Week 6

What I found most interesting in chapter three of Spectral Nationality is that Fichte believed cultural nation to be prior to the political nation while Hegel gave precedence to organic state. For Fichte, even in the face of foreign occupation, as long as the culture remained, the possibility of resistance was preserved. But for Hegel, individuals need to be bound by an ideal state, which is a state where reason and freedom are already actualized. This difference between Fichte's nationalism and Hegel's statism led me to think of the Korean peninsula during the colonialization. Korea during that time lacked its own state institutions, but there were independence-minded organizations that sought to educate people and facilitate resistance movements. Hegel's ideal state was a monarchy, but I came to think that these organization might have assumed the role of an invisible state. Also, some of those spearheading the independence movements were "nationalists", as seen by the development of nationalistic history, but some of them were educated overseas and wrote in Japanese and English as well as in Korean. So, what was the role of language and the role of Korean culture during the colonialization? I wish I was more knowledgeable in both German philosophy and in history of Japan's colonialization of Korea so that I could think more clearly about these issues.

What I thought to be interesting in chapter six was Pramoedya Ananta Toer's discussion of negative notion of freedom manifested in colonial capitalism and the positive notion of freedom where freedom entails reciprocal responsibilities. The modern capitalism that suppressed the natives needed to be replaced by the higher morality of native intelligentsia, who truly cherished the Indies people's living needs and true interests.