G. W. F. Hegel:
An Epitome
The Science of Logic, 1812
It is of the highest importance to ascertain and understand rightly the nature of Dialectics.
Wherever there is movement, wherever there is life, wherever anything is carried into
effect in the actual world, there Dialectic is at work. It is also the soul of all
knowledge which is truly scientific. In the popular way of looking at things, the refusal
to be bound by the abstract deliverance of understanding appears as fairness, which,
according to the proverb: "Live and let live," demands that each should have its
turn; we admit one, but we admit the other also.
Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy. Among the ancients Plato is
termed the inventor of Dialectic; and his right to the name rests on the fact that the
Platonic philosophy first gave the free scientific, and thus at the same time the
objective, form to Dialectic. In modern times
it was, more than any other, Kant who resuscitated the name of Dialectic, and restored
it to its post of honor. He did it, as we have seen, by working out the Antinomies of the
reason. The problem of these Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating
between one set of grounds and another; it really serves to show that every abstract
proposition of understanding, taken precisely as it is given, naturally veers round to its
opposite.
Dialectic gives expression to a law which is felt in all other grades of consciousness,
and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of
Dialectic. We are aware that everything finite, instead of being stable and ultimate, is
rather changeable and transient; and this is exactly what we mean by that Dialectic of the
finite, by which the finite, as implicitly other than what it is, is forced beyond its own
immediate or natural being to turn suddenly into its opposite. We find traces of its
presence in each of the particular provinces and phases of the natural and spiritual
world. Take as an illustration the motion of the heavenly bodies. At this moment the
planet stands in this spot, but implicitly it is the possibility of being in another spot;
and that possibility of being otherwise the planet brings into existence by moving.
Similarly the "physical" elements prove to be Dialectical. The process of
meteorological action is the exhibition of their Dialectic. It is the same dynamic that
lies at the root of every natural process, and, as it were, forces nature out of itself.
If we consider only what it contains, and not how it contains it, the true
reason-world, so far from being the exclusive property of philosophy, is the right of
every human being on whatever grade of culture or mental growth he may stand; which would
justify man's ancient title of rational being. The general mode by which experience first
makes us aware of the reasonable order of things is by accepted and unreasoned belief; and
the character of the rational is to be unconditioned, self-contained, and thus to be
self-determining. In this sense man above all things becomes aware of the reasonable order
of things when he knows of God, and knows him to be the completely self-determined.
Similarly, the consciousness a citizen has of his country and its laws is a perception of
reason-world, so long as he looks up to them as unconditioned and likewise universal
powers, to which he must subject his individual will. And in the same sense, the knowledge
and will of the child is rational, when he knows his parents' will, and wills it.
The absolute Idea has turned out to be the identity of the theoretical and the
practical Idea. Each of these by itself is still one-sided, possessing the Idea only as a
sought for beyond and an unattained goal; each, therefore, is a synthesis of endeavor, and
has, but equally has not, the Idea in it; each passes from one thought to the other
without bringing the two together, and so remains fixed in their contradiction. The
absolute Idea, as the rational Notion that in its reality meets only with itself, is by
virtue of this immediacy of its objective identity, on the one hand the return to life;
but it has no less sublated this form of its immediacy, and contains within itself the
highest degree of opposition. The Notion is not merely soul but free subjective
Notion that is for itself and therefore possesses personality---the practical,
objective Notion determined in and for itself which, as person, is impenetrable atomic
individuality, but explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other
has its own objectivity for its object. All else is error, confusion, opinion,
endeavor, caprice and transitoriness; the absolute Idea alone is being,
imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.
Besides the fact that dialectic is generally regarded as contingent, it usually takes
the following more precise form. It is shown that there belongs to some subject matter or
other, for example the world, motion, point, and so on, some determination or other, for
example (taking the objects in the order named), finite in space or time, presence in this
place, absolute negation of space; but further, that with equal necessity the opposite
determination also belongs to the subject matter, for example, infinity in space and time,
non-presence in this place, relation to space and so spatiality.
The relation of the negative to itself is to be regarded as the second premise of the
whole syllogism. If the terms analytic and synthetic are employed as
opposites, the first premise may be regarded as the analytic moment, for in
it the immediate stands in immediate relationship to its other and therefore passes over,
or rather has passed over, into it---although this relation, as already remarked, is also
synthetic, precisely because that into which it passes over is its other. The second
premise here under consideration may be defined as synthetic, since it is the
relation of the differentiated term as such to the term from which it is differentiated.
Just as the first premise is the moment of universality and communication, so the second
is determined by individuality, which in its relation to its other is primarily exclusive,
for itself, and different. The negative appears as the mediating element, since it
includes within it itself and the immediate whose negation it is. So far as these two
determinations are taken in some relationship or other as externally related, the negative
is only the formal mediating element; but as absolute negativity the negative moment of
absolute mediation is the unity which is subjectivity and soul.
But this determination has not issued from a process of becoming, nor is it a
transition, as when above, the subjective Notion in its totality becomes objectivity, and
the subjective end becomes life. On the contrary, the pure Idea in which the
determinateness or reality of the Notion is itself raised into Notion, is an absolute
liberation for which there is no longer any immediate determination that is not equally
posited and itself Notion; in this freedom, therefore, no transition takes place; the
simple being to which the Idea determines itself remains perfectly transparent to it and
is the Notion that, in its determination, abides with itself. The passage is therefore to
be understood here rather in this manner, that the Idea freely releases itself in its
absolute self-assurance and inner poise.
Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1820
Universal history is the exhibition of Geist in the process of working out the
knowledge of what it potentially is. Just as the seed bears in itself the whole nature of
the tree, including the taste and form of its fruit, so do the first traces of Geist
virtually contain the whole of its own history. What is rational is actual, and what is
actual is rational. Thus what is rational has the potential of actualizing itself, and
thus history, far from being an undifferentiated aggregate of incomprehensible accidents
and chance events, has a rational structure. Thus, the march of reason through history is
a complex dialectical process, in which both individuals and nations are mere tools,
unaware of the import and significance of their own deeds. Changes might be introduced by
world-historical individuals such as Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, but their roles
derive not from their conscious intentions or political ideas, for they are motivated,
like all other men, by base desires such as ambition, greed, and glory. It is the
objective consciousness of their deeds, and not their subjective intentions, that makes
them historically significant. They are thus unconscious tools in the hand of the Geist.
History is, thus, the development towards the consciousness of freedom as expressed in the
political, cultural, and religious institutions of a nation---Volksgeist. This is
expressed externally through the formation of objective institutions, in particular the
State. There are three basic stages of the movement of Geist through history, each
representing a further evolution of the consciousness of freedom:
1. The Oriental World. The Orientals did not attain the knowledge that Geist, in the
form of Mankind, is free. They only knew that "one is free." But in those terms,
the freedom of that one person was only caprice, whether exhibited as ferocity, a brutal
recklessness of passion, or as mildness and tameness of the desires, either of which is
merely an accident of nature. That "one" was thus only a despot. Hence the
Volksgeist expressed itself through despotism, where only one had rights.
2. The Classical World. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and
therefore they were free, though they, just as the Romans, knew only that "some are
free," not Man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know that. Thus the Greeks
had slaves, and the whole of their life and the maintenance of their splendid liberty was
implicated with the institution of slavery. That fact, on the one hand, made their liberty
only an accidental, transient and limited growth and, on the other hand, constituted it a
rigorous thralldom of our common nature, i.e., of the human. Hence the Volksgeist
expressed itself through the city-state, where only some had rights.
3. The Germanic World. The Germanic nations, under the influence of Christianity, were
the first to attain the consciousness that Man, as Man, is free, that it is the freedom of
Geist which constitutes Geist's essence. This consciousness arose first in religion, the
most inward region of Geist. Thus all could be free, and hence the Volksgeist
expressed itself through the modern state, where all have rights. However, to prevent the
State from degenerating into a war of all against all, mediation through rational
institutions is required, as the only guarantee against arbitrariness and the threat of
tyranny posed by absolute monarchy and absolute majoritarianism. The history of the world
[Zeitgeist] is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.....
Source:
From: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, trans. William Wallace, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874), passim; Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
(London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894), pp. i-xxv.
Scanned and organized by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
