4.2 Genocide

The Best of All Possible Histories

realization? The answer is assuredly yes, as the cultural principle of a nation is in direct correspondence to unchangeable inner features, “hence, to each nation is to be ascribed a single principle, compromised under its geographical and anthropological existence.”38

This does not mean that an uncivilized nation will never develop, as it is the nature of history for nations to interact and develop cooperatively. However, taken in conjunction with the Doppelsatz, we can see that Hegel does not conceive of the West’s perfection as historical accident or a transient phase, because it is the national idea of the Eastern nations to organize themselves as despots.39 Cultural essentialism is an actual and rational phenomenon.

Hegel’s indifference to the genocide of Native Americans is justified by the earliest sections of his Philosophy of Right. The basis for right is the possession a completely free will, for it is this will that allows man his first “bare abstract reference of itself to itself.”40 To follow Hegel’s logic closely, we then say that “personality does not arise until the subject has not merely a general concept of himself in some determinate mode. . . but a consciousness of himself as completely abstract.”41 The final step is that “personality implies, in general a capacity to possess rights.”42 Therefore, the use of a will is a hard requirement for the possession of rights.

A will, in this context, is understood with reference to an object, as when there is “no distinction between the will and its content,” the will remains entirely indefinite and abstract.43 It is this utilization of the will in reference to an object that grants personality, as personality begins only when the subject is conscious of both their subjective and objective existence.44 Thus, Hegel does not need to prove indigenous people lack will at the most basic level of individual freedom and self-determination, only that this will remains entirely abstract, and that no effort will ever prompt native peoples to develop personality. This unutilized will is sufficient to justify genocide, as it would deny Native Americans the capacity for rights.

Hegel’s preoccupation with the imagined laziness and sloth of indigenous people

38. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §346. 39. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, 105-06. 40. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §34. 41. Ibid., §35N. 42. Ibid., §37. 43. Ibid., §34A. 44. Ibid., §35N.

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