Greg Detre
Wednesday, 07 February, 2001
post-Kantian V - Dr Rosen, Lincoln
Why for Hegel does history matter to philosophy?
that�s not the same as applying philosophical methods to history, but seeing how history is important in philosophy
Preface to �Phenomenology of Spirit�
Preface to �Lectures on the philosophy of history�
***
interesting, but not this week � Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Science, Lectures on the philosophy of Religion & Fine Art
Charles Taylor � �Hegel�, part I
Fred Beiser (ed) � Cambridge companion to Hegel
Alastair McIntyre (ed) � Hegel, collection of critical essays � the piece by him
Warren Steinkraus (ed) � Hegel, a collection of new essays
Peter Singer
Raymond Plant
Bibliography - www.sussex.ox.ac.uk/Units/Philosophy/chitty/hegel.html
Hegel (along with Fichte and Schelling) was reacting against Kant, and was trying to develop a complete and comprehensive system that could be generated from just a single principle or subject.
history is central to Hegel
historicises philosophy as �its own age comprehended in thought� (Philosophy of Right, VII, 26)
Hegel � debunking philosophers� pretensions to a priori purely rational and eternal a-historical knowledge
also against Schelling�s intellectual intuition, another escape from Kant�s strictures on metaphysics
= related to dialect being a long-term process
self-awareness, freedom and HRs = the end of history
2 standards of truth
Hegel�s The Philosophy of History (1826) insists on the historical situatedness of each individual consciousness as a particular moment within the total progression of all history towards a final goal. The shifting fusion of these ideas provides the foundation for both the strengths and the problems of historicism. Historicism follows both Herder, in attempting to do justice to objective history in its discontinuity and uniqueness, and Hegel, in attempting to determine general patterns of historical change. Indeed, historicism can perhaps be best termed a Hegelian philosophy of history without an all-encompassing notion of progress.
In philosophy, Reason is revealed as the rational process. Through the concepts of philosophy the philosopher may know Reason as it has been and as it is in itself. The history of philosophy thus reveals the development of Mind itself in its quest for its own unification and actualization. The greater the historical perspective accorded the philosopher, the greater and richer the vision of the system and of Reason's own self-comprehension in the system.
Let no one assume from this a new powerfully
constructive instinct. For that we would have to let the so-called Protestant
Union be considered the maternal womb of a new religion and someone like Judge
Holtzendorf (the editor of and chief spokesman for the even more questionable
Protestant Bible) as John at the River Jordan. For some time perhaps the
Hegelian philosophy still clouding the brains of older people will help to
promote that harmlessness, somewhat in the way that people differentiate the
"Idea of Christianity" from its manifold incomplete "apparent
forms" and convince themselves it is really just a matter of the "tendency
of the idea" to reveal itself in ever purer forms, and
finally as certainly the purest, most transparent, that is, the hardly visible
form in the brain of the present theologus liberalis vulgis [liberal
theologian for the rabble].
I believe that there has been no dangerous variation
or change in German culture in this century which has not become more dangerous
through the monstrous influence of the philosophy of Hegel, an influence which
continues to flow right up to the present. The belief that one is a late comer
of the age is truly crippling and disorienting; but it must appear fearful and
destructive when such a belief one day with a bold reversal idolizes this late
comer as the true meaning and purpose of all earlier events, when his
knowledgeable misery is equated to the completion of world history. Such a way
of considering things has made the Germans accustomed to talking of the
"World Process" and to justify their own time as the necessary result
of the world process. Such a way of thinking about things has made history the
single sovereign, in the place of the other spiritual powers, culture and
religion, insofar as history is "the self-realizing idea" and
"the dialectic of the spirits of peoples" and the "last
judgment."
People have scornfully called this Hegelian
understanding of history the earthly changes of God; but this God for His part
was first created by history. However, this God became intelligible and
comprehensible inside Hegelian brain cases and has already ascended all the
dialectically possible steps of His being right up to that self-revelation.
Thus, for Hegel the summit and end point of the world process coincided with
his own individual existence in Berlin. In fact, strictly speaking he should
have said that everything coming after him should be valued really only as a
musical coda of the world historical rondo, or even more truly, as superfluous.
He did not say that. Thus, he planted in the generations leavened by him
that admiration for the "Power of History", which transforms
practically every moment into a naked admiration of success and leads to
idolatrous worship of the factual. For this service people nowadays commonly
repeat the very mythological and, in addition, the truly German expression
"to carry the bill of facts" But the person who has first learned to
stoop down and to bow his head before the "Power of History", finally
nods his agreement mechanically, in the Chinese fashion, to that power, whether
it is a government or public opinion or a numerical majority, and moves his
limbs precisely to the beat of strings plucked by some "power" or
other.
The incredibly thoughtless fragmenting and fraying
of all the fundamentals, their disintegration into a constantly flowing and
dissolving becoming, the inexhaustible spinning away and historicizing of all
that has come into being because of modern men, the great garden spiders in the
knots of the world net, that may keep the moralists, the artists, the devout,
as well as the statesman, busy and worried. Today it should for once cheer us
up, because we see all this in the gleaming magical mirror of a philosophical
writer of parodies, in whose head the age has come to an ironical
consciousness of itself, a consciousness clear all the way to lunacy (to speak
in Goethe's style). Hegel once taught us, "when the spirit makes a sudden
turn, then we philosophers are still there." Our age has made a turn into
self-irony, and, lo and behold, E. von Hartmann was also at hand and had written
his famous Philosophy of the Unconscious, or, to speak more clearly, his
philosophy of unconscious irony. Rarely have we read a more amusing invention
and a more philosophically roguish prank than Hartmann's. Anyone who is not
enlightened by him concerning Becoming, who is not really set right on
the inside, is truly ripe for the state of existing in the past. The
start and the goal of the world process, from the first motions of consciousness
right to the state of being hurled back into nothingness, together with the
precisely defined task of our generation for the world process, all presented
from such a wittily inventive font of inspiration of the unconscious and
illuminated with an apocalyptic light, with everything so deceptively imitative
of a unsophisticated seriousness, as if it were really serious philosophy and
not playful philosophy, such a totality makes its creator one of the
pre-eminent writers of philosophical parodies of all times. Let us sacrifice on
an altar, sacrifice to him, the inventor of a truly universal medicine, a lock
of hair, to steal an expression of admiration from Schleiermacher. For what
medicine would be healthier against the excess of historical culture than
Hartmann's parody of all world history?
If we want a correct matter-of-fact account of what
Hartmann is telling us about the noxious tri-legged stool of unconscious irony,
then we would say that he is telling us that our age would have to be just the
way it is if humanity is to ever get seriously fed up with this existence. That
is what we believe in our hearts. That frightening fossilizing of the age, that
anxious rattling of the bones, which David Strauss has described for us in his
naive way as the most beautiful reality, is justified in Hartmann not only
retrospectively ex causis efficientibus [from efficient causes, i.e.,
as the result of certain mechanical causes], but even looking ahead, ex
causa finali [from a final cause, i.e., as having a higher purpose]. The
joker lets his light stream over the most recent periods of our time, and there
finds that our age is very good, especially for the person who wants to endure
as strongly as possible the indigestible nature of life and who cannot wish
that doomsday comes quickly enough. Indeed, Hartmann calls the age which
humanity is now approaching the "maturity of humanity." But that
maturity is, according to his own description, the fortunate condition where
there is still only " pure mediocrity" and culture is "some
evening farce for the Berlin stockbroker," where "geniuses are no
longer a requirement of the age, because that means casting pearls before swine
or also because the age has progressed to a more important level, beyond the
stage for which geniuses are appropriate," that is, to that stage of
social development in which each worker "with a period of work which
allows him sufficient leisure for his intellectual development leads a
comfortable existence." You rogue of all rogues, you speak of the yearning
of contemporary humanity; but you also know what sort of ghost will stand at
the end of this maturity of humanity as the result of that intellectual
development--disgust. Things stand in a state of visible wretchedness, but they
will get even more wretched, "before our eyes the Antichrist reaches out
further and further around him"--but things must be so, thing must
come about this way, because for all that we are on the best route to disgust
with all existing things. "Thus, go forward vigorously into the world
process as a worker in the vineyard of the Lord, for the process is the only
thing which can lead to redemption."
Hegel also categorises the historical method: original, reflective and philosophical. Original history includes a historian�s account of events around him experienced first-hand. Then comes reflective history, where we try and look back on a previous era, in the light of his own. Beiser interprets the third, vaguely-described category of philosophical history by analogy with the �phenomenological method�.
like Nietzsche, philosophy appears to be about understanding (and also transcending???) one�s own time
history is now bigger than philosophy
is Hegel an idealist??? in the same way that Berkeley is???
no, he�s a German Idealist
is natural religion a �noble lie� in some sense, then?
why doesn�t Hegel get more abused/mentioned by Nietzsche???
is Hegel himself not then the product of the history of philosophy??? or is he the culmination???
Hegel vs Fukuyama???
Hegel and Plato???
history vs philosophy vs history
analytic vs continental
Fichte vs Berkeleyan idealism???
pantheism (Hegelian) vs panpsychism
constitutive vs regulative
dialectic/diachronic � through discussion/time
what�s the historical basis of Hegel�s own thought???
Why do we need to be able to philosophise our generation�s Zeitgeist-thought???
What does philosophy do???
Is there philosophy after Hegel???