Brief Biography

1. German, 1770-1831

2. Studied theology and philosophy at Tübingen University; while there became a strong supporter of the French Revolution and its social agenda of freedom.

3. Became a tutor in Berne and Frankfurt, and in 1801 joined the University of Jena; he wrote the Phenomenology of Spirit while Napolean took Jena.

4. Eventually became an internationally famous philosopher at the University of Berlin.

5. His most influential books--

Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807

Science of Logic, 1812-1816

Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Science, 1818, 1827, 1830

Philosophy of Right, 1821

Lectures on Art, Religion, and World History

1. How to think of being

a. accepted Hume and Kant's critique of representational ideas; the "correspondence

theory" of truth is unfounded; there is not substantive foundation to knowledge

2. Knowledge is non-foundational and truth is known through coherence; the question then is to what is truth coherent?

a. truth is not only coherent it must be fully contextual--includes all factors

b. furthermore it must therefore be comprehensive--includes all relevant factors

3. As truthful knowledge is developed by coherence, contextualism, and comprehensiveness, it becomes more "determinate knowledge," more concrete

a. abstract knowledge is divorced from a context and hence is not comprehensive

and thus cannot be coherent; abstract knowledge is hence false

4. The movement of thought is thus:

a. mediation--all knowledge is in relationship to the contexts

b. sublation--the mediations require going beyond but retaining each context

5. The goal of knowledge is "Truth is the Whole" which is the fully coherent, contextual, and comprehensive knowledge; knowledge of the Whole is fully determinate and concrete knowledge; there are no abstractions.

6. Because of its contextual nature, truthful knowledge is always historical, not transcendental of human affairs.

7. Thus to think of being, must thinking of the most comprehensive historical knowledge.

Introduction--the book is an attempt to explain the meaning and formation of human self-understanding through cultural expressions; the German word Geist can be translated as mind or spirit; it's more than just thinking but it's not divine; it's self-understanding; to show how contemporary society came to think of itself the way it did, Hegel traces the development of the forms (or "phenomenon") cultural development; the individual cannot be separated from culture and culture is more than just the sum of all the people; culture is the embodied idea of a people and that is the dominant way the people understand themselves.

A. The Stages of Consciousness--sense certainty, perception, and understanding

1. Kant has successfully accounted for these stages but he did not explain what makes understanding (which Kant called the "transcendental unity of apperception"); Kant stopped in his explanation, hence his philosophy has an abstract quality to it

B. The Development of Self-Consciousness

1. Understanding occurs not in the world but in the person; our personal identity is developed in relation to others, which is formed according to the struggle between independence and dependence;

a. this is the struggle for freedom in the tension between Lordship and Bondage

2. This struggle takes succeeding forms, which are shaped by how the self relates

a. Stoicism--affirms itself by rejecting the "other"

b. Skepticism--denies everything, even itself

c. the Unhappy Consciousness (the Christian era)--a self which lives with the

disunity of itself and society

3. This development requires the individual and society to affirm and incorporate tensions

C. How a Culture Learns to be Rational--the develop of reason occurs as people learn what to think about in their effort to understand themselves

1. Observing reason--the basis of natural science, which tries to understand itself in relation to nature, the psychological laws, and finally a materialistic reduction of human self-understanding in physiognomy and phrenology.

2. The actualization of rational self-consciousness through its own activity--this is the creative, artistic impulse to be free by being oneself regardless of the consequences.

3. Individuality which takes itself to be real in and for itself--this is Kant's categorical imperative which is the grandest expression of reason.

D. The Embodied Idea in cultural growth

1. In the Greek states, people were considered to embody an ethical idea and were given a legal status as citizen of a moral order and society--an ethical order.

2. In Feudal Europe, people were torn between faith in heaven and the growing needs and forces of secular life; the Enlightenment tore apart the link between faith and society, and the worst consequence happened--the reign of terror of the French Revolution in which people turned upon themselves to become free--European self-alienated culture.

3. 19^th Century Europe is ambivalent about culture, knowing its necessity and latent evil; within this malaise the "beautiful soul" develops who only and always follows her or his conscience but to do so separates from the struggles of culture; hence it's empty.

E. The Cultural Role of Religion in society development of self-understanding.

1. Religion is both necessary for cultural development because it gives people a universal perspective about themselves and also potentially harmful because it tends to abstract itself from history.

2. The forms of religion express the particular relationships between consciousness and self-consciousness:

a. Natural Religion--sense certainty and Stoicism;

b. Religion in the Form of Art--perception and Skepticism

c. Revealed Religion--understanding and the Unhappy Consciousness

3. The last is truer because it's more concrete but it's also frustrating to individuals and culture because the real reconciliation between God and humanity occurs in a single person (i.e., Christ) not all of humanity.

F. The Final Form of Knowledge--Absolute Knowledge

1. Revealed Religion can be reconciled to culture through philosophy when it incorporates religion's ideas into cultural formation.

2. Absolute knowledge is knowing the various forms of the Geist, which matures in the presents era's thinking of it's self.

3. Elsewhere Hegel says there are three forms of absolute knowledge and what makes them absolute is that they represents ways in which conflicts, struggle, and ambiguity can be incorporated into a larger self-understanding:

a. Art--the sensuous form of the Idea

b. Religion--the symbolic form of the Idea

c. Philosophy--the conceptual form of the Idea

4. There is no higher knowledge than the philosophical because it's the last interpretation.

Introduction--it's built on the notion of concrete freedom; when are we most free?

A. Stages of Personal Freedom

1. Absolute Right--immediate freedom but abstract

2. Moral Freedom--mediated but divided self

3. Ethical Freedom--mediated and incorporated into society

B. Stages of Political Freedom

1. Family--the immediate experience of society

2. Civil Society--the mediated experience of society

3. The State--the embodiment of the "general will" in law and institutions

Introduction--the issue is which sensuous form of the Idea (i.e., the ruling notion of a culture's self-understanding) best expresses and educates the people into fuller self-understanding.

A. What is Beauty?

1. Hegel rejects both a) art is an imitation of nature because nature cannot be an act of self interpretation and b) art is only subjective feelings.

2. Beauty is the adequacy of the Idea to its sensuous form; it is the rational rendered sensible; it reveals Geist

3. Each culture has its own Geist, hence its own sense of beauty.

4. Yet art is not just relativistic to a particular culture; in that it's form of absolute knowledge, the more comprehensive artistic expressions are better forms of art.

B. The Forms of Art--three sensible embodiments of the Idea

1. Symbolic art--the sensible form merely symbolizes the Idea.

2. Classical--the adequacy of the form to the Idea.

3. Romantic--the minimizing of the sensible to express the Idea

C. The Three Styles of Art

1. Symbolic art and architecture--associated with Egyptian religion

2. Classical art and sculpture--associated with Greece

3. Romantic art and Painting, music, and poetry--the freedom of the spirit, associated with Christianity.

D. Imperfect art when the representation is inadequate to the Idea; all three styles can be used at any time but for it to be perfect art, it must express the Idea of the people at that time.