Short summary on Hegel and dialectics: Hegel’s philosophical thought. Easy explanation and points to keep in mind.
The Enlightenment had exalted a dualistic vision consisting of the opposition between rational and sensitive faculties, soul and body, individual and society.
Hegel poses the problem of overcoming these divisions, assigning to philosophy the task of interpreting reality in a complete , total way (reality is totality).
The philosopher shows how truth is to be placed in a single aspect, but in the whole and total reality. Hegel considers it a product of laziness who in the name of “common sense” stops at the surface of things, without realizing that truth is not partial, but is wholeness.
The statement “ the true is the whole ” contained in the Phenomenology of Spirit underlines the meaning that truth acquires in Hegel.
Truth must be traced back to reality which for Hegel is complex, stratified, contradictory, that is, it contrasts one event with another, one thought with another ( Heraclitus ‘ doctrine of opposites ), in a word it is dialectic, which becomes the key to reading reality.
HEGELISM: FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
The Hegelian philosophical project does not conceive philosophy as a “love of wisdom” but as a scientific system aimed at interpreting reality in its historical divination (dialectic).
The function of philosophy is to understand reality (of history) in particular the present (which is given by the succession of historical events). It is not the search for something different from what is real.
When philosophy is able to grasp the present in all its aspects it becomes “science”.
For Hegel, truth is the daughter of time, as it was for Bacon.
The present (“every present”) as the point of arrival in every era of the “spirit of the world” represents the pinnacle of truth that includes and surpasses previous eras. The only point of reference for knowledge is history, therefore knowledge cannot rely on another atemporal foundation (outside of time).
History, after all, is like a river that flows and continually changes its waters (today slavery seems irrational to us while the ancient Romans considered it just and rational). History is therefore a continuous becoming like truth and reality whose goal is the realization of Reason.
History is a grand but tragic alternation of human events, each of which has its own Reason within itself.
HEGEL: REASON
By Reason Hegel does not mean the finite reason of individual men but reality itself which is configured as a totality of the finite and the infinite, subjective and objective.
For Hegel, Reason is identified with the Absolute.
From this follows the well-known aphorism contained in the Outlines of the Philosophy of Right : “ What is rational is real, and what is real is rational .”
With this formula Hegel means to say that:
- Reason is not an abstraction but the living concreteness of reality, since Reason governs the world.
- reality is not chaotic matter but the rational unfolding of the Spirit or Idea that manifests itself unconsciously in nature and consciously in man. Everything that is realized is rational.
For Hegel, Reason is the maximum of concreteness, while for Kant it was a faculty producing metaphysical ideas (soul, world, God).
HEGEL: DIALECTIC
Dialectic is the opposition of one event to another, of one thought to another (from which history is born, which gives life to reality – the present, and Reason, by which an idea develops in relation to an opposing idea).
Hegelian dilectics has a triadic nature (just like the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit) which is the result of his teleological studies.
THESIS: Affirmation of a concept (father)
ANTITHESIS: Denial of the concept stated in the thesis (son)
(Both Irrational and Abstract Moments)
SUMMARY: It is the unity of thesis and antithesis that allows us to understand the truth in its entirety and concreteness. (Holy Spirit = Risen Christ)
Rational and concrete moment
The historical process, rich in tragedies, is not purely negative since “from the end of one civilization, comes the birth of another”.
