In Hegel's view, world history is the process of spiritual development in time.
Spirit is a single spirit possessed by human beings, which shows everything created by people with their language, mind and culture. History is the process of spiritual self-development and the process of the world moving towards self-awareness.
The goal of history is full spiritual development and full self-awareness. This full self-consciousness, that is, freedom consciousness, is the culmination of the development of the universe.
Freedom is not to act arbitrarily, but to act according to rational standards. Therefore, history is the process in which our rational potential is gradually realized as freedom, and history is a story of rational freedom.
In the view of positivists, this dominant idea of Philosophy of History cannot be confirmed in history at all. History is full of accidental and irrational factors, and it is nonsense to say that it is the development of the spirit itself.
However, Hegel is not ignorant of the violence and irrationality of history. He never imagined that history was a bright and beautiful process.
But he thinks that the irrationality outside history cannot deny its internal rational goal. On the contrary, irrationality in history is necessary to realize the ultimate goal of cosmic rationality.
The spirit of the world is to cunningly use the irrational motives of "individuals in world history" to achieve its rational goals. All historical contingency can finally be explained in the inevitability of reason.
However, this metaphysical teleological explanation is fatally general. How does the spirit dominate "individuals in world history" and make them act as they do? How to prove that the goal of history is reasonable (rational), and the goal of joining history has not been fully presented? And if the historical goal has been presented, what makes it reasonable? The answer can only be that the results of individual actions prove reasonable.
but we can judge which results are reasonable only by assuming reasonable rational purpose. There is obviously a problem of circular argument here.
Hegel's philosophy of history, like all metaphysical teleology, cannot avoid this kind of circular argument. But the problem is not purely theoretical.
when talking about history, it's hard for people not to contact their own historical experience, even Hegel himself. After all kinds of extremely tragic historical events in the last century, it is hard for people to believe Hegel's rationalist view of history, just as fewer and fewer people believe in theosophy.
It is even harder for people to believe that all kinds of sufferings and sacrifices suffered by human beings are necessary and inevitable costs to realize freedom. Our civilization is becoming more and more rational at the micro level, but at the macro level, it is almost absurd and crazy, which makes Hegel's rationalistic view of history even less credible.
Hegel's philosophy of history is obviously eschatological. Once the goal of spiritual self-development is achieved, history will be complete. After that, the history of experience will continue, but the possibility of spirit has been exhausted. Although not long ago, some people used this eschatology to explain the recent history, but also confirmed this theory with recent history, for most people, this eschatology is still very suspicious, because it is hard to believe that it can digest the infinite historical variables and uncertainties in principle, which makes it inseparable from the fate of Christian eschatology (it is a variant of it).
Nevertheless, Hegel's Philosophy of History does not lose its permanent value. A book with obvious mistakes is not necessarily a classic worthy of repeated reading.
Hegel's Philosophy of History is such a classic. Of course, if you read the classics with a certain formula or prejudice in advance, you can only get what this formula or prejudice gives, not the infinite wisdom contained in the classics.
friedrich, an American philosopher, pointed out in his preface to the English version of Philosophy of History that Philosophy of History is the core and center of Hegelian philosophy and a work with the most profound influence. Hegel always regards thought and history as the same process, and his own philosophy is the product of history, which must be understood in historical geography.
Without the historical context, Hegel's philosophy and its significance cannot be truly understood. German philosopher Loewit said that Hegel's whole system was basically thought out in historical terms.
No other philosophy did this before him. Before Hegel, no philosopher tried to fully grasp the nature of history like Hegel.
It was Hegel who first put forward the concept of "world history". But Hegel does not want to write history, but the philosophy of history.
although he was even accused of "historical positivism", he never wanted to describe the specific historical process empirically, but to provide a framework for a comprehensive understanding of human history. However, Hegel never used this as an excuse to ignore the basic historical facts, weave a historical philosophy at will, or misinterpret and reorganize historical facts with systematic dogma.
In fact, as Gans pointed out in the preface written for the first edition of Philosophy of History: "In fact, one of the main advantages of this book is that although it is full of speculative vitality, it also pays due attention to' experienced things' and' phenomenal things'; It not only excludes subjective' reasoning', but also does not force all historical records to be packed in a formula model; On the development of logic and the apparently rambling and disorderly route of historical narration, we grasp and show that' concept', but don't let this step infringe on historical narration. Therefore, the so-called innate method (which in fact means' writing' history without historical facts) is completely different from the method shown in this book.
The author of this book has no intention to pretend to be a god to create history, but only to explore the created' history' and the rational and conceptual' history' from a mortal. " Hegel has always been critical of the "abstract" thinking mode popular in modern times, and even thinks that the French Revolution is the product of this "abstraction".
He always insists that truth is concrete, tries to let the facts speak for themselves and never imposes ideas on them. Hegel's Philosophy of History is perhaps the most easily criticized for its description of oriental civilization.
In fact, when Hegel prepared this part of the Philosophy of History, he still read the relevant materials and studied their development country by country, but his reading and digestion were not sufficient. On the whole, the understanding of the East in the West in his time was not bad. Second, what is the class essence and historical function of Hegel's philosophy
Class essence: bourgeois philosophy. When Hegel's philosophy came into being, the feudal autocracy in Germany was powerful, which seriously hindered the development of capitalism; The German bourgeoisie is weak, yielding and compromising, which makes the development of capitalism embark on the road of reformism. The class essence of Hegel's philosophy produced under the above background is the bourgeois philosophy that has risen to the status of Prussia's national philosophy. It is the ideology of the German bourgeoisie that is both revolutionary and conservative. Historical role: Hegel's historical view is the most important and direct theoretical premise of Marxist historical materialism. Because Hegel's view of history is the highest achievement of bourgeois thinkers in exploring social and historical issues before the establishment of historical materialism, and it is the peak of bourgeois view of history. The division between young hegelians and the old Hegelians and the emergence of Feuerbach's philosophy are the inevitable products of the internal contradictions of Hegel's philosophy. The whole modern western philosophy (including Husserl's and Heidegger's) is a descendant of Hegel's philosophy and is deeply influenced by it. Marxist philosophy is the true successor of Hegel's philosophy. Third, what is the history of Hegel, the master of German classical philosophy?
Hegel studied Latin with his mother since he was a child, and entered the school in Stuttgart at the age of 7 to receive formal education.
In 1788, Hegel entered Tubingen Theological Seminary, studied philosophy for two years and theology for three years, and obtained a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1793. During his college years, he and another philosopher Schelling became close friends, and they often went for a walk in the suburbs to discuss philosophical issues together.
After graduating from university, Hegel worked as a tutor in Switzerland and Frankfurt, Germany, and studied Greek culture and Kant's philosophy in his spare time. In 1798, his first book Ethics was published.
In 181, on the recommendation of Schelling, Hegel became a philosophy lecturer at the University of Jena, and in 185 he was promoted to professor. In 186, he finished the book Phenomenology of Spirit and expounded his philosophical views.
The day after the manuscript was written, Napoleon's army attacked Jena and Hegel was forced to leave. In 188, he got the position of president of Nuremberg College, where he taught philosophy, Greek culture and calculus, and further improved his philosophy system.
in 1811, he married Mary, the daughter of a member of the Nuremberg Senate. At that time, Hegel was 41 years old and the bride was only 19 years old. 1812? In 1816, Hegel completed the book Logic (Great Logic).
In the autumn of 1816, he was appointed as a professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1818, he completed his masterpiece Encyclopedia, which greatly improved his reputation. In the same year, he was hired as a philosophy professor at the University of Berlin.
Hegel spent the last 13 years of his life in Berlin University, where he published works such as Little Logic, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Spirit and Principles of Philosophy of Right, and in 183 he became the president of Berlin University. Hegel regards absolute spirit as the origin of the world, and the phenomena of nature, human society and human spirit are all manifestations of absolute spirit at different stages of development.
Therefore, the replacement, development and eternal life process of things is the absolute spirit itself. The task and purpose of Hegel's philosophy is to show the absolute spirit embodied by nature, society and thinking, and reveal its development process and laws. In fact, it is to explore the dialectical relationship between thinking and existence and reveal their dialectical unity on the basis of idealism.
around this basic proposition, Hegel established an amazing objective idealism system, which mainly described three stages of absolute spiritual self-development: logic, natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy. Hegel carried out this dialectical principle from beginning to end in discussing the development of every concept, thing and the whole system.
This is one of the most amazing bold thoughts in the history of human thought. Engels later spoke highly of it: "Modern German philosophy reached its peak in Hegel's system. In this system, Hegel described the whole natural, historical and spiritual world as being in constant movement, change, transformation and development for the first time, and attempted to reveal the internal relationship between this movement and development."
in 1831, Hegel died of illness at the age of 61. Fourth, ask the specific source of a famous saying. In essence, the history of Hegel's China is not very high (such as the German philosopher Leibniz), but also very low (such as Hegel). Don't mind. It is important to understand the meaning of what they said first, from their point of view, not with our own imagination. In addition, the language barrier is the best. I don't have an answer. I estimate that I should look for this from German Philosopher on China, Sanlian Publishing House, 1997 and Hegel's Philosophy of History, Shanghai Century Publishing Group. I initially looked for the part of China in Hegel's Philosophy of History, but I didn't find exactly the same sentence. V. Hegel's Great Historical Contribution
(177-1831) was born in Stuttgart, the capital of the Duchy of Wü rttemberg, Germany, on August 27th, 177.
died in Berlin on November 14th, 1831. In October 1788, Hegel went to Tubingen Theological Seminary to study philosophy and theology.
In 181, he came to Jena, the center of German philosophy and literature at that time, and began a decisive stage in his life. In 185, he was appointed as an associate professor.
In 1816, Hegel went to Heidelberg as a professor of philosophy and began to enjoy a high reputation. In 1818, the king of Prussia appointed Hegel as a professor at the University of Berlin.
in 1822, Hegel was appointed as a member of the university Senate. In October 1829, Hegel was elected as the president of Berlin University and concurrently served as the representative of * * *.
In 1831, Hegel was awarded the Third Red Eagle Medal. In the summer of the same year, his article "On the English Reform Act" was published. Because the King of Prussia ordered the suspension, only the first half of the article was published. His main works include Phenomenology of Spirit, Logic, Encyclopedia of Philosophy (including logic, natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy), Principles of Philosophy of Right, Lectures on Aesthetics, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Lectures on Historical Philosophy and so on.
Hegel's ethical thought integrates the previous western ethical thoughts, especially inherits and develops Kant's ethical thoughts, and establishes a complete ethical system of rationalism. Hegel's theory of ethics is his philosophy of law, which includes three parts: abstract law, morality and ethics, and the center is to reveal the dialectical development process of the concept of freedom.
From a philosophical point of view, Hegel's ethical thoughts are idealistic in form, but realistic in content and dialectical in method. Its achievements have an important influence on the formation and development of later ethical thoughts, including Marxist ethical thoughts. Aesthetic Thought Hegel's aesthetic thought is mainly reflected in his book "Aesthetic Lectures", which is an integral part of his whole philosophical system and a concrete manifestation of his philosophical system in the fields of aesthetics and art.
The fundamental feature of art is that ideas reveal themselves and know themselves through perceptual images. "Beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas" has become the core of Hegel's aesthetic thought. Hegel made a logical and historical analysis of the nature and characteristics of art, the historical types of art development and the systems of various arts respectively.
In logic, he established a huge idealistic philosophy system about art; In terms of history, he initiated the study of sociology of art and showed a grand view of history. Hegel's aesthetic thought played an epoch-making role in the development of western aesthetic history and became a master of classical aesthetics.
Hegel regards absolute spirit as the origin of the world. Absolute spirit is not something beyond the world. Nature, human society and human spiritual phenomena are its manifestations in different stages of development.
Therefore, the replacement, development and eternal life process of things is the absolute spirit itself. The task and purpose of Hegel's philosophy is to show the absolute spirit embodied by nature, society and thinking, and reveal its development process and regularity. In fact, it is to explore the dialectical relationship between thinking and existence and reveal their dialectical identity on the basis of idealism.
around this basic proposition,