Hegelianism

Hegelianism is the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories. His goal was to reduce reality to a more synthetic unity within the system of absolute idealism.

Hegel's method in philosophy consists of the triadic development (Entwicklung) in each concept and each thing. Thus, he hopes, philosophy will not contradict experience, but will give data of experience to the philosophical, which is the ultimately true explanation. If, for instance, we wish to know what liberty is, we take that concept where we first find it—the unrestrained action of the savage, who does not feel the need of repressing any thought, feeling, or tendency to act.

Next, we find that the savage has given up this freedom in exchange for its opposite, the restraint, or, as he considers it, the tyranny, of civilization and law. Finally, in the citizen under the rule of law, we find the third stage of development, namely liberty in a higher and a fuller sense than how the savage possessed it—the liberty to do, say, and think many things beyond the power of the savage.

In this triadic process, the second stage is the direct opposite, the annihilation, or at least the sublation, of the first. The third stage is the first returned to itself in a higher, truer, richer, and fuller form. The three stages are, therefore, styled:

These three stages are found succeeding one another throughout the whole realm of thought and being, from the most abstract logical process up to the most complicated concrete activity of organized mind in the succession of states or the production of systems of philosophy.

In logic – which, according to Hegel, is really metaphysic – we have to deal with the process of development applied to reality in its most abstract form. According to Hegel, in logic, we deal in concepts robbed of their empirical content: in logic we are discussing the process in vacuo, so to speak. Thus, at the very beginning of Hegel's study of reality, he finds the logical concept of being.

Now, being is not a static concept according to Hegel, as Aristotle supposed it was. It is essentially dynamic, because it tends by its very nature to pass over into nothing, and then to return to itself in the higher concept, becoming. For Aristotle, there was nothing more certain than that being equaled being, or, in other words, that being is identical with itself, that everything is what it is. Hegel does not deny this; but, he adds, it is equally certain that being tends to become its opposite, nothing, and that both are united in the concept becoming. For instance, the truth about this table, for Aristotle, is that it is a table. (This is not necessarily true. Aristotle made a distinction between things made by art and things made by nature. Things made by art--such as a table--follow this description of thinghood. Living things however are self-generating and constantly creating their own being. Being in the sense of a living thing is highly dynamic and is defined by the thing creating its own being. He describes life not in terms of being but coming-into-being. For instance a baby's goal is to become old. It is neither absolutely young or absolutely old and somewhere in the process of being young and becoming old. It sounds like Hegel made the comparison between being and not being while Aristotle made the comparison between art and nature.)

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