Hegelianism

G. W. F. Hegel
Hegelianism
Forerunners
Aristotle
Bhme
Rousseau
Kant
Goethe
Fichte
Hlderlin
Schelling

Successors
Feuerbach
Marx
Lukcs
Kojve
Adorno
Habermas

Principal works
The Phenomenology of Spirit
Science of Logic
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences
Lectures on Aesthetics
Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
Lectures on the History of Philosophy

Schools
Hegelianism is the philosophy of G. W. Absolute idealism
F. Hegel which can be summed up by the Hegelianism (dialectics)
dictum that "the rational alone is real",[1] British idealism
which means that all reality is capable of German idealism
being expressed in rational categories.
His goal was to reduce reality to a more Related topics
synthetic unity within the system of Right Hegelians
absolute idealism. Young Hegelians

v
Contents t
e
1 Method
2 Doctrine of development
3 Categorization of philosophies
o 3.1 Division of philosophy
o 3.2 Philosophy of nature
o 3.3 Philosophy of mind
o 3.4 Philosophy of history
3.4.1 Stages of history
o 3.5 Philosophy of absolute mind
4 Influence
5 Hegelian schools
o 5.1 In Germany
o 5.2 Other nations
6 See also
7 References

Method
Hegel's method in philosophy consists of the triadic development (Entwicklung) in each
concept and each thing. Thus, he hopes, philosophy will not contradict experience, but will
give data of experience to the philosophical, which is the ultimately true explanation. If, for
instance, we wish to know what liberty is, we take that concept where we first find itthe
unrestrained action of the savage, who does not feel the need of repressing any thought,
feeling, or tendency to act.

Next, we find that the savage has given up this freedom in exchange for its opposite, the
restraint, or, as he considers it, the tyranny, of civilization and law. Finally, in the citizen
under the rule of law, we find the third stage of development, namely liberty in a higher and
a fuller sense than how the savage possessed itthe liberty to do, say, and think many
things beyond the power of the savage.

In this triadic process, the second stage is the direct opposite, the annihilation, or at least the
sublation, of the first. The third stage is the first returned to itself in a higher, truer, richer,
and fuller form. The three stages are, therefore, styled:
 in itself (An-sich)
out of itself (Anderssein)
in and for itself (An-und-fr-sich).

These three stages are found succeeding one another throughout the whole realm of thought
and being, from the most abstract logical process up to the most complicated concrete
activity of organized mind in the succession of states or the production of systems of
philosophy.

Doctrine of development
In logic which, according to Hegel, is really metaphysic we have to deal with the
process of development applied to reality in its most abstract form. According to Hegel, in
logic, we deal in concepts robbed of their empirical content: in logic we are discussing the
process in vacuo, so to speak. Thus, at the very beginning of Hegel's study of reality, he
finds the logical concept of being.

Now, being is not a static concept according to Hegel, as Aristotle supposed it was. It is
essentially dynamic, because it tends by its very nature to pass over into nothing, and then
to return to itself in the higher concept, becoming. For Aristotle, there was nothing more
certain than that being equaled being, or, in other words, that being is identical with itself,
that everything is what it is. Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that
being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the concept
becoming. For instance, the truth about this table, for Aristotle, is that it is a table. (This is
not necessarily true. Aristotle made a distinction between things made by art and things
made by nature. Things made by art--such as a table--follow this description of thinghood.
Living things however are self-generating and constantly creating their own being. Being
in the sense of a living thing is highly dynamic and is defined by the thing creating its own
being. He describes life not in terms of being but coming-into-being. For instance a baby's
goal is to become old. It is neither absolutely young or absolutely old and somewhere in the
process of being young and becoming old. It sounds like Hegel made the comparison
between being and not being while Aristotle made the comparison between art and nature.)

For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it was a tree, and it "will be" ashes. The whole
truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not
being, is the highest expression of reality. It is also the highest expression of thought
because then only do we attain the fullest knowledge of a thing when we know what it was,
what it is, and what it will be-in a word, when we know the history of its development.

In the same way as "being" and "nothing" develop into the higher concept becoming, so,
farther on in the scale of development, life and mind appear as the third terms of the
process and in turn are developed into higher forms of themselves. (It is interesting here to
note that Aristotle saw "being" as superior to "becoming", because anything which is still
becoming something else is imperfect. Hence, God, for Aristotle, is perfect because He
never changes, but is eternally complete.) But one cannot help asking what is it that
develops or is developed?
Its name, Hegel answers, is different in each stage. In the lowest form it is "being", higher
up it is "life", and in still higher form it is "mind". The only thing always present is the
process (das Werden). We may, however, call the process by the name of "spirit" (Geist) or
"idea" (Begriff). We may even call it God, because at least in the third term of every triadic
development the process is God.

Categorization of philosophies
Division of philosophy

The first and most wide-reaching consideration of the process of spirit, God, or the idea,
reveals to us the truth that the idea must be studied (1) in itself; this is the subject of logic
or metaphysics; (2) out of itself, in nature; this is the subject of the philosophy of nature;
and (3) in and for itself, as mind; this is the subject of the philosophy of mind
(Geistesphilosophie).

Philosophy of nature

Passing over the rather abstract considerations by which Hegel shows in his Logik the
process of the idea-in-itself through being to becoming, and finally through essence to
notion, we take up the study of the development of the idea at the point where it enters into
otherness in nature. In nature the idea has lost itself, because it has lost its unity and is
splintered, as it were, into a thousand fragments. But the loss of unity is only apparent,
because in reality the idea has merely concealed its unity.

Studied philosophically, nature reveals itself as so many successful attempts of the idea to
emerge from the state of otherness and present itself to us as a better, fuller, richer idea,
namely, spirit, or mind. Mind is, therefore, the goal of nature. It is also the truth of nature.
For whatever is in nature is realized in a higher form in the mind which emerges from
nature.

Philosophy of mind

The philosophy of mind begins with the consideration of the individual, or subjective,
mind. It is soon perceived, however, that individual, or subjective, mind is only the first
stage, the in-itself stage, of mind. The next stage is objective mind, or mind objectified in
law, morality, and the State. This is mind in the condition of out-of-itself.

There follows the condition of absolute mind, the state in which mind rises above all the
limitations of nature and institutions, and is subjected to itself alone in art, religion, and
philosophy. For the essence of mind is freedom, and its development must consist in
breaking away from the restrictions imposed on it in it otherness by nature and human
institutions.

Philosophy of history
Hegel's philosophy of the State, his theory of history, and his account of absolute mind are
perhaps the most often read portions of his philosophy due to their accessibility. The State,
he says, is mind objectified. The individual mind, which, on account of its passions, its
prejudices, and its blind impulses, is only partly free, subjects itself to the yoke of
necessitythe opposite of freedomin order to attain a fuller realization of itself in the
freedom of the citizen.

This yoke of necessity is first met within the recognition of the rights of others, next in
morality, and finally in social morality, of which the primal institution is the family.
Aggregates of families form civil society, which, however, is but an imperfect form of
organization compared with the State. The State is the perfect social embodiment of the
idea, and stands in this stage of development for God Himself.

The State, studied in itself, furnishes for our consideration constitutional law. In relation to
other States it develops international law; and in its general course through historical
vicissitudes it passes through what Hegel calls the "Dialectics of History".

Hegel teaches that the constitution is the collective spirit of the nation and that the
government and the written constitution is the embodiment of that spirit. Each nation has its
own individual spirit, and the greatest of crimes is the act by which the tyrant or the
conqueror stifles the spirit of a nation.

War, Hegel suggests, can never be ruled out, as one can never know when or if one will
occur, an example being the Napoleonic overrunning of Europe and putting down of
Royalist systems. War represents a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied
in the different States, and out of this crisis usually the State which holds the more
advanced spirit wins out, though it may also suffer a loss, lick its wounds, yet still win in
the spiritual sense, as happened for example when the northerners sacked Rome, its form of
legality and religion all "won" out in spite of the losses on the battlefield.

A peaceful revolution is also possible according to Hegel when the changes required to
solve the crisis are ascertained by thoughtful insight and when this insight spreads
throughout the body politic:

If a people [Volk] can no longer accept as implicitly true what its constitution expresses to it
as the truth, if its consciousness or Notion and its actuality are not at one, then the peoples
spirit is torn asunder. Two things may then occur. First, the people may either by a supreme
internal effort dash into fragments this law which still claims authority, or it may more
quietly and slowly effect changes on the yet operative law, which is, however, no longer
true morality, but which the mind has already passed beyond. In the second place, a
peoples intelligence and strength may not suffice for this, and it may hold to the lower law;
or it may happen that another nation has reached its higher constitution, thereby rising in
the scale, and the first gives up its nationality and becomes subject to the other. Therefore it
is of essential importance to know what the true constitution is; for what is in opposition to
it has no stability, no truth, and passes away. It has a temporary existence, but cannot hold
its ground; it has been accepted, but cannot secure permanent acceptance; that it must be
cast aside, lies in the very nature of the constitution. This insight can be reached through
Philosophy alone. Revolutions take place in a state without the slightest violence when the
insight becomes universal; institutions, somehow or other, crumble and disappear, each
man agrees to give up his right. A government must, however, recognize that the time for
this has come; should it, on the contrary, knowing not the truth, cling to temporary
institutions, taking what though recognized is unessential, to be a bulwark guarding it
from the essential (and the essential is what is contained in the Idea), that government will
fall, along with its institutions, before the force of mind. The breaking up of its government
breaks up the nation itself; a new government arises, or it may be that the government
and the unessential retain the upper hand.[2]

The "ground" of historical development is, therefore, rational; since the State, if it is not in
contradiction, is the embodiment of reason as spirit. Many, at first considered to be,
contingent events of history can become, in reality or in necessity, stages in the logical
unfolding of the sovereign reason which gets embodied in an advanced State. Such a
"necessary contingency" when expressed in passions, impulse, interest, character,
personality, get used by the "cunning of reason", which, in retrospect, was to its own
purpose.

Stages of history

We are, therefore, to understand historical happenings as the stern, reluctant working of

reason towards the full realization of itself in perfect freedom. Consequently, we must
interpret history in rational terms, and throw the succession of events into logical categories
and this interpretation is, for Hegel, a mere inference from actual history.

Thus, the widest view of history reveals three most important stages of development:
Oriental imperial (the stage of oneness, of suppression of freedom), Greek social
democracy (the stage of expansion, in which freedom was lost in unstable demagogy), and
Christian constitutional monarchy (which represents the reintegration of freedom in
constitutional government).

Philosophy of absolute mind

Even in the State, mind is limited by subjection to other minds. There remains the final step
in the process of the acquisition of freedom, namely, that by which absolute mind in art,
religion, and philosophy subjects itself to itself alone. In art, mind has the intuitive
contemplation of itself as realized in the art material, and the development of the arts has
been conditioned by the ever-increasing "docility" with which the art material lends itself to
the actualization of mind or the idea.

In religion, mind feels the superiority of itself to the particularizing limitations of finite
things. Here, as in the philosophy of history, there are three great moments, Oriental
religion, which exaggerated the idea of the infinite, Greek religion, which gave undue
importance to the finite, and Christianity, which represents the union of the infinite and the
finite. Last of all, absolute mind, as philosophy, transcends the limitations imposed on it
even in religious feeling, and, discarding representative intuition, attains all truth under the
form of reason.

Whatever truth there is in art and in religion is contained in philosophy, in a higher form,
and free from all limitations. Philosophy is, therefore, "the highest, freest and wisest phase
of the union of subjective and objective mind, and the ultimate goal of all development."

Influence
The far reaching influence of Hegel is due in a measure to the undoubted vastness of the
scheme of philosophical synthesis which he conceived and partly realized. A philosophy
which undertook to organize under the single formula of triadic development every
department of knowledge, from abstract logic up to the philosophy of history, has a great
deal of attractiveness to those who are metaphysically inclined. But Hegel's influence is due
in a still larger measure to two extrinsic circumstances.

His philosophy is the highest expression of that spirit of collectivism which characterized
the nineteenth century. In theology especially Hegel revolutionized the methods of inquiry.
The application of his notion of development to Biblical criticism and to historical
investigation is obvious to anyone who compares the spirit and purpose of contemporary
theology with the spirit and purpose of the theological literature of the first half of the
nineteenth century.[citation needed]

In science, too, and in literature, the substitution of the category of becoming for the
category of being is a very patent fact, and is due to the influence of Hegel's method. In
political economy and political science the effect of Hegel's collectivistic conception of the
State supplanted to a large extent the individualistic conception which was handed down
from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century.

Hegelian schools
Main articles: Hegelian Rightists and Young Hegelians

Hegel's philosophy became known outside Germany from the 1820s onwards, and Hegelian
schools developed in northern Europe, Italy, France, Eastern Europe, America and
Britain.[3] These schools are collectively known as post-Hegelian philosophy, post-
Hegelian idealism or simply post-Hegelianism.[4]

In Germany

Hegel's immediate followers in Germany are generally divided into the "Right Hegelians"
and the "Left Hegelians" (the latter also referred to as the "Young Hegelians").
The Rightists developed his philosophy along lines which they considered to be in
accordance with Christian theology. They included Karl Friedrich Gschel, Johann Philipp
Gabler, Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz, and Johann Eduard Erdmann.

The Leftists accentuated the anti-Christian tendencies of Hegel's system and developed
schools of materialism, socialism, rationalism, and pantheism. They included Ludwig
Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Bruno Bauer, and David Strauss. Max Stirner socialized with the
left Hegelians but built his own philosophical system largely opposing that of these
thinkers.

Other nations

In Britain, Hegelianism was represented during the nineteenth century by, and largely
overlapped the British Idealist school of James Hutchison Stirling, Thomas Hill Green,
William Wallace, John Caird, Edward Caird, Richard Lewis Nettleship, F.H. Bradley, and
J. M. E. McTaggart.

In Denmark, Hegelianism was represented by Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen
Martensen from the 1820s to the 1850s.

In mid-19th century Italy, Hegelianism was represented by Bertrando Spaventa.

Hegelianism in North America was represented by Friedrich August Rauch, Thomas

Watson and William T. Harris, as well as the St. Louis Hegelians. In its most recent form it
seems to take its inspiration from Thomas Hill Green, and whatever influence it exerts is
opposed to the prevalent pragmatic tendency.

In Poland, Hegelianism was represented by Karol Libelt, August Cieszkowski and Jzef
Kremer.

Benedetto Croce and tienne Vacherot were the leading Hegelians towards the end of the
nineteenth century in Italy and France, respectively. Among Catholic philosophers who
were influenced by Hegel the most prominent were Georg Hermes and Anton Gnther.

Hegelianism also inspired Giovanni Gentile's philosophy of actual idealism and Fascism,
the concept that people are motivated by ideas and that social change is brought by the
leaders.

Hegelianism spread to Imperial Russia through St. Petersburg in the 1840s, and was as
other intellectual waves were considered an absolute truth amongst the intelligentsia, until
the arrival of Darwinism in the 1860s.[5]

See also
Panlogism
References
1.

G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821), Vorrede: Was vernnftig ist,
das ist Wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernnftig. ["What is rational is real; And
what is real is rational."]
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. II, p. 98
Edward Craig (ed.), Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, 2013,
"Hegelianism".
Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism, Cambridge
University Press, 2002, p. 310.

5. Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 18911924, The

Bodley Head (2014), p. 127.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public

domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "article name needed". Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: Robert Appleton.