Richard Bourke, "Hegel’s World Revolutions" (Princeton UP, 2023)
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Welcome to the new Books Network.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host Morteza Haji Zadeh from Critical Theory Channel. Today I'm honored to be speaking with a very special guest, Dr. Richard Burke. Dr. Richard Burke is a professor of history of political thought and a fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. He's the author of a number of books including Empire and Revolution, The Political Life of Edmund Burke, which was published by Princeton University Press,

And today he's here to talk with us about his latest book called Hegel's World Revolutions, which was published by Princeton in 2023. Richard, welcome to New Books Network. Hi.

It's sort of customary to ask our guests to briefly introduce themselves. You're quite well-known philosopher in Syria, but it would be great if you could briefly introduce yourself, talk about your field of expertise, and more importantly, why you decided to write this book about Hegel, given that there are lots of books about him.

And I'm keen to know how you look at Hegel differently from existing literature. Yeah, well, as you said, my position is as a professor of the history of political thought at the University of Cambridge. So what I work on is primarily, specifically, the political thought of past philosophers, essentially.

But I'm based in a history faculty and I suppose one distinct thing about my book is that it's written by an historian about a philosopher. So I'm interested not just in the

sort of abstract metaphysics and epistemology of Hegel, but also of his practical political thought. Now, it's not that no one else has been interested in that before. Of course, they have, many people. But I think as an historian, one brings a different sensibility to the table. And I'm interested in the, you know, detailed, practical responses that Hegel had to his own

contemporary environment, that's to say what was going on in his own period. And I was interested also in framing that in terms of a sort of longer history, which incorporated his historical vision of the history of the world, because

You know, he tended to see things in large structures and his ultimate context was the history of the world. So historians largely don't take Hegel very seriously because they associate him with a series of historical fallacies. But actually, I think he's a very sophisticated historian.

historical thinkers. So that really was part of the motivation, at least. And I think it's maybe the most obvious difference I make to Hegel scholarship. Very few historians have worked on Hegel because they've been busy dismissing him since the 19th century. And that's one of the questions I'll pick up later on. But I guess you put it very well that you're a historian looking at his thoughts, because in a way you can say it's a historical or contextual understanding of Hegel's philosophy and

And that brings me to the next question, which is when I picked up the book, I was a bit surprised to see you have a few chapters on Hegel first. Then you have...

sorry, on Kant, and then you have Hegel and the French Revolution, and then the history of political thought. So can you talk about this structure? Why you decided to have a few chapters on Kant and you call that section the Kantian Revolution, then Hegel, and then the history of political thought?

Yes, well, you're right. The book does have this structure. It's kind of in three parts. And as you put it, the first is on what I call the Kantian revolution. But in effect, it's about Hegel's relationship to Kant. And the second chapter is substantially about Hegel's response to the French Revolution.

And the third is largely about Hegel reception. What happened to Hegel in the 20th century and to what extent his approach might be seen as a model for the history of political thought in general. So you've described it accurately, but I guess the question is why that structure? Well, first of all, I would say

two there were two major shaping events in Hegel's life, one political, one one intellectual and the major intellectual event in his life when he was young was the transformative impact

which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant had on a whole generation of thinkers across Germany and its different, you know, the different portions of that of that state, including Hegel when he was a student together with Marx.

Hulderlin and Schelling at sort of theological seminary. I mean, all three of them were trained at a theological seminary, but that could either train you for public life or for a sort of religious career. But in the process, it gave you a philosophical education. And, you know, the major transformative event while they were

you know, young people was the fact that Kant was still publishing his transformative works of philosophy. Now they're all, and so including Hegel, saw this as a revolutionary intellectual event because it placed the issue of

and the value of human freedom, really, at the human freedom and our creative moral capacities and our creative intellectual capacities, place them at the center of the understanding of philosophy generally and human nature in particular.

So this was a very major shaping event for Hegel. And that's why I begin there. But of course, also my fundamental theme is the nature of revolution as a general abstract category and Hegel's response to it and how he thought about revolution. And Kant was again very influential there. Kant was interested in various...

fundamental intellectual revolutions in the history of civilization. For instance, the invention of geometry. I mean, the invention of geometry begins at a particular point in human history, but it's obviously utterly transformative. Kant also saw modern empirical experimental science as having had a similar impact. So, you know, Copernicus would be a good example of this.

And Kant's view of this was essentially that

As a result of it's not, you know, the birth of modern science, as far as Kant is concerned, is not simply a product of a collection of new observations. I mean, that's one view of how science works, but it's actually not Kant's view of how science works. Kant believed that, you know, people develop new hypotheses which transform our way of seeing things. And of course, then they're confirmed by observation and seem to be true.

But there is a dynamic creative moment where a new hypothesis is introduced. And that's what happened, in fact, with Copernicus, that the universe was seen as operating in one way. And it was just, as it were, by means of a sort of gestalt switch, a sort of radical change of perspective, a whole...

vision underwent fundamental transformation. And Kant was very interested in these revolutionary breaks in thought processes. But these revolutionary breaks in thought process didn't only apply to the mathematical world and the world of empirical science, but could also apply to metaphysics. I mean, he wanted to bring that about himself, but had also, and here's an important point,

had also applied to the moral history of mankind. So there have been various, you know, transformative moments in moral sensibility. Now, these are mostly associated with the emergence of religions because religions are...

moral belief systems. Judaism would be an obvious case in point. The one that Kant was most interested in, and so was Hegel, was the transition from Judaism to Christianity. And therefore they were very interested in the figure of Jesus Christ, who of course was Jewish, but transformed Judaism and brought about a thing called Christianity. Now this is a very complex process in the history of religious belief and theology,

But Kant believed, and he shared this with Hegel, that Jesus of Nazareth made morality dependent on the quality of one's moral intentions rather than on supplication to a godhead. So it was not about appeasing God.

or pleasing a divinity, morality was now about demonstrating your virtue, not by your subordination to an all-powerful deity, but by exhibiting well-motivated duty. So for Kant, this was a

morally transformative moment and it proved to be revolutionary. Now, I should say, as far as Kant was concerned, and Hegel also accepted this, the revolution in effect backfired because Christian culture, I mean, this is supposed to be a non-authoritarian moral rebirth. That was the vision, a sort of fundamental change of heart in humanity that

which would base moral behavior not on authority, but on, as I say, purity of intention. But of course, out of that was constructed an authoritarian church. So, and even the Reformation, which was an attempt to roll back

the impact of this authoritarian church then introduced its own new forms of authoritarianism. So Christianity, as far as Kant was concerned, was an essential revolution. But it's Hegel especially emphasised this, a failed revolution. So why do revolutions succeed or fail revolutionarily?

was a question which they both approached. And so I'm now moving on to Hegel. You can now see why Kant was so important for him because he got this sort of thought process for him. But the fundamental question for Hegel is therefore how...

do fundamental transformations in human consciousness come about? Or how are our worldviews fundamentally changed, including and perhaps most importantly, our moral worldview? So how do moral transformations in humanity come about? Well, he thought, Hegel himself thought there had been

a number of exemplar revolutions. I mentioned he was very interested in Judaism early in his career. So Judaism was one example. Christianity was another example. And of course, he was interested in other world religions too. But he was also interested in the Reformation. And he was also interested in Kant himself as a sort of revolution in thought.

And then finally, of course, the French Revolution was a revolution in his own time. I mean, Hegel's born in 1770, so he's 19 in 1789 when the French Revolution breaks out and he's in university or in this theological seminary at that time.

So in his day, the two major episodes were Kant and the French Revolution. And what they had in common was the extent to which they offered sort of transformation on the one hand in how we understand philosophy and a transformation

or would be transformation, at least in how we understand politics. So that brings me to my second chapter. You can see, therefore, you know, one is about how we understand revolution philosophically. And then the second chapter on the French Revolution is, you know, what was the nature and trajectory of the most important, one of the most important political revolutions that has ever happened, which is the French Revolution, through which he lived and which the values of which he in many ways endorsed

but the conduct of which he did not endorse. I mean, this is a, I mean, you asked, I suppose, what's different about my book. I mean, one thing is to understand more clearly the extent to which Hegel, despite thinking the French Revolution was

was a promising event was in practice a disaster. So most of the literature takes Hegel as a sort of student and champion of the French Revolution. This is just fundamentally mistaken. He thought the revolution went wrong, not in 1793, which is sort of standard view, but already in the summer of 1789. So it was an abortion almost from the start.

So he was interested in how this abortion had come about, how it exacerbated its...

counterproductive tendencies. And of course, that question dominated his whole career. But if you take his date 1770 to his death in 1831, well, that's the whole period in which the French Revolution and its consequences played out in France and across Europe. I mean, he lived through the Napoleonic conquest of Europe, including the Napoleonic conquest of Germany.

So he was deeply absorbed by this question. And via this question, he developed his view of modern politics generally. So if you want to understand Hegel's politics, a good place to start is

you know what did he think the nature and significance of the french revolution and its failure was so that's my fundamental approach you know as i said i'm a historian of political thought so i'm interested in you know his political theory but you know this is a contextual question in the end i mean it's a practical question about what are the possibilities of modern politics in the

in the aftermath of this revolutionary eruption. So that was my question as well. And then finally, you know, I was interested in the, so I'm giving a rather long answer to your question, but you sort of asked me about the whole structure of the book. And then finally, you know, I'm interested in the question of, you know, why do we study the history of political thought at all? Why might dead thinkers be valuable to us?

Since they live in a past world, which is no longer our world, how can it speak to our world? So this sort of general question you might even say about the humanities, you know, the humanities studies historical documents and obviously reconstructs their past meaning. But what's the relationship between us and those past documents? You know, um...

So, well, Hegel himself was interested in this question because not only was he a philosopher, but he was also an historian of philosophy. And he thought, was in a way the first person to think, that philosophy is a meditation on its own history. That is what philosophy is.

So he offered a model and continues to offer a model in many ways of thinking about how historians of philosophy and political philosophy relate to the past of their subject. Now, this has been a live question actively in...

you know, in my niche specialism within the humanities. So I was keen to address it by Hegel, not least because Hegel himself has a very rich reception. And so what Hegel has himself meant to different generations is itself enormously interesting. I mean, he was, you know, as a professor of philosophy, his second main chair was

was located at the University of Berlin after the University of Berlin was founded in the aftermath of, um,

the defeat of Napoleon in Germany. And establishing important chairs was a sort of key political project for the re-established and reconstituted Prussian government. And Hegel was appointed to the chair of philosophy. Now that is not only, I mean, a chair in philosophy...

was a sort of position within the civil service in Germany, in Prussia in the 19th century. So it was an important political position, quasi, sort of political position in addition to being an academic one. So he was in a position to start a sort of school, basically, you know, in other words,

a new religion, you might say, I mean, a whole new worldview which would be carried forward by disciples. I mean, this is the idea. And this did work to a certain extent. And he had very important and influential students.

And so Hegelianism took off. I mean, he died, as I said, in 1831. But Hegelianism is alive and well and being transformed in various ways in the 1840s, spawning rival schools. These are sometimes called left Hegelianism and right Hegelianism. One could debate the accuracy and utility of that nomenclature. But anyway, the point is that there were...

opposing views about how the legacy of Hegel should be developed, largely in relation to his views on religion, actually, but also subsidiarily in relation to his views on politics. And so, for instance, one of his own students, Edward Gantz,

was a teacher of Karl Marxist. So, you know, therein lies a whole new story about the history of 19th century Hegelianism. Anyway, I was mainly interested in, I mean, Hegelianism sort of died out then somewhat in Europe in the later 19th century, but was, you know, in the 1890s was reborn again and took off in the early 20th century. And many interesting figures were involved in this in

in Germany, in France, uh,

in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Russia. I mean, there's enormous interest in Hegel in Russia, actually through the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century. I mean, I should say, you know, Hegel, sorry, Lenin spent an enormous amount of time after the outbreak of the First World War studying and annotating the texts of Hegel. So I would say, you know,

Therefore, that understanding what he meant to various thinkers in the early 20th century and therefore that attempt to what does it mean to revive a dead thinker was a core part of the question. So that was part of the preoccupation, the final part of the book. And the other was, well, why? Why does Hegel's reputation come on? Why does it begin to be radically challenged then?

I mean, one doesn't want to fixate too much on precise dating here, but roughly speaking, since the Second World War, there was then a sort of radical turn against Hegel for various reasons that one could go into. So I was interested in that. You know, so in the final part, I was interested in two things. You know, the fortunes of Hegel in the 20th century, the rise and decline of his reputation, and connected to that, a question about

um what is the meaning of reviving thinkers from the past and then finally you know a reflection upon you know for us as um humanists really you know so for philosophers political thinkers historians you know literary professors also um you know why do we study um um

humanistic documents from the past? How do they relate to us? It was a sort of overarching question. So that's, anyway, that's why the book has the shape it does. That was a great answer. You actually answered a lot of questions I had and you also raised a lot of new points that I will discuss.

There are a couple of points like, for example, the decline of his fame or why he was dismissed. But I'll ask you that question towards the end. One thing I'm really interested in is when you were comparing how Kant thought about the revolution and also the French Revolution and Hegel, what was interesting to me was that, and I could be wrong, that's why I'm asking the question, that Kant didn't really have a philosophy of history, let's say,

Is that the reason that, for example, that Hegel, is that the reason that Hegel was instigated to study history and also human development more systematically and also look at French revolution differently from Kant? Yes. Yes, very interesting. So I suppose there's two parts to that question. Why did Hegel develop such a rich historical vision of

not least since his commitment is fundamentally to philosophy. So why this philosophy of world history, which includes a narrative of the trajectory of world history? Why is that so essential? And second of all, to what extent is he departing from Kant here? Now, as I sort of intimated Kant already, Kant was interested in...

transformative moments that failed. And an example of that for him was also Christianity. I mean, Christianity promised a moral rebirth, but there's been no moral rebirth. So by definition, it failed. But Kant had no explanation for this failure. But of course, the question has to be, well, why did it, why did the Christian project implode?

There was this guy with a radically new thought that, you know, one should behave morally, not for a reward in the hereafter, nor to please a deity, but rather one should be motivated by...

the sheer quality of one's own motives. Now, this was, you know, OK, this is a transformation of the understanding of the relationship between virtue and happiness. Basically, you're not virtuous in order to be happy. Rather, for Kant, your motive should be the pursuit of virtue itself, which might be

have the unintended consequences of delivering happiness, but you weren't motivated by the search for happiness. So this was transformative as far as Kant was concerned. But why did it fall apart? He had no answer to that. Now, Hegel's career begins very much with trying to understand why did the Christian project fail?

of course they're both writing in a christian culture so this is this is called controversial territory for them uh but anyway hegel is basically saying it failed and the question is why did it fail well the answer is because it was a sort of moral revolution without um contemporarily existing friendly circumstances in other words

historical circumstances didn't match this moral expectation. So there was this guy with a religious revolution intended to change the world. But in order to bring it about, first of all, he had to start cheating.

He had to start, I mean, you know, Hegel was skeptical about miracles. And he thought, you know, because the guy says he performed miracles, but he just needed this expedient to, of course, there's no miracles. Let's get real here. He just needed this expedient to sort of convince people. So Hegel's view is that Christianity failed because,

Jesus's moral vision for rebirth was of course only adapted to or only practically um

possible as a sort of small society of apostles who dines together and share the community. But as soon as you wanted this as a world religion, you're then operating in the context of really existing property relations, a really existing state. That's the call. That's to say the Roman Empire. So you need something that can, you know,

have practical traction. There was no practical traction. You also have to convince people and to convince people you have to transform their consciousness. And as I was saying, Jesus tried to perform this, tried to bring this about by performing miracles. But of course, these are bogus. So they're a form of deception. So you're already sort of betraying your own principles. So basically,

Hegel's view was that there was a misalignment between moral ambition and historical reality. And so he was therefore interested in the dynamics of

history and what it could practically uh deliver and for that reason he got more interested in uh the dynamics of history as such that that's one reason why he now it's not that he can't had no philosophy of history he did have a philosophy of history he he'd a theory of the um

of why it was rational to believe in historical progress. And he developed that in some intriguing detail, which influenced Hegel. But of course, it didn't have any empirical detail, right? It didn't really have a narrative about the history of the development of the world where

Whereas Hegel's story does. And Hegel's story does partly for the reasons that I've elucidated or adumbrated. He was interested in why it is that revolutions have failed and not just revolutions.

pointing out that they failed, but accounting for that in pragmatic historical detail, that's one of the reasons why he was motivated to develop a full, if you like, story of the past. But in addition, and this is a very important detail, it seems to me, Kant still believed in the immortality of the soul, or at least for much of his philosophy, he appears to be committed to a doctrine of immortality and a life in the hereafter for the human species.

So if we're want to ask the question, how is the world meaningful? Well, we have the hereafter as a reference point. In other words, if you're trying to justify human existence, this is basically a question in the Odyssey now, you know, is human life justified? Or you might just put it another way. Is it completely futile? That's a very important question, not just for human beings and how they feel about themselves, but it's actually a very important moral question. I mean, if

moral action itself is futile, well, then why undertake moral actions? Now, that's a very fundamental question in Kant, but he can answer that via

you know, via the reward in the afterlife answer. He can address that question via that answer. But of course, here's a crucial, important detail about Hegel. Hegel was not committed to a doctrine of immortality of the soul. It appears nowhere in its philosophy. And we have evidence to suggest that he actually ridiculed the idea.

So if there's no infinity of an afterlife, what then can justify human life? Well, it must be the terrestrial sphere. He must only have a sort of secular perspective or view of human life as developing. Well, in the cyclone, that's to say, in the in the temporal ages of man.

Well, if you're going to explain how human temporality is not futile, so it's that question again, why moral and political action is not futile, such that, you know, why bother? The answer can only come from a focus on what history has delivered. So, you know, Hegel's question then becomes, has human history been justified?

Well, if you're asking the question, has human history been justified? You need an account of what has actually happened in history. And that's exactly what Hegel went on to provide. He was interested in the development of recorded human consciousness. I mean, for those cultures which haven't recorded the past, obviously you've no access to them. So there's nothing you can say about them. Hegel called such peoples unhistorical peoples.

commentators get excited about this as if he's saying something very bad about people, but all he means is actually for most of human history, I mean, the American Indian, there's no record, you know, there's no records of its history. It's been recorded by other observers, but there are no records. Whereas ancient China does have records

Ancient India does have records. Ancient Persia does have records. Obviously, Greece and Rome has records. And of course, biblical culture gives us Middle Eastern records. I mean, similarly for South Asia, for India, there aren't historical records exactly. That's to say there weren't historians. There were largely poets, but there's still records. Whereas the ancient Chinese did have sort of historical records. They're recording what's going on with regimes.

Anyway, I just sort of basically enumerated for you there the sort of outlines of Hegel's history. It moves from east to west, from China through India through Persia

to the Middle East, to Egypt, to Greece, to Rome and to modern Europe. So he's trying to say that development of civilization, of city based cultures, because, you know, all these regimes were empires or city states. So let's just call them city based cultures from which we get the word civilization. So these are not hunter gatherer communities.

These are not shepherding community, pastoral communities. These are largely, you know, civilizations. What what what story needs to be told about the pathway of these civilizations that then for becomes a core question of his? And is that is the direction of change of these civilizations changing?

You know, does that justify the human effort or is human struggle been utterly futile? So that's why he developed a sort of rich, detailed account of historical development. This was a great and comprehensive question about Kant and Hegel's view towards history.

One of the points you make in the book is that for Hegel, the study of political theory, political thought is also historical endeavor. And you're also kind of advocating for this approach. So I'm interested to know what is the benefit of looking this approach to history and politics to look at it in a historical context? Yeah. Well, there's two things. One is a question about understanding history.

past political thought and the role of history in that. And that seems to be clear enough, which is if you want to understand what an individual or community is doing in time, the richer the contextual evidence you have for that, the better. So if you want to know why

George Bush invaded Iraq, the more documentary evidence you have for the decision-making process and the more surrounding explanatory context you have, the better your judgment is going to be. So that's just a straightforward principle in historical procedure that if you want to understand an event in the past, the richer your appreciation of the context in which it occurred is.

the fuller your understanding of the event. Well, the same applies, obviously, to past thought. I mean, if you want to understand Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, it's a good idea to understand a bit about what's going on in Europe in the middle of the 19th century. So similarly with Hegel or with Plato, I mean, we don't have so much evidence available for the sort of micro detail of, you know, what's going on specifically

with Plato in relation to his own time. But, you know, for thinkers, while we do have more evidence, obviously, you know, it does enrich our understanding. I mean, that just seems to me clear. I think that's an established and accepted principle. So that's a question about the role of history in past thought. But then, of course, the question about the role of history in our own contemporary understanding of politics is,

And there I would say, well, we're obviously the product of our historical circumstances. I mean, this applies to Israel or Iran or the United States as much as anywhere. We're the products of our social, our cultural, our political and our intellectual histories. And included in those intellectual histories are

would be the concepts by means of which we understand our political environment. So we, let's say in Europe, since it's where I'm sitting, or in Britain anyway, we on the continent of Europe

understand politics through the prism of representative regimes and an apparatus of constitutional law and voting arrangements and

state structure and various value systems and social attitudes. And, well, I mean, these are what constitute us. And we can say they are the living past still constituting us. So an historical understanding of politics is interested in accessing that living past. I mean, that's the straightforward answer.

way of putting it. Now, I think, you know, it would be hard to refute that. So if you want to understand your contemporary political environment, you have to understand how it's come to be historically constituted because, you know, much of the past is a living past. So bringing those two answers together, that contextualism helps us understand

past events and past thought and living history, understanding living history is a precondition for understanding our present. Bringing those two propositions together, I think the history of political thought is about studying which

bits of the past are still living in our contemporary environment and which are not. So which concepts are still operative? How have they developed and what kind of traction they have? Which concepts and which values? You know, how do they, how are they, how are they departed from the past and

What are the continuities with the past? What are the discontinuities with the past? So in a way, I think the discipline of the history of political thought is an investigation of what ideas from the past are...

continuous with the present and which are discontinuous in the present, which is exactly the same. As soon as you analyze and break that down and sort of reconstruct in a sort of synthesis of where we are is exactly the same question is addressing, you know, how our past has constituted us.

So, I mean, my own view is, you know, this happens to be Hegel's view too, or at least a minimal version of Hegel's view. My view is that if you want to understand politics, there are two indispensable disciplines. One is philosophy and one is history. And really, the most subtle approach is going to be that which brings them together in a productive alliance. Yeah.

And Hegel was an example of the attempt to achieve that. And of course, we have to ask the question, did he succeed or not, or how well he succeeded? But he put the question on the table. How should philosophy and history combine to develop an adequate political philosophy?

And I guess this is what also driving it towards the end of the book. I think it's the very last two pages of the book. I really, really like these quotes when you say, quote, the history of political thought is diagnostic rather than prescriptive. It helps us understand the character of political stories as products of earlier constellation of forces. This is, I guess, a summary of what you explained. Yes. Yes. I guess the two points I'm trying to make there are

One of them is, as I've just said, what's the relationship between philosophy and history and understanding politics? So they are our main focus.

means of diagnosis. If we want to diagnose what's going on, we need to clarify our concepts and understand how they've come about or clarify events and understand how they've come about to the extent that, you know, events and concepts are

mutually constituting phenomena. But in addition, a sort of buried question within your question is, why is this not prescriptive? And there, I suppose, I'm thinking about what is the, because obviously, you know, you do draw conclusions from your diagnosis. But, you know, I'm sort of, as an academic, keen to get away from endless shouty

otherwise known as sort of academic activism. I think the job of the university especially is to understand. And we, you know, we're paid for and have the luxury to develop understanding without antecedently committing to a party political program. So I don't, I think universities, you know, on and off have been

politicized since the 1960s. I don't say it's just one trajectory. It's sort of the mood has come and gone. And of course, it's not just since the 1960s. Obviously, there was highly problematic politicization of the German universities in the 1930s, for instance. So this is sort of since the history, the history of the university has been also a history of trying to understand what is the relationship between academia and politics.

And I'm interested in that question, but it seems to me it's wrong for universities to just think of themselves as sort of arm of politics, as if we're sort of an arm of the state. I think it's valuable to think of modern universities as part of the constitution of a modern state. But just the same as we don't think of the law courts as.

as the same as the government. And we can see important reasons for law courts having their own codes of conduct, their own principles of behavior, and their own systems of regulation distinct from those of the civil service. And so far as we can see all that very, very clearly, surely we can also see very clearly and ought to see the extent to which the university is different from

the law court, the government, the ministry, the civil service. So, you know, on that basis, we've asked, well, what is its role then? It seems to me its role is not just supporting party political doctrines. I think we examine the conditions of possibility of political

the dominant ideologies of our time, but we're not trying to sell them. So for that reason, I'd like to step back from sort of, you know,

overt prescription for political thought and think about more as a diagnostic enterprise. And of course, I'm aware of the implication of that, that, you know, diagnosis does tip over into, into prescription. But I think it's a meaningful difference that what I'm doing is, is, is different from a member of parliament or, uh,

Or a spin doctor for a political party. And insofar as one can say that what I'm doing is different from spin doctoring, one would really hope it's different from that. And if it is different, how is it different? And, you know, I wanted to capture that with by pointing the difference between diagnosing our time and

you know, snatching a prescriptive solutions for the problems that we face. Obviously, we think about those problems to inform our diagnosis. But, you know, as I said, the university professor is not a party political animal in my point of view, from my point of view, albeit, you know, in the nonprofessional conduct, they vote and they have attitudes like everyone else. But I don't think we're in the business of proselytizing.

This is an interesting point you're raising and I'm just thinking especially these days that we live in highly politicized societies especially in the United States with culture wars and everything. I don't know much about how much universities are attached to politics in or politicians may let's let me put it in in England. In Australia politicians usually look down on academics

But in the United States, that's not the case. So whether you have a Republican or a Democrat president, you do try to get those experts from universities who inform your foreign policy. I know more of those who are into foreign policy with Bush administration, Barack Obama, Trump. And they definitely are into both diagnosing and also prescribing what to do. But how much their word is different.

is taken or how much their advice is taken on board that's that i don't know but but you do see especially in the united states this politicized uh debates about academic freedom culture wars cancer culture and which is to i think it's a very much american thing that has been exported to other countries as well but not so much in australia in terms of university academics being attached to

or being, let's say, utilized by politicians. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing it's more or less the same in England because you have a parliamentary system and a prime minister rather than a president for four years. Yes. Well, there's two things there. There's

academics holding advisory roles with politicians. And that does happen in the United Kingdom as much as it does in the United States, because, for instance, you've got economic experts. And obviously, I'm not saying that can't and shouldn't take place.

But what I am saying is that in the role as economist within a university, an economist's role is not to promote a party political agenda with their students. An economist's role is to deepen our understanding of the economy. That's what we would hope. So generalizing that point, I think that's what academics should be doing, deepening understanding rather than

advancing party political agendas. So the question is then how that view, essentially my view,

which is, you know, it's a problematic view. I'm not saying there's no complexity. I'm not saying it's straightforward. You know, how to be academically impartial is what we're talking about. I'm not saying that's a straightforward question, but I'm not prepared to accept that it's a meaningless pipe dream from the get-go because then why would we have universities? Why would we bother? And, you know, obviously,

Obviously, many, many historical examples to suggest that there's been intellectual innovation, which has not been favoured by a dominant political culture. And therefore, such a thing is is possible. But then that spills over into the wider question about our current moment and the so-called culture wars in the United States. I agree with you that this is then exported around the world.

certainly in the places that I know, certainly in other parts of Europe, for instance, Germany is very neo-American in this respect and certainly Britain is. Obviously, I don't myself want to take up a particular position on these so-called cultural wars. I mean, I wouldn't mention that cultural wars have always been with us. You know, I mean, you know, in 19th century Germany, there were various cultural wars, you know,

I think the whole word even came from Germany. 20th century Israel. Yeah. And I think the whole word culture war also came from Germany, right? The translation of a German word, if I'm not mistaken. Kulturkampf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kulturkampf. These have always been around and we're not going to get away from them. I suppose they're called cultural wars because they're, uh,

preoccupations with public welfare, which are not purely focused on the economy. And that seems to be perfectly reasonable. I mean, there are going to be questions on which there are competing opinions on immigration, integration,

and the so-called cultural wars cluster around this, or maybe immigration, integration, sexuality, gender relations, that sort of maybe the relationship between the state and religion. Of course, that's a very old discussion, but these might be parts of the contemporary culture war. Now, obviously I've used in all those subjects, but as an academic, I think it's much more interesting for me

to develop a diagnosis, to try and understand, you know, why are these values colliding in this way at this time, rather than me becoming an advocate for one specific program of immigration or one specific view of the possibilities of integration? I think

You know, you know, Hegel, for instance, was a dialectician. That's to say he was interested in dialectical developments and dialectical thinking. That meant very much standing back and rather than sort of snatching at solutions, looking at the underlying forces which have produced our current menu of choices.

I think that's a sort of a standing back philosophically and historically and looking at how our contemporary predicament emerged. Deepening our understanding of that is what I believe academics in my area of specialization can do. And that's what they should be doing rather than me saying, you know,

you know, explicitly becoming a campaigner. I don't think I should be a campaigner on these issues. And it may happen that in my

private capacity, something happens. And so I urgently feel as a citizen, it's important for me to campaign. But I wouldn't be doing that as an academic. And obviously, I know one gets into complexity there. If I can, on the one hand, be Edward Said would be an example. I mean, you know, he campaigned on a subject, but he was also

And he was also an academic. And in his academic role, one would want to say, ideally, he was trying to tell the truth rather than campaign. Then there's a debate about actually whether his campaigning project influenced his vision. So one gets into a complicated debate there. But I don't think it's meaningless to separate those two. And we can debate whether his book Orientalism is true or not.

irrespective of what one's view of the Israel-Palestine question is. It seems to be they're separate questions. And we can debate the Orientalism book as an academic contribution

irrespective of one's views on that particular conflagration. So that's a good example of what I'm talking about. And there's another cultural war, for example. Now, this is all changing at this very current moment, largely because of the Middle East in American university campuses. For a period there, American campuses were stating positions on these live issues,

Like, for instance, my own department produced a statement on the killing of George Floyd. Now, I'm based in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, which is not even in the United States.

And they're somehow feeling that a history faculty has to, of course, by the way, they produce no statement on Darfur, on China, on it's these select items that, you know, appear up in American student politics. I think I'd rather call it, you know, student politics rather than much of it, rather than cultural politics. So they pop up on the agenda of American student politics and suddenly British universities are taking a position.

Well, this was increasingly happening in the United States that major issues of the day universities were pronouncing on, you know, largely apparently clean hands, moral issues like the, you know, the killing by police officers of American civilians. Obviously, everyone knows that's bad, so it's easy to produce a statement on it. But the point is, you know, then along comes the Gaza situation. And, you know, then you've got divided student populations and

with different religions, different affiliations and different positions on the Middle East. And so now American universities are very much rowing back from these public pronouncements and trying to readopt and, you know, re-embrace a position of neutrality. And I'm afraid I think that's right. I mean, why is it their job to...

Why is a university a campaigning ground in the first place? I mean, I understand students and staff might have strong views on the subject. But of course, you know, why is the university the center point for this? Why not march on Washington? So so anyway, I think this is all changing as we as you and I speak. I think, you know, the Ivy Leagues are now revisiting their position on politics.

controversial public issues of the day and trying to reclaim their status as, you know, spaces in which free research, free inquiry and free discussion takes place without them, without the participants, without the community participants in those enterprises seeing themselves as campaigners, at least in their academic capacity. Mm hmm.

I so much want to continue this particular topic, but because there are a couple of other points about the book that I'm keen to know more about. But it's also generally related to what you just said about universities becoming more politicized in the 1960s. And in the book, you also talk about that, the fact that there was this anti-Hegel insurgency issue.

What were some of the forces? Was it the rise of postmodernism, cultural studies, and the French theory? Was it partly the reason that the philosophers or historians decided to dismiss Hegel at that time?

Yes. Well, two quick points. First of all, there is clearly a politicisation or an attempt to politicise the university on the part of students in the 1960s. But of course, it's not the only time this has happened and universities have been politicised from the left and right in different ways at different times. So I'm not taking up an explicit position on that other than to say, you know, obviously lots of students were potentially

being conscripted into the Vietnam War. And that's one reason why there's a particular concentration of energy at that time. But separately from that, you're asking about the fortunes of Hegel after the Second World War and the extent to which this connects to the 60s. I think it's connected to wider developments generally. And the question is really, you know, why does suspicion of

of Hegel begin to emerge. This seems to me to be something which happened, you know, really across the spectrum. And it was originally spearheaded by cold, cold warriors, I would say.

So people like Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, but also, ironically, Frankfurt School theorists who were OK, I wouldn't call them cold warriors, but the part of the post-war Cold War scene, people like Adorno and Horkheimer, who originally came, at least by their own self-understanding from the Galian tradition, were

But then whilst sort of presenting themselves as sort of neo-Hegelians dismantled the whole edifice of Hegelianism such that I think it only makes sense to call them quite explicitly anti-Hegelian. So in a way they have nothing to do with Hegel at all. Although they

They sort of bask in the penumbra of Hegel. There's nothing in Hegelian about it. So Adorno, Horkheimer, Popper, Berlin, one could name many others. There's a sort of scepticism about the Hegelian doctrine of historical progress, basically, connected to the idea that to understand politics, you need a sort of

total perspective on a culture. They thought this was a sort of totalising vision. This was then taken up by having been a sort of

Frankfurt School and sort of Cold War liberal position then influences lots of 1960s French philosophy, which explicitly turns against Hegel, Foucault, Derrida, many others, many of whom were taught by Hegelians who had been part of the Hegelian, the Hegel revival philosophy.

And once again, they were sceptical about totalising explanation, about the doctrines about inevitable progress. My own view is that they simplified Hegel into a sort of made a straw man of him in order to dismiss him. But, you know, that's just my scholarly view. So I think there's a sort of confluence of forces generally, which...

I mean, there are good reasons. I mean, there are good reasons to be sceptical about Hegel. I mean, Hegel is saying the modern world is justified. Ultimately, that's what he's saying. If you put it end to end and look at the development of human civilization since China...

They present a picture of human liberation. That's that's that's that's his story. And that has justified the effort, despite all the slaughter, despite all the carnage. The outcome is justified. Well, I think understandably, you know, from the 1940s onwards, people began to seriously question this. I mean, there'd been obviously the Second World War, the Holocaust, etc.

Soviet tyranny. That didn't look like it was capable of justifying much. So it's in the light of a venture, the people became sceptical about Hegel. So I don't think the scepticism is mad, but I think much of it is under-informed and is based on poor Hegel scholarship. And also, as I think a bit

too complacent in its dismissal. Because we then, you know, if they are right that there is no, that modern history is not justified, if I can just use that phrase. In other words, that it's futile, which is one way of reading, for instance, Adorno. Well, that has its own problems. I mean, in a way, you know, Walter Benjamin and Adorno, they write as if

history has been condemned to a process of inevitable decline. Well, this seems to me just a sort of inversion of what they condemn in so-called Hegelian metaphysics, rather than them being in necessary progress as a necessary decline. My own view is that neither position is true, that there has been progress, but it wasn't necessary progress. But to the extent that there has been progress, that progress is justified. And

the reason that the modern world is not futile is because national socialism was defeated. So

If you're saying the defeat of National Socialism has been futile, it seems to be you're in your again, deeply problematic, you're in deeply problematic territory. So although I can understand why people find Hegel in this area very questionable, actually, it's hard to get away from his at least his own questions. And

you know, his answer is at least important and deserves reflection rather than being dismissed as obvious hocus pocus, which is what happened with Popper and Berlin and the Frankfurt School and numerous sort of postmodernists. And of course, post-colonialism is itself based on a series of anti-Hegelian premises and a refusal to justify. I mean, this would be my fundamental point.

point, the refusal to argue that one

form of life is justified over and against another. In other words, that you can have a system of normatively informed cultural preferences. In other words, since you're from Iran, that you can think that, you know, the Australian system of government is more justified than the Iranian one. A philosophy which says such a thought process is constitutionally impossible to

is to me more or less an absurdity and is a sort of recipe for human despair, really. I mean, why bother if there's no possibility of judging between rival world historical language games?

So, you know, Hegel is addressing that question head on. And it seems to me, you know, sort of post 60s complacent cultural relativism, such as became dominant in anthropology and then in comparative literature and then in literature departments and latterly in history and more recently, maybe also in philosophy and political science. You know, it's kind of

It's very easy to be sceptical about normative hierarchy. I mean, of course, it's the human mind naturally tends towards that because it's hard to ground judgments, but it's very complacent just to rest there. And that's Hegel's point that that, you know, scepticism is necessary, but it's not a solution. Yeah.

Professor Richard Burke, thank you very, very much for taking the time to talk with us on New Books Network. Really, really enjoyed listening to you. And what we just did was simply scratching the surface. There are lots of great things in the book, and I do strongly recommend to our listeners to read the whole book. Thank you very much again for your time. Thank you.