32 ideas
| 19635 | Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is chiefly responsible for modern optimism. How could he have failed to see that consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by E.M. Cioran - A Short History of Decay 5 |
| 8215 | Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Jacques Derrida - Positions p.64 | |
| A reaction: Reference to 'the Book' connects this to the great religions which rely on one holy text. The implication is that Hegel was proposing one big solution to all problems. It is doubtful if many philosophers before Hegel dreamt of that either. |
| 2516 | Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, or at least one large part of it, is subsequent to science; it begins where science leaves off. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxi) | |
| A reaction: In some sense this has to be true. Without metaphysics there couldn't be any science. Rationalists should not forget, though, the huge impact which Darwin's science has (or should have) on fairly abstract philosophy (e.g. epistemology). |
| 2510 | Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of philosophy is that it is an a priori enquiry into the most general facts about reality. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xi) | |
| A reaction: I think this still defines philosophy, though it also highlights the weakness of the subject, which is over-confidence about asserting necessary truths. How could the most god-like areas of human thought be about anything else? |
| 16011 | Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is a Johannes Climacus who does not storm the heavens, like the giants, by putting mountain upon mountain, but climbs aboard them by way of his syllogisms. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Søren Kierkegaard - The Journals of Kierkegaard 2A | |
| A reaction: [Idea from SY] This appears to be an attempt at insulting Hegel for his timidity, but it seems to be describing the cautious approach which most modern philosophers take to be correct. [PG] |
| 5433 | For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: The basis of Hegel's system is that what is incomplete must not be self-subsistent, and needs the support of other things; whatever has relations to things outside itself must contain some reference to those outside things in its own nature. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: This leads to the idealist doctrine of 'internal relations'. It has some plausibility if you think about the physicist's definition of mass, which has to refer to forces etc. Presumably there is one essence for all of reality, instead of separate ones. |
| 3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In continental Europe it is widely believed that the metaphysical game was played out in Hegel. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Intro |
| 19661 | Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Hegel saw that the absolutization of the principle of sufficient reason (which marked the culmination of the belief in the necessity of what is) required the devaluation of the principle of non-contradiction. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812], 3) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 3 | |
| A reaction: I pass this on without understanding it, though a joint study of my collection of ideas on sufficient reason and non-contradiction might make it clear. [Let me know if you can explain it!] |
| 20952 | Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's 'dialectic' is often characterised in terms of the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is, however, not the way he presents it. The core of the dialectic is rather what Hegel terms the 'negation of the negation'. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this connects it to debates about intuitionist logic, which denies that double-negation necessarily makes a positive. Presumably Marx emphasised the first reading. |
| 21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the 'negation of negation' is negation that, as it were, doubles back on itself and 'relates itself to itself'. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 6 'Space' | |
| A reaction: [ref VNP 1823 p.108] Glad we've cleared that one up. |
| 2521 | 'Real' maths objects have no causal role, no determinate reference, and no abstract/concrete distinction [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Three objections to realism in philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects have no space/time location, and so no causal role; that such objects are determinate, but reference to numbers aren't; and that there is no abstract/concrete distinction. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxix) |
| 5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'. |
| 5646 | Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It would not be unfair to say that Hegel's metaphysics consists of an ontological proof of the existence of everything. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is so gloriously far from David Hume that we must all find some appeal in it. The next question would be whether necessary existence has been proved. If so, given death, decay and entropy, what is it that has to exist? 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? |
| 8507 | Some think of reality as made of things; I prefer facts or states of affairs [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers (like Devitt) think of reality as made up of things. Others, like me, think of it as made up of facts or states of affairs. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §3) | |
| A reaction: Devitt is a follower of Quine on this. Personally I rather like 'processes'. Unanalysed things with predication (Quine) don't look promising. I currently favour things with active powers, which give rise to properties. See Shoemaker and Ellis. |
| 21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed, eternal forms that remain unchanged throughout history, but are concepts that alter their meaning in history. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This results from a critique of Kant's rather rigid view of categories. This idea is very influential, and certainly counts among Hegel's better ideas. |
| 21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts. |
| 22079 | Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's disagreement with Kant is that categories are not unambiguously universal forms of human understanding, but are conceived in subtly different ways in different cultures and in different historical epochs. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95 | |
| A reaction: This may be Hegel's most influential idea. Though he hoped that categories would contain truth, by arising untrammelled from reason, and thereby matching reality. His successors seem to have given up on that hope, and settled for relativism. |
| 8506 | Particulars and properties are distinguishable, but too close to speak of a relation [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: I favour the Realist view that while we can distinguish the particularity of a particular from its properties, but the two 'factors' are too intimately together to speak of a relation between them. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §3) | |
| A reaction: Is Armstrong being a bit of an ostrich here? We could talk of part-whole relationships, or internal relations, or set membership, or coinciding objects, or bundles. We certainly ought to have a go. Armstrong approaches Quine here! |
| 8505 | Refusal to explain why different tokens are of the same type is to be an ostrich [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: A philosophical account of a general sort is required of what it is for different tokens to be of the same type. To refuse to give such an account is to be a metaphysical ostrich. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Against 'Ostrich Nominalism' [1980], §1) | |
| A reaction: This defines Ostrich Nominalism (a label Armstrong aims at Quine). I certainly sympathise with Armstrong. If there is no more to a class (a type) than just having members (tokens), nothing is explain. What is natural, essential, intensional etc.? |
| 9225 | Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is reputed to have claimed to have deduced on a priori grounds that the number of planets is exactly five. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Hartry Field - Recent Debates on the A Priori 1 | |
| A reaction: Even if this is a wicked travesty of Hegel, it will do nicely to represent the extremes of claims to a priori synthetic knowledge. Field doesn't offer any evidence. I would love it to be true. |
| 2513 | We don't have a clear enough sense of meaning to pronounce some sentences meaningless or just analytic [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic meaning is not rich enough to show either that all metaphysical sentences are meaningless or that all alleged synthetic a priori propositions are just analytic a priori propositions. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xx) |
| 2522 | Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The Leibniz-Kant criticism of empiricism is that experience cannot teach us why mathematical and logical facts couldn't be otherwise than they are. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxxi) |
| 2517 | Structuralists see meaning behaviouristically, and Chomsky says nothing about it [Katz] |
| Full Idea: In linguistics there are two schools of thought: Bloomfieldian structuralism (favoured by Quine) conceives of sentences acoustically and meanings behaviouristically; and Chomskian generative grammar (which is silent about semantics). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxiv) | |
| A reaction: They both appear to be wrong, so there is (or was) something rotten in the state of linguistics. Are the only options for meaning either behaviourist or eliminativist? |
| 2519 | It is generally accepted that sense is defined as the determiner of reference [Katz] |
| Full Idea: There is virtually universal acceptance of Frege's definition of sense as the determiner of reference. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: Not any more, since Kripke and Putnam. It is one thing to say sense determines reference, and quite another to say that this is the definition of sense. |
| 2520 | Sense determines meaning and synonymy, not referential properties like denotation and truth [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Pace Frege, sense determines sense properties and relations, like meaningfulness and synonymy, rather than determining referential properties, like denotation and truth. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: This leaves room for Fregean 'sense', after Kripke has demolished the idea that sense determines reference. |
| 2518 | Sentences are abstract types (like musical scores), not individual tokens [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are types, not utterance tokens or mental/neural tokens, and hence sentences are abstract objects (like musical scores). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: If sentences are abstract types, then two verbally indistinguishable sentences are the same sentence. But if I say 'I am happy', that isn't the same as you saying it. |
| 21758 | Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the absolute truth of humanity is that human beings have no fixed, given identity, but rather determine and produce their own identity and their world in history, and that they gradually come to the recognition of this fact in history. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This quintessentially existentialist idea, most obvious in Sartre, seems to have originated with this view of Hegel's. |
| 20414 | Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| Full Idea: We may take Hegel's Absolute Spirit to be the union of collective, human rational activity at a historical moment with its proper object, the forms of social and individual life that the rational activity is devoted to understanding and sustaining. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: From this formulation it sounds as if the whole human race might have momentary union, but presumably it is more local 'peoples' that can exhibit this. |
| 3909 | Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, society cannot be founded on a contract, since contracts have no reality until society is in place. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 28.2 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and reminiscent of the private language argument, but contracts surely start as deals between individuals (on a desert island?). |
| 4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]), quoted by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Sounds good, though I'm not sure what it means. The application of the word 'natural' seems a bit arbitrary to me. No objective joint exists between the natural and unnatural. The default position has to be that everything is natural. |
| 4188 | Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Arthur Schopenhauer - Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' Ch.II | |
| A reaction: All massive a priori metaphysics is summed up in this argument, which is right at the core of philosophy. |
| 6686 | Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham] |
| Full Idea: Hegel claimed that his philosophy was nothing less than an encyclopaedic rationalisation of the Christian religion. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Why did he pick Christianity to rationalise? How can you reason properly if you start with a dogma? |