Rousseau and Revolution

Arbitrariness and Freedom 77
an arbitrary choice. Crucial to this process is the introduction of the structure
of ‘civil society’ and its fundamental distinction from the ‘state’. As we
have seen, in the early Jena years (1805–7) Hegel sees the French Revolution
as the world-historical upheaval that expresses the exploding force of
the will’s arbitrariness and individuality but also gives birth to the fi rst modern
nation state in world history. Starting from 1818–19 Hegel assigns to
‘civil society’ the function of absorbing, justifying and giving free actuality
to the will’s individuality and arbitrariness, thereby characterizing the social
and political world proper to modernity. In structuring this sphere of ethical
life, Hegel does not look at Rousseau but at the Scottish political economists
– at Adam Smith in particular (see Nuzzo, 2009).
Civil society is the sphere of the market and of the economic activity of
individuals who are placed in a net of social interactions and are guided by
utilitarian interests and aims. We have here the justifi cation and legitimization
of those aspects of individuality and arbitrariness that haunt the actual
democratic functioning of a society based on Rousseau’s general will
because they can neither be accommodated within it nor can they be eliminated
in their difference from the general will. 9 Hegel’s point is that the
sphere of civil society is systematically distinct from the state and its relations
should not be confused with political relations – to reduce the state to
civil society amounts, for Hegel as for Rousseau, to dissolving the political
unity. And yet, civil society with its self-interested individualism constitutes
a necessary moment of ethical life, the necessary condition for the individual
to become citoyen or a member of the state capable of a truly universal
will. On Hegel’s view, in the modern world the arbitrariness of the individual
will cannot be suppressed but must fi nd a legitimate sphere within ethical
life. Individuality needs to be given free rein in order to be formed and
educated to the universality of ethical life required by the higher commitments
proper to the state. This is indeed the lesson that the French Revolution
has taught with regard to Rousseau’s ideas (suggestions are in Schmidt,
1998, 26). Since the arbitrariness of the individual will cannot be cancelled,
if it is not given an independent and legitimate sphere of activity, it
emerges at the level of the state disintegrating the ethical whole. In this
sense Rousseau’s general will is still only individual. Terror – or tyranny –
becomes then an unavoidable political consequence.
Hegel introduces the sphere of ‘civil society’ by describing the action that
takes place within it as the convergence of two principles. On the one hand,
the agent is a particular, ‘concrete person’, characterized by a totality of
needs, natural feelings and arbitrary volitions. This person, observes Hegel,
stands in relation to other particular individuals and it is only through these