreta-
tion I argue for here, reason emerges out of nature, on Hegel’s account, but it does
not reduce to nature in the following respect: human reason is significantly dis-
tinguishable from our other natural powers and not a mere species of instinct.
Human reason is anchored in nature, and in exercising it, we cannot completely
abstract our way out of this actual world. Nonetheless, our reason sets us apart
from other animal natures insofar as it endows us with special powers that they
lack, namely the powers to reflect and abstract, powers responsible for our self-­
awareness and freedom.
Not only does Hegel avoid a reductive naturalism of the kind I just sketched, he
should also not be classified as a shallow historicist. For reasons I elaborate in
Chapter 3, it is not his objective to persuade us that the products of our reason
and freedom simply mirror the choices and preferences of temporally located
agents, whatever those choices and preferences happen to be. Hegel insists that
his histories of freedom and reason are more than mere records of actual prefer-
ences and opinions regarding what is good or true. He repeatedly tells us that, in

10 The Hegelian thesis that none of us can wholly transcend our time in thought provides the basis,
I believe, for his critique of “empty formalism”. In charging that, for example, Kant’s supreme moral
law or categorical imperative is an empty formalism, Hegel acknowledges Kant’s motivation for
defending the law’s emptiness. Kant needs the law to be empty of content, because he seeks to estab-
lish its universal and necessarily validity. In fact, however, the law “presupposes content”, Hegel argues,
because it rests on historically contingent assumptions about the nature of our freedom, assumptions
he believes world history has progressed beyond. For Hegel, any effort to defend the “emptiness” of
reason’s laws or concepts must fail precisely because human reason is in the world rather than beyond
it. I defend this interpretation of Hegel’s empty formalism critique in, “Hegel on the Empty Formalism
of Kant’s Categorical Imperative”, in A Companion to Hegel, eds S. Houlgate and M. Baur (Blackwell
Publishing, 2012), 265–280.
 Introduction 7

arguing for the rationality of the actual, he is not voicing his allegiance to
­“positive” accounts of the origin of our norms. Instead, he holds that there can
be independent rational standards for judging our philosophical systems and
practical laws. To put this point differently, Hegel’s system preserves a certain
dualism between “is” and “ought”. He insists that he can rationally justify his thesis
that human freedom has been making progress in its journey through time.11
Among the many challenges we will face in this work is that of explaining just
how Hegel can defend his commitment to independent rational standards. At this
point, we can provisionally suggest that a judgment can qualify as genuinely inde-
pendent, on his account, without deriving its authority from outside human
history—­from a transcendent or God’s eye point of view. Hegel wishes to con-
vince us that our power of thought affords us enough abstraction to yield stan-
dards for judging that are based on reasons rather than mere preferences.12
Independent rational standards are possible, but independence does not require
total transcendence.

Structure and Argumentative Strategy

This completes my summary of what I intend to argue in this book. Again, the
general interpretative picture emphasizes the debt of Hegelian reason to what is.
The basic idea is that, for all its power to shape and master reality, reason’s nature
is also shaped by forces of nature and history, on Hegel’s account—­forces over
which we have little or no control. As I read him, Hegel paves the way for the his-
torical materialisms of Marx and others who call into question a certain concep-
tion of human reason’s autonomy, and ask us to appreciate the extent to which
ideas are responsive to and anchored in material reality, whether real economic
forces (Marx) or psychological drives (Nietzsche, Freud).13
Those familiar with the secondary literature will appreciate that I am far from
alone in defending this general line of interpretation. Others have stressed the

11 An influential expression of the charge that Hegel was a positivist seeking to justify the reaction-
ary Prussian practices of his time appeared already in 1857, in Rudolf Haym’s Hegel und seine Zeit.
Similar charges made their way into the writings of prominent figures such as Marx and Engels, the
late Schelling, Alexander Kojève, and Karl Popper. I return to the topic of Hegel’s alleged positivism in
Chapter 3, but for a good summary of the charges that Hegel was a positivist and apologist for the
status quo, see Jon Stewart’s “Hegel and the Myth of Reason”, in The Hegel Myths and Legends, ed.
J. Stewart (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 306–318. Another useful resource is
Shlomo Avineri’s now classic, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge and New York,
Cambridge University Press, 1972).
12 In Chapter 5, I say more about this distinction between preferences or desires and reasons, and
suggest that Hegel considers the distinction to be one of degree than of kind.
13 Marx did not understand his historical materialism to be indebted to Hegel, but I believe this is
because he misinterpreted Hegel. For a good overview of the Hegel/Marx relation, see Allen Wood’s
“Hegel and Marxism”, in Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. F. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 414–444.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Betty Wales &
Co.: A story for girls
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Betty Wales & Co.: A story for girls

Author: Edith K. Dunton

Illustrator: Eva M. Nagel

Release date: July 18, 2022 [eBook #68551]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The Penn Publishing

Company, 1909

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (The New York Public
Library's Digital Collections)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY

WALES & CO.: A STORY FOR GIRLS ***
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
BETTY WALES
& CO.
A STORY FOR GIRLS
by

MARGARET WARDE
AUTHOR OF
BETTY WALES FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES JUNIOR
BETTY WALES SENIOR
BETTY WALES B.A.

ILLUSTRATED BY
EVA M NAGEL

THE PENN
PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIX
COPYRIGHT
1909 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
 INTRODUCTION
Many of the girls who will read this book have already made the
acquaintance of Betty Wales, and know all about her adventures at
Harding College, from her rollicking freshman days to the time when
she was a “grave and reverend senior”—and was always being
mistaken for a freshman, nevertheless. Mary Brooks graduated from
Harding a year before Betty, and she always considered that this
gave her the privilege of patronizing her friends in 19—, Betty’s
class. Madeline joined 19— in its sophomore year, and Babbie
Hildreth (she and her friends Babe and Bob were known collectively
as the three B’s) was another of the shining lights of that famous
class. She and Madeline and Betty planned the tea-room, though
only in fun, during a trip abroad that came as a grand finale to their
college days. You can read all about that in “Betty Wales, B. A.,”
which also tells about Mary Brooks’s “impromptu” wedding. But you
will have to go back to “Betty Wales, Senior,” to find out how Mary’s
“little friends” discovered that she was interested in Professor
Hinsdale. There are a lot of other things that you will want to know
about Betty and her friends—if you like them—in “Betty Wales,
Freshman,” “Betty Wales, Sophomore,” and “Betty Wales, Junior.”
Margaret Warde.
 CONTENTS
I. Unpleasant Discoveries 9
II. Betty Wales, “M. A.” 24
III. That Tea-Room Again 39
IV. Plans and Parties 56
V. The Real Thing 74
VI. Eugenia Ford’s Luncheon 97
VII. Mary, the Perfect Patron 113
VIII. Young-Man-Over-the-Fence 128
IX. An Order for a Party 145
X. Unexpected Visitors 162
XI. The Advent of the Ploshkin 181
XII. A Tragic Disappearance 198
XIII. More “Side-Lines” 221
XIV. The Revolt of the “Why-Get-Ups” 236
XV. A Sea of Troubles 252
XVI. The Mystery Solved 270
XVII. A Magnate to the Rescue 291
XVIII. A Romance and a Burglary 307
XIX. The Amazing Mr. Smith and Other
Amazements 329
XX. A Final Excitement 346
 Illustrations
PAGE
“What Are You Doing Here?” Frontispiece
“How are We Going to Work?” 62
She Stopped the Girls as they Went Out 117
“This Tea-Shop Closes at Six” 148
True Stories of Dolls 190
They Intercepted the President 303
“Come Along Now” 325
Betty Wales & Co.
Betty Wales & Co.
 CHAPTER I
UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES

“The very loveliest part of going abroad is coming home again!”

laughed Betty Wales, trying to kiss her mother, hug the smallest
sister, and rush into her father’s outstretched arms all at one and the
same minute. Fortunately Will and Nan had had their turns at the
station, and the smallest sister’s kitten had run away at the critical
moment; otherwise matters would have been hopelessly
complicated.
“I hope you’ll always feel just that way, dear,” said Mrs. Wales.
“We’re mighty glad to have you back, child,” added father, with a
queer little catch in his merry voice.
“Have you got anything for me in your trunk, Betty?” demanded
the smallest sister, who was a very practical young person.
“Lots of things, dear,” Betty assured her gaily, “and something for
the kitten, even if she isn’t here to say ‘how do you do’ to me.”
“We’ll have dinner first,” mother insisted laughingly.
“And then we’ll all sit around in an expectant circle and watch
Betty unpack,” added Nan.
“I’ve stopped being expectant since I’ve heard the news,” put in
Will. “She’s brought back money. How’s that, dad, for one of the
Wales family?”
“Well, there weren’t any emergencies,” Betty explained earnestly.
“So of course I could save my emergency fund.”
“Seeing something that she wants in a store-window is Nan’s
definition of an emergency,” declared Will.
 “What’s yours?” retorted Nan. “Besides, haven’t I turned over a
new leaf this month, and isn’t it this very next week that I’m to begin
earning my own bread and butter and jam?”
“What do you mean, Nan?” demanded Betty in amazement.
“Oh, your college course and your trip abroad have bankrupted
father,” laughed Nan; and then, seeing Betty’s expression of genuine
distress, “No, dear, only we are an expensive family and hopelessly
extravagant, as Will says, and times are bad. Anyway I’m tired of
rushing around, studying and traveling and amusing myself. So
when two of the girls in my class, who have a school in Boston,
offered me a job, I jumped at it. Don’t you think I’m likely to make a
stunning school-ma’am?”
“Of course,” Betty assured her promptly. “You’re so bright. But I
thought you hated Boston, and you always said that Ethel was so
silly to drudge at teaching when she didn’t need to.”
“But can’t I change my mind?” asked Nan gaily.
“I suppose so.” Betty looked in a puzzled way around the family
group. “Only——”
“Only dinner is ready,” suggested mother again; and all through
the meal the talk was about Betty’s voyage home, with its exciting
storm, and her visit to Harding, with Georgia’s gargoyle party and
Mary Brooks’s absurd methods of housekeeping as main features of
interest. The minute dinner was over the smallest sister caught Betty
around the waist, and whispered something in her ear.
“All right, dear,” Betty promised. “You shan’t have to wait another
minute to see what I’ve brought you.” And they all, except Will and
Mr. Wales, who preferred the library and the evening papers,
adjourned to Betty’s room to help unpack.
“Such a mess!” she sighed, as she uncovered the top tray. “You
see I took out some things on shipboard, and then Mary and Roberta
and Bob and Georgia all wanted to see what we’d brought home,
and of course I was in too much of a rush to put things back straight.
Besides, it wasn’t worth while to be particular, when all my clothes
need mending or pressing or something. Move back, little sister, so I
can have room for the Katie pile. It’s going to be about all Katie pile,
I’m afraid.”
“Is the Katie pile what you want Katie to fix in the sewing-room?”
inquired the smallest sister. “Because we haven’t got Katie any
more, so you’ll have to call it something else.”
“Haven’t got Katie any more!” Betty’s face wore an expression of
blank amazement. “Has Katie left?”
“I thought we could get on without her,” Mrs. Wales explained
hastily. “I have so little to do, now that my girls are all grown up.
Dorothy is going to help me mend stockings this winter, aren’t you,
dear?”
The smallest sister nodded impressively. “I’ll help you mend your
Katie pile too, Betty. Katie has gone to the Elingwoods’ to live, and
she likes it, but she says it’s not the same thing, and when times are
better she’ll be glad of it, because then she’ll come right back here.”
“You see it’s this queer horrid panic, Betty,” Nan explained.
“Father hasn’t actually lost much, I imagine; but business is bad, and
so we’re trying to economize.”
“And you never told me!” Betty looked reproachfully at her
mother.
Mrs. Wales laughed. “No, dear. Why should we? Anyway it’s all
come up lately, since we got back from the shore. Even now there’s
really nothing to tell, except that everybody is talking hard times and
father’s business is dull. I’m very sorry it happened this season,
because I meant you to be very gay your first winter at home, and
now we can’t do much formal entertaining.”
Betty’s face clouded as she remembered a house-party she had
planned for the “Merry Hearts.” Luckily, she hadn’t mentioned it; it
was to have been a grand surprise to everybody. Then a horrible
thought swept everything else out of her head.
“Oh, mother dear,” she began, “perhaps I ought to teach too, like
Nan. I don’t believe I could, ever in the world, but I suppose every
college girl ought to be able to, and I could try.”
 “Betty Wales,” mother ordered solemnly, “unpack your trunk just
enough to satisfy Dorothy’s curiosity, and then go to bed. You’re
worn out, and as nervous as a witch. Just because I’ve decided not
to keep a seamstress in the house this winter, and Nan is tired of
society and jumps at an excuse to do a little teaching, you decide
that the family is on the way to the poorhouse.”
“It isn’t only that——” Betty stopped. She had started to say that
father looked worried, and didn’t joke back at all when you teased
him; but perhaps that only seemed so to-night because she was
fatigued herself from too much gaiety at Harding.
So she hunted out six assorted neck-bows for the gray kitten, six
hair ribbons from Paris for the kitten’s small mistress, a Dutch doll,
and a long chain strung with tiny silver charms, each with a story of
its own; and having assured the smallest sister that this was only a
beginning of the treasures she might expect, Betty went to bed and
dreamed that she had lost her emergency fund under the teacher’s
desk in Nan’s schoolroom, and had to teach a class in senior
“English Lit.” before she could get it back. But she couldn’t
remember when Shakespeare was born, and the girls stood up on
their desks and waved their handkerchiefs and screamed, and she
waved too, because it was the Harvard-Cambridge boat race on the
Thames. No, it was brother Will calling her to breakfast, and little
Dorothy saying in a sepulchral whisper, “Oh, hush, Will! Mother said
Betty was to sleep over.”
“Coming! Wouldn’t sleep over for anything!” Betty called back,
making a rush for her bath.
It was such a jolly day. People kept dropping in to say welcome
home, and to tease Nan about her “latest fad,” as everybody called
it. In the evening there was a regular party of Betty’s and Will’s
friends on the big piazza, and before it was over Betty had promised
to help at six “coming-out” teas, take part in one play, be on the
committee to get up another, join a morning French class and a
reading-club, and consider taking a cross-country ride every
Saturday afternoon as long as the good weather lasted.
 Up-stairs in her room she took down the rose-colored satin dress
she had bought in Paris, and examined it approvingly. But one
simply couldn’t wear the same thing at six receptions. There was her
graduating dress, of course, but styles had changed frightfully since
spring. If only Katie were here to use her magic touch on the pink
lace evening gown that Bob had stepped on at class-supper!
“I never can mend it myself!” sighed Betty. “I shall need another
afternoon dress anyway, and a suit, and I did want a new riding
habit. Mine is horribly rusty. I wonder how careful about money we’ve
got to be. And I wonder if Will thought to bolt the piazza door.”
She slipped on a kimono and crept softly down the stairs, a slim,
golden-haired ghost in a trailing robe of silk and lace. Will hadn’t
locked the door. And there was a light in the library, though it was
long after midnight.
“It’s Nan, probably, reading up things to teach. I’ll go in and
bother her and make her come to bed.”
But it wasn’t Nan. It was father, poring over a big sheet of paper
scrawled full of tiny figures. Betty closed the door after her, crept
quietly across the room, and descended precipitately upon the arm
of her father’s chair.
“What in the world are you doing here all by yourself at this time
of night, Father Wales?” she demanded gaily.
Mr. Wales looked up at her, still frowning absently, with a finger
on his place among the figures. “Nothing, daughter; just looking over
a contract that I wanted to do a little estimating on before to-morrow.”
“But it’s horribly late,” objected Betty. “Think how sleepy you’ll be
in the morning.”
Mr. Wales smiled faintly. “Shall I? Well, run along to bed, so you
won’t be sleepy too.” And he was back at his figures again.
Betty watched him for a minute, dropped a kiss on his puckered
forehead, and slipped softly away without a word.
“He’s just awfully worried,” she reflected, as she went up-stairs.
“Nan and mummy and Will don’t realize how changed he is, because
they’ve been here right along. Why, in these three months he’s a
different person!” She put the rose-colored satin dress carefully back
in its cheese-cloth covering. “I wonder if we’re really going to be
poor. Why, this may be the first and the last Paris gown I shall ever
have! I know one thing. I’m going to talk to father, and make him tell
me just how poor we are now. You can go ahead so much better
when you understand things.”
But it was such a busy week, what with catching up the threads
of the home life that had been dropped for so long, helping Nan off,
and getting Dorothy started in school, that it slipped by without the
talk that Betty had promised herself. On the evening of Nan’s
departure, however, her opportunity came. Will had an engagement,
mother was tired, and Dorothy very sleepy; so only Mr. Wales and
Betty went with Nan to her train.
It was a fine September evening, and Betty craftily suggested
that they walk home. The down-town streets were too noisy for
serious conversation, but out on the avenue Betty plunged in at
once.
“Father, you’re awfully worried. Please tell me why.”
Mr. Wales threw back his head and laughed. “Goodness, Betty,
but you come right to the point! Suppose I deny that ‘awfully.’”
“You mean because it’s slang?” asked Betty anxiously. “And isn’t
it a good thing to come right to the point?”
“Wouldn’t that depend on the point, little girl? Suppose it was a
point you had never expected to come to, and didn’t want to come
to,—what then?”
Betty’s face wore its most intent expression. “But if you had come
to it all the same, father——”
“Then you’d better get away again as fast as possible, and ask
little girls not to bother their heads about you in the meantime.”
Father’s tone was very brusque and final—the one he used when he
meant “no” and was not going to change his mind, no matter how
much you teased.
 “All right, father.” Betty tried not to show that she felt hurt. “I won’t
bother you again. Only I thought that if I understood perhaps I could
help a little. I don’t think mother really knows how much we ought to
try to save this winter, and I’m sure Nan and Will don’t. You’ve
always been so generous and let us have just whatever we wanted. I
want lots of things just now, but I can be happy without them.” Betty
stopped suddenly, not quite sure where she had meant to come out.
There was a long pause. “Are you quite sure of that—quite sure
you can be happy without them, little girl?” father asked at last.
“Perfectly sure, if I know I’m helping you out, daddy.”
“Well, then—— But I can’t have your mother worried, not any
more than she is now at least.”
“Oh, but I won’t worry her!” Betty promised eagerly. “It will just be
a secret between us two.”
Mr. Wales smiled at her eagerness. “Not a very agreeable secret,
I’m afraid. Well, then, Betty, if you insist, here it is. My business has
scarcely paid expenses for three months, and a big investment I
made in June is going all wrong. By Christmas time I shall probably
know where I stand. Until then I need every cent of ready money that
I can get hold of, and the more things you can be happy without, the
better. That’s all, I guess.”
“Th-thank you.” Betty felt as if she had suddenly been plunged up
to her neck in a blinding fog that made all the old familiar landmarks
of life look queer and far away. “It’s rather bad, isn’t it? But I’ll be very
economical, and I’ll think up ways of making the others economical
without their knowing it. And you can have my emergency fund this
very night. That’s ready money. I meant to give it to you before, but
——” There was no use explaining that Nan had said it was foolish
to give the check back, when she would need all of it and more so
soon for her fall wardrobe.
“Keep it and make it go as far as you can,” father told her. “And
don’t think too much about these business troubles, or I shall be
sorry I confided in you.”
 They were turning in at their own door. “No, you won’t be sorry,”
Betty assured him proudly. “I won’t let you be sorry. Goodness! I see
one way to economize this very minute. Mother’s got dozens of lights
turned on that she doesn’t need.” And she flitted gaily ahead to begin
her economy program. But before she had reached the door, she
rushed back to whisper a last word in her father’s ear.
“It’s mean not to tell mother too, daddy. We could have so much
more fun over it if we all knew.”
“Fun over it!” repeated Mr. Wales slowly. “Fun over it!” Then he
reached out and caught Betty in a big hug. “You’re the right sort, little
girl. You stand up and face life with a smile. Keep it up just as long
as you can, child.”
Betty considered, frowning in her earnestness. “I’ve always had
the smiling kind of life so far, father, haven’t I? But I’ve wished
sometimes that I had to get things for myself, like Helen Adams and
Rachel and K. You know I’ve told you about them, and about K.’s
brother who wants to go to college, and she’s going to help. I shan’t
mind a bit being rather poor—till Christmas,” she added prudently.
“Now I’ll go and turn out the lights and see that Dorothy is all right,
and you be telling mother.”
But father shook his head. “Not to-night, anyway. You don’t
realize the meaning of all this yet, Betty. When you do, I’m afraid it
will look very different to you.”
“I won’t let it,” declared Betty eagerly. “I said I’d help, and I will.
Just try me.”
Betty went to bed with her pretty head in a whirl. This was what
they called being “out in the wide, wide world.” “The real business of
life” that she had talked about so glibly with the B’s and Roberta was
going to begin at last.