Hegel

From MarxWiki

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831): A member of the `German idealism` movement, Hegel's first major work was Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807. He later published Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit. In Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences he wrote, `Philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought.` Hegel's work can be seen as metaphysical and religious, as Hegel develops a concept of the `Absolute Spirit.`

For Hegel, history and philosophy inhabit a single arena, and human events can be best understood according to a model in which a distinction is made between appearance and reality. The reality is hidden, exists behind appearances, and at the same time acts as the driving force behind changes in appearances. The ‘reality’ in this equation can be viewed as God, or some other theological conception, some abstract metaphysical force or concept, or it can be seen as human consciousness or human nature. This reality is what Hegel called the Absolute Spirit, and described the course of history as a process by which the Spirit comes gradually to self-awareness, that is, a process in which appearance moves closer and closer to reality. The actual shape of this process is found in Hegel’s dialectical model, according to which, each historical movement arises as a solution to the inherent contradictions of the previous movement.

This view of history, which suggesets that it moves not arbitrarily, but with coherence and direction, had a great impact on Marx's thought.

Marx and Engels, in `The German Ideology,` place communism as oppositional in many ways to German idealism, stressing the role of material and commerciality in history and society rather than religion and philosophy. They are particularly critical of Hegel and `Young-Hegelians.`

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