5 NOVEMBER 1983, Page 22

Academic point

Sir: Discussing how politicians are resistant to change, Colin Welch says (Centrepiece, 29 October — `Myths and realities'): `Politicians assume with Hegel that what is is right.' But whatever Mr Welch may think of politicians, he should have kept his thoughts on Hegel to himself.

Hegel never says that what is is right, nor does he mean this when he uses the famous phrase in the preface to the Philosophy of Right that `what is rational is real and what is real is rational'. This is a much more complex idea, a proper understanding of which lies at the heart of the Hegelian philosophy, but which certainly does not amount to a statement of metaphysical arch-conservatism, as Mr Welch implies. (Hegel indeed would probably have welcomed the privatisation of motorway construction.) The Spectator's Letters page is no place to enter an academic controversy, par-

ticularly on such recondite matter as Hegel scholarship, on which Mr Welch I am sure is no expert. But patient philosophers and historians of ideas have spent arduous labour demythologising myths of the kind Mr Welch (probably quite innocently) is helping to propagate. Unfortunately, the throw-away line of the journalist too often proves the scholar's heartache.

Alan Bekhor

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