Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 35

ARE WE ALL GERMAN NOW?

he pays tribute to Tacitus's depiction of the ancient tribes, Hegel
contends that German liberty emerged and reached its climax in
the eighteenth-century Age of Revolution, which extended "German" freedom beyond the boundaries of the language itself. As
he puts it in his peculiar jargon, "The freedom of the will that is
in and for itself is the freedom of Good within itself; it is the freedom of spirit, not of a particular spirit but of the universal spirit
as such, in accord with its essential being. Revolutions, then, have
proceeded from thought. This thought has had to do with actuality and has turned forcibly against the established order."4
Different as his language is, Hegel's account of German liberty
is not so different from Jefferson's ransacking of history to justify
American independence. Rather than merely deferring to the
past, Jefferson sought the good in the ancestral-a good that
he was able to recognize by means of philosophical reflection.
This effort was politically essential, even if historically misguided,
because Jefferson and the Americans needed to believe that the
liberty for which they fought was their own. Neither abstract principle nor mere custom would have been sufficient by itself.

T

here is a lesson here for our own reflections on history. Debates
about the Revolution and Founding are so bitter because all
Americans want to see the Founders as their ancestors-whether
they descend from the old stock or not. They can do so only if
the freedom for which the patriots fought can be retrospectively
justified by reason, even if it was inspired at the time by ancestry
and custom. As Hegel argues, the key to the success of German
liberty is that you do not have to be German to treasure it. Or, put
differently, wir sind jetzt schon alle Deutscher.

35



Modern Age - Fall 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Fall 2015

Table of Contents
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - Table of Contents
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - Cover2
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 1
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 2
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 3
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 4
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 5
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 6
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 7
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 8
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 9
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 10
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 11
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 12
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 13
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 14
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 15
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 16
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 17
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 18
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 19
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 20
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 21
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 22
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 23
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 24
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 25
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 26
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 27
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 28
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 29
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 30
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 31
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 32
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 33
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 34
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 35
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 36
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 37
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 38
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 39
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 40
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 41
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 42
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 43
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 44
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 45
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 46
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 47
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 48
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 49
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 50
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 51
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 52
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 53
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 54
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 55
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 56
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 57
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 58
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 59
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 60
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 61
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 62
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 63
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 64
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 65
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 66
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 67
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 68
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 69
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 70
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 71
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 72
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 73
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 74
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 75
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 76
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 77
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 78
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 79
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 80
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 81
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 82
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 83
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 84
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 85
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 86
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 87
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 88
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 89
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 90
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 91
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 92
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 93
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 94
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 95
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 96
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 97
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 98
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 99
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 100
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 101
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 102
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 103
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 104
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 105
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 106
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 107
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 108
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 109
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 110
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 111
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 112
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 113
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 114
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 115
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 116
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 117
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 118
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 119
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 120
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 121
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 122
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 123
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 124
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 125
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 126
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 127
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 128
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 129
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 130
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 131
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 132
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 133
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 134
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 135
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 136
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 137
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 138
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 139
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 140
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 141
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 142
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 143
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 144
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 145
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 146
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 147
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 148
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 149
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 150
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 151
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 152
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 153
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 154
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 155
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 156
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - Cover3
Modern Age - Fall 2015 - Cover4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2018winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2017winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2016winter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2015fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2014fall
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/isi/modernage_2014summer
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com