Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

they draw their inspiration from another source, that hidden spirit whose hour is near but which still lies beneath the surface and seeks to break out.’ These are the leaders who change the world, unite nations, create empires, found political institutions. And once the new state of things exists, the society or nation comes face to face with something it has itself produced—the situation that advances self-understanding, remember—and finds out a little more about its own real aspirations.
It also finds out more about the problems they bring with them. For a start, these transitions from one state to another rarely happen smoothly, without conflict and struggle. What Hegel calls ‘the calm and regular system of the present’ always has its appeal, especially for those in whom the subliminal awareness of Spirit’s next move is undeveloped. These become the reactionaries who resist the world-historical individual’s striving for change; they are opposed by those of a slightly more advanced state of consciousness, who gather behind the leader, sensing that the new direction is the right one.
Only right for now, however. Remember that the strange thing from which we began, the Idea, involves development, in a figurative sense. Everything that exists or happens reflects the Idea, and that of course includes history, which exhibits the Idea’s ‘development’, but now in a literal sense. The Idea, as you will find if you ever read Hegel’s Logic (but be warned, it is desperately hard work), always develops through the conflict of opposed concepts followed by their resolution, which itself turns out to harbour another opposition, upon which a further resolution follows, and so on until the entire system is complete. The same holds, therefore, in the political sphere. Conflict leads to a new order, but before long the new order itself is showing strains; the seeds of the next conflict were already present in it, and once they mature it is swept away in its turn. You may find the metaphysics with which Hegel underpins all this extravagant, wild, and woolly, but when he applies it to human history the result certainly isn’t stupid. It is this idea of progress arising out of conflict which is known as ‘dialectic’. It pervades the thought of Hegel, but equally that of Marx, which is why Marx’s philosophy is often called ‘dialectical materialism’ (see above, p. 65, and below, p. 123).
12. Progress through conflict: the storming of the Bastille. Hegel was nineteen when the French Revolution occurred—it made an impression.
Notice that there is very little comfort here for the individual. The Idea is to come to self-knowledge, and this it must do in human minds, which are the only vehicle around, but no particular human mind is of any concern to it whatever. History throws individuals away once they have served their turn. That is even, or especially, true of world-historical individuals: ‘their end attained they fall aside like empty husks’. Julius Caesar did his bit—and was assassinated. Napoleon did his—then was defeated, captured, and sent to rot on a remote island. An individual is no more than a dispensable instrument. God, supposedly, loves each one of us, but the Idea couldn’t care less, so long as there are some of us, and they are doing its business. So it is hard to see Hegelianism becoming a popular mass philosophy, for all its huge influence.Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species
The first thing we can learn from this fascinating book is not to bother too much about drawing a neat sharp line between philosophy and science. The point is not that the line isn’t sharp, although I believe that to be true. The point is that the line (if it exists) is not of much importance for philosophy. On any reasonable way of drawing it Darwin’s Origin is science, more specifically biology. But because of its subject matter, and the claims it makes, very few books have had greater philosophical impact. For it implies a startling thesis about us and how we have come to be as we are. It may not startle us today, but it startled most of his contemporaries to the point of shock; and there are still a number of people trying to perform the difficult balancing act of rejecting it without appearing merely ignorant and prejudiced.
In one sense The Origin of Species does much more than ‘imply’ the startling thesis: it builds a very carefully constructed case for it, backed by a wealth of thoughtfully assessed evidence. Darwin was not the first person to propose the theory of natural selection (he tells you a little of the history of the idea in his own introduction to the book), but he was the first to assemble so much evidence for it and so honestly to confront the difficulties it faces. If prior to 1859 you wanted to reject the view that species were mutable, and developed out of other species, and that our own species was no exception, it was easy: just say ‘No’. It conflicted with your other (deeply held) beliefs, many experts opposed it, and there existed no serious and plausible statement of the case for it. After 1859 it wasn’t easy at all—though of course there were plenty of people who didn’t notice.
In another sense, however, ‘imply’ is exactly the right word: Darwin gave no prominence (in this book) to his opinion that just as much as any other species humanity falls under the general theory. Readers who reach the last chapter—or jump to it—will there find, discreetly placed and well apart, two or three unmistakable sentences. Otherwise, silence. A common mistake is to call the book Origin of the Species, presumably supposing that we are the species in question. Absolutely not: There is almost nothing about us.
Plenty about pigeons, in fact half of chapter 1. They lend themselves perfectly to Darwin’s strategy: start from a case in which it is totally uncontroversial that a breed can be altered by selection—the breeder’s selection of which birds to allow to mate