Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes

It may be said very abstractly that in personality all persons are equal. But this is an empty tautological proposition, in logic identified with the law of mere identity or A = A. This is so because a person abstractly considered is not as yet separate from others, and has no distinguishing attribute.
Equality is the abstract identity set up by the mere understanding. Upon this principle, mere impoverished reflecting thought, or, in other words, spirit in its middle ranges, is apt to fall, when before it there arises the relation of identity to difference. This equalit would be only the identity of abstract persons as such, and would exclude all reference to posession, which is the basis of inequality. Sometimes the demand is made for equality in the division of the soil of the earth, and even other kinds of wealth. The theory of a pious, friendly brotherhood of men who are to possess all goods in common, and to banish the principle of private ownership, easily presents itself to one who fails to understand the nature of freedom of spirit and nature of right, through mistaking their definite phases. Claims of a demand for equality in divisions of wealth are superficial, because the differences of wealth are due not only to the accidents of external nature but also to the infinite variety and difference of mental ability and character.

It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify

You know my present occupation and why I am pursuing it. You know also that I always had a penchant for politics. But this interest has been weakened by journalism far more than it has found sustenance in it. I have to look at political news from a different point of view from that of the reader. The important thing for the reader is content. For me a news item has interest as an article filling a page. But the diminished enjoyment afforded by the satisfaction of my political curiosity has its compensations. In the first place, income. I have convinced myself by experience of the truth of the biblical text which I have made my guiding light: “Strive ye first after food and clothing, and the Kingdom of God will fall to you as well’’ [reversal of Matthew 6:33]. The second advantage is that a journalist is himself an object of curiosity and almost of envy, in that everybody wants to know what he is holding secretly [in petto]—which, according to the universal persuasion, is surely the best part. But just between us, I never know more than what appears in my newspaper, and often not even that much.

I saw the Emperor—this world-soul—riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

Architecture is treated as crystallisation; sculpture, as the organic modelling of the material in its sensuous and spatial totality; painting, as the coloured surface and line; while in music, space, as such, passes into the point of time possessed of content within itself, until finally the external medium is in poetry depressed into complete insignificance.

Die Architektur ist dann die Kristallisation, die Skulptur die organische Figuration der Materie in ihrer sinnlich-räumlichen Totalität; die Malerei die gefärbte Fläche und Linie; während in der Musik der Raum überhaupt zu dem in sich erfüllten Punkt der Zeit übergeht; bis das äußere Material endlich in der Poesie ganz zur Wertlosigkeit herabgesetzt ist.

Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.

In connection with Kant we must here begin by speaking of Jacobi, whose philosophy is contemporaneous with that of Kant; in both of these the advance beyond the preceding period is very evident. The result in the two cases is much the same, although both the starting point and the method of progression are somewhat different. In Jacobi's case the stimulus was given mainly by French philosophy, with which he was very conversant, and also by German metaphysics, while Kant began rather from the English side, that is, from the skepticism of Hume. Jacobi, in that negative attitude which he preserved as well as Kant, kept before him the objective aspect of the method of knowledge, and specially considered it, for he declared knowledge to be in its content incapable of recognizing the Absolute: the truth must be concrete, present, but not finite. Kant does not consider the content, but took the view of knowledge being subjective; and for this reason he declared it to be incapable of recognizing absolute existence. To Kant knowledge is thus a knowledge of phenomena only, not because the categories are merely limited and finite, but because they are subjective. To Jacobi, on the other hand, the chief point is that the categories are not merely subjective, but that they themselves are conditioned. This is an essential difference between the two points of view, even if they both arrive at the same result.

This is Bruno's fundamental idea. He says: ”To recognize this unity of form and matter in all things, is what reason is striving to attain to. But in order to penetrate to this unity, in order to investigate all the secrets of Nature, we must search into the opposed and contradictory extremes of things, the maximum and the minimum” It is in these very extremes that they are intelligible, and become united in the Notion; and this union of them is infinite Nature. “To find the point of union is not the greatest matter; but to develop from, the same its very opposite, this is the real and the deepest secret of the art” It is saying much if we speak of knowing the development of the Idea as a necessity of determinations; we shall see later how Bruno proceeded to do this. He represents the original principle, which is elsewhere known as the form, under the Notion of the minimum, which is at the same time the maximum One, which at the same time is All; the universe is this One in All.

Very similar were the views expressed by Raymundus of Sabunde or Sabeyde, a Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and professor at Toulouse about the year 1437. In his theologia natural is, which he handled in a speculative spirit, he dealt with the Nature of things, and with the revelation of God in Nature and in the history of the God-man. He sought to prove to unbelievers the Being, the trinity, the incarnation, the life, and the revelation of God in Nature, and in the history of the God-man, basing his arguments on Reason. From the contemplation of Nature he rises to God; and in the same way he reaches morality from; observation of man's inner nature. This purer and simpler style must be set off against the other, if we are to do justice to the Scholastic theologians in their turn.

That condition which man terms the life of man in unity with nature, and in which man meets with God in nature because he finds his satisfaction there, has ceased to exist. The unity of man with the world is for this end broken, that it may be restored in a higher unity, that the world, as an intelligible world, may be received into God. The relation of man to God thereby reveals itself in the way provided for our salvation in worship, but more particularly it likewise shows itself in Philosophy; and that with the express consciousness of the aim that the individual should render himself capable of belonging to this intelligible world. The manner in which man represents to himself his relation to God is more particularly determined by the manner in which man represents to himself God. What is now often said, that man need not know God, and may yet have the knowledge of this relation, is false. Since God is the First, He determines the relation, and therefore in order to know what is the truth of the relation, man must know God. Since therefore thought goes so far as to deny the natural, what we are now concerned with is not to seek truth in any existing mode, but from our inner Being to go forth again to a true objective, which derives its determination from the intrinsic nature of thought.

Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι έννοια), as material modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the physical or physiological; these we still see practiced side by side. According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view it is the surging upward of the heartblood and the warm element in man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger; just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.

Viewed in the light of such facts, we may conclude slavery to have been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among the Negroes. The doctrine which we deduce from this condition of slavery among the Negroes, and which constitutes the only side of the question that has an interest for our inquiry, is that which we deduce from the Idea: viz., that the “Natural condition” itself is one of absolute and thorough injustice – contravention of the Right and Just. Every intermediate grade between this and the realization of a rational State retains – as might be expected – elements and aspects of injustice; therefore we find slavery even in the Greek and Roman States, as we do serfdom down to the latest times. But thus existing in a State, slavery is itself a phase of advance from the merely isolated sensual existence – a phase of education – a mode of becoming participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it. Slavery is in and for itself injustice, for the essence of humanity is Freedom; but for this man must be matured. The gradual abolition of slavery is therefore wiser and more equitable than its sudden removal.

This final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing but himself.

Aims, principles, &c., have a place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only; but not yet in the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only, is a possibility, a potentiality; but has not yet emerged into Existence. A second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality — viz. actuation, realization; and whose motive power is the Will — the activity of man in the widest sense.