3.3 Rational The Real
Last modified 06/08/2008
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Our analysis has passed quietly through that mysterious land first charted by
the philosopher Hegel, but with a different model and result. We should pause to
consider for a moment the legacy of that great figure and take note of the
well-known history of the left on this issue, and the great confusion over Hegel
that arose in Marxist theoretical gestures. That generation of Hegelianism, we
should note, clusters near our Great Divide, and thus we can be sure, if not in
theory, in a sort of 'eonic hunch', that it will prove important and recurring,
whatever the verdict of transient scientism on its metaphysically outlandish
demeanor. Fukuyama is proof of that. How on earth did a concoction of
Hegelianism sneak its way back into the political discourse in an age of hard
science and regimented scientism. How did
he manage it?
Our eonic model can easily answer the question, and is robust enough to easily either 'sublate' and/or bypass the ruminations of Hegel, but we must insist that we have produced an historical analysis that stands on its own terms and borrows nothing from Hegelian dialectics, showing rather a Kantian emphasis on the issues of so-called transcendental idealism. Our solid model is thus potentially superior in practice to the dangerous gamble with dialectic that animated Hegel and haunted his followers. The question must be left to further research. We need not come to any final decision on these issues, save to warn that the eonic sequence doesn't resolve as a dialectical process. And we should caution that the degenerations of dialectic in the promotion of revolution are one of the least rigorous, in fact, shallowest corners of Marxist theory. Our model enforces a discipline that a revolutionary might dislike: it grants no legitimation for future revolutionary trials as deterministic or teleological outcomes in theory, restricting such ventures to what they should be, the actions of free men, and no doubt hare-brained men, destined to miscalculate their situations. That said, with ominous precision, the eonic sequence generates not only a liberal world, but a potential failsafe protocol in the outcome of mideonic confusion. As to Hegel, it is hard to compete with the momentum and reputation of this classic, but we might note that our eonic model reissues the discourse that bedeviled Hegel, his discussion of the rational as the real, a pronouncement he lived to regret as his leftist followers proceeded to find the actual slightly less than rational. Our eonic model resummons this issue in another terminology, without Hegel's faux pas, by making its gist an issue of two levels. And indeed in the eonic sequence we see the way in which the ideal and the 'real' can intersect, leaving us with a sense of the rationality of history quite compatible with an evaluation of its irrationality. So we can peddle our wares confident in a robust upgrade of Hegelian thinking on the mysteries of Reason in History. |
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