Well I went to the web page, paid my $5 and there was no link or instructions on how to get the eBook. You pay for it and then have no way of getting it. Beware.

Liberals think?

Hegel: The State as God’s Will
Mises Daily: Thursday, October 04, 2012 by Murray N. Rothbard

This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 11 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995).
…

Hegel made quite evident that what the new, developing strong state really needed was a comprehensive philosophy, contributed by a Great Philosopher to give its mighty rule coherence and legitimacy. Otherwise, as Professor Plant explains, “such a state, devoid of philosophical comprehension, would appear as a merely arbitrary and oppressive imposition of the freedom of individuals to pursue their own interest.”

We need make only one guess as to what that philosophy, or who that Great Philosopher, was supposed to be. And then, armed with Hegelian philosophy and Hegel himself as its fountainhead and great leader, “this alien aspect
of the progressive modern state would disappear and would be seen not as an imposition but a development of self-consciousness. By regulating and codifying many aspects of social practice, it gives to the modern world a
rationality and a predictability which it would not otherwise possess.”[3]

Armed with such a philosophy and with such a philosopher, the modern state would take its divinely appointed stand at the height of history and civilization, as God on earth. Thus, “The modern State, proving the reality of political community, when comprehended philosophically, could therefore be seen as the highest articulation of Spirit, or God in the contemporary world.” The state, then, is “a supreme manifestation of the activity of God in the world,” and, “the State stands above all; it is Spirit which knows itself as the universal essence and reality”; and, “The State is the reality of the kingdom of heaven.” And finally, “The State is God’s Will.”[4]

Of the various forms of state, monarchy is best, since it permits “all” subjects to be “free” (in the Hegelian sense) by submerging their being into the divine substance, which is the authoritarian, monarchical state. The people are only “free” when they are insignificant particles of this unitary divine substance….

According to Hegel, the final development of the man-God, the final breakthrough into totality and infinity, was at hand. The most highly developed state in the history of the world was now in place — the existing Prussian monarchy under King Friedrich Wilhelm III.

It so happened that Hegel’s apotheosis of the existing Prussian monarchy neatly coincided with the needs of that monarch. When King Friedrich Wilhelm III established the new University of Berlin in 1818 to assist in supporting, and propagandizing for, his absolute power, what better person for the chair of philosophy than Friedrich Hegel the divinizer of state power?…

On Hegel’s worship of the state, Popper cites chilling and revealing passages:

The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth … We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth … The State is the march of God through the world … The State must be comprehended as an organism … To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows what it wills … The State … exists for its own sake … The State is the actually existing, realized moral life.[7]
All this rant is well characterized by Popper as “bombastic and hysterical Platonism.”… [ << ** !! ]

http://mises.org/daily/6213/Hegel-The-State-as-Gods-Will

[My comment: what Rothbard saw as "reabsorption theology" is none other than a secular form of ancient Gnosticism. R.T. Allen traces the trail through history when he states that Marx was built upon Hegel, which came from Boehme which came from Valentinism. --tBW]

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