Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes

It has been said that the French revolution resulted from philosophy, and it is not without reason that philosophy has been called Weltweisheit [world wisdom]; for it is not only truth in and for itself, as the pure essence of things, but also truth in its living form as exhibited in the affairs of the world. We should not, therefore, contradict the assertion that the revolution received its first impulse from philosophy.

Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around him had it been perceived that man's existence centres in his head, i.e. in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality. Not until now had man advanced to the recognition of the principle that thought ought to govern spiritual reality. This was accordingly a glorious mental dawn. All thinking being shared in the jubilation of this epoch. Emotions of a lofty character stirred men's minds at that time; a spiritual enthusiasm thrilled through the world, as if the reconciliation between the divine and the secular was now first accomplished.

When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in.

Intelligence finds itself determined: this is its apparent aspect from which in its immediacy it starts. But as knowledge, intelligence consists in treating what is found as its own. Its activity has to do with the empty form – the pretense of finding reason: and its aim is to realise its concept or to be reason actual, along with which the content is realised as rational. This activity is cognition. The nominal knowledge, which is only certitude, elevates itself, as reason is concrete, to definite and conceptual knowledge. The course of this elevation is itself rational, and consists in a necessary passage (governed by the concept) of one grade or term of intelligent activity (a so-called faculty of mind) into another. The refutation which such cognition gives of the semblance that the rational is found, starts from the certitude or the faith of intelligence in its capability of rational knowledge, and in the possibility of being able to appropriate the reason, which it and the content virtually is.

The action of intelligence as theoretical mind has been called cognition (knowledge). Yet this does not mean intelligence inter alia knows – besides which it also intuits, conceives, remembers, imagines, etc. To take up such a position is in the first instance, part and parcel of that isolating of mental activity just censured; but it is also in addition connected with the great question of modern times, as to whether true knowledge or the knowledge of truth is possible – which, if answered in the negative, must lead to abandoning the effort. The numerous aspects and reasons and modes of phrase with which external reflection swells the bulk of this question are cleared up in their place: the more external the attitude of understanding in the question, the more diffuse it makes its simple object. At the present place the simple concept of cognition is what confronts the quite general assumption taken up by the question, viz. the assumption that the possibility of true k

This is the trait constituting the soulful, inner, higher ideal which enters here in place of the quiet grandeur and independence of the figures of antiquity. The gods of the classical ideal too do not lack a trait of mourning, of a fateful negative, present in the cold necessity imprinted on these serene figures, but still, in their independent divinity and freedom, they retain an assurance of their simple grandeur and power. But their freedom is not the freedom of that love which is soulful and deeply felt because this depends on a relation of soul to soul, spirit to spirit. This depth of feeling kindles the ray of bliss present in the heart, that ray of a love which in sorrow and its supreme loss does not feel sang-froid or any sort of comfort, but the deeper it suffers yet in suffering still finds the sense and certainty of love and shows in grief that it has overcome itself within and by itself. It is only the religious love of romanticism which has an expression of bliss and freedom.

This oneness and satisfaction is in its nature spiritually concrete because it is what is felt by the spirit which knows itself in another as at one with itself. Here therefore if the subject-matter portrayed is to be complete, it must have two aspects because love necessarily implies a double character in the spiritual personality. It rests on two independent persons who yet have a sense of their unity; but there is always linked with this unity at the same time the factor of the negative. Love is a matter of subjective feeling, but the subject which feels is this self-subsistent heart which, in order to love, must desist from itself, abandon itself, and sacrifice the inflexible focus of its own private personality. This sacrifice is what is moving in the love that lives and feels only in this self-surrender. Yet on this account a person in this sacrifice still retains his own self and in the very cancelling of his independence acquires a precisely affirmative independence.

The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present.

That the line does not consist of points, nor the plane of lines, follows from their concepts, for the line is the point existing outside of itself relating itself to space, and suspending itself and the plane is just as much the suspended line existing outside of itself.-Here the point is represented as the first and positive entity, and taken as the starting point. The converse, though, is also true: in as far as space is positive, the plane is the first negation and the line is the second, which, however, is in its truth the negation relating self to self, the point. The necessity of the transition is the same.-
The other configurations of space considered by geometry are further qualitative limitations of a spatial abstraction, of the plane, or of a limited spatial whole. Here there occur a few necessary moments, for example, that the triangle is the first rectilinear figure, that all other figures must, to be determined, be reduced to it or to the square, and so on.-The principle of these figures is the identity of the understanding, which determines the figurations as regular, and in this way grounds the relationships and sets them in place, which it now becomes the purpose of science to know.
Negativity, which as point relates itself to space and in space develops its determinations as line and plane, is, however, in the sphere of self-externality equally for itself and appearing indifferent to the motionless coexistence of space. Negativity, thus posited for itself is time.
Time, as the negative unity of being outside of itself, is just as thoroughly abstract, ideal being: being which, since it is, is not, and since it is not, is
If these determinations (of Kant, the forms of intuition or sensation) are applied to space and time, then space is abstract objectivity, whereas time is abstract subjectivity (“the pure I=I of self-consciousness” but still the concept is in its pure externality).

Time is just as continuous as space, for it is abstract negativity r

I have the courage to be mistaken.

As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom.

تاریخ جهان دادگاه جهان است

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Нравственность есть завершение объективного духа, истина субъективного и самого объективного духа.

The state of nature is in theory what we find it in practice. Freedom as the ideal of the original state of nature does not exist as original and nature. It must first be acquired and won; and that is possible only through an infinite process of the discipline of knowledge and will power. The state of nature, therefore is rather the state of injustice, violence, untamed natural impulses – of inhuman deeds and emotions.

Ведь «метафизика» – как и «абстрактное» (да, пожалуй, как и «мышление») – слово, которое в каждом вызывает более или менее сильное желание удрать подальше, как от чумы.

Jesus explains this unity in another way (Matthew xviii. 19): “If two or three of you shall agree as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done for you of my father.” The expressions “ask” and “vouchsafe” are relative strictly to a unification in respect of objects (πράγματα [things]); it was only for a unification of this kind that the matter-of-fact language of the Jews had words. But here the object in question can be nothing but the reflected unity (the σνμϕωνία τὠν δνοἰν ὴ τριὠν [agreement of two or three]); regarded as an object, this is a beautiful relationship, but subjectively it is unification; spirits cannot be on in objects proper. The beautiful relationship, a unity of two or three of you, is repeated in the harmony of the whole, is a sound, a concord with the same harmony and is produced thereby. It is because it is in the harmony, because it is something divine. In this association with the divine, those who are at one are also in association with Jesus. Where two or three are united in my spirit (είς τό ὂνομα μοΰ [into my name], cf. Matthew x. 41), in that respect in which being and eternal life fall into my lot, in which I am, then I am in the midst of them, and so is my spirit.

The subject behaves in general as a thinking subject; yet the subject is also concrete conscoiusness. Therefore, the idea, absolute truth, must be present for this subject as concrete self-consciousness, as an actual subject. The idea posesses certainty for the subject only insofar as it is a perceptible idea, insofar as it exists for the subject. This is immediate knowledge, is certainty. It is also necessary that what is true is also what is certain for me. This is the further process of mediation and is no longer something immediately apprehended, so this mediation is the transition into the universal. For the universal absolute idea is the end here as well as the beginning. The certainty of Jesus’ unity with God penetrated the actuality of the hearts of the believers. This certainty revealed the certainty of an infinite relationship with God was the highest qualitative mode of satisfaction. This infinite relationship exists in certainty in the determination of one’s feeling as consciousness that God is love. This content must remain immediately certain in the mode of sensible appearance, this content is called the outpouring and revelation of the nature of God in the Holy Spirit. The intuition of the nature of God’s spirit satisfying human needs sensibly as Jesus leads to positing glorification of God through revelation of his mediating death and resurrection. This revelation expressed that the negative moments of finitude and weakness are moments contained within the “death of God,” by which the external and negative becomes sublated into the internal. This history reveals humanity is implicitly both dead and God through mediation, through what subsists in-itself returning to itself and eternally becoming spirit. This certainty, intuition, and consciousness of the unity of God and man constitutes the truth upon which develops the consciousness that God is triune. That Christ has died is an eternal act, in the nature of God himself.