For the better part of 20th century the analytical school of philosophy has dominated the academic circles. Along with many other continental philosophers, one name which particularly evokes extreme repulsion within analytical circles is the philosopher GWH Hegel.
Hegel's reputation as a philosopher in his own time was second to none. He literally ruled the German mind during the first half of 19th century. His influence went beyond the border as well. In England, the dominant school of philosophy hitherto had been empiricism.But such was the spell of Hegel's idealistic philosophy that even Anglo-Saxon mind, which was averse to rationalism or idealism, became a victim of it. People like Bradley and McTaggart openly called themselves Hegelians and taught (in fact preached) Hegelian ideas in major Universities of UK. It was only with the emergence of people like GE Moore and Bertrand Russell that Hegel was eventually marginalized from the academic circles first and then from the popular discourse. As a matter of fact his work became a constant subject for ridicule, non-sensical metaphysical speculation and a prime example of philosophy losing itself in obscurantism.
Its been almost hundred years since Hegel's philosophy has been put to flames as far as academic philosophy is concerned. However, none will dispute the legacy of the man who had inspired a chain of great thinkers (even today people like Francis Fakuyama use Hegelian ideas to shape their own thesis.
I confess,its been long since I'v last read Hegel or took his philosophy seriously. However, recently while preparing my lecture on Marxism for my Jurisprudence class I had the opportunity to re-read some of the Hegelian ideas. The problem with teaching Marxism is that you cannot make sense of what Marx is really up to unless you have sufficient idea of Hegelian philosophy. As expected, the very name of Hegel's philosophy evoked a sense of boredom in me. Yet, I lingered my way through secondary literature. As I kept on reading Hegel and his subsequent influence upon Marx, one question started bothering me and captured all my imagination. How can we summarily dismiss a thinker who has been the main source of Marx's own methodology and philosophy? By no means Marx is a an ordinary name, his influence has been compared to prophets, a luxury that not too many philosophers enjoy. The impact of his philosophy and ideas went well beyond the field of philosophy and changed the very politico-economic face of our
planet. The question for me then was quite simple. How did Hegel's legacy lost itself in obscurity? What made Hegel's ideas so different or radical?
Therefore, this blog entry is my attempt to make sense of Hegelian philosophy and strip off the obscure crust that surrounds some of his major ideas that has shaped our modern world.
Phenomenology of Spirit as a starting point:
A major problem in reading Hegel is the difficulty in finding out the starting point. I have decided to tread the same path Karl Marx took in understanding Hegel. He started of with one of Hegel's major works called 'Phenomenology of the spirit'. I will start by explaining the ideas presented in this book one by one.
When it comes to want of words German language is quite rich. The German word for 'spirit' is Geist. However, the spirit is synonymously used with the word mind in German. So one may call it 'Phenomenology of Mind'.
Universal Mind (The Absolute):
Being a pure Idealist, Hegel believes that his theory is the gradual unfolding of the Universal Mind. Right from the start the obscurity begins, what does he mean by Universal Mind? Hegel believes that the Reality is rational. That rationality is corresponded with the idea of Universal Mind. The individual minds i.e your mind or my mind are just individualized or particularized manifestations of this Universal Mind. There has been considerable debate with regards to what this Universal Mind is. Some have called it God, while others have equated it with the mystical doctrine of 'unity of being'. I personally think that there is no conclusive answer to this question. One may find arguments in favor of both schools of thought but I personally lean towards the pantheistic understanding of Hegel. However, this is not the concern of our debate. For the purpose of this post I would rather tag Universal mind as 'Absolute Idea' manifesting itself in everything that exists.
Development of the Absolute:
In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel traces the development of the Universal Mind. Initially it manifested itself in individual Self or ego, but that ego was neither self-conscious nor aware of his own freedom and universal nature. It encountered the other individual mind and saw it as an object to be conquered. This is where Hegel introduces his concept of Master/Slave relationship.
What Hegel tries to demonstrate by this relationship is the fact that the Mind (Universal Mind) not being self-aware about its freedom takes the other individual mind as something 'alien'. Therefore, the development of the Mind takes place through such inherent contradictions. Hegel calls this 'Dialectical process'. This is probably the most commonly known concept of Hegel. The thesis meets its antithesis and then as result of this confrontation comes out a synthesis. However, this synthesis is itself a thesis and the process continues.
The meaning of history is manifested in this process. The whole of history is a progress towards the Self-consciousness of the Absolute. In the words of Iqbal the Hegelian philosophy can be summed up in one line, 'infinite becoming finite and then again becoming infinite through self-evolving synthesis'.
Hegelianism and Rationalized mysticism:
To sum up what I have written in the preceding part of my post. Hegel saw Mind as Universal and the essence of of this Universal Mind lies in freedom. This freedom is only possible with complete self-consciousness of the Absolute history. Hegel's analysis leads to a strange conclusion. If the end of history is the self-consciousness of the Mind then that stage culminated itself in none other that Hegel's own philosophy. I admit Hegel must not have been a very modest or humble dude otherwise such a conclusion must have seem preposterous to him.
In spite of Hegel's supercilious claims, I would like to draw a comparison between Hegelian philosophy and mysticism. The resemblance is uncanny when it comes to their conclusions. The only difference appears to be in their methodology. Hegel's method is partially rational and partially historical. Whereas mystics emphasize the intuition above reason and history. But it is important to mention here that like all mystics Hegel believes that the Mind is Universal. The apparent multiplicity is just a matter of appearance or lack of self-consciousness (ignorance).
Therefore, the apparent conflict is just 'Maya' resulting from transitory phenomena. Furthermore, like mystics Hegel also believes that whatever happens occurs out of sheer necessity. History in unfolding itself follows a rational and necessary path towards final self-emancipation of the Universal mind or Absolute Idea. Therefore, its meaningless or pointless to challenge a particular development of history. From this one may conclude that Hegel's philosophy may be interpreted as an attempt at rationalizing mysticism. This is a task very few philosophers have dared to undertake.
Conclusion:
Finally I would abruptly end this blog entry without criticizing Hegelian ideas. The task has already been done by numerous other writers and philosophers. The purpose was to re-read Hegel and make sense of his ideas.
I plan to write a sequel to this blog entry regarding how Hegelian philosophy was further interpreted by people like Beaur, Fuaerbach and Marx. Until then you folks should try to make sense of Hegel too :-)
Hegel's reputation as a philosopher in his own time was second to none. He literally ruled the German mind during the first half of 19th century. His influence went beyond the border as well. In England, the dominant school of philosophy hitherto had been empiricism.But such was the spell of Hegel's idealistic philosophy that even Anglo-Saxon mind, which was averse to rationalism or idealism, became a victim of it. People like Bradley and McTaggart openly called themselves Hegelians and taught (in fact preached) Hegelian ideas in major Universities of UK. It was only with the emergence of people like GE Moore and Bertrand Russell that Hegel was eventually marginalized from the academic circles first and then from the popular discourse. As a matter of fact his work became a constant subject for ridicule, non-sensical metaphysical speculation and a prime example of philosophy losing itself in obscurantism.
Its been almost hundred years since Hegel's philosophy has been put to flames as far as academic philosophy is concerned. However, none will dispute the legacy of the man who had inspired a chain of great thinkers (even today people like Francis Fakuyama use Hegelian ideas to shape their own thesis.
I confess,its been long since I'v last read Hegel or took his philosophy seriously. However, recently while preparing my lecture on Marxism for my Jurisprudence class I had the opportunity to re-read some of the Hegelian ideas. The problem with teaching Marxism is that you cannot make sense of what Marx is really up to unless you have sufficient idea of Hegelian philosophy. As expected, the very name of Hegel's philosophy evoked a sense of boredom in me. Yet, I lingered my way through secondary literature. As I kept on reading Hegel and his subsequent influence upon Marx, one question started bothering me and captured all my imagination. How can we summarily dismiss a thinker who has been the main source of Marx's own methodology and philosophy? By no means Marx is a an ordinary name, his influence has been compared to prophets, a luxury that not too many philosophers enjoy. The impact of his philosophy and ideas went well beyond the field of philosophy and changed the very politico-economic face of our
planet. The question for me then was quite simple. How did Hegel's legacy lost itself in obscurity? What made Hegel's ideas so different or radical?
Therefore, this blog entry is my attempt to make sense of Hegelian philosophy and strip off the obscure crust that surrounds some of his major ideas that has shaped our modern world.
Phenomenology of Spirit as a starting point:
A major problem in reading Hegel is the difficulty in finding out the starting point. I have decided to tread the same path Karl Marx took in understanding Hegel. He started of with one of Hegel's major works called 'Phenomenology of the spirit'. I will start by explaining the ideas presented in this book one by one.
When it comes to want of words German language is quite rich. The German word for 'spirit' is Geist. However, the spirit is synonymously used with the word mind in German. So one may call it 'Phenomenology of Mind'.
Universal Mind (The Absolute):
Being a pure Idealist, Hegel believes that his theory is the gradual unfolding of the Universal Mind. Right from the start the obscurity begins, what does he mean by Universal Mind? Hegel believes that the Reality is rational. That rationality is corresponded with the idea of Universal Mind. The individual minds i.e your mind or my mind are just individualized or particularized manifestations of this Universal Mind. There has been considerable debate with regards to what this Universal Mind is. Some have called it God, while others have equated it with the mystical doctrine of 'unity of being'. I personally think that there is no conclusive answer to this question. One may find arguments in favor of both schools of thought but I personally lean towards the pantheistic understanding of Hegel. However, this is not the concern of our debate. For the purpose of this post I would rather tag Universal mind as 'Absolute Idea' manifesting itself in everything that exists.
Development of the Absolute:
In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel traces the development of the Universal Mind. Initially it manifested itself in individual Self or ego, but that ego was neither self-conscious nor aware of his own freedom and universal nature. It encountered the other individual mind and saw it as an object to be conquered. This is where Hegel introduces his concept of Master/Slave relationship.
What Hegel tries to demonstrate by this relationship is the fact that the Mind (Universal Mind) not being self-aware about its freedom takes the other individual mind as something 'alien'. Therefore, the development of the Mind takes place through such inherent contradictions. Hegel calls this 'Dialectical process'. This is probably the most commonly known concept of Hegel. The thesis meets its antithesis and then as result of this confrontation comes out a synthesis. However, this synthesis is itself a thesis and the process continues.
The meaning of history is manifested in this process. The whole of history is a progress towards the Self-consciousness of the Absolute. In the words of Iqbal the Hegelian philosophy can be summed up in one line, 'infinite becoming finite and then again becoming infinite through self-evolving synthesis'.
Hegelianism and Rationalized mysticism:
To sum up what I have written in the preceding part of my post. Hegel saw Mind as Universal and the essence of of this Universal Mind lies in freedom. This freedom is only possible with complete self-consciousness of the Absolute history. Hegel's analysis leads to a strange conclusion. If the end of history is the self-consciousness of the Mind then that stage culminated itself in none other that Hegel's own philosophy. I admit Hegel must not have been a very modest or humble dude otherwise such a conclusion must have seem preposterous to him.
In spite of Hegel's supercilious claims, I would like to draw a comparison between Hegelian philosophy and mysticism. The resemblance is uncanny when it comes to their conclusions. The only difference appears to be in their methodology. Hegel's method is partially rational and partially historical. Whereas mystics emphasize the intuition above reason and history. But it is important to mention here that like all mystics Hegel believes that the Mind is Universal. The apparent multiplicity is just a matter of appearance or lack of self-consciousness (ignorance).
Therefore, the apparent conflict is just 'Maya' resulting from transitory phenomena. Furthermore, like mystics Hegel also believes that whatever happens occurs out of sheer necessity. History in unfolding itself follows a rational and necessary path towards final self-emancipation of the Universal mind or Absolute Idea. Therefore, its meaningless or pointless to challenge a particular development of history. From this one may conclude that Hegel's philosophy may be interpreted as an attempt at rationalizing mysticism. This is a task very few philosophers have dared to undertake.
Conclusion:
Finally I would abruptly end this blog entry without criticizing Hegelian ideas. The task has already been done by numerous other writers and philosophers. The purpose was to re-read Hegel and make sense of his ideas.
I plan to write a sequel to this blog entry regarding how Hegelian philosophy was further interpreted by people like Beaur, Fuaerbach and Marx. Until then you folks should try to make sense of Hegel too :-)
6 comments:
Y'know in class Hegel's Dialectic made me feel this way: http://kasdatay.tumblr.com/post/16114523985
Thanks for making the difficult easy, mashaAllah. But y'know, while reading your piece i learned that empiricism was different from idealism. I thought that idealism was an empiricist theory.
Oh and this is Maryam :)
Haha! that picture tells me how much you enjoy jurisprudence.
And Maryam the relationship between idealism and empiricism is quite clear. Its another thing that many idealists where some sort of empiricists too.
Idealism is a theory about 'reality'. It deals with the question of what constitutes reality. Whereas empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that true concrete knowledge is based on observation and experience , the rest is just metaphysical non-sense.
:)
I really enjoy Juris, but some of the writers are so challenging and that's depressing.
khayr, thank you, i still feel that empiricism and idealism is similar but then its just me y'know and maybe i can't digest these intricate subtleties just now.
I would venture to say that finding the balance between the mystical and the rational is the only task of the philosopher.
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