Sophocles, Hegel and Ibsen

A Perspective on A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People
by Helge Salemonsen

IV. Hegel’s perspective on history

      In the sixth chapter of The Phenomenology of Spirit (VI: Spirit) Hegel makes a historical journey from ancient Greece, via the Roman Empire, the breakthrough of Christianity, medieval feudalism, French absolutism and its culture of flattery and courtesy, the age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Kant’s moral philosophy, German Romanticism and his contemporary age. The point is to demonstrate patterns of historical evolution, its line of conflicts, the collective experiences that made modernity or modern European self-consciousness possible.

      Along this line of development, he describes stages of consciousness in the development of ethics and law; he describes the coexisting symbiotic and conflict-filled relationship between politics and economy, between state power and wealth, to use Hegel’s terminology, or between common interests and private gain. He describes the changing moral preferences throughout history; changing ways of distinguishing between good and evil, defined by the position one has in the different sections of society (the social hierarchy, economy and government).

      He describes how religion in this process, by establishing a safe haven for the sorely tried, the unhappy consciousness, that would include the majority, contributes to the legitimisation of social inequalities. He describes the Enlightenment philosophy’s critique of religion that seeks to reveal faith as a superstition, as a work of mirrors staged by priests and despots as a way to sustain a meaningless, unjust, privilege-based society. He describes the French Revolution as an attempt to overthrow once and for all the conflict between common and private interests, by diminishing outdated institutions and privileges, in short by forcing the will of the individual to recognise the enlightened general will as his own true will, freed from despotism and religious deceits. He describes how this project had to collapse in terror and barbarism.

      He describes how the failed liberation project of the Revolution, the attempt to reconcile the individual will with the general will through outer, political upheaval, is changed into an interior moral project in Kant’s moral philosophy; in his description of the inner, self-imposed duty within each individual to abstain from selfish interests (sensuality, desires, inclinations) in favour of the moral law (the categorical imperative).(4) He describes how this moral hubris must decay into moral paralysis – or dissemblance, duplicity and pretence – since by definition, it can only postulate, never truly fulfil the uncompromising imperatives of pure will into action, without defiling the purity of the will.

      Through this historical journey Hegel attempts, in short, to show the historical conditions for the modern self-image; the way in which we identify ourselves as individuals, as members of social community, our cultural and moral preferences, our juridical perceptions, our understanding of reality, or even more concisely put: our political, juridical, cultural and moral horizon of perception.

      It is this historical presentation that Brian Johnston claims Ibsen gives systematic references to in his contemporary dramas. Or more precisely, he claims that the plays, from A Doll’s House to Hedda Gabler, refers precisely to this presentation, which is developed in the sixth chapter of the Phenomenology. This sounds undoubtedly quite odd. Yes, quite unlikely, at least at first glance, since these plays are contemporary dramas. Ibsen describes modern characters, in modern contexts, involved in modern conflicts, while Hegel describes humanity’s history of consciousness, from ancient Greece to his contemporary times. Hasn’t Ibsen with Pillars of Society once and for all put behind him the genre of historical drama?(5)

      At this point, I have to remind the reader of what Ibsen says about his historical drama Emperor and Galilean. The 14th of October 1872 he writes to Edmund Gosse: “The chosen historical theme has a closer connection to the movement of our contemporary time than one would presume.” And in the letter to Ludvig Daa, quoted above, he claims that the historical conflict described in the drama “will repeat itself till the end of time”. Emperor and Galilean is his latest play before the chain of realistic contemporary dramas. In a letter to John Paulsen (20th September 1879), while working on A Doll’s House, he insists that:

An extensive knowledge of history is indispensable to an author; without it he is not in a position to understand the conditions of his own age, or to judge men, their motives and actions, except in the most incomplete and superficial manner.

      History is reflected in the age and society in which we live. This is quite obviously Ibsen’s point of view. Against this background it would be negligent not to look for historical references in his contemporary plays.

      On Emperor and Galilean Ibsen has stated that this was his first play written under the influence of German thinking. I cannot help but agree with Brian Johnston’s commentary:

Ibsen’s statement that Emperor and Galilean was the first work written under German influence can only mean that other works, written under the influence of German thought followed this “first”. These later works were the realistic plays of the Cycle. (Johnston 1992: 4)

      In a letter to Georg Brandes, from the 30th April 1873, the same year Emperor and Galilean was published, Ibsen declared that knowledge of German philosophy in general and particularly Hegel’s philosophy is a precondition for being able to say anything remotely interesting and inventive in philosophy. Ibsen has just read Brandes’ translation of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, and the work had annoyed him. He has not been able to perceive anything but “sage-like philistinism” in the book, and, what’s worse, no indication that Mill had any knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy, which in Ibsen’s eyes seems to serve as a decisive criterion of dilettantism! Ibsen cannot pride himself on being an expert in philosophy, he admits. But as opposed to Mill, he apparently knows Hegel’s work:

But now as to Stuart Mill’s book! I do not know whether I ought to express my opinion on a subject in which I am not an expert. Yet, when I remember that there are authors who write on philosophy without knowing Hegel, or without even a general knowledge of German scholarship, many things seem to me permissible. I must honestly confess that I cannot in the least conceive of any advancement or any future in the Stuart Mill’s direction. I cannot understand your taking the trouble to translate this work, the sage-like philistinism of which suggests Cicero and Seneca.

      Hegel’s project in The Phenomenology of Spirit is to show how the development of history gives the conditions not only for the conflicts in contemporary society, but for our cultural values, institutions of society, our perception of our selves. Contemporary society, culture and mind is in this way downright permeated with the past, as a conscious and unconscious presence in the present, comparable to Freud’s perspectives that childhood, growing-up, the total life span of experiences leave permanent marks on our psyche. These private ghosts of personal circumstances are however indebted to the more extensive cultural and society-based circumstances we are born into, pre-conditioned circumstances, fully loaded with history:

Mrs. Alving: It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother, that shows itself in us. It’s all kinds of outdated opinions and all kinds of outdated beliefs and so on. It is not alive inside of us; but it still resides in us, and we cannot get rid of it. Only by picking up a newspaper and reading it, it is as if I could see the ghosts crawling between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the country. I believe there are as many of them as there are grains of sand.

4 - In this context it is irrelevant to discuss whether Hegel gives a just criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy.

5 - Pillars of Society gives, according to Johnston, references to the ending of the fifth chapter (V: Reason), while the last four (The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman, When We Dead Awaken) give reference to the seventh chapter (VII: Religion), which implies that the first and the last four plays have a different character than the remaining seven (from A Doll’s House to Hedda Gabler) which according to Johnston refer to the historical line of development described in the sixth chapter (VI: Spirit) of the Phenomenology.