There are four angles to analyze this sentence, 1, from Hegel's philosophical theory, 2, from philosophy, 3, from science, 4, from general understanding.
1. Let's talk about Hegel's philosophical theory first.
Hegel's "Being is rationality" is based on his ontology and epistemology. As far as the relationship between ontology and epistemology is concerned, some theories derive epistemology from ontology, such as My New Ontology and Epistemology (see What Is Existence, P121-kloc-0/26), and some theories derive ontology from epistemology, which is typical of Hegel's theory. Hegel believes that the difference between objective things and knowledge forms a contradiction, which promotes the development of knowledge. This is Hegel's epistemology. His epistemology was formed to solve the problem that Kant's transcendental knowledge theory cannot contain the object itself. (For Kant's transcendental knowledge theory, refer to Truth is an Objective Existence-Kant's Transcendental Proof, P87-90, What is Existence. Although Hegel's epistemology has serious problems, he finally put objective things into the process of cognition by using contradictory movement, that is, contradiction is the source of power of movement and cognition is a kind of movement. What contradiction does such a movement come from? Hegel said it was the difference between objective things and knowledge.
Hegel knew, of course, that not any difference or contradiction can produce the power to promote the subject movement. Only when a pair of contradictions exist in the same subject can the pair of contradictions produce the power to promote the movement of this subject. (About this conclusion, in Aristotle's time, it has been clearly demonstrated in philosophy. Please refer to Aristotle's theory for a detailed argument, or refer to what is existence, P 31-40). There is indeed a difference between objective things and knowledge, but this difference must be unified in the same subject to produce power. So, what is this topic?
Hegel naturally created such a subject, which is "thought" and "thought is the subject." In his book Little Logic, he said: "The reason why a thing is a thing depends on its inherent activities and its own concepts." Thought is not only our thoughts, but also the essence of things themselves or objective things. Thought not only constitutes the entity of external things, but also constitutes the universal entity of spiritual things-when we regard thought as the true commonality of all natural and spiritual things, thought will dominate all these things and be called the foundation of everything. This is an ontology created naturally by Hegel in order to establish his own epistemology.
According to his ontology, if the hypothesis holds, since the subject is thought and thought is subject, then "being is reasonable" also holds. Note that in philosophy, the word existence refers to an entity that can exist independently. It should also be noted that the "entity" here does not refer to the real object in the physical sense, but refers to the subject or existence that contains a contradiction and can rely on this contradiction to produce independent movement. On this philosophical level, subject, existence and entity are the same meaning. In Hegel's view, existence is entity and subject. Furthermore, according to Hegel's thought, thought is not only human knowledge, but also the essence of objective things. So thought is the subject, that is, existence is the subject, that is, the subject is reasonable, that is, existence is reasonable.
Therefore, from Hegel's theory, the premise of "being is reasonable" is his ontology "subject is thought".
Say a few more words by the way. Hegel's ontology is unconvincing, which is no different from Descartes' routine of "I think, therefore I am". It is subjective and lacks strict logical argument. I will briefly talk about what is wrong with "subject is thought" here. The subject must exist independently, and neither subjective nor objective aspects of thought can be determined as the subject that can exist independently. Subjectively, thoughts belong to people after all, and there is no thought without people. Objectively speaking, the essence of the objective subject can exist independently, and its existence is independent of people's objective existence. Even if the essence of the subject is named thought, then such thought is also other subjects besides people. In this way, thought can only be used objectively or subjectively, and it can never be a real subject that can unify the subjective and objective.
Thought is not subject, or subject is not thought, so Hegel's epistemology has no ontological basis and cannot be established, that is, the differences between objective things and knowledge cannot be unified into the same subject, so such differences can only be an objective situation, not a pair of contradictions that can produce power.
So, Hegel's philosophy is worthless? Not exactly. Hegel's starting point of establishing epistemology is correct, that is, cognition is the process of movement, and movement comes from the unity of contradiction and opposition. In other words, the further epistemology should be based on Hegel's epistemology and make progress by solving the problems of Hegel's epistemology and ontology.
I have done research in this field and established a new ontology and epistemology. In short, the idea of my theory is this: cognition is a movement process, so the power to promote this movement must come from a subject with a pair of contradictions and opposites, that is, a pair of contradictions that can promote the movement of cognition must exist in a real subject. This idea, like Hegel's, is that such a subject must be found.
Such a subject can no longer be made purely subjectively like Hegel or Schopenhauer and Nietzsche after Hegel. Such a subject must be the real subject of objective existence. A pair of contradictory unity of opposites within this subject has produced a movement to promote this subject, which has promoted the development of cognition.
What subject is this? My thinking is this: understanding, in the final analysis, is an act and a movement of people. Then, the subject that promotes the cognitive movement must have a close relationship with people, that is to say, we must consider people when looking for this subject.
The subject is an existence with a pair of contradictions, opposites and unity, which can independently produce movements and exist. Is man such a subject? If so, what is the unity of opposites of this pair of contradictions that human beings have?
Please refer to My New Ontology and Epistemology, P120-126, What is Existence for specific argumentation. My conclusion is that ontology is the unity of opposites, and the essence of any discipline is the concrete form of the unity of opposites. Man is a subject, and the unity of opposites between subject and man is self and non-self, which can produce contradictions. Promote the subject of "I" to exercise and understand sports, that is to say, "I" is among "self" and "non-self".
According to this epistemology, we can get the following formula of cognitive movement:
Ego+Non-ego →→ Action 1 → Feeling 1 → Appearance 1+ Thinking 1 → Knowledge 1≠ Object.
Ego+Non-ego →→ Action 2 → Feeling 2 → Appearance 2+ Thinking 2 → Knowledge 2≠ Object
Ego+Non-ego →→ Action 3 → Feeling 3 → Representation 3+ Thinking 3 → Knowledge 3≠ Object
↓
Ego+non-ego →→ action n → feeling n → representation N+ thinking n → knowledge N= object.
All knowledge comes from this sport.
According to the above epistemological formula, many aspects of human knowledge can be inferred. For a detailed discussion, please refer to The Existence of Happiness.
2. From a philosophical point of view
Philosophically speaking, it should be analyzed according to the philosophical significance of "existence" and "rationality". It can be said that existence and understanding of existence are the research objects of philosophy, and the whole history of philosophy cannot be separated from this scope. Simply put, the philosophical meaning of "existence" refers to the existence that can exist independently of others. A thing, or existence, is existence as long as it can be proved that it can exist independently of other things. It's not easy. In the history of philosophy, to be exact, in the history of western philosophy, this definition of existence was not demonstrated until Aristotle.
At the earliest time, there was a view that everything in the real world was constantly changing. This ever-changing thing is not the real essence, but the real existence should be constant and eternal. If we want to know things in the world clearly, we must understand the real existence hidden behind, that is, the unchanging existence is the object of human thinking and understanding, and the real world is not the purpose or object of understanding. The most typical person who holds this view is parmenides.
Plato continued to study from this point of view. Like parmenides, he thinks that the real world is not real, and behind the real world, there must be a world of truth. So, what is the relationship between the real world and the truth world? On this issue, Plato can't find a convincing argument except self-defense.
Aristotle, a student of Plato, saw his teacher's problem, that is, to solve the relationship between the truth world and the real world, the first thing is how to treat "existence". If you deny the existence of the real world, you don't need to know the real world at all, nor do you need to solve the relationship between the real world and the truth world.
Aristotle demonstrated the essence of existence. Finally, he concluded that entities that can exist independently include absolute existence that dominates everything, the essence of concrete things, and concrete things. He said: "or the ultimate subject or carrier, it never tells anything else;" Or an independent, single existence, that is, what is the individual thing. "That is to say, all things and forms in reality (what is inherent in things) are entities and exist. Individual things grow and die, but their intrinsic essence is eternal. Therefore, in ontology, the internal essential form is the first entity, which is primary.
The essential entity of things is also hierarchical. The essential entity and the essential entity of a concrete thing go down layer by layer until they have the most fundamental identity with everything, that is, the distance between the ontology is 0. So absolute existence and ontology are also formal entities, which are the most fundamental formal entities. Aristotle called this most fundamental formal entity a philosophical God, which is what parmenides meant by absolute existence.
It can be seen that Aristotle's ontology includes the essence of everything in reality, concrete things and the absolute existence. In this way, in addition to absolute existence, everything in reality also belongs to the scope of understanding. There is a communication medium between absolute existence and reality-formal entity. By understanding the internal formal entity of real things, we can gradually realize the most fundamental formal entity-absolute existence (ontology). In this way, the development of epistemology has found the right path. At this point, ontology and epistemology have reached a new world. The debate about what existence is before and after parmenides can come to an end. Find the way of understanding between reality and ontology.
Aristotle's ontology is the basis of philosophical understanding of existence, and the subsequent history of philosophy continues to develop on this basis. In this way, in philosophy, the so-called "existence" can only be three kinds: the ontology that dominates the existence of all things, that is, the highest and purest form; The form of concrete things; A realistic thing that can exist independently because it contains some form. All three can exist independently.
Note that the so-called "formal body" here refers to what things call the essential body of this thing, and this essential body is not matter, because matter exists by form. For example, they are all flesh and blood, but some are people and some are low-level animals. For example, they are all made of wood, but some are living trees and some are furniture. And so on. Now, the nature or law of concrete things that can be understood by scientific methods has been determined, which is such a form in philosophy.
It can be seen that if it can be proved that some existence can exist independently, then this existence exists because it has some form that can exist independently. And such a formal institution certainly conforms to the law or rationality of its existence. So it can be said that "existence is reasonable".
3. From a scientific point of view
Science is a cognitive method to know concrete sensible things, including three elements: feeling, logic and testing. In western philosophy, it was produced by Aristotle. Scientific methods can only be applied to concrete things that can be completely felt and tested. Therefore, from the perspective of scientific understanding, any existence that cannot be completely felt and tested is regarded as uncertain or unknown. In this way, for those objects that scientific methods are powerless, it is impossible to determine whether they are reasonable from the point of view of only scientists. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, the sentence "existence is reasonable" is problematic. At the level of @LostAbaddon, the explanation is very clear.
4. Generally speaking.
For many non-professional friends, the meaning of "existence" is understood from a broader perspective, that is, various phenomena, situations, events, behaviors and so on. What has happened belongs to existence. In this sense, no matter good or bad, good or evil, right or wrong, beauty or ugliness, they are all regarded as existence. From this perspective, the phrase "existence is reasonable" is even more controversial.
In this sense, if we admit that "existence is reasonable", it will undoubtedly provide some ambiguous and specious basis for any ugly phenomenon, situation, event and behavior. And such rationality, even in the general understanding, will also involve some kind of legitimacy connotation. Obviously, this conclusion is not only controversial in natural law, but also untenable in ethics and morality, and also untenable in realistic legal rules.
These so-called phenomena, events, behaviors and situations do not exist independently, but belong to a certain discipline. Ugly events or behaviors themselves cannot be produced independently, but must be caused by a subject. Then, in order to analyze these ugly events, it is necessary to analyze the existence of subject qualification, or people, or some subject composed of people. In this way, such an analysis will definitely take the subject as the object. As long as the subject is regarded as the object, its analysis method is nothing more than scientific or philosophical. Accordingly, whether it is reasonable or not requires scientific or philosophical understanding, and then it is necessary to judge whether it exists at the scientific or philosophical level.
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