Why study hegel

No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts.

Down Under Knock-Down? Share on Facebook. Follow us. Related Posts. We use cookies to improve our service for you. You can find more information in our data protection declaration. The father of the "zeitgeist" was born 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, , 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. The three young men would wake up at 4 a. 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 , 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. 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. And when Hegel understood the world historical significance of the principles of the French Revolution and their military avatar, Napoleon, and wrote it down in Phenomenology of Spirit , he believed that the underlying purpose of history had been fulfilled.

Just as Christ was the incarnation of the divine logos, so is the historical world—and the book—brought about by the French Revolution the incarnation of the logos of human history, and Hegel and Napoleon played the role of the Holy Spirit, mediating the two, making the ideal the concept concrete. Now, at first glance—and maybe at second glance—all of this must seem quite mad.

There is more madness to come. But I think that if your experience is like mine, you will find that these claims, which initially seem so mad, have a certain method to them, and even a logic. If they were mad, then I hope to convince you that they had cases of divine madness. The main reason for reading Hegel is that he provides deep insights into the philosophy of history and culture. If history is something that can come to an end through a battle and a book, then Hegel must have a very specific—and very peculiar—conception of history in mind.

This is true. But it would be a mistake to think of these fundamental interpretations of human existence merely as abstract philosophical positions. They can also be found in less-abstract articulations, such as myth, religion, poetry, and literature. And they can be concretely embodied: in the form of art and architecture and all other cultural productions, as well as in social and political institutions and practices. Indeed, Hegel holds that these fundamental interpretations of existence exist for the most part in concrete, rather than abstract form.

Although these can be articulated at least in part, they need not be and seldom fully are. History for Hegel does include more concrete and mundane historical facts and events, but only insofar as these embody fundamental interpretations of human existence—and there are few things in the world that do not embody such interpretations.

Even the stars, which would seem to fall into the realms of natural science and natural history, fall into human history and the human world, insofar as they are construed from the point of view of the earth, and through the lenses of different myths and cultures, as constellations, portents, or even gods. Indeed, since all of the sciences are themselves human activities, and the sciences interpret all of nature, all of nature falls within the human world.

The human world means the world of nature as interpreted by human reason and as transformed by human work. This process can be quite simple. A rock in your driveway is simply a chunk of nature. But it can be brought into the human world by endowing it with a purpose. One can use it as a paperweight; or one can use it as an example in a lecture. By doing this, I have appropriated the rock, lifting it out of the natural world, where it has no purpose and no meaning, and bringing it into the human world, where it has purpose and meaning.

Does this mean that Hegel held that the human world was somehow numinous and abstract? No, Hegel is not that kind of idealist. Ideas for Hegel are not abstract and numinous, because the Hegelian Idea consists of chunks of solid, concrete reality interpreted, worked over, and otherwise transformed in the light of concepts. Or, conversely formulated, the Hegelian Idea consists of concepts that have been concretely realized in reality, whether by deploying concepts merely to interpret reality or as blueprints for transforming it.

The Hegelian Idea is identical to the human world, and the human world is the world of concrete natural objects interpreted and transformed by human beings. For Hegel, Spirit and Ideas can be as solid and concrete as a rock, so long as the rock has been transformed in light of human concepts. History proper is not, however, the history of mundane concepts, mundane Ideas, and humble chunks of Spirit like a paperweight. History is the history of fundamental concepts, fundamental Ideas: fundamental interpretations of human existence, both as abstractly articulated and as concretely embodied.

Hegel claims that all fundamental interpretations of human existence that fall within history are partial and inadequate interpretations, which are relative to time, place, and culture. Since there is a plurality of distinct and different times, places, and cultures, there is also a plurality of distinct and different fundamental interpretations of human existence.

The existence of a plurality of different interpretations of human existence on the finite surface of a globe means that eventually these different interpretations and the cultures that concretize them will come into contact—and, inevitably, into conflict—with one another. History is the record of these confrontations and conflicts between different worldviews.

It follows, then, that the logical structure of history is identical with the logical structure of the conflict of different worldviews. Dialectic is the logic of conversation. It is the process whereby partial and inadequate perspectives work for mutual communication and intelligibility, thereby creating a broader, more-encompassing and adequate perspective.

Dialectic is the process whereby different individual or cultural perspectives, with all of their idiosyncrasies, work their way toward a more encompassing common perspective.

Dialectic is the process wherein largely tacit cultural horizons—myth, religion, language, institutions, traditions, customs, prejudices—are progressively articulated and criticized, casting aside the irrational, idiosyncratic, parochial, and adventitious in favor of the universal, rational, and fully self-conscious.

What drives the process forward is the search for an interpretation of human existence that is adequate to our nature. It is the search for a true understanding of human existence. And this presupposes that human beings have a fundamental need for a correct understanding of themselves and their world, a need which drives the dialectic forward.

Now, since fundamental interpretations of human existence take the form not merely of abstract theories, but concrete institutions, practices, cultures, and ways of life, the dialectic between these worldviews is not carried on merely in seminars, symposia, and coffee houses. It is carried on in the concrete realm as well in the form of the struggles between different political parties, interest groups, institutions, social classes, generations, cultures, forms of government, and ways of life, insofar as these embody different conceptions of human existence.

The struggle is carried on in the form of peaceful rivalries and social evolution—and in the form of bloody wars and revolutions—and in the form of the conquest and annihilation or assimilation of one culture by another. If all fundamental interpretations of human existence in history are partial, inadequate, and relative to particular times and cultures, this implies that if and when we arrive at an interpretation of human existence that is comprehensive and true, then we have somehow stepped outside of history.

If history is the history of fundamental ideological struggle, then history ends when all fundamental issues have been decided. In the abstract realm, the realm of concepts, the end of history comes about when a final, true, and all-encompassing interpretation of human existence is articulated.

This interpretation, unlike all the others that came before it, is not partial or relative but Absolute Truth, the Absolute Concept. It is important to note that the Absolute Truth, unlike all previous partial and relative truths, does achieve a wholly articulated form; it is not a merely tacit and unarticulated cultural horizon; it is fully articulated, all-encompassing system of ideas. However, just because the absolute truth is wholly articulated in abstract terms, that does not imply that it exists in the abstract realm only.

The Absolute Concept is also realized in the concrete realm as well. In the concrete realm, Absolute Truth is realized at the end of history in the form of a universal, and in all important respects, homogeneous, world civilization. This does not necessarily mean a world government. Distinct nations may remain, but only insofar as their existence is fundamentally unimportant.

For in all important things—that is, in all issues relating to the correct interpretation of human nature and our place in the world—uniformity reigns. Hegel does not hold that Absolute Truth and Absolute Spirit are mere possibilities, the speculations of an agile and perhaps fevered mind.

He holds that they are already actual. The Absolute Truth is to be found—where else? Specifically, it is to be found in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The Phenomenology of Spirit is only a ladder leading up to Absolute Truth, proving that it is and what it must be like, but giving no specifics.

And, as we have seen, Hegel holds that ideological history comes to an end with the ideals of the French Revolution: the universal rights of man; liberty, equality, and fraternity; secularism and scientific and technological progress.

Now, this is not to say that Absolute Spirit comes into being only after the entire universe has been scientifically understood and technologically appropriated and transformed, for this is an infinite task. Rather, Absolute Spirit comes into being by setting up the infinite task of understanding and transforming nature; Absolute Spirit consists of a way of framing nature as, in principle, infinitely knowable by science and, in principle, infinitely malleable by technology.

All limitations encountered in the unfolding of this infinite task are encountered as merely temporary impediments what can always, in principle, be overcome by better science and better technology. Hegel, like all the other great philosophers of modernity, is a good Baconian.

The end of history does not mean the end of history in the more mundane sense. The newspaper will still come in the morning, but it will look more like the Atlanta Journal than the New York Times : a global village tattler, chronicling untold billions of treed cats, weddings, funerals, garage sales, and church outings, bulging with untold billions of pizza coupons.

Remember: the end of history means the end of ideological history. It means that no ideological and political innovations are possible, that there are no causes worth killing or dying for anymore, that we fully understand ourselves.

It is often said that Hegel holds that human nature itself is relative to particular times, places, and cultures, and that as history changes, so does human nature. This strikes me as false.

It is a natural fact that makes history possible. It is natural in the sense that it is a fixed and permanent necessity of our natures, which founds and bounds the realm of human action, history, and culture. Different interpretations of human nature are relative to different times, places, and cultures; different worldviews change and succeed one another in time. If such an account is not possible, because a fixed human nature does not exist, then Hegel could never hold that history comes to an end.

There will be merely an endless progression of merely relative human self-interpretations, none of which can claim any greater adequacy than any other, because of course there is nothing for them to be adequate to.

For Hegel, man gains knowledge of his nature through history. But he does not gain his nature itself through history. Hegel claims that the end of history would be wholly satisfying to man.

But is it? But it is still the most profound, accessible, and exciting introduction to Hegel in existence. And if it is, can it really claim to be fully satisfying to man? He was arrested and narrowly escaped being shot.