Reason in History:
Hegel and Marx Reply to their Post-Rational Critics
Alex Steinberg
8 Sessions Tuesdays: 7:30 – 9:00 p.m. Oct. 24 – Dec. 12
Tuition: $90 – $115, sliding scale
Hegel
famously said that “Reason rules the world.” Was this little more than an
expression of Eurocentric imperialism, racism and patriarchy?
Marx turned Hegel’s equation upside down but maintained an optimism about human rationality when he said: “The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”
The
horrors of the 20th century have witnessed a great disenchantment towards such
optimistic sentiments. Adorno began the turn away from “reason in history” when
he said that, “After Auschwitz, poetry was no longer possible.” Others like the
postmodernist Lyotard have said that History, either as a rationally
comprehensible entity, or as a guide to action, is no longer possible.
While
there has been much criticism of the “meta-narratives” of Hegel and Marx in
recent years, there has been scant attention paid to just what those
“meta-narratives” are. Instead, a superficial caricature of the ideas of Hegel
and Marx has become a convenient punching-bag in these discussions.
Was
Marx stuck in the outmoded conceit of a “totalizing meta-narrative,” one that
obliterates Difference and the Other? Or is there something of lasting value in
the heritage of the radical wing of the Enlightenment for those committed to
fundamental change? Does human history have a goal? Is progress a discernable
phenomenon in history (or is this just another illusion bequeathed to us by the
Enlightenment)?
We will
examine these questions as we read Hegel’s most famous single work, his
Introduction to the “Philosophy of History.” We will then read selections from
Marx to see how he both overturns and preserves the core of Hegel’s idea of
Reason in history as a practical guide to human emancipation.
Finally, we will reconstruct the replies that Hegel and Marx might have made to
some key essays of the contemporary post-rational critics -- Lyotard, Foucault,
Baudrillard, Mouffe and Laclau.
Alex Steinberg taught a course on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit last fall at the New SPACE. He is facilitator of a philosophy and literature discussion group in Brooklyn and author of several essays, including "The Case of Martin Heidegger." He has also served as a member of the WBAI Local Station Board (2004) and as Chairperson of the WBAI LSB Programming Committee.