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 HEGELIANISM

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HEGELIANISM

concept of being. Now, being is not a static concept, as Aristotle supposed it was. It is essentially dy- namic, because it tendsby its very nature to pass over into nothing, and then to return to itself in the higher concept, becoming. For Aristotle, there was nothing more certain than that being^being, or, in other words, that being is identical with itself, that e\-ery- thing is what it is. Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the concept becoming. For instance, the truth about this table, for .-Vristotle, is that it is a table. For Hegel, the. equally important trutii is that it was a tree, and it will be ashes. The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not being, is the highest expression of reality. It is also the highest expression of thought; because then only do we attain the fullest knowledge of a tiling when we know what it was, what it is, and what it will be — in a word, when we know the history of its development.

In the same way as being and nothing develop into the higher concept becoming, so, farther on in the scale of development, life and mind appear as the third terms of the process and are in turn developed into higlier forms of tliemselves. But, one cannot lielp asking, what is it that develops or is developed? Its name, Hegel answers, is different in each stage. In the lowest form it is being, higher up it is life, and in still higher form it is mind. The only thing always present is the process {das Werde7i). \Ve may, how- ever, call the process liy the name of spirit {Geist) or idea (Begriff). We may even call it God, because at least in the third term of every triadic development the process is God.

(.5) Division of Philosophy. — The first and most wide-reaching consideration of the processes of spirit, God, or the idea, reveals to us the truth that the idea must be studied (1) in itself; this is the subject of logic or metaphysics; (2) out of itself, in nature; this is the subject of the pliilosophy of nature; and (."?) in and for itself, as mind; this is the subject of the philos- ophy of mind (Geistesphilosophie).

(6) Philosophy of Nature. — Passing over the rather abstract considerations by which Hegel shows in his "Logik" the processes of the idea-in-itself through being to becoming, and finally through essence to notion, we take up the study of the development of the idea at the point where it enters into otherness in nature. In nature the idea has lost itself, because it has lost its unity and is splintered, as it were, into a thousand fragments. But the loss of unity is only apparent, because in reality the idea has merely con- cealed its imity. Studied philosophically, nature reveals itself as so many successful attempts of the idea to emerge out of the state of otherness and present itself to us as a better, fuller, and richer idea, namely spirit, or mind. Mind is, therefore, the goal of nature. It is also the truth of nature. For whatever is in nature is realized in a higher form in the mind which emerges from nature.

(7) Philosophy of Mind. — ^The philosophy of mind begins with the consideration of the individual, or subjective, mind. It is soon perceived, however, that individual, or subjective, mind is only the first stage, the in-itself stage, of mind. The next stage is objective mind, or mind objectified in law, morality, and the State. This is mind in the condition of out- of-itself. There follows the condition of aljsolute mind, the state in which mind rises above all the limitations of nature and institutions, and is sub-

iected to itself alone in art, religion, and philosophy, ''or the essence of mind is freetlom, and its develop- ment must consist in breaking away from the re- strictions imposed on it in its otherness by nature and human institutions.

(8) Philnsophi/ of History. — Hegel's philosophy of

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the State, his theory of history, and his account of absolute mind are the most interesting portions of his philosophy and the most easily understood. The State, he says, is mind objectified. The individual mind, which, on account of its passions, its prejudices, and its blind impulses, is only partly free, subjects itself to the yoke of necessity — the opposite of free- dom — in order to attain a fuller realization of itself in the freedom of the citizen. This yoke of necessity is first met with in the recognition of the rights of others, next in morality, and finally in social morality, of which the primal institution is the family. Aggre- gates of families form civil society, which, however, is but an imperfect form of organization compared with the State. The State is the perfect social em- bodiment of the idea, and stands in this stage of development for God Himself. The State, studied in itself, furnishes for our consideration constitutional law. In relation to other States it develops inter- national law; and in its general course through historical vicissitudes it passes through what Hegel calls the "Dialectics of History". Hegel teaches that the constitution is the collective spirit of the nation and that the government is the embothmcnt of that spirit. Each nation has its own individual spirit, and the greatest of crimes is the act by which the tyrant or the conqueror stifles the spirit of a nation. War, he teaches, is an indispensable means of political progress. It is a crisis in the development of the idea which is embodied in the different States, and out of this crisis the better State is certain to emerge victorious. The "ground" of historical development is, therefore, rational; since the State is an embodi- ment of reason as spirit. All the apparently con- tingent events of history are in reality stages in the logical unfokling of the sovereign reason which is embodied in the State. Passion, impulse, interest, character, personality — all these are either the ex- pression of reason or the instruments which reason moulds for its own use. We are, therefore, to under- stand historical happenings as the stern, reluctant working of reason towards the full realization of itself in perfect freedom. Consequently, we must interpret history in purely rational terms, and throw the succes- sion of events into logical categories. Thus, the widest view of history reveals three most important stages of development. Oriental monarchy (the stage of oneness, of suppression of freedom), Greek democ- racy (the stage of expansion, in which freedom was lost in unstable demagogy), and Christian constitu- tional monarchy (which represents the reintegration of freedom in constitutional government).

(9) Philosophy of Absolute Mind. — Even in the State, mind is limited by subjection to other minds. There remains the final step in the process of the acquisition of freedom, namely, that by which abso- lute mind in art, religion, and philosophy subjects it- self to itself alone. In art, mind has an intuitive contemplation of it.self as realized in the art material, and the development of the arts has been conditioned by the ever-increasing "docility" with which the art material lends itself to the actualization of mind or the idea. In religion, mind feels the superiority of itself to the particularizing limitations of finite things. Here, as in the philosophy of history, there are three great moments, Oriental religion, which exaggerated the idea of the infinite, Greek religion, which gave undue importance to the finite, and Christianity, which represents the union of the infinite and the finite. Last of all, absolute mind, as philosophy, transcends the limitations imposed on it even in religious feeling, and, discarding representative in- tuition, attains all truth under the form of reason. Whatever truth there is in art and in religion is contained in pliilosophy in a higher form, and free from all limitations. Philosophy is, therefore, "the highest, freest and wisest jDhase of the union of suli-