Tag Archives: Hegel

Arts, History, Philosophy

Philosophy: On Reason and Experience

AGE OF REASON AND ENLIGHTENMENT

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington (1732–1799)

IN the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason – characterised by thinkers such as Descartes, Hobbes and Locke during the seventeenth century – brought about a seismic shift in emphasis in philosophical thought. Massive advances were made in the natural sciences and this in turn led to a questioning of old certainties and a rush of new and often competing ideas concerning everything from how knowledge and truth can be acquired and tested to the first seedlings of notions of democracy, representation and civil liberties. The floodgates opened, characterised best by Kant’s imperative in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” The human mind was emerging from the darkness of infancy and maturing like that of an enquiring child, while Kant urged people to “dare to know”. Reason and experience became the watchwords in this new philosophy, which was more concerned with how things actually are rather than how they could or possibly should be.

However, not all enlightenment was positive. There were darker consequences of this new awakening, as evidenced by the reign of terror following the French Revolution and by the work of possibly the most morose thinker of all time, Arthur Schopenhauer, who once wrote in an essay that everyone should swallow a live toad for breakfast to guarantee they wouldn’t have to experience anything else quite as dispiriting again for the rest of the day. It would also be a mistake to think that the status quo embraced the new enlightenment with open arms. The preface quote for this article is taken from George Washington’s farewell address to the American people and illustrates that although there was an explosion in free-thinking in some quarters, the old guard – the protectors of religious-based morality – were deeply suspicious and frightened of these new ideas about how to live in and view the world.

Reading the great thinkers of reason and experience shouldn’t be difficult. Most of what they had to say seems pretty self-evident today, obvious even, yet somehow their arguments can be difficult to follow. This is largely due to the intellectual zeal with which they approached their investigations and their fervent search for one over-arching, all-encompassing system of thought. It didn’t help either that this spirit of competitiveness led to petty rivalries. The German philosopher Schopenhauer had a hatred of Hegel bordering on the pathological. This drove him to take up a position at the University of Berlin, where Hegel had a seat, just to try and prove his ideas were more popular with the students (but he failed spectacularly). Nonetheless, readers should appreciate that the philosophers of the ages of reason and enlightenment represent a pivotal point in the history of philosophy.

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond… Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

HEGEL

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tubingen, and after graduation became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807 and his ideas developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology, but the work is far from systematic and generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars and scientific discoveries, as an idealistic self-development of an objective Spirit or Mind.

His mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right- wing political thought. In fact, the interpreters of Hegel split into “left” and “right” camps. Marx drew inspiration from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. This is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is even said that he celebrated Bastille Day every year.

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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770–1831

GEORG HEGEL was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tübingen, and, after graduation, he became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought. His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807. Many of his ideas were developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology. The book and text is far from systematic and is generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars, and scientific discoveries, as an objective and idealistic self-developing Spirit or Mind.  

Hegel is a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand. For a beginner with next to no grounding in the Greek logic of Aristotle and the later works of Descartes, Hume and Locke it is probably a forlorn task best left until the fundamentals of philosophy are mastered. Being able to comprehend what he writes requires a grasp of at least the basics. Hegel still causes frustration among academics and one of the philosophers that give the discipline its forbidding reputation.

For example, in his book Hegel, Edward Caird writes: “But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel… and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.”

To have any chance of understanding Hegel one must first come to terms with the principle of the dialectic method. This is a type of argument or discussion between two or more opposing viewpoints whereupon the outcome or truth can be distilled. As the mechanism for this process Hegel proposed variations on the three “classical laws of thought” – that is, the law of identity (essentially “truths” that are taken to be self-evident), and the laws of [non]contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Paraphrasing these last two suggests respectively that contradictory statements cannot both be true but that either proposition must be true. This is the kind of difficulty that any student of philosophy will be faced with.

Hegelian dialectics is based upon four concepts:

. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

. Everything is composed of contradictions (opposing forces).

. Gradual changes lead to crisis or turning points when one force overcomes its opposing force (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).

. Change is helical (spiral), not circular.

In summary, Hegel believed that when our minds become fully conscious, awakened, or enlightened, we will have a perfect understanding of reality. In short, our thoughts about reality, and reality itself, will be the same. He argues this by showing that the mind goes through an evolution on its way to what he calls “absolute spirit”.

Because Hegel’s philosophy requires a journey it can be seen that it is the process and not just the result that is important. A struggle exists between one viewpoint (or thesis) to which there might exist one or more opposing viewpoints (or antithesis). A process of debate or connected dispute such as revolution or war might lead to a higher level of understanding (or synthesis) to which another antithesis might emerge and thus the process towards truth will continue. This is a Hegelian description of all history as an inevitable progression towards truth. It is complex and a difficult area of study.

Hegel’s mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right-wing political thought. Marx drew influence from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. Yet, this is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in Phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century.

. Hegel on Reason and Experience

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”

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