The Philosophy Book by DK Publishing
Author:DK Publishing
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781465441065
Publisher: DK Publishing
In Hegel’s view, a synthesis emerging from an antagonism of thesis and antithesis itself becomes a new thesis, which generates its own antithesis—which finally gives birth to another synthesis. This dialectical process is one in which Spirit comes to ever more accurate understandings of itself—culminating in the philosophy of Hegel, in which it achieves complete understanding.
Dialectic and the world
The discussion of Hegel’s dialectic above uses terms such as “emerge”, “development”, and “movement.” On the one hand, these terms reflect something important about this method of philosophy—that it starts without assumptions and from the least controversial point, and allows ever richer and truer concepts to reveal themselves through the process of dialectical unfolding. On the other hand, however, Hegel clearly argues that these developments are not simply interesting facts of logic, but are real developments that can be seen at work in history. For example, a man from ancient Greece and a man living in the modern world will obviously think about different things, but Hegel claims that their very ways of thinking are different, and represent different kinds of consciousness—or different stages in the historical development of thought and consciousness.
Hegel’s first major work, Phenomenology of Spirit, gives an account of the dialectical development of these forms of consciousness. He starts with the types of consciousness that an individual human being might possess, and works up to collective forms of consciousness. He does so in such a way as to show that these types of consciousness are to be found externalized in particular historical periods or events—most famously, for example, in the American and French revolutions.
Indeed, Hegel even argues that at certain times in history, Spirit’s next revolutionary change may manifest itself as an individual (such as Napoleon Bonaparte) who, as an individual consciousness, is completely unaware of his or her role in the history of Spirit. And the progress that these individuals make is always characterized by the freeing of aspects of Spirit (in human form) from recurring states of oppression—of overcoming tyrannies that may themselves be the result of the overcoming of previous tyrannies.
This extraordinary idea—that the nature of consciousness has changed through time, and changed in accordance with a pattern that is visible in history—means that there is nothing about human beings that is not historical in character. Moreover, this historical development of consciousness cannot simply have happened at random. Since it is a dialectical process, it must in some sense contain both a particular sense of direction and an end point. Hegel calls this end point “Absolute Spirit”—and by this he means a future stage of consciousness which no longer even belongs to individuals, but which instead belongs to reality as a whole.
At this point in its development, knowledge is complete—as it must be, according to Hegel, since Spirit encompasses, through dialectical synthesis, both the knower and what is known. Furthermore, Spirit grasps this knowledge as nothing other than its own completed essence—the full assimilation of all forms of “otherness” that were always parts of itself, however unknowingly.
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