Institutional Love: An Investigation on Hegel and Neitzche

Introduction

Love is often thought of as a subject belonging to poetry not politics, yet this oversight fails to account for love as not a mere emotion, but as an intrinsic part of human nature. Love can be separated into two understandings as a verb and noun, the former being  representing the simple emotion of fondness towards a person or a thing. As a verb however, love is a motion, an exercise of will in the transitive state between one object and the next. Love as a movement is therefore an exercise of freedom, it is also an expression of humanity intrinsic to life. Love is a political good in the way its movement paints a more practical understanding of the freedom which a society begets. Essentially, the freedom of individuals within a society is accounted for by how they may love. In Friedrich Nietzsche's genealogy of morality and Hegel's philosophy of right, the thinkers explore love, elaborating on how society aids the individual in actualizing or failing to actualize "loving." Through an analysis of the action of loving, this paper will show that Hegel and Neitzche view a community as either aiding or hampering the individual's freedom. First, the paper will briefly trace the groundwork of the thinkers' theories: Hegel's ethical life and Neitzche's slave revolt in morality. Second, it will explain how Hegel sees loving as only actualizable externally, and Neitzche sees love only actualizable through an embrace of individualism outside of social conformity. Finally, it will connect their analysis of loving towards either a defence of the community or, for Neitzche, his critique of conformity amidst one. This analysis will hone in on one expression of freedom, "to love," as a way to see the political implications of society in the thinker's analysis of what it means to be free.

Neitzche and Hegel

It is essential to first lay the groundwork of each thinker's works to decipher their concept of love. Neitzche and Hegel both take a material viewpoint of analysis, examining existing structures and realising truths within them, abstaining from mere abstracting. Hegel's work traces the societal actualization of freedom in the concept of the "ethical life," while Neitzche critiques social conformity by explaining "the slave revolt of morality". Hegel's ethical life, in its simplest form, explores freedom and the way institutions of society are necessary for freedom. Freedom is defined by Hegel as a "liberation" of two parts, first "from dependence on mere natural impulse". Hegel believes firstly that freedom lies in an individual's ability to tame impulse to be subordinate to rationality. His second condition for freedom lies in "liberation from the indeterminate subjectivity which never reaches reality" . This second tenant is the one which brings forth his advocacy of the society, stressing a material condition for individual liberation. While the individual must tame impulse and rationalise their pursuits towards the outcome most worthwhile, their environment must follow suit, serving to assist the individual in actualizing their goals. "the good is this freedom realised." he remarks, believing that once the institutions of society align with individual rational, a person is "free," . To summarise, Hegel's theory of freedom is based on the fact that one's individual will is externally realised in society, moving out of the abstract, transitioning rationality into material reality. This concept of "ethical life," which "is the concept of freedom developed into the existing world and the nature of self-consciousness" is the end of his theory, what he concludes from his text. Importantly, Hegel calls this “the good” using this title objectively as a front for something desirable. 

Neitzche's material approach is different from Hegel’s, as he takes a genealogical approach. He essentially discovers truth from a historical investigation of conceptual development. In his genealogical stance, Neitzche stresses the impermanence of obsolete concepts, such as “good”, which thinkers such as Hegel utilise quite passively. The concept of "the good,"to Neitzche, is falsely often used to represent an objective ideal, however, in deconstructing the word itself, he finds that it cannot be used as such. His method is much more critical, and he discredits that any objective understanding of right and wrong has actual value for philosophy, that in failing to understand this is a representation of how deep rooted psychological manipulation and conformity have been rooted into society. Nietzsche's "slave revolt in morality," is his crucial theory in this argument. In brief, it is a historical account of the word “good” and an explanation of how the qualities associated within it have been constructed. He explains how the modern concept of good was developed by  the weak who used their intellect to denounce the powerful, turning the traits commonly associated with "good" into "bad" as a means of consoling their situation from a stance of powerlessness. Neitzche sets his theory on the base claim that "The Word good is not necessarily attached to unegoistic actions'' . He then reverts to genealogy, explaining, "The predominant feeling of complete and fundamental superiority of a higher ruling kind about a lower kind, to those below, that is the origin of the antithesis good and bad". With the weak and oppressed labelled as "bad" under this order, they managed an intellectual resistance where they denounced the actions of the rulers as "evil"- bringing with it the association between these two concepts, "bad" and "evil." He uses a metaphor from the animal kingdom to explain: "There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey...but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey". He transitions into the revolt through a supposition that " if the lambs say to each other that these birds of prey are evil and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like … a lamb is good… then there is no reason to raise objections to this setting up of an ideal" . While this deconstruction established the concept of “good” as being contextual, through its initial function it also prescribed a certain value lying in power, as the natural and first concept of “good”. Thus, Neitzche describes popular morality more generally, as baseless other than this consoling function. Therefore, the idea of "goodness" being "selflessness" is an indoctrinated lie, and strength/power are the qualities which naturally harbour positive feelings from humanity.  

What is Love: A Philosophy

Amidst this background emerges the thinker's descriptions of love. Their idea of loving can be separated into an ideal, which they promote and a false form, which they renounce. In focusing upon the "pure form," one can see the qualities the thinkers value for the freedom of love. Hegel describes love as fundamentally a feeling, one that can be most astutely understood through the family. He explains, "The family as the immediate substantiality of mind is specifically characterised by love". While this is where love can be seen, the substance of love is broken down to be more complex, described as "a feeling of unity". This unity involves "the renunciation of my independence" and through" knowing myself as the unity of myself with another and of the other with me". Under his previous umbrella of "the good," love falls amongst this, as it fulfils a particular desire within human beings and leads to a material realisation of abstract wants. Hegel claims that love fulfils an intrinsic discrepancy of the human condition, this being loneliness. Self-awareness of loneliness begets a desire for human connection, that humans consciously "do not wish to be a self-sufficient and independent person," and that this makes one feel "defective and incomplete". Love follows; it’s worth it that a person "counts for something in the other while the other, in turn, comes to count for something" in them- amending the problem of loneliness by bringing their selfhood out of mind. Therefore, Love to Hegel is a mutual act of recognition, abiding by the same logic that constitutes his ethical life. To finalise this understanding, he describes that love and the institution which begets it, marriage "is a self-restriction but is liberation". Love is a feeling, but its actualization must be found through a material institution, for him marriage is the useful actualization of this requirement. 

Nietzsche's text spends most of its page space in a critique; therefore, it can be challenging to understand his concept of love. This requires a more astute breakdown of his concepts. First, it is essential to understand that Nietzsche believes in two forms of love; one, which is damaging and part of the slave revolt in morality, and one positive. He clearly defines that which he considers terrible about modern love- yet he cannot critique it without subtly proposing an alternative version.  From this, one can retroactively construct positive loving from everything that he finds poor in what he calls love, but truly sees as a lie, and the facets which make it negative. Neitzche calls love "the masterpiece of those back magicians who can turn anything black into whiteness". He explains, " What do they turn revenge and hatred into?" and decides, that they have forged a new meaning of love.Neitzche explains that love was used as a vessel for the enslaved people to channel negative emotion towards oppressors. Christian morality chooses to love their enemies out of spite, in the notion that divine retribution will eventually sow the revenge they seek, making “brother in hate but their brothers in love" . However, Neitzche takes issue with this subconscious doctrine as he does the rest of slave morality, that this lie is inefficient as it does not address the true nature of the discrepancy rather oppresses the negative emotion. "they are talking about loving your enemies and sweating while they do it… they are miserable without a doubt" Neitzche states. It is evident that his critique forms from the fact that slave morality is a form of self-denial, of repression, and liberation from one's desires or freedom cannot come from this state of denial.  Neitzche believes love must begin with internal acceptance then. He makes this more evident when he describes that the only people who have ever been capable of true love had been the masters or noblemen; going back to his birds of prey analogy, he claims ". Further, Neitzche alludes to pure love in  "the nobleman” who is confident and frank with himself", explaining that only in this state of honesty “actual love of your enemies is possible here and here alone". Essential slave morality corrupts love, love must begin from a more honest origin. Further, if slave love is poor for being a false love bred from animosity and oppression, real love must begin with loving oneself, therefore loving others not in animosity but in genuine respect of the other.  

Love and Freedom: Hegel

Defining the thinker's groundwork and the thinker's concept of love, one may move on to see how the concepts intersect and how their analysis of love paints a practical understanding of how the thinkers define freedom. Loving is realised when a citizen is free, for both thinkers, a breakdown of this logic in their specific contexts symbolises their grander thoughts. Hegel's understanding of love exemplifies the process of ethical living, in transitioning self consciousness to the outside world. For one, marriage is the essential key to actualizing love. Love therefore must exist in the scheme of institutional conformity. Love in itself to Hegel represents this conformity, he defines it as a feeling of unity, an internalised acceptance of being both an individual and a part of a community. However, confined to the sole person, or even sole family renders it unfulfilled. This is why he states that it is an ethical duty of the citizen to enter into marriage. Hegel expands his theory forward, also seeing love more broadly, in working backwards, love forges the bonds that structure society as a whole, bringing freedom from the abstract and into material life. Hegel explains that love must be released from the family in his section "Transition of the Family into Civil Society." As the family disintegrates into a plurality of families, "the moments bound together in the unity of the family… must be released from the concept to self-subsistent objective reality" . Hegel finds value in the concept of love as it joins the single to the plural. Loving “takes the concrete person, who is himself the object of his particular aims''  but “that each establishes himself and finds satisfaction using others''. One can see from this analysis the inherent defence of community and institutional conformity as freeing and positive. "This logical movement from internal to external is accomplished using institutional and external societies," he explains. He further exposes a defence of the community as being developed in love, in referring to marriage he explains, "These institutions are the firm foundation of the state," seeing how each institution solidifies freedom in this unification of the institutions of society to the individual as, "in them is particular freedom”. Essentially, love is a representation of freedom through unity. However, to be actualized it must be developed from the particular to the collective, from abstract to reality. Love indicates Hegel's idea that social institutions translate the particular good, and freedom is only made possible by this actualization. However, while he promotes society he does necessitate that institutions must reflect the particular freedom, this evidenced in the idea “in them is the particular freedom”- suggesting if this condition is not met, one is not free. 

Love and Freedom: Neitzche 

Neitzche offers quite the opposite insight to Hegels, while he similarly believes love is forged in particular, by engaging in the community, one denies themselves the ability to love. While this dichotomy is applied to love, it also represents his central argument upon freedom.  Love is one exercise of freedom which is corrupted by slave morality and social conformity. Love, as conditioned to be understood through slave morality, comes from powerlessness; he explicitly states: "Priests make the evilest enemies? But why? Because they are the most powerless". However, he finds this a self-denial, claiming,  “it is just absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength" when thinking of what slave morality and the denunciation of power which it propagates. He sees a defeatist mentality predominating from this acceptance which is inherently unfree, one which is negative for humanity. He explains that from the acceptance of slave morality, "Today we see nothing that wants to expand", suggesting that slave loves repression translates to the external world. While “the man of resentment is neither upright nor honest” and "his soul squints" the “noble man” who seeks power, is confident and frank with himself. Further, we can see that loving your enemies is criticised because it denies an inherent desire for power; hating the concept and deciding that powerful people will suffer divine retribution. This explanation of poor love helps to illuminate what it is that Neitzche argues for. In section 17, Neitzche explains: "Every table of values, every thou shalt needs first and foremost a physiological elucidation," expanding that "the question of value for what cannot be examined too finely".  Neitzche disagrees with conformity to existing social orders, including that of love, denouncing the self-repression which Hegel defines as liberating, likely disagreeing with the institution of marriage as well. Essentially then, Neitzche defines a problem in society, not amenable by society, that society proposes an oppressive morality, that it fosters self-repression and that this leads to decline. Therefore, when Neitzche claims that "The good of the majority and the good of the minority are conflicting moral standpoints” and that the philosopher “must solve the problem of values”, he is advocating for a deconstruction of society as a whole, and the institutions which forge it. To summarise, Neitzche believes love has been corrupted, that it has been corrupted by society - and as loving is a mere embodiment of freedom, communal conformity cannot develop freedom. In contrast to Hegel, Neitzche is starkly non-conformist and a critique of society as an avenue to freedom. 

Conclusion

Neitzche and Hegel represent the changing nature of political philosophy as entering into the modern age. As political philosophy became accessible to and for the public, they represent the modern era, abstaining from the aristocratic tendency of the early ages to theorise in abstractions of a utopia which is to never come to fruition. However, Nietzsche and Hegel may be two political thinkers who could not be further apart in their diagnoses of society. Their conceptions of freedom are fundamentally different, while Hegel sees freedom in unity and society, Neitzche sees society as limiting and the self as the source which one must begin from to discover true freedom. These latent arguments are made evident in their analysis of love. While Hegel sees love actualized institutionally through the practice of self repression, Neitzche sees the love forged through society as nothing more than a lie. Hegel essentially is more abstract than Neitzche, despite his denunciation of abstract tought. While he develops a defence of the community, he fails to recognize the implications of a society which does not unify the aims of the particular but instead corrupts them. Neitzche’s astute analysis of the modern world pushes further, examining the institutions which he discovered through lived experience and deconstructing an acceptance of them just as they are. The thinkers delve into a realm of practicality which is overall more useful for the future of political analysis by breaking the boundaries of past thinkers and explaining the practical implications of society. 

Works Cited

 Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right . Edited by Allen W. Wood and H. B. (Hugh Barr) Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 2017. “On the Genealogy of Morality” and Other Writings . Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson and Carol Diethe. Cambridge, United Kingdom ; Cambridge University Press.