HEGEL, NIETZSCHE AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NEW WORK (V-C)

Frithjof Bergmann, University of Michigan

The foundational question which set Hegel's Political Philosophy onto its course involved a comparison to the Greeks. In his youth Hegel asked whether a distinctly modern culture that would come close to the culture of the Greeks in creativity, vitality and vigor - above all in coherence and unity - could not be just envisioned, but could in practice be created? (The difference from English speaking Political Philosophy could hardly be more flagrant, for in essence it asked: under what circumstances it might be "moral," or "justified," or "legal" - to cut off a king"s head?) Hegel's, opening question shows, one could say, in a flash, that Hegel and Nietzsche are more kindred in spirirt than has often been imagined. That Hegel of course did not discover the steps through which this culture could be attained - and that he certainly did not describe these steps in the Philosophy of Right - is, I believe, agreed and patent. Conceiveably Hegel therefore failed!

THe present paper proposes that this "failure" can be seen in a startling perspective - namely that of work. Centrally, the organization of work that prevailed in Hegel's time, which is (unhappily) still with us - the organization that we could call the "Job-System" - condemns people to do work that they must do (i.o.w. to work that is "unfree.") A vast number of people are hence maimed and crippled by the work they do. Yet, a radical change away from the Job-System was in Hegel's time not yet an option, and deplorably, all other political, social maybe even moral changes had no hope of reaching Hegel's goal. Thus, inside that organization of work there was no way to succeed.

Pivotally, this is no longer true. The dazzling advances which technology has achieved in the last hundred or so years have put within our reach a possibility undreamt of in Hegel's time: the possibility that machines could do most of the stupefying, crippling, and less than human work, while people could do work very different from that allotted to them in the Job-System: work that would strengthen them, that would in-crease their energy and their vitality, that would enhance their sense of self. This would be work that many would experience as their "calling," work that they seriously and with commitment *want* to do - and thus work that would be "free."

This possibility is by no means merely "theoretical." As long as 15 years ago I organized together with a group of colleagues the first Center for New Work in Flint, Michigan, and recently the number of additional Centers for New Work (in this and also other countries) has rapidly increased.

The political goals of the past have dissolved in dew. Maybe the time has arrived where Hegel's hope (and with differences also that of Nietzsche) need not be just recalled - maybe the time has come when it could be achieved?