Talk:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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Wikilinks to PhS and SL[edit]
@X-Editor, you recently modified Wikilinks in the article lead without discussion or summary/justification for the change. The reason that they were pointed to Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#The_Phenomenology_of_Spirit and Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#Science_of_Logic, rather than Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, is that the latter two pages suffer from serious shortcomings, especially the latter. Most obviously, they are objectively incomplete in they set out to cover the whole book and then just stop well before coming to any kind of conclusion. They are also poorly referenced.
I would love for these entries to be improved so that we could not only link out to them in the lead, as would be typical, but also so that we would not need to spend as much time covering these works in this long article. Until such a time as someone steps up to do this, however, I propose we keep the Wikilinks in the lead pointing to their respective sections in this article. Curious readers will be better served.
Both have "Main article" links to the individual pages so that readers can still easily link out if they please. My concern, however, is that anyone who links out right from the top will learn very little from the individual pages and not bother to return to this one.
In consideration of this, I'd ask you justify your edit here or else please revert.
Thank you! Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:08, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
- Went ahead and manually reverted this myself. BTW, if anyone is ever interested in spearheading an overhaul of either of these articles, please do tag me, and I'll do what I can to help.
- Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Philosopher Infobox[edit]
Normally with other philosophers on Wikipedia there is a subsection in their infobox called "Influenced" where all subsequent thinkers have cited this particular philosopher. Hegel does not have one, granted his towering influence over subsequent western philosophy I believe this should be addressed.
FictiousLibrarian (talk). 14:39, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- Hi @FictiousLibrarian, Thanks for your interest in this article! An earlier list of influences was removed as part of the Good Article editorial review process. Infoboxes are not supposed to contain information not supported by the article (see MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE). Since Hegel's influence extends far beyond what is mentioned in the Criticism and Legacy section, including just those mentioned would be highly misleading.
- If you are interested in starting a list with the aim of more completely cataloging his influence, you might consider creating a stand-alone list. We could then link out to that with a "See also" under the section head.
- I hope this makes sense?
- Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:32, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Criticism and legacy --> Early reception?[edit]
Hey all,
I am considering restructuring the current "Criticism and legacy" section into a section provisionally titled "Early reception". This would have three subsections. The first would be "German reception", which would include the material currently divided between the sections on L v. R Hegelianism and Marxism. The second would be "French reception", which would probably be unchanged. The third would be American reception, which would probably also be largely unchanged from the current section entitled "American pragmatism".
This would leave four sections hanging: (i) "Racism", (ii) "Allegations of authoritarianism", (iii) "Thesis–antithesis–synthesis", and (iv) "Non-metaphysical interpretations".
To take these in reverse order:
(iv) This is an academic debate that is widely considered to be over. I wrote most of the section in order to include something that was in the article before I started overhauling it. Looking back now, however, I think just about everything currently included could be simply deleted. This debate is just not something about which non-specialists have any reason to care.
(iii) The primary reason to include this dated misrepresentation of Hegel's philosophy is to prevent editors who have not studied Hegel and do not know the literature to add it somewhere inappropriate. In the past, for instance, it has even been featured in the lead. Some of the current exposition, I believe, is useful and could be incorporated above, probably into "Dialectics, speculation, idealism", without being a section unto itself.
(ii) None of these allegations are by Hegel scholars. They are more a reflection of the intellectual climate during the Cold War than anything Hegel wrote, said, or actually inspired. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, do they any longer shadow Hegel's legacy.
(i) This section was added by someone who translated it from the German article on Hegel. Best practice is to integrate criticism into the article's presentation of the ideas being criticized, rather than as its own section. In this case, those sections are Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#Subjective_spirit and Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel#History,_political_and_philosophical.
Some of the material currently in this stand-alone section could be incorporated into those sections above in addition to what is already there. Buck-Morss, in particular, is an important addition to the bibliography; for her work on this topic is probably the most cited among scholars.
Writing from the United States as a dude on the pale side of white, however, I want to be sure other folks have a chance to chime in before I make any changes that might unduly minimize the significance of Hegel's particular brand of "scientific" racism. (Tagging the original contributor, @Anna.Bonazzi.)
The reason for these proposed changes is to help protect the page against the sort of arbitrary bloat currently found, for instance, at Immanuel_Kant#Influence_and_legacy or (at least until somewhat ameliorated by my recent edits) in the Aristotle article.
There is just no way to cover the legacy and criticisms of such major figures in an objectively principled way. Limiting this section of the article to the figure's initial reception helps to forestall WP:UNDO or otherwise problematic contributions by well-meaning editors. If something has no place in the Life/Biography or Philosophy/Thought section of the article, it probably does not belong at all (or else one of those sections needs to be restructured, in which case, pls. bring this to the Talk page!).
This is a long post. There is no expectation that anyone respond to anymore than one of the points I make. But if you are reading this, please share your views! I am still the primary author of most of this article (apart from the Life section, which required little by way of improvement). That is just to say that I can make these changes very easily without much time or effort. But I'm going to leave this here for a week or so in hopes others might chime in to support this proposal or else to raise qualified or categorical objections.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 01:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
- Sorry for neglecting to follow through on any of this. I am going to now act on (i) and (ii), linking back to this thread in my edit description of the deletions. If I have removed anything of importance, I am happy to discuss and restore as appropriate.
- Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
- I've made these and a few other related edits. If no one speaks up in objection, I will come back to clean up the bibliography in a few days. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Some ideas for improving the article[edit]1. The Phenomenology of Spirit is not part of Hegel's mature system. In the preface to the Logic Hegel says the Phenomenology is only an introduction to the system, and not the system itself. So I think the section on the Phenomenology, which is good, should go outside the "Philosophical system" section. 2. "Philosophical system" should be structured in the same way as Hegel's system. So the sub-headings should be Logic, Nature, Spirit. And then within those, the subsections. So Philosophy of Art should go as a subsection within Absolute Spirit 3. The writing in the section on "philosophy of the real" is not correct regarding the structure of Hegel's system. It is not the case that Logic is in some sense finished, and Nature is an ongoing historical project. Rather it is all an ongoing project, and it's also all finished. As it is, the Realphilosophie section implies a kind of dualism which Hegel is trying to overcome. 4. The beginning of the Philosophical system section correctly states that Proclus's Neoplatonic triad of remaining-proceeding-reverting influenced Hegel. This is correct, but it is an indirect influence. The direct influence is rather Christian theosophy in general, the Rosicrucian and theosophical milieu of Swabia where Hegel went to school being suffused with the theosophy of Jakob Böhme. So I propose that the Philosophical system section begin with this influence (Christian theosophy), and then it can list a few parallel triads in other traditions which influenced both Böhme and Hegel indirectly. There are: 1. Neoplatonic triads of Being-Living-Thinking and remaining-proceeding-reverting, 2. the triadic groupings of the Sefirot in Kabbalah, 3. Plato's three gods: the One, the Demiurge, and the World Soul, 4. the triadic thought of non-Behmenist Christian mystics such as Eckhart. These influences can be grouped as Christian, Jewish, and Greek. In Böhme and Hegel the three are woven together. Green eggs and HUM (talk) 01:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Laurentiis article states the exact opposite of what is written in the Real Philosophy section[edit]I have read the entire Laurentiis article that is cited in support of the claim that Hegel says the Logic is finished. Laurentiis, through the whole article, from beginning to end, on almost every single page, argued the exact opposite of what is stated in the "philosophy of the real" section which cites that article: "The theoretical order of philosophical concepts...and the chronological order of their expression in history....do not operate independently of one another....The two orders are in principle the same." (Lauretiis 5) "The 1820 introduction continues by highlighting....features that justify the claim of the intrinsically historical character of theoretical concepts..." (Laurentiis 13) "Thus the historical inception of philosophic thinking coincides with the rise of the self-refexive stage of consciousness, namely self-consciousness....[Consciousness's] history is part and parcel of the natural history of knowing." (Laurentiis 17) "Only a philosophical history of philosophy can capture the inwardization or recollective dimension of spirit's external development, namely by reconstructing the successive sublations of philosophic principles in the history of the systems." (Laurentiis 20) "The logical concretization, that is, increasing intension and extension, of philosophic concepts is then the necessary complement of their chronological succession." (Laurentiis 20) "The historical succession of systems in the history of philosophy parallels...the logical succession of spirit's phases in its practical and theoretical activity of knowing itself." (Laurentiis 22) "the philosopher reconstructing the history of philosophy understands the theories succeeding each other in time to be expressions of principles of the theoretical and practical activity of self-knowing called “the Idea"." (Laurentiis 23) "In this sense, the series of systems in the history of philosophical thinking can be interpreted as being 'the same' as the logical series of self-determinations of the idea." (Laurentiis 29) Regarding the paragraph in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, "Translations usually disregard the reflexive form of 'sich fertig machen', a common expression that means 'to make oneself ready', and interpret this to mean that actuality is 'finished'. But the reflexive form implies both completion and preparedness. Since Hegel's prose is seldom redundant, the connotation of 'preparedness' should be stressed in the translation. Actuality has completed one of its phrases and has made itself ready for this next." i.e. history, and thus the development of the Logic, is unfinished! (Laurentiis 29) "More importantly, since the subject of the phrase is actuality, the translation is also at odds with Hegel’s consistently Aristotelian use of “actuality” as an activity that by definition does not attain any “completed state.” Thus, translations neglect here to convey Hegel’s idea of a recollective and simultaneously anticipatory function of philosophy." (Laurentiis 29) "Indeed, if the history of philosophic thinking follows the logic of the Idea, then philosophic principles must be as much determined by those they have sublated as by the ones they contain as yet only implicitly." (Laurentiis 29) "Thus, while it is true that for Hegel the principles of a system, in sublating all previous ones, do express an epoch whose life cycle is concluded, it is equally true that these same principles anticipate a new epoch." (Laurentiis 30) "Prima facie this appears to contradict the “owl of Minerva” allegory from the Preface to the Philosophy of Right. But the allegory (often quoted out of context) intends to highlight only one of the functions Hegel attributes to philosophy. It is embedded in a passage vigorously directed against the idea of a moralistic, ideological, or generically normative vocation of philosophy and philosophers." (Laurentiis 30) " Though it attains systematic completion at the end of an epoch, it thinks beyond this end." (Laurentiis 30) "Thus, each philosophic system grasps both an epochal closure of spirit and the new beginning for which it has “made itself ready." (Laurentiis 31) Green eggs and HUM (talk) 00:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Can we add this summary of Hegel's Logic to the Science of Logic section?[edit]I have written this three paragraph summary of Hegel's Logic which I think will be very helpful to wishing to understand this titanic work. Can we add this to the Science of Logic section? If you approve, I'll gather references, probably from G.R.G. Mure's "A Study of Hegel's Logic," (but I'm also willing to gather from Beiser and Inwood if you'd prefer) to point the reader to scholarship on each point of the summary. The summary is as follows: Being is the sensible, empirical side of reality. It consists of quality and quantity (Aristotle’s ‘poion’ and ’poson’ respectively). Qualia (e.g. shiny, red, apple) constitute the content of sensible reality, but in a form which is generally recalcitrant and unreceptive to combination (shiny cannot be added to heavy). Quanta (e.g. 5, 9, etc.) constitute the combinability of sensible reality, but a formal combinability abstracted from all content (e.g. addition, subtraction, ratio, etc.). Measure is the combination of quality and quantity (e.g. 100 books in a library, 2 atoms of hydrogen), and it constitutes the general structure of the field of sensation and experience. But this field is still the external combination of qualia and quanta. Their inward union is substance, essence. Essence is the invisible, formal side of reality. It consists of the difference between itself and its manifestation. Essence thus has two sides: on the one hand, essence is pure form, pure inner thinking without content (these are the laws of thought, e.g. A = A); and on the other hand, essence is the sensible content but in the form of abstract laws (these are the laws of nature, e.g. F = ma). As the third to pure essence and essence with content, we have actuality, which is the structure of the organic world in general. Actuality is the pure form (A = A) that has entered into reality and become a real existent (e.g. the seed = the tree; Aristotle’s dynamis and energeia). But this is only a partial unification, because it still has some reality standing outside it. When essence and existence are perfectly united so that all reality is in the essence and essence exists in reality, this is the concept. The concept is essence fully entered into being and thus become present to itself. It is thinking, but no longer as merely formal thinking, but a thinking which has all reality in it as its own self-production. This is the ‘I’ of self-consciousness. In itself this is the content of traditional logic (Aristotle’s Prior Analytics). As externally projected, the concept is an object, an objective end apart from itself to which it relates. When this end is brought back into the concept, then we have the end in itself, the idea. The idea is the philosophical method, self-knowing truth, and eternal life. It is the creator of nature, the unity of truth and goodness, the purpose of existence, and the ideal human being. This is the Absolute Idea. Thanks! RightHegelian (talk) 05:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
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