“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” As a critique of Feuerbach, which is what it primarily is, this verdict of Marx's seems to me fair enough. But to what extent does it also apply to that other great philosopher with whom Marx is preoccupied: Hegel?Superficially, it might appear that Hegel too is only an ‘interpreter’ of the world. Does he not, after all, repudiate any ambition to ‘give instruction as to what the world ought to be’ in his Preface to the Philosophy of Right? And does he not then famously go on to argue thatphilosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed […] The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk —?Well, yes. But the particular sort of ‘instruction’ in question here is the devising of political Utopias, or the drafting of detailed programmes of government. And this is by no means the only way in which thinking may move beyond simple ‘interpretation’ to become strategically effective in worldly terms.
Ethics as ethical rebellion: Good as the externalization of particularity in Hegel’s elements of the philosophy of right