Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is a representative of classical German philosophy. Immanuel Kant had the greatest influence on his writings.

Hegel did not agree with some of the judgments of his predecessor and tried to refute them in his works.

Kant argued that without experience, knowledge of pure reason does not exist. Hegel objected to him: a person is able to know the world around him. The phenomenon and the "thing in itself" are interconnected and their connection will never be broken.

The two German philosophers also differed in their judgments about the nature of the contradictions. Kant treated contradictions negatively. For him, this is a source of confusion. Hegel called contradictions the criterion of truth, and their absence the criterion of error.

Hegel still supported the ideas of his predecessor about the freedom of the individual, respected the laws and saw the state as a source of rational management of society. Both thinkers criticized violence and slavery, arbitrariness and oppression. In addition to Kant, the humanistic orientation of Hegelian judgments was based on the teachings of Descartes, Schelling and Diderot.

The theme of the Spirit, which Hegel studied in detail, has been developed since the time of Plato. The philosopher himself admitted that Proclus, Eckhart, Leibniz, Rousseau influenced his judgments.

The essence of the philosophy of the German sage

Hegel's philosophy was based on the idea of ​​gradual development. From being in oneself (idea, mind) through being outside oneself (nature) to being in oneself and for oneself (Spirit).

In the process of self-development, a pure mind is not a real, but an ideal and logical substance. To transform a substance into a subject, an unconscious mind into an independent mind, spirit or absolute Spirit is the goal of the world process. Substance pours out of its original state as a logical idea into otherness, nature, in order to achieve the goal: awareness of oneself as a single and truly real, understanding of the absolute truth of what it is in itself and within itself.

The Absolute Idea is the basis of the universe. Nature is not capable of becoming the basis of everything that exists, because it is a passive substance, and the Absolute Idea changes it, producing certain actions.

The world around, according to Hegelian philosophy, can be known with the help of a tool of knowledge - sensory and rational experience. Contradictions are the criteria of truth, and their absence is error. These two judgments contradicted the ideas that had a strong influence on the formation of the worldview of the German thinker.

Dialectics and logic in the interpretation of Hegel

Georg Hegel's doctrine of dialectics has left a significant contribution to philosophy. The German thinker was the first to systematize dialectical thinking and singled out its three laws. In his work, the philosopher tried to understand the relationship between the various components of one process.

Laws of dialectics:

1. Quantitative changes are converted into qualitative ones. Basic law of dialectics.
2. The law of double negation. In the process of development, the object regains its old quality, but now at the highest stage of development.
3. Unity and struggle of opposites.

The beginning of Hegelian logic lies in his dialectical method: if all thoughts that have any content are excluded from reasoning, then an indefinite general concept, called being, will remain, which can no longer be excluded. Being has no content and quality, therefore, it is equal to non-being. Thus, being passes into non-being, and reasoning about being leads to the opposite.

The doctrine of the logic of a representative of classical German philosophy is divided into:

• The doctrine of being. Explores such concepts as quantity, quality and measure.
• Essence doctrine. The object of study is phenomena, essences and reality.
• The doctrine of the concept. Knowledge of objectivity, subjectivity and ideas.

Philosophical reflections on nature and spirit

In Hegel's theory of the basis of the world, the Absolute Idea is expressed by a boundless spiritual principle, a condition for the existence and development of the world, man and nature. The main task of the Absolute Idea is self-knowledge.

Nature is not capable of being an Absolute idea, it will not become the basis of everything that exists. Nature, according to the German philosopher, is a passive substance. By itself, it does not contain active actions. The beginning of the world should be something impersonal, some absolute spiritual force.

Hegelian philosophy represents the path of the idea in its otherness. Nature in his teaching appears as an intermediate link. The idea in its development becomes material nature, and then develops into spirit, true and conscious.

Philosophy about the Spirit is one of the most developed topics in the works of the German thinker.

The doctrine is divided into three stages: subjective, objective and absolute spirit.

Briefly, Hegel's concept can be expressed as follows: in the beginning, at a certain stage in the development of nature, a rational person arose. At first he lives in a natural state, under the influence of nature, and obeys instincts. Man is a subjective spirit.

In the process of development, a person recognizes other people as equal to himself, begins to perceive them as spiritual beings who should be treated with respect. The realization comes that the freedom of one thinking being ends where the freedom of another begins. This stage is the objective spirit, the life of people in a collective.

Absolute spirit, the third stage, the unity of the subjective and the objective. The spirit is freed from contradictions, reconciles with itself and comprehends true, perfect knowledge about itself.

Hegelianism - what is it?

After the death of Georg Hegel, his followers formed a school called Hegelianism. The unified school did not remain long and was soon divided into several directions. The reason for the discord was religious and theological differences.

Hegel considered the philosophical system he created to be orthodox. But some representatives of his school saw in the works of the philosopher the overthrow of the state and the church, the rejection of God and the immortality of man. The beginning of this was laid by the work of D. Strauss "The Life of Jesus".

The school split into those who adhered to the "classical" Hegelian philosophy and those who were carried away by left-wing views. The latter were heterogeneous and divided into three groups: the extreme left (Bauer, Feuerbach), the conservative right (Gabler, Geschel, Erdman) and the central wing (Bathke, Konradi, Rosencrantz).

Among the left Hegelians, who were called Young Hegelians, there were many critics of the history of the church, as well as philosophers who criticized religion.

The extreme left Hegelians went further than others and expanded the scope of study, in addition to the philosophical questions of religion, to political and social topics. Marx interpreted Hegel's philosophical ideas in a materialistic way and took it as the basis of his system of economic materialism.

Adherents of Hegelianism had a great influence on the development of science, especially on the philosophy of religion, the history of philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of history.

Hegel's influence on Western and Russian philosophers

The German thinker became the forerunner of the concept of Art Nouveau and modernism. Hegel's writings describe a number of problems whose relevance is undeniable today: alienation, social disunity, the search for freedom and inner harmony. Some researchers of Hegel's work note his significant contribution to the formation of the social sciences.

Attempts by the German philosopher to combine rational and idealistic beginnings found many adherents, especially at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. During this time, Hegel's works were translated into all major European languages.

In Russia, Hegelian philosophy has played an important role in the culture of the country. In the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, many educated people were interested in Hegel's ideas. They argued about it, read numerous brochures. The entire educated world was familiar with the views of the outstanding German thinker on the topics of philosophy, religion, aesthetics, law and morality.

A feature of Russian philosophy is that the participants in two opposite currents of Russian socio-philosophical thought: Westerners and Slavophiles, were well aware of Hegel's philosophy and drew their ideas from it. The Slavophils developed his ideas from their own standpoint. The most prominent representatives of Westernism grew up on the works of Hegel.

The merits of Hegel in philosophy are great and its influence on the development of human history is difficult to underestimate. The thinker dealt with both issues of religion and dialectics. He also laid the foundations of the social sciences, which did not exist in his time.

5. Philosophy of Hegel

system of Hegelian philosophy. The culmination of classical German idealism was the philosophical system of Hegel. All his main works are devoted to its development: The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807). "Science of Logic" (1812-1816), "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" (1817). An introduction to the Hegelian philosophical system is his "Phenomenology of Spirit", where Hegel considers a successive series of development of various stages of human consciousness - from the lowest form (direct sensory perception) to the highest level (absolute, or pure, knowledge), on which all external objects are completely overcome and the spirit thinks only of its own essence.

The result and conclusion of the "Phenomenology of Spirit" is "Logic" - the first and most important part of Hegel's system. This is the area of ​​"pure thought" that exists before the subject and object. There is no empirical content in logic, except for itself, except for its forms. Logic precedes history and nature, it creates them.

Logic is divided into three parts: the doctrine of being, of essence, and of the concept. Being and essence are considered as steps along which the concept "climbs" before it appears in all its universality and completeness. In the Logic, the development of the absolute idea takes place in the form of abstract logical categories. Its starting point is pure abstract thought about the existent in general, about “being”. This initially meaningless concept of "pure being" seeks to obtain its content through "something", which in turn is already "determined being". Thus begins, according to Hegel, the process of becoming an absolute idea. “Determined being” at the next stage appears as “something definitely existing”, or quality. The category of quality develops in unity with the category of quantity. Qualitative quantity or quantitative quality acts as a measure. In the doctrine of being, Hegel substantiates one of the laws of the dialectic of the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, the spasmodic nature of the processes of development, development as an “interruption of gradualness”.

From being, understood as a phenomenon, Hegel proceeds to deeper, inner laws - to essence. The main content of this part is Hegel's consideration of the law of the interpenetration of opposites, their unity, identity and struggle. Hegel argues that a contradiction is a ratio of opposites that do not exist without each other, but which develop in different ways, which leads to an aggravation of the relationship between them. The contradiction needs to be resolved, or “removed”. Hegel saw a contradiction in the relationship between foundation and effect, form and content, phenomenon and essence, possibility and reality, chance and necessity, causality and interaction. Developing the doctrine of contradiction, Hegel made a conclusion about the internally necessary, spontaneous movement, about "self-movement" as the source of all change and development.

According to Hegel, knowledge of the relationship of identity and difference reveals the contradiction underlying them. The presence of contradictions indicates the development of the phenomenon. In the doctrine of essence, Hegel also defines reality as "the unity of essence and existence." Essence itself is the "ground of existence." From the very first paragraphs of the doctrine of essence, Hegel rejects the idea of ​​its unknowability.

The necessity with which development takes place in the realm of being and essence is realized in the concept. Such necessity turns into freedom, and “freedom is a conscious necessity”. Thus, "Logic" passes to the concept. At the same time, Hegel criticizes formal logic and metaphysics as a philosophical method and develops a dialectic of the general, particular and singular. At the same time, he considers the concept of truth as a process of coincidence of thought with an object. This is achieved in the idea. Only the idea is the unconditional unity of the concept and the subject.

From logic Hegel proceeds to the philosophy of nature. The creator of nature is his idea. It is she who generates her "otherness" - nature. Stages of development of nature: mechanism, chemistry, organism. Thanks to the depth and strength of his dialectical thought, Hegel in his "Philosophy of Nature" expressed a number of valuable conjectures about the mutual connection between the individual steps of inorganic and organic nature and the laws of all phenomena in the world.

The third stage in the development of the absolute idea is the spirit, which also passes through three stages in its development: subjective spirit, objective spirit, absolute spirit. Subjective spirit is "soul" or "spirit in itself", consciousness or "spirit for itself", and "spirit as such". The objective spirit forms the sphere of law. It is a free will, and the system of law is the realm of realized freedom. Ultimately, the objective spirit finds its expression in morality and is embodied in the family, civil society and the state. The absolute spirit is the eternally actual truth. He goes through three stages of development: art, religion and philosophy. Art, according to Hegel, is a direct form of knowledge of the absolute idea. Religion has God as its source of revelation. Philosophy is the highest stage in the development of the absolute spirit, the full disclosure of the truth contained in art and religion. In philosophy, the idea cognizes itself, it rises to its "pure principle", connects the end of the absolute idea with its beginning. If, according to Hegel, philosophy is the world grasped by thought, and the world itself is an absolute idea, then the “desired completeness” of the development of the absolute idea occurs.

Thus, the absolute idea lives a varied and complex life in the Hegelian philosophical system. His system is objective idealism: the absolute idea exists before nature and man as “pure thought”, generates nature and society. The system is built on the basis of the "triad" - thesis - antithesis and synthesis. This "triad" makes the Hegelian philosophical system strict, clear, on the one hand, and on the other hand, allows Hegel to show the progressive nature of the development of the world, to use the encyclopedic nature of knowledge.

His philosophical system incorporates the logic and philosophy of nature, anthropology and psychology, the philosophy of law and ethics, the philosophy of state and civil society, the philosophy of religion and aesthetics, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history, etc. It incorporates dialectics as a system of principles of laws and categories . However, his philosophical system restrains dialectics, for it has, as it were, a complete character: in his philosophy, the absolute idea fully cognizes itself, thereby completing the process of cognition, and in the Prussian monarchy, the “crown of the whole building” is acquired as the most perfect embodiment of reason in the life of mankind.

Hegelian dialectic. The greatest role belongs to Hegel in the development of the problems of dialectics. He gave the most complete teaching on dialectical development as a qualitative change, the movement from lower forms to higher ones, the transition of the old into the new, the transformation of each phenomenon into its opposite. He emphasized the interconnection between all processes in the world.

True, Hegel developed an idealistic form of dialectics: he considers the dialectics of categories, their connections and overflows into each other, the development of "pure thought" - the absolute idea. He understands development as self-movement, as self-development occurring on the basis of the interpenetration of opposites: since the phenomenon is contradictory, it has movement and development. For him, each concept is in an internal necessary connection with all the others: concepts and categories mutually pass into each other. Thus, the possibility in the process of development turns into reality, quantity - into quality, cause - into effect and vice versa. He emphasizes the unity of opposite categories - form and content, essence and phenomenon, chance and necessity, cause and effect, etc.

He showed the internal inconsistency, interpenetration and transitions of such "paired categories". For him, categories, both in form and content, do not need sensually perceived material: they, as pure thoughts and stages in the development of an absolute idea, are in themselves meaningful and therefore constitute the essence of things. Revealing the dialectics of categories as pure thoughts, being convinced of the identity of being and thinking, Hegel believed that the dialectics of categories he expounded is manifested in all phenomena of the world: it is universal, exists not only for philosophical consciousness, for “what it is about, we already find it also in every ordinary consciousness and in universal experience. Everything that surrounds us can be regarded as a model of dialectics.

Hegel created a system of categories of dialectics, virtually unsurpassed until now. The category definitions are striking in their accuracy, conciseness and depth. He gives such definitions that we can use today: “the result is the removed contradiction”, “quality is definitely existing”, “measure is a qualitative quantity or quantitative quality”, “reality is the unity of essence and existence”, “chance is that which has no cause in itself, but has in something else, etc.

Hegel's categories flow seamlessly and organically into each other. He sees the connection of such categories as essence, content, general, necessary, law, or such as phenomenon, form, individual, random.

Hegel owns the discovery of the basic laws of dialectics: the law of quantitative and qualitative changes, the law of the interpenetration of opposites and the law of negation of negation. Through the dialectics of categories, he considers the mechanism of operation of the basic laws of dialectics. A thing is what it is due to its quality. Losing quality, a thing ceases to be itself, a given certainty. Quantity is a certainty external to being, characterizes being from the side of number. A house, Hegel said, remains what it is, no matter whether it is larger or smaller, just as red remains red, whether it is lighter or darker. Emphasizing the universal nature of the law of quantitative-qualitative and qualitative-quantitative changes, Hegel showed its peculiar manifestations in each individual case.

Another law - the interpenetration of opposites - allowed Hegel to substantiate the idea of ​​self-development, because he sees the main source of development in the unity and struggle of opposites. Hegel brilliantly divined in the contradictions of thought, in the dialectics of concepts, the contradictions of things and their dialectics.

Finally, the law of negation of negation. In it, Hegel saw not only the progressive development of the absolute idea, but also of each individual thing. According to Hegel, thought in the form of a thesis is first posited, and then, as an antithesis, is opposed to itself, and, finally, is replaced by a synthesizing higher thought. Hegel considers the nature of dialectical negation, the essence of which is not continuous, total negation, but the retention of the positive from the negated.

Hegel introduced dialectics into the process of cognition. For him, truth is a process, not a given, absolutely correct answer once and for all. Hegel's theory of knowledge coincides with the history of knowledge: each of the historical stages of knowledge, the development of science gives a "picture of the absolute", but still limited, incomplete. Each next step is richer and more specific than the previous one. It retains in itself all the richness of the previous content and denies the previous step, but in such a way that it does not lose anything of value from it, "enriches and thickens everything acquired in itself." Thus, Hegel develops the dialectic of absolute and relative truth.

Another aspect of dialectics is also interesting: the coincidence of dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge. According to Hegel, the logic of categories is also their dialectics, which in turn makes it possible to discover the essence, law, necessity, etc. Before us is a real feast of dialectics! Appeal to the study of Hegel's dialectics enriches, promotes the development of theoretical creative thinking, promotes the generation of independent ideas.

Contradiction between method and system. The triumphal procession of Hegelian philosophy, which began during the life of the philosopher, did not stop after his death. The followers of Hegel formed two trends: Left Hegelianism and Right Hegelianism. The first drew attention to the Hegelian dialectical method and used it to criticize Christianity; the latter were more attracted by the philosophical system of objective idealism. F. Engels in his work “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” showed that the Left Hegelians and Right Hegelians did not fully understand the meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, they did not see the contradiction between his philosophical system and the dialectical method. The Left Hegelians, although they accepted Hegel's dialectic, nevertheless remained captive to his idealism.

Hegel's system was a kind of complete philosophical system. Already by these features it determined the limitations of dialectics. The idea of ​​universal and uninterrupted development proclaimed by Hegel was not fully realized in his system, because, as noted above, the development of the absolute idea ended with the Prussian state and Hegelian philosophy.

Hegel's philosophical system contains the idea of ​​the beginning and end of the development of an absolute idea, which contradicts the dialectical idea of ​​development as eternal and infinite. Moreover, when Hegel spoke about matter, he did not approach its development dialectically: he did not see its development in time, because he believed that everything that happens in nature is the result of the materialization of an idea or its alienation.

The Hegelian dialectical method turned out to be turned to the past, as it was subject to the requirements of a philosophical system that reflected the path already traveled by mankind: the present for Hegel turned out to be the final stage in the development of the absolute idea.

These contradictions were removed by K. Marx and F. Engels when they overcame Hegelian objective idealism and developed a new form of dialectics - materialist dialectics. However, in the future there was such a dogmatization of Marxism, which, as in the Hegelian philosophical system, led to the assertion of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "peak" of philosophical knowledge. But now in the form of the philosophy of Marxism, which alone was assigned the status of science, which allegedly distinguishes the philosophy of Marxism from all previous philosophical thought.

Socio-philosophical concepts. The socio-philosophical concepts of Hegel deserve the closest attention. Many of them sound very relevant today, they help, through the categorical apparatus of social philosophy, to understand the problems of civil society, the rule of law, private property, consciousness and self-consciousness of the individual and society, forms of public consciousness, etc.

In The Philosophy of History, Hegel expressed a number of valuable conjectures related to the understanding of historical patterns, the role of great people in history, and raised the question of the meaning of history. In his analysis of the social order, Hegel went further than his predecessors. He emphasized the great role of the instruments of production, economic and social relations, and the geographical environment in the development of mankind.

Hegel understood the history of mankind not as a chain of random events. For him, it had a natural character, in which the world mind is revealed. True, Hegel immediately explained that people, pursuing their goals, at the same time realize historical necessity, without themselves realizing it. Great people play a role in history insofar as they are the embodiment of the spirit of their time. The meaning of all world history is, according to Hegel, progress in the consciousness of freedom - progress, which we must recognize in its necessity.

Hegel distinguishes between civil society and the political state.

Civil society, in his understanding, is the sphere of realization of private goals and interests of an individual. Hegel identifies three main points of civil society: 1) the system of needs; 2) administration of justice; 3) police and cooperation. Civil society requires not only the functioning of private property, but also its protection by the law, the courts and the police. At the same time, the importance of publicity for civil society is based: public announcement of laws, public trial and trial by jury.

Civil society and the state, according to the Hegelian concept, are related as reason and reason. Civil society is the "external state", "the state of need and reason", and the true state is rational, it is the foundation of civil society. Hegel connects the formation of civil society with the development of the bourgeois system, while the philosopher speaks of the natural dialectical nature of the relationship between the socio-economic and political spheres of civil society. And although the state is "the march of God in the world", he recognizes the possibility of a bad state, which only exists, but becomes unreasonable.

Hegel gives various interpretations of the state: the state as the idea of ​​freedom; the state as a single organism; the state as a constitutional monarchy; the state as a "political state". For Hegel, freedom, law, justice are valid only in a state that corresponds to the "idea of ​​the state."

Hegel agrees with the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu about the separation of powers in a state where public freedom is guaranteed. However, he disagrees with them in understanding the nature and purpose of such a separation of powers. Hegel considers the point of view of the independence of the authorities and their mutual limitation false, since this approach assumes the hostility of each of the authorities to the others, their mutual fears and opposition. He believes that the ratio of these powers should express the relationship of the whole and its members. According to Hegel, the internal sovereignty of the state consists in the domination of the whole, in the dependence and subordination of various authorities to state unity. Hegel criticizes the democratic idea of ​​popular sovereignty and substantiates the sovereignty of a hereditary constitutional monarch.

Today, the socio-philosophical and philosophical-historical problems of Hegelian philosophy should be treated with all scientific scrupulousness, because they were studied in Soviet philosophy biasedly, not in a certain system, but in parts.

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against Hegel. Philosophy of life Since Hegel believed that the basis of the universe is the mind and therefore everything that exists is reasonable, his philosophical ideas are often called the philosophy of mind. However, it is quite possible to doubt the basic Hegelian thought. Argue with what

Hegel is rightfully considered one of the greatest German thinkers who elevated German philosophy to unprecedented heights. Many researchers believe that it was Hegel who brought to mind the idea started by Kant.

His teaching had a great influence on all the philosophers who lived in his time. And even now, the philosophical system built by Hegel retains great influence. You can often hear that it was under him that German philosophy reached its peak in its development. This will certainly be an exaggeration, but his influence on German thought is indeed enormous.

However, for all his merits, he was rather bad at explaining his ideas to mere mortals. His works are written in heavy scientific language and it is easy to get lost in them even for those who have been studying philosophy for a long time.

In this article, we will more easily analyze the main aspects of his philosophy and consider his notorious laws of dialectics.

Brief biography of Hegel

But let's start, perhaps, with a brief biography of the famous philosopher.

Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel was born on August 27, 1770 in the German town of Stuttgart, in the family of a government official. He worked for Duke Karl Eugen as a secretary at the treasury.

In 1788 he began his studies at the Tübingen Institute, from which he graduated in 1793. At the university, he paid much attention to theology and philosophy. According to a habit that had taken root since childhood, he read a lot and studied hard. During his university years, he is known to have been friends with Schelling and Hölderlin, the famous German poet.

Being only a 20-year-old student, Hegel defended his master's thesis, becoming a master of philosophical sciences. Despite the fact that he spent the last 3 years at the university studying theology and successfully passed the exams, the clergy did not attract him at all. It was probably because of his dislike for the church, which developed during his studies at the university.

After successfully graduating from the university, he worked for 3 years, from 1793 to 1796, as a home teacher in Bern. The next 3 years, from 1797 to 1800, differed little from the previous ones. Hegel still worked as a home teacher, but now in Frankfurt am Main.

Hegel spent all his free time from work writing his works and was completely immersed in books.

In 1799, having received an inheritance of 3,000 guilders from his father and adding his own savings to it, he was finally able to devote himself entirely to academic activities.

In January 1801, he received the post of Privatdozent at the University of Jena and the opportunity to lecture. However, this occupation was given to him with difficulty, and he was not popular with students.

In 1805 he was given the post of extraordinary professor at the same Jena University, where in 1806 he wrote one of his most famous works, The Phenomenology of the Spirit, which he finished, according to him, the day before the end of the battle for Jena, in which the French won and captured Jena. As a result, he had to leave the city and get a job as a newspaper editor in Bamberg, where he worked for only a year until 1808, which left him with a completely negative impression.

Therefore, when in 1808 he was offered to take the post of rector at the Nuremberg Gymnasium, he gladly accepted and happily moved. He worked there until 1816.

In 1811, Hegel nevertheless decided to marry, Maria Helena Susanna von Tucher, a representative of the Bavarian nobility, became his chosen one. Nuremberg plays an important role in the life of the German thinker, also because it was here that the first part of his fundamental work, The Science of Logic, was published.

He would have remained there even further, if in 1816 he had not received an invitation to the position of full-time professor of philosophy from three universities at once: Erlanger, Gelderberg and Berlin. He chose Gelderberg, where he worked for another 2 years until 1818, and then moved to Berlin, where he settled at the University of Berlin, acting as head of the department of philosophy.

If in 1818 his lectures were reluctant to attend, then by 1820 he had become so famous that not only German students, but also many interested people from all over the world came to listen to him. His view of the philosophy of law, as well as the Hegelian understanding of the political system, gradually began to become a state ideology, and in 1821 he released his new work, which he called "Philosophy of Law".

In 1830 he took the place of head of the University of Berlin and in 1831 received a special award from the current monarch for worthy service to the German state.

In August of the same year, Hegel hurriedly left Berlin, where a cholera epidemic was raging, but returned in October, as he considered that there was nothing more to fear. However, the disease still got him and in November he died.

Although cholera is considered the official cause of Hegel's death, many still believe that some serious stomach disease was the main cause of death.

Basis of Hegel's philosophical system

Before starting to analyze his main ideas, it is necessary to understand what analytical structure underlies his philosophical system.

The philosophical system of Hegel is based on Kantian ideas. But if Kant's stumbling block was pure reason, which was freed from everything sensual, material and even experienced. Kant is interested in the possibility of spontaneous knowledge of the world by pure reason, without involving the category of experience.

That Hegel adheres to a completely different opinion. He believed that our experiential knowledge is a necessary category for understanding the essence of things. Hegel even compared Kant's system of knowledge to a person who wants to learn how to swim without entering the water.

Based on these principles, Hegel formulates his main philosophical principle - the Principle of the identity of thinking and being.

It follows from this principle that our empirical knowledge is built into the structure of our thinking. Through our methods of cognition, nature reveals to us some part of its own. Its noumenal essence, as it were, shines through the phenomenon (phenomenon).

But much more important for understanding his philosophical system, its logic, described in the books "Great Logic" and "Small Logic", which are part of the fundamental work "Science of Logic".

In it, Hegel talks about his tripartite system, which he himself calls dialectics. Any property of an object, according to Hegel, if it describes a characteristic of a real whole, is in itself contradictory.

And it was precisely the contradiction that he considered the criterion of truth. Absence of contradictions is the criterion of delusion.

A statement about the properties of an object is called a thesis. A statement that contradicts it is an antithesis.

The third component in this system is the merging of these two contradictions, taking into account all the logical inconsistencies, taking the best from the two statements - synthesis. Synthesis is one of the most important phenomena in Hegel's philosophy. It was created in order to bring the thesis and antithesis to a common denominator, and then form a new thesis from the resulting synthesis, for which the antithesis is chosen, and so on until we reach some consistent Absolute.

The introduction of such a concept as synthesis, according to Hegel, was necessary to overcome the Kantian antinomies, judgments in which thesis and antithesis are equally provable.

Precisely according to this scheme practically the whole philosophy of Hegel works. That is how he formed his laws of dialectics, the doctrine of the absolute idea and everything else.

Absolute Idea

Definition of the absolute idea

In the Hegelian system of worldview, the doctrine of the absolute idea is the most global and extensive, covering the entire universe and many aspects of human life.

At the heart of the universe, according to Hegel, lies the impersonal Absolute. This spiritual, autonomous origin is the condition for the development of the world. Unlike Spinoza, who argued that the Absolute is characterized by extension and thinking, Hegel does not consider the Absolute to be a thinking and creative principle, it is only a starting point and a necessary resource for the development of everything that exists.

And it is the absolute idea that gives form to this impersonal substratum. In the words of Hegel:

“The absolute idea is a set of categories that are the condition for the formation of the world and human history.”

The main and key goal of the absolute idea is self-knowledge, as well as the development of independent self-consciousness.

To understand his logic, you should go through the chain of his thoughts.

Nature cannot be the basis of everything that exists, Hegel says, it is essentially passive and cannot lead an active creative activity. She needs something to push her to creation, to set the initial impulse for the subsequent transformation.

Without this impulse, nature would have remained unchanged from the very moment of its inception.

He probably invented this symbiosis of the absolute idea and impersonal nature by analogy with the human mind. After all, it is our thinking that makes each of us unique. It is thinking that changes our life depending on what categories we think.

Nature without an absolute idea can be compared to a man in a coma. Perhaps he still has the ability to think, but its results are completely invisible. The person himself does not change in any way, his state is static and he will simply die without outside help.

The absolute idea is also the totality of the entire spiritual human culture, all the knowledge accumulated by mankind over the entire period of its existence.

And it is at the level of human culture and experience that the world of things clashes with the human mind. Thanks to this, it becomes possible to understand the real noumenal essence of things. Although this understanding is incomplete, it is still better than the rather radical view of Kant, who argued that the understanding of noumena (things in themselves) is impossible with the help of experience.

This implies Hegel's statement that culture is not just a way of expressing one's own thinking and realizing a creative ability, but also a way of seeing and perceiving the world.

After all, each person sees the world in completely different ways through the prism of their own perception.

The evolution of the absolute idea

In his three fundamental works, The Science of Logic, The Philosophy of Nature and The Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel tried to reveal the theme of how the absolute idea works.

In his probably most famous book, The Science of Logic, Hegel explains the role played by reason, thinking and logic itself in human life and in general in world history. It is in it that another, no less famous than triodicity, principle of ascent from the abstract to the concrete is formed.

Hegel's understanding of abstract thinking can be illustrated by looking at people's reactions to any socially significant event. Whether it's a speech by a politician or a sentencing of a murderer. Each person from the crowd, (or from the comments under the news) watching what is happening has his own point of view.

However, they never see an absolutely complete picture of what is happening. And only by gathering together absolutely all available information about this event, having analyzed all points of view, a person can claim to have specific knowledge.

Concrete knowledge is always diverse. It includes the smallest possible details and nuances.

Without this, we become just hostages of our own opinion, shaped by our life attitudes.

The development of the Absolute Idea begins, according to Hegel, with completely abstract, indefinite concepts.

The science of logic itself consists of 3 parts, which are the steps along which we climb in the knowledge of things.

It can be expressed by the scheme: "Being-Essence-Concept". Let's dwell on this in more detail:

Being-Essence-Concept

The first of the abstract definitions is pure "Being". In its original form, Being is just a word, it has no certainty, and so much so that it can even be compared with the concept of "Nothing", precisely because it lacks any qualitative characteristic.

“Becoming” is a concept that unites these very impersonal “Being” and “Nothing”. This is a kind of synthesis, which gives being some qualitative characteristic.

To better understand how being takes shape, you can imagine an artist painting a picture. First, he outlines the edges of the drawing, draws a sketch, then in the process of work, the picture is filled with new colors, acquires various shades, shadows and other additional parameters.

In this example, the absolute idea will be the artist creating his masterpiece, and the painting will be a being, which gradually takes shape and form, thereby moving from an empty abstract “Being”, comparable to nothing, into the so-called “existent being”.

Having finished painting, he puts the picture aside and takes a new canvas, thereby again turning existence into nothing.

It is from the presence of existence that human knowledge begins, because it is logical to assume that we can only interact with what is visible or detectable by any of the available methods.

Essence, according to Hegel, is the basis of the material world, and if for Kant it is an unknowable thing in itself, then Hegel, as mentioned above, believes that through our observation it is partly revealed to us.

Gradually plunging into the understanding of the Essence, we find that each of them is internally contradictory.

A concept is a category that reproduces the entire process of being and thinking preceding it. It is historical, carries all the experience of previous generations, constantly changes, is supplemented and, in fact, is a synthesis of the triad Being (existing)-Essence-Concept.

Philosophy of nature

The absolute idea, according to Hegel, being a purely metaphysical entity, the personification of pure thought, cannot know itself without its antithesis. And this antithesis is nature, which is also called "Other Being".

The absolute idea is connected with nature through "Alienation". Being an intangible object, it needs to embody part of its creative material in the material world, in other words, to alienate a part of itself into nature. This process is necessary for the absolute idea to receive feedback in order to understand in which direction to move further in its self-knowledge.

Like Schelling, Hegel considers man to be the highest stage in the development of the Other Being. This creature, being the embodiment of an absolute idea in nature, can create and explore the surrounding world.

Philosophy of spirit

Speaking of man, it is impossible not to touch upon such a section of Hegelian philosophy as the philosophy of the spirit. In the book Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel, in his characteristic triodic manner, divides human consciousness into 3 components:

• The stage of the subjective spirit
• Stage of objective spirit
• Absolute Spirit Stage

At the first stage, we can only talk about one particular person, by studying whom we can expand and subsequently extrapolate our knowledge to all of humanity. At this stage, such sciences as psychology, which studies the inner world of a person, phenomenology, which analyzes human consciousness, and, finally, anthropology, which studies humanity in all its unity of manifestation of material and cultural values, are useful.

At the stage of the objective spirit, Hegel expands the boundaries of the study of man, introducing such new categories of knowledge of human society as the family, civil society and the state. Here, not only the person as such is taken into account, but also his connections, contacts, interactions in society.

The absolute spirit is the highest stage in the development of human thought. It includes such stages as art, religion and philosophy.

Art is a concept of beauty, a view of the world from the side of aesthetic perception.

Religion Hegel calls is a synthesis of the entire aesthetic worldview. Here he cites as an example the creation of the Christian paradigm, which, in his words, has become a synthesis of all ancient culture.

Philosophy is the highest level of development of human thinking, which Hegel calls: "The era known in thinking."

It incorporates all the main problems characteristic of any human era, which are raised by the most talented people of their time and brought to the surface, taking on a theoretical form.

Laws of dialectics

The Hegelian laws of dialectics are the most important achievement of the German thinker and are designed to serve a better understanding of society and, in principle, any processes associated with a person.

The Law of the Transition of Quantitative Changes into Qualitative

This law can be called the most comprehensive. It describes all the processes that occur with all things in the world, quantitative and qualitative changes can be seen in absolutely every aspect of our lives.

This law is characterized by 4 terms:

• Quantity. In the Hegelian interpretation - that which externally determines the subject. These are the parameters that allow us to fix the presence of an object in space and time. A quantitative characteristic is simply a statement of the presence of an object without any additional characteristics. For example, when we say “cat” or “human,” we simply isolate this subject from the entire universe.
• Quality determines the internal characteristics of an item. In this case, we are talking about a specific cat or a specific person who is different from other cats or other people.
• The measure acts as a synthesis of quantity and quality. This concept embodies a change in quantitative characteristics while maintaining qualitative ones. This is best seen in the process, for example, the freezing of water. If you pour water outside in winter at temperatures below zero, you can see how it turns into ice. This will be the destruction of the measure and the transition from one qualitative state to another.
• A jump is something with the help of which the transition from one qualitative state to another is carried out. And it is the moment when water turns into ice that can be called a jump.

The law of double negation

Forming the law of double negation, Hegel argues that human understanding of the world goes in a spiral, constantly ascending. And this applies not only to the world, but also to our own development.

In contrast to Kant, who argued that with regard to any issue, only a thesis (affirmation) and antithesis (negation) can be expressed, Hegel adds a synthesis to them, which in this case Hegel calls “Removal”.

This term describes the transition from a lower state to a higher one, but the lower state does not go anywhere, it remains latent in the higher one.

To illustrate this concept, we can give a classic example of the development of a fetus from a kidney.

First of all, a bud appears on the tree, after some time it transforms into a flower and by its appearance the flower denies the bud, the bud passes into a higher state, but the bud does not disappear, it is still contained in the flower in a hidden (removed) form. Following the bud, the flower also disappears, turning into a fruit (passing into an even higher state), which will contain both the flower and the bud in a removed form.

From this example, it can be understood that there are three conditions in Hegelian dialectical negation:

1. Overcoming the old, which consists in the emergence of new higher forms of development
2. Continuity - new forms contain the best and most useful characteristics of the old ones
3. Approval of a new

These three conditions are also valid for our own development. After all, each of our new knowledge is based on what was received some time ago or recently, the previous one and serves as a stepping stone for raising our knowledge to a new level.

Hegel chose the spiral to describe this law because it shows well the progress and regression of our knowledge. Points can be marked on the spiral at which our thinking moves to a higher state, however, when we stop moving up, regression begins.

The law of unity and struggle of opposites

This principle can be called fundamental in the entire philosophy of Hegel, since it is built precisely on the struggle of contradictions and their subsequent transition into synthesis.

The key definitions that define this law will be:

Identity. Expresses the equality of an object to itself. In the case of a person, this self-consciousness will be meant. Even more self-awareness.

Difference respectively expresses the inequality of the object to itself. Although I am aware of myself, my thinking is constantly undergoing changes, I am not a complete Absolute, I am constantly developing and comparing myself with others.

Opposites express those characteristics of the object that are completely different from each other, but they may well be part of one whole and coexist with each other.

contradictions Hegel is the cornerstone of all his philosophical thought. He considered them a necessary condition for moving forward, whether it be applied to an absolute idea or to human consciousness. Each statement must have a different side, contradicting this statement, which will be its complete opposite.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to say that although the Hegelian system is rather difficult to understand, the tripartite structure underlying it is undoubtedly worthy of consideration. At the heart of his philosophical system lies the unity and at the same time the struggle of opposites, without which no development is possible. Such a conflict, of course, does not make our life easier, but it is thanks to it that the transition to higher levels of development is possible.

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What are the main ideas of the philosophy of Hegel, the philosopher of German classical thought, you will learn from this article.

Hegel main ideas

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a classic of German thought, and his philosophy is an achievement of the 19th century. The professor's views were formed under the influence of Diderot's dialectic, Cartesian rationalism, Boehme's mysticism and Schelling's philosophy. Not the last role in the formation of his ideas was played by discoveries in the field of natural science and the spiritual mood of the Great French Revolution.

Hegel's philosophy differs from other philosophical systems in that the thinker did not try to understand what is the meaning of everything that exists. On the contrary, he perceived everything that exists as thinking, which turned into philosophy. His views and ideas are not subject to an independent object, nature or God. For the professor, God is an absolutely perfect thinking mind, and nature is a shell of dialectical reality. For the thinker, the essence of philosophy is self-consciousness.

Hegel main ideas: briefly

The philosopher's ideas are expressed through the basic concepts of his philosophy.

• Hegel believed that an outstanding person who creates world-historical deeds is beyond the jurisdiction of morality. Only the greatness of the deed matters, not its moral meaning.
• The absolute ideas of Hegel's philosophy imply the idealism of a concrete and unconditional universality with a starting point and an ultimate goal of knowledge.
• The subjective spirit is the individualization of the soul, which is characterized by the alienation of the absolute idea.
• The objective spirit is the alienation of the absolute idea in the objective world, which is accompanied by the appearance of morality, law and morality.
• The absolute spirit is the last stage of the rejection of the absolute idea. On it, the absolute spirit takes the form of art, philosophy and religion, as the true embodiment of absolute knowledge.
• Alienation. Hegel said that this is a reflection of the absolute spirit in nature and history, the relationship between created reality and man.
• Withdrawal. This is a process of negation of negation, continuity in the development of the old new.
• Triad. It is a universal reflection of all development processes and consists of 3 steps: thesis is the initial factor, antithesis is the denial of the original essence, synthesis is the union of thesis and antithesis.

In addition, the philosophical point of view of Hegel found its reflection in philosophical principles. They consist in the transition from abstraction to historicism, systemicity, specificity and contradiction.

1. The principle of ascent to the concrete from the abstract. This is the main dialectical method of cognition. Deep concrete knowledge, uniting the special and the general, occurs through the knowledge of the meaningless and the general through the deepening of knowledge.
2. The principle of historicism. Any object of knowledge is the result of a development process. At the same time, knowledge takes into account the historical dimension of the object. Hegel believes that the historical and logical aspects coincide.
3. The principle of system. The real world is considered as a whole, in which all elements are interconnected with each other to the required extent. It is noteworthy that the system develops not by elements, but as a whole.
4. The principle of contradiction. This is the reason and the root cause of development. It can destroy the old system and build a completely new one.

We hope that from this article you have learned what are the main ideas of G. Hegel.