Hegel holds a very distinct perspective on history because he believes that history corresponds with spirit. He believes in a dialectical process where a political structure has to overcome a previous one or a newer one. It’s his thesis/antithesis/synthesis dialectic process. History for Hegel was rational and essentially it was the ultimate rationality. History was the ultimate and greatest freedom for understanding the events both good and bad of history. Hegel says, “Reason is the law of the world and that, therefore, in world history, things have come about rationally” (62). Hegel believes that reason runs history and can explain anything. Reason is God in an abstract sense.
Passion According to Hegel is what drives reason or history. Spirit in a sense manifests itself as a motivator through passion. Things that happen in life that are eventful and are moved by passion are not particularly that individual’s passion but rather it’s the passion of the dialectic manifesting itself in that person. Passion is what drives history and steers history in the correct direction for good or for bad. Therefore the role of the individual becomes very small. The only importance of the individual is that he/she needs to be an entity that can express the passion of the spirit. For example the Holocaust would have happened without Hitler or not. Hitler was simply the dialectic passion of the spirit at that time manifested in himself. Martin Luther King JR for the rights of black people was the very same thing in a positive sense. The dialectic uses people as a kind of avatar for the movements of the collective.
Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism held the concept of alienated labor as one of the foremost greatest problems. Marx says, “We have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, the most miserable commodity” (312). Labor created through a capitalistic way according to Marx produces an alienated and enslaved human being. Marx goes on to say,...