Hegel and Language (SUNY Series in Hegelian Studies)

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State University of New York Press, All greatly admired Hellenic civilization and Hegel additionally steeped himself in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lessing during this time. Hegel at this time envisaged his future as that of a Popularphilosoph , i. Although the violence of the Reign of Terror in dampened Hegel's hopes, he continued to identify with the moderate Girondin faction and never lost his commitment to the principles of , which he would express by drinking a toast to the storming of the Bastille every fourteenth of July.

During this period, he composed the text which has become known as the Life of Jesus and a book-length manuscript titled "The Positivity of the Christian Religion". His relations with his employers becoming strained. Also in , the unpublished and unsigned manuscript of " The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism " was written. In , Hegel came to Jena with the encouragement of his old friend Schelling, who held the position of Extraordinary Professor at the University there.

Hegel secured a position at the University as a Privatdozent unsalaried lecturer after submitting an inaugural dissertation on the orbits of the planets. In , the University promoted Hegel to the position of Extraordinary Professor unsalaried after he wrote a letter to the poet and minister of culture Johann Wolfgang Goethe protesting at the promotion of his philosophical adversary Jakob Friedrich Fries ahead of him. With his finances drying up quickly, Hegel was now under great pressure to deliver his book, the long-promised introduction to his System.

Hegel was putting the finishing touches to this book, The Phenomenology of Spirit , as Napoleon engaged Prussian troops on 14 October in the Battle of Jena on a plateau outside the city. On the day before the battle, Napoleon entered the city of Jena. Hegel recounted his impressions in a letter to his friend Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer:. I saw the Emperor — this world-soul [ Weltseele ] — riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

Pinkard notes that Hegel's comment to Niethammer "is all the more striking since at that point he had already composed the crucial section of the Phenomenology in which he remarked that the Revolution had now officially passed to another land Germany that would complete 'in thought' what the Revolution had only partially accomplished in practice". The following February, Hegel's landlady Christiana Burkhardt who had been abandoned by her husband gave birth to their son Georg Ludwig Friedrich Fischer — Unable to find more suitable employment, Hegel reluctantly accepted.

Ludwig Fischer and his mother whom Hegel may have offered to marry following the death of her husband stayed behind in Jena. In November , Hegel was again through Niethammer, appointed headmaster of a Gymnasium in Nuremberg , a post he held until While in Nuremberg, Hegel adapted his recently published Phenomenology of Spirit for use in the classroom.

Part of his remit being to teach a class called "Introduction to Knowledge of the Universal Coherence of the Sciences", Hegel developed the idea of an encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences, falling into three parts logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit. This period saw the publication of his second major work, the Science of Logic Wissenschaft der Logik ; 3 vols. Having received offers of a post from the Universities of Erlangen , Berlin and Heidelberg , Hegel chose Heidelberg, where he moved in Soon after, his illegitimate son Ludwig Fischer now ten years old joined the Hegel household in April , having thus far spent his childhood in an orphanage [39]: Hegel published The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline as a summary of his philosophy for students attending his lectures at Heidelberg.

In , Hegel accepted the renewed offer of the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, which had remained vacant since Johann Gottlieb Fichte 's death in Here, Hegel published his Philosophy of Right Hegel devoted himself primarily to delivering his lectures; and his lecture courses on aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy were published posthumously from lecture notes taken by his students.

His fame spread and his lectures attracted students from all over Germany and beyond. Hegel was appointed Rector of the University in October , but his term as Rector ended in September Hegel was deeply disturbed by the riots for reform in Berlin in that year.

Hegel and Language

Now in a weak state of health, Hegel seldom went out. As the new semester began in October, Hegel returned to Berlin with the mistaken impression that the epidemic had largely subsided. By November 14, Hegel was dead. The physicians pronounced the cause of death as cholera, but it is likely he died from a different gastrointestinal disease. He is said to have uttered the last words "And he didn't understand me" before expiring. Hegel's son Ludwig Fischer had died shortly before while serving with the Dutch army in Batavia and the news of his death never reached his father.

Hegel's thinking can be understood as a constructive development within the broad tradition that includes Plato and Immanuel Kant. What all these thinkers share, which distinguishes them from materialists like Epicurus and Thomas Hobbes and from empiricists like David Hume , is that they regard freedom or self-determination both as real and as having important ontological implications for soul or mind or divinity.

This focus on freedom is what generates Plato's notion in the Phaedo , Republic and Timaeus of the soul as having a higher or fuller kind of reality than inanimate objects possess. While Aristotle criticizes Plato's "Forms", he preserves Plato's cornerstones of the ontological implications for self-determination: Kant imports Plato's high esteem of individual sovereignty to his considerations of moral and noumenal freedom as well as to God. All three find common ground on the unique position of humans in the scheme of things, known by the discussed categorical differences from animals and inanimate objects.

In his discussion of "Spirit" in his Encyclopedia , Hegel praises Aristotle's On the Soul as "by far the most admirable, perhaps even the sole, work of philosophical value on this topic". Rather than simply rejecting Kant's dualism of freedom versus nature, Hegel aims to subsume it within "true infinity", the "Concept" or "Notion": Begriff , "Spirit" and "ethical life" in such a way that the Kantian duality is rendered intelligible, rather than remaining a brute "given". The reason why this subsumption takes place in a series of concepts is that Hegel's method in his Science of Logic and his Encyclopedia is to begin with basic concepts like "Being" and "Nothing" and to develop these through a long sequence of elaborations, including those already mentioned.

In this manner, a solution that is reached in principle in the account of "true infinity" in the Science of Logic' s chapter on "Quality" is repeated in new guises at later stages, all the way to "Spirit" and "ethical life" in the third volume of the Encyclopedia. In this way, Hegel intends to defend the germ of truth in Kantian dualism against reductive or eliminative programs like those of materialism and empiricism. Like Plato, with his dualism of soul versus bodily appetites, Kant pursues the mind's ability to question its felt inclinations or appetites and to come up with a standard of "duty" or, in Plato's case, "good" which transcends bodily restrictiveness.

Hegel preserves this essential Platonic and Kantian concern in the form of infinity going beyond the finite a process that Hegel in fact relates to "freedom" and the "ought" , [55]: Hegel renders these dualities intelligible by ultimately his argument in the "Quality" chapter of the "Science of Logic". The finite has to become infinite in order to achieve reality. The idea of the absolute excludes multiplicity so the subjective and objective must achieve synthesis to become whole.

This is because as Hegel suggests by his introduction of the concept of "reality", [55]: Finite things do not determine themselves because as "finite" things their essential character is determined by their boundaries over against other finite things, so in order to become "real" they must go beyond their finitude "finitude is only as a transcending of itself". The result of this argument is that finite and infinite—and by extension, particular and universal, nature and freedom—do not face one another as two independent realities, but instead the latter in each case is the self-transcending of the former.

This evolution was itself the result of God's desire for complete self-awareness. Modern philosophy, culture and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other , freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, or the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that in different contexts he called "the absolute Idea" Science of Logic , sections — or "absolute knowledge" Phenomenology of Spirit , " DD Absolute Knowledge".

According to Hegel, the main characteristic of this unity was that it evolved through and manifested itself in contradiction and negation.

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Contradiction and negation have a dynamic quality that at every point in each domain of reality — consciousness , history, philosophy, art, nature and society—leads to further development until a rational unity is reached that preserves the contradictions as phases and sub-parts by lifting them up Aufhebung to a higher unity.

This whole is mental because it is mind that can comprehend all of these phases and sub-parts as steps in its own process of comprehension. It is rational because the same, underlying, logical , developmental order underlies every domain of reality and is ultimately the order of self-conscious rational thought, although only in the later stages of development does it come to full self-consciousness.

The rational, self-conscious whole is not a thing or being that lies outside of other existing things or minds.

Rather, it comes to completion only in the philosophical comprehension of individual existing human minds who through their own understanding bring this developmental process to an understanding of itself. Hegel's thought is revolutionary to the extent that it is a philosophy of absolute negation—as long as absolute negation is at the center, systematization remains open, and makes it possible for human beings to become subjects.

Hegel and Language

Geist combines the meaning of spirit—as in god, ghost, or mind—with an intentional force. In Hegel's early philosophy of nature draft manuscripts written during his time at the University of Jena , Hegel's notion of "Geist" was tightly bound to the notion of " Aether ", from which Hegel also derived the concepts of space and time , but in his later works after Jena he did not explicitly use his old notion of "Aether" anymore.

Central to Hegel's conception of knowledge and mind and therefore also of reality was the notion of identity in difference —that is, that mind externalizes itself in various forms and objects that stand outside of it or opposed to it; and that through recognizing itself in them, is "with itself" in these external manifestations so that they are at one and the same time mind and other-than-mind. This notion of identity in difference, which is intimately bound up with his conception of contradiction and negativity, is a principal feature differentiating Hegel's thought from that of other philosophers.

Hegel made the distinction between civil society and state in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right. On the left, it became the foundation for Karl Marx 's civil society as an economic base ; [61] to the right, it became a description for all non-state and the state is the peak of the objective spirit aspects of society, including culture, society and politics. This liberal distinction between political society and civil society was followed by Alexis de Tocqueville.

For example, while it seems to be the case that he felt that a civil society such as the German society in which he lived was an inevitable movement of the dialectic, he made way for the crushing of other types of "lesser" and not fully realized types of civil society as these societies were not fully conscious or aware—as it were—as to the lack of progress in their societies. Thus, it was perfectly legitimate in the eyes of Hegel for a conqueror such as Napoleon to come along and destroy that which was not fully realized.

Hegel's State is the final culmination of the embodiment of freedom or right Rechte in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. The State subsumes family and civil society and fulfills them. All three together are called "ethical life" Sittlichkeit. The State involves three " moments ". In a Hegelian State, citizens both know their place and choose their place. They both know their obligations and choose to fulfill their obligations.

An individual's "supreme duty is to be a member of the state" Elements of the Philosophy of Right , section The individual has "substantial freedom in the state". The State is "objective spirit" so "it is only through being a member of the state that the individual himself has objectivity, truth, and ethical life" section Furthermore, every member both loves the State with genuine patriotism, but has transcended mere "team spirit" by reflectively endorsing their citizenship.

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Members of a Hegelian State are happy even to sacrifice their lives for the State. According to Hegel, " Heraclitus is the one who first declared the nature of the infinite and first grasped nature as in itself infinite, that is, its essence as process. The origin of philosophy is to be dated from Heraclitus. His is the persistent Idea that is the same in all philosophers up to the present day, as it was the Idea of Plato and Aristotle".

According to Hegel, Heraclitus's "obscurity" comes from his being a true in Hegel's terms "speculative" philosopher who grasped the ultimate philosophical truth and therefore expressed himself in a way that goes beyond the abstract and limited nature of common sense and is difficult to grasp by those who operate within common sense. Hegel asserted that in Heraclitus he had an antecedent for his logic: Hegel cites a number of fragments of Heraclitus in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy.

Heraclitus does not form any abstract nouns from his ordinary use of "to be" and "to become" and in that fragment seems to be opposing any identity A to any other identity B, C and so on, which is not-A. However, Hegel interprets not-A as not existing at all, not nothing at all, which cannot be conceived, but indeterminate or "pure" being without particularity or specificity. This interpretation of Heraclitus cannot be ruled out, but even if present is not the main gist of his thought. For Hegel, the inner movement of reality is the process of God thinking as manifested in the evolution of the universe of nature and thought; that is, Hegel argued that when fully and properly understood, reality is being thought by God as manifested in a person's comprehension of this process in and through philosophy.

Since human thought is the image and fulfillment of God's thought, God is not ineffable so incomprehensible as to be unutterable , but can be understood by an analysis of thought and reality. Just as humans continually correct their concepts of reality through a dialectical process , so God himself becomes more fully manifested through the dialectical process of becoming.

For his god, Hegel does not take the logos of Heraclitus but refers rather to the nous of Anaxagoras , although he may well have regarded them the same as he continues to refer to god's plan, which is identical to God. Whatever the nous thinks at any time is actual substance and is identical to limited being, but more remains to be thought in the substrate of non-being, which is identical to pure or unlimited thought.

The universe as becoming is therefore a combination of being and non-being. The particular is never complete in itself, but to find completion is continually transformed into more comprehensive, complex, self-relating particulars. The essential nature of being-for-itself is that it is free "in itself;" that is, it does not depend on anything else such as matter for its being. The limitations represent fetters, which it must constantly be casting off as it becomes freer and more self-determining. Although Hegel began his philosophizing with commentary on the Christian religion and often expresses the view that he is a Christian, his ideas of God are not acceptable to some Christians even though he has had a major influence on 19th- and 20th-century theology.

As a graduate of a Protestant seminary, Hegel's theological concerns were reflected in many of his writings and lectures. In his posthumously published Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion , Part 3 , Hegel is shown as being particularly interested with the demonstrations of God's existence and the ontological proof. This means that Jesus as the Son of God is posited by God over against himself as other. Hegel sees both a relational unity and a metaphysical unity between Jesus and God the Father. To Hegel, Jesus is both divine and human. Hegel further attests that God as Jesus not only died, but "[ God, that is to say, maintains himself in the process, and the latter is only the death of death.

God rises again to life, and thus things are reversed". The philosopher Walter Kaufmann has argued that there was great stress on the sharp criticisms of traditional Christianity appearing in Hegel's so-called early theological writings. Kaufmann admits that Hegel treated many distinctively Christian themes and "sometimes could not resist equating" his conception of spirit Geist "with God, instead of saying clearly: So he, too, sometimes spoke of God and, more often, of the divine; and because he occasionally took pleasure in insisting that he was really closer to this or that Christian tradition than some of the theologians of his time, he has sometimes been understood to have been a Christian.

According to Hegel himself, his philosophy was consistent with Christianity. Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, Hegel seemed to have an ambivalent relationship with magic , myth and Paganism. He formulates an early philosophical example of a disenchantment narrative, arguing that Judaism was responsible both for realizing the existence of Geist and, by extension, for separating nature from ideas of spiritual and magical forces and challenging polytheism. Hegel published four works during his lifetime: During the last ten years of his life, Hegel did not publish another book, but thoroughly revised the Encyclopedia second edition, ; third, He also published some articles early in his career and during his Berlin period.

A number of other works on the philosophy of history , religion , aesthetics and the history of philosophy were compiled from the lecture notes of his students and published posthumously. There are views of Hegel's thought as a representation of the summit of early 19th-century Germany's movement of philosophical idealism. It would come to have a profound impact on many future philosophical schools, including schools that opposed Hegel's specific dialectical idealism , such as existentialism , the historical materialism of Marx, historism and British Idealism.

Hegel's influence was immense both within philosophy and in the other sciences. The more recent movement of communitarianism has a strong Hegelian influence. Some of Hegel's writing was intended for those with advanced knowledge of philosophy, although his Encyclopedia was intended as a textbook in a university course. Nevertheless, Hegel assumes that his readers are well-versed in Western philosophy. Those without this background would be well-advised to begin with one of the many general introductions to his thought. As is always the case, difficulties are magnified for those reading him in translation.

In fact, Hegel himself argues in his Science of Logic that the German language was particularly conducive to philosophical thought. According to Walter Kaufmann, the basic idea of Hegel's works, especially the Phenomenology of Spirit , is that a philosopher should not "confine him or herself to views that have been held but penetrate these to the human reality they reflect". In other words, it is not enough to consider propositions, or even the content of consciousness; "it is worthwhile to ask in every instance what kind of spirit would entertain such propositions, hold such views, and have such a consciousness.

Hegel's Theory of Imagination Suny Series in Hegelian Studies

Every outlook in other words, is to be studied not merely as an academic possibility but as an existential reality". Some historians have spoken of Hegel's influence as represented by two opposing camps. The Left Hegelians , also known as the Young Hegelians, interpreted Hegel in a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocation of atheism in religion and liberal democracy in politics. In more recent studies, this paradigm has been questioned. Critiques of Hegel offered from the Left Hegelians radically diverted Hegel's thinking into new directions and eventually came to form a disproportionately large part of the literature on and about Hegel.

The Left Hegelians also influenced Marxism, which inspired global movements, encompassing the Russian Revolution , the Chinese Revolution and myriad revolutionary practices up until the present moment. According to Benedetto Croce , the Italian Fascist Giovanni Gentile "holds the honor of having been the most rigorous neo-Hegelian in the entire history of Western philosophy and the dishonor of having been the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy". In previous modern accounts of Hegelianism to undergraduate classes, for example , especially those formed prior to the Hegel renaissance, Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, " thesis, antithesis, synthesis "; namely, that a "thesis" e.

However, Hegel used this classification only once and he attributed the terminology to Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Fichte. The "thesis—antithesis—synthesis" approach gives the sense that things or ideas are contradicted or opposed by things that come from outside them. To the contrary, the fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction.

This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. The triadic form that appears in many places in Hegel e. For Hegel, reason is but "speculative", not "dialectical".

According to their argument, although Hegel refers to "the two elemental considerations: Furthermore, in Hegel's language the "dialectical" aspect or "moment" of thought and reality, by which things or thoughts turn into their opposites or have their inner contradictions brought to the surface, what he called Aufhebung , is only preliminary to the "speculative" and not "synthesizing" aspect or "moment", which grasps the unity of these opposites or contradiction. It is widely admitted today that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of thesis—antithesis—synthesis is inaccurate.

Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this misnomer that the model and terminology survive in a number of scholarly works. In the last half of the 20th century, Hegel's philosophy underwent a major renaissance. This was due to a the rediscovery and re-evaluation of Hegel as a possible philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists; b a resurgence of the historical perspective that Hegel brought to everything; and c an increasing recognition of the importance of his dialectical method. In Reason and Revolution , Herbert Marcuse made the case for Hegel as a revolutionary and criticized Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse 's thesis that Hegel was a totalitarian.

Beginning in the s, Anglo-American Hegel scholarship has attempted to challenge the traditional interpretation of Hegel as offering a metaphysical system: Pelczynski and Shlomo Avineri. This view, sometimes referred to as the "non-metaphysical option", has had a decided influence on many major English language studies of Hegel in the past forty years. Late 20th-century literature in Western Theology that is friendly to Hegel includes works by such writers as Walter Kaufmann , Dale M.