George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German Philosopher who was born in Stuttgart in 1770. As a young man, he studied theology, but was also impelled to explore philosophy due to the upheaval of this treacherous time in history. The Reign of Terror and French Revolution had a huge impact on Germany and Europe, and Hegel became caught up in the fervor and outrage of the period and wanted to take a deeper look at the events that were occurring. His look and analysis of the French Revolution is what began his reflection of history.
After graduation from the seminary, Hegel joined the faculty of the University of Jena, the philosophic center of Germany. While there, he wrote Phenomenology of Spirit, his first major book. Hegel left the University in 1806 after the battle of Jena in which Napoleon and his troops battled Frederick William III of Prussia. Hegel then moved to Nuremburg and became headmaster of philosophy at a high school there, with future teaching philosophy positions secured at several universities. During this time as an educator, he published his books Science of Logic (1813), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), and his Philosophy of Right (1821). Hegel died in 1831 due to contracting cholera during the European pandemic. His friends and contemporaries believed that he still had a significant contribution to philosophy left to make. They gathered his hand-written lecture notes and combined them with transcripts of his lectures made by his student listeners. The resulting publications were the Philosophy of Art, the Philosophy of Religion, the Philosophy of History, and the History of Philosophy.
Hegel proposed that we can better understand ourselves and the world by studying history. In his Philosophy...
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...ational freedom and is the actualization of freedom as it expands, unfolds, and thus creates history. The means that Spirit uses to realize itself is human life, and as we all know, humans have subjective ideas, interests, passions, and spirit of their own. When these passions combine with universal laws, Spirit unfolds and history happens. The union of an entire culture and government is called State, and this is how Spirit actualizes itself in unique forms. Finally, Spirit constantly changes and reinvents itself through time and historical events. As Spirit actualizes itself in a stable State, the natural process then leads to a change of the status-quo, and breakdown occurs. This constant struggle between self-destruction and self-renewal is the way in which Spirit is re-actualized in a new State. According to Hegel, this is the force behind all of human history.
In sections 190-193 of Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Sprit, Hegel looks into the relationship between the lord and the bondsman. In this examination of the relationship, Hegel makes the move to find out what both the lord and bondsman offer to each other in terms of existence and or identity. The formulation that Hegel made in the selected sections is that the bondsman had more to gain in terms of intellectual growth than his lord who becomes intellectually dormant due to the bondsman acting in the likeness of his lord.
Philosophers believe that Hegel’s historicism has inherent conflicts that surprisingly fall in same dialectic argument that Hegel promotes, which somehow nullifies his philosophy. Originated and influenced by his Dialectic thought process of “thesis, antithesis, and synthesis”, Hegel believes that all societal and more importantly all human activities including culture, language, science, art, and even philosophy are defined by their past and the heart of these activities can be understood by studying their history. Hegel argues that the history of societal activity is a cumulative reaction to the events that has happened in the past. His famous “Philosophy is the history of philosophy" quote essentially summarizes his thoughts. Hegel believes history is a progressive and directional relation between human activities and society. He argues that in order to understand an individual, he must be studied in a society where in turn the same society can be understood by evaluating th...
In beginning his lengthy phenomenology for identifying the pathway in which Geist will realize itself as Absolute Knowledge, Hegel begins at what many considered the most basic source of all epistemological claims: sensual apprehension or Sense-Certainty. Though the skeptical tradition took this realm as a jumping-off point for making defensible epistemological claims, Hegel sees in the sensual a type of knowledge so general and abstract as to be entirely vacuous. Focusing on the principle that anything known in the Scientific sense must be communicable, through language or its approximations, Hegel shows that whatever the sensual purports to know is inherently incommunicable and therefore cannot represent true knowledge.
The French Revolution evokes many different emotions and controversial issues in that some believe it was worth the cost and some don't. There is no doubt that the French Revolution did have major significance in history. Not only did the French gain their independence, but an industrial revolution also took place. One of the main issues of the Revolution was it's human costs. Two writers, the first, Peter Kropotkin who was a Russian prince, and the other Simon Schama, a history professor, both had very opposing views on whether the wars fought by France during the Revolution were worth it's human costs. Krapotkin believed that the French Revolution was the main turning point for not only France but for most other countries as well. On the other hand, Schama viewed the French Revolution as unproductive and excessively violent.
Marx, Karl. "Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General." marxists.org. marxists.org, 19/10/2009. Web. 26 Mar 2010. .
Kung, Hans. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought As Prolegomena to a Future Christology. T&T Clark, 2001. hard cover.
Hegel's philosophy of History, on of the greatest in the philosophy cannon, is the great philosophers greatest body of work. The philosophy of History is based on such ideals as the idea that Reason rules history. George Hegel used Immanuel Kant's system of philosophy as a basis for his own, discarding a few ideas and adding some more. Particularly, he found fault with his idea of the underlying reality of everything, or "noumena," can never be known. They exist in a plane outside of our own reality and understanding, and are therefore impossible to perceive and study, much like Plato's "forms." Hegel countered this notion with the phrase, "What is rational is real, and what is real is rational." He believed that the ability to be understood is a prequalification for something to exist. Also, Hegel completely reversed Kant's idea of the nature of truth. While Kant carefully listed and categorized the components of truth, Hegel stated that truth was an organic and dynamic process that is impossible to break into neat components. In fact, he claims that truth constantly changes and encompasses many contradictions. Truth, he says, comes about as a product of Geist, a German word that can be translated as mind, ghost, or God.
Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Ed. A. V. Miller. Verlag Hamburg: Oxford University Press, 1952.
During the eighteenth century, France was one of the most richest and prosperous countries in Europe, but many of the peasants were not happy with the way France was being ruled. On July 14, 1789, peasants and soldiers stormed the Bastille and initiated the French Revolution. This essay will analyze the main causes of the French Revolution, specifically, the ineffectiveness of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the dissatisfaction of the Third Estate, and the Enlightenment. It will also be argued that the most significant factor that caused the French Revolution is the ineffective leadership of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in the epic drama of life's struggle and Spirit's birth.
History is the increasing self-consciousness of the Spirit i.e. Reason; that is, a progressive increase of Reason within the world. This relationship between history and Reason is expressed by Hegel's agreement with Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds. In other words, everything is as it should be. In fact, Hegel makes strong assertions along just these lines, "that [Reason] reveals itself in the world, and that nothing else is revealed in the world but that Idea itself, its glory and majesty (12-13)." It is from this idea that Hegel derives the point that "Re...
One of them main critiques of Hegel in regards to the liberalism view of freedom is that the view of liberalism is only a partial view of freedom. By referring to liberalism as a partial freedom, Hegel is referring to its subjectivity. To Hegel, liberal freedom is a subjective freedom. In other words, it is a negative freedom, it is a system of rights. To Hegel, freedom is the “the worthiest and the holiest thing in humanity”, where the core of freedom lies in free will (Par. 215). According to Hegel, without free will, individuals do not possess freedom. This is why Hegel refers to freedom as an abstract concept, as freedom by itself, is just an abstract right. As a result, when an individual think to himself “I will”, that is just the abstract thought, it
Hegel's theory held prevalence in society for many years, thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Heidegger relying heavily upon the dialectic as a way to further their own theories. Cause and effect became the main way of looking at world events, and life continued until the advent of the twentieth century, which saw a negation of Hegel's thought and a shift in the dialectic.
Among those Hegel influenced were theologians and religious people because of his emphasis on the importance of God in his teachings. (Boston U) Hegel was supported by German scientists and theologians because he promoted the vitality of these two areas of studies. His opponents were those who did not believe in God or religious motives in philosophy like Kant with Agnostic Phenomenalism and Schelling with Objective Idealism that prompted Nietzsche and Marx to find their ideologies. Georg wrote many political works critiquing different European governments explaining how the morals and motives for doing certain things are corrupt and twisted. His more famous works came later, like the Jena Writings. Included in these writings was the Philosophy of Right. In this piece, Hegel talks about Natural Law and how the true meaning of Natural Law is hindered by the materialistic world. He claims that the physical world alters the perception of the actual truth. He advocated the traditional rationalist approach to the Natural Law. His underlying message is that the community must move beyond the false reality the state entraps them in to find what is real and what is good. (UTM) Hegel believed that if one were
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and J. N. Findlay. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford [England: Clarendon, 1977. Print.