Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a world famous German philosopher. His principal achievement was the development of the theory of so-called absolute idealism. In it, he managed to overcome dualisms such as consciousness and nature, the subject and the object. Georg Hegel, whose philosophy of Spirit has united many concepts, still remains an outstanding figure, inspiring new generations of thinkers. In this article we will briefly review his biography and main ideas. Particular attention will be paid to the philosophy of the Absolute Spirit, ontology, epistemology and dialectics.
Biographical Information
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel from childhood was a very curious child. We call such people “pochimuchki”. He was born into the family of an influential official. His father was strict and loved everything in order. Nothing in the surrounding nature and human relations left him indifferent. Even in early childhood, Georg Hegel read books on the culture of the ancient Greeks. As you know, they were the first philosophers. It is believed that it was this hobby that pushed Hegel to his future professional activities. He graduated from a Latin gymnasium in his native Stuttgart. In addition to reading, in the life of the philosopher in general there were few other occupations. Georg Hegel spent most of his time in various libraries. He was an excellent specialist in the field of political philosophy, he followed the events of the French bourgeois revolution, but he did not take part in the public life of the country. Hegel Georg graduated from the theological university. After that, he was engaged exclusively in teaching and his scientific research. With the beginning of his career, Schelling, with whom they were friends, helped him a lot. However, then they quarreled on the basis of their philosophical views. Schelling even stated that Hegel appropriated his ideas. However, history has put everything in its place.
Fundamentals of Philosophical Thought
Hegel has written many works in his life. The most prominent of these are the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, and the Foundations of the Philosophy of Law. Hegel considered any transcendentalism inconsistent, since it breaks down such dual categories as “thing” and “idea”, “world” and “consciousness”. Perception is primary. The world is its derivative. Any transcendentalism is obtained due to the fact that there are pure possibilities of experience that are superimposed on the world to obtain universal experience. Thus appears the Hegelian “absolute idealism”. Spirit, as the only reality, is not a frozen primary matter. Hegel's whole philosophy can be reduced to substantial discourse. According to Hegel, the Spirit is cyclical; it overcomes itself each time in double negation. Its main characteristic is self-promotion. It is designed as a subjective thought. The philosophical system is built on the basis of the triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. On the one hand, the latter makes it rigorous and clear. On the other hand, it allows us to show the progressive development of the world.
Georg Wilhelm Hegel: The Philosophy of Absolute Idea
The theme of the Spirit developed within the framework of a wide tradition and originates from Plato and Emanuel Kant. Georg Hegel also recognized the influence of Proclus, Eckhart, Leibniz, Boehme, Rousseau. All these scientists are distinguished from the materialists by the fact that they considered freedom and self-determination as things that have important ontological consequences for the soul, mind, and divinity. Many followers of Hegel call his philosophy a kind of absolute idealism. The Hegelian concept of the Spirit is defined as an attempt to find the place of the divine essence in everyday life. To prove their argument, these followers quote from an eminent German philosopher. From these, they conclude that the world is identical with the absolute idea (the so-called Spirit). However, in reality, these statements are far from the truth. Georg Friedrich Hegel, whose philosophy is actually much more complicated, means by the Spirit not regularities, but facts and theories that exist separately from consciousness. Their existence does not depend on whether they are known to man. In this, the Hegelian absolute idea is similar to Newton’s second law. It is only a scheme that facilitates understanding of the world.
Hegel Ontology
In the "Science of Logic" the German philosopher identifies the following types of being:
- Clean (things and space that are interconnected).
- Cash (all divided).
- Being-for-itself (abstract things that are opposed to everything else).
Hegelian epistemology
Georg Hegel, whose philosophy is often considered in university courses immediately after Kant, although he was influenced by his ideas, did not accept many of them. In particular, he fought with his agnosticism. For Kant, antinomies cannot be resolved, and this conclusion is the end of the theory. There is no further development. However, Georg Hegel finds the engine of rational knowledge in problems and hindrances . For example, we cannot confirm in any way that the Universe is infinite. For Kant, this is an unresolved paradox. He goes beyond the bounds of experience, therefore, can not be meaningful and rational. Hegel Georg believes that this situation is the key to finding a new category. For example, endless progress. The epistemology of Hegel is built on contradiction, and not on experience. The latter is not a criterion of truth, as in Kant.
Dialectics
The German philosopher Georg Hegel contrasted his teachings with everyone else. He did not try to find the root causes of the phenomena or their resolution in the final result. Simple categories he turns into complex. Truth is contained in the contradiction between them. In this he is close to Plato. The latter called the art of debate as a dialectic. However, Georg Friedrich Hegel went even further. In his philosophy there are no two debaters, but there are only two concepts. An attempt to combine them leads to decay, from which a new category is formed. All this contradicts the third law of Aristotle's logic. Hegel manages to find in contradiction an eternal impulse for the movement of thought along the road paved by an absolute idea.
Elements of the Spirit:
- Being (quantity, quality).
- Essence (reality, phenomenon).
- Concept (idea, subject, object).
- Mechanics (space, time, matter, motion).
- Physics (substance, shaping).
- Organics (zoology, botany, geology).
- Subjective (anthropology, psychology, phenomenology), objective (law, morality) and absolute (philosophy, religion, art) spirit.
Social philosophy
Many criticize Hegel for the unscientific nature of his conclusions about nature. However, he never claimed it. Hegel revealed interconnections through contradictions and tried to organize knowledge in this way. He did not claim to discover new truths. Many see Hegel as the founding father of the theory of the development of consciousness. Although his work “The Science of Logic” does not at all describe the existence of a kind of absolute mind, which is the root cause of the existence of everything. Categories do not give rise to nature. Therefore, we can say that Marx and Engels turned Hegel's dialectic upside down. It was beneficial for them to write that the idea is embodied in history. In fact, the Absolute Spirit according to Hegel is only the accumulated knowledge of mankind about the world.
Marxism and the Frankfurt School
The name of Hegel is closely related to us today with another philosophical system. This is because Marx and Engels relied heavily on Hegel, although they interpreted his ideas in a way that was beneficial to them. Representatives of the Frankfurt School were even more radical thinkers. They base their concept on the inevitability of technological disasters. In their opinion, popular culture requires the sophistication of information technology, which will necessarily lead to problems in the future. It is safe to say that the dialectical materialism of the Marxists and the Frankfurt School is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. And Hegel’s ideas are now undergoing a new birth.
Georg Hegel: ideas and their development
The teachings of the German philosopher include three parts:
- The philosophy of the Spirit.
- The logic.
- The philosophy of nature.
Hegel argued that religion and philosophy are identical. Only the presentation of the information is different. Hegel considered his system as the crown of development of philosophy. Hegel's merit consists in establishing in philosophy and in the general consciousness of true and fruitful concepts: process, development, history. He argues that there is nothing separate, not connected with everything. This is the process. As for history and development, they are explained by Hegel even more vividly. It is impossible to understand the phenomenon without understanding the whole path that it has taken. And the contradiction plays an important role in its disclosure, which allows development to occur not in a vicious circle, but progressively - from the lower to the higher forms. Hegel made a great contribution to the development of the method of science, that is, a combination of artificial devices invented by man and independent of the subject of research. The philosopher showed in his system that cognition is a historical process. Therefore, truth for him cannot be a finished result. It is constantly developing and revealing in contradiction.