The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (118 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

The head of state embodies the political community and continuity of the state, and carries out ceremonial functions associated with representing the state both at home and in foreign policy, for instance in committing the state to treaty obligations.
In those systems where the head of state does not also act as
head of government
, the head of state attempts to appear above party politics and to represent the interests of the nation as a whole. Such a head of state may be an hereditary monarch, which is the situation in about thirty states, or a president elected indirectly by the legislature from amongst the ‘elder statesmen’ who have rendered conspicuous service to the state. At the end of the Second World War the occupied and liberated nations of Western Europe chose through parliament or by referendum whether to maintain the largely monarchical systems of the interwar period, or to establish republics headed by a president. In Eastern Europe governments abolished monarchies, and here and in the Soviet Union the head of state was normally the chairman of the parliament—an unknown politician heading a largely powerless body, while political power was normally exercised outside the formal machinery of the state by the general secretary of the Communist Party.
In Europe today, heads of state may be able to exercise some discretionary powers if the political process is temporarily deadlocked. In Italy, presidents have tried to represent the interests of the nation at large against the corruption of both government and Mafia, and in Spain King Juan Carlos has played an important role in the transition from dictatorship to democracy and in cementing support for the post-Franco democratic regime.
The British monarch plays two additional and unique roles as head of state which have evolved from the role of the Crown as King and Emperor (Queen and Empress) which developed in the nineteenth century. First, the monarch is head of the
Commonwealth
, and recognized as such by the majority of members of the Commonwealth, which are either republics or have retained their own monarchy. Secondly, the monarch continues to serve as head of state for a minority of Commonwealth states, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In these states, from which most of the time of course she is absent, she is represented by a Governor-General who carries out ceremonial functions on her behalf.
PBy 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1770–1831)
German philosopher, born in Stuttgart in 1770; died of cholera in Berlin in 1831. He was educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium and the Tübinger Stift where he, along with Hölderlin and Schelling , studied philosophy and theology. After being employed as a house tutor Hegel eventually secured a position at the University of Jena in 1801 where he lectured on logic and metaphysics for four years until he was appointed as a professor. In 1816 he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg and lectured on political philosophy, history of philosophy, logic and metaphysics, anthropology and psychology, and aesthetics. Two years later Hegel took a professorship at the University of Berlin where he remained until his death.
During his lifetime Hegel published four important philosophical works:
Phenomenology of Spirit
(1807);
Science of Logic
(1812–16);
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
(1817, 1827, 1830); and
Philosophy of Right
(1821). His lectures on the history of philosophy, and philosophies of history, aesthetics, and religion were all published after his death.
Hegel intended the
Phenomenology of Spirit
to serve as an introduction to his whole philosophical system, which was later to be explicated in the
Encyclopaedia
. His task in the
Phenomenology
is to present scientifically the contradictory development of consciousness from its most abstract state to the level of ‘absolute knowledge’. For Hegel the aim of philosophy is to apprehend ‘what truly is’ but to do this we need first to reflect on the very way consciousness itself understands reality. Hegel does this by showing how consciousness develops through education to, dialectically, both preserve and transcend previous modes of thought. As each form of consciousness becomes aware that it has not achieved ‘absolute knowledge’ it is forced to move on to a higher level of cognition. For Hegel this is why ‘the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom’.
The
Science of Logic
sees Hegel similarly concerned with the discovery of truth but also with his preoccupation concerning the problem of a starting point for philosophical analysis. Initially, however, Hegel is concerned to show that the weakness of traditional logic is that it separates form from content. For instance, formal logic would regard the following as ‘true’: all men are stupid, Galileo was a man, therefore Galileo was stupid. In form this is correct, each statement can be deduced from one another, but in content it can only be decide by experience whether the main premiss and the conclusion are ‘true’. In contrast Hegel argues that ‘real’ logic can only come about if thought is allowed to develop itself free from the imposition of formal rules of traditional logic. Consequently, he wants to begin without any such presuppositions. He does this through abstracting thought to an indeterminate state as ‘pure being’ where it is ‘nothing’. Yet this ‘nothing’ is itself ‘something’,—that is, it is nothing. Both ‘being’ and ‘nothing’ therefore become reducible to one another. Yet the movement which takes place between the two is a movement of ‘becoming’. ‘Being’ becomes ‘nothing’ and ‘nothing’ becomes ‘being’. From a state of indeterminacy we have moved to the determinacy of ‘becoming’ without assuming or presupposing anything. The rest of the
Logic
is an attempt by Hegel to develop further categories from the level of bare determinacy.
It is from this analysis that we begin to discern the outlines of Hegel's dialectical method. Hegel attempts to explain this as lucidly as is possible in the
Lesser Logic
which comprises part one of the
Encyclopaedia
. The rest of the
Encyclopaedia
covers the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of mind. Hegel argues that his logic consists of three moments: the Understanding, the Dialectic, and the Speculative. Thought which remains simply at the level of the Understanding holds determinations in a fixed manner and sees them as being distinct from one another. The Dialectic is the recognition of the movement between these ‘fixed’ determinations in terms of their opposites, such as ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, for example. The Speculative stage is where real truth is found. It is the stage of ‘positive reason’ which is the knowledge that the opposites themselves should be apprehended as contradictions within a unity. Speculative philosophy is concerned with grasping the truth which emerges out of the contradictoy movement of the Dialectic itself.
In the
Philosophy of Right
this dialectical movement becomes express in the development of the concept of the will as it makes its progression along the path to freedom. The will moves through the moment of ‘Abstract Right’, where it manifests itself into material existence as it posits itself in property. It then passes through ‘Morality’, which allows it to realize the importance of moral norms, before it enters the realm of ‘Ethical Life’. It is here that the will passes through the moments of the family,
civil society
, and the state. It is through these mediating moments that a particular will comes into contact with other wills. Such interaction leads to the creation of institutions that attempt to bring the particular and universal will into a contradictory unity, for only then can people be truly free. The task for philosophy, according to Hegel, is to discern what is rational in this progression of the will. It is to try and penetrate the ‘forms, appearances and shapes’ which rationality takes in its external existence. Hence Hegel's claim, that ‘What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational’, should be understood as a non-identity. The ‘rational is actual’ in that it exists in society but only in a particular ‘form’. Speculative philosophy's task is to grasp the ‘content’ of that ‘form’ and thereby discover what is truly rational. If Hegel's legacy means anything it is the importance of carrying out this endeavour for our own time in order for human freedom to be fully realized. See also
sittlichkeit
.
IF 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search