G. W. F. Hegel
"Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History,"
1820
Universal history is the exhibition of Geist in the process of working out the knowledge of what it potentially is. Just as the seed bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, including the taste and form of its fruit, so do the first traces of Geist virtually contain the whole of its own history. What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational. Thus what is rational has the potential of actualizing itself, and thus history, far from being an undifferentiated aggregate of incomprehensible accidents and chance events, has a rational structure. Thus, the march of reason through history is a complex dialectical process, in which both individuals and nations are mere tools, unaware of the import and significance of their own deeds. Changes might be introduced by world-historical individuals such as Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, but their roles derive not from their conscious intentions or political ideas, for they are motivated, like all other men, by base desires such as ambition, greed, and glory. It is the objective consciousness of their deeds, and not their subjective intentions, that makes them historically significant. They are thus unconscious tools in the hand of the Geist. History is, thus, the development towards the consciousness of freedom as expressed in the political, cultural, and religious institutions of a nation---Volksgeist. This is expressed externally through the formation of objective institutions, in particular the State. There are three basic stages of the movement of Geist through history, each representing a further evolution of the consciousness of freedom:
1. The Oriental World. The Orientals did not attain the knowledge that Geist, in the form of Mankind, is free. They only knew that "one is free." But in those terms, the freedom of that one person was only caprice, whether exhibited as ferocity, a brutal recklessness of passion, or as mildness and tameness of the desires, either of which is merely an accident of nature. That "one" was thus only a despot. Hence the Volksgeist expressed itself through despotism, where only one had rights.
2. The Classical World. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free, though they, just as the Romans, knew only that "some are free," not Man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know that. Thus the Greeks had slaves, and the whole of their life and the maintenance of their splendid liberty was implicated with the institution of slavery. That fact, on the one hand, made their liberty only an accidental, transient and limited growth and, on the other hand, constituted it a rigorous thralldom of our common nature, i.e., of the human. Hence the Volksgeist expressed itself through the city-state, where only some had rights.
3. The Germanic World. The Germanic nations, under the influence of Christianity, were the first to attain the consciousness that Man, as Man, is free, that it is the freedom of Geist which constitutes Geist's essence. This consciousness arose first in religion, the most inward region of Geist. Thus all could be free, and hence the Volksgeist expressed itself through the modern state, where all have rights. However, to prevent the State from degenerating into a war of all against all, mediation through rational institutions is required, as the only guarantee against arbitrariness and the threat of tyranny posed by absolute monarchy and absolute majoritarianism. The history of the world [Zeitgeist] is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.....