Hegel. Phenomenology. Pinkard

H.PS.P Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. Pinkard

Translator's introduction

xxix b "Spirit's" concept of itself is not an ideal against which it measures itself, a statement of its true form...

Spirit stands in a unity of I/you relations and I/we relations. If Spirit were to shape the real flesh and blood lives of individuals, united in friendship in the personal sphere and justice in the wider social and political sphere...

Pinkard's snapshot serves to spotlight the UCP in Hegel.

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So each generation molds the "typical mind set" for the next, against which it reacts. The "typical" mind set is what keeps evolving as so-called Spirit.

xxxi-ii "Hegel interpreted the transition in the French Revolution from its constitutionalist beginings to the Jacobin terror as a logical result of this self-imposed exemption from any normative constraints except those which it brought on itself. Bounded only by itself, it thus found itself outfitted only with the principle of utility at best to constrain it, and, thru the use of the guillotine, it proceeded rationally and calmly and under the pretense of judicial thoroughness to eliminate all those deemed a threat to itself."

In other words, a terroristic group think emerged from the previous group think. Such a group think gives the impression of being an entity (spirit), tho some would prefer to view such in terms of group psychology. And of course group think can descend into mob frenzy, at which point the individual is submerged into a primitive state of being.

Politically one might argue, as would the communists, that the terror was necessary in order to defend the revolution from the conspiracies of the counter-revolution, which was being fueled by the aristocracy of Europe.

Yet we see that Robespierre is an example of how easily violence spirals out of control. Live by the sword, die by the sword.