Conclusion

If Hegel's views on revolution can be faulted it is for turning what was originally a messianic and eschatological vision into a theory of history and human progress. There is, of course, a vigorous literature debating Hegel's appropriation of the messianic theme. For some, notably Karl Lowith, his views on the end of history represent a "secularized" eschatology, whereas for others, like Hans Blumenberg, the very idea of a secularized eschatology is a contradiction in terms. Whereas eschatological thinking speaks of a final judgment breaking into history from the outside, the idea of progress to

which Hegel is attached seeks possibilities at work within or immanent in history. Far from being identical in function, the idea of progress originally set itself over against eschatological expectations brought about through divine intervention. Progress has little to do with millennial faith in a transcendent deity but much to do with "human self-assertion" and the desire to take control over one's own destiny. The Hegelian (and later Marxist) construction of an end of history is not a Heilsgeschichte that sees divinity breaking into history from the outside but is the outcome of purely immanent developments that can be either hastened or retarded by human activity.^[65]

It should go without saying that Hegel was not a terrorist and should not be saddled with the tyrannical moralisms of both the left and the right. He even, arguably, sought to dampen the revolutionary spirit of his age by showing history to be a "slaughterbench" where heroic individuals invariably come to grief. Nevertheless, Hegel's ideas about the progressive character of revolutionary movements clearly resonate with certain of our leading beliefs about progress and modernization. Whereas the ancient Greeks spoke of revolutions as part of an endless cycle of nature doomed to eternal repetition over time, one of the hallmarks of modernity has been the belief that we are capable of breaking out of this cycle and creating something new. Certainly, the scientific, industrial, and political revolutions of the modern age have been thought of as evidence that humankind is awakening from its dogmatic slumber and rolling back the forces of ignorance and superstition. If we understand the Enlightenment to mean the ultimate triumph of reason over unreason, then it would seem that the Hegelian belief in the emergence of reason and freedom in history represents the culmination of the Enlightenment.

In the face of the experiences of the twentieth century it is difficult to retain anything of the Enlightenment's faith in history as the story of man's secular redemption. The Enlightenment's belief that advances in our scientific and technological rationality can bring about a "better world" has been all but relegated to the status of one of the self-consoling mythologies of the age. At the very least the belief that further advances in history will lead to the amelioration of human suffering has been massively contradicted by the experiences of Auschwitz and the Gulag. The chief task facing political theory today must be to keep alive some sense of the primacy of human rights and the dignity of the individual while resisting the temptations of a dynamic, teleological philosophy of history.