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POLITICS AS CULTURE: STUART HALL

which is spontaneous and a consciousness which penetrates to the very core
of reality and grasps both this core as well as how this core necessarily
presents itself to consciousness in particular, distorted, and one-sided
experiences. The notion that the ‘truths’ of consciousness are always rel-
ative and partial, that experience generates only a partial truth not to be
taken at face value, that, however, this partial truth is a necessary part of
reality which reality itself generates and which people actually experi-
ence – this is the Hegelian critique of French rationalism and mechanical
materialism, which, as Marx long ago pointed out, Feuerbach famously
failed to grasp. 6
Hegelian rationalism was ‘Absolute’ and far more thoroughgoing and
profound than French rationalism. He showed that the process whereby
Reason supersedes Understanding is not a subjectively intellectual one
produced by superior feats of reason performed by the Cartesian subject.
From the Hegelian viewpoint, this is to break the necessary interconnec-
tion between subject and object and to elevate the former arbitrarily over
the latter. On the contrary, truth emerges from an arduous process of strug-
gle within Reason and is a necessary part of the process of the unfolding
of Reason itself in a broad social (not personal) sense. In the Preface to
The Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel wrote: ’The beginning of the new spirit
is the outcome of a widespread revolution in manifold forms of spiritual
culture; it is the reward which comes after a chequered and devious
course of development, after much struggle and effort.’ 7
As Lukács pointed out, there is a striking contrast between early
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and late Hegel on this issue of the power of consciousness. First, it is
vital to note that this is a profoundly historical notion of consciousness.
Consciousness does not ‘exist,’ it emerges – it has a history. Second, the
history of consciousness is a phenomenology. It evolves over historical
time as the result of a struggle within consciousness itself, between new
and archaic mentalities and outlooks. Third, in Hegel’s earlier writings,
Understanding (at the social level but expressed in the insights of indi-
vidual thinkers) is able, as it were, to leap ahead of itself and anticipate
solutions to problems yet to fully unfold in Reason. Consciousness is able
to sense in ‘symptoms here and there … the undefined foreboding of
something unknown – all these betoken that there is something else
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approaching’. In a letter to his friend Neithammer in 1808, quoted both
in Lukács’ book The Young Hegel and by Avineri, Hegel is more explicit:
‘Daily do I get more and more convinced that theoretical work achieves
more in the world than practical. Once the realm of ideas is revolution-
ized, actuality does not hold out’. 10 This was in sharp contrast to the
dispiriting view published 13 years later – a view which is far better

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