Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart to a treasury official. From 1788 to 1793 he studied at the Tübingen Theological Seminary. His classmates and friends were Hölderlin and Schelling, the future poet and philosopher. Hegel preferred to work as a private tutor first in Bern, then in Frankfurt, to a spiritual career. In 1801, Hegel came to Jena, defended his dissertation “On the Orbits of the Planets” for the title of Privatdozent and began lecturing at the university. The professorial chair at the University of Jena was occupied at that time by Schelling, with whom Hegel actively collaborated on the jointly published “Critical Journal of Philosophy” and was clearly influenced by whose transcendental philosophy he was in the first years of his stay at the university.
In his lecture courses on philosophy, Hegel gradually overcomes his dependence on transcendentalism and moves on to create his own system of speculative philosophy. In February 1805, he becomes an extraordinary professor, but the war with Napoleon and the occupation of Jena by the French in 1806 interrupted his academic career for several years, during which he was the editor of a newspaper in Bamberg (1807-1808) and the director of a gymnasium in Nuremberg (1808-1816). This did not prevent him from fruitfully working on the development of his system during these years. Its foundation was laid in Jena, where the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) was written, a kind of critical introduction to philosophy, then continued in Nuremberg, where the Science of Logic (1812-1816) was written, and completed in Heidelberg, where he was invited as a university professor and where the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817) was written, representing a complete system of philosophy consisting of three main parts: the science of logic, presented in a brief form (the so-called “small logic”), the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit. These works brought him well-deserved fame and allowed him to become a professor at the University of Berlin in 1818. In Berlin, Hegel published a large work entitled “Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Law, or the Science of Natural Law and the State” (1821) and gave lectures on various sections of his system: on the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of history, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. In 1829 Hegel was elected rector of the university, and although he never managed to become a member of the Academy of Sciences, his position in the scientific world was indisputable. During his Berlin period, a circle of supporters of his philosophy arose around the philosopher. This Hegelian school included mainly his former students (Gabler, Heschel, Hinrichs, Henning, Rosenkranz, etc.), who sought to expound the philosophy of the teacher in an orthodox spirit. At the height of his fame and adoration, Hegel unexpectedly died of cholera. He died on November 14, 1831 and, in accordance with his will, was buried in the Berlin cemetery next to Fichte’s grave.
To a significant extent, in philosophy, Hegel continues the line of divergence from metaphysics begun by Kant, but does not follow Kant completely. As an advantage of the previous metaphysics, the philosopher notes the conviction that “it is not objects in their immediacy that are truly true, but only objects raised to the form of thought, objects as thinkable… that thought in its immanent determinations and the true nature of things constitute one content” (2: 1, 98). At the same time, Hegel decisively criticizes metaphysics for the limitations of its ideas about thinking, for the fact that it dogmatically transferred finite definitions to reality and uncritically used the methods of rational thinking, to which he contrasts thinking that is infinite in itself and rational, which thinks not only of objects and is limited by them, but also of itself: “True knowledge of an object must, on the contrary, be such that it itself determines itself from itself, and does not receive its predicates from outside” (7: 1, 136-137).
Hegel considers Kant’s critical transcendental study of reason to be insufficient. If Kant rejected the previous metaphysics for the sake of scientific knowledge and posed the question of how this scientific knowledge is possible, then Hegel goes further and considers it necessary to investigate not only scientific knowledge, but also the entire sphere of the human spirit, including politics, morality, religion, and even ordinary consciousness. Hegel goes further than Kant in that he considers the premise of philosophy not the scientific knowledge that is available, but the content of the human spirit as a whole. In other words, if Kant considers it possible to trust a scientist in science and does not pose the question of the scientific nature of existing knowledge, but only of how it is possible, then Hegel as a philosopher dares to trust the human spirit in general, and considers it necessary for philosophy to rely not only on scientific knowledge, but also on culture as a whole. Hegel’s overcoming of transcendentalism proceeds through the transition from a critical study of reason (scientific knowledge) to a critical study of the spirit as a whole (culture in its entirety), which constitutes the main goal of the science of the experience of consciousness, or the phenomenology of the spirit, created by him at the end of his Jena period of creativity.
Phenomenology of the Spirit as an Introduction to the System of Philosophy. Phenomenology of the Spirit, or the science of the experience of consciousness, is a science that systematically investigates the truth of spiritual phenomena, determining the connection between them and philosophy and thereby the place of philosophy in the system of spiritual activity. Phenomenology of the Spirit considers the existing spirit or culture, in modern language, as a given, but at the same time approaches the spirit critically, asserts that “what is known is not yet known” (4: 16), and poses the question of what the truth of the knowledge that is available consists of.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, consciousness is characterized primarily through the division of the subject of consciousness, the I, and the object of consciousness, and their mutual connection in this regard. Otherwise, these two moments of consciousness are defined by Hegel as moments of the for-itself and in-itself. The knowledge that the science of the phenomenology of spirit purports to provide is secondary knowledge about knowledge, and therefore it necessarily occupies a special position in the course of research, more complex than ordinary knowledge. “Our ordinary knowledge represents only the object that it knows, but at the same time does not represent itself, that is, knowledge itself. The whole that is present in knowledge is not only the object, but also the I that knows, as well as the relationship between me and the object – consciousness” (3: 2, 79).
The limitation of the ordinary conception of consciousness about itself lies in the unconditional affirmation of this absolute opposition between consciousness and object. Even critical, transcendental research did not completely abandon this conviction and, as a result, limited itself to recognizing the formal relationship of thinking to the knowledge of reality. True philosophy, which, according to Hegel, “contains thought insofar as thought is also the thing in itself, or contains the thing in itself insofar as the thing is also pure thought” (2: 1, 103), and where “that which is in itself and for itself is the conscious concept, and the concept as such is that which is in itself and for itself” (2: 1, 103), must overcome this conviction.
The very posing of the phenomenological question about the truth of knowledge already orients thinking in this direction, since from the position of the phenomenologist, or the position of for-us, as Hegel says, the aspects of consciousness: object and knowledge, in-itself and for-itself – are in an equal relationship to us and for this reason, as it were, change places: the object for us equally becomes knowledge, and knowledge for us – the object. In exactly the same way, our idea of the criterion of truth changes: for us, this criterion can equally be defined as the correspondence of knowledge or concept to the object, just as the correspondence of the object to the concept. In this ambiguity, the entire complexity of the phenomenological question is revealed, for it is clearly seen that it asks not simply about another knowledge that supplements or cancels the first, existing knowledge, it simultaneously asks about another truth or about other knowledge and truth, unknown to ordinary consciousness.
The opposition of moments of consciousness is not cancelled out when posing a phenomenological question, but doubled. And this doubled negation, or negation of negation, forces ordinary consciousness to reconcile itself with the contradiction within itself between unity and duality, contrary to its own logic. Here we encounter a situation where contradiction enters consciousness and is retained in it, without destroying its truth, but only introducing new, additional tasks into the study. Subsequently, in his philosophy, Hegel will repeatedly speak out against the limitations of the rules of rational thinking, expressed in the laws of formal logic and not applicable in the field of philosophical thinking.
The phenomenological method of double reflection. It is extremely important that the phenomenological investigation of knowledge takes place with the participation of both consciousnesses, the one being investigated and the one investigating. In the first step, self-consciousness is forced to begin to re-examine its knowledge, and it carries out this verification in a natural way through reflection. Consciousness reflects in relation to its object, so that as a result of reflection the object of consciousness is doubled. Since in relation to the moment for-us both moments of consciousness (in-itself and for-itself) are equalized and, as it were, move in a circle, constantly changing places, then reflection or bifurcation on one side, on the side of consciousness, entails exactly the same bifurcation on the side of the object. For us, it is no longer simply consciousness, but the object itself that proves capable of its own reflection, and as a result of this action on the side of the object, the object of consciousness itself changes and becomes more complex precisely due to this negation or the emergence of an internal attitude towards itself, or internal reflection. Accordingly, a more complex object now appears before consciousness, for it now contains within itself an element of consciousness and in this respect comes closer to consciousness itself, although it still remains opposed to consciousness. Thus, in place of one form of consciousness, as a result of research and as the truth of the preceding form, another more complex one appears, while the preceding form reveals its untruth to us, and each subsequent form thus critically refutes the preceding one. Research as a whole is a constant and consistent movement through the forms of the spirit (from consciousness to self-consciousness and further to reason, spirit, religion and absolute knowledge), each of which inherits something from the preceding one and at the same time surpasses it in the complexity of its object. In the end, research reaches a form in which the moments of consciousness and objectivity completely balance each other, so that the very opposition of consciousness disappears, this will mean our attainment of the absolute form of knowledge or the form of philosophy.
In the transition to philosophy, at the last step, the opposition of consciousness and object disappears, the very attitude of phenomenology dissolves. Substance and subject, object and knowledge merge into one in the simplest and at the same time absolute form of the concept, in the form of absolute knowledge, ready to begin mastering its own content by thinking in concepts already in the field of the system of philosophy as a whole. Three main parts of the system will be: the science of logic as a doctrine of pure thinking in itself, the philosophy of nature as a doctrine of the objectification of the absolute idea, and the philosophy of the spirit as a doctrine of the return of the spirit to itself.
The science of logic. In the science of logic, as in the whole system of speculative philosophy, knowledge and object are initially in unity, which is why the method of philosophy or logic and its content or the system itself are inseparable from each other, there is no need to talk about a divergence and even less about the opposition of the system and the method of Hegel’s philosophy. Absolute thinking presents itself as the beginning and at the same time must return to itself at the end as the absolute idea. “The main thing for science is not so much that the beginning is something exclusively immediate, but that the whole science as a whole is a cycle in itself, in which the first also becomes the last, and the last also the first” (2: 1, 128). This thinking does not oppose its object, but develops it from itself in such a way that the immediate and the mediated in the process of thinking mutually push each other towards development. This is the specificity of Hegel’s philosophical thinking, which appears “in the absolute sense as infinite thinking, unburdened by the finitude of consciousness… thinking as such” (2: 1, 118). Only in this way can thinking be presented scientifically in all its fullness and the interrelation of its forms. In contrast to Hegel’s substantive logic, traditional Aristotelian formal logic, in his opinion, “can claim at most the significance of a natural-historical description of the phenomena of thinking in the form in which they are present” (2: 3, 30).
Logical thinking in Hegel appears in three forms: rational, dialectical and speculative, each of which expresses one of the sides of thinking: the first is abstract thinking in the finite categories of reason, the second is dialectical thinking, revealing the contradictory nature of the categories of reason and denying their limitations, and, finally, the third is speculative thinking, doubling the negation and producing a certain positive result in thinking. Movement in the science of logic, as in the phenomenology of the spirit, occurs through double negation, or Aufhebung, as Hegel calls this process, i.e., overcoming one form by another, growing out of the negation of the first.
Hegelian logic begins its movement through the categories of thought with immediate being. The concept of being is presented as, on the one hand, the immediate beginning and the simplest object of thought, and on the other hand, it already contains within itself as a concept an internal contradiction and negativity, mediation by reflection, which will give impetus to all subsequent development. Reflection shows us this immediate being in relation to its negation as a definite, qualitative being, but thereby the indefiniteness of being itself becomes its quality, therefore, it is definite in itself – and is the present, finite being. Within the being of the indefinite and pure, the same game is played out between itself and its negation in the form of nothing, pure being passes into nothing. At the stage of being, the movement of categories is realized through the “transition to another” (7: 1, 215), for each determinacy is at the same time something existing, and their mutual negativity appears as something external in relation to them. Being and nothingness, passing into one another, are both sublated in becoming, but in turn becoming also sublated itself and passes into what has become, into “a certain calm result” which is revealed as being, i.e., there is a return to being. The result of the repeated transition or negation is not nothingness, but precisely determinate being. For determinate being its unfolding through the categories of finite and infinite proves to be essential. Since in determinate being determinacy or quality has united with being itself as a result of the preceding movement, negativity is now inherent in determinate being itself. Being as a finite something has a limit in itself, in its finitude the negativity of nothingness manifests itself again, and therefore something is transient, it is destroyed, and not simply changed. The finite constantly overcomes itself and thereby passes into the infinite, which in turn nevertheless remains finite as well, for it is held by the finite and continually restores the already overcome finite, crosses the boundary and recreates it again. Thus, in thinking, what Hegel calls bad or negative infinity is formed. “By holding the infinite pure from the finite and at a distance from it, we only end it” (2: 1, 201), in other words: “The one who flees is not yet free, because in his flight he is still conditioned by that from which he flees” (7: 1, 233).
The deliverance from bad infinity is achieved together with the deliverance from external reflection, when the transition to something else means the transition to something else as into the same kind of something, therefore, there is both the return of something into itself and at the same time its self-overcoming, the entry of reflection into being itself. Existing being is transformed into an infinite relationship of being with itself, into being for-itself, the simplest form of consciousness or the concept as being. “Consciousness as such already contains within itself the determination of being for-itself” (2: 1, 224), whereas “self-consciousness is being-for-itself as fulfilled and posited… the closest example of the presence of infinity” (2: 1, 225). Existing being is sublated in negation and reveals finitude as the ideal, and not the real; on the other hand, the reality of the ideal also appears here, but only through true infinity in self-consciousness, or in being-for-itself. “This ideality of the finite is the fundamental position of philosophy, and every truly philosophical teaching is therefore idealism” (7: 1, 236).
Being for itself appears through the categories of one (it denies the relation with the other, since it itself is this other), but nevertheless as one in relation to many, therefore the further development of the negativity and ideality of being is already connected with the category of quantity. “Quantity is a quality that has already become negative; magnitude is a determinacy that is no longer one with being, but is already distinct from it, it is a sublated quality that has become indifferent” (2: 1, 137). “Number is thought, but it is thought as a kind of being completely external to itself” (7: 1, 251).
If quality passes into quantity (through negation in logical thinking), then quantity also passes into quality (as unity with quality through repeated negation) by means of measure as a qualitatively determined quantity. The nodal line of measures, representing this movement of the transition of quantity into quality, expresses in itself the essence or truth of being.
“Being, or immediacy, which through the negation of itself mediates itself with itself and comes into relation with itself and which is therefore also a mediation that sublates itself, bringing itself into relation with itself, to immediacy, is essence.” (7: 1, 262). Reflection now does not simply penetrate into being itself in an external way, but allows itself to sublate or negate being for the sake of penetrating into essence.
“In essence there is no longer transition, but only relation. The form of relation is in being only our reflection; on the contrary, in essence the relation is its own determination” (7: 1, 262). Essence reduces immediate being to appearance, and on the other hand, it contains being in itself as a relation to itself. “Essence and further the inner find their confirmation solely in the way they appear in appearance” (7: 1, 268). “In it everything is posited as the being of reflection, a being which shines forth in appearance in another and in which the other shines forth in appearance. It is therefore also the sphere of posited contradiction, which in the sphere of being remains only in itself” (7: 1, 269).
Contradictions of thought are revealed at the level of essence in an explicit form and are also necessarily overcome in the essence itself. Therefore, as Hegel states, “contradiction is what actually moves the world, and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction cannot be thought. The only thing that is correct in this assertion is that the matter cannot end in contradiction and that it (the contradiction) annuls itself through itself. But the annuled contradiction is not an abstract identity, for the latter itself is only one side of the opposition. The closest result of the opposition posited as a contradiction is the foundation, which contains both identity and difference as annulments and reduced to mere ideal moments” (7: 1, 280). Identity and difference, content and form, essence and appearance, necessity and chance, reality and possibility – all these categories overcome themselves and are reflected, or “shine with appearance”, in their opposites due to their own reflection, thereby they are connected with each other and demonstrate their unity instead of their opposites in the process of thinking. Essence is an aspect of appearance, but appearance is equally essential. Through the substantial relation (necessity), causal relation and interaction, the category of reality is revealed, permeated with logical relations, which demonstrates to us the rational character of reality itself.
“In contrast to the bare phenomenon, reality, as primarily the unity of the internal and external, is so little opposed to reason that, on the contrary, it is entirely rational, and that which is irrational should not be considered real for this very reason” (7: 1, 314). For logic, this means that reality sublates itself in the logical form of a concept.
Having begun with the concept of being, the concept itself now removes the contradiction between being and essence and comes to the surface in its pure form. This is not the same as the concept in formal logic, a simple form of the general. “The concept here should be considered not as an act of the understanding conscious of itself, not as a subjective understanding, but as a concept in itself and for itself, forming a stage of both nature and spirit” (2: 3, 20). “The concept is truly the first, and things are what they are thanks to the activity of the concept inherent in them and revealed in them. Thought, or, more precisely, the concept, is that infinite form or free creative activity which does not need material outside of it for its realization” (7: 1, 347).
At this stage, the movement occurs as a development, an unfolding of the reality of the concept from itself and passes through the following stages: the subjective concept (which includes Hegel’s teaching on the traditional forms of thinking: concept, judgment and inference), the objective concept, which unfolds in the field of natural science in the form of mechanism, chemism and teleologism, and the absolute idea, which reveals itself through life and knowledge. “The concept, which is at first only subjective, in accordance with its own activity, without needing for this any external material or substance, comes to objectify itself, and in the same way the object is not something motionless, something in which no process takes place; its development consists in the fact that it reveals itself simultaneously as something subjective, which forms a further movement towards the idea” (7: 1, 384).
The absolute idea itself is formed as a unity of fully developed reality as life and the fullness of forms and content of knowledge. And therefore, “the absolute idea alone is being, eternal life, self-aware truth and all truth” (2: 3, 288). This completes the development of the Absolute at the level of pure objective thinking, but its development continues as the transition of the absolute idea into otherness, into nature. Absolute thinking cannot stop or limit itself to its pure self, but is forced to realize the internal negativity accumulated in the course of logical movement against itself and to appear as something objectified and external, like nature.
The philosophy of nature is the middle link in the chain of the Hegelian system, its task is to connect the logical idea and the spirit, forcing the logical idea to first turn outside itself into being, to turn into nature, and then, having passed through nature, to return to itself as a spirit, which removes in itself, in the course of its own activity, the contradiction with nature. The philosophy of nature is also present in Hegel as a necessary component of a holistic philosophy, without which, by the standards of that time, a system of philosophical knowledge cannot take place. Having experienced a strong influence of Schelling’s transcendentalism in his early period, Hegel in his mature work also clearly diverges from Schelling’s natural philosophy. At the same time, Hegel offers his understanding of the philosophy of nature as “an examination of nature that comprehends in concepts” (7: 2, 14). For Hegel, this means that the philosophy of nature is a necessary supplement to the knowledge of nature that is given in physics. This difference consists in the fact that philosophy cognizes in nature “the same universal, but taken for itself… in its own immanent necessity” (7: 2, 14). “The philosophy of nature picks up the material produced by physics on the basis of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and, in turn, transforms it further, but without placing experience as the final confirmation” (7: 2, 20). Thus, the philosophy of nature is called upon not to replace physics, but to continue the study of nature deeper than experimental data with the help of a concept. This means that, by and large, the movement of thought in the philosophy of nature will repeat the movement in the field of logic, for in both cases our thinking is driven by the logic of the unfolding concept. This method of natural science gives very unexpected and ambiguous results in Hegel. On the one hand, we are presented with a dry logical analysis of the forms of thinking when it comes to, for example, the celestial bodies that make up the solar system: Hegel asserts that the relationships between the Sun, Moon, and planets can be depicted using the syllogism scheme. On the other hand, the nature of light is revealed in a most unexpected way when light is spoken of as “pure reflection into itself … to which the I corresponds in the realm of the spirit.” However, “light is not self-consciousness, because it lacks the infinity of return to itself. It is only a manifestation of itself, but a manifestation not for itself, but only for another” (7: 2, 123). “Just as the I is not yet spirit and has its truth in the latter, just as light has its truth in the concrete planets” (7: 2, 144). Such an approach to light as “physical ideality” takes Hegel quite far from the physical meaning of light and forces him to sharply object to both Newton’s corpuscular theory of light and Huygens’ wave theory.
Living nature brings us even closer to the form of a logical concept: “The concept, which in the non-conceptual nature is only something internal, comes into existence only in living beings as a soul” (7: 2, 31). In another place, Hegel characterizes the relationship between nature and spirit as follows: “Nature attracts us to itself, for the spirit senses its presence in it; it repels us as something alien, in which our spirit does not find itself” (10). Therefore, clearly perceiving spiritual existence behind the curtain of nature, Hegel categorically objects to the poetic and romantic spiritualization of nature, the exaggeration of its spiritual value for the spirit itself. His philosophy of nature is completely devoid of an enthusiastic and poetic attitude towards nature: a scattering of stars is no more worthy of delight than a rash on a person’s body or a swarm of flies. As if arguing in absentia with Kant’s admiration for the “starry sky above me,” the philosopher dryly states that “rational consideration of the stars consists in understanding their arrangement” (7: 2, 87), since at the moment this is precisely what limits the possibilities of scientific penetration into the depths of the Universe.
Moving as if in parallel with physical science (the parts of Hegel’s philosophy of nature are mechanics, physics and organic physics), Hegel often finds himself in some way above or below the level of contemporary natural science. Thus, he prefers the theory of physical elements, qualitative elements of matter: earth, water, air and fire, to the chemical atomism that already existed at that time. As a result, he argues with the assertions that water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, and air of oxygen and nitrogen. He rejects the evolutionary approach to nature, which, in his opinion, exaggerates the significance of quantitative changes, and prefers the idea of qualitative leaps-metamorphoses of nature, following in this respect Goethe’s natural philosophy. At the same time, development in nature is discussed quite definitely, although it is emphasized that we are talking about the “logical” development of the concept: “nature must be considered as a system of stages, each of which necessarily follows from the other and is the closest truth of that from which it flowed” – this is “a generation in the bosom of the inner idea”, and not a natural, natural generation” (7: 2, 33). Speaking about development in nature, Hegel also asserts that nature does not develop in time, but only in space, i.e., the various stages of its movement do not replace one another, but are superimposed on one another and coexist.
Goethe’s influence makes him argue with Newton’s theory of color and assert that color arises as a result of the synthesis of “light” and “dark,” and that white color is not decomposed into the colors of the spectrum. Again, he cannot fully agree with Newton and opposes the extension of Newtonian mechanics to the movement of celestial bodies, which, according to Hegel, although they have something in common with other bodies in matter, are distinguished by a special, “free movement” (7: 2, 91).
On the other hand, Hegel’s philosophy, emphasizing the qualitative uniqueness of the stages of nature, seeks to correct the bias towards reductionism on the part of the natural sciences: the reduction of chemical processes to the mechanical movement of atoms and processes in living nature to chemical ones: “the chemical is inherent only in the dead, while animal processes always remove the form of the chemical” (7: 2, 514). He quite justifiably condemns the actions of the natural sciences, which in their knowledge tear the living object of nature into separate parts, and asserts that it is possible to unite them only with the help of a philosophical concept that contains both moments – the universal and the particular. Again, Hegel’s philosophical position allows him to decisively break with many of the errors of the science of that time, such as the doctrine of caloric, phrenology or the “so much praised discoveries” of various natural forces leading to the chaos of matter, which “is impossible not only to think in a concept, but also to imagine” (7: 2, 159).
Naturally, it was Hegel’s philosophy of nature that caused and still causes a lot of criticism from scientists and philosophers. It is not surprising that at the present time, unlike other parts of the Hegelian system, the philosophy of nature causes the least interest and is practically forgotten.
Philosophy of the Spirit. Both the transition from a logical idea into nature and the return from nature to the spirit occur when the concept has completed its full development and can look at itself from the outside. If the movement of a concept into nature meant the immersion of the idea into the alien element of external natural existence, then upon leaving nature the spirit, as it were, awakens again to its natural spiritual life and begins to realize itself in free development as spirit. “As the substance of matter is heaviness, so … the substance, the essence of the spirit is freedom” (1:8, 17). The ultimate goal of the spirit is to achieve the fullness of its freedom, which it achieves by developing through the forms of the subjective, objective and absolute spirit.
The subjective spirit, which is studied by anthropology, the phenomenology of the spirit and psychology, is the individual spirit of the personality, developing itself towards ever greater freedom and independence from the surrounding, present being. The key to the success of this movement is that “the transition of nature to spirit is not a transition to something absolutely different, but only a return to itself of that very spirit, which in nature is an entity outside itself” (7: 3, 24). The soul as a subject of anthropology is considered as a natural spirit, connected with external bodily being and therefore abstract, the purpose of which is to free oneself from this naturalness and abstractness through education. “The spirit does not come from nature in a natural way” (7: 3, 24), even the upright posture of man is the result of “the habit of the will to an upright position” (7: 3, 85). The accidental and individual in man is not the most valuable thing for Hegel; he believes that only the universal has moral significance and that “the more educated a person is, the less something peculiar to him and therefore accidental appears in his behavior” (7: 3, 74). A young man believes that he is the one who is called to change the world and realize his ideals, while a mature man recognizes the conditions of this world and is forced to admit that “the world exists independently and is basically finished” (7: 3, 89). He must join the general work of humanity, since “the forward movement of the world occurs only through the activity of enormous masses” (7: 3, 90).
Having passed through the phenomenology of the spirit in a brief form, which this time has as its subject not the spirit appearing in its entirety, but only the spirit as a phenomenon (consciousness) or the spirit at the stage of reflection as a relationship to itself, the section on the subjective spirit ends with psychology – the doctrine of the spirit as a totality: “the principle of the free spirit consists in positing the being of consciousness as the mental, and, conversely, transforming the mental into the objective” (7: 3, 252). The finiteness and limitation of the subjective spirit are overcome by it through its deployment in the sphere of the objective spirit or society. The doctrine of society is mainly set forth in Hegel’s philosophy of law, since for Hegel, in accordance with the ideas of his era, it is precisely the political and legal aspects that prove decisive in the life of society.
The philosophy of law has as its subject “the concept of law and its implementation” (5: 59). The philosophy of law asserts that “law is freedom as an idea in general”, defending the priority of law against the opinion that “the substantial basis and the first must be the will not as something existing in itself and for itself, the rational will, the spirit not as a true spirit, but as a special individual, but as the will of the individual in its inherent arbitrariness” (5: 89).
In the sphere of law, man acts first and foremost as a legal entity, as a personality and a bearer of law. One of the essential rights is the right of ownership. Ownership is the external expression of my personality and my will; it is a necessary general condition for the presence of personality in the legal field. Therefore, “in relation to external things, the rational consists in my owning property… what I own and how great my possession is, therefore, a legal accident” (5: 107). When the will realizes itself only as a particular one and in contrast to itself as universal and rational, then this particular will commits a crime. “The commission of a crime… is negative, so that punishment is only the negation of the negation” (5: 145). The removal of crime as a particular will directed against the idea of law also means that, thanks to this, “the will now has its own personality, as which alone the will exists in abstract law, as its object. Such an infinite subjectivity of freedom for itself constitutes the principle of the moral point of view” (5: 153).
Moral consciousness arises as a result of the bifurcation of the subjective principle, will and world, and operates with the concepts of good and evil, intention and intent. Its limitation is that at the level of morality, will appears only through the relations of obligation and demand and can never be realized fully and finally. The significance of the moral point of view is that thanks to it, not only does the individual discover his subjective will, but the existing will or concept receives for itself the possibility of realization in the present being through the subjective will of the individual. “The concrete identity of good (goal) and subjective will, their truth is morality” (5: 198). Morality is “freedom or will existing in itself and for itself as an objective… moral forces that govern the life of the individual” (5: 201). In the most general sense, it is a moral substance surrounding the spiritual individual, the spirit of the people, its mores and the individual’s habit of morality. More concrete forms of morality are presented in Hegel by the family, civil society and the state. Following moral duties does not limit the freedom of the individual, but on the contrary, develops it, since this submission frees the individual from natural inclinations and from fruitless reflections on what is due, from the uncertain position of his subjectivity, deprived of genuine external reality. “In duty, the individual frees himself to substantial freedom” (5: 203). These duties and, at the same time, the realization of one’s freedom begin in the family as a still immediate, natural moral spirit and continue in civil society.
In civil society, everyone is only for himself and everyone has an exclusively egoistic goal for himself, and all others are nothing to him, but at the same time, egoistic goals connect people with each other and lead to the formation of a system of comprehensive dependence between people in society. Civil society arises with reliance on the state and later than the state, but it is precisely it that acts as the basis of the state. Within the framework of civil society, Hegel distinguishes three estates: the substantial, or agricultural; the formal, or industrial estate, and the universal – the intelligentsia. The universal nature of human needs and the universal nature of the division of labor allows civil society to accumulate enormous wealth. However, at the same time, part of society is forced to exist in conditions of “disunity and limitations of special labor”, which leads “to the dependence and need of the class associated with this labor, and hence to the inability to feel and enjoy all the freedom, and especially the spiritual advantages of civil society” (5: 271). Poverty gives rise to a “rabble” which “is determined only by the state of mind associated with poverty, by an inner revolt directed against the rich, against society, the government, etc.” (5:272). “With excessive wealth, civil society is not rich enough, i.e., does not possess sufficient of its own property to prevent the emergence of an excess of poverty and the emergence of a rabble” (5:272). Hegel does not see a way to resolve the problem of poverty in simple charity, since provision without mediation by labor contradicts the principle of civil society. In essence, this problem is insoluble at the level of civil society. A higher principle of the organization of society is the state.
The state is what represents the highest value for Hegel, since it enables both the individual and society to embody the rational principle. The tasks of the state are to preserve individuals as persons, to support their rights and property, to protect the family and to govern civil society. The state finds its unity and subjectivity in the government, which in its perfect form takes the form of a real unity of will in the person of the monarch. According to Hegel, “the monarchical constitution is therefore the constitution of developed reason; all other constitutions belong to lower stages of the development and realization of reason” (7: 3, 358). A true monarchy, however, is such only on condition that it contains and develops the principles of law: freedom of property, personal freedom, the principles of civil society, its industry, its communities, subordination of the activities of state services and departments to laws.
“Every state structure is only a product, a manifestation of the spirit of a given people and a stage in the development of the consciousness of its spirit. This development necessarily requires progressive movement, in which not a single stage can be skipped” (5: 469). From this principle of the natural-historical evolution of society as rational follows one of the most famous propositions of Hegel’s philosophy, for which he was often accused of conservatism: “What is rational is real; and what is real is rational” {5: 53). This statement expresses the difference between the philosophical point of view and the position of an individual who can, with his reason, discover irreconcilable contradictions in social life and put forward his moral ideals in opposition to the existing state of affairs. However, revolution is impossible without reformation, that is, revolution presupposes a revolution in the general historical development of a nation, including all aspects of its spiritual life, including religion. And in this regard, he opposes the extremes of the French Revolution, which attempted to subordinate state life to abstract principles. He does not accept Rousseau’s theory of the social contract, which served as the ideological basis of the French Revolution, as inconsistent with the nature of the state: “Contractual relations cannot be applied either to marriage as a moral relationship, or to the same extent to the state” (5: 409). “It is incorrect to assert that the foundation of the state depends on the arbitrariness of all, on the contrary, it is absolutely necessary for everyone to be in the state”, for it is “an end in itself and for itself” (5: 130) and gives his understanding of natural law as a law corresponding to the nature of rational will, but in no way to the will of the people and especially not to the will of an individual, identical to arbitrariness.
Each state embodies the spirit of a particular people, and in this respect it is nevertheless limited and transient within the framework of world history, where the spirit of a historical people enters as a stage in the development of the world spirit, which passes judgment on the spirits of peoples.
Philosophy of history. As in the philosophy of law, rationality triumphs in Hegel’s philosophy of world history. The apparently contradictory course of history, filled with clashes of actions and goals of individuals, entire nations and their governments, forms for philosophy only material testifying to the superiority of the position of reason, capable of rising above the interests and opinions of particular participants in the historical process and seeing the universal as the goal and result. In this regard, it is precisely the position of philosophical reason that plays an essential role, which itself does not participate in historical actions, but sums up historical achievements and demonstrates to itself that if not the actions of people, then the result of history itself always turns out to be rational. As Hegel aphoristically expresses it: “Whoever looks at the world rationally, the world also looks at him rationally” (1:8, 12).
“Reason is not so powerless as to be limited to an ideal, an obligation, and to exist as something special, only outside of reality, no one knows where, in the heads of individual people” (1:8, 10). However, on the other hand, the goals of reason are not realized automatically, by themselves or only in reason itself; for its realization, reason needs the activity of people. Human aspirations, interests, passions and the actions that follow from them, often far from meaningfulness and rationality, constitute an integral fabric of the historical process. “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion” (1:8, 23), but at the same time, thanks to the disparate efforts of people as a whole, a certain universal result is created in the course of the world-historical process, expressing the action of the universal reason. The fact that the final result differs from what people themselves strove for and wanted to achieve with their actions, Hegel calls the “cunning of reason”, which, using human aspirations, makes them ultimately realize precisely their own, rational goals. Human suffering is the price that humanity must pay so that the human rational goal becomes a reality. World history is not an arena of happiness, on the contrary, it is precisely those people, Hegel calls them world-historical personalities, who maximally express in their actions the goals of the universal spirit, who sacrifice themselves to history and turn out to be deeply unhappy in their personal fate. Let this circumstance serve as consolation to those who need it, says the philosopher. At the same time, world-historical personalities receive from Hegel the right to treat other people no better than themselves, to ignore their feelings and desire for happiness: “Such a great personality is forced to trample another innocent flower, to crush much in his path” (1: 8, 31-32). And all this is for the sake of reason or the universal achieving its goal and realizing itself in action, and consequently realizing itself as freedom.
The main thing for history is precisely the activity of people, paving the way for reason and at the same time allowing them to realize their own freedom. “World history is progress in the consciousness of freedom, a progress which we must recognize in its necessity” (1:8, 19). This movement in history requires enormous efforts from the people, first of all in achieving the state, for “in world history we can only speak of such peoples who form a state” (1:8, 38), but a world-historical people is also required to participate in the comprehensive development of the human spirit, in order to form by its activity a step in the movement of the world spirit. Hegel distinguishes four such stages, or steps of the spirit, which form their own special historical world in the course of history: the Eastern world, the Greek world, the Roman world, and the German world, by which Hegel understands the world created by the German peoples on the ruins of the Roman Empire, i.e., the European, Christian world.
The progress of world history as it moves from East to West is expressed in the fact that “the East knew and knows only that one is free, the Greek and Roman world knows that some are free, the German world knows that all are free” (1: 8, 98). Provoking accusations of Eurocentrism from modern researchers, the philosopher asserts that “only the Germanic peoples have reached the realization in Christianity that man as such is free, that freedom of spirit constitutes the most fundamental property of his nature” (1: 8, 18). Only in the German world, i.e. in Hegel’s contemporary Europe, “has freedom found its support, its own concept of how to realize its truth. This is the goal of world history…” (1: 8, 104). It finds this support in Hegel’s philosophy, and, consequently, the goal of history turns out to be already achieved in itself thanks to the philosopher’s activity.
Thus, the philosophy of history actually ends in Hegel’s modernity, but this does not mean that Hegel considered his modernity to be the highest perfection, and even more so does not mean that he considered further historical movement impossible. “The end of history” is the end of precisely the philosophy of history, which demonstrated the rationality of history and thereby reconciled man with his historical fate. The human spirit must seek its further development no longer in historical deeds, but in the eternal works of art, in religion as a sphere “in which the people expresses its determination of what it considers true” (1:8, 48), or in philosophy, i.e., in the sphere of the absolute spirit.
Absolute spirit.Art as a form of absolute spirit is distinguished by the presence of external being in the form of a work of art, located between its creator and its connoisseur. On the other hand, art for Hegel is a form of knowledge, and as such it is aimed at an exclusively spiritual, free from any externality, comprehension of the Absolute. Therefore, art is located by the philosopher in the sphere of free and pure absolute spirit, but at the same time has an expression in external, natural being. “The artist’s inspiration manifests itself as a certain force alien to him, as an unfree pathos; creativity in itself has here the form of natural spontaneity, turns out to be inherent in genius as a given special subject, and at the same time represents work connected with technology” (7: 3, 385). In this contradiction between external form and internal spiritual content lies the source of the development of art: from the classical through the sublime, or symbolic, to the romantic, and its forms: from architecture to poetry. “The connection between spiritual penetration and external existence is broken at a level that ceases to correspond to the immediate concept of art, so that poetry is in danger of becoming completely lost in the spiritual, going beyond the limits of the sensory sphere. The beautiful mean between these extremes of architecture and poetry is occupied by sculpture, painting and music … ” (1: 14, 166). Unlike Schelling, Hegel assigns the highest place to rational knowledge and reveals from this side the inevitable limitations of art. For him, “the borderline spheres of the kingdom of beauty, on the one hand, are the prose of finite knowledge and everyday consciousness, from where art breaks out to the truth, on the other hand – the higher spheres of religion and science, into which art passes to comprehend the Absolute in less sensory forms” (1: 14, 165). Questions of religion always occupied an important place in the works of the philosopher. In his early “theological” works, Hegel’s criticism is directed against the positivity or super-rationality of religion. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of popular religion as a factor in strengthening and developing the national spirit. In general, the philosopher overcomes the Enlightenment approach to religion and proceeds from the belief that “the convictions of long centuries, everything for which millions of people lived and died during all this time, which they considered their duty and sacred truth – all this was not empty nonsense and even immorality” (3: 1, 95). The idea that religion is the most important factor in culture, the life of the spirit of both an individual and a nation as a whole runs through all his work. Already in the “Phenomenology of Spirit” the idea is developed that religion is the highest form of comprehension of the absolute spirit, second only to philosophy. From this follows the Hegelian formula, which asserts that religion and philosophy have the same content but different forms: religion comprehends absolute truths in the form of ideas, and philosophy in the form of concepts. In Hegel’s absolute spirit,expressing the unity of all human activity and the spirit of the people (society), all contradictions are revealed and resolved, including the contradiction between the divine and the human. It is important for a philosopher to emphasize both their difference and their unity, since from the point of view of philosophy, that in religion which surpasses the individual consciousness of the individual and even the spirit of the people, which does not recognize itself in the image of the deity opposing it, is not just a mistake or a manifestation of the weakness of the human spirit, but, on the contrary, a stage of its ascent to the Absolute and reason. “Perhaps what is given is not a dual mind and a dual spirit, not a divine mind and a human one, which would be different in general. The human mind, the consciousness of its essence in the mind in general, the divine in people and the spirit, especially the spirit of God, is not the spirit of an otherworldly star, of the other world, but God is with us, is omnipresent and as a spirit is present in all spirits” (8: 15, 50).
Because of this inner unity, the course of human history and the evolution of religious ideas correspond to each other in their rationality and represent both the development of humanity and the development of the Absolute itself, or God, in the various historical forms of religion. Hegel connects the highest stage of the development of the concept of religion with Christianity: “The identity of the divine and the human consists in the fact that God ultimately dwells with himself, and this finiteness in death itself is the definition of God. Through death, God has reconciled the world and is eternally reconciling it with himself” (6: 2, 293). “But the process does not stop here, conversion occurs, namely, God preserves himself in this process, which is only the death of death. Resurrection also belongs essentially to faith… it is not an external history for unbelievers, but this event exists only for faith” (6: 2, 290). The death of Jesus Christ as an individual “is transformed into the universality of the spirit, which lives in its community, in which it dies and is resurrected daily” (4:418). This is the reconciliation of faith and knowledge in the absolute spirit, achieved in Hegelian philosophy.
The concrete reconciliation of the religious and the secular in life is achieved in the state as a divine presence in history and, at the same time, the affirmation of human freedom. But since this contradiction is practical and historical in nature, in it we approach the limits of philosophy: the answer to the question of what way out of this opposition “the temporary, empirical present will find, what form it will take – must be left to it, this is no longer a directly practical matter and the subject of philosophy” (6: 2, 333).
The Absolute Spirit in the form of philosophy crowns the Hegelian system and at the same time returns it to its beginning, closing the circle of Hegelian thinking. This does not mean that the philosopher Hegel finally identifies himself with the Absolute or God. It only means that the thinker has completed his philosophical work to the end and further development should be expected from the direct figures of history, i.e. ordinary people, whose lives and activities provide material for philosophical reflection.
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