be followed which are truly general, which are for the good of all, and not

just for oneself. We have the basis here for the idea of the general will. This
is the other great discovery of Enlightenment ethical theory. Man shapes
his society according to right reason by founding it fully on the general
will. For the rational is the universal, that which holds for all men and is
binding on all men.
The step from utilitarianism to general will theory is an attempt, as we
saw in section 2, to achieve a more integral realization of reason. The ethic
of utility has to take an arbitrary final point in de facto human desire,
something which is just given. The ethic of the general will promises to
go beyond what is just given, what men happen to want, to ends derived
from the rational will itself.
This is in any case how Hegel sees the step by Rousseau and later
developed by Kant. But this new theory is as incapable as its predecessor
of developing a content, a set of substantive goals out of the idea of reason,
because as we saw it remains centred on the free, rational will of man. It
remains like utilitarianism in the domain of ‘understanding’ (Verstand)
which separates finite from infinite, and cannot see that finite spirits are
linked into the larger reality of Geist.
The ethic of the general will, of formal universality, remained empty.
But it is one thing to weave empty ethical theories in one’s study; it is
another thing to try to put this empty general will into reality in history.
The Germans only did the first; but the French tried the second, and the
terrible, destructive consequences revealed what was implicit in this emptiness
and showed the need to go beyond to another stage. This traumatic,
climactic event was the French Revolution (cf. PR, §258).
Hegel thus sees the French Revolution as the culminating attempt to
realize the dictates of human reason in the world.We who have seen more
horrendous, far-reaching attempts have to recall what an unprecedented
and world-shaking event the Revolution was. Hegel saw it as an attempt
to remake society entirely according to the prescriptions of human reason,
without any reliance on authority or on the shape of things evolved by
tradition. Men are to remake things in an unrestricted, unconditioned
freedom, what Hegel calls ‘absolute freedom’.
This aspiration wreaks terrible destruction. And the root cause of the
destructiveness is its vacuity. The Revolution, Hegel argues in the famous
passage of the PhG (ch. vi. B. iii, pp. 413–22), is incapable of recreating a
new society to replace the one it has destroyed. For a viable new political
society requires differentiation of function. And this has to be embodied
in political structures, such as different political institutions, executive,
legislative and judiciary; and also Hegel believes in differentiated social
100 politics and alienation
structures (the Stände, or estates). But no particular differentiated structure
can be tolerated, for it would stand as a restriction on the supposedly
unconditioned freedom of rational will to remake the world according to
its dictates. And no ground can be found in reason (that is, purely human
reason) to justify any such particular structure. The differentiated structure
of society can in the end only be justified in Hegel’s eyes, as we saw above,
by its standing as an expression of cosmic reason.
The drive to absolute freedom is therefore incapable