G. W.

F Hegel (1770-1831)

Kant is perhaps the most important Western philosopher after Aristotle and undoubtedly
the most influential thinker in the German philosophical world. One aspect of Kant's
thought that is well known is that it focuses on the subject. For example, Kant’s so-called
“Copernican revolution” in philosophy makes the activity of consciousness or the mind
(and not objects outside experience) the focus or the ground for our philosophical claims.
A common complaint against the critical philosophy (one that began to be raised after
Kant’s philosophical project grew in influence) came from the next generation of German
philosophers—known as the German Idealists.

The idealist complaint against Kant was two-fold. On the one hand, these thinkers
maintained that Kant’s philosophy was not systematic. The Critique of Pure Reason, for
example, was a preparation for the possibility of doing scientific metaphysics: but Kant
never manages to establish a system, a complete and coherent account of his
philosophical idealism. Another complaint raised by these later thinkers is that Kant’s
thought is too subjective. In focusing on the individual thinker as the locus for the
understanding of “phenomena” (the world of experience or possible objects as they
conform to the “categories” of the understanding) Kant ignores nature or the world of
things outside immediate experience- in fact Kant claims that the true world (“noumenal”
and unconditional) is unknowable.

Hegel challenges Kant’s reasoning in two ways. 1) Following earlier post-Kantians,

Hegel maintains that the distinction between the world of appearance and things in
themselves is untenable. Hegel thinks that, because reason directs us to reality, therefore
we must have some insight or knowledge of that reality. For Hegel, that ultimate reality
(Kant’s "thing in itself") is pure Spirit; or what is later called “the Absolute”. 2) Hegel
also thinks that because human beings (whom he views as particular or individual
thinking beings always enmeshed in a culture) are finite we should not consider human
thought as capable of transcending history. Hegel is therefore a historicist, which means
that he believes Kant is wrong to make the categories of the understanding universal and
capable of presenting unchanging absolute categories for all possible experience.
Instead, all understanding must be determined by the historical consciousness of the
person making the knowledge claim. In this way, Hegel is one of the first philosophers
to make history central to the method of philosophical speculation. After Hegel this
historicist approach becomes very influential, first in Germany than in the rest of Europe
and eventually all over the world.

What does it mean to say that history is central to philosophy? In Hegel’s case it means
that the universal (Plato’s forms) are in history. According to Hegel, that is, all
experience is historically conditioned; but furthermore all experience is social and
culturally conditioned—including philosophy. In other words Hegel thinks that Kant
(and all earlier philosophers –such as Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes, etc.) misconceive
the very nature of reason. Hegel’s philosophy, by contrast, is called absolute or logical
idealism partly because he thinks that his thought is systematic and all embracing.
Furthermore, Hegel also believes that his philosophy- as opposed to earlier rationalism
and empiricism (as well as Kant’s synthesis)—is truly rational. This is because what
Hegel defines as true rationality is the movement and growth of the universal Spirit—the
one true reality becoming the objectification of the spirit coming to itself. This is tied to
Hegel’s conception of logic which signifies not abstract rules for thought but is an
investigation into existence and more precisely the existence of abstract aspects of reality
including the movement and progression of abstract aspects of culture: such as art, laws,
religions, etc. According to Hegel Spirit develops. Spirit therefore expresses itself in
history and we can see this by studying the development of cultures.

Criticizing Kant’s transcendental deduction, Hegel (like Kant before him) still
distinguishes between “reason” and “understanding” but he reverses their priority and
importance. "Reason" is what Hegel calls the identity of subject and object. But Hegel
also calls this, at times, a merely Kantian identity, i.e. an identity of an object within the
categories of the ‘possible’ objects of experience. It is said by Hegel to be a “subjective
subject-object relation”. Why? Because, according to Kant, we can’t know the object as it
is in-itself). In Hegel’s main work, called Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel says that there
are stages or phases within which ultimate reality (pure or world Spirit) and
consciousness progresses. We start with the “in-itself,” this is consciousness or spirit as
active but unconsciousness- taken at the level of its own activity. The first stage is
basically the lowest form of pure Spirit. Spirit next achieves a new level of awareness, in
a subsequent stage where the spirit achieves awareness of the world; in taking in the
world we arrive at the material embodiment of Spirit and so we are at a higher level—we
now have the world of subjective feeling and the world of objects. This second level is
also that which Hegel calls the “for-itself” of the Spirit. So the Spirit “in-itself” reaches
out and knows things “for-itself”. Finally, we come to the highest level which is a
synthesis of the previous two—Hegel’s philosophical logic, is should be pointed out,
works on this principle of synthesis: you have a thesis, you present an antithesis and you
end up with what Hegel calls a synthesis or higher and more objective position that keeps
something of the thesis and antithesis but is different from both. At the third stage and
highest level (expressing the synthesis of the 'in itself' and the 'for itself of Spirit') the
Spirit expresses itself in the society or rational life-form of human beings. Human beings
live not only on the level of sensation and perception but also on the level of social
networks –i.e., we use reason (the understanding) to create cultures removed from nature.
At this level, Hegel says, the spirit objectifies itself and achieves understanding. This
level is described as the self-knowledge of the Spirit and as the outcome of its laborious
movements though its materializations in the subject and in “objective forms”. These
‘objective’ forms include institutions. For example human’s establish laws and have
customs, we engage in politics, etc. Subjective Spirit only develops in the individual; but
in a culture we arrive at the level of the “in-itself” and “for-itself” of the Spirit. The
Spirit therefore expresses itself in art, politics, religion and (at the highest level)—the
synthesis of art and religion- which is philosophy.