File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9804, message 7


From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 13:28:33 -0500
Subject: Give Hegel back to the fascists



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Was Hegel a racist?  Good Heavens, no, he was a good German Christian in
the process of becoming God:

"A mild and passionless disposition, want of spirit, and a crouching
submissiveness (...) towards a European, are the chief characteristics
of the native Americans (...)  The inferiority of these individuals in
all respects, even in regard to size, is very manifest.  (...)
"The Negro (...) exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and
untamed state;(...) there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be
found in this type of character."
(Hegel, "Introduction to the Philosophy of History", p.81&93)

So, how does Thacker propose to stand him on his head so that he marches
on politically correct pilosity?  Oh yes, by switching subject and
predicate...and glossing over his German, all too German ethnocentered
prejudice.

Why does one not find overt Anti-Semitic remarks in Hegel's writings? 
Because he *only* admires the Jews for their priestly spirit - since he
too was but a priest of laic Christianity and eagerly hoped for his
dialectical self-consciousness as the Sittlich realization of the ideal
of the Jewish-Christian priest.  However, and despite Hegel's wrath
against Fries' involvement in the anti-Semitic Burschenschaften, and
despite his subdued apology of 'civil rights for the Jews', hear what he
says about the 'technical aspect' of the State's anti-Semitism: "Thus
technically it may have been right to refuse a grant of even civil
rights to the Jews on the ground that they should be regarded as
belonging not only to a religious sect but to a foreign race." 
("Philosophy of Right")

Hegel, at bottom, wished what any other Christian wanted - they would
not mind *their* Jews no more if only *their* Jews were to become good
Christians (or good Nazis, for that matter).

Q: Would anyone who actually *knew* a Sioux, a Mohawk, an Iroquois, a
Tarahumara, an Apache, or a Zulu, a Nuba, a Dogon, etc, believe that
there was anything of submissiveness to them, proud, noble warrior
societies that they were?  It takes a dinosaur (say, a Marxist, say a
crypto-Lenino-Stalinist) to still believe in Hegel today.  Histoires à
dormir debout.  But then, just about all the races have now been
bleached.

Lambda C


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