We know that Hegel’s rationalized “universal spirit”, his Absolute, is supposed to be directing world history, that Kierkegaard fought for the authenticity of individual existential experience against Hegel’s rational knowledge, and that Sartre tried to synthesize the contributions of the two philosophers in his grand historical-philosophical work, La Critique De La Raison Dialectique. But for us, dealing with the present onslaught in our history of globalization, is Hegel’s “universalism” so bad? In our thoroughly rationalized world is there any possibility anymore of genuine “existential” experience? In American society our public words and behavior must now be ruled by universal standards. Hegel believed that certain great men like Napoleon and Caesar embodied in their actions history’s “universal spirit”. They were hegelian heroes because they made the universal particular. We Americans have become hegelian heroes. We have every race of people living among us and immigrants speaking all languages and practicing all religions from everywhere in the world. Particular nations give their people distinct individual characteristics that we Americans must respect and accept when they decide to live among us. They can still be particular but we must act universally in our relations with them. I live in a New England town on the ocean that was founded nearly 400 years ago by English colonists and has been English-speaking all those years but when I go jogging along the ocean and pass people speaking Russian, I know I am radically different. An alarm goes off in my mind warning me that my actions must be universal as well as individual. It is my duty as an American not to be only particular. The Russians I pass and all the other immigrants think we Americans are odd. They came to America expecting particular people and they found universal people. They are right. We are odd but, on the other hand, if all peoples do not change and become universal like us, is there any hope for humanity? Everyone talks about human rights but no human right is only particular. All of them must be universal before they can be particular. Should people expect to enjoy universal rights if their minds are not able when necessary to think in a universal mode? Recently I heard on Italian television a woman arguing passionately that poor immigrants trying to reach Italy have a universal right to be saved and brought to land by the Italian navy but they have no right to live in Italy and must leave. Italy is a particular place. Italians, according to her, should not want their Italy also to be anyone’s Italy because then Italy would be universal and no longer Italy. It would be America. Italians would begin living as though universal human rights belong to all people in spite of their particularities and that the right to live and work in any state in the world with full democratic rights and full citizenship simply because a person decides to live in a certain state should be a universal right. Italians would decide like Americans that Hegel was right and Kierkegaard was wrong, States and individuals can no longer live existentially. Hegel’s “universal spirit” is directing history and states and individuals should help it accomplish its divine work.
Daniel McNeill’s play,The Body Is A Legal Drug, will have 7 performances during the Midtown International Theater Festival in New York in July at the Davenport Theatre 354 West 45th Street. 212-956-0948.
The famous writer, Nathan Mauer, married four times to women, marries a man but behavior in his macho past disrupts his happy new identity. A comedy about the difficulties of living with any identity permanently.
tickets $20.00 : https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/27845
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