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history lesson: The history behind current events.

George Bush, HegelianThe president's quest for a sense of "history."

By David Greenberg
Posted Monday, Aug. 6, 2007, at 7:18 AM ET

David Greenberg was online on Aug. 9 to chat with readers about the article. Read the transcript.

(Continued from page 1)

But Brooks' gloss on Bush's theory of history is too simple. For although the president considers individual leaders the key to diplomacy, his thoughts about history—especially when he shifts into his philosophical mode—actually suggest he believes in a kind of determinism, in the inevitability of deeper currents. The twist is that Bush's deep forces aren't the organic social impulses that Tolstoy wrote about. Rather, they're the expressions of a spirit—a divine will.

"Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy," Brooks wrote, "or as he said … , 'I believe a gift of [the] Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me doesn't exist.' " Much more than the probing queries of a wide-eyed undergraduate, this defiant assertion of conviction sounds like the Bush we know. It's in keeping with countless other remarks Bush has made insisting that defeating terrorism is the "purpose" of his presidency. And it bespeaks a view of history that, while out of fashion for many decades, once enjoyed near-universal appeal.

Before the Enlightenment and the recourse to science and reason in historical explanation, most societies believed that the unfolding of events followed divine guidance. Even into the 19th century, chroniclers of the American story sprinkled their narratives with references to the hand of Providence. They interpreted the conquest of the West, the flowering of democracy, and the rise of the United States to greatness as the result of a supernal blessing. "A superintending Providence, that overrules the designs, and defeats the projects of men, remarkably upheld the spirit of the Americans," reads but one such passage, from Mercy Otis Warren's classic History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805), "and caused events that had for a time a very unfavorable aspect, to operate in favor of independence and peace."

This faith-based theory of history resembles Bush's. In his Vanity Fair article, Halberstam interpreted Bush's recent talk of history as a puzzling departure from his previous inclination to cite "instinct and religious faith" as the underpinnings of his decision-making. If Bush sees history as a divine plan, the contradiction disappears.

But perhaps there's a more charitable way to think of Bush's understanding of history: as a Hegelian. (Scott McLemee of Inside Higher Ed, for one, has offered an intriguing Hegelian reading of Bush.) Like Carlyle, who was influenced by his work, Hegel venerated heroes who steer the course of events. After seeing Napoleon ride into battle to defeat the armies of Prussian monarchy at Jena in 1806, Hegel famously described the emperor as "the World Spirit riding on a horse"—a great individual shaping history. But Hegel also believed the battle at Jena to represent, as Francis Fukuyama stressed in his influential 1989 essay, the "end of history." History, Hegel argued, had an inner logic, a teleology, with the unfolding of liberty as the ultimate plan. For Hegel, Great Men like Napoleon don't just happen to find themselves as emperor of Europe; they're driven by an inner spirit that serves the aims of historical destiny.

I doubt that many Americans would share the view of Bush as a world-historical figure, possessed by the spirit of history. It does strike me as possible, however, that the president thinks of himself this way. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History aren't likely to appear on Bush's nightstand next to the three biographies of George Washington he's said to have consumed, nor should we expect Bush to drop his comparisons to Truman and start talking about Napoleon instead. But that's because, after last summer's dabbling with Camus, and this summer's Gallic flirtation with big questions, he wouldn't want people to think he's French.

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David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers, has two new books out: Presidential Doodles and Calvin Coolidge.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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Remarks from the Fray:

One of Hegel's most influential disciples was, of course, Marx, who saw an inevitable march of history towards socialism. Replace 'socialism' with 'democracy' and you have the neocons' agenda in a nutshell. Add the fact that the neocon movement was pretty much started by former Trotskyists at the University of Chicago and then you have a pretty complete picture. Of course I doubt that Bush has much of a personal intellectual connection to this movement; more than likely he's just parroting what he's picked up from Wolfowitz, et la.

Interestingly, I think Marx would support Bush and the neocons more so than he would isolationists. Remember, he saw capitalism as an evil but necessary intermediate stage in the transition to communism. In modern terms, this means that a global revolution can only occur when globalization has industrialized the entire world and turned the entire population into equally exploited laborers. By this logic, then, modern-day liberals who try to improve a single nation's infrastructure while preventing outsourcing and exploitative 'free trade' are actually hindering communism rather than helping it, as they're often accused of doing. In other words, things have to get really bad for everyone before they can get good for anyone.

That's just one twisted theory, anyway. I just wonder whether the neocons are perhaps really closet socialists playing an epic game of chess with the world, or if they really think that belligerent corporatocracy is a sustainable form of world governance...

--achilleselbow

(To reply, click here.)

Is it surprising that, George Bush, a devout Christian, has a teleological view of history? Not at all. Is it surprising that, as an American neoconservative, he believes in the spread of American-style liberal democracy? Of course not. Do these beliefs thereby make him a Hegelian? Only by a quantum imaginative leap. Trying to find remote intellectual precedents for the Bush Presidency (remember when he was a Straussian--but was too stupid to realize it?) is a fruitless and self-indulgent exercise.

--Ryan Ruby

(To reply, click here.)

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