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Single Idea 22083

[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism ]

Full Idea

Hegel believed, unlike Kant, that the categories of the understanding, when properly understood, disclose the nature of things in themselves and not just the character of things as they appear to us.

Gist of Idea

Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves

Source

report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.101

Book Ref

'A Companion to Continental Philosophy', ed/tr. Critchley,S/Schroeder,W [Blackwell 1999], p.101


A Reaction

'Properly understood' sounds like 'no true Scotsman'. This is thoroughgoing idealism, because reality is determined by the activity of the mind, and not from outside. The Hegel story makes more sense if you see the categories as evolutionary.

Related Idea

Idea 22084 Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel]


The 27 ideas from 'Science of Logic'

If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate]
To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie]
Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Hegel, by Bowie]
Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard on Hegel]
The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Hegel, by Gardner]
Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Hegel, by Bowie]
Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Hegel, by Bowie]
When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]
Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel]
The so-called world is filled with contradiction [Hegel]
The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth [Hegel]
The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
The nature of each category relates itself to another [Hegel]
Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel]
In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty [Hegel]
We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel]