Nation, volk, masse

In Left-Hegefian writings of the 184&, a critique of Hegel underlies the assessment of concrete probfems of historical trans~o~ation posed by the French Revolution. The concept of the nation emerges in response to themes developed in Hegel’s ~~~r~~~~~~ of Right. Here Hegel examines the problems of autonomy and community within the typically modern constellation of private interest, in consequence of the liberation of the individual from the constraints of the feudal order. On the Hegelian Left, Bruno Bauer critically counterposes the idea of nationhood both to the undemocratic nature of the proposed Hegelian state and to the possessive individualism of emergent civil society. He seeks a doctrine of freedom which synthesises autonomy and concrete universality. He affirms the nation as the Volk. a free and consu he defineates the P’& from the MXW, the image of civit society, whose principle is private economic interest. The contradiction of autonomy and possessive individualism is fundamental to this conception. While for Bauer the nation is an histori~allyambivaient concept, appearing either in folkish or in massy guise depending on the orientation of its members toward autonomy or toward the accumulation of property, its genuine, progressive sense is that of the Volk. The split between particular and universal interests is decisive for Hegel’s political theory. In his youth, Hegel had greatly admired the immediate, unalienated unity of the direct democracies of classical antiquity. Through his experience of the French Revolution and his encounter with political economy at Jena (1802~Wj, he concluded that this ideal unity was no longer attainable, He developed a penetrating analysis of the modern separation of state and civil society, and of the conflict of private interests which character&s the tatter. Community dissolves into a welter of atomistic points, each seeking the satisfaction of private ends in the appropriation and exchange of property. Freedom in civil society, the unconscious result of such particu!aristic individual strivings, is historically necessary but insufficient. It must be complemented by the conscious freedom and universality of the state, which is to prevent the encroachment of the principle of self-interest on all spheres of life, and contain and assuage the contradiction of wealth and poverty which the market economy constantly generates. Hegel envisages a system of mediating institutions surmounted by a constitutional monarchy, since he fears that in modern

Contradiction · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Individualism · Nationalism · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Global Economic and Social Development · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism

• The Idea of Volk and the Origins of Völkisch Research, 1800-1930s

  J Laurence Hare, Fabian Link•Journal of the History of Ideas•2019

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