Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hegel: To live in reality

Modern science made a breakthrough in the 1600s, not least because of the mechanics. Hegel represents one of the last who dared still defend the pride of philosophy's attempts to be the framework for all human knowledge. He specifically discussed three issues in his philosophy: the religious, the objective reality, and the unity of nature and history.

The first issue, the religious issue, is about the relationship between faith and knowledge. Hegel defined philosophy as the infinite minded, that a notion of an infinite God, almost a God who understands the creation of all that is and who believe in death, overcome by the divine gift of love.

The other problem, Hegel's doctrine of the objective and absolute Other, is deep rooted in his philosophy. He criticized Kant's moral philosophy, who believed that practical reason is able, through its own autonomy, to defend all ethical problems. Hegel argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Law, that the moral estimate must be the concrete Others that we meet. Self-consciousness exists only when it receives its confirmation from Others. Any binding to the Other, through friendship, provides such a substantial union. Family, society and state, have the same starting point, namely overcoming the subjective Other. The Other is always onjektiv and thus part of the community's consciousness.

The third issue that Hegel was concerned with, is about the conceptual unity between nature and history. Hegel's dialectical secret lies in the secret of reconciliation. The secret is synthesis. Hegel attempted not only to see the sense in nature, like the Greeks did, but also in history. He asked: "What makes sense?" and answered "reality". The reality is reasonable, according to Hegel, and what is not reality is therefore unreasonable. Living in reality is a task for each individual.Even though reality is crule and unjust, Hegel means the reasonable thing to do, is to reconcile with reality. Denying the reality one lives in, is unreasonable.

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