Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Life And Work Contemporary

Hegel attended the seminary at TübingenTubingen an old university city on the River Neckar in Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany, near Stuttgart, functions as the seat of the Administrative District of Tubingen, as well as of the county of Tubingen. In 2002 the city had 82,885 inhabitants, including with the epic poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the objective idealist Schelling. The three watched the unfolding of the French RevolutionThe period of the French Revolution in the history of France covers the years between 1789 and 1799, in which democrats and republicans overthrew the absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church perforce underwent radical restructuring. While France wo and collaborated in a critique of the idealist philosophies of Immanuel Kant and his follower Fichte.

Hegel's first and most important major work is the Phenomenology of Spirit (or Phenomenology of Mind). During his life he also published the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the Science of Logic and the (Elements of the) Philosophy of Right. A number of other works on the philosophy of history, religion, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy were compiled from the lecture notes of his students and published posthumously.

Hegel's works have a reputation for their difficulty, and for the breadth of the topics they attempt to cover. Hegel introduced a system for understanding the history of philosophy and the world itself, often called a " dialectic": a progression in which each successive movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent in the preceding movement. For example, the French Revolution for Hegel constitutes the introduction of real freedom into western societies for the first time in recorded history. But precisely because of its absolute novelty, it is also absolutely radical: on the one hand the upsurge of violence required to carry out the revolution cannot cease to be itself, while on the other, it has already consumed its opponent. The revolution therefore has nowhere to turn but on to its own result: the hard-won freedom is consumed by a brutal Reign of Terror. History, however, progresses by learning from its mistakes: only after and precisely because of this experience can one posit the existence of a constitutional state of free citizens, embodying both the (allegedly) benevolent organizing power of rational government and the revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality.

In the introduction to THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY (Translated by J. Sibree) Hegel says: "Philosophy shows that the Idea advances to an infinite antithesis; that, viz. between the Idea in its free, universal form - in which it exists for itself - and the contrasted form of abstract introversion, reflection on itself, which is formal existence-for-self, personality, formal freedom, such as belongs to Spirit only."

So, breaking it down, there are two forms of the universal idea and they are always and infinitely the antithesis of each other. One form is the general principle of it and the other form is its specific application to the actual events in history. He continues to say: "The universal Idea exists thus as the substantial totality of things on the one side, and as the abstract essence of free volition on the other side."

and: "This reflection of the mind on itself is individual self-consciousness - the polar opposite of the Idea in its general form, and therefore existing in absolute Limitation. This polar opposite is consequently limitation, particularization, for the universal absolute being; it is the side of its definite existence; the sphere of its formal reality, the sphere of the reverence paid to God. - To comprehend the absolute connection of this antithesis, is the profound task of metaphysics."

Therefore, Hegel is stating, albeit in difficult turns of phrase, that metaphysics should be concerned with grasping the mechanics of how the thesis and antithesis are connected in each individual case. To do so would involve comparing examples of events of history with their archetypal forms and trying to understand both the similarities and the differences between them.

2 Contemporary Interpretation

In contemporary accounts of Hegelianism — to undergraduate classes, for example — Hegel's dialectic often appears broken up for convenience into three moments called "thesis" (in the French historical example, the revolution), "antithesis" (the terror which followed), and "synthesis" (the constitutional state of free citizens). Hegel did not use this classification at all himself, though: it was developed earlier by Fichte in his loosely analogous account of the relation between the individual subject and the world. Serious Hegel scholarship does not recognize the usefulness of this triadic classification for shedding light on Hegel's thought. Although Hegel refers to "the two elemental considerations: first, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for realising it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity" (thesis and antithesis) he doesn't use "synthesis" but instead speaks of the "Whole": "We then recognised the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements."

Hegel used this system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion, but many modern critics point out that Hegel often seems to gloss over the realities of history in order to fit it into his dialectical mold. Karl Popper, a critic of Hegel in The Open Society and Its Enemies, suggests that the Hegel's system forms a thinly veiled justification for the rule of Frederick William III, and that Hegel's idea of the ultimate goal of history is to reach a state approximating that of 1830s Prussia. This view of Hegel as an apologist of state power and precursor of 20th century totalitarianism was criticized thoroughly by Herbert Marcuse in his Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, on the grounds that Hegel was not an apologist for any state or form of authority simply because it existed: for Hegel the state must always be rational. Arthur Schopenhauer despised Hegel on account of the latter's historicism (among other reasons), and decried Hegel's work as obscurantist " pseudo-philosophy". Many other newer philosophers who prefer to follow the tradition of British Philosophy and Kantianism have made similar statements.

3 Effects of Hegelian Philosophy

After Hegel's death, his followers divided into two major and opposing camps. The Right Hegelians , the direct disciples of Hegel at the University of Berlin, advocated evangelical orthodoxy and the political conservatism of the post- Napoleon Restoration period. The Left became known as the Young Hegelians and they interpreted Hegel in a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocation of atheism in religion and liberal democracy in politics. Left Hegelians included Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, David Friedrich Strauss, Max Stirner, and most famously, Karl Marx. The multiple schisms in this faction eventually led to Stirner's anarchistic variety of egoism and Marx's version of communism.

In the 20th century, Hegel's philosophy underwent a major renaissance. This was due partly to the rediscovery and reevaluation of him as the philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists, partly through a resurgence of the historical perspective that Hegel brought to everything, and partly through increasing recognition of the importance of his dialectical method. The book that did the most to reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon was perhaps Georg Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness . This sparked a renewed interest in Hegel reflected in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Alexandre Kojève and Gotthard Günther among others. The Hegel renaissance also highlighted the significance of Hegel's early works, i.e. those published prior to the Phenomenology of Spirit. More recently two prominent American philosophers, John McDowell and Robert Brandom (sometimes, half-seriously, referred to as the Pittsburgh Hegelians), have exhibited a marked Hegelian influence. Francis Fukuyama's End of History thesis owes much to Hegel's idea that history has a purpose, a goal and an end point.

4 Major works

Phenomenology of Spirit ( Phänomenologie des Geistes Sometimes translated as Phenomenology of Mind) 1806 (See battle of Jena)
Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik) 1812-1816
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Enzyklopaedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften) 1817-1830
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) 1819
Lectures on Aesthetics
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History
Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion

5 Secondary literature

Frederick C. Beiser, The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. BooksEnthsiast.com (The Cambridge Companions are always a good way to start learning about a particular philosopher, and this Companion is no exception.)
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. BooksEnthsiast.com (includes a powerful statement of the case that Hegel authorized an over-powering state, i.e. that his philosophy is a dangerous opponent of individual liberty).
Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770-1807. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. BooksEnthsiast.com (Provides a fascinating account of how "Hegel became Hegel", using the guiding hypothesis that Hegel "was basically a theologian manqué".)
Justus Hartnack, An Introduction to Hegel's Logic. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. BooksEnthsiast.com
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. London, 1941 (An introduction to the philosophy of Hegel, devoted to debunking the myth that Hegel's work included in nuce the Fascist totalitarianism of National Socialism; the negation of philosophy through historical materialism)
Kenneth R. Westphal, Hegel's Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003. BooksEnthsiast.com
Terry P. Pinkard, "Hegel: a biography". Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000. BooksEnthsiast.com (Lucid biography by a leading American Hegalian philosopher. It debunks popular misconceptions about Hegel's thought.)

6 External links

7 Hegel Texts Online

Philosophy of History

Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, GFH Hegel, GFH Hegel, GFH Hegel, GFH

zh-cn:···

<Hide>

Home > Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1 Life and Work