Talk:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Hegel's Absolute

There is a bit here quoting Nietzsche's criticism of Hegel's idea of the Absolute, but no section about what Hegel's view of the Absolute actually is. Could this problem with a very interesting article be rectified? Fledgeaaron (talk) 15:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Be bold and add the info you believe belongs in the article. That is how the article becomes better, individual editors, such as yourself, identifies a deficiency in the article, finds sources for the intended change and chnges the article, with sources. If you insert new info without sources, the info may be tagged as needing sources or might be removed as unsourced. Good luck Jons63 (talk) 15:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are looking for clarification, you came to the wrong place. Hegel's philosophy is obscurity par excellence, and proud of it. Remember, he claimed that the Owl of Minerva flies at night (in the dark).Lestrade (talk) 00:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Whim

In the main article, nothing is said about the fact that Hegel changed 8 to 16 on whim in his 1800 effort. The same effort is not worth reading, whether it bans the discovery of Ceres or not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.242.167 (talk) 13:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC) Professor Neuser says "Spectral analysis ... was unknown at the time." Even with modern spectroscopic evidence, there is still doubt as to whether Chiron is a minor planet or a comet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.174.243 (talk) 12:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC) Neuser made the remark to try and minimise the way Ceres discredited Hegel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.4.21 (talk) 09:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC) Gauss made remarks similar to those of 86.141.242.167.His remarks are quoted in the main article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.4.21 (talk) 10:36, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Balance section

The "Balance" section boldly claims to have found the reasons why so many well–known philosophers opposed Hegel. Several dogmatic and categorical statements are made without reference to published literature. It's a Hegelian synthesis that tries to neatly resolve the negative judgments that have been made against Hegel by renowned thinkers.Lestrade (talk) 01:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Yeah, it seems rather biased, and has no citation. Perhaps additional information on Professor Jon Stewart's work would improve it? 163.1.162.20 (talk) 00:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points. Using Fries as a critic of Hegel may not be a good idea, a case actually of praising by faint damns. Though Fries and Hegel apparently had a case of hate at first sight - they were schoolmates - there is more. The article on Fries goes easy on him. Apparently he was the first person in modern German history to propose the extermination of the Jews. Hegel wrote articles against his proposals, saying things perhaps not in the modern PC manner, but making points like Jews are human beings, and we should not exterminate innocent human beings. Who would not support the Prussian state to the extent it was the bulwark against such ideas? My knowledge of this comes from a book by Walter Kaufmann I don't have at hand. Second, the Stewart book is not by him, but a collection of essays by many scholars; it is available in part from Google Books, here is the table of contents.John Z (talk) 11:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you are referring to Kaufmann's article which also appears in Stewart's collection? trespassers william (talk) 15:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Works, works, and works

This article now has three "works" sections listed in its table of contents. #9 is now just a reference, so the reference should be moved to the beginning of #2. #7 could be removed and incorporated into the separate Hegel's Works article that was just created. (Shouldn't that be Hegel's works?) I hesitate to do any of this myself, however, because I don't want to spend time on the endless petty squabbles arising from this page, and of course it needs a lot more help than this minor suggestion. Franklin Dmitryev (talk) 13:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Accurate?

Is it accurate to say that similar to Kant, Hegel believed the knowable world was knowable because its structure was identical to the structure of the mind, but that unlike Kant, Hegel believed the knowable world was all-encompassing, that there were no "things in themselves" that stood outside of it, and that this is what is meant by absolute idealism? --Le vin blanc (talk) 20:12, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

A minor point about the criticism section

First time on Wikipedia. In the criticism section Wittgenstein is listed as a critic of Hegel. I am almost certain this is not the case. I cannot recall a single reference to Hegel in either the Tractatus or the Investigations, nor in any of the other posthumous writings. I can recall an incident in Ray Monk's biography when Wittgenstein met a russian philosopher who told him to "read more Hegel". The forthright/blunt nature of this advice is supposed to have impressed Wittgenstein, though there is no mention of him ever following it. Unless someone can point to an instance of Wittgenstein actually criticising Hegel (or even mentioning him) I suggest he should be removed from the list of critics. An easy change to make. I would do it myself except that I am new at this and incompetent to do so . . . Toonysoprano (talk) 23:37, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Category discussion

A discussion is occurring regarding changing the name of Category: Georg Hegel. Here. Please lend your voice. — goethean ॐ 00:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Pick one

The "Works" section refers to "the Phenomenology of Spirit (or Phenomenology of Mind)." You would think that, by now, we would know which concept was designated by the word "Geist." Its been many years since Hegel wrote this book. As one of the most important works in the world's philosophical history, we should not be denied knowledge of the correct meaning: Is "Geist" a spirit or is it a mind? Admittedly, both are not detectable through the senses. This makes it slightly difficult to avoid saying more than we know.Lestrade (talk) 04:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

I disagree. The German word Geist can mean both, and both are essential to really understand the idea. Different translations of the Phenomenology into English use different titles--the Baillie translation uses mind, and the Miller translation uses spirit. Both are somewhat common, and it's not really up to Wikipedia to pick one.

I'm a little unclear about what you're suggesting. I don't think a parenthetical about an alternate title is confusing at all. If you think translators should pick one, go tell that to Miller or somebody. If you're concerned that scholars have not yet resolved the problem of how to choose the better English translation, consider that distinguishing mind and spirit linguistically prioritizes a certain set of determinations--religious or spiritual versus secular--at the expense of others that suggest identity--related to ideas, for instance. It's not really a big deal--personally, I like mind better, because it avoids implying the least refined version of the argument that Hegel is quasi-mystical nonsense.69.94.192.147 (talk) 04:36, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little unclear about what you're suggesting. I guess that there is no point in trying to have the Wikipedia article on Hegel employ non–ambiguous words. After all, readers are not really looking for information. Distinct linguistic priorities are so limiting. It's not really a big deal--personally, I like spirit better, because it is the thesis of the argument that Hegel was an absolute idealist. There must be a synthesis to the antithesis.Lestrade (talk) 04:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Lestrade, is there anything that we could do to get you to stop trolling this page? — goethean ॐ 19:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The complaint is really with the German language, not Hegel or edits here, should he have written in English? As 69... seems to note, insisting that there is an ambiguity in German is a philosophical position itself. Hard to see how the informative choice of both in the article could be improved, or how this has to do with improving the article.John Z (talk) 20:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Ambiguity is usually resolved by appealing to context. Is there anyone who has read this book and knows the correct translation of "Geist" by the context in which it is used?Lestrade (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

No, context will not do it. Hegel seems to intentionally be utilizing the ambiguity of the term Geist to mean "mind," "soul" and even "spirit" in the sense that we often talk about "team spirit" or the collective identity and enthusiasm of a community. The Phenomenology of Spirit should be translated as "spirit" but not because Hegel didn't mean mind, rather because Spirit is ambiguous enough to capture most of his meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.209.232.213 (talk) 06:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Wwmargera's additions

User:Wwmargera is edit warring over his addition of unsourced and unhelpful material to this article. [1][2]. His additions should be reverted. — goethean ॐ 14:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The material that was unsourced earlier had been sourced before Goethean made this claim here. Schopenhauer's quote and Hegel's statements were sourced to begin with. The only other change was to ask for citation for a blatantly POV piece of text. It is obvious who is edit warring here. Wwmargera (talk) 14:26, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing includes information like page number and publication edition, not merely the title of a book. Please see WP:V. Thanks. — goethean ॐ 17:08, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I notice that you do not ask for all these details elsewhere. However, the page numbers, etc. are quite easy to find and I have put them in. Wwmargera (talk) 18:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Each of User:Wwmargera's edits constitute WP:OR and should be removed. — goethean ॐ 18:23, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Each of those statements is well-known and easily verified. Wwmargera (talk) 18:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You have claimed that Hegel is a racist and a sexist, not based on the writings of any Hegel scholar, but based on quotatons from Hegel. That is a perfect example of WP:OR. Your edit should be removed immediately. — goethean ॐ 18:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It is well known that Hegel was both a racist and a sexist. I have added more secondary sources for this to sink in. Wwmargera (talk) 19:16, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Now you are willfully lying. Kaufmann's complete sentence is: [3]

Popper’s most ridiculous claim — and the last one to be considered here — is that the Nazis got their racism from Hegel. In fact, the Nazis did not get their racism from Hegel, and Hegel was no racist (see section 5 above).

My bad, the source I used did not clarify if Kaufmann was himself saying this or if he was quoting Popper. No problem, if Popper himself said it this is all the better Wwmargera (talk) 19:16, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Please stop trying to deceive our readers. — goethean ॐ 19:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Please stop trying to cover up your idol's faults Wwmargera (talk) 19:16, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I welcome the addition of sources that argue against Hegel being racist/sexist/obscurantist/etc, but why sweep these issues under the carpet? It is obvious that these criticisms of Hegel have been made. Wwmargera (talk) 19:36, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:WEIGHT this is an article about Hegel, it is legitimate to include criticisms but not at this level. Goethean you are being agressive (remember you made undertakings about this elsewhere), Wwmargera suggesting that another editor is trying to cover up his idol's faults is not addressing content issue its attacking another editor. Would you both stop and lets have a sensible discussion about this. --Snowded ^TALK 20:36, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Wwmargera has quoted a source (Kaufmann) as saying the exact opposite of what the source says. Kaufmann said:

"Popper’s most ridiculous claim — and the last one to be considered here — is that the Nazis got their racism from Hegel. In fact, the Nazis did not get their racism from Hegel, and Hegel was no racist. "[4]

In the article, Kaufmann is currently quoted as saying:

"the Nazis got their racism from Hegel"

This is misleading and should be removed immediately. — goethean ॐ 20:42, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Since you had pointed this out to me, I had changed this to show that Kauffman was paraphrasing Popper, whose words they were. Please check your statements Wwmargera (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

The amount of material in the criticism section here seems excessive (and has just become more so) compared with other philosophers of equal repute. How about we reduce it to a summary without the multiple quotes and section headings? --Snowded ^TALK 19:45, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The criticism of Hegel comes about as a natural consequence of the fact that he really did come in for heavy criticism, which in turn had to do with the fact he was a perverse fraud whose worship of statist authority led almost directly to most of the worst crimes against humanity since his time, from marxism to fascism. However, this is merely my personal opinion and I can see that there is already plenty of criticism on his article and anyone who wishes to explore the matter further on his/her own can easily see through the obnoxious mendacity of this perverse charlatan. Thus I do not object to this removal by you. Wwmargera (talk) 20:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

All philosophers attract criticism, some legitimate, some fails to take account of context. Do I gather that you will have no objection if I summarise the various cited criticisms into a paragraph or two which would balance with the articles on other such figures? --Snowded ^TALK 20:50, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

That is correct, I have no objection. Wwmargera (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources?

≥≥≥Religion

Hegel's thoughts on the person of Jesus Christ stood out from the theologies of the Enlightenment. In his posthumous book, The Christian Religion: Lectures on Philosophy of Religion Part 3, he espouses that, "God is not an abstraction but a concrete God." "God, considered in terms of his eternal Idea, has to generate the Son, has to distinguish himself from himself; he is the process of differentiating, namely, love and Spirit". This means that Jesus as the Son of God is posited by God over against himself as other. Hegel sees both a relational unity and a metaphysical unity between Jesus and God the Father. To Hegel, Jesus is both divine and Human. Preceding the 'death-of-God' theologians, Hegel further attests that God (as Jesus) not only died, but "...rather, a reversal takes place: God, that is to say, maintains himself in the process, and the latter is only the death of death. God rises again to life, and thus things are reversed." Hegel therefore maintains not only the deity of Jesus, but the resurrection as a reality.≤≤≤ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.237.179.136 (talk) 23:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

A full four-word name in an article title is against the standard practice of Wikipedia

Wikipedia articles use short versions of complex German names in the titles. Hegel is not a deity and should not be treated in an obsequious manner. Even Germans themselves call him "der grosse Wilhelm Hegel"[5] and do not stoop to cloying servility. In many respectable scholarly sources, the philosopher is named as "Wilhelm Hegel." See those links:

• http://books.google.com/books?id=nwNqAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=1KlDAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=AzVdAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=TYfUAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=4fE9AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=5qwHAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=5ecPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=Bioqi_f0uwsC&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://books.google.com/books?id=pRBdAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22
• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22Wilhelm+Hegel%22+-Georg+-Friedrich+-%22George+Wilhelm%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

That is why this article should be moved to Wilhelm Hegel. Antichristos (talk) 10:30, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive and inappropriate moves. Most philosophers refer to Hegel either as "Hegel" or "G.W.F.Hegel". It has nothing to do with Hegel not being a deity. It has to with what his name is and what he is called. The above links prove nothing, as it would be a simple matter to provide many times as many links which call Hegel by other names. If you provide a reliable source which explicitly says that Hegel is not referred to as "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel", then you will have something worth discussing. Until then, please stop now. — goethean ॐ 15:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

You have not understood the reason of the proposed move. Most educated Germans featured in Wikipedia have multiple forenames. However, all but one of a person's multiple forenames are omitted in article titles. For example, the full name of another German philosopher is Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach. But the title of the Wikipedia article is Ludwig Feuerbach. Do you understand now? It is a matter of Wikipedia's internal consistency. So, please stop your disruptive actions and read about German forenames instead: German_name#Forenames. Antichristos (talk) 16:31, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Google Scholar hits:

• [6] Hegel = 451,000
• [7] "G. W. F. Hegel" = 20,000
• [8] "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel" = 9280
• [9] "Georg Hegel" = 3430
• [10] "Wilhelm Hegel" 1050. — goethean ॐ 17:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

see also. — goethean ॐ 17:04, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Read the guidelines for choosing the article title (Wikipedia:COMMONNAME#Deciding_on_an_article_title):

• Conciseness – shorter titles are generally preferred to longer ones.
• Consistency – titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles are generally preferred. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principal criteria above. Antichristos (talk) 17:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

We usually try to name biographical articles after the subject's name. Hegel's name is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Deal. — goethean ॐ 17:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The full name of another prominent philosopher is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. But the article is named as Friedrich Nietzsche. The article about Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein is named as Ludwig Wittgenstein; about Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler, as Oswald Spengler. Brevity and consistency. Antichristos (talk) 17:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Articles should be named after how people are usually referred to. Accuracy. — goethean ॐ 18:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

According to your own statistics, the incorrect "Georg Hegel" is used thrice more often than the correct "Wilhelm Hegel." Wikipedia is supposed to enlighten people and not to copy and proliferate their errors. Negentropy (useful information) is inversely proportional to volume. So, do not seek the truth in the googled numerical volume of its adherents—it is not there. Antichristos (talk) 18:37, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of the best solution for this article you should observe WP:BRD. After your move was reverted you should have waiting for consensus before moving it again. --Snowded ^TALK 18:56, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Workses

This article has two sections headed "Works". I propose that tne first of these be changed to "Books and other works" and the second be changed to "Partial list of works". Objections? Better ideas? Jo3sampl (talk) 22:51, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Goethean -- Jo3sampl (talk) 01:09, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Works, Difficulty, and the French Revolution

Several years ago, I added a good part of the paragraph in the Works sections that discusses the difficulty of reading Hegel (starting, currently, "Hegel's works have a reputation for their difficulty . . ."). I can't prove it was me, but that's not my concern.

I contributed the part about the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and while I think I was on the right track in general, I'm actually not sure this section is up to the standards of the entry as a whole. I'm just an armchair philosopher, and I'd fully expected that someone more knowledgeable about Hegel would have, by now, replaced the majority of the paragraph with something of greater philosophical depth and/or historical accuracy.

While I'm honored and humbled at the fact that most of what I wrote is still there, I feel compelled to call out this paragraph as something that either needs to be removed or is is need of serious review/editing by professional philosophers. If I somehow hit the nail on the head despite myself, so be it -- but I can't let the paragraph in question stand without raising the concerns I've just tried to express.

Treepour (talk) 05:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Rather than waiting for a pro to come along, the section can be improved by the addition of citations to reliable sources. And honestly? I haven't been that impressed with the work of those who claim to be pros. — goethean ॐ 14:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

um why don't you just cite some of schopenhauer's tracts about hegel. that should elucidate the obtuse matters of truly investigating the dialectics of the hegelian class. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.216.66.15 (talk) 00:51, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

christian philosophers

a. Here is a bit of philosophizing about christianity right there in your quote. But it's the tip of the iceberg. Have you read the article by Kainz? It is not very long and expands on Hegel's rational viewpoint in his constant theological undertakings.

b. You misinterpreted and misquoted the sentence from Britannica (Thank you very much for the site!). "Rligious rationalism", isn't meant as skeptical rationalism vs. religion, but as a kind of affirmation of core religious ideas by means of pure thought, with a critique of some institutions. The same source also writes "In such a flux of ideas, with the Protestant tradition seemingly under attack from Protestants, there was naturally a wide variety of approaches, both in philosophy and history. There was an opinion, represented by the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), that Christianity should be restated as a form of Idealistic philosophy. This view was influential for a time in Germany and afterward among Oxford philosophers of later Victorian England. Such restatements were subjected to destructive attacks, of which the most powerful were published by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, chiefly because such reasoned philosophy failed altogether to account for the depths and tragedies of human existence." http://www.uv.es/EBRIT/macro/macro_5005_31_43.html#460WJ

c. Saying things were halfway was kind of his thing. It doesn't mean he wasn't taking them seriously, though.

d. In the Britannica piece on Hegel,

"It is impossible to exaggerate the importance that this problem had for Hegel. It is true that his early theological writings contain hard sayings about Christianity and the churches; but the object of his attack was orthodoxy, not theology itself. All that he wrote at this period throbs with a religious conviction of a kind that is totally absent from Kant and Hegel's other 18th-century teachers. Above all, he was inspired by a doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of man, his reason, is the candle of the Lord, he held, and therefore cannot be subject to the limitations that Kant had imposed upon it. This faith in reason, with its religious basis, henceforth animated the whole of Hegel's work."

"He accepted the chair at Heidelberg. For use at his lectures there, he published his Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1817; "Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline"), an exposition of his system as a whole. Hegel's philosophy is an attempt to comprehend the entire universe as a systematic whole. The system is grounded in faith. In the Christian religion God has been revealed as truth and as spirit. As spirit, man can receive this revelation. In religion the truth is veiled in imagery; but in philosophy the veil is torn aside, so that man can know the infinite and see all things in God."

"The lectures on the philosophy of religion are another application of his method, and shortly before his death he had prepared for the press a course of lectures on the proofs for the existence of God. On the one hand, he turned his weapons against the Rationalistic school, which reduced religion to the modicum compatible with an ordinary worldly mind. On the other hand, he criticized the school of Schleiermacher, who elevated feeling to a place in religion above systematic theology. In his middle way, Hegel attempted to show that the dogmatic creed is the rational development of what was implicit in religious feeling. To do so, of course, philosophy must be made the interpreter and the superior discipline."

are just samples. trespassers william (talk) 21:41, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Intellectual influences (and beneficiaries)

Scientific racialism

Racial studies

Hegel's philosophy of history was explicitly biased towards Europe, especially the Prussian state, conceived as the ultimate historical achievement, i.e. the End of History. In his chapter on the "Geographical Foundings of Universal History" Hegel said that "each People represented a particular degree of the development of the Spirit", thus forming a "nation"; however, that nationalism is not based upon racial (physical) particularities, rather it concerns the historico–geographic site where the Geister unfold. Informed by Montesquieu's theory of climatologic influence upon cultural mores and law Hegel developed in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), contrasting historical peoples with ahistoric savages:

It is true that climate has influence, in that sense that neither the warm zone, nor the cold zone, are favourable to the liberty of man, and to the apparition of historical peoples.Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1828–1830, Chapter IV, Natural Conditions—The Geographical Foundings of Universal History; 1, General Definitions; A. Natural Conditioning, §5.

Unsurprisingly, Hegel thus favoured the Geist in temperate zones, and finally wrote an account of "universal history" chronicling the Oriental World, the Greek Antiquity, the Roman, the Christian World, and the Prussian World.Hegel, ibid., Chapter V</ref> In the same Lectures he said that "America is the country of the future", yet "philosophy does not concern itself with prophecies", but with history.Hegel, ibid., IV, 2, The New World, 4 (1 is the Introduction) "North America and its Destiny," excipit</ref> Hegel’s philosophy, like that of Kant, cannot be reduced to evolutionist statements, nevertheless, it justified European imperialism until the First World War (1914–18). Likewise, some of Montesquieu’s œuvre justified "scientifically-ground" Negro inferiority consequent to the climate’s influence.

Hegel declared that:

Africa is no historical part of the world." Hegel further claimed that blacks had no "sense of personality; their spirit sleeps, remains sunk in itself, makes no advance, and thus parallels the compact, undifferentiated mass of the African continent.On Blackness Without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany, Boston: C.W. Hall, 1982, p. 94

Hegel was an advocate of the Asia hypothesis, he claimed the history of the whole world began in Asia, he claimed that no historical evolution had ever occured in Africa.General history of Africa: Methology and African pre-history p. 272

The linguistic basis of the Asia hypothesis developed from the work of the British philologist Sir William Jones who founded the Asiatic Society. Jones published a number of papers claiming that many of the languages around the world can be traced back to Asia. Hegel praised the work of Jones and said it was “the discovery of a new world”.Race and manifest destiny: The origins of racial Anglo-Saxonism, Reginald Horseman p. 33

Any reason this was all deleted? Its well sourced that Hegel had strong links to scientific racialism. Earthisalive (talk) 22:30, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

(1) Politically incorrrect; (2) Inconsistent with academic Hegel–worship.Lestrade (talk) 02:34, 12 September 2012 (UTC)Lestrade

Beneficiaries/critics of Hegel's thought

I've added Gadamer. I noticed that another user added 'Gadamer' some days back, an edit that was subsequently reversed. With respect, I'm not quite sure why; as the twentieth century's most important advocate of philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer was both an important interpreter and (especially in Part III of his magnum opus Truth and Method) an acknowledged beneficiary of Hegel's brand of 'speculative' thought. Despite having taken the Hegelian legacy in quite a different direction to the list's other constituents, he well and truly deserves his place there. In a similar vein, I've also included Wilhelm Dilthey on account of his (explicit) reception and appropriation of the Hegelian notion of 'Geist' in respect of a society's pervasive 'Zeitgeist', such as must be reconstructed through the hermeneutical process. It seems to run counter to the concept of a list of 'admirers and detractors' to keep it canonical, as if to say: "these are the admirers"; and "these are the detractors". --Rmc56 (talk) 14:29, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but I noticed a very strange sentence in the article: "Hegel began to write in an obscure, esoteric, unintelligible manner after Fichte was removed from his professorship at Jena. Fichte had been accused of writing atheistic philosophy." 1) It is either biased or incorrect (one either believes that Hegel always wrote unintelligibly, or that he almost always wrote intelligibly, and nothing changed when Fichte was removed...) 2) Fichte being accused is completely beside the point here. The whole sentence is some kind of weird mistake. magneez 15 December 2012 —Preceding undated comment added 15:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

--108.181.146.182 (talk) 00:37, 9 March 2013 (UTC)== max planck was also a critic of hegel i believe ==

max planck was also a critic of hegel i believe

Precursor to Marxism

On the lead it says he was precursor to Marxism. But I see nothing speaking about this through the article. According to guidelines the lede must summarize the article. If that excerpt is present somewhere, can someone point me out where it is, please? GreyWinterOwl (talk) 15:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Your point is well taken. I have added two paragraphs under the "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis" heading that show how Marx borrows from Hegel. I could have added that Marx, like Hegel, provided a dialectical interpretation of history. However, this would have further lengthened an already long section of the article.Atticusattor (talk) 22:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The two paragraphs I added on December 6 to demonstrate Hegel's influence on Marx were deleted on December 8 by Gothean, who left this explanation: "Undid good faith edit by Atticusattor (talk). This Marx-related material is inappropriate to the Hegel article." The deleted material showed that (1) Marx explicitly praised Hegel ("that mighty thinker") and approved Hegel's general concept (but not his specific applications) of thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics and (2) Marx in his own dialectics used Hegel's pattern of a two-concept thesis, a two-concept antithesis, and a two-concept synthesis that truly synthesizes (combines) by borrowing one concept from the thesis and one from the antithesis. If anyone wants more detailed information on Hegel's influence on Marx, it can be found in the first three chapters of Robert Tucker's book Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). The chapter titles are (I) "The Self as God in German Philosophy," (II) "History as God's Self-Realization," and (III) "The Dialectic of Aggrandizement." In his Introduction, Tucker also mentions that Marx adopted Hegel's version of atheism, in which "God" is treated as a synonym for man: "Marx's atheism . . . meant only the negation of the transmundane God of traditional western religion" and "was merely a way of asserting that 'man' should be regarded as the supreme being" (p. 22). Tucker also endorses the deleted material's demonstration that Marx's chief dialectic follows the Hegelian separation-and-return pattern (adopted by Hegel from the gospel of John) in which the synthesis separates from and returns to something in the thesis, separating from and returning to communism in Marx's case: "Communism lost and communism regained -- such is the plot of [Marxian] world history" (23).Atticusattor (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Students of Hegel do not use the term "dialectics", and the deletion of the entirely irrelevant material on Marx was inevitable. – Herzen (talk) 00:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The deletion of this interesting and fascinating material was a necessary stage in the evolution of the article. But can't we salvage it through some sort of Aufhebung?173.72.63.150 (talk) 02:14, 9 December 2013 (UTC)The Honourable Ronald Adair

I am replying here to Herzen, not to Adair. Where did you get that idea? Some students of Hegel (e.g., McTaggart, Findlay, Taylor, Singer, James) do use the term "dialectic," and they use it to refer to incorrect examples of thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics from Logic, where there really are no dialectics. (The dialectics are in Phenomenology and Philosophy of History.) Other "students" misuse "dialectics" to refer to all sorts of things that really are not dialectics. Hintakka counted more than 20 different meanings given to dialectics in a symposium on Hegel. Most commonly, authors misuse "dialectic" to refer to whatever passage of Phenomenology they are discussing. But what the students do or don't do isn't particularly relevant, because most of them don't know what they're talking about. What is relevant is what Hegel says in his preface to Phenomenology: "Kant rediscovered this triadic form [dialectics] by instinct, but in his work it was still lifeless and uncomprehended; since then [since Kant] it has, however been raised to its absolute significance [by Hegel, and maybe Fichte and Schelling too], and with it the true form [not just a Kantian table] . . . has been presented, so that the notion of Science has emerged." (Miller translation, para. 50) It doesn't take much reading between the lines to grasp what Hegel is saying. He is saying that Phenomenology uses dialectics and that dialectics is so wonderful that it can be called a Science, which Hegel emphasizes by spelling Science with a capital S. In paragraphs 800 and 805 and 808 (in the penultimate sentence of the book), Hegel again refers to this "Science" in describing Spirit's self-realization, where Spirit becomes Absolute Spirit.Atticusattor (talk) 17:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

which Hegel emphasizes by spelling Science with a capital S

That would be a neat trick since in German all nouns are capitalized. — goethean 22:40, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Hegel used a capital "W." He wrote in German and always used the word "Wissenschaft" instead of the English word "Science."173.72.63.150 (talk) 00:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)The Honourable Ronald Adair

Atheist? Deist? Which is it?

So I'm trying to research Hegel and I keep seeing the article change! Is he an atheist or a deist? A Christian? Voodoo practitioner? Which is it?!? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.154.42 (talk) 20:36, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

An editor is adding the deist information to the article. The editor has not provided any citations to back up his claims. Another editor has provided some quotations from Hegel scholars to back up his claims that Hegel was an atheist.

The fact is that Hegel's philosophy is too complicated to accurately put him in either category. He envisioned history as a succession of the appearances (or phenomena) of the whole or The Absolute, which he called geist (German for spirit or mind). To call this philosophy "deism" is completely wrong in my opinion. — goethean 20:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not just your opinion. Deism was a predominantly French movement that made its way into anglophone countries to a certain extent but not into Germany. So it's not just Hegel who wasn't a deist: I don't know of any Germans who were deists. (Goethe, for example was a pantheist, like Wordsworth was, I believe.)

Hegel was certainly an atheist, but he was also an influential Christian thinker. Also, he could consider himself in good conscience to be a Lutheran, since he simply made a philosophical interpretation or rational reconstruction of Christianity, from a specifically Lutheran point of view. This is why he should be considered to be a Christian for the purposes of this article. In his view, Christian believers have a better grasp of reality than liberal, empiricist atheists. Christians understand on a symbolic, intuitive level what he worked out in his philosophy; empiricist philosophers don't understand it at any level. As you say, his stance towards religion (which for Hegel means Protestant Christianity, which is the most highly developed religion) is complicated, and is very hard for someone who has only been exposed to (the predominantly fundamentalist) Christianity of today or to "vulgar" New Atheism to understand. – Herzen (talk) 02:50, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it is not justifiable to just call Hegel an atheist (or a deist) and leave it at that. For such a bare claim to be stated in Wikipedia, this would have to be the (near) uniform judgment of reliable sources, and it just is not. And with respect to the sources quoted, their idea of theism and atheism might not be Hegel's, or early thinkers'. One can find a colossal number of quotes from him, including ones remembered by contemporaries that he would have no reason to dissemble to that contradict atheism. Indeed to Hegel "God alone is real, God alone is true" (from memory, such a statement appears both in his works and in conversation with Heine (?).) If one wrongly wants to pigeonhole this least pigeonholeable of thinkers with a religious ism, (His philosophy has been called "anti-ism"-ism - in The Accessible Hegel IIRC) Panentheism is probably the best, and sourceable. Basically, I agree with Goethean's statement above.John Z (talk) 20:19, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Do we want to undo the changes which User:Atticusattor/141.156.50.42/141.156.47.161 has made the the article? page history This would be going back to the 25 August 2013‎ version of the article. — goethean 20:20, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I must say that I have not read the article for quite some time (as opposed to monitoring revisions), but glancing at Atticusattor's changes, I did not see anything glaringly awful. If you have problems with them, I suggest that you start a new Talk section, and hopefully he will chime in. – Herzen (talk) 20:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I now looked at Atticusattor's changes a little more closely: this is probably one you don't like. But Atticusattor is expressing a respectable point of view there (although the Hegel exegetes he quotes are not as charitable and sympathetic to Hegel as I would like). I think it's clear that Atticusattor is making positive contributions to the article and—to use that WP cliché—acting in good faith, so that outright reverts of his revisions are uncalled for. However, discussion about Hegel's attitude toward religious (i.e., Christian) belief can continue here, and people should feel free to make edits to Atticusattor's edits (as I did when I scrubbed the "indoctrinated in Lutheranism" bit, which Atticusattor apparently wrote). — Herzen (talk) 21:15, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised to learn that "indoctrinated in Lutheranism" is an issue. Hegel always claimed to be a Lutheran (he was equivocating: saying one thing and meaning another), and he was raised as a Lutheran. According to Terry Pinkard's Hegel: A biography, "generations of Hegels had been pastors at Wurttenberg [Hegel's home town]," and "Hegel's parents were thus the kind of people who were tied into the traditional order of Wurttemberg and, no doubt, as Protestants, also disdainful of the impertinence of their Catholic ruler." (pp. 3,7) Also, "Hegel was descended from a long line of prominent Protestant reformers." (p. 7) And "it seems that quite early in his life he or his parents (very likely his mother) decided that he was to study theology." (p. 8) Hegel attended the Gymnasium Illustre, where "more than fifty percent of the graduates went on to pursue careers that involved theological studies." (p. 8) Later, at the Protestant seminary at Tubingen, Hegel "attempted . . . to shift over to the study of law," but "his father, however, refused to let him make the switch" (p.28) -- evidence that Hegel's father was as interested as his mother in directing Hegel into a theological career. Atticusattor (talk) 19:49, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

That Hegel's parents wanted him to study theology is besides the point. I think it's fair to say that "indoctrinate" today has a fairly pejorative meaning. (I just looked it up in the OED, and this only seems to have happened in the 20th century.) Thus, the Compact OED defines indoctrinate as "cause to accept a set of beliefs uncritically through repeated instruction. (It characterizes the second meaning, "teach or instruct", as archaic.) Thus, I think that the implication is that one can only be indoctrinated into something that is false. If the belief system in question is true, then it's really not a proper use of the word to say that one gets "indoctrinated" into it. This is why I found your phrase "indoctrinated into Lutheranism" objectionable. Following the usage of the word as I've described it, the only kinds of religion that one can get indoctrinated into are false religions, whereas according to Hegel, Protestant Christianity (which to him means Lutheranism) is the true religion. Thus, it is improper to speak of being "indoctrinated into Lutheranism" in an article on Hegel. (On the other hand, one can certainly be indoctrinated into Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam, for example.)

After writing that, I googled "die wahre Religion", and came up with this, in which Hegel approvingly cites Scotus Eriugena: »Die wahre Philosophie ist die wahre Religion, und die wahre Religion ist die wahre Philosophie,«  – Herzen (talk) 20:53, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure where "indoctrinated into Lutheranism" came from, but it didn't come from me. What I wrote is "Though raised as a Lutheran." Although I could quibble about whether "indoctrinated" is always pejorative (it can be simply descriptive), that would be beside the point. "Indoctrinated" is indeed a stronger word than the evidence justifies. Atticusattor (talk) 03:47, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Calling Hegel a pantheist almost does as much injustice to his thought as calling him an atheist: his thought far transcends both of those "isms", as you call them. I am in agreement with Goethean, too. I wrote above that "for the purposes of this article", "he should be considered to be a Christian". I never said that we should "just call Hegel an atheist and leave it at that." I did not anywhere suggest that the article should even suggest or mention the possibility that Hegel was an atheist. Doing so would just confuse readers, since reconciling Hegel's atheism (of which there is no doubt in my mind) with his system and what he wrote goes beyond what a Wikipedia article can accomplish.

Nevertheless, Hegel's "stance" can be described rather simply. Hegel claimed that his philosophy successfully explained and limned (to use a favorite word of analytic philosophers) the structure of reality. Unfortunately, not everyone has the resources and/or ability to study philosophy. Most people do not, but they can get by with religion (i.e., orthodox Christianity) to come to the same basic worldview that philosophy (i.e, Hegel's system) leads to. People who have studied philosophy understand that "God" is merely a metaphorical/symbolic stand-in for the Absolute; people who have not take the God concept literally, and hence believe that God actually exists (as something other than the Absolute, that is, Spirit coming to know itself). This explains, by the way, the passage "God alone is real, God alone is true", which you quoted: for Hegel the philosopher (as opposed to Hegel as a member of a Lutheran congregation), "God" simply means the Absolute. – Herzen (talk) 20:53, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

It simply isn't true that, for Hegel, "'God" simply means the Absolute." Hegel uses "God" as a synonym for a nonsupernatural entity called Spirit that Hegel designed -- a far cry from the supernaturalistic metaphysical absolutes of some philosophers. Hegel distinguished between Spirit and absolute Spirit. Throughout most of Phenomenology, Spirit is simply Spirit, meaning conscious but not yet self-conscious, not yet in the state of self-realization. Spirit's goal is "its consummation as self-conscious Spirit" (para. 802, Miller trans.). "Self-consciousness," or self-realization, occurs when Hegel, part of Spirit's mind (Spirit's mind is the collective mind of all humans), arrives and realizes that the external "objects" he (Spirit) sees are not really "alien" but are himself, because everything in the physical universe is Spirit, the conceptual inner reality of everything. Before this act of self-realization, "the object is revealed to it [to Spirit, any perceiving person] . . . and it does not recognize itself [as the object]" (para. 771). Only in the last paragraph (para. 808) of Phenomenology does the "goal, Absolute Knowing [title of the last chapter], or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit," arrive. Then Spirit evolves into "absolute Spirit"; only at the end of the line does Spirit become an "Absolute." And that Absolute is not the supernatural "Absolute" of some philosophers. Findlay is entirely correct when he writes that "Hegel believes in no God and no Absolute." Atticusattor (talk) 20:21, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

The funny thing is that Hegel's philosophy is almost identical to Plotinus', and nobody goes around calling Plotinus an atheist. — goethean 22:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

The article asserts that " Hegel’s atheism is widely recognized". I don't think this is accurate. I'm a student in an italian Liceo (roughly, a high school)where philosophy is a compulsory subject and I can testify that no one has mentioned Hegel's atheism to me; my teacher described his religious view as a sort of panentheism and so did my textbook, which is considered pretty authoritative and widely used. I couldn't find any reference to his atheism in the page dedicated to him in the Italian, French, Spanish, or German versions of Wikipedia. I haven't read the whole [| entry on Hegel in the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy], but it doesn't seem to mention atheism either. Regardless of whether he was an atheist or not, it seems to me that his philosophy is not interpreted or taught that way in many circles, and this should be worth pointing out.Gelophile (talk) 15:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You doubt that "Hegel's atheism is widely recognized." But his atheism is recognized by these 10 interpreters: Findlay, Tucker, Kaufmann, Solomon, Hippolyte, Kojeve, Westphal, Pinkard, Beiser, and Wheat. (Conceivably some German interpreters could be added to the list, but I don't read German.) A high school survey-of-philosophy textbook is really not the best place to gain information on whether Hegel was an atheist. Textbook authors tend to rely heavily on secondary sources, and some of those sources do think Hegel was a panentheist. But your textbook's author apparently overlooked a lot of sources. And, as Kaufmann wrote, Spirit "should have caused no misunderstanding, had it not been for Hegel's occasional references to God." Various authors have taken "God" literally as implying a supernatural mind. I could also ask: who besides your teacher says your textbook is considered "pretty authoritative" -- and does "authoritative" apply to every single philosopher in a survey text or might it be meant in a more general way (subject to exceptions, and not implying that the Hegel chapter in particular is fully accurate)?Atticusattor (talk) 05:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no need to decide whether or not he was atheist - it seems that both views exist, and both should be presented. Right now, the article reads as an attempt to persuade the reader he was atheist. This section should be edited to reflect a neutral point of view. Aya merkabah (talk) 21:22, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Aya merkabah, as my comment on this obviously Marxist-POV:ed article (no pejorative meaning intended, Marx made very beneficial contributions to economics, sociology etc.), where the Marxist-POV in question is to "whitewash" an important contributor to the Marxist system, meaning he must be adapted to the "Marxist Faith", including Atheism. But very obviously (such as in established protestant school books) he is regarded as a Lutheran by Lutherans, more specifically a kind of a mystic. Pursuing the theory that he was "atheist" requires some kind of balance in the citation regime. The current state of the citations: "Wheat, 154-61" "On the Basis of Morality." and worse "Ibid P-n" is not good enough. I think his modern usage within Protestantism warrants some indecision whether he really was atheist or not. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 10:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

You refer to "this obviously Marxist-POV article." I wrote much of the article and am not a Marxist. Indeed, I consider both Marx's economics and his dialectical interpretation of history to be unadulterated nonsense. You need to control your impulses to leap to wild conclusions.Atticusattor (talk) 20:38, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course Hegel was a Lutheran. Nobody disputes that. But that in no way implies that he was not also an atheist. Kant was a Lutheran atheist, too. For Lutherans, faith, like grace, is a gift from God, so that one can be a Lutheran without believing that God exists. – Herzen (talk) 22:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

(outdent) Instead of arguing on and on from "first principles" we should look at what authoritative sources say (Frederick C. Beiser (ed.) 1993:315, Charles Margrave Taylor 1975:102, Robert B. Pippin 1989:80, Raymond Keith Williamson 1984:297–298); in a nutshell, they explicitly reject the claim that Hegel was an atheist. See my comments here. --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy#Promotion of Leonard F. Wheat's non-mainstream views in several Hegel-related articles. --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:11, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Making sense

The “Reading Hegel” section makes it seem that Hegel is incomprehensible because the reader is at fault, not being familiar with “advanced” philosophy or with Hegel’s “logic.” These assumptions may be unwarranted. The difficulty or impossibility of making sense out of Hegel’s words may be due to the fact that the words do not signify concepts that are ultimately grounded in perceptual experience. Also, he repeatedly breaks the law of contradiction (something cannot be and not be at the same time).Lestrade (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)Lestrade

Popper

I have removed text which implied that Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolution criticizes Karl Popper's view of Hegel. Reason and Revolution was written several years before Popper's attacks on Hegel were published, and not surprisingly it doesn't even mention Popper. Marcuse does criticize the idea that Hegel was a totalitarian, but his criticism is directed against that theory as espoused by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, not Popper. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:52, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Would it be relevant in the criticism section to mention exactly what the argument of "scholars such as Kaufmann and Shlomo Avineri" were when they "criticized Popper's theories [misunderstanding - - intentional in many cases] about Hegel"? As we all know, Kaufmann pretty much tore apart Popper's claims in his Shakespeare and Existentialism book — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ditc (talk • contribs) 01:56, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Reading Hegel

I have added the following under the reading hegel section. My intention is not to overload the article with references to Kaufmann. I feel he has unique insights and comments that are not expressed anywhere else. Hopefully we can find a place for the following if not under the reading hegel section.

According to Kaufmann, the basic idea of Hegel's works, especially the Phenomenology of the Spirit is that a philosopher should not "confine him or herself to views that have been held but penetrate these to the human reality they reflect." In other words, it is not enough to consider propositions, or even the content of consciousness; "it is worthwhile to ask in every instance what kind of spirit would entertain such propositions, hold such views, and have such a consciousness. Every outlook in other words, is to be studied not merely as an academic possibility but as an existential reality."

Hegel is fascinated by the sequence Kaufmann writes:

How would a human being come to see the world this way or that? And to what extent does the road on which a point of view is reached color the view? Moreover, it should be possible to show how every single view in turn is one-sided and therefore untenable as soon as it is embraced consistently. Each must therefore give way to another, until finally the last and most comprehensive vision is attained in which all previous views are integrated. That way the reader would be compelled – not by rhetoric or by talk of compelling him, but by the successive examination of forms of consciousness – to rise from the lowest and least sophisticated level to the highest and most philosophical; and on the way he would recognize stoicism and skepticism, Christianity, and Enlightenment, Sophocles and Kant.

Many sympathetic commentators have argued that this is surely one of the most imaginative and poetic conceptions ever to have occurred to any philosopher. Kaufmann even argues that the parallel between Hegel's Phenomenology and Dante's journey "through hell and purgatory to the blessed vision meets the eye." He also makes a comparison with Goethe's Faust claiming that "two quotations from ‘The First Part of the Tragedy’ could have served Hegel as mottoes." The first of these passages (lines 1770-75) Kaufmann argues Hegel knew from Faust: A Fragment (1790)": "And what is portioned out to all mankind, I shall enjoy deep in myself, contain; Within my spirit summit and abyss, Pile on my breast their agony and bliss, And thus let my own self grow into theirs, unfettered.

These lines express much of the spirit of the book Kaufmann writes: "Hegel is not treating us to a spectacle, letting various forms of consciousness pass in review before our eyes to entertain us as he considers it necessary to re-experience what the human spirit has gone through in history and he challenges the reader to join him in this Faustian undertaking." Hegel asks readers not merely to read about such possibilities but according to Kaufmann, to "identify with each in turn until their own self has grown to the point where it is contemporary with world spirit. The reader, like the author, is meant to suffer through each position, and to be changed as he/she proceeds from one to the other. Mea res agitur: my own self is at stake. Or, as Rilke put it definitively in the last line of his great sonnet on an “Archaic Torso of Apollo”: du must dein Leben andern – you must change your life.”

Hegel's writing style and language has also been a source of criticism.Schopenhauer for example, called Hegel "this Caliban of the spirit." He also spoke of "Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense." Aberwitzig meaning insane is a word that recurs frequently in Schopenhauer's remarks about Hegel, along with the claims that Hegel had no Geist at all.

Kaufmann claims that while it is "widely considered bad form to speak irreverently about Kant, disrespect for Hegel is still good form. Many writers and lecturers enjoy making scurrilous remarks about Hegel while others -- and sometimes actually the very same people -- make use of his ideas without giving credit to him." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ditc (talk • contribs) 17:40, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Secondary literature

Hello everyone. I recently added an extensive Hegel bibliography to the external links section. It is much more comprehensive than what is listed on this page and has the additional merit of singling out certain works as either introductory or especially recommended. To me, what is listed on this page is rather useless. The best case scenario, I believe would be to replace it with a selective annotated bibliography of only introductory-level works. For example, H.S. Harris's two-volume Hegel's Development is the most comprehensive account of Hegel's development leading up the PhS, perhaps in any language. But who coming to Wikipedia to learn about Hegel is going to take that on? Let alone technical works in German or French about specific aspects of his philosophy. People coming to this page should be assumed to have a very low level of acquaintance with Hegel. What would be useful to this audience is just a short list of useful introductions with a few words explaining their strengths, weakness, possible biases, etc.

Do others agree? I do not want to presume to delete the whole thing to replace it with a short list entirely of my own devising. I usually recommend Houlgate's intro or Pinkard's intellectual biography to people looking for a general intro. Reason and Revolution may also belong on the list, as it provides a summary of much of Hegel's thought (albeit rather too simplistically for my taste) and situates it in the Marxist tradition, which many will be interested in. I have not read it, but I've heard Rosen's intro highly praised by a scholar hyper-critical of what seems like just about everything written about Hegel in the English language. Apparently it does an especially good job of illustrating the Aristotelean underpinning of so much of Hegel's thought. I could list a few more, but will leave it here for now so that others may weigh in.

Thanks for your consideration. PJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by PatrickJWelsh (talk • contribs) 20:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

As you will see, I have gone ahead and done something like this, albeit less selectively than I would really like to be in order to avoid controversy (and without the annotations I obviously cannot supply to everything on my own). See the Aristotle or Wittgenstein pages for precedent. Having looked at a sampling of other major philosophers' pages, there seems to be no standard practice. Although this was mostly an act of removal, I also added an introduction much better than some of the stuff up there and two volumes on Hegel's ethical and political thought. (Unfortunately, I do not know of any decent book-length introductory treatments of Hegel's philosophy or art or religion. These subjects, however, are covered in most of the general introductions.)

Hegel's Aesthetics?

I think it might be helpful to include something about Hegel's aesthetics, specifically content from Lectures on Aesthetics, under the "Thought" section. What do other people think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tiberius Aurelius (talk • contribs) 14:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

PatrickJWelsh (talk) 20:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC) I agree wholeheartedly (I am writing a dissertation on the topic!). Time permitting, I will pull something together for the site. Honestly though, the whole "Thought" section could use an overhaul. Not that there is anything egregiously wrong with it, but it's weirdly selective in its treatment (my main objection) and sometimes lapses into jargon without adequately adumbrating the terms. Do any others feel this way?

Overhaul of “Thought” Section?

Okay, so I have no idea whether I’m actually willing to do such an overhaul, but it might be a good exercise for me. And I think I could be successful in soliciting further improvements from other Hegel scholars. If, however, this is just going to outrage everyone who contributed to the current version and be immediately taken down, I definitely will not waste my time.

What I have in mind is something like this:

Hegel’s Idealism

• clarify Hegel’s general idealistic thesis as articulated in the Phenomenology and Logic, i.e., explain what he means by "absolute knowing" and the claim that "substance is essentially subject"
• maybe cite one of Pinkard or Pippin’s single-paragraph attempts at a summary of the PhS (which has its own page, but is totally useless)
• explain what the logic is, why there is so much confusion about this (reference to “metaphysical,” “non-metaphysical, “revised metaphysical” accounts)
• cite recent scholarship articulating and defending revisionary metaphysical reading
• elucidate distinction between scientific portion of Hegel’s philosophy (the PhS in its capacity as a “science of experience” and the logic) and the Realphilosophie, which is “its own time comprehended in thought—and so needs to be read and assessed quite differently

Hegel’s System

The Philosophy of Nature

• pretty much just that it exists and is a presupposition of spirit
• the reasons few take it seriously anymore, but noting that some still do

The Philosophy of Spirit

• distinction between subjective, objective, and abs spirit

Subjective Spirit

• very brief description of subjective spirit

Objective Spirit

• Hegel's concept of freedom and how it achieves actuality in Ethical Life
• the doctrine of world history and its problems

Absolute Spirit

• present the concept of the beautiful ideal, why Greek sculpture is most perfectly beautiful art
• explain infamous claim about “passing away” of art to clarify that Hegel does indeed secure an ongoing place for art in the modern world
• present concept of religion
• brief explication of Hegel’s interpretation of Lutheranism as “consummate religion” in which spirit, knowing itself, knows god
• logic as mode of spirit most at one with itself, but entirely in thought—hence ongoing need for art and religion

Sections on his intellectual context and his pre-Jena writing would also be valuable, but I am not in the position to write them without reviewing more material than I have time for.

Do people like this idea? Is there anything conspicuously missing? I can provide citations to primary sources and recent scholarship to establish that I am not doing “original research.” There's no question that this is how the system is organized, and broad scholarly consensus about what he took himself to accomplish (albeit, of course, massive disagreement about the extent which he actually succeeded). — Preceding unsigned comment added by PatrickJWelsh (talk • contribs) 20:54, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Lede re-write?

Rereading the first paragraphs, I realize it’s more than just the absurd request for a “citation” to support the claim that he was “influential to” Continental Philosophy, which is essentially defined by whether one took Kant in the idealist direction of Fichte, Schelling, et al. of which Hegel presents himself (controversially, but with a still impressive consensus among those scholars persuaded by that tradition’s criticisms of the Kantian program) or the neo-Kantian route of the Marburg and Baden Schools (Cassirer being probably the most famous representative). As is well known, these two traditions largely developed in mutual contempt with little significant interaction for arguably over a century (British Hegelianism, the primary exception, being a disaster). Fortunately this distinction is fairly well broken down. All of which is just a long-winded way of stating that I think, not only that the claim needs no citation, but that it ought to come down altogether. Also, “historicism,” not really a unified or at all well-defined movement.

What about simply:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (/ˈheɪɡəl/;[2] German: [ˈɡeɔɐ̯k ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːɡəl]; August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher of the late Enlightenment who achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the Continental philosophy tradition of philosophy, has becoming increasingly influential in the Anglophone world as well [citation to SEP entry]. Although he remains a decisive figure, his canonical stature within Western philosophy is universally recognized [citation to “Any introductory text to the history of philosophy written in the past century.”].

The second paragraph could also be improved, but that is enough from me for now. I’ll let this sit for a while and then make the change in a few days or so if no one objects or wants to tweak it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PatrickJWelsh (talk • contribs) 19:30, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

I support the rewrite, although I think "English-speaking world" would be better than "Anglophone world" (Anglophone world redirects to English-speaking world article). Abierma3 (talk) 06:08, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Great. Re-write implemented with slight changes and with what I hope are some additional improvements to the 2nd paragraph as well. I don't know Wikipedia's policy on this, but I also removed the link from "state," which just seemed totally (and conspicuously) arbitrary, given that there are surely pages on all of the other items in that catalog (psychology, art, etc.). It seems to me that the principle of selection in this context ought to be biographical, historical, or philosophical relevance to Hegel. If anyone disagrees, by all means restore the link or add links to everything. I just find this practice distracting and unhelpful.

French Revolution

Removing this from Works section where it does not belong. It's accurate, though, so someone may wish to integrate elsewhere:

The French Revolution for Hegel constitutes the introduction of real individual political freedom into European societies for the first time in recorded history. But precisely because of its absolute novelty, it is also unlimited with regard to everything that preceded it: on the one hand the upsurge of violence required to carry out the revolution cannot cease to be itself, while on the other, it has already consumed its opponent. The revolution therefore has nowhere to turn but onto its own result: the hard-won freedom is consumed by a brutal Reign of Terror. History, however, progresses by learning from its mistakes: only after and precisely because of this experience can one posit the existence of a constitutional state of free citizens, embodying both the benevolent organizing power of rational government and the revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality. Hegel's remarks on the French revolution led German poet Heinrich Heine to label him "The Orléans of German Philosophy".

I do think Hegel's interpretation of the French Revolution is important and should be included somewhere in the article (especially since "French Revolution" and "Reign of Terror" are used as examples of thesis and antithesis in the "Triad" subsection of the "Legacy" section). From Susan Buck-Morss: "Hegel, writing The Phenomenology of Mind in his Jena study in 1806, interpreted the advancing army of Napoleon (whose cannons he could hear roaring in the distance) as the unwitting realization of Reason." From Philip Cunliffe: "It is well established that the thrust of [Hegel's] project was an attempt to absorb the impact of modernity by offering a philosophical response to the French Revolution and the unfolding of the modern division of labour." Maybe we can incorporate some of this text into the "Progress" subsection of the "Thought" section? Abierma3 (talk) 19:35, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it probably belongs in the Thought section, but that whole section is such a mess I don't even what to touch it unless it is to completely rewrite per earlier comment.

Freedom

I find this section contains many, many weasel words and unsupported conclusions by which I mean, they conclusions are not elaborated on and thus not explained just possed as a given. seemingly the authors conjectures. I didn't notice any referencing. really poor encyclopaedic offering of Hegel's ideas on freedom. this is not an introduction to Hegel's thought on freedom , it contains no framework to situate Hegel's ideas in relation to his philosophy ˜˜˜˜ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mgdyason (talk • contribs) 14:59, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

That section is not great, I agree. The whole article needs to be improved. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:22, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Is it common Wikipedia policy to give both the correct pronunciation of a name and the one in whatever language this Wikipedia happens to be written in?

When I say "correct", I mean the pronunciation the person used for themselves, and that is quite obviously not ˈheɪɡəl. This is probably the nearest approximation most English native tongues can make of his name, but does that mean it should be set up as sort of a rule here? Doesn't seem to make much sense to me. --91.34.32.10 (talk) 14:02, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

School

"Hegel's studies at the Gymnasium were concluded with his Abiturrede ("graduation speech") entitled "The abortive state of art and scholarship in Turkey" ("den verkümmerten Zustand der Künste und Wissenschaften unter den Türken")."

This fragment of a sentence does not make any sense as a title in German, nor does the source (Rosenkranz) support the claim that this was the title of his speech. I don't know what Pinkard has to say on this, but this should really be rephrased as long as we don't know the exact title.

Also, I'd be really curious to know what a "German School" is supposed to be. --91.34.32.10 (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Just found the Pinkard source online. Pinkard says that Hegel "chose to speak on" this, not that this was the title of his speech. Not to mention the fact that "abortive" is a somewhat strange translation of "verkümmert", and "unter den Türken" means "among the Turks" which is not necessarily the same thing as "in Turkey". --91.34.32.10 (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Removal of material

I've just undone the removal of an enormous amount of material from the article by PatrickJWelsh, who made no attempt to explain his changes on the talk page. I accept that the changes were in good faith, but the removal of so much material at once requires more explanation than PatrickJWelsh has so far provided. Many of the changes I undid seemed to be based in nothing more than personal opinion. A typical example is this, the removal of material cited to Walter Kaufmann, which was done with the comment, "Kaufmann's "existentialist" reading has been broadly discredited. Hegel's central concern is not with "human reality," but with the true. This paragraph is misleading at best." The problem there is less the total absence of evidence that Kaufmann's view has been discredited than a misconception about the basis on which Wikipedia includes content in articles. Whether a given view is mentioned in an article or not has nothing to do with whether it is true or not, and it certainly shouldn't depend on what individual editors personally believe to be true. See WP:NOTTRUTH, which is a useful essay explaining the policy WP:VERIFY. Kaufmann was a notable Hegel scholar, his view is worth mentioning as an example of what Hegel scholars have rightly or wrongly deemed to be true. It is not of consequence whether his views are universally held among Hegel scholars, and it's certainly beside the point whether individual editors agree with them or not. The result of editors removing things they personally don't agree with is always an impoverished article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:16, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I also have to note this unfortunate edit, which appears to be a case of deliberate vandalism. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:38, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

With Hegel, as with many philosophers, so much has been written as one could cite published work to present him as propounding anything at all. What I removed was justified on the basis of topical irrelevance (an editorial decision) or because it misrepresented Hegel's position (a professional judgment).

Also, when I wrote that Hegel's concern was with the true, I meant that that is his official topic: the unfolding of die Sache into its intelligible conceptuality, i.e., the true, das Wahre. If you were qualified to be editing the content of an entry on Hegel, this would have been obvious. You would also know that, as important as Kaufmann was in the early days of the Anglo-American "Hegel Renaissance," he has been superseded by subsequent scholarship. "Human reality," for instance, is a very loose gloss of Hegel's concept of spirit, and, moreover, the claim is manifestly false. Nowhere does Hegel describe his philosophical project in any such terms. Here's "counter source"—just because I can't help myself:

The most widely known and read proponent of an existential reading of Hegel was certainly Walter Kaufmann. He shared with Mueller the cardinal virtue of seeking consistently for the historical Hegel, but his book exemplified the perils of this concern even more vividly than Mueller's (which first appeared in German, and had to wait ten years for an English abridgement). To those of us who revere Hegel as a great systematic philosopher, Kaufmann's boasted "reinterpretation" appears to be all bits and scraps. The insights are almost lost to sight in a pot-pourri of biographical data, cultural allusions, statistical notes on the space Hegel gives to this or that topic, and polemics against every anglophone interpreter who followed the lead of Hegel's first editors. For Hegel's German editors themselves Kaufmann could find charity, but he had none for Wallace or Josiah Royce. His appreciation of the need for a critical approach to the text, and his consequent understanding of the importance of properly critical editing, must be accounted to him as a virtue. But he did not deal with any text himself in a sufficiently continuous and connected way for me to feel certain what the basis of his proposed "reinterpretation" is. He acknowledged - a little grudgingly - that his thesis that the Phenomenology offers us a "logic of passion" was anticipated by Royce. But when the more radical Ivan SolI insisted that Kaufmann and Royce did not mean the same thing, Kaufmann was a little aggrieved to think that anyone should have believed they did. Actually, I still believe that they meant more or less the same thing. Perhaps SolI himself means something different, since he extends the phrase to embrace the Logic along with the Phenomenology. But until he gets beyond the level of introducing Hegel-which he is certainly very good at-the question must remain unsettled.

Kaufmann's own main thesis about the Logic-that "analysis of categories replaces speculative metaphysics" was already grasped (perhaps) by Wallace, and certainly by Baillie. The essential thing-which Kaufmann did not do-is to develop the thesis in detail: to see just what the move to what Hegel called an "objective" logic (as against Kant's "subjective" transcendental logic) means, and how it is justified. Kaufmann offered us little help toward the overcoming of the deep uneasiness that Baillie had already clearly expressed. One might take Kaufmann's support of Mueller's view that the triadic structure has been foisted onto Hegel, and his (perfectly correct) insistence that Hegel's "tables of categories" are merely "arrangements of external reflection" as tending to show that all categoreal schemes are "subjective." But the despised "table of contents" was all that Kaufmann himself offered us (with page-count statistics and some desultory comments) when he discussed the "contents" of the Logic. Perhaps he held that Hegel was consciously a sort of Nietzsche avant la lettre; but I believe he only held, more modestly, that Hegel was Nietzsche malgre lui- that he yearned systematically for a scientific finality which his own insight and method had shown to be impossible. Needless to say, I do not think that either view is right.

References

I've heard positive things about his translation of the Preface to the Jena Phenomenology, but Kaufmann lives on primarily as a Nietzsche translator and popularizer of existentialism. Hegel scholars no longer consider his monograph as particularly important or at all authoritative—not that he was a nut who got everything wrong, just that he was sufficiently muddled to no longer be worth reading for most people.

Wikipedia's citational conventions simply do not work for articles about philosophers. The "experts" disagree on too many details for a citation to establish accuracy. One can cite peer-reviewed articles and monographs to the effect that Hegel was a Lutherian who believed in the afterlife or that he was an atheist; that the system is radically open or a monolithically closed totality; et cetera, et cetera. An Encyclopedia entry should exclude trivial detail, use Hegel's own technical vocabulary accurately or acknowledge when glossing for a popular audience, and be open about scholarly disagreements rather than presenting any secondary source as authoritative. Kaufmann's, let us say, "partial" reading is massively overrepresented. Search The Owl, The Bulletin, Idealistic Studies, and so forth—and lament the massive neglect of his work among people who have devoted their lives to the study of Hegel.

In any case, I'm not going to further engage you unless you show specific interest in some actual point of fact pertaining to Hegel's thought or have a specific question about the accuracy of claim. I'm expecting not. Please, though, consider asking for justification of changes on the talk page before undoing the work of someone who possibly knows a lot more about the subject than you. Some of my brief justifications may have insufficient, but not all of them. People like you are the reason so very few scholars even bother attempting what could be a quite modest public service of improving Wikipedia entries in their fields of study. PatrickJWelsh (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

You wrote, "What I removed was justified on the basis of topical irrelevance (an editorial decision) or because it misrepresented Hegel's position (a professional judgment)." This goes to prove my point. You removed material because you disagreed with it. Don't do that. It is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work. Your comment, "Also, when I wrote that Hegel's concern was with the true, I meant that that is his official topic: the unfolding of die Sache into its intelligible conceptuality, i.e., the true, das Wahre. If you were qualified to be editing the content of an entry on Hegel, this would have been obvious" is peculiar and presumptuous, since I never expressed any opinion about what you meant when you wrote that Hegel's concern was with the true. Why presume I misunderstood your meaning when I expressed no opinion about it at all? More importantly, if Kaufmann has been corrected by subsequent scholarship, then by all means add material to the article explaining that. There is no reason to remove mention of his views. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I’m sorry, but you appear to be under-informed about how academic scholarship in the humanities works. Any research library will have a few shelves full of monographs devoted to various aspects of Hegel’s philosophy—to say nothing to the proliferation of (apparently quite lucrative) short introductions. They are rife will all manner of disagreement in most, if not all fields, and especially in philosophy.

Even if it were possible, an encyclopedia article is not the place to refute early scholars who didn’t quite get it right. Each can have his own entry! Look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kaufmann_(philosopher). This entry, however, purports to be about Hegel, and my edits were made to that end.

Give me a mulligan on the (openly acknowledged) snarky comment on “s-a-t” nonsense and present your case for how any other edit degraded the quality of the article. I am quite confident I can justify every one with direct reference to primary sources and, if you perversely believe secondary sources more authoritative, to those as well. If not, I will be grateful for what I learn in being corrected.

(As to early admonishment I check in with the Talk page before making a change, please see above for an idea of how well that works.)PatrickJWelsh (talk) 23:58, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

No, PatrickJWelsh, I am not "under-informed about how academic scholarship in the humanities works". I am quite sure that "Any research library will have a few shelves full of monographs devoted to various aspects of Hegel’s philosophy—to say nothing to the proliferation of (apparently quite lucrative) short introductions" and that they are "rife will all manner of disagreement in most, if not all fields, and especially in philosophy". I have no idea why you would presume that I am unaware of these facts. How very arrogant and rude of you. As far as I'm concerned, it is perfectly appropriate, as well as possible, for an encyclopedia article to state how scholarly opinion about a subject has evolved. I've no idea why you would suppose that it is inappropriate or impossible, and nor do I really care, since I think its appropriateness and possibility will be clear to most editors. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:07, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Once again, you ignore the question of substance: What did I get wrong that was improved by your restoration of (I contend) misleading or outright false claims in this entry? Please, prove you care about the accuracy and usefulness of this entry (at least) as much as your mastery of Wikipedia policy. Many thanks, PJPatrickJWelsh (talk) 00:12, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I do not apologize for responding to rude and insulting comments you made. If your comments were not about "the question of substance", then you should not have made them in the first place. What you got wrong is the purpose an encyclopedia entry, which is to summarize views expressed on a topic by reliable sources, especially those written by scholars, whether individual editors (such as you) happen to agree with those views or not. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:18, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Dear god, man (am assuming you are a man) — I did not ask you to apologize. I asked you to please educate me with respect to the inadequacy of what it is my professional judgment (not equivalent to "opinion") I messed up with the edits I made. If you present a respectable case, I will apologize to you. If you have no case, you should ask yourself what you're even doing here. PatrickJWelsh (talk) 00:24, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, PatrickJWelsh, I realize that you did not ask me to apologize. I explained that I was not apologizing anyway, even though you didn't do that. Your latest comment is mostly pointless blather, possibly designed to provoke me. I won't take your bait. I explained to you that removing material just because you personally disagree with it is not OK. If you won't accept that, that's unfortunate, but not a reason for me to get sidetracked into an endless argument with you. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:26, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I would say "expose" rather than "provoke," but that is pointless to argue.

Once again: What edit of PatrickJWelsh did FreeKnowledgeCreator undo that improves the usefulness or accuracy of the entry from the edited version? If you cannot answer this, you discredit yourself.

As Hegel opens the Introduction to his Science of Logic "In no science is the need to begin with the fact itself [Sache selbst], without preliminary reflections, felt more strongly than in the science of logic" (GW 21.27). I have been deliberately avoiding making this about credentials or any institutional markers of "authority" you or me might hold. All I would like to see is a philosophical justification of your editorial high-handedness, which you have yet to show has any grounding in scholarship beyond the purview of Wikipedia. PatrickJWelsh (talk) 00:47, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

In regard to your question above, about what edit you made that I undid that was helpful, I believe there was a single unambiguously constructive edit you made, which involved removing content that had been marked with "citation neeeded" since 2008. I restored that change here. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:52, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

New archive

Hi editors,

I created a new Talk page archive (Archive 3) and then removed all the topics that I take to have been resolved. If anyone disagrees, by all means, please restore unresolved section and, if possible, expand upon what issue you believe remains outstanding.

Thanks, PJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by PatrickJWelsh (talk • contribs) 15:44, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Whitewash

Hegel's 1800 effort without Ceres seems to have been passed over in silence, as an attempt at a whitewash. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.170.187.17 (talk) 14:30, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

See http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1992JHA....23..208C