The
Philosophy of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.

II.

III.Life and Works

Being
and New Logic of the Concrete

Dialectical
Process of Being

I. Life and Works

Georg Hegel (
picture) was born in Stuttgart in 1770. He studied theology
and philosophy, and at first gave his sympathies to the philosophy of the
Enlightenment and to Kantian Criticism, only to turn to Romantic historicism
and become attached to Fichte and Schelling.
He lectured in various German universities, and ultimately at the University of Berlin, where he exercised great
influence. He died in 1831.

Hegel's
most representative philosophical works are: Phenomenology of Spirit; Logic;
and Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. German Idealism and
modern thought, generally speaking, reach the greatest heights of immanentism in the compact dialectic system of Hegel.

II. Being and the New Logic of the Concrete

The
primordial Being, as it is conceived by Hegel, is the
poorest and simplest unity. Indeed, so poor and simple is it that it blends
with nothingness. Primitive and absolute Being
is non-being. (Cf. the Being of Parmenides.) But this non-being-Being is a subject;
it is perennial activity. Through this perennial activity, primitive
absolute Being becomes intrinsically differentiated,
constructing itself in an unlimited series of phenomena. That is to say, the
"pure indeterminateness" (nothing) builds itself upon itself, passing
from state to state, developing explicitly (in a series of determinate beings) what
is implicitly contained in itself. In any passage of this kind (and such
passages are continually occurring) the primordial indeterminateness becomes
ever richer and more conscious.

The
rhythm which makes possible this self-revelation and self-construction is that
of the "coincidence of opposites." Because the development of Being is achieved with the intention of becoming what it is
not, any link in this chain of development is characterized by a point of
"coincidence" of being and non-being, united to affirm a higher
entity. Being, affirming this higher entity, does not nullify the preceding
entity, but revaluates it, together with its opposite (non-being), in a higher
synthesis. Being, in other words, is characterized in its development by three
stages: being (thesis), non-being (antithesis), becoming
(synthesis). In other words, the preceding entity (being) is affirmed with its
opposite (non-being) in a higher entity (becoming). It is in this that Hegel's
system of triads consists.

This
higher entity, at the same time it becomes being, is lacerated, so to speak, by
its opposite (i.e., by non-being), and tends to affirm itself in a still higher
entity, and so on ad infinitum. This activity of building and of tearing itself
apart, with the intention of rebuilding itself ad infinitum, is the life of Being. To stop this activity would mean to destroy Being itself.

Hegel
believed that he had found a confirmation of this dynamic development, in which
nothing is nullified but everything is revaluated in a higher development, in
the growth of our stable ego. At every moment of the development of our
personality we pass from state to state, and yet the preceding reality is not
nullified, but is affirmed in a richer and more conscious ego.

Another
important characteristic of the primordial reality is its rationality.
Primordial Being is essentially thought, idea, logos.
Hence logic is the rule of the entire series of its developments; the entire
unbroken series in which Being divides itself and recomposes itself in thesis,
antithesis and synthesis is rational. In the
primordial Being, thought is identified with reality, so that the order of
ideas coincides perfectly with the order of beings. Hence Hegel's principle:
Every real being is rational and every rational being is real.

This
new concept of reality as the realization and overcoming of opposites (being,
non-being, synthesis) requires a new logic, which Hegel calls the logic of the concrete,
as opposed to that of Aristotle, which Hegel calls formal. According to
Hegel, formal logic is founded on an abstract and static concept of being, a
being which has been forcibly divorced from the dynamism that is the true life
of reality. This abstract concept of being, drawn from reality, is understood
as being always identical with itself.

According
to Aristotle, the principle of identity could be formulated because the concept
of being is always the same -- A is equal to A, and A cannot be its negation
(non-A) at the same time and in the same respect. For Hegel, this logic is
faulty because it misinterprets reality. For him reality is never identical
with itself, but at every moment changes, passing from what it is to what it is
not. Contradiction, therefore, is the life of concrete being.

Now,
since the rhythm of logic is identical with the dynamic rhythm of reality, we
need a new logic, which makes possible the reconciliation of the terms of the
contradiction (being and non-being) in a higher reality. In other words, in any
synthesis there must be present the terms of contradiction, the former reality
and its negation (the opposite), being and non-being. Hegel maintains that this
new logic of the concrete must take the place of the formal logic of Aristotle.

III. Dialectical Process of Being

According
to Hegel, reality is a logical process developing in accordance with the law of
coincidence of opposites. This process depends upon a fundamental triad: Idea
(Logos), Nature, Spirit. This triad indicates a logical rather than a
chronological succession, for the entire process is actuated within the
primordial Spirit, in which all is immanent.

Idea or Logos is the system
of the pure concepts which lie at the foundation of all reality. Nature
is the self-extrinsication, the objectivation
of the Idea. It is the Idea's becoming other than itself,
or its self-extension in time and space. But it is the Universal Spirit
which establishes itself in the series of phenomena extended in space and time,
with the purpose of developing itself and revealing to itself with the
intention of gaining consciousness of self. Indeed, nature
reaches the acme of perfection in the human organism, and the human organism
attains the acme of perfection in individual consciousness. With the attainment
of this supreme stage of perfection there begins the return of nature to the
Universal Spirit.

Indeed,
individual consciousness (or the subjective spirit) is the first appearance of
the Universal Spirit as rationality and freedom. But in the narrow limits of
individuality, the Spirit can never reach the fullness of rationality and
freedom, which are the consummation of the entire process of the Spirit. To
realize this ultimate end (the fullness of rationality and freedom), the
subjective spirit (individual consciousness) objectivates
itself in many superindividual dorms; i.e., it
constructs the ethical world. The first objectivation
is the juridical order, right, which guarantees freedom to all in a measure
compatible with the freedom of others.

Right
can regulate only external conduct. The spirit which aspires
to regulate the interior world also, objectivates
itself in a higher form, i.e., in morality. Morality concretizes itself:
1. In the family, in
which the spirit reveals itself as a union of souls;
2. In civil society,
which is a larger and higher community of souls; and, lastly,
3. In
the state, the highest revelation that the spirit gives to itself.

The
state is the living God, who concretizes Himself in the spirit of the
people (the "national spirit"). The living God incarnates Himself now
in this, now in that nation, according as the nation realizes more perfectly
than any other the ideal of civilization. This passing of the Spirit from one
nation to another is what history is made of.

The
Spirit is not limited, but circulates among the entire multitude of particular
institutions. The passage of the Spirit from one nation to another, according
to Hegel, is necessary, rational and progressive. So also conflict and war are
necessary, rational and progressive. Hence, to the one chosen people
another succeeds. The new chosen people possesses all
rights over the former for the sufficient reason that it is the conqueror;
similarly, the vanquished people are wrong merely because they have been
vanquished.

History,
therefore, is a tribunal before which all the injustices, evils and crimes with
which the world is filled, find their rational justification. Such is the
conclusion of a dialectic in which the real has been proclaimed the rational,
and values have been leveled because all are equally necessary for the
manifestation of the Spirit.

Although
the state is the highest objectivation and
manifestation of the Spirit, Hegel places the Universal or Absolute
Spirit over the objective spirit. The Absolute Spirit -- through the last
triad: art, religion and philosophy -- fully actuate the consciousness of its
divine nature in a full equation with itself.

In art
the Spirit apprehends its absolute essence as an idea expressing a sensible
object: the beautiful is an idea sensibly concretized, in which the infinite is
seen as finite.

In
religion, on the other hand, there is the unity of the finite with the
infinite. The infinite is immanent in the finite, but in a sentimental,
imaginative, mythical form. In tracing the history of religion, Hegel places
Christianity above all other religions because of the mystery of the
Incarnation, in which the human spirit acquires a consciousness of its divine
nature.

Above
religion stands philosophy, which has the same content as religion, but with
this difference -- that the content has been drawn up on logical, conceptual
and rational form. In philosophy the Absolute Spirit reaches its full
consciousness and rationality.

The
Hegelian concept, in which the state is the living God and individuals but
passing shadows, and in which, moreover, conflict and war are affirmations of
the vitality of the state, has been put to the test in the German nation. The
course which Germany followed -- with disastrous
results -- in two world wars is rightly judged the consequence of such a
concept. Needless to say, Hegel's concept of reality is immanentist,
pantheistic and atheistic.