Hobbes’s Argument for the Practical Necessity of Colonization

Hobbes attempts to show that practical necessity and human nature are related in such a way that colonization is unavoidable by virtue of its naturalness. Colonization is practically and historically necessary because unavoidable constraints generated by human nature combine with material and social factors to produce certain inevitable outcomes. Hobbes’s account of colonization can also be understood in terms of his negative idea of freedom. Hobbes fails, however, to provide a sufficient explanation of one aspect of modern colonialism, namely, the existence of national liberation movements, while the role of the sovereign implies a different idea of freedom to Hobbes’s purely negative one. This makes colonization appear less natural and necessary than he suggests. Finally, I explore the implications of Hobbes’s account of the causes of colonization in connection with the possibility of a ‘science’ of history and the idea of historical necessity.

Practical Necessity and History I

Rousseau’s idea of ‘moral’ freedom is shown to imply an element of contingency in history. Rousseau can be seen to identify three historical models, the first of which entails the possibility of stasis, whereas the other two presuppose and incorporate the idea of a subjection to practical necessity which explains the development of the capacity for moral freedom. Once this capacity has been sufficiently developed, history may result in significantly different, equally possible, outcomes depending on whether or not this capacity is exercised and how it is exercised. One of these outcomes is a genuine social contract. Rousseau appeals to practical necessity in order to explain how individuals would agree to enter into this contract. We here encounter a potential advantage of a mode of explanation that relies on the notion of practical necessity: it requires introducing fewer assumptions about how agents are disposed to act and what motivates them.

Practical Necessity and Historical Necessity in Historical Materialism

Practical necessity is shown to play a key role in Marx’s explanation of the historical necessity to which historical materialism is committed and to facilitate the adoption of a first-person standpoint that introduces minimal assumptions about what would lead the relevant agents to act in ways that bring about certain events and states of affairs. It is argued that Marx’s commitment to the idea of historical necessity, on the one hand, and his account of the possibility of a society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled, on the other, generate a problem in relation to the historical necessity of a phase of history that precedes a post-capitalist society in which freedom and necessity are reconciled. The idea of historical necessity would not apply to this phase of history, whereas to claim that it does so implies the existence of ‘surplus’ practical necessity.

Practical Necessity and History II

Kant argues that constraints generated by social antagonism compel individuals to submit themselves to law and state authority, and that international conflict compels states to form a global legal order. The establishment of legal and political order in turn enables human beings to exercise collective control over their conditions of life. In this way, Kant employs the concept of practical necessity in order to explain the transition to a state of affairs in which freedom and necessity are reconciled while introducing minimal assumptions about what motivates agents. It is shown, however, that although practical necessity here tracks a type of normative necessity, Kant fails to explain how the latter can become the direct object of an agent’s willing. I argue that this implies the need for a different picture of history to the one provided by Kant’s idea of universal history.

Introduction

What you will have I’ll give, and willing too; For do we must what force will have us do. Shakespeare, Richard II, 3.3.204–05 The idea that freedom consists in the absence of constraints and the question of what counts as a constraint on freedom are central themes in social and political philosophy. There is, for example, the debate between liberals and neo-republicans. Neo-republicans accuse liberals of focusing on actual unjustifiable interference in the lives of others. This liberal freedom is purely ‘negative’ in that it consists only in the absence of such interference. Protecting this freedom will require the removal and prevention of constraints of the relevant type, leaving individuals free to do what they desire to do, even though they may lack the ability or power to do it....

Hegel and Marx on the Historical Necessity of the Terror

Hegel is shown to explain the historical necessity of the phase of the French Revolution known as the Terror in terms of conceptual necessity. This conceptual necessity concerns the self-conception and understanding of how the world ought to be characteristic of agents who are committed to the idea of ‘absolute’ freedom. Practical necessity here plays a key role, in that it is the mediating factor between this conceptual necessity and historical necessity. It also enables Hegel to avoid introducing a standpoint that is external to the one of the agents caught up in the historical process that is being explained. Marx explains the Terror in similar terms, and his explanation of it is shown to be related to his critique of the modern state and his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.

The Compatibility of Freedom and Necessity in Marx’s Idea of Communist Society

It is argued that the manner in which workers organize production and determine its goals explains how freedom and necessity are reconciled in Marx’s idea of communist society. Freedom and necessity are reconciled, moreover, in such a way that both self-realization and engagement in activities that possess some intrinsic value become possible, whereas this is not the case for workers in capitalist society. Communist society is explained in terms of a concept of freedom that incorporates three distinct types of freedom, whereas this concept of freedom is incompatible with the constraints generated by the capitalist mode of production and the social relations that emerge on its basis. The theme of how historical materialism is committed to the idea of historical necessity and seeks to explain this necessity in terms of practical necessity is then introduced.

Practical Necessity, Ethical Freedom, and History

It is explained how the conceptual order of Hegel’s system of right concerns the actualization of ‘ethical’ freedom, which consists in self-determination and self-constraint. Practical necessity plays a key role in explaining not only how agents come to exercise and thereby develop their capacity for ethical freedom, but also how they act in accordance with a normative necessity whose sources are the social and institutional conditions of this form of freedom. This is shown to explain how freedom and necessity are reconciled in Hegel’s theory of ethical life. I argue that ethical freedom is, however, prematurely displaced by a negative idea of freedom that has expansionary implications, despite how this ‘global’ freedom becomes explicit only later in Hegel’s account of world history. I explore the tension between ethical freedom and global freedom in connection with Hegel’s claims concerning the essentially progressive character of world history.