Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (
/ˈheɪɡəl/;
[11] German:
[ˈɡeːɔɐ̯k ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːɡəl]; August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German
philosopher and an important figure of
German idealism. He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the
continental tradition of philosophy, has become increasingly influential in the
analytic tradition as well.
[12] Although he remains a divisive figure, his canonical stature within
Western philosophy is universally recognized.
Hegel's principal achievement is his development of a distinctive articulation of
idealism sometimes termed "
absolute idealism",
[13] in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and
subject and
object are overcome. His philosophy of spirit conceptually integrates psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy. His account of the
master–slave dialectic has been highly influential, especially in 20th-century France.
[14] Of special importance is his concept of
spirit (
Geist: sometimes also translated as "mind") as the historical manifestation of the logical concept and the
"sublation" (
Aufhebung: integration without
elimination or reduction) of seemingly contradictory or opposing factors; examples include the apparent opposition between nature and
freedom and between
immanence and
transcendence. Hegel has been seen in the 20th century as the originator of the
thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad;
[15] however, as an explicit phrase, this originated with
Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
[16]
Hegel has influenced many thinkers and writers whose own positions vary widely.
[17] Karl Barth described Hegel as a "
Protestant Aquinas",
[18] while
Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that "All the great philosophical ideas of the past century—the philosophies of
Marx and
Nietzsche,
phenomenology, German
existentialism, and
psychoanalysis—had their beginnings in Hegel."
[19]
"thesis, antithesis, synthesis"; namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French Revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. theconstitutional state of free citizens). However, Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Fichte. It was spread by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus in accounts of Hegelian philosophy, and since then the terms have been used as descriptive of this type of framework.
The "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" approach gives the sense that things or ideas are contradicted or opposed by things that come from outside them. To the contrary, the fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. The triadic form that appears in many places in Hegel (e.g. being–nothingness–becoming, immediate–mediate–concrete, abstract–negative–concrete) is about this movement from inner contradiction to higher-level integration or unification.
For Hegel, reason is but "speculative", not "dialectical".
[56] Believing that the traditional description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of thesis–antithesis–synthesis was mistaken, a few scholars, like
Raya Dunayevskaya, have attempted to discard the triadic approach altogether. According to their argument, although Hegel refers to "the two elemental considerations: first, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for realising it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity" (thesis and antithesis) he doesn't use "synthesis" but instead speaks of the "Whole": "We then recognised the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements." Furthermore, in Hegel's language, the "dialectical" aspect or "moment" of thought and reality, by which things or thoughts turn into their opposites or have their inner contradictions brought to the surface, what he called "
Aufhebung", is only preliminary to the "speculative" (and not "synthesizing") aspect or "moment", which grasps the unity of these opposites or contradiction. It is widely admitted today that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of thesis–antithesis–synthesis is inaccurate. Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this misnomer that the model and terminology survive in a number of scholarly works.
[57]