Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 55)

by Edward Craig

In spite (or partly because) of this glitch the Discourse is a rich and memorable work. An eminent founder of modern thought grapples with himself, Aristotelianism, scepticism, academic reaction, public and ecclesiastical opinion, physics, cosmology, and physiology, all in about fifty pages. Now that I call a real feast.

Suppose that you want to know something about yourself, say, what you really think about some question or other. Should you sit down meditatively and try to introspect your own thoughts? No – you will just think you see whatever you wanted to see. You should do something, make something, write something, in general produce something that expresses you, your own work – and look at it.

Good advice, and nothing especially new. (‘By our works shall we know ourselves.’)

But Hegel now makes a very surprising (and rather obscure) use of it. He holds, remember, that Nature is the concrete expression of the Idea. So the Idea is confronted by its own work, and the situation is ripe for it to start to understand itself.

There’s more to come: Hegel believes that the whole purpose of reality is precisely this, that the Idea should come to full knowledge of its own nature.

In history, the Idea is working out its rational purposes.

So this value-system was not God-given, and it was not the outcome of some intuitive perception of its truth, or intrinsic ‘rightness’. It was a vengeful, retaliatory device, born of the weak’s resentment of the strong.

All that commitment to charity, compassion, and love was actually fuelled by hate.

Just when you thought your house was in good order, along comes a Nietzschean ‘explosion’ and suddenly your roof has changed places with your cellar. This is philosophy at its most challenging.

What he most dislikes about ‘herd morality’ is that it arose not through affirmation of their own way of life (like the codes of the higher classes) but through the negation of someone else’s: they looked at the vigorous, free, proud, self-assured, self-assertive people who ruled them, resentfully declared their qualities to be bad and hence the opposite qualities, such as passivity, servitude, humility, unselfishness, to be good.

Herd morality is life-denying, in Nietzsche’s estimation.

Whilst developing your own powers of discrimination, stick to the good old classics.

But as I hope to have indicated, philosophy is as wide as life, and in its huge literature are exemplified most intellectual vices as well as most intellectual virtues. Wishing it were otherwise would be close to wishing that human beings didn’t have minds.