We encountered Georg... «Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction»
innashpitzberg10 октября 2012We encountered Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) in Chapter 6, though only briefly. His influence has been massive; we shall see two examples of it in the next and final chapter, but important as they are they can give only the barest inkling of the extent of the Hegelphenomenon. And the opposition to him started two very significant movements: existentialism, through the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, and in Britain the analytic school through Moore, Bertrand Russell, and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein. It took heavyweights with an alternative on offer to take people's minds off Hegel, and then the effect was only partial, local, and temporary. But there is another reason for introducing a work by Hegel at this point. Nearly all the philosophy we have looked at so far begins from what are relatively ordinary, everyday considerations. (Socrates: what will happen to my children if I do what my friends are suggesting? Hume: you can't always believe what other people tell you. Descartes: when there's so much disagreement between the authorities, what can we do but go back to basics and start again?) Hegel's thought in the Philosophy of History, in contrast, arises out of a grand vision of reality and the forces that move it – this is heavy-duty metaphysics. Hegel is often said to be a very difficult philosopher. I won't deny it – if you select a page at random and read it from top to bottom you will probably feel that you might just as well have read it from bottom to top. But one of the most valuable experiences for someone coming new to his philosophy is that of finding how much easier things are if you approach the text with the grand metaphysical vision already in mind. The big picture is the key, so we begin by trying to get some grasp of it. Remember that I warned you back in Chapter 1 to expect to find some philosophy weird. You will find Hegel's less weird, even if you still don't believe a word of it, after you have read the Introduction to the Philosophy of History.
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