Hegel and Bush

The other day I was thinking that I had not thought about Hegel for some time. Perhaps I had tired of this great philosopher who I regarded to be the greatest of them all. Then I came across an interesting article that offered a Hegelian explanation for George Bush. Then I thought, one can't avoid Hegel because we live in a Hegelian world.

The article I refer to was written by Scott McLemee, entitled "The Great Man Theory". Mclemee points out that Hegel had, in his book "Philosophy Of History", postulated a great man theory in which he describes specific men in history as “World-Historical Persons”. For instance, Hegel believes Julius Caesar and Napoleon were great men of history because not only did they make history but also they changed the world dramatically. Mclemee said that as he was reading Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Spirit" he began to wonder if Bush fitted Hegel's criteria as a world historical person. From what he read Mclemee concluded that GWB did fit GWFH's criteria.

To Hegel's way of thinking the thing that made men historically great is not just that they made history or changed it but that they were single-minded about it. They were not men of intellect or complex ideas, or men that nuanced. Their minds were not clutter with a lot of other ideas, like justice or the welfare of others. They were obsessed men who were focused like a dog with a bone, men that could not be distracted from their vision just like a dog can not be distracted from his bone. They were possessed. GWB is such a man, possessed by a crusade that believes the world should be only one way.

(I imagine Bush's management style to be like this: If things remain intransigent and immovable create a mess of it and let the chips fall where the may and generally they will fall in the right place. This is his Middle East Policy.)

I like the idea presented by McLemee. It sort of explains the unexplainable, why George Bush and his mediocrity exists in this day and age. I thought the American people were smarter and I couldn't believe that so many could have considered him at for president. Not in a million years. But since Bush was picked to be president, by a hair, I thought there must be something providential about his becoming president. Mclemee doesn't think his arrival on the world stage was providential but I do think he believes some convergence of history picked him for this time and place.

Perhaps Bush is a product of History. He became president in a sense accidentally. Historical circumstances picked him. (That can be the only explanation for his being.) History needed a single-minded person it could use and manipulate to break the historical impasse that has existed between the West and Islam. Modernity was making the situation worse between them. Islam was not adapting well or quickly enough to the modern world. The West in turn had to become more understanding of the islamic world. History needed a single minded person like Bush to do its bidding. The strategy he would use was not important, whether corrupt mismanaged or perverse, just as long as he some how upended the status quo and started Islam’s belated reform. Bush in his bubble, with his ‘gut feelings’ and hubris has fueled a revolution in the Islamic world, and its relations with the West, that is irreversible. He has done History’s bidding when no other person would have. History perversely used Napoleon and Hitler in the same way, to change the world when Reason alone would not do it.