Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Hegel’s most important contribution to Western Thought was his concept of the dialectic. Hegel’s philosophy attempts to comprehend and systemize the entire universe as a totality – explaining the present, the now, as the totality of all that has come before (Knox Internet). Due to his religious convictions, he believed that the universe must not be random, but directed. He believed that this direction, God’s Will, was represented in the world by Man’s reason; however, unlike Kant, he believed Man’s reason was unlimited in power because it came from God (Heston Audio Cassette). But, if the world is ordered around supreme and unlimited reason, then why are there differing philosophical views? Why does society have many different forms of government? And why does history appear to swing at random from one dominant country, religion and race to another? Hegel’s philosophy explains these questions, and many more, through a dialectic, a dialogue of ideas, that swings from thesis to antithesis finally culminating in an entirely new synthesis containing only the best of the previously opposed ideas. This synthesis then becomes a new thesis, generates a new antithesis, and culminates in a new synthesis; the dialectic is circular. However, the circle is not endless. Each new synthesis more closely approximates God’s Will; as the limit approaches infinity, perfection is produced, and no new synthesis is needed. The development of this dialectic, and its implied direction, made Hegel unique (Knox Internet).
Hegel is universally regarded as the pinnacle of German Idealism. His philosophy is firmly based in the idealistic belief that subjectivity has a rational, objective basis and therefore that analyzing the self is the key to understanding. Perhaps most importantly, Hegel consciously related his work to the previous important German Idealists: Leibniz, Kant and Fichte. Where Hegel differed most was in his conception of human reason. Whereas Kant, the most important Idealist, believed reason was limited, Hegel believed that reason was unlimited (Heston Audio Cassette). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
"Above all, Hegel was inspired by a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of man, his reason, is the candle of the Lord, Hegel held, and therefore cannot be subject to the limitations that Kant had imposed upon it. This faith in reason, with its religious basis, henceforth animated the whole of Hegel's work." (Knox Internet)
This
faith in reason, derived from faith in God, provides the basis for the dialectic.
Hegel’s dialectic rose out of his need to explain the origins of Christianity. Some of Hegel’s first, unpublished, essays were replies to Kant’s speculations on religion. One essay attempted to reinterpret the Gospel, the other explained how the Church had gone from the rationalism of Christ to authoritarianism; both were firmly based in Kant’s idea of a limited reason. However, as Hegel began to generate his own thought – to break away from Kant’s limited reason and hold to his own, unlimited, reason – he began to reconsider his previous interpretations. In his essay The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, Hegel first expresses his primary differences with Kant. In Spirit, he first explicates the dialectic: the Jews were slaves to the Mosaic Law but had God’s Love, the Greeks were Free but were without Love; from thesis and antithesis came synthesis: Freedom and Love came together via the Divine Will represented by Jesus – Christianity. Hegel’s philosophy relies on the idea that all is ephemeral, all is changing, but that all is changing for the best. When the best is finally achieved in totality, when all is perfect, we will know God. Hegel would later comprehensively explicate his system and relate it to all areas of human thought and history in his Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Similarly, in his Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel demonstrates how individual man can move through consciousness to "Absolute Being". However, it is this first conception of the dialectic that underlies all his works, and it is this conception that most influenced his followers (Knox Internet).
Hegel’s philosophy was important both in the reactions against it, such as Kierkegaard, and its extensions – especially Marx and Engels. While at first unknown, Hegel’s reputation steadily grew up to and beyond his death in 1831. By this time, Hegel’s thought dominated throughout Germany. Within a few years, it had spread throughout Europe (Rossi Internet). While a majority embraced Hegel’s thought, one, very important, philosopher did not: Søren Kierkegaard. Britannica writes:
Kierkegaard waged a continuous polemic against the philosophy of Hegel. He regarded Hegel as motivated by the spirit of the harmonious dialectical conciliation of every opposition and as committed to imposing universal and panlogistic resolutions upon the authentic antinomies of life. Kierkegaard saw these antinomies as emerging from the condition of the individual, as a single person, who, finding himself always stretching to attain ascendance over his existential limitations in his absorption in God and at the same time always thrust back upon himself by the incommensurability of this relationship, cannot find his salvation except through the paradoxical inversion of the rational values of speculative philosophy and through the "leap of faith" in the crucified Christ. Kierkegaard's claim that the nexus of problems characterizing man's condition as an existing being is irreducible to any other terms lay at the very roots of Existentialism. It was destined to condition the critical relationship of this current of thought to Hegelianism throughout its subsequent history. (Rohde Internet)
Hence, the dominance of Hegelianism served as a
catalyst for the synthesis of an important counter-current: Existentialism.
However, Hegel was not important only in the reactions against him; his dialectic was at the core of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ theory that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Marx 1). Marx and Engels "fused German idealistic philosophy with British political economy and French socialism" in their epochal Communist Manifesto (Coser Internet). From Hegel, Marx and Engels took the concept of a dialectic and applied it to the history of class struggles (Feuer Internet). They argued that history inevitably moves through a variety of conflicts, each derivative of the current mode of production, until a perfect state of communism was reached. In other words, they believed that the dialectic worked not because of a Divine Will represented in human reason; instead, they believed the dialectic was firmly based in the natural strife resultant from Man’s need to survive, and that this dialectic would inevitably culminate in Communism because this was the state of least strife – the natural State of Man. These beliefs immeasurably effected the future of the Western World (Coser Internet).
While Hegel’s idealism may appear absurd in today’s more alienated society, it profoundly influenced the history of Western Civilization. His concept of the dialectic introduced a new and widely re-interpreted method for interpreting all of human history and psychology.
Works Cited
Coser, Lewis. “Socialism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2001 ed.
Feuer, Lewis, and David McLellan. “Marx, Karl.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2001 ed.
Heston, Charles, narr. The Giants of Philosophy: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Carmichael & Carmichael, Inc. Audio cassette. Knowledge Products, 1990.
Knox, Sir T. Malcolm. “Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2001 ed.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. London: 1848.
Rohde, Peter. “Kierkegaard, Søren.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2001 ed.
Rossi, Mario. “Hegelianism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 2001 ed.
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