Philosopher views
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (1770-1831)
Download 5.81 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Life And Work
- Dialectical Reason: The Struggle And Synthesis Of Opposites
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGELGERMAN PHILOSOPHER (1770-1831)Life is a struggle. Often we say this without fully realizing what it means but its meaning becomes clear both in individual episodes of struggle and later, when we have felt ourselves grow through struggle. Part of the struggle is itself trying to comprehend the meanings and reasons for the agony we might suffer. At some point, we become conscious of the process itself; we see it as a whole rather than a collection of individual episodes. At that point, we have a picture of the very thing we are experiencing, and have experienced. The episodes lose their individuality and become ‘the big picture.” While these comments sound simply like wise observations about everyday life, growth and self-awareness, G.W.F. Hegel sees them as observations about the very nature of philosophical truth. Until Hegel came along, most thinkers assumed truth was something static and unchanging. Hegel, on the other hand believed change itself to be truth. And integral to this change-truth is, for Hegel, the notion that struggle is part of growth, that contrary opposites clash and become a higher reality. True to the nature of opposites clashing, Hegel’s views are simultaneously conservative and radical. Nothing is as it seems after Hegel gets done with it. For philosophy, Hegel issued a challenge which is still being both fled and confronted. Life And WorkGeorg Hegel was born in 1770 to an upper middle class family in Stuttgart, Germany. He began his mature education by studying at the Seminary at the University of Tubingen, where he quickly developed a theological view of the world, but also came to realize his belief that theology, as well as the world, must be governed by rational principles. Upon graduation, he spent seven years as a private tutor before finding employment as a lecturer at Jena in 1801. There, he probably began to develop the style that would make him known as one of the greatest lecturers of his time; so unique and unforgettable was his style that students took copious notes, many of which would later be turned into books credited to him after his death. Writing and editing for scholarly journals, Hegel finally received a full professorship in 1805. Although he would be happily married by 1811, the years in between these two events were themselves eventful: Napoleon’s adventures took his armies near Jena. Hegel fled Jena, edited a newspaper and was principle of a school in Nuremberg. The closeness in proximity to Napoleon left an indelible mark on the young philosopher-theologian; he began to believe that history had a life of its own, and that historical figures seemed to follow a course which was, in some way, terrifyingly more real than the moral and mundane life of most of humanity. In 1818, Hegel received a respected post at the University of Berlin, where he would remain until his death in 1831. During his life, he actually published only four books--the rest were transcripts of his lectures. Phenomenology of Spirit his best known work, is a puzzling philosophical epic which purports to trace the journey of consciousness from individual awareness to absolute knowledge. The Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences were more understandable but no less stimulating or groundbreaking; both were sweeping visions of philosophy which influenced German idealism and introduced dialectical reason, more about which will be said later. Finally, The Philosophy of Right expounded Hegel’s rather conservative political and ethical theories, though in no less a revolutionary manner as his other works. After Hegel’s death, scores of young philosophers poured over his work and found visions which would shake the foundations of European thought. Hegel’s words influenced both the right and the left politically. That he could do both was a testament to both the confusing and awe-inspiring style and substance of his work. If there had been no Hegel, for example, there would have been no Karl Marx, who used Hegelian thinking, molded to metaphysical materialism and ethical egalitarianism, to formulate dialectical materialism, the science of socialism. Hegel influenced rejections from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and even into the 20th century his influence was felt; Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas are all “postmodern” thinkers who owe a huge debt to Hegel. Dialectical Reason: The Struggle And Synthesis Of OppositesThe main contribution that made Hegel the most influential of all 19th Century philosophers was his “dialectic.’ Originally, the word refers to the dialogues, such as those written by Plato and attributed to Socrates, which attempt to both arrive at philosophical conclusions and trace the steps, often confusing and side-tracked, used to get there. Hegel turned this from a notion of conversation into a notion of logic. Now, logic had been (and still is largely) held to be an “absolute” kind of thinking which excludes “middle ground” and considers all statements potentially true or false. But Hegel’s “logic,” the logic of dialectical progression, is different. We begin with a “thesis,” that is, some piece of knowledge. Immediately, Hegel says, it “produces” its own ‘antithesis,” or contradiction. Let us say, for example, that our thesis is “freedom.” Its antithesis, its contradiction, would probably be “slavery,” or un-freedom. Now, normal logic would say these two ideas are irreconcilable. But dialectical reason tells us that there are many instances in which humans live simultaneously in freedom and slavery. That is, we are free in some senses and not free in others. At this point, in conceptualizing this “third way” which incorporates the ideas of the thesis and antithesis, we begin to produce a dialectical “synthesis.” It may be, for example, the notion of “responsibility”: the realization that we freely choose to constrain ourselves in appropriate situations. Or it may be the political entity which both guarantees freedom and also asks us to limit our own freedom. In any event, dialectical reason demonstrates that contradictory things can both be true, given a “higher,” or more comprehensive, way of looking at them. As Monroe Beardsley puts it, “Hegel’s thinking was an attempt--sometimes heroic--to do justice to the reality of partial truths, relative perspectives, one-sided insights, without losing track of truth itself completely.” The new, synthesized truth will itself produce an antithesis, and then a still newer synthesis, and the process goes on and on. In each case, elements of the one are combined with the other, while undesirable traits of both are shed. Truth itself is simply the progress of the synthesis of contradictions. Because of this, things which appear in opposition to us in a given moment are not really opposed at all; on a higher level of consciousness, sometimes arrived at over painfully long periods, they are the same. Eventually, all will be synthesized in “the absolute” level of consciousness, a consciousness completely aware of itself as a process and without any contradiction, because there is nothing other than itself. Vaguely, Hegel hinted that this consciousness, this absolute synthesis, would be called “God.” At other times he indicated it was simply the sum total of everything. Hegel, naturally, didn’t think these two designations were really contradictory. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
|