Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel was a German philosopher known for his vast impact on philosophy, and for work that is famously difficult to understand.  This brief biography will explore the historical context surrounding his life, and the historical significance of his life.

Hegel was born in a Europe on the cusp of a great deal of change.  The Enlightenment movement was in full swing.  In the decades leading up to 1770, principles of reason, empiricism (knowledge supplied by experience) and the scientific method were being extolled by philosophers like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Hume.  These Enlightenment thinkers were building on the contributions made by Bacon, Newton, Locke and other participants in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.  An intellectual migration was taking place; the church and dynastic monarchy were being left behind in favour of science, reason, individual and human rights, progress, and economic globalization.  Along with these principles of modernity came revolutions.  At Hegel’s birth, the American Revolution was five years in, and would last another thirteen.  The French Revolution would begin when Hegel was eighteen.

The political upheaval was intriguing to Hegel, and as Europe began to realize its new identity, he was drawn to try to understand his modern environment (Pinkard x).  In 1789, Hegel was attending a seminary in Tübinger, which served as a sort of university for Hegel, because although the seminary trained young men to be clerics, Hegel had “no clerical aspirations,” (Baur, 4).  The summer of his first year is when the Bastille was stormed, igniting the French Revolution.  The fall of the French monarchy occasioned “joyful anticipation” in Hegel and his contemporaries (Moland 133).  The news that power was shifting to the lower  classes (or at least away from the monarchs) must have been seen as a victory for the enlightened spectators of south-west Germany.  However, the revolution proved more bloody than anticipated, leading Hegel to disapprove of the violence that resulted (133).  Hegel remarked that revolution had its roots in thought, namely the thought that we can create a society based on “a rational concept of human being,” (Rockmore 51).  Hegel was aware that the modern world was progressing as his predecessors had envisioned, but also that the concept of freedom would need to be applied to society in a way that made practical sense (53).  The strife that accompanied the revolutions in his early life lead him to question what freedom means in the context of modernity and history.

Hegel’s philosophy is commonly attributed to the school and period of “German idealism” (Baur 8)  The idealists put an emphasis on our experience as subjects when coming to know things about the world.  The idealists were in many ways a contrast to the realists, who would claim that the world exists as it does without our active participation in experiencing it.  This divide between the knowing subject, and knowable object, was a common thread for early modern philosophy (8).  Hegel took parts of this school a step further, and his work suggests that since human knowledge is limited by the faculties of perception, there must be an independent “something” (13) beyond ourselves.  This something manifests in Hegel’s idea of Geist, or Spirit, a popular view of Hegel’s in the philosophy of aesthetics.

Hegel’s vast influence begins with Karl Marx.  Marx was a student of Hegel, but he disagreed on some key points. He defends materialism over idealism (Buchwalter 159) which means he views the world as knowable by virtue of matter and objects, not any mystical Giest.

Hegel’s influence also stretches to the existentialist movement of the twentieth century, where his work is cited by many thinkers as beginning the discussion on the irrational aspects of human nature examined by existentialism (Ciavatta 169).  Like Marx, existentialist thinkers focused more on what they rejected about Hegel than on what they agreed.  Existential thought prioritizes existence over essence (meaning) in a similar way that Hegel sees experience as dependent on the knowing subject.

Hegel had further influence on thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Royce, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger (Rockmore 159, 161, 164, 171).

Stephen Good

Works Cited

Baur, Michael. G.W.F. Hegel: Key Concepts. Routledge, 2015.

Buchwalter, Andrew. “Hegel and Marx.” G.W.F. Hegel: Key Concepts, edited by Michael Baur. Routledge, 2015, pp. 155-168.

Ciavatta, David. “Hegel and Existentialism.” G.W.F. Hegel: Key Concepts, edited by Michael Baur. Routledge, 2015, pp. 169-181.

Pinkard, Terry. Hegel: A Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Rockmore, Tom. Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel’s Thought. University of California Press, 1993.

Moland, Lydia. “Philosophy of History.” G.W.F. Hegel: Key Concepts, edited by Michael Baur. Routledge, 2015, pp. 128-139.

Absurdism

Absurdism

Absurdism is a school of thought in philosophy and literature, prominent in the twentieth century.  The contemporary understanding of Absurdism has its roots with Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century, as well as with the Dada movement in the 1920’s, which began in Switzerland as a reaction to the horrors of The Great War.  French novelist Albert Camus has spilled the most ink on the subject.  Broadly, Absurdism is the view that people seek meaning in their life, while the universe seems unlikely to provide it.  The disharmony between these two features is the source of absurdity. Absurdism is seen as an emotional state as well as an intellectual position.  (Camus)  Conrad saw it as “the frightful gulf that separates man from his surroundings, man from man, the disparity between the human ideal and its surroundings.” (Gillon 3)

Absurdism plays and important role in the progress of human thought, and can be linked to other important intellectual movements.  Existence has been puzzling people as far back as Dante and the Stoics, (Wegener 150) and there have been countless events that call into question the harmonious relationship between humans and the universe.  These events range from the world wars, to the loss of a family dog.  Over time, as the idea of God lost currency as a source of meaning for people’s lives, Absurdism gains currency as an explanation for the human condition.  Since Nietzsche’s famous declaration of God’s death at the end of the nineteenth century, the modern world has struggled to maintain its clear vision of progress and unity.  Modernity claims to move humankind forward with a unified purpose, but Absurdism points out that there might not be any inherent meaning to existence.  This seems to be the starting point for the postmodern movement that has accompanied us to the twenty-first century.  The history of Absurdism can be seen in the social and political issues of today.  Absurdism makes it difficult to form a consensus on the state of affairs around us, and the news media is facing challenges in this regard.  There is a large flow of mis- and disinformation by virtue of Absurdism’s claim that truth might be relative.  This skepticism has also influenced a contemporary body of art that disavows meaning, instead opting to disavow meaning and live in the unknown.  Examples include the viral video “going to the store” and the comedic work of Reggie Watts.

There are many important figures that participated in Absurdism, including Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, and Albert Camus.  Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived from 1813 to 1855. His response to the absurd was to take a leap of faith and place meaning in God. (Camus 40) Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist who lived from 1821 to 1881.  He saw the world as fundamentally irrational, and his works live in this absurd space.  Kafka lived in Czechoslovakia and Austria from 1883 to 1924.  His characters are described as responding to absurdity with ridiculousness, like someone who laughs at policemen while hitting them. (Gillon 3)  Joseph Conrad, 1857 to 1924, is famous for his book Heart of Darkness, which contrasts the absurdity of England to that of the Congo.  His hero’s journey up the Congo river is an allegory for a personal journey into the absurdity of existence.  The film Apocalypse Now, which explores the absurdity of the Viet Nam War, is loosely based on Conrad’s book.  Camus’ work The Myth of Sisyphus is the most commonly cited work in Absurdism.  Aside from an argument against suicide, it is a project to explain the best response to absurdity.  The central image is of Sisyphus being condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, but that he is happy to do so.

Stephen Good

 

Bibliography

Gillon, Adam. The Absurd and ‘Les Valeurs Ideales’ in Condrad, Kafka and Camus.” The Polish Review, vol. 6, no. 3, 1961, pp. 3–10. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25776355

Wegener, Adolph H. “The Absurd in Modern Literature.” Books Abroad, vol. 41, no. 2, 1967, pp. 150–156. JSTOR, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40121546.

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Vintage Books, 1955.