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 such dualisms as consciousness and nature, subject and object. Georg Hegel, whose philosophy of the Spirit united many concepts, remains today 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.
Biography
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a very inquisitive child from childhood. We call them "pochemuchki". He was born into the family of an influential official. His father was strict and loved order in everything. Nothing in the surrounding nature and human relations left him indifferent. Even in early childhood, Georg Hegel read books about the culture of the ancient Greeks. As you know, they were the first philosophers. It is believed that it was this passion that prompted Hegel to his future professional activities. He graduated from the Latin gymnasium in his native Stuttgart. In addition to reading, there was little in the life of a philosopherother occupations. Georg Hegel spent most of his time in various libraries. He was an excellent specialist in the field of political philosophy, followed the events of the French bourgeois revolution, but he himself 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 in many ways. However, later they quarreled on the basis of their philosophical views. Schelling even claimed that Hegel appropriated his ideas. However, history put everything in its place.
Fundamentals of philosophical thought
During his life, Hegel wrote many works. The most prominent of them are the "Science of Logic", "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" and "Foundations of the Philosophy of Law". Hegel considered any transcendentalism to be inconsistent, since it breaks such dual categories as "thing" and "idea", "world" and "consciousness". Perception is primary. The world is its derivative. Any transcendentalism results from the fact that there are pure possibilities of experience that are superimposed on the world in order to obtain a universal experience. This is how Hegel's "absolute idealism" appears. Spirit as the only reality is not a frozen primary matter. The whole philosophy of Hegel can be reduced to a substantive discourse. According to Hegel, the Spirit is cyclic, it overcomes itself each time in a double negation. Its main characteristic is self-promotion. It is arranged as a subjective thought. philosophic althe system is built on the basis of a triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. On the one hand, the latter makes it strictly and clear. On the other hand, it allows you to show the progressive development of the world.
Georg Wilhelm Hegel: The Philosophy of the Absolute Idea
The theme of the Spirit has developed within a broad tradition and originates from Plato and Emmanuel Kant. Georg Hegel also recognized the influence of Proclus, Eckhart, Leibniz, Boehme, Rousseau. What distinguishes all these scholars from materialists is that they viewed freedom and self-determination as things that have important ontological implications for the soul, mind, and divinity. Many followers of Hegel call his philosophy a kind of absolute idealism. The Hegelian concept of Spirit is defined as an attempt to find a place for the divine essence in everyday life. In support of their argument, these followers cite quotations from an eminent German philosopher. From them they conclude that the world is identical to the absolute idea (the so-called Spirit). However, these statements are actually far from the truth. Georg Friedrich Hegel, whose philosophy is actually much more complicated, means by 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. She is only a blueprint to make the world easier to understand.
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 separated).
- 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, he did not accept many of them. In particular, he fought against his agnosticism. For Kant, antinomies cannot be resolved, and this is the end of the theory. There is no further development. However, Georg Hegel finds in problems and obstacles the engine of rational knowledge. For example, there is no way we can confirm that the universe is infinite. For Kant, this is an unresolved paradox. It goes beyond experience, therefore it cannot be comprehended and rational. Hegel Georg believes that this situation is the key to finding a new category. For example, infinite progress. Hegel's epistemology is based on contradiction, not on experience. The latter is not a criterion of truth, as in Kant.
Dialectics
The German philosopher Georg Hegel opposed his teaching to all others. He did not try to find the root causes of phenomena or their resolution in the final result. Simple categories are transformed into complex ones. The truth is contained in the contradiction between them. In this he is close to Plato. The latter called dialectics the art of arguing. However, Georg Friedrich Hegel went even further. There are no two disputants in his philosophy, but only two concepts. An attempt to combine themleads to disintegration, from which a new category is formed. All this contradicts the third law of Aristotle's logic. Hegel manages to find in contradiction the eternal impulse for the movement of thought along the road paved by the absolute idea.
Spirit Elements:
- Being (quantity, quality).
- Essence (reality, phenomenon).
- Concept (idea, subject, object).
- Mechanics (space, time, matter, movement).
- 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 identified relationships through contradictions and tried to streamline 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 some absolute mind, which is the root cause of the existence of everything. Categories do not generate nature. Therefore, one can say that Marx and Engels turned Hegel's dialectic on its head. It was profitable for them to write that the idea was embodied in history. In fact, according to Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is only the accumulated knowledge of mankind about the world.
Marxism andFrankfurt School
The name of Hegel is closely connected for us today with another philosophical system. This is because Marx and Engels largely relied 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 put the inevitability of man-made disasters at the heart of their concept. In their opinion, mass culture requires the complication of information technology, which will certainly 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 experiencing a new birth.
Georg Hegel: ideas and their development
The doctrine of the German philosopher includes three parts:
- Philosophy of Spirit.
- Logic.
- Philosophy of nature.
Hegel argued that religion and philosophy are identical. The only difference is the way the information is presented. Hegel considered his system as the crown of the development of philosophy. Hegel's merit lies in the establishment in philosophy and in the general consciousness of true and fruitful concepts: process, development, history. He proves that there is nothing separate, not connected with everything. This is the process. As regards history and development, Hegel explains them even more clearly. It is impossible to understand a phenomenon without understanding the whole path it has taken. And an important role in its disclosure is played by the contradiction, which allows development to occur not in a vicious circle, but progressively - from lower forms tohigher. Hegel made a great contribution to the development of the method of science, that is, the totality of artificial methods invented by man and independent of the subject of study. The philosopher showed in his system that knowledge is a historical process. Therefore, truth cannot be a ready-made result for him. It constantly develops and reveals itself in contradiction.
