Philosophers of the early nineteenth century saw the progression of history, especially insofar as progress was characterized by scientific discovery, as pointing toward a bright and enlightened future. Contradictions and difficult situations all through history until the nineteenth century were seen merely as the growing pains that necessarily preceded the inevitable resolution in a society characterized by joyous life and freedom. Thinkers of this time period, however, saw this occurring by different means, some of them at odds with others; and certain thinkers were more articulate than others in evaluating historical progress in terms of what was left to be done. I shall argue that Hegel is the best of the optimistic thinkers because of his unprecedented account of history to that point as having a purpose, because of his thorough analysis of history and psychology in philosophical terms, and because of his ability to articulate a present freedom in terms of consciousness in light of philosophical history; whereas, I shall argue that Comte is the worst of the optimistic thinkers, because of his quasi-worship of science as the highest of all systems, because of his economic outlook on human beings, because of the diluted nature of his argument for three phases of history in light of Hegel’s robust system, and because of his tendency to undermine himself in light of the problems with his doctrine near the end of his life.
First and foremost, Hegel’s account of the history of the world (or, at least, the Western world) and of the history of philosophy as being a dialectical process with a direction and an apex—namely, Hegel’s own conception and understanding of the Absolute Spirit—is an unprecedented way of viewing the world. The idea that there was a pattern in history meant that there would be a way to work with it toward a good end or work against it in ignorance; and no one was, or indeed perhaps has been, able to so originally articulate a coherent, systematic conception of the historical pattern as being directed and process-oriented. There was a purpose, a telos toward which all of history was aiming, and if only we could understand this the way that Hegel understood it, we would be able to grasp not only the course of history in itself, but ultimately the way to actualize the freedom that he claimed was already ours in the abstract, that is to say, in essence. Process thinking and the idea of essence or, specifically, of the essence of consciousness, actualizing itself gradually was an original way of understanding the world.
Additionally, Hegel was so extremely thorough in his analysis of the way that we understand the progress of consciousness and of the self-consciousness as a part of the universal, the Absolute or World Spirit, that even if we lay aside the philosophical impact he had, we would nevertheless have a compelling foundation for psychology. Indeed, the ideas of an alienated self-consciousness seeking autonomy and recognition in relation to others and of the master-slave relationship served as the theoretical basis for the ideas of several psychological thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and into the present).
Hegel concedes that history is the “slaughterbench” at which the lives and happiness of people throughout all of time have been sacrificed, but then balances this with what must be understood as the optimistic notion that, nevertheless, the world is as it should be. This is not a naïve, Leibnizian conception of a debonaire God, sovereign over a world that is quite all right such as it is, but rather a nuanced account of the direction of things as being ultimately the best—better even than the lives and happiness of the countless individuals that have had to lose what they had in order for progress to occur. This curious optimism, then, about the state of the world not only as it is but as it will inevitably be, is strong precisely because it is not (at least theoretically) blind to the suffering of those that were lost in the progress of the World Spirit towards its own consciousness fully realized.
If it seems that Hegel is a bit over the top with some of his ideas, we might nevertheless excuse him based on the preponderance of evidence in his favor: the history of philosophy has been studied in what is, at base, a Hegelian sense ever since his Phenomenology came to the light of press, and he established himself as the cornerstone of philosophy, originating a new way of looking at the world and at world history as a dialectical process. On the other hand, some thinkers had more difficulty in being quite so original—by interpreting what had been given already and by attempting to bring it into the concrete from Hegel’s abstraction. These thinkers had varying degrees of success in this endeavor, and in the sense that Hegel can still inform us today, so can they.
One such thinker was Auguste Comte, whose success in bringing the abstraction of Hegel into the concrete was significantly mitigated by, among other things, the radically scientific approach he took to humanity. Comte, like Hegel, believed that there was a pattern to world history and to the history of philosophy as a field of human study; however, the direction Comte took in directing humanity (note that this is humanity as a collection of individuals into a universal society, not the universe or World Spirit of Hegel) toward a better, more progressive future was absolutely naturalistic. Comte believed that, by adding to the natural sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and mathematics, the new science of “sociology,” or the study of societies, we would be able to interpret the pattern of human history in a way that gave us “positive,” that is to say totally factual, scientific knowledge about human and societal interaction. Armed with this positive knowledge of the way human societies interact, we would be able to direct the flow of history into a more beneficial and progressive era. So instead of a Hegelian, rational and abstract approach, Comte decided that it would be better to focus on empirical observation. This seems, however, to be a failure on his part to recognize that science was not and is not the end-all, be-all of epistemological methods (or at least, if that thesis seems to strong, that science could be lacking in a means by which to account for the nuances of societal interaction). His is an empiricism baptized in the optimistic notions of human progress coupled with exciting new advancements in methods and tools of scientific inquiry, failing to see that his assumption that human interaction was not subject to the “disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator,” was just as tenuous as the assumption he sought to reject, viz., that human interaction is subject to unpredictable “interventions.”
Also, Comte’s organization of history into three divisions—the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive or scientific—fails to take into account the interplay amongst them all. For example, even in the days of Aristotle were scientific inquiries, only not conforming necessarily to the rigorous standards demanded by the modernist tradition over two thousand years later; and there were elements of the theological even in the scientific: hymns whose librettos were the text of books written on the glories and methods of science are no less a priori praises to compellingly powerful systems than the Stoic hymns to the rational, natural order qua “god.” The division ends up seeming almost arbitrary, and stands in the shadow of, and in contrast to, Hegel’s well-articulated assimilation of every pattern of thought from the ancients forward in his understanding of the pattern of history.
Furthermore, Comte’s ideas about the way government should be run ended up forcing him to come full circle in his ideology. When he so bitterly criticizes the so-called “theological era” for being so ignorant and using authority in a malevolent, arbitrary way, he then sets up a “sociocracy” in which the best sociologists—these scientists most thoroughly acquainted with the patterns of human history and societal interaction—would be the ones to dictate the path to progress, peace, and human happiness. This ends up with Comte setting up an authority based on positivism which, in turn, is based on the unquestioned ability of these scientists to learn to predict all of human behavior based on empirical evidence. The system is easily reduced from a seemingly ignorant “divine right of kings” to an equally unchallengeable “scientific right of sociologists.” Ultimately, in a shameful irony, Comte sees himself as the prophet establishing a new world order through positivism that would ultimately save mankind from itself, from its ignorance and dependence on anything but science.
It seems to me, then, that the best optimistic thinker was Hegel, for his articulation of an original understanding of the entire course of human history, and for the impact he has had and continues to have on the course of philosophical and even theological thought. The worst, on the other hand, was Auguste Comte, whose genius was unfortunately overshadowed by unquestioned assumptions and the prolific writings of G. W. F. Hegel.
