Posted on 08/31/2020 11:47:01 AM PDT by Borges
For German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, life was a process of constant change. The father of the "zeitgeist" was born 250 years ago.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher who would go on to be one of the most famous thinkers of his era, was born on August 27, 1770, in Stuttgart, in southwest Germany. His parents practiced Pietism, a Lutheran reform movement that emphasized personal religious experience.
Hegel, who showed an affinity for math and Latin, was at the top of his class in school. His parents hoped he would become a priest and sent him to university in nearby Tübingen, where he studied philosophy and Protestant theology.
His roommates at the university seminary were the future philosophers and writers Fredrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1845). The three young men would wake up at 4 a.m. to debate each other. Whoever overslept had to give up their ration of wine as a punishment.
While Hegel was at seminary, the French Revolution broke out. He celebrated the political upheaval without being a militant revolutionary.
After his studies ended, Hegel was plagued by money problems. He tutored privately and wrote journalistic texts until 1805, when he became a professor. Meanwhile, he also worked on his own writings.
His scholarly career got off to a late start, and he also married late. He was not known to attract people based on his outward appearance; he was perpetually frowning, had an unforgiving penetrating gaze, and is said to have expressed himself uncouthly in the vernacular dialect of the region rather than formal German.
Hegel's handwriting was also considered difficult to decipher — another reason why his theory yielded very different interpretations to this day.
Hegel's concept of 'zeitgeist' However, it is generally agreed that Hegel was the first philosopher to recognize and address the dimension of change, which he termed "becoming" ("Werden"), in all its fullness. He believed everything in the world was in constant motion: every individual life, nature, history, society. This results in each epoch having its own particular zeitgeist, or general spirit. One historic epoch is not randomly followed by another; instead, there is a principle of logical evolution.
As a metaphor for this, Hegel used the growth cycle of a plant, whose stages occur according to an inner principle. Hegel saw history as following a predetermined logic that repeatedly led to contradictions and revolutions. He was convinced it was dialectic processes of change that consistently brought humanity, and thus history, one step further.
Clashing with the Church Hegel also applied his theory of becoming to the idea of God. It earned him few friends, especially within the Catholic Church, as he believed that God as an entity had not simply always existed as is, but had rather become what is over time: a "world spirit" ("Weltgeist") that contains and unites all the preceding epochs within it.
When he subsequently dismissed the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation — the physical transformation during a mass of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ — he was forced to recant his statement and officially apologize.
A strong influence on Marx and Engels Left-leaning thinkers later used Hegel's philosophy as the starting point for dialectical materialism, which emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions separate from the mind. Two of the theory's key thinkers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, were significantly influenced by Hegel, further developing and applying it to class competition.
For his part, Hegel considered enlightened absolutism, the major political ideology of his era, to be the crowning final achievement of the change process, with the Prussian state offering the greatest freedom possible.
Hegel died on November 14, 1831, in Berlin, most likely due to chronic stomach issues. His idea of a "world being," however, lived on.
One of the fathers of modern evil. Another lifelong academic who wouldn’t know what real life was, spouting nonsensical hogwash. A progenitor of Marx and his evil “scientific” view of history. Also another lifelong academic/parasite.
Hegel said that there couldn’t be more than 7 planets because 7 is the “prefect number”. Sorry, Neptune. You aren’t there.
Hegel, a man of contradictions.
The father of dialectical materialism.
The Absolute Idea. The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea - a notion whose object (Gegenstand) is the Idea as such, and for which the objective (Objekt) is Idea - an Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity."
Russell goes on to comment, "The original German is even more difficult." Past all the word salad and definitional spaghetti-tossing, we have two useful notions IMHO: the concept of God as zeitgeist taken over in greater detail by Nietzsche, and the model (for that's what it is) of progress in history as thesis/antithesis/synthesis, a model described by one of my philosophy professors as "artillery style" - one shot short, one long, fire for effect. (Army veteran, could you tell?) The assumption here is that thesis/antithesis encompasses the entirety of reality between, and it's not a good assumption.
Still, it's heady stuff it you like that sort of squirrel-cage approach to philosophy.
Where Hegel is most attractive to the Left in general is his explanation of the State and the individual's relation to it - yes, it is unremittingly collectivist and authoritarian.
The State is the reality of the moral idea - the moral spirit, as the visible substantial will, evident to itself, which thinks and knows itself, and fulfils what it knows in so far as it knows it. - Philosophy of Law
The individual is what he or she is by virtue of his or her relationship to the State. It is a philosophy of ants. I'll let Russell have the final word: "This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise."
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel
There’s nothing Nietzche couldn’t teach ya
‘Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And René Descartes was a drunken fart
“I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he’s pissed
Somebody needed to tell him the German version of “Don’t post when you’re toast!”
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
‘bout the raising of the wrist,
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed
Hegel's biggie was "in being, non-being posits itself" and from that produced the concept of the dialectic, which is often attributed to Marx. See, I never thought I'd use that in real life. ;^)
Thanks. Despite the damage done by him, Hegel is still important, and had some intriguing concepts like Zeitgeist and the “owl of Minerva”.
“in being, non-being posits itself”
And here I thought The Jabberwocky invented nonsense verbiage.
T’was brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimbel in the wabe
Years ago a former cow-orker quoted me a saying about Hegel. Can’t remember the exact wording, and can’t find it on the interweb thingy.
Something like, (a particular type of person) has heard of Hegel, (another type of person) has read Hegel, and (the third type of person) understands Hegel. Ring a bell?
The thesis/antithesis idea has some validity though. An idea emerges, it mixes with another idea and a new idea is formed ad infinitum...
Well, yes. But, the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad actually originated with Johann Fichte.
And Hegel expanded it to an all purpose Theory of Everything.
By the end of the 19th Century there seemed to be some validity about the inexorable improvement of mankind. 1914-1945 should have disabused anyone of that notion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
