only intelligible in relation to the others and through the others, and while
the substance universal characterizes the individual as a whole in a way that
unifies its particular properties, there is no suggestion here that individuals
as such are interrelated by the universal, in the mann er of Bradley’s red-
haired men. When Royce writes that ‘[the universal ‘man’] is thus konkret in
two senses, namely, in so far as in it all men are together, and i n so far as
through it all Qualita
¨
ten of each man are united’,
47
I would accept only the
second of these senses as being part of Hegel’s conception of the concrete
universal, and not the first. It would seem, then, that even if previously (in
section I) it was possible to interpret their position in such a way that there
was no divergence between Hegel ’s position on the concrete universal and
that of the British Idealists, there is a genuine divergence here.
IV
It might be said, however, that my argument in the previous section
exaggerates the contrast between Hegel and the British Idealists on this
issue, and that this can be seen by looking at the role both gave to the
concrete universal in their political philosophies, where it was used by both
Hegel and the British Idealists to the same effect – to argue for their organic
or holistic view of the state. It can be argued that this holistic conception of
the concrete universal underpins the British Idealist’s organic conception of
the state, whereby all individuals within the community are said to embody
a common universal that makes them into parts of a whole; and, it might
therefore be argued, Hegel’s social holism (which he and the British Idealists
could be said to share) has a similar basis in this holistic model of the
concrete universal.
48
That the British Idealists based their picture of the unity of the state on
something like this holistic conception of the concrete universal is suggested
in several of their writings (although perhaps not as explicitly or strongly as
some of their critics have generally assumed); so, for example, in his
(in)famous discussion of ‘the English nation’ in Essay V of Ethical Studies,
47
Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 501.
48
For a classic account along these lines, which attributes the social holism of the British
Idealists to the holistic model of the concrete universal that is said to be found in Hegel, see
L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (London, 1918), esp. pp. 62–6, where
Hobhouse distinguishes this sort of position from his own:
We are contending for individuality, for the irreducible distinction between self and
others, and we have met some of the arguments directed against that distinction. But
now we have admitted a ‘universal’ running through thousands and millions of selves.
This admission, according to the idealist, will be fatal to the separateness which we
have maintained. The universal for him unites the instances which fall under it just in
the manner which we dispute . . . We come, therefore, to that theory of the universal
which, as we said above, underlines the whole question. This theory is due to Hegel.
(ibid., 62)
134 ROBERT STERN
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