When the great philosopher Hegel says “the real is the rational and the rational is the real…” what do you think he means?
i think he means that when it comes down to it everything can and does make sence at some level.
Actually Hegel thought that the whole of reality was the unfolding of mind-- or “Geist.” Geist is nothing like the Christian concept of God because it didn’t create everything;it actually IS everything. It does not begin as a self-conscious entity, but it becomes increasingly aware of itself through dialectical logic; history is basically supposed to be the unfolding of this dialectic–which I think is what he means by the “rational”. Hegel’s hard to grasp, and his system is really flawed; but it’s interesting nonetheless.
i like hegel quiet a bit, but only because there is an idealist and there is something about idealism that i just can’t shake. it’s something about paremendies and then the twist with descartes until finally the 19th century germans. the remarkable thing is that although it seems utterly false, it’s hard to dispell. in that, there hasn’t been a convincing arguement against it. or i haven’t seen one at least
In a word - Hobbes.
Metavoid was able to tear himself from his drug quest to post:
which doesn’t cut it for me. i think descartes tears hobbes down pretty effectively. [has anyone read the letters that they sent to each other?] there is still an unexplainable element to reality, namely our thoughts, that cannot be assessed by a died-in-wool materialist. i think pragmatism comes close, but even then it’s a coup out.
Wait a sec, Trix. Lotsa thinkers–LOTSA them–have argued successfully against Hegel in the past 150 years; so successfully, in fact, that professional philosophers just take it as a given he was wrong.
Schopenhaur was probably the first to tear Hegel’s system apart, but I really like Kierkegaard’s critique. It goes something like:
-Hegel claims to begin with the immediate, with that which cannot be questioned. However, the only immediate reality is that something exits.
-By Hegel’s own admission, it has taken Geist thousands of years of reflection to finally discover the immediate starting point through Hegel’s
“Phenomenology of Spirit.”
-But since the only starting point that makes any sense is that something exists, anything beyond that must not be immediate; it comes AFTER the immediate. So Hegel’s idea that consciousness must be conscious of something, and that that something can only be consciousness, is in fact not an absolute but a conjecture. He has to prove it. And of course he doesn’t; he merely asserts it.
Hegel gets mixed reviews from me. On the one hand, the Sophist Hegel rejects Kant and rambles incoherently for scores of pages at a time, on the other hand he offers these gems:
“In so far as it is the other’s action, each aims at the destruction and death of the other.” – Hegel
“The relation of both self-consciousnesses is in this way so constituted that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle. They must enter into this struggle, for they must bring their certainty of themselves, the certainty of being for themselves, to the level of objective truth, and make this a fact both in the case of the other and in their own case as well. And it is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained.” – Hegel
“In the same way each must aim at the death of the other, as it risks its own life thereby; for that other is to it of no more worth than itself the other’s reality is presented to the former as an external other, as outside itself ; it must cancel that externality.” – Hegel
hegel. nice ideas this guy… but i disagree with his phenomenology.
like Logo explained:
geist (spirt) that unfolds throughout history in dialectics - thesis, antithesis, synthesis… to arrive at a ‘rational totality’ of the world. this is the concrete idea - truth, the noumenal world. the absolute objective real truth of the world, life the universe and everything. hence the real is rational, it is an idea.
as Logo also said,
i like kierkagaard’s attack (very funnily) against hegel. kierkegaard was all about subjectivity. he made phenomenology existential. hence the real isnt ‘rational’ but rather, referential.
warrior monk: is everyone who attacks dear Kant and Aristotle a sophist? you speak very much like Thyrasmachos or whoever that guy is from plato’s dialogue.
The long answer is yes.
It’s spelled Thrasymachus. I disagree strongly with Thrasymachus and Nietzsche.
You’re mule-headed stupidity reminds me a little bit of Callicles from the Gorgias. I’m sorry, on second thought, Callicles was way more intelligent.
To whomever it may concern:
Please try to respect others by attacking the argument, not the person.
thank you for correcting my mistake.
um anyway i kinda got confused there… i wonder why i brought up thrasymachus (i kidna liked him) when i actually meant Anytos. thats the guy. anti sophists who speak like sophists. most wonderful.
…but when there’s no argument, and you know there never WILL be, what’s left to attack?
Jedi-Pockey. Who’s anytos? Is he some kind of patron out of Plato’s dialogues or a romulan on Star trek?