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Ideas of Georg W.F.Hegel, by Text

[German, 1770 - 1831, Born in Stuttgart. University of Heidelberg 1816. Professor in Berlin, 1818 till his death.]

1796 Oldest System Prog. of German Idealism
p.130 Highest reason is aesthetic, and truth and good are subordinate to beauty
1807 Phenomenology of Spirit
p.13 History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom
p.23 Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Aho]
p.34 Hegel made the last attempt to restore Christianity, which philosophy had destroyed [Feuerbach]
p.36 God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Feuerbach]
p.61 Experience is immediacy, unity, forces, self-awareness, reason, culture, absolute being [Houlgate]
p.78 Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Houlgate]
p.104 Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Houlgate]
p.142 I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel]
p.177 Hegel claims knowledge of self presupposes desire, and hence objects [Scruton]
p.177 For Hegel knowledge of self presupposes objects, and also a public and moral social world [Scruton]
p.224 Hegel tried to avoid Kant's dualism of neutral intuitions and imposed concepts [Pinkard]
p.242 Modern life needs individuality, but must recognise that human agency is social [Pinkard]
p.249 The structure of reason is a social and historical achievement [Pinkard]
p.052 p.52 Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself
p.053 p.53 Consciousness derives its criterion of knowledge from direct knowledge of its own being
p.28 p.100 Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons
p.461 p.100 The God of revealed religion can only be understood through pure speculative knowledge
Pref 01 p.1 Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality
Pref 06 p.4 The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited
Pref 16 p.9 In the Absolute everything is the same
Pref 20 p.11 The true is the whole
Pref 26 p.15 The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness
Pref 34 p.20 The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method
Pref 48 p.28 Truth does not come from giving reasons for and against propositions
Pref 53 p.32 Science confronts the inner necessities of objects
Pref 54 p.33 Being is Thought
Pref 67 p.41 Without philosophy, science is barren and futile
Pref 69 p.43 Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds
1812 works
p.3 On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA]
p.6 For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Houlgate]
p.6 Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Houlgate]
p.17 Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Houlgate]
p.64 Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Derrida]
p.69 Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Field,H]
p.72 Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Graham]
p.77 Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Eldridge]
p.83 For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Russell]
p.84 Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Bowie]
p.95 Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Houlgate]
p.100 Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard]
p.105 When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural
p.124 Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Houlgate]
p.150 Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Cioran]
p.170 The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Scruton]
p.171 Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Scruton]
p.268 Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer]
p.417 Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Scruton]
3 p.71 Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Meillassoux]
1816 Science of Logic
p.32 Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Houlgate]
p.34 If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Houlgate]
p.35 To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Houlgate]
p.38 The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Houlgate]
p.38 Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Houlgate]
p.38 Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Houlgate]
p.38 When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Houlgate]
p.46 Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Bowie]
p.49 Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Bowie]
p.90 The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Bowie]
p.90 Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Bowie]
p.101 Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Houlgate]
p.165 Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Moore,AW]
p.262 Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Pinkard]
p.320 Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard]
p.336 The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Gardner]
Intro p.258 Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Pinkard]
I.i.i.1C p.82,74 p.182 Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity
I.i.i.C(c) p.150 p.173 Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Moore,AW]
I.i.i.C.1 Rem 3 p.101 p.172 Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible
I.i.ii.2C(b) p.185 The so-called world is filled with contradiction
II.iii.3 p.824 p.170 The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth
II.iii.3 p.825 p.170 The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Moore,AW]
p.125 p.99 The nature of each category relates itself to another
p.45 p.101 Authentic thinking and reality have the same content
p.49 p.64 In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty
p.70 p.49 We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being
1817 Logic (Encyclopedia I)
p.168 In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Scruton]
§03 Rem p.135 We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts
§20 p.139 The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals
§20 Rem p.140 The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things
§21 p.141 Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it
§213 p.276 In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature
§213 p.276 The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be
§213 p.276 Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness
§213 p.276 True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation
§24 p.44 Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts
§24 Add 2 p.100 Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere
§246 Add p.95 Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories
§28 Add p.144 Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves
§28 Add p.145 Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates
§28 Add p.145 Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible
§32 p.147 Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false
§33 Rem p.148 If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory
§35 Add p.149 In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together
§36 Add p.150 If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable
§37 p.151 Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims
§38 Rem p.151 Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it
§38 Rem p.151 Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories
§38 Rem p.151 Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction
§39 Rem p.152 Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic
§41 Add1 p.153 Free thinking has no presuppositions
§41 Add2 p.154 Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive
§43-4 p.156 Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them
§48 p.159 The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea
§48 Rem p.159 Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world
§48 Rem p.160 Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas
§49 p.161 The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being
§50 p.161 The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it
§51 p.161 We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking
§62 p.163 Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories
§62 Rem p.163 The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite
§64 Rem p.165 The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy
§65 p.166 Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation
§81 p.39 Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall'
§81 p.171 Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together
§81 Add1 p.171 Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective
I §151Z p.214 p.179 God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person
I §151Z p.215 p.181 The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts
I §60Z p.188 Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Moore,AW]
I §80Z p.115 p.185 We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed
p.172 p.35 Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions
p.235 (1892) p.151 Existence is just a set of relationships
1817 Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III)
p.278 Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Pinkard]
§382, Zusatz p.284 Freedom is produced by the activity of the mind, and is not intrinsically given
1817 Philosophy of Nature (Encylopedia II)
§246 p.7 All revolutions result from spirit changing its categories, to achieve a deeper understanding
§3 p.95 Metaphysics is the lattice which makes incoming material intelligible
1819 Lectures on the Philosophy of Right
p.293 Representatives by region ignores whether they care about the national interest [Pinkard]
p.127 p.186 The absolute right is the right to have rights
p.78 p.187 We are only free, with rights, if we claim our freedom, and there are no natural rights [Houlgate]
1821 Elements of the Philosophy of Right
p.14 In the 1840s Hegel seemed to defend society being right as it is, as a manifestation of Mind [Singer]
p.17 The categorical imperative lacks roots in a historical culture [Bowie]
p.102 Freedom requires us to submit to a family, or a corporation, or a state [Houlgate]
p.194 Evil enters a good will when we believe we are doing right, but allow no criticism of our choice [Houlgate]
p.197 Moral individuals become ethical when they see the social aspect of a matter [Houlgate]
p.208 For Hegel, the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community [MacIntyre]
p.208 You can't have a morality which is supplied by the individual, but is also genuinely universal [MacIntyre]
Pref p.20 Philosophy is exploration of the rational
Pref p.21 I aim to portray the state as a rational entity
Pref p.13 p.174 Wisdom emerges at the end of a process
005 p.183 True liberal freedom is to pursue something, while being free to cease the pursuit [Houlgate]
015 p.184 People assume they are free, but the options available are not under their control
026 add p.56 Subjective and objective are not firmly opposed, but merge into one another
027 p.57 The concept of the will is the free will which wills its freedom
027 p.184 A free will primarily wills its own freedoom [Houlgate]
035 add p.68 A person is a being which is aware of its own self-directed and free subjectivity
036 p.69 Be a person, and respect other persons
039 p.70 Personality overcomes subjective limitations and posits Dasein as its own
044 p.186 Man has an absolute right to appropriate things
044 add p.76 Because only human beings can own property, everything else can become our property
046 p.78 A community does not have the property-owning rights that a person has
050 p.81 The owner of a thing is obviously the first person to freely take possession of it
057 add p.88 Slaves are partly responsible for their own condition
070 add p.102 Individuals must dedicate themselves to the ethical whole, and give their lives when asked
075 add p.106 Individuals can't leave the state, because they are natural citizens, and humans require a state
129 p.157 The good is realised freedom
132 p.159 It is a rejection of intellectual dignity to say that we cannot know the truth
135 add p.163 The categorical imperative is fine if you already have a set of moral principles
137 p.193 Conscience is the right of the self to know what is right and obligatory, and thus make them true
147 p.191 To have pagan beliefs and be a pagan are quite different
155 p.197 Rights imply duties, and duties imply rights
158 add p.199 Love is ethical life in its natural form
166 add p.207 Even educated women are unsuited to science, philosophy, art and government
174 add p.211 Children need discipline, to break their self-will and eradicate sensuousness
201 add p.234 The family is the first basis of the state, but estates are a necessary second
207 add p.239 A human only become a somebody as a member of a social estate
238 add p.263 Society draws people, and requires their work, making them wholly dependent on it
244 add p.266 We cannot assert rights which are unnatural
258 p.279 The state is the march of God in the world
260 p.208 Social groups must focus on the state, which must in turn respect their inclusion and their will
261 p.196 Slaves have no duties because they have no rights
264 p.287 Individuals attain their right by discovering their self-consciousness in institutions
270 p.291 Some religions lead to harsh servitude and the debasement of human beings
270 add p.302 A fully developed state is conscious and knows what it wills
270 add p.303 People can achieve respect for their state by insight into its essence
274 add p.313 A constitution embodies a nation's rights and condition
299 p.339 Money is the best way to achieve just equality
299 add p.339 In modern states an individual's actions should be their choice
301 p.340 The people do not have the ability to know the general will
309 add p.348 Majority rule means obligations can be imposed on me
311 p.209 The state should reflect all interests, and not just popular will, or a popular party [Houlgate]
318 add p.355 The great man of the ages is the one who reveals and accomplishes the will of his time
324 add p.652 Wars add strength to a nation, and cure internal dissension
1826 Lectures on Aesthetics
p.43 The purpose of art is to reveal to Spirit its own nature [Davies,S]
p.77 For Hegel the importance of art concerns the culture, not the individual [Eldridge]
p.220 The main purpose of art is to express the unity of human life
p.297 Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Pinkard]
p.299 Hegel largely ignores aesthetic pleasure, taste and beauty, and focuses on the meaning of artworks [Pinkard]
5 p.82 Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Scruton]
I: 97 p.244 What I hold true must also be part of my feelings and character
I: 99 p.211 Genuine truth is the resolution of the highest contradiction
p.8 p.78 Art forms a bridge between the sensuous world and the world of pure thought
1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
III: 152 p.270 To universalise 'give everything to the poor' leads to absurdity
III: 208 p.265 Immortality does not come at a later time, but when pure knowing Spirit fully grasps the universal
1830 Lectures on the History of Philosophy
p.25 p.9 Philosophy is the conceptual essence of the shape of history
1837 Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History
Intro p.29 p.170 The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally
p.29 p.4 If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect
1840 Introduction to the Philosophy of History
p.122 Hegel inserted society and history between the God-world, man-nature, man-being binary pairs [Safranski]
2 p.13 We should all agree that there is reason in history
3 p.22 The goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness and enactment of freedom
3 p.23 The human race matters, and individuals have little importance
3 p.27 In a good state the goal of the citizens and of the whole state are united
3 p.29 World history has no room for happiness
3 p.43 The state of nature is one of untamed brutality
3 p.55 The soul of the people is an organisation of its members which produces an essential unity
1840 The Philosophy of History
p.324 p.253 Man is God if he raises himself, by denying his nature and finitude
p.98 p.187 State slavery is a phase of education, moving towards a full culture
p.99 p.187 Slavery is unjust, because humanity is essentially free