Thought Leaders Precede Political Leaders, Not the Other Way Around

By: Hahim Saleh 

Thought Leaders Precede Political Leaders, Not the Other Way Around First, it should be noted that in Hegel’s time, Germany had a large Protestant majority, accounting for 70 percent of the population, while the rest were Catholics affiliated with the Vatican and the Pope in Rome, whom Protestants deeply resented. Second, Hegel himself was profoundly Lutheran and Protestant at heart. Yet he was not sectarian. Impossible. A great philosopher who helped usher in intellectual, political and Enlightenment modernity in Europe could not have been sectarian. Nor should we forget that Germany is the homeland of Martin Luther, who launched the Reformation and liberated Christians from the domination, corruption and exploitation of the clergy. It is well known that the popes of Rome and their cardinals had become millionaires at the expense of ordinary people who feared the fires of hell and were prepared to spend all their money to obtain indulgences and secure entry into paradise.

They had been convinced that the more they paid, the greater their chances of entering heaven. This was how religion became the subject of large-scale profiteering. It was against all this rampant corruption that Luther launched his sweeping revolt and shook the foundations of the papacy. This is why Hegel admired him so immensely. Sectarianism was still raging in Hegel’s time, and the German people were divided along denominational lines between Catholics and Protestants. There was enormous resentment between the two sides. Catholics represented the reactionary current in Germany, unlike Protestants, who represented the liberal and progressive current within Christianity. German Catholics followed the teachings of the popes in Rome, who remained reactionary throughout the nineteenth century and even into the middle of the twentieth.

Catholicism later renewed itself, reconciled with modernity and the contemporary age, and abandoned the excommunicatory mentality of the Middle Ages. But in Hegel’s time, it was still deeply reactionary. It is well known that in 1864, more than three decades after Hegel’s death, Pope Pius IX condemned the “errors of the modern world” in a famous declaration. He condemned freedom of thought and expression, freedom of belief and conscience, rationalism, liberalism and the entire body of ideas associated with modernity. He declared them incompatible with our heritage, religion and doctrine. He also condemned the philosophy of human rights because it placed all human beings on an equal footing without distinction—as though a non-Christian could be equal to a Christian, a non-Catholic to a Catholic, or an unbeliever to a believer.

The Pope of Rome condemned all these ideas as heresy and unbelief, just as the dominant political Islamist movements in our societies do today. They, too, are bitter enemies of the philosophy of human rights and have yet to experience the spirit of Enlightenment modernity. Bismarck, who unified Germany in 1870, only about forty years after Hegel’s death, was naturally compelled to break the power of Catholic reaction, which stood as an obstacle to this great unification. At the time, most progressive liberals opposed to sectarianism were Protestants. Most reactionary fundamentalists, meanwhile, were papal Catholics steeped in the teachings of the Pope of Rome, hostile to modernity and condemning Protestants as heretics—and therefore Hegel himself as well. It is within this charged atmosphere that Hegel’s position on the sectarian question must be situated if we are to understand it properly. It should also be noted that Bismarck, who unified Germany on the basis of equal, non-sectarian citizenship for all Germans, literally implemented the program envisioned by Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and the other great philosophers of the Enlightenment. Here we encounter directly that remarkable connection between thought and politics.

There can be no great politics without great thought preceding it, embracing it and clearing the way for it. In this sense, thought precedes politics and rises above it, not the other way around. Hegel lays the foundation; Bismarck comes afterward. Priority belongs to the great intellectual, not to the politician, even one as formidable as Bismarck. Why have I offered this lengthy preamble? To demonstrate just how serious the sectarian—or rather denominational—problem can be in all societies and religions. When you look at today’s enlightened and developed Europe, you find virtually no trace of denominational or sectarian sensitivities. They have completely disappeared thanks to the efforts of Hegel and the other philosophers of the Enlightenment. This is one of the first things that astonishes an Arab or Muslim arriving from an East overflowing with fundamentalism, sectarianism and denominational divisions. No Catholic today resents a Protestant simply because he is Protestant, nor does a Protestant resent a Catholic because he is Catholic.

They are equal citizens under German citizenship and live together in complete peace and harmony on the same street, in the same neighborhood or even in the same building. There are no longer Protestant neighborhoods separated from Catholic ones. Nor are there first-class, second-class or third-class citizens. All of that ended long ago. But it did not end until the Enlightenment conception of Christianity triumphed over the old obscurantist and excommunicatory conception. Although the Enlightenment had already taken hold among the intellectual elite in Hegel’s time, denominational loyalties remained deeply entrenched among the general population, ready to be mobilized and inflamed at any moment. Although Hegel was the greatest philosopher of his age, and perhaps of all ages, he could not bear to hear the name of Catholics or Catholicism.

The French thinker Victor Cousin recounts that he was once walking with Hegel through the streets of Cologne when they suddenly came upon its famous cathedral, one of the most beautiful churches in the world. I remember personally being enchanted and overwhelmed by its beauty when I first saw it during my first visit to Germany in 1990. So what did Hegel say as he gazed at this magnificent, towering structure? Victor Cousin says he heard him curse the Pope and the Catholics and almost spit on the ground in the very heart of their sacred cathedral. Cousin was astonished by Hegel’s agitated reaction and had not expected such behavior from a philosopher of his stature. Hegel would lose his temper whenever the sectarian or denominational question was raised before him. He fiercely attacked papal Catholics and regarded them as responsible for Germany’s backwardness, intolerance and attachment to the religiosity of the Middle Ages. This means that Germany in 1826 was not the Germany of 2026! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, history moves forward. Yes, fortunately, there is evolution and renewal in history. Indeed, denominational or sectarian sensitivities remained powerful in Hegel’s time.

They continued to thrive for many years after him. Bismarck, the unifier of Germany, also clashed with the reactionary attitudes of papal Catholics, just as Hegel had, as mentioned earlier. Why did Hegel hate Roman papal Catholicism? Not simply because he was Protestant. Hegel was no ordinary man in the street! There was a valid reason for this. Catholicism regarded itself as the absolute truth of Christianity, indeed of religion as a whole, while all others were seen as deviations, heresies or insignificant minorities. Because of its numerical strength—more than a billion people—it considered itself the only saved sect within Christianity. It believed that numerical superiority automatically meant possession of religious correctness and absolute divine truth.

It believed that not a single Protestant would enter paradise or receive God’s favor. Heaven was reserved exclusively for Catholics. Papal Catholicism, in its dominant form, represented a fortress of intellectual and political reaction. When you read the statements of the popes of Rome at the time, when you examine their religious rulings condemning the spirit and essence of modern times, you could almost imagine that the leading figures of today’s dominant political Islamist movements had drafted and written them. This means that there are two conceptions of religion: the sectarian, obscurantist conception rooted in darkness, and the Enlightenment, non-sectarian conception reconciled with modernity and the contemporary age.

It was the latter that rescued Europe from the grip of sectarianism and the inferno of religious wars. It was this conception that made possible Europe’s renaissance, civilizational takeoff and ascendancy over all the peoples of the world. It also means that there are two conceptions of faith. There is the old sectarian and excommunicatory conception that kills and slaughters people on the basis of identity and destroys national unity. And there is the new Enlightenment conception that gives life, revitalizes societies, builds civilizations and brings all social components together. The problem, however, is that the old sectarian and excommunicatory conception is embedded in the collective mentality as firmly as mountains. It cannot be uprooted overnight. Therein lies the great impasse.

Originally published on; Asharq Al-Awsat