Hegel's Conception of Fanaticism

ion, 1 fanaticism strives for a universality without determinacy, and thus an annihilation of the differences established by the state and preserved in its laws, a radical de-differentiation and homogenization. What policy should the state assume toward these negatively disposed religious communities and their adherents? According to Hegel, this depends on which type of repudiation is involved. On the one hand, the state must tolerate "polemical piety" when this takes the form of inwardness, i.e., insofar as the religious community abstains from efforts to impart objectivity to its convict ions . 2 2 When, however, a negatively disposed church or religious community claims authority in the purview of the state, that is to say, whenever there arises a threat to objective truth and the rational principles governing Ethical Life, the state must turn intolerant, asserting its supremacy to ensure "the right and form of self-conscious, objective rationality." 2 3 The state has a duty to be intolerant of opinions 1 8 In one of the notes attached to section 270's "Remark" Hegel refers to the Quakers and the Anabaptists as examples of this sort polemical piety (Philosophy of Right, p. 29S). At any rate, in one sense persons of such a disposition are, to be sure, not really members of the state at all, for they disdain to recognize the validity of the state's laws, and so recognize no duties to the state either. Still, insofar as they possess and dispose of property they enter the state's domain and therefore incur certain obligations to it. See p. 295 of the Philosophy of Right. 19 Ibid., p. 293. 2 0 Ibid., p. 279. 2 1 Ibid., pp. 37-38. It is in section 5 of the Philosophy of Right that Hegel treats this aspect of fanaticism in some detail, in the course of discussing the first moment of the will, "the element of pure indeterminacy" (Ibid., p. 37). 2 2 The duly of tolerance, Hegel adds, presupposes both that the state is secure enough and strong enough to exercise such tolerance, and that the negatively disposed religious communities remain small in number. Too large a number of citizens who accord the state merely passive obedience would, like fanaticism, tend to undermine the state's actuality. See p. 295 of the Philosophy of Right. 2 3 Ibid., p. 299. HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OF FANATICISM 89 based on bad principles when these principles aspire to "give themselves a universal existence [Dasein] which undermines ac tua l i ty . " 2 4 When confronted with this threat it behooves the state to exercise what we might call its epistemological sovereignity, as ultimate arbiter of objective truth and the "right and form of self-conscous, objective rationality." For it is by upholding the objective determinations of the laws that the state defends particular interests as well as the "rights of r e a s o n " 2 5 and objective rationality. We may then think of the state's intolerance toward fanaticism as in one sense representing an exercise of raison d'etat, one which finds its justification in the reason of the state. In sum, insofar as it must practice intolerance toward the designs of certain religious communities the state is merely fulfilling its essential purpose: the conservation and harmonization of particular interests (including those of every variety of religious group) within the universal interest. 2 6 Thus, however curious Hegel's neglect of the religious question in his analysis of Civil Society or the Family, it is clear why he should choose to broach the relationship between religion and the state precisely he re , 2 7 in a section stressing the state's two-fold role as the institution that secures the universal interest while upholding particular interests. In concluding this brief exposition it is well to take note of the decisive inversion, as it were, that Hegel effects in the course of section 270. Hegel begins his discussion in the "Remark" by way of responding to the claim that the state rests on a religious foundation. We have seen why, according to Hegel, this cannot be so: the mode of understanding natural to religious insight and conviction is that of representational thought, feeling, the sphere of opinion—"a subjective content which therefore has no true inner force and power . " 2 8 Yet Hegel's counterargument goes further still, and by the end of his analysis it has been shown that, far from the state's resting on a religious foundation, "genuine" religion—in the end the only worthy type of religion—rests on a political foundation.TM It is not the state that cannot 2 4 Ibid.. p. 301. 2 5 Ibid.. p. 292. 2 6 Ibid., p. 290. Cf. p. 282: T h e principle of modern states has enormous strength and depth because it allows the principle of subjectivity to attain fulfilment in the self-sufficient extreme of personal particularity, while at the same time bringing it back to substantial unity and so preserving this unity in the principle of subjectivity itself." 2 7 In a note to the "Remark" for section 270 Hegel does in fact directly acknowledge the absence of a more extensive treatment of religion, explaining that "a comprehensively concrete treatise on the state" would include such a discussion, but that in the Philosophy of Right it is "the principle of the state which is expounded in its own distinct sphere and in accordance with its Idea...." (Ibid., p. 292). 2 8 Ibid., p. 301. 2 9 It is no doubt instructive to recall that Hegel himself claims, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, that "religion is the foundation of the state" (1,472; cf. p. 200 of the Lectures: "...the state must rest essentially on religion"). Yet the context