The term “Modernism” is unavoidable when talking about the transition from 1800s and 1900s. It refers to the radical new outlook that arose in response to the sense of great technological and cultural change that characterized this era. In response to Writers like Fitzgerald and Faulkner exemplified modernism in literature through their intense focus on subjectivity and experiments with story structure. Similarly, Kant’s focus on the individual knowing subject represents the beginning of modernism in philosophy. It opens up the question of how each person’s world is related to the reality “out there,” which leads philosophical inquiry in remarkable new directions. At the same time, it unleashes the frightening idea that reality itself is without meaning, a view called Nihilism. Kant has shown that an outside world exists, but left us to grapple with the possibility that it is without purpose. HEGEL, SCHOPENHAUER, and NIETZSCHE (KNEE-cha) are the key philosophers who respond. We'll begin with Hegel, who rethinks Kant's philosophy by introducing CHANGE into the idea of our mental organization: (Kant is the white-haired guy; Hegel is the brown-haired on with sideburns. Both are German.) The key idea in Hegel's philosophy is that understanding is always a process. Kant wants to simply split the individual person as a perceiving subject from the world of things-in-themselves that our mental categories organize into the objects we experience. Hegel says we have to factor in the process by which the subject comes to know and distinguish itself from objects. This means that the individual is part of history, changing over time as they develop greater self-understanding. There is no one universal, unchanging human "operating system," but an evolving consciousness. Hegel's goal is to figure out how knowledge of the Whole, all of reality, is possible for a subject. He wants to get beyond Kant's limitations on possible knowledge and see all as, ultimately, One Mind: To begin making sense out of these complex ideas, start with these videos and take notes:
School of Life on Hegel 8-Bit Philosophy on Hegel Macat on Kant and Hegel Then write a short post explaining anything you "got" about Hegel in your own words (20 pts)!
24 Comments
Parizaad Mohammadi
1/17/2017 03:45:21 pm
Hegel argues that every ear was part of wisdom. He published several books explaining his thoughts. He believed people only make progress by going from one extreme to another and that rationality equals harmony. However, Hegel's theory could be very complicated and confusing.
Reply
Biggs
1/18/2017 11:17:06 am
Good start Parizaad! Yes, Hegel believes
Reply
Paige Whittle
1/18/2017 12:17:13 pm
Hegel had many ideas about philosophy; however, his work and ideas were written horribly. Because of this, many of his ideas come across as confusing. Hegel believes we should go back in time to rescue past ideas. For example, he would support the idea that we should look back at Ancient Greece in order to discover how a good community should look and be operated. This reminds me of the "is ought" gap that Hume brought up. In the case of Hegel, this would be a "was ought" gap. Hegel would believe that how things were is how they should continue to be. Another idea of Hegel is that we need to find a community between extremes. For example, humans should try to find a balance between the need for privacy and the need for security. Finally, Hegel stresses the importance of art, as he believes it has a purpose and a job. Hegel does not think art has to bring in radically new ideas. He believes that art makes important and helpful ideas we already have stick in our minds in a more imaginative way. Although Hegel's work was cryptic and confusing, some useful things can be deciphered from it.
Reply
Jennifer Spinelli
1/18/2017 05:36:05 pm
I like Hegel. I really like that he very much focuses on keeping philosophy up to date. Keeping track of the advances in science. I actually agree with a lot of what he said about Ancient Greece and its society, to an extent of course. Also I love how he not only appreciates science, but art as well. Because art serves an incredibly important role in society and that is to make us think.
Reply
Emily Fitzgerald
1/18/2017 05:44:48 pm
I like the idea behind Kegel's theory of knowledge and understanding. When learning about Kant's categories in which he split up the human mind, I was very confused and didn't understand the logic behind doing so. Because Hegel doesn't break up the mind into pieces, and instead sees it as a whole, I can understand where he's coming from and form my own thoughts on what I think.
Reply
Dixie
1/18/2017 07:17:09 pm
In a way Hegel is all about rebellion. He believes that as people grow they become more self aware and realize there is room for improvement and evolve from that. He thinks that these changes are measured in gaining freedom. What I don't understand is his world spirit concept. What defines a "rational" and "peaceful society? It seems unlikely to have everything at a state so in harmony it no longer needs to change because that is not how culture works. Culture is an evolving thing. I really like his idea of needing to take things from the past to resuscitate things today. Yet in some ways that undermines the power of humanity and its progression. For instance today a lot of culture (clothing trends, movie rebooting, etc.) is just taken from the 70's-90's. I think that is a bad thing because people are not coming up with new ideas and making current day it's own thing. It's just an imitation.Hegel just really reminds me of an angsty teenager!!! Everything about change he suggests is what a teenager goes through. From going through phases of extremes until you find the right balance, acknowledging the importance of art and its purpose of reflecting life, and rejecting social norms like what society considers a "correct" institution. I really liked learning about Hagel because he is unlike any other philosopher we've learned so far and there is a clear gap between modernist philosophy.
Reply
Jack McNally
1/18/2017 08:36:38 pm
Hegel seems to put a lot of emphasis on the past, and in a way this was because he was trying to change the way people view it. He didn't want people seeing the history as a linear timeline, in which progress is always moving forward; he simply didn’t think that was how history worked. Instead, he saw history as something that is always changing, but not always progressing in the same way as it always has been. Hegel believed that something could be learned from each era of history that has already passed us. This does not been that we as a society should strive towards emulating past genoustion. Rather it means that we can pick out the best values of each generation before us, and then use all of those value to create as perfect of a society as possible. This is probably why Hegel believed that a historian had the most important job in a society.
Reply
Kelly Farley
1/18/2017 09:33:13 pm
Hegel has very specific views and ideas. He has many ideas about processes from the past to the present. Time is a key aspect in Hegel's philosophy. He sees understanding as a process and the progress from the past to now is a messy process and goes from one extreme to another. He also sees this entire process is moving toward a completion of some sort. I noticed that Hegel's ideas are very spread out and he seems to have views on everything he sees.
Reply
Emma Vollmuth
1/19/2017 04:06:29 am
Hegel argues that everything has to do with time. He says that in order to live successfully, we need to use the past as a reference and build off of it. He says the past is what teaches us how to live,for example, Hegel would say that while looking back at say the Middle Ages, we can learn a number of things. Using the past is very important in shaping how we are in the present.
Reply
Marissa Seely
1/19/2017 04:41:19 am
Hegel tried to expands on Kant's beliefs by stressing the importance of "change." Over time, our knowledge about the self and our ability to distinguish that from the greater world around us is evolving. Each individual. belongs to history, and changes with it contantly. The change never stops, however, that isn't to say that time is always improving from past eras. We can take what Hagel says about the importance of the past and use this knowledge to pick out the greatest aspects of every time period and construct an ideal lifestyle.
Reply
Michelle Mazzucca
1/19/2017 08:03:07 am
Hegel puts emphasis on the idea of change. Change helps give a better understanding. We get ideas from nature. As time passes by, everything we learn is based off what we previously knew. These ideas all combine into one which is synthesis (mentioned in the packet). For example, each day is not live the same as the previous day. Every individual is a part of history. Overall, the main difference between Kant and Hegel is the categorizing done by Kant, and everything being a whole by Hegel.
Reply
Max Portman
1/22/2017 08:53:40 am
What fascinates me about Hegel is his expansion on Kant's argument and what he changes to make more sense to him. This, to me is what philosophy is all about, finding an answer that makes sense to you. Hegel essentially compares every individual to a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Once every piece in the world is fit together, we will have eternal knowledge of everything. As ridiculous as the whole world uniting unanimously, Hegel seems to admit that it is a work in progress. In my opinion, if we do our part to make the world a kinder, safer and more enjoyable place to live in, then we as individuals have done our duty in the eye's of Hegel.
Reply
Edith Torres
1/22/2017 05:38:05 pm
I actually feel like i understand Hegel really well, either by how im being fed his ideas or because i think a lot like him. He states that we should see everything as part of history. Each word i type here on this blog is a part of a historical proces that bothe develops my mind and others who read it. He also believes that no two ideas can fully come together without of a villain of some sort. Whenever you read a story there's always that character that, even if they are not actually a villain or bad guy, they have an opposing view compared with that of the protaganist. Hegel says that these opposing views make a story and help to push these characters to grow. A good example would be Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, by the end of their story, both of these characters are grown and have much more level headed minds than they head in the first few novels. Also, Hegel points toward art being a very important part of our lives. I see this as whenever someone is found out to have played video games their usually seen as lazy. People see these works of art as a waste of time. However when you ask someone about a game they played when they were young, chances are they wil think of how it made them feel and how it impacted their life as a whole. Each piece of artwork, whether it be a tv show or a painting, it stimulates ideas and thoughts that might otherwise be lost, according to Hegel. This is just the core of what i understood about Hegel's theories.
Reply
Sofia Fernandes
1/22/2017 05:51:14 pm
While Kant believes that individual subjects use their own knowledge to interpret the objective outside world, Hegel believes that subjects absorb information from the outside world to gather knowledge. Hegel's philosophy leaves room for universal improvement rather than simply individual understanding of the outside world. As people come up with new ideas based on past failures and successes, observations of the present outside world, and predictions of the future, they can allow them to be challenged by others' ideas in order to formulate new and improved ideas that only bring them closer to the so-called "end" of history or the point where all that there is to be known is known. Hegel believes that history is never static and constantly moving towards a final point. In the slightest way his view of the universe is similar to Heraclitus's view of the world; both believe that there is constant change. Hegel's philosophy is effective at uniting people because it promotes team work to gain as much knowledge as possible. One person can only have one idea about a specific thing, so they need another person to counteract that idea in order to reach a compromise and reach a higher point of knowledge.
Reply
Michael Deitz
1/22/2017 07:33:14 pm
Georg Hegel, his middle names can be left out for now, is one of the most flowery philosophers to read with very obtuse ways to explain his theories, which are actually brilliant. Hegel wants people to look back at the past, historians he calls them (duh), gather necessary elements that have been lost since them and reintroduce them to civilization to synthesize a new, better way of life. Speaking of synthesizing, his epistemology of synthesis, thesis, and antithesis actually makes a lot of sense and is very well thought out. It is learning via questioning and experience, taking cues from Socrates and Locke to unite the worlds of knowledge that Kant broke apart. The act of compromise and conflict is so apparent in my everyday life that I never realized Hegel affects me, mostly because I didn't know of him. I always argue to gain a new perspective on things, whether it be politics, book analysis, or even video games. Hegel provides invaluable insight into how the human mind gathers information and I truly believe everyone should learn and understand his epistemology, even if his morals are a bit wonky with the World Spirit.
Reply
Young Chen
1/24/2017 05:16:38 am
What I got from Hegal was that the person should be divided into rational categories, similar to Kant. He believed that people should simplify reality down a basic and easy to understand meaning. He explains all people have a part of history and everyone is like a jigsaw piece than can put together into one big picture.
Reply
Young Chen
1/24/2017 05:19:34 am
I believe that the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" is sprouted form his philosophy because he explains history and the past as a huge part of someones puzzles/reality. (Accidentally clicked submit early)
Reply
Phoebe Carr
1/24/2017 07:27:57 pm
I think Hegel is someone I would like to hang out with. I like how aware he is/how much he respects of the past/history because i think that's a very relevant thing to keep in mind present day (yikes) and if a philosophy can hold it's relevance for that long it must be important. His philosophies are so refreshingly positive and unifying – again, all things we should be trying for in the present. Honestly where's Hegel now when we need him.
Reply
Corey Van Huff
1/25/2017 04:28:06 am
Hegel reminds me a a short story called A Canary's Ideas. The main message of the story is that perception and knowledge changes increases with experience, also known as process. I also learned he believed opposites helped define each other. We can't have good without having evil to compare it to.
Reply
Gabriella Lopez
1/26/2017 05:39:28 pm
-spirit: "mind" or "idea" that reintegrate overtime
Reply
Paige Davis
1/26/2017 09:34:53 pm
Hegel claimed that his own system of philosophy represented an historical culmination of all previous philosophical thought. He takes philosophy from both past and present. Hegel's philosophy is divided into the science of Logic, the philosophy of Nature, and the philosophy of Spirit. He sees things more as a whole and believes that experience further the knowledge of the human mind. I think he has a very positive and realistic outlook.
Reply
Tara
1/30/2017 12:08:17 pm
I didn't really understand a lot but that's probably because my attention span is nonexistent and my vocabulary is remedial, but basically I understood that Hegel opposes Kant in saying that we can't exist within our own worlds because we only learned of our own existence based off the aknowledgement of others.
Reply
Holly Braverman
3/26/2017 12:54:57 am
Some things that I “got” about Hegel in regards to his philosophy are as follows:
Reply
emily clarke
4/4/2017 11:49:04 am
What i like about Hegel is his ability to make philosophy contemporary. While we now consider Hegel's ideas somewhat dated, they were advanced for his time. What I find especially interesting is Hegel's ability to tie science and philosophy together when most people, especially then, would consider them at conflict with each other.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |