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 HEGELIANISM

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HEGELIANISM

he was made a Knight of the Order of the Wurtem- berg Crown, and with it received the rank of noliiUty.

In addition to his otlier work, he had a parhamentary seat (1842-45) as representative of the government district of Ellwangen. In Wiirtemberg, as in almost all districts of German}' in the first half of the nine- teenth century, the Church groaned under the oppres- sion of the Iliuminati and a Protestant government. When in 1S42 Bishop von Keller made an energetic attempt to hberate the Church, he was supported by the skill and vigour of his fellow-representa- tiVe Hefele, who endeavoured in this way to realize Mohler's ideal programme. The historian of the councils was summoned to Rome in 1868 as con- suitor for the Vatican council. He spent the winter of 1868-69 in Rome, and on his return he was ap- pointed Bishop of Rottenburg; his consecration took place 29 December of the same year. He was to bring sorely needed peace to the diocese, torn by the so- called " Rottenburg Dissensions ", a conflict between the more rigorous and the laxer clergy. Immedi- ately after his consecration, the bishop set out for Rome to attend the council. When the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility was proposed, he was one of the most prominent bishops in the oppo- sition minority. He even published the reason for the stand he had taken in his " Causa Honorii Papa; " (Naples, 1870). In the decisive session of 13 July he voted "Non placet", and having signed the address of the minority to the pope on 17 July, returned home. Even after the definition of the dogma he held to his opinion, but was soon placed in a most difficult position, whence neither his expectation of a common stand on the part of the opposition bishops, nor his hope of a speedy resimiption of the oecumenical council, nor yet the thought of resignation, could extricate him. Shrinking from a schism, urged by Rome, importuned by the clergy of his diocese, perhaps also influenced by the desire of the Govern- ment, but above all, solicitous for his diocese, Hefele promulgated the decrees of the council, 10 April, 1871.

Various judgments were pronounced on this step. Karl von Hase, in his " Handbuch der Polemik gegen die romisch-katholi.sche Kirche" (.5th ed., 1890, p. 237), declared that "the bishop had strangled the scholar". It was the Old Catholics, however, who attacked Hefele the most severely. To compromise him they published various letters WTitten to their leaders both during and after the council, and ex- plained that his submission was merely external. But they erred ; good evidence for this may be found in the declaration made to his coadjutor bishop during an illness in the late autumn of 1890: "It is true that I stood on the side of the opposition. But thereby I made use of my right ; for the question was proposed for discussion. However, once the decision had been made, to tarry in the opposition party would have been inconsistent with my whole past. I would have set my own infallibility in the place of the infallibility of the' Church" [From a discourse of Bishop Reiser at the burial of Bishop Hefele (Rottenburg, 1893), p. 11]. Apart from the aforesaid matter, the bishop brought peace to his diocese. It was not disturbed when the Kulturkampf was raging in other parts of Germany That peace was preserved in Wurtemberg, was due, after King Charles, to the services of Hefele. After November, 1886, he was aided by Bishop Reiser as auxiliary bishop.

Funk, Tlieologische Qunrtahrhrifl, LXXVI (1S94): Idem in Allgem. deutsche Biog.. L (1905). 109: Hegler in Realencyk. luT prot. Tkeol. und Kirche, s. v.: Granderath-Kirsch, Ge- echichte des vatikaniachen Cancils, III (1906), 31. 16.3. 174, 559.

Johannes Baptist S.^gmCller.

Hegelianism. — (1) Life and Writings of Hegel. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 1770; died at Berlin in 1831. After studying

theology at Tubingen he devoted himself successively to the stud}- of contemporary philosophy and to the cultivation of the Greek classics. After about seven years spent as private tutor in various places, he began bus career as university professor in 1801. His first appointment was at Jena. After an intermission of a year which he spent as newspaper editor at Bam- berg, and a short term as rector of a gymnasium at Nuremberg, he was made professor of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816, whence he was transferred to the University of Berlin in 1818. Hegel's principa works are his "Logic" (WissenschaftderLogik, 1816), his " Phenomenology of Spirit" (Phanomenologie des Geistes, 1807), his " Encyclopedia" (Encyklopadie der philosophischen WLssenschaften, 1817), and his " Philosophy of History" (Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Geschichte, 1820). His works were collected and puljlished by Rosenkranz in 19 vols., 18.32-42, second edition 1840-54.

(2) Aim of his Philosophy. — Hegel's philosophy is an attempt to reduce to a more synthetic unity the system of transcendental idealism bequeathed to him by Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Kant had taught that, so far as our theoretical experience is concerned, there exists nothing except the appearances of things and the unknown and unknowable noumenal sub- strate of these appearances, the Ding-an-sich. Hegel starts out by assuming that, if for Kant's destructive criticism of theoretical experience we substitute an incessantly progressive and productive immanent crit^ icism, we shall find that the noumenal reality is not an unknowable sulistrate of appearances but an ever-active process, which in thought and in reality constantly passes into its opposite in order to return to a higher and richer form of itself. This process in its barest and most meagre form is being; in its fullest and richest form it is spirit, absolute mind, the state, religion, jihilosophy. The business of pliilosophy is to trace this process through all its stages.

(3) His Method. — Hegel's method in philosophy consists, therefore, in following out the triadic develop- ment {Entwicklung) in each concept and in each thing. Thus, he hopes, philosophy will not contra- dict experience, but will give to the data of experience the philosophical, that is, the ultimately true, ex- planation. If, for instance, we wish to know what liberty is, we take that concept where we first find it, in the unrestrained action of the savage, who does not feel the need of repressing any thought, feeling, or tendency to act. Next, we find that the savage has given up this freedom in exchange for its opposite, the restraint, or, as he considers it, the tyranny, of civilization and law. Thirdly, in the citizen under the rule of law, we find the third stage of development, namely liberty in a higher and a fuller sense than that in which the savage [lossessed it, the liberty to do and to say and to think many things which were beyond the power of the savage. In this triadic process we remark that the second stage is the direct opposite, the annihilation, or at least the sublation, of the first. We remark also that the third stage is the first re- turned to itself in a higher, truer, richer, and full'T form. The three stages are, therefore, styled: (I; in itself (An-sich); (2) out of itself (Andersxein): and (3) in and for itself {An-und-fiir-sich). The.se three stages are found succeeding one another throughout the whole realm of thought and being, from the most abstract logical process up to the most complicated concrete activity of organized mind in the succession of states or the production of systems of philosophy.

(4) Doctrine of Development. — In logic — which really is a metaphysic — we have to deal with the pro- cess of development applied to reality in its most ab- stract form. For in logic we deal wit h concepts robbed of their empirical content: in logic we are di.scussing the process in vacuo, so to speak Thus, at the very beginning of our study of realiiy, we find the logical