But this improvement would, as a matter of fact, only bring us back to the point where we were before. • Contact Admin. Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel’s most mature statement of political philosophy, the Elements of the Philosophy of Right is an excoriating critique of social contract theory and liberal individualism. It is natural to suppose that, before philosophy enters upon its subject proper — namely, the actual knowledge of what truly is — it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. This translation is a collaborative effort, the accomplishment of decades of work, by Peter Fuss (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis) and John Dobbins (independent scholar). • “The Master-Slave Dialectic” from “The Phenomenology”
• Terry Pinkard’s translation of The Phenomenology
The goal, however, is fixed for knowledge just as necessarily as the succession in the process. Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) adopted and extended the triad, especially in Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). In either case we employ a means which immediately brings about the very opposite of its own end; or, rather, the absurdity lies in making use of any means at all. Marx finds it in Hegel, albeit raised to the level of purely philosophical reflection which has lost touch with the real basis of history in material labour. For science cannot simply reject a form of knowledge which is not true, and treat this as a common view of things, and then assure us that itself is an entirely different kind of knowledge, and holds the other to be of no account at all; nor can it appeal to the fact that in this other there are presages of a better. • “Hegel's Theory of the Modern State”, Shlomo Avineri 1972
• Foreword to “Hegel’s Logic” by Andy Blunden
The differences between Hegel and Marx are important. Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. Φ 78. Robert Brandom’s A Spirit of Trust is a culmination of an unlikely attempt by recent academic philosophers to bring Hegel together with American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. In the present instance the position takes this form: since what at first appeared as object is reduced, when it passes into consciousness, to what knowledge takes it to be, and the implicit nature, the real in itself, becomes what this entity per se, is for consciousness; this latter is the new object, whereupon there appears also a new mode or embodiment of consciousness, of which the essence is something other than that of the preceding mode. Φ 80. Objective Spirit: the Ethical order a. b. c. B. Hegel: Glossary (from Sebastian Gardner) It is extremely useful to have access to a guide to Hegel's philosophical terminology. Or, again, fear of the truth may conceal itself from itself and others behind the pretext that precisely burning zeal for the very truth makes it so difficult, nay impossible, to find any other truth except that of which alone vanity is capable — that of being ever so much cleverer than any ideas, which one gets from oneself or others, could make possible. In a wider sense the issues that are generated out of Hegelian Marxism, and the questions for • Kai Froeb’s Hegel Page
§ 16 That Nature is unchangeably subordinate to universal laws, appears nowise strange to us. The scepticism which ends with the abstraction “nothing” or “emptiness” can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is — in order to cast it into the same abysmal void. On the view above given, however, the new object is seen to have come about by a transformation or conversion of consciousness itself. Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. Upon this distinction, which is present as a fact, the examination turns. not as abstract pure moments, but as they are for consciousness, or as consciousness itself appears in its relation to them, and in virtue of which they are moments of the whole, are embodiments or modes of consciousness. Author: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He was educated at the Royal Highschool in Stuttgart from 1777-88 and steeped in both the classics and the literature of the European Enlightenment. Marxism, according to many of these theorists, cannot do without an injection of Hegelian philosophy in order to revivify it. • Preface to “Philosophy of Right”
Such a one-sided view of it is what the natural consciousness generally adopts; and a knowledge, which makes this one-sidedness its essence, is one of those shapes assumed by incomplete consciousness which falls into the course of the inquiry itself and will come before us there. Hegel usually referred to the Phenomenology as his "psychology", because it was the only one of his writings which deals with the world, not as it appears to Absolute Mind (or Spirit) but to quite ordinary minds like our own. Hegel, the philosopher of the System. The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, published in 1807, is based on a precious philosophical intuition: consciousness is not an completed institution, it is constructed, transformed to become other than itself. Hegel emphasizes the concept of Idea, but Marx talks about matter. • “Ludwig Feuerbach &c.”, I. As the foregoing has been stated, provisionally and in general, concerning the manner and the necessity Of the process of the inquiry, it may also be of further service to make some observations regarding the method of carrying this out. The essence or the criterion would lie in us; and that which was to be compared with this standard, and on which a decision was to be passed as a result of this comparison, would not necessarily have to recognize that criterion. • “The Philosophical Propadeutic” Hegel’s lecture notes, 1808-1811, • Hegel’s Critics – a collection of 60 critiques of Hegel from 1841 - 2001
Φ 84. But it can find no rest. Φ 75. G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy became known outside Germany from the 1820s onwards, and Hegelian schools developed in northern Europe, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, America and Britain. on-line study)
Consciousness, we find, distinguishes from itself something, to which at the same time it relates itself; or, to use the current expression, there is something for consciousness; and the determinate form of this process of relating, or of there being something for a consciousness, is knowledge. For an examination consists in applying an accepted standard, and, on the final agreement or disagreement therewith of what is tested, deciding whether the latter is right or wrong; and the standard in general, and so science, were this the criterion, is thereby accepted as the essence or inherently real (Ausich). And, finally, when it grasps this its own essence, it will connote the nature of absolute knowledge itself. The most vexing and devastating Hegel legend is that everything is thought in "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." Marx's critical reformulation of Hegel's philosophy of history consists in the elimination of the fictitious subject of world history, the so called 'world spirit', and in the prolongation of the dialectical process of historical development into the future. The theoretical and the practical spirit still fall in the sphere of the subjective spirit in general; this knowledge and will are still formal. But just because consciousness has, in general, knowledge of an object, there is already present the distinction that the inherent nature, what the object is in itself, is one thing to consciousness, while knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is another moment. He has inspired individuals as diverse as Karl Marx, Francis Fukuyama, and, latterly, the football manager Jose Mourinho. • Marxists Internet Archive. What Marx and the other Young Hegelians took from Hegel was a method and language that allowed them to challenge tradition and the existing order: a focus on history and a stress on flux, change, contradiction, movement, process, and so forth. • “Critique of Hegel's Dialectic”
Nonetheless, Hegel’s philosophy contains the idea of activity and, moreover, an activity which develops through a stage of alienation and estrangement. That which is confined to a life of nature is unable of itself to go beyond its immediate existence; but by something other than itself it is forced beyond that; and to be thus wrenched out of its setting is its death. the way the notion is for an other, then the examination consists in our seeing whether the object corresponds to its own notion. Hegel observed that this was needed for connectivity, something that Marx opposed vehemently. If now our inquiry deals with the truth of knowledge, it appears that we are inquiring what knowledge is in itself. Hegel’s philosophy has had a great influence on much of what has happened in the world since his time (1770-1831) and is crucial to understanding much of modern social thought and philosophy as well as to understanding Marxism and the socialist tradition in its varied aspects. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself. Lectures on the Philosophy of History, also translated as Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (LPH; German: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, VPW), is a major work by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), originally given as lectures at the University of Berlin in 1822, 1828, and 1830. Thus, Hegel’s philosophy left the backdoor open for a return to a form of dualism, and it is this backdoor that is now being used in academia to distort Hegel’s true achievements. Moreover, he was an avid admirer of Immanuel Kant. These schools are collectively known as post-Hegelian philosophy, post-Hegelian idealism or simply post-Hegelianism. Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770, the son of an official in the government of the Duke of Württemberg. • Introduction to the “Philosophy of History”
Since both are for the same consciousness, it is itself their comparison; it is the same consciousness that decides and knows whether its knowledge of the object corresponds with this object or not. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit. • Hegel’s Logic – purchase book from MIA for $25. Or it can be regarded as the path of the soul, which is traversing the series of its own forms of embodiment, like stages appointed for it by its own nature, that it may possess the clearness of spiritual life when, through the complete experience of its own self, it arrives at the knowledge of what it is in itself. Since, however, it immediately takes itself to be the real and genuine knowledge, this pathway has a negative significance for it; what is a realization of the notion of knowledge means for it rather the ruin and overthrow of itself; for on this road it loses its own truth. For if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absolute Reality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of an instrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails in the process, and has in view, a moulding and alteration of it. But in this inquiry knowledge is our object, it is for us; and the essential nature (Ansich) of knowledge, were this to come to light, would be rather its being for us: what we should assert to be its essence would rather be, not the truth of knowledge, but only our knowledge of it. The essential fact, however, to be borne in mind throughout the whole inquiry is that both these moments, notion and object, “being for another” and “being in itself”, themselves fall within that knowledge which we are examining. But, here,. Consciousness, therefore, suffers this violence at its own hands; it destroys its own limited satisfaction. One barren assurance, however, is of just as much value as another. Alex Steinberg has previously taught the philosophy of Hegel and Marx at the New Space, the Brecht Forum and most recently the Marxist Education Project. Consequently we do not require to bring standards with us, nor to apply our fancies and thoughts in the inquire; and just by our leaving these aside we are enabled to treat and discuss the subject as it actually is in itself and for itself, as it is in its complete reality. • Contents of “Hegel’s Shorter Logic”
With better right, on the contrary, we might spare ourselves the trouble of talking any notice at all of such ideas and ways of talking which would have the effect of warding off science altogether; for they make a mere empty show of knowledge which at once vanishes when science comes on the scene. This way of looking at the matter is our doing, what we contribute; by its means the series of experiences through which consciousness passes is lifted into a scientifically constituted sequence, but this does not exist for the consciousness we contemplate and consider. • 1841
§ 17Religious holds that the world is not abandoned to chance, but that a Providence controls it. By giving that assurance it would declare its force and value to lie in its bare existence; but the untrue knowledge appeals likewise to the fact that it is, and assures us that to it science is nothing. The progress towards this goal consequently is without a halt, and at no earlier stage is satisfaction to be found. or visit my Home Page, • Hegel’s Logic (epub)
And they are offered to us very much in the way we have just stated. For a trick is what knowledge in such a case would be, since by all its busy toil and trouble it gives itself the air of doing something quite different from bringing about a relation that is merely immediate, and so a waste of time to establish. Consciousness furnishes its own criterion in itself, and the inquiry will thereby be a comparison of itself with its own self ; for the distinction, just made, falls inside itself. The experience which consciousness has concerning itself can, by its essential principle, embrace nothing less than the entire system of consciousness, the whole realm of the truth of mind, and in such wise that the moments of truth are set forth in the specific and peculiar character they here possess — i.e. Hegel described the work as an "exposition of the coming to be of knowledge". In this connection, there is a moment in the process just mentioned which should be brought into more decided prominence, and by which a new light is cast on the scientific aspect of the following exposition. Thereby there enters into its process a moment of being per se, or of being for us, which is not expressly presented to that consciousness which is in the grip of experience itself. Scepticism, directed to the whole compass of phenomenal consciousness, on the contrary, makes mind for the first time qualified to test what truth is; since it brings about a despair regarding what are called natural views, thoughts, and opinions, which it is matter of indifference to call personal or belonging to others, and with which the consciousness, that proceeds straight away to criticize and test, is still filled and hampered, thus being, as a matter of fact, incapable of what it wants to undertake. Or, again, if knowledge is not an instrument which we actively employ, but a kind of passive medium through which the light of the truth reaches us, then here, too, we do not receive it as it is in itself, but as it is through and in this medium. Φ 74. M. Inwood's A Hegel Dictionary is excellent for this purpose and remains invaluable at all stages in the study of Hegel. If we take away again from a definitely formed thing that which the instrument has done in the shaping of it, then the thing (in this case the Absolute) stands before us once more just as it was previous to all this trouble, which, as we now see, was superfluous. This is materialism. Some varieties of Marxist philosophy are strongly influenced by Hegel, emphasizing totality and even teleology: for example, the work of Georg Lukács, whose influence extends to contemporary thinkers like Fredric Jameson. When feeling of violence, anxiety for the truth may well withdraw, and struggle to preserve for itself that which is in danger of being lost. Bibliographic information: Translated by Michael Inwood, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2018. its bare origination; for it, what has thus arisen has merely the character of object, while, for us, it appears at the same time as a process and coming into being. In this regard, it is a matter of indifference whether we consider that it (science) is the phenomenon because it makes its appearance alongside another kind of knowledge, or call that other untrue knowledge its process of appearing. At the same time this “other” is to consciousness not merely for it, but also outside this relation, or has a being in itself, i.e. Matter is everything. Consciousness knows something; this something is the essence or is per se. Hegel: An Introduction Matt Qvortrup observes the watcher of the world spirit.