based on any claim that this unity is grounded in some common nature that
the individuals share, as on the holistic model of the concrete universal.
It might be argued, however, that in emphasizing the role that Hegel gives
to the will, rather than anything like ‘Englishness’ or ‘humanity’, I have not
yet shown that the holistic model of the concrete universal is not operative in
his political philosophy: for (it could be said), does not this conception of
the will involve attributing to individuals a will they possess in common,
where it is this communality that is supposed to underpin their unity, much
as the holistic model of the concrete universal suggests?
It is indeed true that the British Idealists have sometimes been interpreted
in this way. For example, this is how Hobhouse appears to have understood
Bosanquet’s social holism, where Hobhouse focuses on Bosanq uet’s
conception of the will, but adopts the holistic model of the concrete
universal in doing so. Thus, he argues that for Bosan quet, because our ‘real
will’ is supposed to be something shared and thus a universal, it makes us
parts of a whole:
But when we pass from the conception of like persons or like selves to a
corporate person or a common self, there is an inevitable transition from
qualitative sameness to the sameness of continuity and numerical unity. The
assumptions are (1) There is in me a real self, my real will, which is opposed to
what I very often am. (2) This real will is what I ought to be as opposed to
what I very often am. (3) There is in you a real will and in every other member
of society a real will. All these real wills are what you and every other member
of society ought to be. In quality and character these real wills are
indistinguishable. They are therefore the same. (4) This sameness constitutes
of all the real wills together one self.
60
It might seem, then, that even if I am right to make the will central to
Hegel’s political philos ophy, this can be conceived of in a way that still
involves the holistic model of the concrete universal, just as it does
(Hobhouse claims) for an Idealist such as Bosanquet.
However, whatever the justice of this reading of Bosanquet,
61
it seems
clear that it woul d involve a misunderstanding of Hegel’s position, and what
constitutes the ‘universality’ of the will as he conceives it. For, as we have
outlined, for Hegel the will contains a universal moment in so far as each of
us can abstract from particular interests, where what underpins his holis m is
then the claim that we cannot prevent that abstraction becoming vicious
except by seeing those interests as forming pa rt of some general social good;
this then provides the social context within which my interests and the
actions that flow from them have a ‘universal’ as well as a ‘particular’ value.
60
Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State, 50.
61
Hobhouse was of course a hostile witness: for a corrective, see Peter P. Nicholson, The
Political Philosophy of the British Idealists (Cambridge, 1990) 205–221.
140 ROBERT STERN
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