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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Spirit, and in the History of the World regard everything as only its manifestation, we have, in traversing the past? however extensive its periods'only to do with what is present; for philosophy, as occupying itself with the True, has to do with the eternally fresenL Nothing in the past is lost for it, for the Idea is ever present; Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps. These have indeed unfolded themselves in succession independently; but what Spirit is it has always been essentially; distinctions are only the development of this essential nature. The life of the ever present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments, which looked at in one aspect still exist beside each other, and only as looked at from another point of view appear as past. The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present. GEOGRAPHICAL BASIS OF HISTORY Contrasted with the universality of the moral Whole and with the unity of that individuality which is its active principle, the natural connecticm that helps to produce the Spirit of a People, appears an extrinsic element; but inasmuch as we must regard it as the ground on which that Spirit plays its part, it is an essential and necessary basis. We began with the assertion that, in the History of the World, the Idea of Spirit appears in its actual embodiment as a series of external forms, each one of which declares itself as an actually existing people. This existence falls under the category of Time as well as Space, in the way of natural existence; and the special principle, which every world-historical people embodies, has this principle at the same time as a nat...… (more)
User reviews
Other than that? Well, the parts where he spends half a page explaining why
The abstract castlebuilding on God and "Spirit" I read with great inattention and in some cases only notionally, and it still got through to me by the end because he managed to spend FOUR HUNDRED PAGES stentoring it at me (like getting hit with a pillow for aeons and aeons . . .), and in the end it was worth about four sentences and even those weren't really worth enough for me to try to sketch/parse them here. I'll give you one word, and it won't surprise you to hear that it's "theodicy."
Some of the stuff about the Greeks and the Romans and the good ol' dialectical contradictions that brought them down was interesting and new, no doubt. And the stuff about China and India and the "German World" (including France and Spain, in Hegel's estimation) was interesting in a "the way we were" kind of way. Aaand his concept as a whole, world-historical peoples and the development of Spirit and passing of the torch is kind of aesthetically, or no, ergonomically pleasing, as long as you don't ask there to be any reality to it whatsoever.
But dude, if I could coin one term to describe whatever the term is for a unity of imagined author with experienced text (and please don't ask me to coin a term for that too) for this book, it would be . . .
"Anti-fresh air." Schopenhauer called Hegel's philosophy (and this was selected by me and Heidi from a wealth of similar statements by many dudes) ". . . a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage..." He was basically right.
Though the prose is often difficult (though easy by Hegelian standards), I think that this is a worthwhile read for those interested in contemporary philosophical debates surrounding history as well as those interested in Marxist theory. "The Philosophy of History" is an interesting case of history as narrative. The progressive agenda behind this book may help those understand the foundations of Marxist historiography. A difficult, though worthwhile read.
He makes some
This is one of his more accessible works, thankfully. If you have to read him, start here.
To take the shorter way out of this, I'll say that Hegel views History as Freedom. Some of his
The Introduction and Preface are astounding - German idealism, etched in stone tablets and given from the Mount of Sinai. Interesting ideas about Spirit and the Dialectic and The Meaning of History and other things. I need to reread a huge chunk of my philosophy section, now that I've actually read Hegel and not just summaries of him in order to get a background.
The preface and introduction are necessary for students of history and philosophy, regardless of orientation. The rest is up to you.