Hegel (1770- 183 1) is the peak of the movement initiated by Kant in German philosophy. Although he often criticized Kant, without Kant's theoretical system, his system would never have been formed. Hegel's influence is gradually declining now, but it has always been great, and it is not limited to Germany, nor is it mainly in Germany. /kloc-at the end of 0/9 century, the first-class academic philosophers in the United States and Britain were mostly Hegelians. Outside the scope of pure philosophy, many Protestant theologians also adopted his theory, and his historical philosophy had a far-reaching impact on political theory. As we all know, Marx was a disciple of Hegel when he was young, and he kept some important Hegelian characteristics in the complete theoretical system. Even if (in my opinion) Hegel's theory is almost all wrong, but because he is the best representative of a certain philosophy, this philosophy is not so consistent and all-encompassing, so he still maintains an important position in a historical sense.
There are not many important events in his life. When he was young, he was very enthusiastic about mysticism, and his later views can be regarded as the rationalization of what he initially thought was mysterious. He first worked as a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) at the University of Jena-he mentioned that he wrote Phenomenology of Spirit in Jena the day before the Battle of Jena-then as a Privatdozent at Nuremberg University and later as a professor at the University of Heidelberg (18 16- 188). In his later years, he was a patriot of Prussia and a loyal servant of the country, enjoying a recognized philosophical reputation; But in his youth, he despised Prussia, admired Napoleon, and even rejoiced in the victory of the French army in Jena.
Hegel's philosophy is very difficult. I think he is the most difficult to understand among all the great philosophers. Before discussing in detail, it may be helpful to give a general overview of his philosophy.
Because of his early interest in mysticism, he retained a belief that separation was unrealistic; In his view, the world is not an integration of some solid units, both atoms and souls are completely independent of each other.
The self-reliance of limited things in appearance is an illusion in his view; He thinks that nothing is completely true except the whole. But he didn't imagine the whole body as a simple entity, but as a composite system that we should call an organism. In this respect, he is different from parmenides and Spinoza. It seems that the seemingly separated things that make up the world are not simply an illusion; They are more or less realistic to some extent, because they really seem to know that each is an aspect of the whole, and its reality lies in this aspect. With this view, I certainly don't believe in the reality of time and space itself, because if time and space are considered to be completely real, they must be discrete and multiple. All this must have been a mysterious "epiphany" in his heart at first; The refined product of rationality put forward in his book must have appeared later.
Hegel asserted that what is realistic is reasonable, and what is reasonable is realistic. But when he said this, his word "realistic" didn't mean empiricist. He admitted, even emphasized, that all the facts made by empiricists were unreasonable, and they must be unreasonable; Only by looking at the fact as a whole and changing its appearance and character can we see its rationality. However, equating reality with reason will inevitably lead to some complacency, which is inseparable from the belief that everything that exists is just.
The complex totality, Hegel called it "absolute". "Absolute" is spiritual; Spinoza believes that all people not only have the attribute of thinking, but also have the attribute of universality. This view has been rejected.
Hegel is different from other people who once held slightly similar metaphysical views in two aspects. One point is to emphasize logic: Hegel believes that the essence of "reality" can be deduced from the only consideration that cannot be contradictory. Another notable feature (closely related to the first point) is the three-dimensional movement called dialectics. His most important work is Two Logics, which is an indispensable basis for correctly understanding his views on other issues.
Logic according to Hegel's understanding, he clearly said that metaphysics is one thing; That's totally different from general logic. His view is that any ordinary predicate is self-contradictory if it is regarded as limiting the whole of "reality". We might as well quote parmenides's theory that the only real "one" is spherical, as a superficial example. Nothing can be spherical without boundaries. Unless there is something outside (at least virtual space), there can only be boundaries. Therefore, it is contradictory to assume that the whole universe is spherical. (If non-Euclidean geometry is carried out, there can be no objection to this argument, but this argument is useful as an illustrative example. )
Or, let's give a more superficial example-too superficial, far from what Hegel would use. You can say that Jiajun is an uncle, and there is no obvious contradiction; But if you want to say that the universe is an uncle, you are in a dilemma. The so-called uncle is a person who has a nephew, and a nephew is a person who is separated from his uncle; Therefore, uncle will not "really" have it all.
This example can also be used to illustrate dialectics, which is composed of questions, duality and combination. First of all, we say "it's really uncle". This is the "topic". But the existence of uncle implies the existence of nephew. Since nothing really exists except "absolute" and now the nephew is guaranteed to exist, we have to keep saying "absolute nephew". This is an "opposite". But this has the same defect as my uncle's view that "absolute" is my uncle's; Therefore, we are forced to take the view that "absolute" is the whole of uncle and nephew. This is a "combined topic". But this topic is still incomplete, because a person can only become an uncle if he has a sister as his nephew's mother. Therefore, we are forced to expand our universe to include sisters and even brother-in-law. It is argued that this can constantly drive us to reach the final conclusion of dialectics from any predicate about "absolute" only by the power of logic. This is the so-called "absolute concept". In the whole process, there is a basic assumption that nothing can be actually true unless it is about the whole "truth".
This basic assumption is based on traditional logic, which assumes that every proposition has a subject and a predicate. According to this view, all facts mean that something has a certain nature. So it can be seen that "relationship" will not be true, because the relationship involves not one thing but? Two? Things. "Uncle" is a kind of relationship, and one can be an uncle without knowing it. On this occasion, from an empirical point of view, this person has not been affected because he is an uncle; If we understand the word "quality" as something necessary to describe ourselves without considering his relationship with others and things, then this person does not have the quality he did not have before. The only way that subject-predicate logic can avoid this difficulty is to say that this fact is not only the nature of an uncle, but also the nature of all uncles. Because everything except the "whole" has various relationships with external things, it can be seen that nothing can be completely true about individual things. In fact, only the "whole" is true. This can be directly deduced from the following fact: "A and B are two" is not a subject-predicate proposition, so based on traditional logic, there will be no such proposition. So there are no two things in the world, so the "whole" regarded as a unity is real.
The above discussion was not clearly described by Hegel, but implied in his system and many other metaphysical systems.
He analyzes things from positive, negative and comprehensive aspects. A few examples of Hegel's dialectical method may make this method easier to understand. At the beginning of his logical argument, he assumed that "it is absolutely pure"; Let's assume that this is just. It is pure without any added mass. But there is nothing without any quality; So we reached the opposite: "absolute nothingness." From this topic and duality to the topic: the unity of "being" and "nothing" is "change", so it is absolute change. Of course, this will not work either, because some things will change when they change. In this way, our view of "reality" is developed by constantly correcting previous mistakes, which are all due to inappropriately abstracting something that is restricted or bound, as if it could be all. "The boundaries of limited things not only come from the outside world; Its own nature is the reason for its sublation, and it has changed from its own role to its opposite. "
According to Hegel, the process is very important for understanding the result. Every later stage of dialectics contains all the previous stages, just like in a solution; None of these stages? It's over? Completely replace it, but give it a proper position as a factor in the whole. Therefore, it is impossible to reach the truth without going through all stages of dialectics.
As a whole, cognition has a ternary movement. Cognition begins with sensory perception, in which there is only awareness of the object. Then, by doubting and criticizing feelings, knowledge becomes a pure subject. Finally, it reaches the stage of self-knowledge, at which there is no difference between subject and object. Therefore, self-awareness is the highest form of cognition. Of course, this must be the case in Hegel's system, because the highest understanding must be the understanding of "absolute". Since "absolute" is "all", it has nothing to know except itself.
According to Hegel, in the best thinking, thoughts become smooth and harmonious. Truth and fallacy are not as diametrically opposed as commonly thought; Nothing is completely false, and? Me? Everything a child can know is not completely true. "We can get to know each other a little wrongly"; This happens when we attribute absolute truth to some isolated knowledge. For example, "Where was Caesar born?" There is a straightforward answer to this question, which is correct in a sense, but not in a philosophical sense. According to philosophy, "truth is everything" without any part? Ten? Be reasonable.
Hegel said: "Reason is a conscious conviction of all realities." This is not to say that separated people are reality; As far as his separation is concerned, he is not very real, but his truth lies in his participation in the whole "truth". As we become more rational, this participation will increase accordingly.
The "absolute idea" mentioned at the end of Logic is something similar to Aristotle's "God". Absolute concept is to think about your own thoughts. Obviously, "absolute" can't think about anything except itself, because there is nothing but a narrow and wrong understanding of "reality". According to him, "spirit" is the only reality, and its thoughts are reflected in itself through self-awareness. The actual vocabulary that defines "absolute idea" is very obscure. The unity of ideas translated by barres is the concept of ideas. Starting from this concept, the objective world is an idea-in this objective world, all regulations are unified. ) The original German text is difficult to understand.
However, the essence of the problem is not as complicated as Hegel said. Absolute concept is pure thought with pure thought. This is what God has done through the ages-he is really God in the eyes of a professor. He went on to say, "So what is this unity? Absolutely? Yeah, and then what? All of them? Department? what's up Really? Be rational and think about your own ideas. "
Now let's talk about a wonderful feature of Hegel's philosophy, which is the difference between his philosophy and that of Plato, Plotinus or Spinoza. Although the ultimate reality is eternal and time is just an illusion that we can't see the whole, the process of time is closely related to the dialectical process of pure logic. In fact, world history has always gone through various categories from China's "pure existence" (about China, Hegel knew nothing about it except its existence) to "absolute concept", and it seems that absolute concept has almost been realized in Prussia countries, if not fully realized. According to Hegel's own metaphysics, I can't understand why there are various changes in dialectics of world history. However, this is his argument in the philosophy of history. This is an interesting argument, which makes all kinds of changes in human affairs unified and meaningful. This argument is the same as other historical theories. It seems reasonable, but it needs to distort the facts and is quite ignorant. Hegel, like Marx and Bingler after him, are both qualified. Strangely, a process that is said to be cosmic actually happened on our planet, and most of it happened near the Mediterranean Sea.
Moreover, if "reality" is eternal, there is no reason to say that the latter part of this process embodies a higher category than the former part-unless people really want to adopt such a blasphemous assumption that the universe is gradually learning Hegel's philosophy.
According to Hegel, the process of time is from imperfection in ethical and logical sense to perfection. Indeed, in his view, these two meanings are actually inseparable, because the perfection of logic lies in a dense whole, without rugged edges and independent parts, but like a human body, or more like a rational spirit, forming an organism whose parts are interdependent and all tend to a single goal together; This also constitutes the perfection of ethics. A few quotations in the original text can illustrate Hegel's theory: "Ideas are like the guides of souls, truly Meyuri, the leader of all ethnic groups and the world; Spirit, that is, the rational and inevitable will of the guide, is the director of various events in world history and has always been. It is the purpose of our current work to understand the spirit according to its guiding role. "
"The only idea that philosophy brings to the observation of history is the simple concept of' rationality'; That is, reason is the master of the world; In other words, world history thus shows a reasonable process. This belief and insight is a hypothesis within the scope of history itself. In the field of philosophy, it is not a hypothesis. Philosophically, rationality is proved through speculative understanding-the relationship between the universe and God is not exquisite here, only this noun is enough-is it? Nothing? Limit? Force? Quantity, too real? Body; It belongs to all natural life and spiritual life? Nothing? Limit? Sue? Materials and? Nothing? Limit? Shape? Type-that is, what drives content. Is rationality universal? Real? Body. "
"This kind of" idea "or" reason ",is it? Really? Real, right? Never? Constant, absolute? what's up Force? The existence of; It appears in the world, and nothing else appears in this world except it and its glory-this is an argument that has been proved in philosophy and is regarded as confirmed here. "
"The world of intellectuality and conscious will is not entrusted to contingency, but must be manifested as the concept of self-knowledge."
"Is this a just struggle? I know the result because I have checked the whole field in detail. " The above quotations are all taken from Introduction to Historical Philosophy.
The process of spirit and spiritual development is the real object of historical philosophy. We can understand the essence of spirit by comparing it with its opposite, that is, matter. The essence of matter is weight; The essence of spirit is freedom. Matter is outside itself, while spirit has a center within itself. "Spirit is a self-sufficient existence." If this is not clear, the following definition may be more telling:
"But what is the spirit? It is "one", it is its own unified infinity, it is pure identity, which separates itself from itself as another thing of its own, as opposed to * * *' own' and' own'. "
In the historical development of the spirit, there are three main stages: Orientals, Greeks and Romans, and Germans. "World history is the training of unconstrained natural will, making it obey universal principles and giving it subjective freedom.
The east only knows the past, only today? Only? One? Freedom; The Greek and Roman worlds know that some people are free; Does the Germanic world know? By who? what's up Freedom. "People always think that democracy may be an appropriate regime, and the owners are free, but it is not. Democratic politics and aristocratic politics also belong to the free stage of some people, while authoritarian politics belongs to the free stage of the only one. Jun? Lord? The system belongs to the stage of owner freedom. This is inseparable from the extremely strange meaning of the word "freedom" used by Hegel. In his view, there is no freedom without law (so far, we can agree); But he always likes to reverse this sentence, thinking that as long as there is law, there is freedom.
Therefore, in his view, "freedom" means nothing more than the right to obey the law.
It is conceivable that in the development of "spirit" on the earth, he assigned the highest role to the Germans. "Germanic spirit is the spirit of the new world. The purpose of the new world is to realize the absolute truth as the infinite self-determination of freedom-taking its own absolute form as its purport? So what? Kind of freedom. " This is a wonderful freedom. This freedom doesn't mean that you can't go to a concentration camp. This freedom does not mean democracy, nor does it mean freedom of the press, or any common liberal slogan that Hegel despised. When the spirit imposes laws on itself, it is free to do it. From our secular point of view, it seems that the "spirit" added to the law is embodied by the monarch, while the "spirit" added to the law is embodied by his subjects. But from an "absolute" point of view, the difference between monarch and subjects, like all other differences, is an illusion. Even if the monarch throws his subjects with free thoughts into prison, his own decision is still a kind of spiritual freedom. Hegel praised Rousseau for distinguishing the general will from the will of all the people. Presumably, the monarch embodies the general will, while the parliamentary majority only embodies the will of all. What a convenient theory.
Hegel divided Germanic history into three periods: the first chapter ended with Charlemagne; In the second chapter, Charlie is transformed; The third chapter, after the Reformation.
These three periods are also called the kingdom of the father, the kingdom of the son and the kingdom of the Holy Spirit. It seems a little strange that the kingdom of the Holy Spirit actually began with the heinous bloody atrocities committed in suppressing the peasant war; But of course, Hegel did not mention such trifles, but gave Machiavelli a big compliment as expected.
Hegel's explanation of the history since the decline of the Roman Empire is partly the result of world history teaching in German schools and partly the reason. In Italy and France, although a few people like Tacitus and Machiavelli once worshipped the Germans romantically, it is generally believed that the Germans have always been the chief culprit of the "barbarian" invasion and the enemy of the church: first under the great emperor, then the leader of the religious reform. Until the19th century, the Latin people regarded the Germans as less civilized than their own. Protestants in Germany naturally hold another view. They regarded the late Romans as exhausted people and thought that the Germanic conquest of the western Roman Empire was an important step towards recovery. Regarding the political dispute between the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope in the Middle Ages, they adopted the viewpoint of the Emperor Party. To this day, German pupils are taught to worship Charlemagne and Barbarossa infinitely. In the post-Reformation era, Germany's political weakness and disunity are deplorable, while Prussia's gradual rise is welcomed, which makes Germany stronger under the leadership of Protestantism, rather than Austria's slightly fragile old religion. When Hegel philosophized on history, he thought of Dior Doric, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Luther and King Friedrich. To explain Hegel, we should focus on the merits of these people and the fact that Germany was just bullied by Napoleon at that time.
Germany has been highly praised, so you may expect to say that Germany is the ultimate embodiment of the absolute concept, and I am afraid there can be no further development beyond it. But Hegel's opinion is not like this. On the contrary, he said that America is the land of the future. "There, in the coming era, the theme of world history will be displayed-perhaps (he added in a typical tone) the struggle between North and South America will be displayed." He seems to think that all important things appear in the form of war. If someone really reminds him that the contribution of the United States to world history may be to develop a society without extreme poverty, he will not be interested. On the contrary, he said that there is no real country in the United States so far, because a real country needs to be divided into two classes: the rich and the poor.
In Hegel's view, nationality depends on the role played by Marx's class. He said that the origin of historical development is the national spirit. In every era, a certain nation has been entrusted with the mission of guiding the world through the dialectical stage it has reached.
Of course, in modern times this country is Germany. But apart from the nation, we must also consider the world's historic individuals; It is such people that their goals reflect the dialectical transformation that should take place in the contemporary era. Such people are heroes, and may violate ordinary moral laws, which is not too much. Hegel cited Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon as examples. I doubt whether, in Hegel's view, a person can be a "hero" if he is not a conqueror of war.
Hegel's emphasis on the nation, coupled with his unique concept of "freedom", shows his praise for the country-this is a very important aspect of his political philosophy, and now we must turn our attention to this aspect. His national philosophy occupies an important position in the philosophy of history and the philosophy of law.
Generally speaking, it is consistent with his general metaphysics, but it is not the inevitable result of this metaphysics; However, at some points, such as the relationship between countries, his praise of the nation-state is inconsistent with his overall spirit of attaching importance to the whole and ignoring the parts.
In modern times, praising the country began with the religious reform. In the Roman Empire, the emperor was deified and the country gained sacredness. But medieval philosophers were all priests except a few, so they put the church above the state.
Luther, with the support of the owners of Protestant countries, started the opposite approach. Lutheran churches generally believe in Eiras's theory. Hobbes was a Protestant in politics and carried forward the theory of the supremacy of the state. Spinoza thought the same thing as him. As mentioned above, Rousseau believes that the state should not tolerate other political organizations. Hegel is a fierce Protestant belonging to the Lutheran school; Prussia is an Elatus-style autocratic monarchy. These reasons would have made people expect that the country would be highly valued by Hegel; But even so, he has reached a worrying extreme.
"Philosophy of History" says that "the state is a real moral life", and all spiritual realities that people have are occupied through the state.
"Because this is the spiritual reality of human beings: the essence of human beings-rationality-is objectively presented to him, and it is an objective and direct existence for human beings. Because the' real thing' is the unity of universal will and subjective will, and the' universal thing' should be found in the country, in the country's laws and in the country's universal and reasonable system. The country is the idea that God exists on the earth. " There is also: "the state is the embodiment of rational freedom, which is realized and understood in an objective form."
..... The state is a spiritual concept in the external expression of human will and its freedom. "
In the section on the state, the philosophy of law expounds this theory more completely. "The state is the reality of moral concepts-that is, moral spirit is a visible and self-understanding entity will; This moral spirit thinks about yourself, knows yourself, and completes what you know within the limits of what you know. " The country is a rational person who is at ease. If the state (as advocated by liberals) exists only for the benefit of individuals, then individuals may or may not be members of the state. However, the relationship between the state and the individual is completely different. Because the country is an objective "spirit", and the individual is objective, authentic and ethical just because he is a member of the country, the true meaning and purpose of the country lies in this combination. Admit that there may be bad countries, but such countries only exist, and there is no real reality. A rational country itself is infinite.
It can be seen that Hegel's position on the country is roughly the same as that of St. Augustine and his successors on the church. But from two angles, the requirements of the old religion are more reasonable than those of Hegel. First, the church is not an accidental regional community, but a group that is considered extremely important by its members and combined with its creed; Therefore, the church is the embodiment of Hegel's so-called "idea" in essence. Second, there is only one Catholic church, but there are many countries. Although every country is autocratic in its relations with its citizens as Hegel said, it is always difficult to find out any philosophical principles to regulate the relations between different countries. In fact, Hegel gave up his philosophical empty talk at this point, backed by the state of nature and Hobbes' war between the whole people and the whole people.
As long as there is no "world country", it is misleading to talk about "country" as if there is only one country. In Hegel's view, the so-called obligation is completely the relationship between individuals and countries, so there is no principle left to moralize the relationship between countries. Hegel acknowledged this. He said that in foreign relations, a country is an individual, and each country is independent of other countries. "Because in this kind of independence, the' self-possession' of the realistic spirit exists, and independence is the most basic freedom and the highest glory of a nation." He continued.
Refute any international alliance that will restrict the independence of all countries. The obligation of citizens (in terms of their country's foreign relations) is completely limited to safeguarding their country's basic personality, namely independence and sovereignty. This shows that war is not completely evil, nor is it something we should try our best to abolish. The fact that the purpose of a country is not only to safeguard citizens' lives and property constitutes the moral basis of war. Therefore, we should not regard war as absolute evil or accident, nor should we think that the cause of war lies in things that should not have happened.
Hegel didn't just say that a nation can't avoid war properly under certain circumstances. He meant much more than that. He opposes the establishment of institutions to prevent this from happening, such as the world government, because he thinks it is a good thing to have wars from time to time. He said that war is a state in which we have carefully understood the emptiness of worldly property. This view should be compared with the opposite theory, that is, all wars have economic reasons. )
War has practical moral value: "War has a higher meaning. Through war, the moral health of people in all countries is preserved in their disregard for various limited rules. " Peace is rigid; The holy alliance and Kant's peace alliance are wrong, because a family composed of many countries must create an enemy. Disputes between countries can only be solved by war; Because countries are in a natural state, the relationship between them is neither legal nor moral. The rights of every country have its reality in its own will, and the interests of every country are its own supreme law. There is no contrast between morality and politics, because the country is not bound by ordinary moral laws.
This is Hegel's theory of state-this theory, if admitted, then all imaginable domestic tyranny and all foreign aggression have an excuse. The power of Hegel's deception is revealed at this point: there are great contradictions between his national theory and his own metaphysics, and these contradictions tend to defend cruelty and international plunder. If a person is forced by logic and regrets to infer the conclusion that he laments, he can be forgiven; But it is unforgivable to go against logic in order to preach crime. Hegel's logic convinced him that the reality or superiority of the whole (which is synonymous in his view) is more than the part, and the more organized the whole, the greater its reality and superiority. This proves that it is reasonable for him to like countries rather than anarchic individual clusters, but it should have made him like countries all over the world rather than anarchic national clusters. Within the country, his general philosophy should also make him feel more respect for individuals, because the totality discussed in his logic is not like parmenides's "Taiyi" or even Spinoza's God, because his totality is such a totality: the individuals in it have not disappeared, but have gained more full reality through his harmonious relationship with larger organisms. The country where individuals are neglected is not the prototype of Hegel's "absolute".
In Hegel's metaphysics, there is no strong reason to emphasize the state and not other social organizations. I can only see Protestant prejudice in his neglect of the church and the country. In addition, if, as Hegel thought, it is a good thing for society to be organized as much as possible, there must be many social organizations besides the state and the church. Inferring from Hegel's principle, it must be said that every cause that is harmless to society and can be revitalized through cooperation should have an appropriate organization, and every such organization should have a limited independence.
There may be objections that the ultimate power must always belong to a certain place and not to other places outside the country. But even so, this last strength is good if it is not irresistible when trying to be cruel beyond a certain limit.
This brings us into contact with a basic problem when judging all Hegel's philosophy. Is the whole more real than the part? Is there any greater value?