Great Philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel devoted his life to academic pursuits, teaching at Jena, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. Hegel criticized the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and produced a comprehensive worldworld-view that encompasses the historical development of civilization.

In Hegel's world, reality is personal because the dialectical movement of thought is personal. This should not negate the static "essence" that Spinoza called reality, it should merely individualize it because while each person may perceive a different reality, it is the synthestis of different perspectives which is in fact reality.

The reason that personality is considered to be reality is because nothing on the planet is static, everything is moving and it is this constant state of flux which Hegel calls the dialectic... which is essentially what we call reality.

Empirical science may discern the physical features of Reality but perspective provides what Spinoza called the essence. We cannot determine the essence of the words on a page through a forensic analysis of the ink on a document.

Personal evaluation gives science its validity and there is therefore no such thing as science without personality.

In Hegel's world, "ultimate truth is slowly uncovered through the unfolding evolution of the history of ideas." Truth is not a proposition, it is a concept.

The understanding mind is committed to the falsehood of contradictions. If an idea is found to involve a contradiction, a new stage in the development of thought must occur and Hegel called this process/concept 'dialectic'.

A Hegelian dialectic begins with a thesis that is initially taken to be true. Reflection reveals a contradictory point of view that hegel calls the "antithesis". Thesis and antithesis have an equal claim of legitimacy and these incompattible ideas are equally false . Hegel develops a new and third position which he calls the 'synthesis' or the ultimate truth.

The new synthesis becomes the thesis, the thesis develops another antithesis and the proces goes on. Absolute truth is a progression, it is not propositional. Falsehood is merely the incomplete understanding of the absolute. This view of falsehood as limitation is rather liberating because it suggests that we ought to stop attacking each other's imperfections and focus on the need to develop our abilities.

Propositions reflect degrees of truth or stages of consciousness. Absolute Consciousness is about the convergence of Love, Harmony, Wisdom, Social responsibility and experience. This 'one consciousness' is the dimension of meaning, beyond mere appearances and beyond phenomena. The goal of the Phenomenology is reached, then, in the transcendence of phenomena and the attainment of Noumena, Geist, Spirit, the Absolute. And what is that Absolute? It's conscious Love.

Absolute Consciousness brings to its members the social responsibility that comes with Wisdom -to learn to love the entire world and to help each person attain the next stage of consciousness.

The continual movement of Hegel's philosophy is unavoidable because every negation is a position which opens itself up to a new negation. "For knowledge, however, the goal is fixed just as necessarily as the sequence of the progression. It is that point where knowledge no longer has need to transcend itself, where it finds itself, and where the concept corresponds to the object and the object to the concept. The progression to this goal is consequently without halt and at no earlier stage is satisfaction to be found."

Hegel added "know history" to the Socratic commandment, "know thyself" and it is this synthesis that treats history like an extention of the self, which provides a more comprehensive philosophy.

Hegel proposed this synthesis with the admonishment;

"In applying the theory, some facts may not improbably have been distorted, some brought into undue prominence, and others altogether neglected. In the most cautious and limited analysis of the past, failures and perversions of this kind are inevitable: and a comprehensive view of history is proportionately open to mistake.

Hegel was a philosopher with a single end -the truth -and the frequently repeated suggestion that he inspired Marxism and Fascism is inadequate because there is no room for evil to flourish in Hegel's world unless his work is misrepresented.

In fact, Hegel proposes the exact opposite when he says;

It lies in the nature of the matter that the slave has an absolute right to make himself free, or that, when anyone has hired out his morality for robbery and murder, the transaction is absolutely void. Anyone possesses the competency to annul such an agreement. It is the same with the letting of religiosity by a priest, who is my confessor. The inner religious condition every one must adjust by himself. A religiosity, part of which is handed over to some one else is not genuine, for the spirit is only one, and must dwell within me. To me it must belong to unite the act of worship with religious aspiration.

Marxism and Fascism is the abandonement of Hegel because he preaches mutual respect, freedom and accountability.

To quote directly from Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right:

The ingenuous mind adheres with simple conviction to the truth which is publicly acknowledged. On this foundation it builds its conduct and way of life. In opposition to this naive view of things rises the supposed difficulty of detecting amidst the endless differences of opinion anything of universal application. This trouble may easily be supposed to spring from a spirit of earnest inquiry. But in point of fact those who pride themselves upon the existence of this obstacle are in the plight of him who cannot see the woods for the trees. The confusion is all of their own making. Nay, more: this confusion is an indication. that they are in fact not seeking for what is universally valid in right and the ethical order. If they were at pains to find that out, and refused to busy themselves with empty opinion and minute detail, they would adhere to and act in accordance with substantive right, namely the commands of the state and the claims of society. But a further difficulty lies in the fact that man thinks, and seeks freedom and a basis for conduct in thought. Divine as his right to act in this way is, it becomes a wrong, when it takes the place of thinking. Thought then regards itself as free only when it is conscious of being at variance with what is generally recognised, and of setting itself up as something original.

The idea that freedom of thought and mind is indicated only by deviation from, or even hostility to what is everywhere recognised, is most persistent with regard to the state. The essential task of a philosophy of the state would thus seem to be the discovery and publication of a new and original theory.

When we examine this idea and the way it is applied, we are almost led to think that no state or constitution has ever existed, or now exists. We are tempted to suppose that we must now begin and keep on beginning afresh for ever. We are to fancy that the founding of the social order has depended upon present devices and discoveries. As to nature, philosophy, it is admitted, has to understand it as it is. The philosophers' stone must be concealed somewhere, we say, in nature itself, as nature is in itself rational. Knowledge must, therefore, examine, apprehend and conceive the reason actually present in nature. Not with the superficial shapes and accidents of nature, but with its eternal harmony, that is to say, its inherent law and essence, knowledge has to cope. But the ethical world or the state, which is in fact reason potently and permanently actualised in selfconsciousness, is not permitted to enjoy the happiness of being reason at all.

Like Plato, Hegel combines freedom, will and action, in the following terms:

Freedom of will is best explained by reference to physical nature. Freedom is a fundamental phase of will, as weight is of bodies. When it is said that matter is heavy, it might be meant that the predicate is an attribute; but such is not the case, for in matter there is nothing which has not weight; in fact, matter is weight. That which is heavy constitutes the body, and is the body. Just so is it with freedom and the will; that which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word, and freedom becomes actual only as will, as subject. A remark may also be made as to the connection of willing and thinking. Spirit, in general, is thought, and by thought man is distinguished from the animal. But we must not imagine that man is on one side thinking and on another side willing, as though he had will in one pocket and thought in another. Such an idea is vain. The distinction between thought and will is only that between a theoretical and a practical relation. They are not two separate faculties. The will is a special way of thinking; it is thought translating itself into reality; it is the impulse of thought to give itself reality. The distinction between thought and will may be expressed in this way. When I think an object, I make of it a thought, and take from it the sensible. Thus I make of it something which is essentially and directly mine. Only in thought am I self-contained. Conception is the penetration of the object, which is then no longer opposed to me. From it I have taken its own peculiar nature, which it had as an independent object in opposition to me.

Spinoza rejects free will

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