Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 49)

by Peter Singer

he gives first place to Hegel’s historical sense.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History contains a good deal of historical information.

His work is a work of philosophy because it takes the bare facts of history as its raw material, and attempts to go beyond those facts.

‘the philosophy of history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it’.

the ‘thoughtful consideration’ of history should seek to present its raw material as part of a rational process of development,

history has some meaning and significance.

In Hegel’s day there was nothing unusual about his confident belief that human history is not a meaningless jumble of events

It may be taken as a claim that history is the working out of the purposes of some Creator who set the whole process in motion;

to suggest that the universe itself can somehow have purposes.

to discern the direction history is taking,

coming to grips with Hegel,

endow history with a meaning in the third, and least mysterious,

‘The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.’

‘stationary’ civilizations, societies that have reached a certain point of their development and then somehow stuck fast.

‘outside the World’s History’, in

True history begins with the Persian Empire, ‘the first Empire’, says Hegel, ‘that passed away’.

only one person – the ruler – is a free individual.

The truth is, says Hegel, that the oriental subject has no will of his own in the modern sense. In the Orient not only law, but even morality itself, is a matter of external regulation.

forming their own moral judgements about right and wrong.

India, in contrast, has no concept of individual freedom because the basic institution of society – the caste system which allocates to each his or her occupation in life –

something natural and hence unchangeable.

a general principle, a law which regulates the ruler as well as the subject.

Persia was a theocratic monarchy, based on the religion of Zoroaster,

The idea of rule based on an intellectual or spiritual principle signifies the beginning of the growth of the consciousness of freedom that Hegel intends to trace. Hence it is the beginning of ‘true history’.

the Greek idea of freedom allows slavery. Indeed,

some – not all – are free.

Greek city-state are only free, Hegel believes, in an incomplete way.

the Greeks had no concept of individu...

the habit of living for their country, without further reflection.

They did as they themselves wished to do, not as some external decree required them to do.

If I do something from habit, I have not deliberately chosen to do it. My actions, it might be said, are still governed by forces external to my will – the social forces that gave me my habits

As a symptom of this dependence on external forces, Hegel refers to the Greek tendency to consult an oracle for guidance

Reason lifts free people above the chance events of the natural world, and enables them to reflect critically upon their situation and the forces that influence them. Hence freedom cannot be fully achieved without critical thought and reflection.

Thus he judges the death sentence passed upon Socrates as unimpeachably correct:

But while the course of world history, as Hegel presents it, is certainly not a smooth and steady progression, it does not go backwards either.

The idea of individuality, of the private capacity for judgement, that was born in the Greek era has not disappeared. Indeed, the Roman state rests upon a political constitution and a legal system which has individual right as one of its most fundamental notions.

the catch is, of course, that this recognition of individual freedom is a purely legal or formal matter – Hegel calls it ‘abstract freedom of the individual’.

The spread of these philosophical schools was, according to Hegel, a result of the helplessness that the individual, who sees himself as a free being, must feel in the face of a domineering power he is unable to influence.

negative response to this situation;

There was a need for a more positive solution. This solution was prov...

appreciate that for Hegel human beings are not just very clever animals. Humans live in the natural world, as animals do, ...

Until they recognize themselves as spiritual beings, humans are trapped in the natural world, the world of material forces. When the natural world is implacably resistant to their aspiration for freedom, as the Roman world was, there is no escape within the natural world, apart from the already mentioned retrea...

Once humans recognize themselves as spiritual beings, however, the hostility of ...

to be all-important; it can be transcended in a positive manner because there is something positi...

This teaches humans that, though limited in some respects, they are at the same time made in the image of God and

‘religious self-consciousness’:

As we shall see, it takes the whole of the Christian era up to Hegel’s own time for humanity to become capable of achieving this.

First, Christianity opposes slavery, for each unit of mankind has the same essential infinite value.

dependence on oracles ceases,

the customary morality of Greek society is replaced by a morality based on the spiritual idea of love.