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Hegel was. German philosopher Georg Hegel: main ideas

Hegel was. German philosopher Georg Hegel: main ideas

23.09.2019

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich(Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) (1770-1831), German philosopher, was born in Stuttgart (Duchy of Württemberg) on August 27, 1770. His father, Georg Ludwig Hegel, Secretary of the Treasury, was a descendant of a Protestant family expelled from Austria during the Counter-Reformation. After graduating from the gymnasium in his native city, Hegel studied at the theological department of the University of Tübingen in 1788-1793, took courses in philosophy and theology and defended his master's thesis. At the same time, Friedrich von Schelling, who was five years younger than Hegel, and Friedrich Hölderlin, whose poetry had a profound influence on German literature, were studying in Tübingen. Friendship with Schelling and Hölderlin played a significant role in Hegel's mental development. While studying philosophy at the university, he paid special attention to the works of Immanuel Kant, which were widely discussed at that time, as well as to the poetic and aesthetic works of F. Schiller. In 1793-1796, Hegel served as a home tutor to a Swiss family in Bern, and in 1797-1800 in Frankfurt am Main. All these years he was engaged in the study of theology and political thought, and in 1800 he made the first draft of the future philosophical system ("Fragment of the System").

After the death of his father in 1799, Hegel received a small inheritance, which, coupled with his own savings, enabled him to abandon teaching and enter the field of academic activity. He submitted to the University of Jena first theses ("Preliminary theses for a dissertation on the orbits of the planets"), and then the dissertation itself "Planetary orbits" ("De orbitis planetarum"), and in 1801 received permission to lecture. In 1801-1805 Hegel was a privatdozent, and in 1805-1807 an extraordinary professor on a very modest salary. The Jena lectures were devoted to a wide range of topics: logic and metaphysics, natural law and pure mathematics. Although they did not enjoy great success, the years in Jena were one of the happiest periods in the life of a philosopher. Together with Schelling, who taught at the same university, he published the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" ("Kritisches Journal der Philosophie"), in which they were not only editors, but also authors. In the same period, Hegel prepared the first of his major works, Phenomenology of Spirit (Phanomenologie des Geistes, 1807), after the publication of which relations with Schelling were severed. In this work, Hegel gives the first outline of his philosophical system. It represents the progressive procession of consciousness from the direct sensual certainty of sensation through perception to the knowledge of rational reality, which alone leads us to absolute knowledge. In this sense, only the mind is real.

Without waiting for the publication of the Phenomenology, Hegel left Jena, not wishing to remain in the city captured by the French. He left his position at the university, finding himself in difficult personal and financial circumstances. For a while, Hegel edited the Bamberger Zeitung, but less than two years later he abandoned the "newspaper penal servitude" and in 1808 received a position as rector of the classical gymnasium in Nuremberg. The eight years that Hegel spent in Nuremberg gave him a wealth of experience in teaching, leading and dealing with people. At the gymnasium, he taught philosophy of law, ethics, logic, phenomenology of the spirit, and an overview course in philosophical sciences; he also had to teach literature, Greek, Latin, mathematics, and the history of religion. In 1811 he married Maria von Tucher, whose family belonged to the Bavarian nobility. This relatively quiet period of Hegel's life contributed to the appearance of his most important works. The first part of the Hegelian system was published in Nuremberg - "The Science of Logic" ("Die Wissenschaft der Logik", 1812-1816).

In 1816, Hegel resumed his university career, receiving an invitation to Heidelberg to fill the position previously held by his Jena rival Jakob Fries. At the University of Heidelberg he taught for four semesters; from the lectures he read, the textbook "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" ("Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse", first edition of 1817) was compiled, apparently the best introduction to his philosophy. In 1818, Hegel was invited to the University of Berlin to take the place that had once been occupied by the famous J. G. Fichte. The invitation was initiated by the Prussian Minister for Religious Affairs (in charge of religion, health and education) with the hope of pacifying the dangerous spirit of rebellion that roamed among the students with the help of Hegelian philosophy.

Hegel's first lectures in Berlin were left almost without attention, but gradually the courses began to attract an ever larger audience. Students not only from various regions of Germany, but also from Poland, Greece, Scandinavia and other European countries flocked to Berlin. The Hegelian philosophy of law and government became more and more the official philosophy of the Prussian state, and whole generations of educators, officials and statesmen borrowed their views on the state and society from the Hegelian doctrine, which became a real force in the intellectual and political life of Germany. The philosopher was at the pinnacle of success when he died suddenly on November 14, 1831, apparently from cholera, which raged in those days in Berlin.

Hegel's last published work was "Philosophy of Law" ("Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse"), published in Berlin in 1820 (on the title - 1821). Soon after Hegel's death, some of his friends and students began to prepare a complete edition of his works, which was carried out in 1832-1845. It included not only works published during the life of the philosopher, but also lectures prepared on the basis of extensive, rather intricate manuscripts, as well as student notes. As a result, famous lectures on the philosophy of history, as well as on the philosophy of religion, aesthetics and the history of philosophy, were published. A new edition of Hegel's works, partially including new materials, began after the First World War under the direction of Georg Lasson as part of the "Philosophical Library" and, after the latter's death, was continued by J. Hoffmeister. The old edition was re-edited by G. Glockner and published in 20 volumes; it was supplemented by a monograph on Hegel and three volumes of Glockner's Hegel Lexikon. Since 1958, after the founding of the "Hegel Archive" in Bonn, within the framework of the "German Research Society", the "Hegel Commission" was created, which took over the general editorship of the new historical-critical collection of works. From 1968 to 1994, the work of the Archive was directed by O. Pöggeler.

Philosophy. Hegelian philosophy is usually considered the highest point in the development of the German school of philosophical thought, called "speculative idealism". Its main representatives are Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The school began with the "critical idealism" of Immanuel Kant, but moved away from it, abandoning the Kantian critical position in relation to metaphysics and returning to the belief in the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, or knowledge of the universal and absolute.

Hegel's philosophical system is sometimes called "panlogism" (from the Greek pan - everything, and logos - mind). It starts from the idea that reality lends itself to rational knowledge because the Universe itself is rational. The preface to the Philosophy of Right contains a famous statement of this principle: "What is reasonable is real; and what is real is reasonable". (There are other formulations of Hegel himself: "What is reasonable will become real; and what is real will become reasonable"; "All that is reasonable is inevitable".) The last essence of the world, or absolute reality, is the mind. Mind manifests itself in the world; reality is nothing but the manifestation of the mind. Since this is the case, and since being and mind (or concept) are ultimately the same, it is possible not only to apply our concepts to reality, but also to learn about the structure of reality through the study of concepts. Therefore, logic, or the science of concepts, is identical with metaphysics, or the science of reality and its essence. Every concept, thought through to the end, necessarily leads to its opposite. So reality "transforms" into its opposite. Thesis leads to antithesis. But this is not all, since the denial of antithesis leads to reconciliation at a new level of thesis and antithesis, i.e. to synthesis. In the synthesis, the opposition of the thesis and antithesis is resolved or abolished, but the synthesis, in turn, contains an opposing principle, which leads to its negation. Thus, we have before us an endless replacement of the thesis by antithesis, and then by synthesis. This method of thinking, which Hegel calls the dialectical method (from the Greek word "dialectics", dispute), is applicable to reality itself.

All reality passes through three stages: being in itself, being for itself, and being in and for itself. "Being in itself" is the stage at which reality is in possibility, but not completed. It is different from other being, but it develops the negation of the last still limited stage of existence, forming "being in and for itself." When applied to the mind or spirit, this theory suggests that the spirit evolves through three stages. In the beginning, spirit is spirit in itself. Spreading in space and time, the spirit turns into its "other existence", i.e. into nature. Nature, in turn, develops consciousness and thereby forms its own negation. At this third stage, however, there is not a simple negation, but a reconciliation of the previous stages on a higher level. Consciousness constitutes "in itself and for itself" the spirit. In consciousness, thus, the spirit is reborn. But then consciousness passes through three different stages: the stage of the subjective spirit, the stage of the objective spirit, and finally the highest stage of the absolute spirit.

Philosophy is divided according to the same principle: logic is the science of the "in itself" spirit; philosophy of nature - the science of "for itself" spirit; and the philosophy of mind itself. The latter is also divided into three parts. The first part is the philosophy of the subjective spirit, including anthropology, phenomenology and psychology. The second part is the philosophy of the objective spirit (under the objective spirit Hegel means the mind considered in its action in the world). The expressions of the objective spirit are morality (ethical behavior as applied to the individual) and ethics (manifested in ethical institutions such as the family, society, and the state). This second part consists respectively of ethics, philosophy of law and philosophy of history. Art, religion and philosophy, as the highest achievements of the mind, belong to the realm of the absolute spirit. Therefore, the third part, the philosophy of the absolute spirit, includes the philosophy of art, the philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. Thus, the triadic principle (thesis - antithesis - synthesis) is carried through the entire Hegelian system, playing an essential role not only as a way of thinking, but also as a reflection of the rhythm inherent in reality.

The most significant areas of Hegelian philosophy turned out to be ethics, the theory of the state, and the philosophy of history. The culmination of Hegelian ethics is the state. For Hegel, the state is the reality of the moral idea. In the state system, the divine grows into the real. The state is the world that the spirit has created for itself; a living spirit, a divine idea embodied on Earth. However, this applies only to an ideal state. In historical reality, there are good (reasonable) states and bad states. The states known to us from history are only transient moments in the general idea of spirit.

The highest goal of the philosophy of history is to demonstrate the origin and development of the state in the course of history. For Hegel, history, like all reality, is the realm of reason: in history everything happens according to reason. "World history is a world court". The World Spirit (Weltgeist) acts in the realm of history through its chosen instruments - individuals and peoples. The heroes of history cannot be judged by ordinary standards. In addition, the World Spirit itself sometimes seems unfair and cruel, bringing death and destruction. Individuals believe that they are pursuing their own goals, but in reality they are carrying out the intentions of the World Spirit. The "cunning of the world mind" lies in the fact that it uses human interests and passions to achieve its own goal.

Historical peoples are carriers of the world spirit. Every nation, like an individual, goes through periods of youth, maturity and death. For a while, she dominates the fate of the world, and then her mission ends. Then she leaves the stage to free her for another, younger nation. However, history is an evolutionary process. The ultimate goal of evolution is the achievement of true freedom. "World history is progress in the consciousness of freedom". The main task of the philosophy of history is the knowledge of this progress in its necessity.

According to Hegel, freedom is the fundamental beginning of the spirit. However, freedom is possible only within the framework of the state. It is in the state that a person acquires his dignity as an independent person. For in the state, Hegel says, adhering to the Rousseauist conception of the true state, it is the universal (that is, the law) that rules, and the individual, by his free will, submits himself to its rule. However, the state is undergoing a remarkable evolution as far as the consciousness of freedom is concerned. In the Ancient East, only one person was free, and humanity knew only that one person was free. That was the era of despotism, and this one man was a despot. In reality, it was abstract freedom, freedom in itself, rather arbitrariness rather than freedom. The Greek and Roman world, the youth and maturity of mankind, knew that some people are free, but not man as such. Accordingly, freedom was closely connected with the existence of slaves and could only be an accidental, short-lived and limited phenomenon. And only with the spread of Christianity did mankind know true freedom. The path to this knowledge was prepared by Greek philosophy; humanity began to realize that man as such is free - all people. The differences and shortcomings inherent in individuals do not affect the essence of man; freedom is part of the very concept of "man".

The French Revolution, hailed by Hegel as a "wonderful sunrise," is another step on the road to freedom. However, in the late period of his activity, Hegel objected to the republican form of government and even to democracy. The ideals of liberalism, according to which all individuals should participate in the government of the state, began to seem unjustified: in his opinion, they led to unreasonable subjectivism and individualism. A much more perfect form of government began to appear to Hegel as a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign had the last word.

Philosophy, according to Hegel, deals only with what is, and not with what should be. Just as every man is a "son of his time," "Philosophy is also time, comprehended in thought. It is just as absurd to assume that any philosophy can go beyond the limits of its contemporary world, how absurd to assume that an individual is able to jump over his era". Therefore, Hegel in his "Philosophy of Law" is limited to the task of knowing the state as a reasonable substance. However, considering the Prussian state and the Restoration period as a model of rational analysis, he was increasingly inclined to idealize the Prussian monarchy. What Hegel said about the state as a whole (the state is the divine will as a spirit present, unfolding into a real image and organization of the world), apparently, also applied to this particular state. This was also consistent with his conviction that the last of the three stages of historical development had already been reached: the stage of old age, but not in the sense of decrepitude, but in the sense of wisdom and perfection.

In the philosophical concept of Hegel there are fatalistic and even tragic motives. Philosophy cannot teach the world how it should be. It comes too late for that, when reality has completed its process of formation and has reached completion. "When philosophy begins to paint with its gray paint on gray, then a certain form of life has become old, but gray on gray cannot be rejuvenated, one can only understand; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only at dusk".

Hegel: biography, works, philosophy

Hegel was born on August 27, 1770 in the family of a financial official. At the age of seven, he entered the Stuttgart Gymnasium, where he showed an aptitude for ancient languages and history. In 1788, after graduating from high school, he entered the Tübingen Theological Institute. Here he became friends with F. J. Schelling and the poet F. Hölderlin. As a student, Hegel admired the French Revolution (he later changed his mind about it). According to legend, during these years he even planted the “tree of freedom” together with Schelling. In 1793, Hegel received a master's degree in philosophy. In the same year, he completed his education at the institute and "graduated" into life with a very strange indication in his certificate: a young man with good abilities, but not distinguished by either diligence or knowledge, is very unskilled in words and can be called an idiot in philosophy.

He first works as a home teacher in Bern and Frankfurt. During this period, he creates the so-called "theological works", published only in the 20th century - "Folk Religion and Christianity", "The Life of Jesus", "The Positiveness of the Christian Religion".

Having received an inheritance, Hegel was able to pursue an academic career. From 1801 he became a teacher at the University of Jena. He collaborates with Schelling in the publication of the "Critical Philosophical Journal" and writes the work "The difference between the systems of philosophy of Fichte and Schelling", in which he supports Schelling (their views diverged later). In the same 1801 he defended his dissertation "On the orbits of the planets". Hegel works hard to create his own system, trying a variety of approaches to justify it. In 1807 he published The Phenomenology of Spirit, the first of his significant works. A number of vivid images of the "Phenomenology" (part of the manuscript of which Hegel miraculously saved during the invasion of French troops in Jena) - "the dialectic of the slave and the master" as a study of freedom, possible only through slavery, the concept of "unhappy consciousness", etc., as well as powerfully declared the doctrine of the historicity of the spirit immediately attracted attention and is discussed to this day.

After leaving Jena, Hegel (with the help of his friend F. I. Nithammer) gets a job as the editor of the Bamberg Gazette in Bavaria. Despite the moderate nature of the publications, the newspaper is soon closed for censorship reasons.

From 1808 to 1816 Hegel was director of the gymnasium in Nuremberg. In 1811, he marries (he had several children in marriage, he also had an illegitimate son), and soon publishes one of his central works, The Science of Logic (in three books - 1812, 1813 and 1815). From 1816 Hegel returned to university teaching.

Until 1818 he worked in Heidelberg, and from 1818 to 1831 - in Berlin. In 1817, Hegel published the first version of the "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences", consisting of the "Science of Logic" (the so-called "Small Logic", in contrast to the "Great Logic" of 1812 - 1815), "Philosophy of Nature" and "Philosophy of Spirit" ( during the life of Hegel, the Encyclopedia was reprinted twice - in 1827 and 1833).

In Berlin, Hegel becomes the "official philosopher", although he does not share the policy of the Prussian authorities in everything. He publishes the "Philosophy of Law" (1820, on the title - 1821), conducts an active lecture activity, writes reviews, prepares new editions of his works. He has many students. After Hegel's death from cholera in 1831, his students published his lectures on the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of art.

Hegel was a very unusual person. With difficulty choosing words when talking on everyday topics, he talked interestingly about the most difficult things. Thinking, he could stand still for hours, not paying attention to what was happening. In absent-mindedness, he could not notice the shoes left in the mud and continue walking barefoot. At the same time, he was the "soul of the company" and loved women's society. Petty-bourgeois stinginess combined with the breadth of his soul, caution with adventurism. Hegel walked for a long time towards his philosophical system, but having started, he immediately overtook his teachers and pursuers. Hegel's philosophy is twofold. On the one hand, this is the most complex and sometimes artificially tangled network of speculative deductions, on the other hand, aphoristic examples and explanations that sharply distinguish Hegel's style from the esoteric philosophizing of F. J. Schelling. The philosophy of Hegel, as well as the system of his aggressive rival A. Schopenhauer, has in a sense a “transitional” character, manifested in a combination of methods of classical philosophy and new trends in popular and practice-oriented metaphysics, which seized leading positions in Europe in the middle of the 19 V. The main pathos of Hegel's philosophy is the recognition of the logical "transparency" of the world, faith in the power of the rational principle and world progress, the dialectic of being and history. At the same time, Hegel often avoided direct answers to fundamental questions, which made it difficult to interpret the ontological status of the most important concepts of his philosophy, such as the absolute idea or absolute spirit, and gave rise to a wide variety of interpretations of the structure and meaning of his system. The ideas of J. G. Fichte and F. J. Schelling had a decisive influence on the philosophical views of Hegel. He also experienced a serious influence of J. J. Rousseau and I. Kant.

The main dates of the life and work of G.V.F. Hegel

1770, August 27 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart (Eberhardtstrasse 53).

1788 October 27- Hegel enrolled in the theological faculty of the University of Tübingen.

1792 - the beginning of work on the manuscript "Folk Religion and Christianity".

1793 June- defense of the theological dissertation.
September 20- graduation.
October- Hegel is a teacher in Steiger's house (Bern). 1794 - Hegel stopped work on the manuscript "Folk Religion and Christianity".

1795, May - June- work on the manuscript "Life of Jesus".
November 2- the beginning of work on the manuscript "The Positivity of the Christian Religion" (finished on April 29, 1796).

1798, spring- the first printed work is published (anonymously) “Letters of Confidence on the former state-legal relations of Wadtland (Vo district) to the city of Bern”.
Summer - autumn - winter- work on the manuscript "The Spirit of Christianity and its destiny".

1799 March- stay in Stuttgart.
Spring Summer- work on the manuscript "The Spirit of Christianity and its destiny".

1800, September 14- "Fragment of the system" is written.
September 29- a new introduction to the work "The Positivity of the Christian Religion" was written.

1801 January- Hegel in Jena.
July- The work "The difference between the system of Fichte and Schelling" was published.
August 27- habilitation dispute.
October 18- dissertation submitted to the faculty.
October 21- the first meeting of Hegel with Goethe.
Winter semester- Hegel teaches the courses "Logic and Metaphysics" and "Introduction to the Idea and Limits of True Philosophy".

1802 January The Critical Journal of Philosophy began to appear. The first issue published two works by Hegel: "On the Essence of Philosophical Criticism" and "How Sound Human Reason Relates to Philosophy."
March- the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" (vol. 1, no. 2) was published with Hegel's article "The Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy".
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Natural and International Law".
July- the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" (vol. 2, no. 1) was published with Hegel's article "Faith and Knowledge".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Natural Law".
December- the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" (vol. 2, No. 2) was published, containing the beginning of Hegel's article "On the Scientific Methods of Investigating Natural Law."

1803 summer term- Hegel reads courses "Encyclopedia of Philosophy" and "Natural Law".
May- the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" (vol. 2, no. 3) was published with the end of the article on natural law.
Summer autumn- work on a manuscript on the philosophy of nature.
Winter semester- Hegel teaches the courses "System of Speculative Philosophy" and "Natural Law".
Winter- work on the manuscript on the philosophy of spirit.
November December- Hegel's meeting with Goethe.

1804, January 30- The Jena Mineralogical Society elects Hegel as an assessor.
Summer semester- Hegel reads the course "The General System of Philosophy".
August 1- Hegel is elected a full member of the Society of Naturalists of Westphalia.
Summer autumn- work on the manuscript “Logic. Metaphysics. Natural philosophy".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Philosophical Science in General".

1805 March- Hegel is an extraordinary professor.
May- the first mention of the work on the "Phenomenology of Spirit".
Summer semester- Hegel teaches the courses "Philosophical Science in General", "Philosophy and Natural Law".
Autumn- work on the manuscript "Real Philosophy". Winter semester - Hegel teaches the courses "History of Philosophy", "Real Philosophy", "Pure Mathematics, Arithmetic and Geometry".

1806 summer term- Hegel reads the courses "Philosophy of Nature and Human Reason", "Speculative Philosophy or Logic", "Pure Mathematics, Arithmetic and Geometry".
June- Hegel was assigned the first academic salary - 100 thalers a year.
On the night of October 14- Completed Phenomenology of Spirit.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Philosophy of nature and spirit", "Speculative philosophy, or logic and metaphysics, which presupposes the phenomenology of spirit", "Pure mathematics, arithmetic and geometry".

1807, January 1- Hegel is elected an honorary member of the Physical Society in Heidelberg.
February 5th- an illegitimate son, Ludwig, was born.
March- moving to Bamberg. Hegel is the editor of a daily newspaper. The Phenomenology of Spirit has been published.

1808, early December- moving to Nuremberg. Hegel is the director of the gymnasium.

1811 April Maria Tucher agreed to become Hegel's wife.
6 September- marriage.

1812, spring- the first part of the "Science of Logic" was published.
August- the birth and death of a daughter.
December- the second part of the first volume of "Science of Logic" was published.

1813 June 9 son Karl was born.
December 15- Hegel was appointed part-time referent for school affairs of the city commissariat of Nuremberg.

1816, the beginning of autumn- publication of the second volume of "Science of Logic".
October- Moving to Heidelberg.
Winter semester- Hegel reads courses "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" and "History of Philosophy".

1817 January- Hegel's article on the third volume of the works of F. Jacobi was published ("Heidelberg Yearbooks of Literature", No. 1 - 2).
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Aesthetics", "Anthropology and Psychology".
June- The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences was published.
Winter semester- Hegel teaches the courses "Natural Law", "History of Philosophy", "Anthropology and Psychology".
November December- Hegel's work "Evaluation of the debates of the Estates Assembly of the Kingdom of Württemberg" published in print ("Heidelberg Yearbooks of Literature", No. 67 - 68, 73-77).

1818, January 24- Hegel accepted an invitation to Berlin.
Summer semester- Hegel reads in Heidelberg courses "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences", "Aesthetics".
September 18- Hegel left Heidelberg.
23 September- Hegel visiting Goethe in Weimar.
22 of October- introductory lecture at the University of Berlin.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Natural Law and State Studies", "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences".

1819 March- work on a book on the philosophy of law.
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "History of Philosophy".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Naturphilosophy", "Natural Law and State Studies, or the Philosophy of Law".

1820 summer term- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Anthropology and Psychology".
the 14 th of July- Hegel was appointed concurrently a member of the scientific examination committee of the province of Brandenburg (remained in this post until December 1822).
August- September - a trip to Dresden.
October- The book "Fundamentals of Philosophy of Law" was published.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "History of Philosophy", "Aesthetics, or Philosophy of Art".

1821 summer term
September- a trip to Dresden.
Winter semester- Hegel teaches courses on "Rational Physics, or the Philosophy of Nature", "Natural Law and State Studies, or the Philosophy of Law".

1822 summer term- Hegel reads courses "Anthropology and Psychology", "Logic and Metaphysics".
September October- A trip to Brussels.
Winter semester- Hegel is a member of the university senate. Reads courses "Philosophy of World History", "Natural and State Law, or Philosophy of Law".

1823 April- a trip to Leipzig.
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Aesthetics, or Philosophy of Art", "Logic and Metaphysics".
September- Hegel received a diploma from the Dutch scientific society "Concordia".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Philosophy of Nature", "History of Philosophy".

1824 summer term- Hegel reads the courses "Philosophy of Religion", "Logic and Metaphysics".
September October- a trip to Vienna.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Natural and State Law", "Philosophy of World History".

1825 summer term- Hegel teaches the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Anthropology and Psychology, or Philosophy of Spirit".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "History of Philosophy", "Philosophy of Nature, or Rational Physics".

1826 January- in the "Berlin Express Mail" (No. 8 - 9) Hegel's review of Raupach's play "The Converts" was published.
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Aesthetics, or Philosophy of Art".
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences", "Philosophy of World History".

1827 January- under the leadership of Hegel, the journal "Yearbooks of Scientific Criticism" began to appear. In the January (No. 7 - 8) and October (No. 181 - 188) issues, Hegel's review of W. Humboldt's book "On an episode from the Mahabharata known as the Bhagavad Gita" was published.
Summer semester- Hegel teaches the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Philosophy of Religion".
July- The second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences was published.
August - October- a trip to Paris.
Winter semester

1828, March, June- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 51 - 54, 105 - 110) an article by Hegel on the work of Solger was published.
Summer semester
April June- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 77 - 80, 102 - 114) Hegel's article "On the writings of Hamann" was published.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "Aesthetics, or Philosophy of Art", "Philosophy of World History".
November- L. Feuerbach sends Hegel his dissertation.

1829, January, February, June- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 10 - 11, 13 - 14, 37 - 40, 117 - 120) Hegel's review of the books "On the Hegelian doctrine, or on absolute knowledge and modern pantheism", "On philosophy in general and the Hegelian" Encyclopedia philosophical sciences, in particular. To the evaluation of the latter.
Summer semester- Hegel reads courses "On the proofs of the existence of God", "Logic and Metaphysics".
May June- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 99 - 102, 105 - 106) Hegel's review of Göschel's book "Aphorisms about ignorance and absolute knowledge" was published.
End of August, September- a trip to Prague and Carlsbad.
11 September- Hegel in Weimar. Last meeting with Goethe.
October - Hegel is elected rector of the university.
October 18- Speech about taking office.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the courses "History of Philosophy", "Psychology and Anthropology".

1830 summer term- Hegel reads the courses "Logic and Metaphysics", "Philosophy of Nature, or Rational Physics".
June 25- speech on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession.
October- The third edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences was published. Speech about leaving the post of rector.
Winter semester- Hegel reads the course "Philosophy of World History".

1831 January- Hegel was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle.
April- in the Prussian State Gazette (No. 115, 116, 118) Hegel's article "The English Reform Bill" was published (incompletely).
Summer semester- Hegel reads the courses "Logic", "Philosophy of Religion".
June- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 106 - 108) Hegel's review of A. Olert's book "Ideal Realism" was published.
September- in the "Yearbooks" (No. 55 - 58) Hegel's review of the book by I. Görres "On the foundations of periodization and the sequence of world history" was published.
November 14- Hegel died suddenly.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a world famous German philosopher. His principal achievement was the development of the theory of so-called absolute idealism. In it, he managed to overcome such dualisms as consciousness and nature, subject and object. Georg Hegel, whose philosophy of the Spirit united many concepts, remains today an outstanding figure inspiring new generations of thinkers. In this article we will briefly review his biography and main ideas. Particular attention will be paid to the philosophy of the Absolute Spirit, ontology, epistemology and dialectics.

Biographical information

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a very inquisitive child from childhood. We call them "pochemuchki". He was born into the family of an influential official. His father was strict and loved order in everything. Nothing in the surrounding nature and human relations left him indifferent. Even in early childhood, Georg Hegel read books about the culture of the ancient Greeks. As you know, they were the first philosophers. It is believed that it was this passion that prompted Hegel to his future professional activities. He graduated from the Latin gymnasium in his native Stuttgart. In addition to reading, there were few other activities in the life of a philosopher. Georg Hegel spent most of his time in various libraries. He was an excellent specialist in the field and followed the events of the French bourgeois revolution, but he himself did not take part in the public life of the country. Hegel Georg graduated from the Theological University. After that, he was engaged exclusively in teaching and his scientific research. With the beginning of his career, Schelling, with whom they were friends, helped him in many ways. However, later they quarreled on the basis of their philosophical views. Schelling even claimed that Hegel appropriated his ideas. However, history put everything in its place.

Fundamentals of philosophical thought

Hegel wrote many works during his lifetime. The most prominent of them are the "Science of Logic", "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" and "Foundations of the Philosophy of Law". Hegel considered any transcendentalism to be inconsistent, since it breaks such dual categories as "thing" and "idea", "world" and "consciousness". Perception is primary. The world is its derivative. Any transcendentalism results from the fact that there are pure possibilities of experience that are superimposed on the world in order to obtain a universal experience. This is how Hegel's "absolute idealism" appears. Spirit as the only reality is not a frozen primary matter. The whole philosophy of Hegel can be reduced to a substantive discourse. According to Hegel, the Spirit is cyclical, it overcomes itself each time in a double negation. Its main characteristic is self-promotion. It is arranged as a subjective thought. The philosophical system is built on the basis of the triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. On the one hand, the latter makes it strictly and clear. On the other hand, it allows to show the progressive development of the world.

Georg Wilhelm Hegel: the philosophy of the absolute idea

The theme of the Spirit has developed within a broad tradition and has its origins in Plato and Emmanuel Kant. Georg Hegel also recognized the influence of Proclus, Eckhart, Leibniz, Boehme, Rousseau. What distinguishes all these scholars from materialists is that they viewed freedom and self-determination as things that have important ontological implications for the soul, mind, and divinity. Many followers of Hegel call his philosophy a kind of absolute idealism. The Hegelian concept of Spirit is defined as an attempt to find a place for the divine essence in everyday life. To prove their argument, these followers cite quotations from an eminent German philosopher. From them they conclude that the world is identical to the absolute idea (the so-called Spirit). However, these statements are actually far from the truth. Georg Friedrich Hegel, whose philosophy is actually much more complicated, means by Spirit not regularities, but facts and theories that exist separately from consciousness. Their existence does not depend on whether they are known to man. In this, the Hegelian is similar to Newton's second law. It is only a diagram that makes it easier to understand the world.

Ontology of Hegel

In the Science of Logic, the German philosopher distinguishes the following types of being:

Pure (things and space that are interconnected).
Cash (everything divided).
Being for-itself (abstract things that are opposed to everything else).

Hegelian epistemology

Georg Hegel, whose philosophy is often considered in university courses immediately after Kant, although he was influenced by his ideas, did not accept many of them. In particular, he fought against his agnosticism. For Kant, antinomies cannot be resolved, and this is the end of the theory. There is no further development. However, Georg Hegel finds an engine in problems and interferences. For example, we cannot prove in any way that the Universe is infinite. For Kant, this is an unresolved paradox. It goes beyond experience, therefore it cannot be comprehended and rational. Hegel Georg believes that this situation is the key to finding a new category. For example, infinite progress. Hegel's epistemology is based on contradiction, not on experience. The latter is not like Kant's.

Dialectics

The German philosopher Georg Hegel opposed his teaching to all others. He did not try to find the root causes of phenomena or their resolution in the final result. Simple categories are transformed into complex ones. The truth is contained in the contradiction between them. In this he is close to Plato. The latter called dialectics the art of arguing. However, Georg Friedrich Hegel went even further. There are no two disputants in his philosophy, but only two concepts. An attempt to combine them leads to disintegration, from which a new category is formed. All this contradicts the third law of Aristotle's logic. Hegel manages to find in contradiction the eternal impulse for the movement of thought along the road paved by the absolute idea.

Spirit Elements:

Being (quantity, quality).
Essence (reality, phenomenon).
Concept (idea, subject, object).
Mechanics (space, time, matter, movement).
Physics (substance, shaping).
Organics (zoology, botany, geology).
Subjective (anthropology, psychology, phenomenology), objective (law, morality) and absolute (philosophy, religion, art) spirit.

social philosophy

Many criticize Hegel for the unscientific nature of his conclusions about nature. However, he never claimed it. Hegel identified relationships through contradictions and tried to streamline knowledge in this way. He did not claim to discover new truths. Many see Hegel as the founding father of the theory of the development of consciousness. Although his work "The Science of Logic" does not at all describe the existence of some absolute mind, which is the root cause of the existence of everything. Categories do not generate nature. Therefore, one can say that Marx and Engels turned Hegel's dialectic on its head. It was profitable for them to write that the idea was embodied in history. In fact, according to Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is only the accumulated knowledge of mankind about the world.

Marxism and the Frankfurt School

The name of Hegel is closely connected for us today with another philosophical system. This is because Marx and Engels largely relied on Hegel, although they interpreted his ideas in a way that was beneficial to them. Representatives of the Frankfurt School were even more radical thinkers. They put the inevitability of man-made disasters at the heart of their concept. In their opinion, mass culture requires the complication of information technology, which will certainly lead to problems in the future. It is safe to say that the dialectical materialism of the Marxists and the Frankfurt School is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. And Hegel's ideas are now experiencing a new birth.

Georg Hegel: ideas and their development

The doctrine of the German philosopher includes three parts:

Philosophy of the Spirit.
Logic.
Philosophy of nature.

Hegel argued that religion and philosophy are identical. The only difference is the way the information is presented. Hegel considered his system as the crown of the development of philosophy. Hegel's merit lies in the establishment in philosophy and in the general consciousness of true and fruitful concepts: process, development, history. He proves that there is nothing separate, not connected with everything. This is the process. As regards history and development, Hegel explains them even more clearly. It is impossible to understand a phenomenon without understanding the whole path it has taken. And an important role in its disclosure is played by the contradiction, which allows development to occur not in a vicious circle, but progressively - from lower to higher forms. Hegel made a great contribution to the development of the method of science, that is, the totality of artificial methods invented by man and independent of the subject of research. The philosopher showed in his system that knowledge is therefore the truth for him cannot be a ready-made result. It constantly develops and reveals itself in contradiction.

Born in Stuttgart (Duchy of Württemberg) on August 27, 1770. His father, Georg Ludwig Hegel, Secretary of the Treasury, was a descendant of a Protestant family expelled from Austria during the Counter-Reformation. After graduating from high school in his native city, Hegel studied at the theological department of the University of Tübingen in 1788-1793, took courses in philosophy and theology and defended his master's thesis. At the same time, Friedrich von Schelling, who was five years younger than Hegel, and Friedrich Hölderlin, whose poetry had a profound influence on German literature, were studying in Tübingen. Friendship with Schelling and Hölderlin played a significant role in Hegel's mental development. While studying philosophy at the university, he paid special attention to the works of Immanuel Kant, which were widely discussed at that time, as well as to the poetic and aesthetic works of F. Schiller. In 1793-1796 Hegel served as a house teacher in a Swiss family in Bern, and in 1797-1800 in Frankfurt am Main. All these years he was engaged in the study of theology and political thought, and in 1800 he made the first sketch of a future philosophical system (“Fragment of the System”).

After the death of his father in 1799, Hegel received a small inheritance, which, coupled with his own savings, allowed him to abandon teaching and enter the field of academic activity. He submitted to the University of Jena first theses (Preliminary theses of the dissertation on the orbits of the planets), and then the dissertation itself Planetary orbits (De orbitis planetarum) and in 1801 received permission to lecture. In 1801-1805 Hegel was a privatdozent, and in 1805-1807 an extraordinary professor on a very modest salary. The Jena lectures were devoted to a wide range of topics: logic and metaphysics, natural law and pure mathematics. Although they did not enjoy great success, the years in Jena were one of the happiest periods in the life of a philosopher. Together with Schelling, who taught at the same university, he published the "Critical Journal of Philosophy" ("Kritisches Journal der Philosophie"), in which they were not only editors, but also authors. In the same period, Hegel prepared the first of his major works, the Phenomenology of the Spirit (Ph nomenologie des Geistes, 1807), after the publication of which relations with Schelling were severed. In this work, Hegel gives the first outline of his philosophical system. It represents the progressive procession of consciousness from the direct sensual certainty of sensation through perception to the knowledge of rational reality, which alone leads us to absolute knowledge. In this sense, only the mind is real.

Without waiting for the publication of the Phenomenology, Hegel left Jena, not wishing to remain in the city captured by the French. He left his position at the university, finding himself in difficult personal and financial circumstances. For a while, Hegel edited the Bamberger Zeitung, but less than two years later he abandoned the "newspaper penal servitude" and in 1808 received a position as rector of the classical gymnasium in Nuremberg. The eight years that Hegel spent in Nuremberg gave him a wealth of experience in teaching, leading and dealing with people. At the gymnasium, he taught philosophy of law, ethics, logic, phenomenology of the spirit, and an overview course in philosophical sciences; he also had to teach literature, Greek, Latin, mathematics, and the history of religion. In 1811 he married Maria von Tucher, whose family belonged to the Bavarian nobility. This relatively quiet period of Hegel's life contributed to the appearance of his most important works. In Nuremberg, the first part of the Hegelian system was published - the Science of Logic (Die Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812-1816).

In 1816, Hegel resumed his university career, receiving an invitation to Heidelberg to fill the position previously held by his Jena rival Jacob Fries. At the University of Heidelberg he taught for four semesters; from the lectures he read, the textbook Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (Enzyklop die der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, first edition 1817) was compiled, apparently the best introduction to his philosophy. In 1818 Hegel was invited to the University of Berlin to take the place that had once been occupied by the famous J. G. Fichte. The invitation was initiated by the Prussian Minister for Religious Affairs (in charge of religion, health and education) with the hope of pacifying the dangerous spirit of rebellion that roamed among the students with the help of Hegelian philosophy.

Hegel's last published work was the Philosophy of Law (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse), published in Berlin in 1820 (on the title - 1821). Shortly after Hegel's death, some of his friends and students began to prepare a complete edition of his works, which was carried out in 1832-1845. It included not only works published during the life of the philosopher, but also lectures prepared on the basis of extensive, rather intricate manuscripts, as well as student notes. As a result, famous lectures on the philosophy of history, as well as on the philosophy of religion, aesthetics and the history of philosophy, were published. A new edition of Hegel's works, partially including new materials, began after the First World War under the direction of Georg Lasson as part of the "Philosophical Library" and, after the latter's death, was continued by J. Hoffmeister. The old edition was re-edited by G. Glockner and published in 20 volumes; it was supplemented by a monograph on Hegel and three volumes of Glockner's Hegel Lexikon. Since 1958, after the founding of the "Hegel Archive" in Bonn, the "Hegel Commission" was created within the framework of the "German Research Society", which took over the general editorship of the new historical-critical collection of works. From 1968 to 1994 the work of the Archive was directed by O. Pöggeler.

Philosophy.

Hegelian philosophy is usually considered the high point in the development of the German school of philosophical thought called "speculative idealism". Its main representatives are Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The school began with the "critical idealism" of Immanuel Kant, but moved away from it, abandoning the Kantian critical position in relation to metaphysics and returning to the belief in the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, or knowledge of the universal and absolute.

Hegel's philosophical system is sometimes called "panlogism" (from the Greek pan - everything, and logos - mind). It starts from the idea that reality lends itself to rational knowledge because the Universe itself is rational. The preface to the Philosophy of Right contains the famous formulation of this principle: “What is reasonable is real; and what is real is reasonable. (There are other formulations of Hegel himself: “What is reasonable will become real; and what is real will become reasonable”; “Everything that is reasonable is inevitable.”) The last essence of the world, or absolute reality, is mind. Mind manifests itself in the world; reality is nothing but the manifestation of the mind. Since this is the case, and since being and mind (or concept) are ultimately the same, it is possible not only to apply our concepts to reality, but also to learn about the structure of reality through the study of concepts. Therefore, logic, or the science of concepts, is identical with metaphysics, or the science of reality and its essence. Every concept, thought through to the end, necessarily leads to its opposite. So reality "turns" into its opposite. Thesis leads to antithesis. But this is not all, since the denial of antithesis leads to reconciliation at a new level of thesis and antithesis, i.e. to synthesis. In the synthesis, the opposition of the thesis and antithesis is resolved or abolished, but the synthesis, in turn, contains an opposing principle, which leads to its negation. Thus, we have before us an endless replacement of the thesis by antithesis, and then by synthesis. This method of thinking, which Hegel calls the dialectical method (from the Greek word "dialectics", dispute), is applicable to reality itself.

All reality passes through three stages: being in itself, being for itself, and being in and for itself. “Being in itself” is the stage at which reality is in possibility, but not completed. It is different from other being, but it develops the negation of the last still limited stage of existence, forming "being in and for itself." When applied to the mind or spirit, this theory suggests that the spirit evolves through three stages. In the beginning, spirit is spirit in itself. Spreading in space and time, the spirit turns into its "other existence", i.e. into nature. Nature, in turn, develops consciousness and thereby forms its own negation. At this third stage, however, there is not a simple negation, but a reconciliation of the previous stages on a higher level. Consciousness constitutes "in itself and for itself" the spirit. In consciousness, thus, the spirit is reborn. But then consciousness passes through three different stages: the stage of the subjective spirit, the stage of the objective spirit, and finally the highest stage of the absolute spirit.

Philosophy is divided according to the same principle: logic is the science of the "in itself" spirit; the philosophy of nature is the science of the "for itself" spirit; and the philosophy of mind itself. The latter is also divided into three parts. The first part is the philosophy of the subjective spirit, including anthropology, phenomenology and psychology. The second part is the philosophy of the objective spirit (under the objective spirit Hegel means the mind considered in its action in the world). The expressions of the objective spirit are morality (ethical behavior as applied to the individual) and ethics (manifested in ethical institutions such as the family, society, and the state). This second part consists respectively of ethics, philosophy of law and philosophy of history. Art, religion and philosophy, as the highest achievements of the mind, belong to the realm of the absolute spirit. Therefore, the third part, the philosophy of the absolute spirit, includes the philosophy of art, the philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. Thus, the triadic principle (thesis - antithesis - synthesis) is carried through the entire Hegelian system, playing an essential role not only as a way of thinking, but also as a reflection of the rhythm inherent in reality.

The highest goal of the philosophy of history is to demonstrate the origin and development of the state in the course of history. For Hegel, history, like all reality, is the realm of reason: in history everything happens according to reason. "World history is the world court." The World Spirit (Weltgeist) acts in the realm of history through its chosen instruments - individuals and peoples. The heroes of history cannot be judged by ordinary standards. In addition, the World Spirit itself sometimes seems unfair and cruel, bringing death and destruction. Individuals believe that they are pursuing their own goals, but in reality they are carrying out the intentions of the World Spirit. The “cunning of the world mind” lies in the fact that it uses human interests and passions to achieve its own goal.

Historical peoples are carriers of the world spirit. Every nation, like an individual, goes through periods of youth, maturity and death. For a while, she dominates the fate of the world, and then her mission ends. Then she leaves the stage to free her for another, younger nation. However, history is an evolutionary process. The ultimate goal of evolution is the achievement of true freedom. "World history is progress in the consciousness of freedom." The main task of the philosophy of history is the knowledge of this progress in its necessity.

Philosophy, according to Hegel, deals only with what is, and not with what should be. Just as every man is "the son of his time," "philosophy is also time grasped in thought. It is just as absurd to suppose that any philosophy can transcend the limits of its contemporary world as it is absurd to suppose that an individual is capable of jumping over his epoch. Therefore, Hegel in the Philosophy of Law is limited to the task of knowing the state as a reasonable substance. However, considering the Prussian state and the Restoration period as a model of rational analysis, he was increasingly inclined to idealize the Prussian monarchy. What Hegel said about the state as a whole (the state is the divine will as a spirit present, unfolding into a real image and organization of the world), apparently, also applied to this particular state. This was also consistent with his conviction that the last of the three stages of historical development had already been reached: the stage of old age, but not in the sense of decrepitude, but in the sense of wisdom and perfection.

In the philosophical concept of Hegel there are fatalistic and even tragic motives. Philosophy cannot teach the world how it should be. It comes too late for that, when reality has completed its process of formation and has reached completion. “When philosophy begins to paint with its gray paint on gray, then a certain form of life has become old, but gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, one can only understand; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only at dusk.

Suzanne/ 12/13/2018 I read Hegel in one breath. The crazy writer writes so interestingly and excitingly .. I advise everyone. Respect and respect. True, I didn’t find his page on either Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, I would like to see pictures and all that ..

Valery/ 05/06/2018 “Regarding all sciences, fine and applied arts, crafts, there is a widespread belief that in order to master them, it is necessary to expend great efforts on their study and practice in them. Concerning philosophy, on the other hand, at the present time the prejudice seems to prevail that although it does not follow from the fact that everyone has eyes and hands that he will be able to sew boots if he is given leather and tools, nevertheless everyone directly knows how to to philosophize and talk about philosophy, because he has a measure for this in the form of his natural mind, as if he did not have the same measure for a boot in the form of his foot. As if, indeed, the mastery of philosophy presupposes a lack of knowledge and study, and as if it ends where the latter begin.
“It is sad that ignorance and even unceremonious and tasteless ignorance, unable to focus their thoughts on any abstract sentence, and even more so on the connection between several sentences, pretends to be freedom and tolerance of thinking, and even genius”

Hegel.

lotus/ 08/14/2016 GUYS DO NOT confuse SCIENCE WITH FAITH KAMU HEGEL TO WHOM OSHO, FORD'S TEACHING TO EVERYONE HIS OWN BUT RESPECT PEOPLE

BORING, BORING AND GREAT./ 03/08/2016 My friends,
True philosophy will never be dreary, gloomy and mournful. I should not consider a person great, because I am offered to do this by those who respect him very much. Moreover, the True Philosophy of Life can even be cheerful and with a sense of humor. Human consciousness has such advantages over other civilizations of the cosmos. For example, Osho . How happy I am to have met him in my life. Philosophy, in which there is no dance of the soul, no delight and enthusiasm, is a graveyard for the spirit. Go around everything gloomy and lifeless. Please, I beg you.

CORRECT REVIEW/ 8.03.2016 There is nothing worse than a crazy mind who thinks he is a reasonable philosopher. Nordic zaumi improvisations are always far from the Truth. Study the Great Roots of Wisdom. Go to the East. I advise the Teaching of Agni Yogi.

Reader1989/ 01/20/2016 Who knows in what context he said "so much the worse for reality"? If he's joking, then it's ok. And if in all seriousness - it smacks of mental retardation.

Evidentis/ 3.03.2015 Hegel is the platinum key to the gates of philosophy.
Removing the Kantian thing in itself, the consciousness that has reached the level of the Absolute Subject realizes that he is the world.

Hegel is one of the most complex philosophers in the history of world philosophy. It is complicated not so much by its teaching, its system, as by the language in which it expounds its positions. Reading Hegel is very difficult. Hegel tried to build a system of philosophy that would include everything. As V.S. Solovyov in the article "Hegel", published in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, "Hegel can be called a philosopher par excellence", i.e. if you call anyone a philosopher, then first of all Hegel. Usually, the name of Socrates is associated with the concept of a philosopher in the first place, for whom philosophy and life were a single whole. For Hegel, philosophy replaces everything - the world of the spirit, and the world of nature, and the world of human creations - art, science and even religion, as a special case of a common absolute idea. Therefore, it is impossible to state everything, to state it logically in two lectures. I will try to show the main initial principles of Hegelian philosophy and outline the main points of the logical development of Hegel's absolute idea.

Biography of Hegel is not distinguished by any events. He was born in 1770 in Stuttgart, in the family of a wealthy official. Even while studying at the gymnasium, Hegel became interested in antiquity, which later affected his development as a philosopher. In the future, he enters the University of Göttingen, studies philosophy, studying at the theological faculty. At first he wanted to be a pastor, but changed his mind, and the interest in philosophy suppressed all other desires in him. He studies the philosophy of the Leibniz-Wolf school, graduates from the university with a master's degree in philosophy and a candidate of theology. In the future, Hegel studies Kant, which produces some change in his worldview.

After graduation, it is time to travel and teach at various universities. For some time he was a home teacher in Bern, in Frankfurt am Main, then, on the recommendation of Schelling, he teaches at the University of Jena. While working at this university, he defends two dissertations - one in philosophy, the other in natural philosophy "On the Revolution of the Planets". At the same time, he writes the work "The difference between the systems of philosophy of Fichte and Schelling". Prior to this, Hegel's philosophical ideas were mainly distinguished by either his interest in early Christianity and antiquity, or he thought rather in the spirit of his friend Schelling. In the above work we already see some departure from the ideas of these two philosophers, although here he stands somewhat closer to Schelling.

While teaching at the University of Jena, in 1807 he wrote his first fundamental work, The Phenomenology of Spirit. In this work, he appears as an original philosopher, who finally diverged from the ideas of Schelling. Then from 1806 to 1816 he taught at the gymnasium in Nuremberg. This is his most productive period. He writes "The Science of Logic", where he sets out his main ideas, which he will then develop in the "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences". He writes this work while teaching at the University of Göttingen. "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" consists of three parts: "Science of Logic", "Philosophy of Nature" and "Philosophy of Spirit". Then he is invited to the University of Berlin, where he works as a professor until 1831, the year of his death from cholera. In Berlin, he practically no longer writes works, he only reads various courses of lectures. After his death, students publish all the courses of lectures that he managed to read; these are courses of lectures on the philosophy of religion, the history of aesthetics, the history of philosophy, etc.

Hegel is a typical academic philosopher who taught and wrote philosophical works all his life. In his youth, Hegel was fond of antiquity and planned to devote himself to theological work. These ideas of youth affected some of his early works, which were published much later, in 1907, in Germany (youthful manuscripts of Hegel). Among them stand out: "The Life of Jesus", "The Positiveness of the Christian Religion" and "Folk Religion and Christianity". These works attracted great interest, because Hegel in them looked completely different from what he was in the works "Phenomenology of Spirit" and "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences".

In the early works of Hegel, he is interested in the problems of man, personality, human spirit, life, which he considers on the example of a turning point in the history of Europe, namely at the moment of transition from paganism to Christianity. Hegel is interested in the reason why Europe nevertheless turned out to be Christianized, why paganism was defeated by Christianity. His ideas presented in these works do not, in fact, withstand any criticism from the point of view of Orthodox theology. For example, the work The Life of Jesus does not tell about such famous events as the birth of Jesus and His death on the cross and resurrection, which are known to anyone who has not even opened any of the Gospels. He writes only about Christ's sermons, omitting all miracles, including those related to the Nativity and His resurrection.

In the works "Positivity of the Christian Religion" and "Folk Religion and Christianity" Hegel explores paganism, trying to find those features that could not keep paganism in Europe. According to Hegel, paganism corresponded to the spirit of ancient Europe - the spirit of freethinking. This is indeed a folk religion (literally, paganism is a religion invented by the people, pagans). In paganism, the interests of the people were, above all, earthly. People did not think about another world, they had no desire for eternal immortality. Christianity, which at that time was emerging in the Middle East, was a completely different religion. This religion, first of all, carried individualistic ideas, it made people think not about society, but about their soul, including the posthumous fate of a person. Therefore, the ideal and meaning of human life in Christianity is transferred to another world. Man, according to Hegel, in Christianity turns from a citizen into a subject, into a slave. A person loses a sense of freedom, therefore Christianity contributed to the death of antiquity, it brought up in people a sense of humility and renunciation of their own freedom.

This authoritarian orientation of Christianity existed for many years, until Martin Luther appeared, who resurrected Christianity, giving it its true meaning - namely, the meaning of free human existence. The task of any Christian is to support the ideas of Luther, to develop the positivity of Christianity, to return to antiquity, to its positive ideas, i.e. ideas of freedom and the value of earthly existence. Hegel is not interested in the problems of Christian dogmas, he is primarily interested in the personal and social aspect of Christianity.

But the secret of his popularity lies not in Hegel's youthful manuscripts, because indeed Hegel's philosophy became extremely popular during his lifetime, everyone was captivated by the fundamental and comprehensive nature of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel himself pointed out that in his philosophy, which is a system, everything is interconnected, therefore it cannot be said that there is any one single starting point of philosophy. According to Hegel, if philosophy is a system that embraces all being, then this means that this system can be developed from any point, from any concept. He left us two such attempts. One attempt is set forth in his first fundamental work, The Phenomenology of Spirit, where the system of philosophy develops from the self-consciousness of man, that is, from what Hegel would later call "from the subjective idea." In the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Hegel approaches differently, develops a system of philosophy based on the concept of being, from the concept of pure thinking, not from subjective, but objective thinking, from an objective absolute idea.

Let us consider Hegel's philosophy as he sets it out in the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. A few words about this work. This is a work, one of the few, that was written by Hegel himself. This work consists of three parts: the first volume is called "Science of Logic", the second volume - "Philosophy of Nature" and the third volume - "Philosophy of Spirit".

It is no coincidence that I dwell on the structure of the Encyclopedia, because the very structure of this work is constructed by Hegel in such a way that the main idea of his philosophy follows from the structure. Hegel builds this work according to his principle, which has become famous, the principle of the triad, consisting of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In this case, the "Science of Logic" is a thesis; "Philosophy of nature" is the negation of the idea, i.e. antithesis; and the synthesis of these two propositions is contained in the Philosophy of Spirit. Each of these works is built on the same principle, so for those who are interested it is enough to open the table of contents of this work, and much becomes clear. Let's say "Science of Logic" consists of three sections; each section consists of three chapters; each chapter consists of three paragraphs. The principle of triadicity is visible everywhere. This is the basic principle that pervades all Hegelian philosophy.

The classics of Marxism reproached Hegel for the fact that he raises the principle of triadicity into a system, which contradicts the spirit of dialectics. The classics of Marxism tried to elevate the principle of dialectics to an absolute, to deny everything invariable, including the system of building philosophy.

One more remark regarding the principle of construction of Hegelian philosophy. On the very first pages, Hegel shows the difference between his philosophy and previous philosophical systems, first of all, the philosophy of Kant, Fichte and Schelling. He shows the ideas that he borrows from these German philosophers, and what he disagrees with them in the first place. These disagreements with previous philosophers Hegel reveals to us in the first paragraphs of the Science of Logic, which are called "On the Relation of Thought to Objectivity." According to Hegel, logic is the science of the pure idea, that is, the idea in the abstract element of thought. Therefore, thinking is the element in which the idea lives, in which the idea manifests itself as logical. Logic encompasses all thought, and the subject matter of logic is thought and truth. Since thought is the only way by which one can comprehend the eternal being, both in and for itself, being, therefore the content of logic is the supersensible world. But not only the supersensible world; since the subject of logic is truth, and one of the moments of truth since the time of Aristotle is the coincidence of the subjective and the objective, being and thinking, then the subject of logic is everything - both thinking and being. Therefore, logic really encompasses everything. Logic, according to Hegel, is not only logic, but also metaphysics, epistemology and ontology; it is indeed the most general of all sciences. "The Science of Logic" is not a textbook on logic, it is Hegel's main book, which includes the main methodological principles of his philosophy, which will then be developed and developed in other books. The core of all philosophy is contained precisely in Hegel's Science of Logic. It is impossible to understand Hegel's philosophy without reading the Science of Logic. But to understand the "Science of Logic" in a short time is also impossible.

Let's continue. What is logic for Hegel? Hegel writes that there are three sides of the logical: the abstract, i.e. rational, logic, dialectical and speculative.

In abstract or rational logic, thinking, like reason, does not go beyond immovable determinateness. Here Hegel uses the well-known, coming from Plato and Plotinus, division of all human cognitive abilities into reason and reason. Reason, according to Hegel, as well as according to Plotinus, is thinking, operating with immovable certainties, operating always in time and avoiding contradictions. These immovable determinations are always separate from each other. Thinking is compelled to consider these contradictions as excluding one another, and to choose one member of the contradiction as opposed to the other. According to Hegel, abstract logic is limited, and this limitation was brilliantly noticed by Kant in the famous antinomies of pure reason. Kant's only shortcoming was that he found only four antinomies, believing that all the antinomy of our mind is reduced to them. In fact, according to Hegel, the whole world, all our thinking, is permeated with antinomies. Therefore, antinomies that mutually negate each other show the specificity of our thinking, that our thinking is contradictory in nature.

The second, dialectical side of logic, according to Hegel, reveals the presence of dialectics, i.e. that each contradiction is connected with the other side of the contradiction and turns into this contradiction. But this is not the final logic.

The final logic, of which Hegel considered himself a supporter, is speculative logic, which comprehends the unity of these limited definitions in their opposition. Usually, by virtue of terminology, we say that the words "Hegel's dialectic" for us are some well-established phrase. Although Hegel himself calls his logic speculative. But dialectical logic is also used by him in a positive sense, although it does not yet show the removal of these opposites. Dialectics reveals opposites, reveals their union, the mutual transition of opposites into each other. But only speculative logic removes opposites.

The term "withdrawal" is one of the most complex concepts in Hegelian philosophy; translated into ordinary human language, it means such an operation with opposites, in which the contradiction in these opposites does not disappear, but, passing to another level, is, as it were, resolved. For this Hegel uses the term "removal". That is, the removal is the solution of the contradiction. Hegel noticed the obvious truth that the development of human thought always occurs through the resolution of contradictions. For example, a certain thought arises in the mind of a sage; afterwards, another sage puts forward the opposite thought. There is thus a contradiction between these two ideas. It was usually believed that contradictions are resolved in favor of one or the other member of this contradiction. For example, Aristotelian physics states that the speed at which bodies fall depends on their weight. Galileo argues that the speed of falling bodies is not due to their weight. There is a contradiction that is being investigated. In the end, one of the parties wins - it turns out that Galileo is indeed right, and Aristotle is relatively right, since he did not take into account air resistance.

This is how it was usually believed that contradictions are resolved in favor of one or another member of this contradiction. According to Hegel, this is a wrong decision, this is a rational, metaphysical solution to a contradiction. The contradiction always remains, it is solved by ascending to a new level, at which the contradictions are removed. That is, the contradiction remains at the lowest level, and at the highest level, some unity arises.

Hegel also compares speculative logic with abstract logic, better known to us by the term "formal logic". According to supporters of dialectics, formal logic is a special case of dialectical logic. This is a very tempting comparison, it shows that Hegel's dialectic and Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which inherited this method, develops without denying or discarding all the achievements of mankind, but creatively assimilating, processing and ascending to a new level. But this is not even a mistake, but a clear deception, because between dialectical logic and formal logic there is precisely an opposite, a contradiction. Human thoughts are arranged in such a way that opposites always exist, we cannot remove them just like that. Opposites always remain, and therefore dialectics is always forced to operate on the principle that Lenin remarkably expressed in the Philosophical Notebooks. With amazing frankness, he pointed out that the essence of dialectics is the unity, even the identity of opposites. There is an opposite "A" there is "not-A"; then the dialectic says that "A" is equal to "not-A". About any transition to a new level in comparison with the logic of abstract, formal, which states that "A" is only equal to "A" and nothing else, can not be here. That is, there is not a transition to a new level, but an obvious and simple contradiction between formal logic and speculative logic. This method of thinking is based on an absolutely false system of thinking. Here, not only can there be no scientific development, but no thinking at all. Instead of arguing and finding out the truth, we agree and say that both sides are right, i.e. there is a unity of opposites. And no matter how the supporters of the dialectic avoid such a direct accusation, the dialectical work will always be structured in this way.

Let us return to Hegelian philosophy. Those thoughts that I have outlined, they are not contained in an obvious form in Hegelian philosophy. They follow from it, as a result of it and the basis of methodology, but the way Hegel argues can really seduce with logic and a claim to comprehensiveness.

Hegel begins by saying that logic is the science of the pure idea, of thinking. Thinking is always thinking about the universal, therefore the meaning of the essence of the matter, essence, truth is always contained in the universal. Only the universal possesses this truth. But, Hegel argues, one cannot oppose the universal and the individual, the particular, because the universal contains the individual and therefore the individual is opposed to the universal. But this opposition is removed at a higher level. In thinking about this general, the true nature of things is revealed to the extent that this nature corresponds to thinking.

Therefore, Hegel returns again to the famous principle, which Kant tried to abandon, the principle of the Eleatic school, the identity of being and thinking. For Hegel, this is not something that is identity, but thinking - this is being; there can be no question of any identity here, there is no being, except as thinking. For only thinking is objective, thinking is being.

Therefore, all questions about knowledge, about being, about faith, about man are reduced to simple definitions of thought and only in logic do they find their true resolution. Therefore, philosophy can be built as a system starting from itself. That is, there is no need to solve questions about the relationship of thoughts to reality, about knowability, what is a thing in itself, what is a phenomenon - those problems that worried Kant's critical philosophy or Locke's empirical philosophy. All these questions turn out to be incorrectly posed, because thought is being. Therefore, the question of whether thinking is identical with being or not, and how to solve their relationship, turns out to be a question posed incorrectly.

But nevertheless this question existed, and Hegel discusses various solutions to this question. Altogether, Hegel lists three relations of thought to objectivity. The first is metaphysics, which proceeds only from the elements of thinking itself, but does not notice that thinking has opposites in itself and does not go beyond the limits of the final definitions of thinking. It is from this Hegelian definition that we are familiar with the concept of metaphysics as opposed to dialectics. Until now, the term "metaphysics" has been used (as in Aristotle) as the doctrine of intelligible essences, as a symbol of philosophy proper, the doctrine of the self-existing and immovable, immaterial, immaterial.

Hegel pursues his understanding of metaphysics as the opposite of dialectics, as a doctrine that is limited to stating opposites and does not notice the existence of their unity. Metaphysics always operates with rational, abstract thinking, the rational side of the logical. But metaphysics is higher than subsequent critical philosophy in that it affirms the cognizability of the world, metaphysics always proceeds from the principle of the identity of being and thinking. This world is cognizable and cognizable in ourselves, i.e. for metaphysics there is no thing-in-itself. But metaphysics perceives cognizable things as certain totalities given to it objectively, i.e. not as concepts arising from thinking itself, but as concepts opposed to this thinking. Hegel does not object to Kant and agrees with him that there are only three such totalities: this is the soul, the world and God, and therefore metaphysics always comes down to rational psychology, cosmology and rational theology. Hegel repeats Kant's assertion that, while finding antinomy and opposition in various definitions, metaphysics cannot find a solution to these opposites and is thus doomed to failure. The advantage of metaphysics, according to Hegel, is its conviction in the knowability of the existent, and the disadvantage is that it got stuck in the abstract, gave final definitions to the infinite. Therefore, metaphysics has always been reduced to subjectivism and separation from reality. This conviction of metaphysics in the identity of being and thinking was reduced to the insolubility of this identity, to the separation of thinking from being, and thus gave rise to a solution to the problem of the identity of thinking and being by searching for a second relation of thought to reality.

The second relation of thought to reality, according to Hegel, has two types - these are empiricism and critical philosophy. What unites them is that both empiricism (say, Locke's philosophy) and Kant's critical philosophy proceed from the fact that experience is the true source of knowledge. According to Hegel, empiricism arises in contrast to metaphysics, its abstract theories, unable to combine the general and the individual. For example, back in the Cynic and Megarian schools, philosophers noticed such a strange contradiction that we always build our statements according to the following principle: Peter is a man, Bug is a dog (the famous example of Lenin from Philosophical Notebooks). We, as it were, identify what cannot be identified, we identify the individual and the general. Saying that Peter is a man, we thereby say that a man is Peter, but what about, for example, Nikolai or Ivan? From this inability of metaphysics to solve the problem of the transition from the general to the particular, empiricism arises, which always ascends from the particular and tries to determine how general ideas arise. We see this in the example of the philosophers Locke and Hobbes. In this case, empiricism proceeds from a very real problem, from the real need for human cognition to combine being and thinking, because being always appears to us as concrete, and thinking is always thinking about the universal.

The disadvantage of empiricism is that it also cannot solve this problem, because for it thinking is always thinking acting through perception, and perception is only a form of comprehension of the external world. That is, again, thinking and the external world are torn apart.

Critical philosophy, like empiricism, considers experience the only ground for knowledge. But the true thought of critical philosophy, which distinguishes it from empiricism, is that only knowledge is the subject of our thinking. In order to understand the mystery of our knowledge, to discover the mystery of truth, we must make the forms of thought themselves the subject of our thinking. This correct thought was remarkably noted by Kant, but in doing so he made the mistake of pointing out that philosophers should stop creating subsequent philosophies. As Kant pointed out, until we build a critique of pure reason, we will not find in this reason what What gives him the ability to know the truth, then before that we have no right to build any philosophy. Let's find these forms - forms of thinking, forms of sensibility, determine whether metaphysics is a science or not, then we can decide whether it is possible to build metaphysics.

According to Hegel, this means that a person must learn to think before he can begin to think. In his figurative expression, a person must learn to swim before he enters the river. It is clear that one can learn to think only by thinking. Therefore, to explore the mind, explore thinking and build a philosophical system, according to Hegel, is one and the same. Kant did not notice this moment, this obvious truth that thinking builds philosophy out of itself.

Another feature of Kantian philosophy, which, according to Hegel, is both positive and negative at the same time, is the discovery of the antinomy of reason. Kant correctly noted the presence of contradictions in our thinking, but erroneously limited these contradictions to only the number four. In reality, these antinomies, these contradictions, are contained in all objects. This, according to Hegel, is the dialectical moment of the logical. Therefore, the proof of the antinomy offered by Kant is erroneous, because Kant proves what he is convinced of. In reality, these antinomies cannot be proved. It is clear to the attentive reader that Kant, in proving the validity of the thesis and antithesis, seems to proceed from the fact that it is obvious to him from the very beginning that both the thesis and antithesis will be true. Hence the tension of these proofs, as Hegel argues. Therefore, Kant's philosophy turned out to be inconsistent, it did not have any significant influence on the method. Therefore, the closest students and followers of Kant immediately tried to solve this shortcoming of Kantian philosophy. Fichte, for example, tried to construct a deduction of categories, but he made the mistake of not going beyond the fact that only the finite is knowable, i.e. without going beyond the metaphysical way of thinking.

Hegel, on the other hand, asserts that thinking is thinking about everything; thinking, like being, is infinite, therefore thinking should not be limited to the finite, otherwise it will not be thinking about everything. Thinking is infinite and therefore its subject is infinite. But this feature of thinking should by no means frighten the philosopher, should not make the philosopher think, as Schelling said, that this infinity is conceivable only in some kind of irrational comprehension. According to Hegel, Schelling correctly noted the infinity of thinking, but mistakenly assumed that this infinity is incomprehensible in concepts, incomprehensible to reason.

Schelling erroneously contrasted reason and reason in the tradition of Plotinus and Nicholas of Cusa. Hegel notes this merit of Schelling, but nevertheless points out that the infinite is comprehensible in concepts. Therefore, he further attempts to build a philosophical system based on these principles, based on the conviction that thinking is being, i.e. philosophy can be built on the basis of the pure element of thought, and philosophy can be built precisely in concepts. Here we can recall Socrates, because it was Socrates who first pointed out that philosophy can be built only in concepts; It was precisely this merit of Socrates that Aristotle noted, pointing out that the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotelian logic, and Aristotelian metaphysics originate from here.

Thus, Hegel, as it were, starts from scratch, just like Socrates, although Hegel himself does not think so. He points out that his philosophy is perfect and absolutely true, but does not oppose his philosophy to previous philosophical teachings, showing that all these philosophical systems and points of view approached the truth in one way or another. They reflected one side or the other of objectivity. Hegel's merit, in his opinion, is that he saw this one-sidedness of previous philosophies and combined all these opposites in his philosophy, "removing" them in his system. This approach to the history of philosophy in Hegel is visible in his lectures on the history of philosophy (they are again republished in Russian). Reading them is very helpful. Often Hegel puts problems where other philosophers do not see them. But it is necessary to approach the reading of these lectures with some apprehension, because Hegel expounds not just the history of philosophy, but the development of his own philosophical conception, shows how philosophers, without knowing it themselves, went to ensure that philosophy reached objective truth in Hegelian philosophy.

Actually, Hegel is not alone here. Many philosophers saw in the history of philosophy only a preparation for their own philosophical system. This is especially clearly seen not only in Hegel, but, say, in Marx and Nietzsche, who frankly showed the preparatory moment of the previous history of philosophy, that all philosophy was striving only for the appearance of Hegel, Marx or Nietzsche.

After these preparatory moments, Hegel proceeds to the actual construction of the system of his philosophy. For Hegel, thinking is being. This raises the obvious question of where to start building a philosophical system.

Hegel's "Science of Logic" contains three sections: the doctrine of being, the doctrine of essence, and the doctrine of the concept. Hegel begins to think about being, that thinking is being. What is thinking in itself, without reference to any particular concept? We take thinking in the pure element of thinking, not broken down into any definitions, let alone concepts; it is the pure element of thinking, thinking itself. But thinking in itself cannot be just thinking, thinking is always thinking about something. For the first time this idea was clearly expressed by Plotinus, pointing out that the second hypostasis of his being is the Mind, which is a pure single thought. Nevertheless, this unity is always bifurcated, because Mind, i.e. thought, there is always a thought about something. Therefore, Mind, being one, splits in itself into subject and object, into thought and being. Therefore, the mind is both being and thinking at the same time.

Hegel proposes the same move, but with one difference. In Plotinus, reason and reason are divorced in different ways. The mind exists on the level of eternity, and the opposites in it are united, since they are united in eternity, and our reason operates on the level of the Soul, where time operates, and therefore the opposites are separated there, and all this is crowned by the One, transcending all being and all understanding. Hegel seems to flatten this pyramid of being, showing that reason, thinking and infinity are one and the same. Therefore, the concepts that, according to Plotinus, operate at the level of the Soul, and the infinity of thinking turn out to be one and the same. Starting from the pure element of thinking, we can deduce all the concepts that operate in thinking. Therefore, Hegel's philosophy itself is rooted in the philosophy of the distant past and has objective premises in itself, but due to its specificity, it itself turns out to be full of various contradictions.

Thus, thinking is always thinking about being. Therefore, first of all, the first idea of thinking is being. Hegel proceeds from this idea of being. Being is pure uncertainty, pure element of thought, pure abstraction, pure thought and pure immediacy, as Hegel writes. Being has no definition, there is a lack of definition to any definiteness, approximately in the same way as, say, Plotinus described the unity. Being cannot be defined in any way and described in no way, therefore being is nothing, because it carries in itself only negative moments. Being is that which is completely devoid of any definitions, and this is nothing. Therefore, the first pair of thesis and antithesis, the pair of opposites that arise in Hegelian philosophy is "being" and "nothing". They begin to interact and enter into unity, and this unity gives "becoming", i.e. the transition of being into nothingness and nothingness into being. Becoming is the first concrete thought, the first concept. It is not just being that arises, but actual being.

I will not develop other categories, as Hegel builds in his philosophy. It is not so important for you and me how Hegel derives other categories such as "being for itself", "quantity", "pure quantity", "degree", "measure", "identity", "essence", "difference" , "base", etc. Those who wish can see for themselves.

A few remarks about the development of this deduction of categories, the deduction of concepts. In the Science of Logic, all those discoveries of Hegel appear, later elevated to the rank of laws of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, namely the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, the negation of negation, the transition of quantity into quality. By the will of Engels they were elevated to the rank of fundamental laws, while Engels took a number of purely Schelling examples of how negation of negation occurs - plus negates minus, then they enter into some incomprehensible dialectical identity, dialectical struggle and unity. This is already complete metaphysics, natural philosophy, which does not lend itself to any criticism - pure mythology. The roots of this mythology go both to the philosophy of Schelling and to the philosophy of Hegel. Carrying out the deduction of categories, Hegel points out in passing that there is no thing in itself, that the essence always, according to him, shines in itself and therefore always manifests itself as a phenomenon. The Kantian opposition between the thing-in-itself and the appearance does not really exist, for the essence is cognized through the appearance. There is no opposition between necessity and chance, between necessity and freedom, for they are also sides of a dialectical contradiction, and they are also removed in the concepts of law, just as the concept of essence is removed in the concept of measure.

The structure of Hegelian philosophy is remarkable in the sense that it is enough to have a table of contents in front of you, and at once much comes to mind. It turns out that pure being denies itself and the concept of essence arises, i.e. being certain, being existing in the present world. This is a pair of "being - essence", and the synthesis of being and essence is a concept. The concept in the "Science of Logic" is the final section of the work. The concept also unfolds from itself, and the subjective concept, i.e. the concept as such, the concept used in logic, which is operated on in judgment, is forced to negate itself, passes into its opposite, i.e. concept associated with nature, with objectivity. There is a second opposite.

The doctrine of the concept includes such a triad - a subjective concept, an object, or an objective concept, and an idea. An idea is a concept that is operated on in judgment, in pure thought; it negates itself and passes into an objective concept corresponding to nature, and an idea arises that unites subjectivity in itself, i.e. thinking, and objectivity, i.e. nature.

The idea, developing through life and knowledge, ascends to the absolute idea, to the pinnacle of the Hegelian system. What is an absolute idea? The idea, as the unity of the objective and subjective ideas, is the concept of the idea, for which the idea as such is an object that embraces all determinations. This unity is therefore absolute and complete truth thinking itself. That is, the absolute idea is truth as the identity of being and thinking, the identity of the objective and the subjective. It is a truth that exists on its own.

The next development of the absolute idea: the idea denies itself, passes into the otherness of the idea, into the philosophy of nature. Then there is a synthesis of idea and nature in the form of an objective spirit.

Lecture 12

The "science of logic" ends with the development of the concept from itself leading to the idea. The idea is, according to Hegel, the correspondence of the concept to the object, there is the identity of the concept and the object. Therefore, the idea is the truth in the sense in which we usually understand it, as the correspondence of a person's thoughts to the objective world. But Hegel here makes a clarification that truth is not the correspondence of the subjective ideas of a certain, individual person, but the correspondence of a concept that exists objectively, and not at the whim of a separate individual, to an object.

It is no accident that Hegel uses Platonic terms, showing that an idea is a form of inference. The idea also develops, and the first form of the idea is life, i.e. a conclusion that manifests itself in a certain concrete act of cognition by a living being. A living being not only lives, but cognizes, therefore the antithesis of life is cognition. Hegel's knowledge has two forms: knowledge as knowledge itself, and knowledge as will. Cognition and life are synthesized in the absolute idea. The absolute idea is no longer just an idea, but, in Platonic terms, the world of ideas, i.e. the totality of all ideas, the form of forms (according to Aristotle), the Aristotelian God as a self-thinking mind, this is the absolute idea, i.e. Truth with a capital letter, not a specific truth, but Truth in general.

But truth, as an absolute idea, is a spiritual formation, and it requires for itself some kind of free activity, so the absolute idea needs some act of action. Its action presupposes creation, the creation of something, something that would not be an idea. Therefore, the idea presupposes a transition into its own otherness.

The otherness of the idea as the realm of the spirit, the realm of the non-material, is nature, matter or substance. Therefore, the second part of the Hegelian universal triad is the Philosophy of Nature, which occupies the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. The absolute idea, being the quintessence of freedom, requires for itself a transition into its own otherness. This otherness of the idea is nature.

The "Philosophy of Nature" is perhaps the least interesting part of Hegel's philosophy, admittedly by all. But there is a completely objective explanation for this, which I will present to you. The structure of the "Philosophy of Nature" is also triadic, and it consists of three parts - mechanics, physics and organics. The principle of classification according to thesis, antithesis and synthesis is the principle of motion, the principle of the form of motion of matter. In mechanics, the movement of masses, the movement of bodies, which we observe in the megaworld, is considered. The physical world, which includes chemistry, involves the movement of corpuscles. Organics is the movement of masses and corpuscles in their unity.

Considering mechanics, Hegel notices that the movement of masses implies the equivalence of these masses, the masses differ from each other only in quantity. The equivalence of moving masses implies their quantitative unification - these masses are united in space and time, and space and time, as is known from the obvious equations of mechanics, is that in which movement is carried out. That is, space and time in their unity give matter. Movement, developing, leads to the fact that there are bodies that have not only quantitative, but also qualitative development. Such bodies are planets and luminaries. Physics, according to Hegel, is, first of all, consideration in its beginning of the doctrine of celestial bodies. In the future, from the study of celestial bodies, dividing them into four types - the Sun, Moon, comets and Earth, which correspond to air, fire, water, and earth, he proceeds to the four figures of the syllogism.

Thus, Hegel comes to the structure of matter, which allows him to move on to the movement of corpuscles; and the unification of the movement of corpuscles and masses allows him to pass to organic movement. The organism is not just a moving animal, but an animal that has a metabolism, i.e. inside itself, which also implies the movement of corpuscles. Organics, according to Hegel, is a synthesis of the first two provisions - mechanics, as the thesis, and physics, as the antithesis.

Organics begins with the geological nature, the second moment is the plant organism and, as their synthesis, the animal organism. In the animal organism there occurs, as it were, a self-growth of matter to the level of its self-negation. In the animal organism such a growth of matter takes place, which again requires for itself a transition already into its own otherness, into the realm of the spirit.

This is the structure of the "Philosophy of Nature" in brief. Looking ahead, before considering the "Philosophy of Spirit", I will allow myself some comments.

I have already spoken about how Hegel and his followers understood the difference between formal, dialectical and speculative logic. That allegedly speculative logic, in our terminology - dialectical, is the highest level of logic, which includes formal logic. I suggest that you consider, using the example of two philosophers that we studied with you (Hegel and Kant), the difference between the two ways of thinking.

Kant was interested in the mechanism of scientific knowledge; that scientific knowledge exists, for Kant there is no doubt. Therefore, Kant explores the method of cognition that exists in science, i.e. the method of cognition that gives rise to new knowledge. Any scientist - physicist, mathematician, chemist, etc. - always works as if with a blank slate, he discovers knowledge. This knowledge is tested by various methods, theoretical, practical, collective, etc., and finally accepted as truth.

Hegel in his philosophy approaches us from the other side. Let's take any triad - mechanics, physics, organics; phenomenon, content, relation (from the first part of his dialectics); substance, cause, interaction; quality, quantity, concept; concept, judgment, conclusion. Hegel, deriving the antithesis from the thesis and then combining them into a synthesis, makes some appearance of logic. But the fact of the matter is that this is just an appearance. Hegel never made any discovery, he always deals only with categories known to him, with data known to him. And if we are talking about concepts, then it is rather a kind of game, laying out certain concepts on different shelves. It sorts concepts, and sorting occurs not according to an objective principle, but according to a fictitious principle.

Let's take any triad and instead of the triad phenomenon-content-correlation we put any three positions, say, substance-cause-interaction. Any of you, having studied a little Hegelian dialectics, will easily say that the substance is the thesis, the cause is the antithesis and the interaction is the synthesis. This is just a game. And the fact that in the "Science of Logic" and in the "Philosophy of the Spirit" this is imperceptible, in the "Philosophy of Nature" it becomes obvious, because here Hegel intrudes into the field of science. His philosophy is compared with science, which since the time of Descartes, from the beginning of the 17th century - Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, has always been considered the standard of true knowledge, and philosophy was equal to science in order to come to the same true knowledge itself. Hegel believes, on the contrary, that philosophy is the standard of true knowledge, and science must obey it.

What happened? It turned out such nonsense - the resurrection of ancient ideas about the four elements, corresponding to the four figures of the syllogism; no scientific discovery can be made here, because, as they say, Hegel's philosophy of nature is similar to the natural-philosophical constructions of Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Empedocles and Anaxagoras were people who lived in their era, and did a lot for the development of contemporary science. They built the concept of the origin of life, the structure of the cosmos, the emergence of man, something from which geology and biology later arose (as in Theophastus and Aristotle). It was a search that is always fraught with errors. Hegel, in the scientific 19th century, says that "he does not climb into any gates." This is not an oddity, not a mistake, not something that can be bashfully pushed aside, but this is a test of the dialectical method for truth. The dialectical method shows that as soon as it joins with science, it suffers a crushing fiasco. According to the well-known aphorism of Kozma Prutkov "once lied, who will believe you"; also here - the one who once made a mistake in applying his method, he can no longer have any confidence in himself. The method turned out to be wrong.

With this attitude, we will consider the third part of the Hegelian triad - "Philosophy of Spirit". Talking about the philosophy of Hegel, I am cheating on myself, because I have taken on the mission not to judge philosophers, but to try to convince you of the correctness of any of the philosophers, no matter how opposite camps they belong to. I want to teach you to philosophize, search and think. Only in relation to Hegel do I allow myself to express my attitude, precisely because Hegel's philosophy does not teach thinking. The dialectical method is a false method. Only two schools in the history of philosophy are distinguished by such a conscious attitude to lies - this is sophistry (Socrates and Plato fiercely fought against Protagoras) and the Hegelian method, which was later adopted by the Marxist-Leninists. This is the same sophistry, the same method that allows you not to discover new unknown truths, but to make it look like an explanation of what you know. With the Sophists this was frankly and distinctly. Protagoras honestly said that the criterion of truth is profit, what is useful to someone is true; everything is true. Hegelian philosophy in this respect is much more camouflaged, it is not as obvious, not as frank as sophistry. Therefore, the harm that it did through Marxism-Leninism at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries is largely due to a fake for the truth. Lies always dress up as truth, because the devil always tries to look like a kind, bright being, tries to be confused with the Savior. Here is a special case of this general confrontation between the forces of good and evil, Satan and God. I pronounce these words with full awareness, for Hegel's dialectic is that barren fig tree that has dried up and can never bear any fruit except destruction.

Let us consider objectively Hegel's "Philosophy of Spirit". "Philosophy of Spirit" is placed in the third volume of Hegel's "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences". Like other works, it consists of three large parts: "subjective spirit", "objective spirit" and "absolute spirit". What is a spirit? “For us, spirit has nature as its presupposition; it is its truth and is therefore absolutely first in relation to it. like its subject, there is a concept. In other words, spirit is a unity, a synthesis of idea and nature. Therefore, the spirit exists where there is animate life. The sphere of action of the spirit is the sphere of action of man. Man is the only being in whom nature and idea are united. Moreover, they do not just connect, but merge. Hence comes the development of the philosophy of spirit as subjective spirit, objective spirit and absolute spirit.

The subjective spirit is an individual subject, a concrete person. The objective spirit is the action of the spirit in society, starting from the minimum association, from the family. The absolute spirit is the synthesis of the individual and society. Hence the division of each of these positions into its own triads. The subjective spirit consists of anthropology, phenomenology and psychology. The objective spirit is from law, morality and ethics. The absolute spirit is an art, a revealed religion and a philosophy. Everything is crowned by philosophy, which is the synthesis of art and religion of revelation.

Despite the fact that the third part of the "Encyclopedia" is equal in volume to the first part, Hegel pays much more attention to the objective spirit in his philosophy, and there are a number of confirmations of this. Hegel develops many of the chapters of this book in such detail that he devotes separate courses of lectures to them. On the subjective spirit is the work "Phenomenology of Spirit". On the Objective Spirit - "Philosophy of Law" (separate course of lectures), "Philosophy of History" (separate course of lectures). On the absolute spirit - lectures on aesthetics (four volumes published in Russian); on revealed religion (two volumes on the philosophy of religion); on philosophy published in several volumes of lectures on the history of philosophy. Consideration of the doctrine of the objective spirit occupies in Hegel, at least in terms of the volume of books written and lectures given by him, the vast majority of all his work. It was in this part that Hegel had a very great influence on subsequent philosophy.

The first stage in the development of the spirit is the subjective spirit. The development of the spirit begins in the subject, in a concrete individual. The subjective spirit is that moment in the development of the spirit as it exists in the individual. The first stage in the development of the subjective spirit is anthropology. Hegel's anthropology considers the soul as it exists in itself. Therefore, Hegel, first of all, considers the soul, which exists independently of others.

We know Hegel's doctrine of the coincidence of the historical and the logical, that the historical development of a certain thing and phenomenon coincides with its logical unfolding. Therefore, in order to logically explain the soul, it is possible and necessary to trace its historical development. Hegel stops at the development of the soul, starting from infancy, even from the prenatal age of a person. Hegel considers various states of the soul - in an infant, states of dementia, dreams, absent-mindedness, idiocy. All these phenomena of Hegel are extremely interesting in order to show where the limit of the soul is, where we can see the fundamental difference between the soul and the rest of the world. If we show the difference between the soul of a genius and a stool, then we will not show anything yet. But if we say how the soul of an idiot differs from a stool, then we will really find the essential difference between these two substances. Indeed, the soul in its most minimal form, the soul of an embryo, the soul of a sleeping person is still different from inanimate nature. Therefore, Hegel explores, first of all, the marginal states of man, the initial forms of the development of the soul.

The subjective spirit continues its development and grows up to the moment when it becomes aware of itself, begins to realize itself as a real soul. Hegel considers all forms of the natural or sentient soul, which include dreams or the uterine state, dementia, stupidity, absent-mindedness, stupidity, madness, insanity. And the real soul is the soul of a normal person, a soul that reaches the level of self-consciousness. A person who combines all the phenomena of the soul and realizes himself as a subjective spirit moves to the level of phenomenology.

Phenomenology is the antithesis of subjective spirit. We have already said that the Hegelian system develops according to a cyclical method. And Hegel himself said that it does not matter from what place it begins. It can be started anywhere; That is why it has the character of a closed system, that from any place you can develop all the other elements. Hegel himself made two such attempts. The first work was called "Phenomenology of Spirit", and the second - "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences". In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel began with the fact of self-consciousness. The phenomenology of the spirit is the fact of the self-consciousness of the spirit, that with which many philosophers before Hegel began. Let us recall at least Descartes and Fichte. Hegel in the Encyclopedia took a different path, the more well-known path, the path of Parmenides and Plato. The subjective spirit begins to become conscious of itself; feel like an outsider. Why is this development? Why is this the antithesis? Precisely because the soul, as it were, contemplates itself from the outside, it, as it were, denies itself; the soul looks at itself from the outside and cognizes itself as some self-existing.

Synthesis is psychology, a science that perceives the soul in its entirety - both as a sentient soul, as having various marginal deviations, and as a self-conscious soul. That is, psychology is the synthesis and the highest form of development of the subjective spirit.

The main moment in the development of the spirit is the emergence of reason and freedom. It is the appearance of freedom that is the highest moment in the development of the subjective spirit. Freedom is inextricably linked with the mind, so a person, i.e. spirit, perceives many of its states as some of its practical qualities - a state of happiness or unhappiness, a state of attraction, arbitrariness, will, violence, etc. Therefore, there is a feeling of independence of the spirit from the natural world surrounding it. There is a feeling and a state of freedom, there is a will. Will, according to Hegel, is the highest point in the development of the subjective spirit. "Free spirit" is the last paragraph which Hegel considers in the thesis "subjective spirit". The will is always perceived, firstly, subjectively, but it always strives to negate itself. Will always strives to act, always strives to manifest itself in some object, i.e. seeks to deny himself.

Free will seeks to manifest itself in the world, to objectify itself, therefore, a denial of the subjective spirit arises, an objective spirit arises, a spirit that exists not just in a person, but in a society in which people act as free and rational beings. The objective spirit is the sphere of action of free people, the intersection and collision of their various aspirations, desires and actions. The objective spirit is also divided into thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Some explanation. For Hegel, the historical and the logical exist in an inseparable unity. But with Hegel, the logical often replaces the historical. The fact that Hegel shows the development of a certain idea, phenomenon does not mean that this development was precisely such in history, that it passed through all these historical stages. Hegel often shows the logical development of this concept. If we say "in the beginning" or "then" this does not always mean that in some century there was such a state, and a few years later another state appeared. Sometimes this coincides with Hegel, sometimes there is another development. Particularly with regard to the objective spirit; here most often it is the logical unfolding of the idea, the objective unfolding.

The free will of a person strives to realize itself in some object, tries to realize its freedom, i.e. trying to take possession of something that exists outside of this free will. Therefore, the concept of property and the concept of possession of this property arise. The first realization of the objective spirit is the right, the right to possess some kind of property. Law is the first action of the objective spirit, or the first action of the subjective spirit that feels free, i.e. the right to acquire for oneself something that is outside.

The state of law arises at first as an unreflexed, unconscious state, simply as a certain state that a free spirit must own something. But this right of one free man eventually clashes with the right of another free man and a conflict of interests arises. What we remember from the philosophy of Hobbes or Rousseau, according to which the first state of man is the state of absolute freedom. Then, when absolute freedom begins to contradict itself, for it presupposes the freedom to own everything, kill, steal, etc., then I myself become not only the subject of this social freedom, but also the object of the absolute freedom of another person. Therefore, both Hobbes and Rousseau, and after them Hegel, point out that the clash of these interests requires an agreement for itself. With only one difference; if with Hobbes and Rousseau this was a purely historical development, then Hegel rests on the logical unfolding of the idea. The subjective idea, like a free spirit, requires some kind of property for itself, conflicts with other subjective spirits, and the concept of a contract arises.

A contradiction arises again - a contradiction between my subjective free will, my desire to own something, and the contract as some kind of objective force that violates my desire to own it. The synthesis that removes this contradiction, according to Hegel, is the right against the violated right. What does contradiction mean? The contradiction in life is realized as the desire of a certain free being to violate this contract, that is, to commit a crime. There is a desire to violate the right, so the synthesis is the right against the violation of the right. There is an awareness of the admissibility of an act or its inadmissibility. So far, this awareness exists only at the personal level. For example, I want to buy something for myself. I understand that this thing is in someone's property. But I really want to buy this thing, so I want to steal this thing. But I know that there is a Criminal Code that provides punishment for this crime. I, however, understand that I am right, because this thing does not belong to that person by right. He, say, stole this car (as Detochkin argued in the famous film). Therefore, I believe that I am right, my act of stealing a car is not immoral. There is a transition to a certain new level of relations - morality arises, not just a relationship that regulates the interaction of various free people in the possession of some property, but a state of morality. Or, if someone wants to steal something from me, I understand that I am right if I protect my property, or my life, or stand up for the truth; any act will always be accompanied by my own assessment of justice or lack of it. There is a state of morality.

There are also three degrees of development in morality: thesis - intent; antithesis - intention and good; synthesis - good and evil.

Intent considers the state of morality simply as a certain private act. I want to steal a certain thing, but I understand that this is not just not good, but because stealing is generally not good. There is an interaction between the particular and the general. Intention as an intention to commit some particular act turns out to be an intention to commit an act that is not good in general.

Therefore, the antithesis of intent is intention and good, i.e. the intention to steal in general, which may correspond to the realization of some goodness and, conversely, the badness of this act.

Synthesis is good and evil, i.e. that understanding of good and evil, which combines the particular and the general case, the awareness of the general idea of good and concrete action. I understand that stealing a certain object is not good precisely because the concept of good generally prohibits theft. This is where this particular case comes from.

Hegel shows the dialectic of the interaction of the individual, the particular and the general. Therefore, not just morality arises, but morality, i.e. The dialectics of the development of the objective spirit leads to the following point. I remind you of these steps - law, morality and morality.

The right has its three components: property, contract and the right to violate the right.

Morality has, respectively: intent, intention and good, good and evil.

We will look at morality a bit later.

Each of these points can also be considered in even more detail. This more detailed consideration is the subject of Hegel's special lecture courses, published separately. In the "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences", as a rule, Hegel only reaches the second level. It is understood that law, morality and morality are a special case of the objective spirit, and the objective spirit is the antithesis of the philosophy of the spirit, and the philosophy of the spirit is the synthesis of the encyclopedia of all philosophy. It is clear that all the time there is a refinement and development of all Hegelian concepts.

Morality arises as a state of the objective state of things. It turns out that my conviction that stealing is not good is not just my personal conviction, but it is an objective law, a law existing in an objective spirit, existing even more so in an absolute idea; this is the truth. Hegel here for the first time (we must give him his due) separated two concepts that have always been considered and are still considered identical, synonymous. Morality, or morality, is a subjective belief in the rightness or wrongness of a certain action, the conviction of me as a specific person who performs a specific act or leads a certain lifestyle, i.e. as a state of a separate subject, a separate spirit. Morality is the objective existence of certain moral norms, it is the assertion of the existence of objective moral propositions - good and evil. Morality is a synthesis of law and morality.

Right is simply the striving of the free spirit to realize itself in some act. Then it turns out that this act can be assessed as good or bad. It turns out that morality removes the contradiction between freedom and the desire to do anything, and the subjective awareness that it is not good to do it. This contradiction is removed by the fact that it turns out that freedom is not limited by my own inner convictions, but is the sphere of action of the spirit.

The spirit has its own laws. These laws presuppose action in good and evil. Therefore, freedom, according to Hegel, does not contradict necessity, regularity. Freedom, as an action of the spirit, is an action in a certain area, in the area of the spirit, and the spirit also has a certain structure and acts in its own spiritual world. Therefore, there is no contradiction between freedom and necessity. It is only the appearance of a contradiction between the thesis and antithesis. In synthesis, i.e. in morality, this contradiction between freedom and necessity is removed, i.e. it seems to remain, but it is also solved.

Morality is also deployed by Hegel according to a certain mechanism. People, understanding themselves as free beings, understanding that they are limited in their freedom by the presence of moral laws, enter into communication with each other and enter into various organizations, unions, various public formations.

The first, most elementary education is the family. The family is not just a unity, as Hegel emphasizes, based on gender, as it exists in the animal world. The family presupposes moral unity. First of all, this unifying unity is love, i.e. moral sense, which is absent in the animal world. Two creatures unite in a small community, limiting their own freedom, in order to live in love and harmony, i.e. according to some moral law. Therefore, the family is not just a contract. The family is a unit of society organized on certain romantic principles. Families do not exist in isolation, so each family, being a whole, feels like it exists among other families.

If the thesis is the family, then the antithesis of this is civil society, which is simply a set of families, a society in which these families and their members enter into certain economic, legal, civil and other relations. Various needs arise, the need to satisfy these needs arises, a division of labor arises, the police arise as an institution for keeping order, inequality arises, and so on. Therefore, there is a need to regulate relations between people and between families in civil society.

If the thesis is the family, the antithesis is civil society, then the synthesis of these two contradictory phenomena is the state; the contradiction between the family and civil society is removed in the state. The state exists because it exists. Here is a characteristic moment of Hegelian philosophy. There is always some temptation to explain the next step of the previous one. You expected something completely different from me, namely, that the state exists to protect the interests of every family. No. The state exists for itself, we will talk about this in detail in the next lecture.

Consider Science of Logic. All research begins with being, which then unfolds into existing being, becoming, quantity, quality, measure, and so on. And in the end, the absolute idea as truth. Is it really possible to say that the absolute idea exists in order to regulate the relationship between quantity and quality, translating them into measure. No. On the contrary, the relationship between quantity and quality is determined by the measure because there is an absolute idea, everything exists in this idea. And the absolute idea exists because it exists.

The development of concepts, according to Hegel, goes towards the goal, and the goal exists in itself, for itself. In society, the state is the goal. Everything else - civil society, the family, the subjective spirit, the individual, his soul - all this exists for the state. Hegel in this case is the most radical supporter of the state as a self-sufficient organization. Here it is easiest to recall Plato with his utopian attempt to build an ideal state. He said that if the state is happy, then its members will be happy. The same simple formula could be repeated by Hegel. True, Hegel will not say such a phrase, he will say an even more cruel phrase, that the state is happy, the state is "the procession of God on earth"; and even if in this state some people are happy and others are not, then this is God's plan; the state cannot exist without it. His doctrine of the state, as Hegel writes, is at the same time a theodicy, i.e. explanation of why evil exists in this state. Passing to the level of the state, we necessarily pass to the consideration of the Hegelian doctrine of religion.

Lecture 13

Let us continue our consideration of Hegel's doctrine of objective and absolute spirit. We stopped at that moment in the development of the objective spirit, at which, according to Hegel, the state arises. The state is also considered by Hegel at various points in its development. First, a state can exist as a state for itself, i.e. domestic state law. Secondly, the state is considered in relation to other states, i.e. external state law. Finally, the synthesis of these two mutually exclusive provisions is world history, i.e. the emergence of the state, the development of the state from one form to another and the formation of a system of states, i.e. various states.

It is no coincidence that the state arises precisely in the realm of the objective spirit, where morality and morality acted and arose. The state, according to Hegel, is "the reality of the moral idea, the moral spirit, as a clear, self-evident substantial will." That is, morality, which exists as a set of certain objective moral laws, objectivity that exists in the spirit, is objectified on earth in the material world as a state. Therefore, the state exists in and for itself. The state is the triumph of morality, "the procession of God on earth." Therefore, the state exists insofar as it exists. Due to the fact that the state exists, there is also a normal human life, namely morality and law. The state is an end in itself, which has the highest correctness in relation to a single person. And the highest duty of a person is the duty to be a member of the state, to be a citizen.

The state is, first of all, a rational device, it is the objectification of the spirit, therefore there is a materialized mind. Therefore, the state is the realization of freedom. The state does not suppress the freedom of the individual. One might think that in this case Hegel comes into conflict with himself; no, he is faithful to his dialectical method and finds the unity of freedom and necessity in the moment of coexistence of citizen and state. The state is the realization of freedom, and the realization of freedom is the highest goal of reason.

The state, considered as existing in and for itself, is an internal law of the state. Therefore, the state exists as a certain integrity, as immanent, i.e. the end in itself, in which both the family and the citizen of society exist. The state actually realizes the unity of the individual, the particular and the general, i.e. individual, family and state as an integral entity. The state really exists because, according to Hegel, reality is determined by the reality of the concept. The concept of the state arises dialectically, arises at the moment of self-development of the idea, the objective spirit, therefore the state really exists, having being in the field of the objective spirit. This reality of the state ensures its development and combination in itself of all its components.

In a single state, however, various independent entities exist, such as, for example, authorities. The authorities are moments of a single concept, therefore, when they are divided, they do not dismember this single concept. Legislative power, according to Hegel, corresponds to universality, executive power to singularity, and judicial power to singularity. According to the dialectic of the individual, the universal and the particular, these three powers exist in unity. Hegel, speaking as an apologist for the state, which is the highest value, and man submits to it, strangely continues this idea - he justifies war. Hegel points out that war, with its state in which the vanity of temporal goods and things is taken seriously, is the moment at which the ideality of the particular achieves its right and becomes reality. The high significance of war lies in the fact that thanks to it the moral health of the people is preserved, its indifference to the freezing of final certainties. That is, war, as it were, contributes to the vitality of the people, because without war, the people freeze in their development, and war contributes to the historical development of the people and the state. Therefore, war, according to Hegel, protects peoples from decay. As an example, Hegel cites that successful wars of conquest did not allow unrest to develop within the state, they contributed to greater peace, no matter how this war took place. As a result of wars, a separate class of warriors or knights appears, as it was in more ancient times. This class must necessarily exist as a guarantor of the existence and development of the state.

But the state, being an integral and independent formation, exists not only in itself and for itself, but also for others - the states enter into certain relations with each other. One form of this relationship is war.

In external state law, the state, first of all, is a sovereign entity, therefore the first absolute right of the state is its sovereignty. If a dispute arises between states, then, according to Hegel, it can only be resolved by war. Although even in war there is still a unifying bond between states in which they recognize each other as existing. So that war is only a certain dialectical moment of interaction between states, it does not deny the existence of states, but implies their existence and therefore is a moment of legal international definition.

In relations between states, no judge can and does not exist, because all states are equal in terms of their sovereignty. The only judge for states is only the universal spirit, which exists only in and for itself. The world spirit judges states by its own right, and its right is the highest right. This judgment of the spirit about the state and states takes place in world history.

Hegel paid great attention to world history, he devoted a separate series of lectures to it - "Lectures on the Philosophy of History". Let me remind you that not much attention has been paid to the philosophy of history in the history of philosophy. For the first time, the concept of philosophical history was put forward by Augustine; the ancient Greeks did not have this concept as such. This idea appears only with the emergence of Christianity, with the appearance of the idea of the development of the world, its emergence, a certain existence in development and an end. For the Greeks, the existence of the world was independent of man, chaotic, subject only to fate, which is impossible to understand, therefore it is impossible to build a philosophy of history. Christianity has a completely different concept. Augustine in the "City of God" was the first to offer consideration of this historical process from a philosophical point of view.

In the future, the concept of the philosophy of history appears in other philosophers; in modern times, Hobbes' most famous concept is in Leviathan. The Hegelian concept is perhaps one of the most serious and well-known.

Before considering the philosophy of history, Hegel considers various forms of the existence of history as a science in general, and conducts a certain classification of historical concepts. According to Hegel, there are three types of historiography - this is the original history, reflective history and philosophical history.

The original history does not go beyond the subject matter under consideration, history emerges as the original history. Examples of it can be found in the works of Xenophon, Caesar. These authors merely describe the events they witnessed or retell them from other sources without towering over them. At best, they can moralize about certain events. In the works of these authors, the identity of the spirit of the author and the spirit of the time reaches a complete identity. This is extremely important for the researcher, who through these works can better comprehend the spirit of the times, but the work itself does not say anything about the author himself as a historian, he is rather a narrator.

In reflective history, exposition rises above history. The historian already distinguishes between himself and the narrative, the spirit of the time and the spirit of the author are distinguished. Hegel considers Titus Livius to be the first author of such a plan, for the first time the question arises about the meaning of history. But the historian, in any case, is the son of his time, he can analyze events, compare them, but he cannot go beyond the limits of his era. If a reflective historian lives, say, in the 19th century and describes antiquity, then he, as it were, modernizes the ancient era; he does not rise above his epoch, in which he lives and translates the events and ideas of an epoch alien to him into his own epoch. Therefore, there is a need for presentation by abstraction. Often this attempt is made within the framework of reflective history itself, but the best attempt is nevertheless made within the framework of philosophical history, i.e. philosophy of history.

The philosophy of history does not consider the events themselves, but, first of all, studies the spirit as the driving force of historical events. And that is the purpose of history. The historian is obliged not so much to describe events as to analyze them and show the driving force of these events, causal relationships between events, show the necessity of events, i.e. their reality. As we know, according to Hegel, the state is reasonable, therefore history is also reasonable. History is the history of states, therefore history operates in the mind. The philosopher brings to the world the idea that the world is dominated by reason, that there are no random events, that everything that happens in the world is some manifestation of the universal world mind, objective spirit. Therefore, the philosophy of history studies history as the work of the spirit, and not just as a set of random, unrelated interesting or uninteresting events.

From this position, Hegel approaches the analysis of the historical development of mankind on earth. As it was said, history is reasonable just like all reality, like the state. Hegel has a phrase that he said in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, for which he was often attacked, so he devoted several pages to it in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Hegel said: "Everything that is real is reasonable, everything that is reasonable is real." Hegel was reproached for justifying the existence of all sorts of outrages, imperfections, lawlessness, and so on. Hegel had to explain that this phrase does not justify, but explains the existence of imperfection in the world. Here it is difficult to disagree with Hegel in the correctness of his phrase, for only that which is reasonable can be explained; the unreasonable, the irrational is not subject to explanation. If we want to explain the existence of something, then we assume its rationality, i.e. accordance with our mind. A well-known principle coming from antiquity: like is known by like; Almost all philosophy is based on this principle, with very few exceptions. Here the same principle is shown in action - if we want to explain the action of the spirit in the world, in the state and history, we must assume that this history and the events taking place in it are reasonable, therefore they can be explained. Accordingly, on the contrary, - since we can explain these events, then they are reasonable. Therefore, Hegel's thesis "Everything that is real is reasonable, and everything that is reasonable is real" does not mean that no stupid things happen in the world. It can be said that rationality and stupidity are only some aspects of the same universal reason, dialectical interaction.

The spirit, or rather the mind, is a substance, it is the environment in which the actions of world history and the state are carried out. Reason is an infinite power, there is a creative principle that carries out its action on earth. Therefore, only the mind is active, and events on earth occur because they act in the mind. Therefore, the mind is directed towards itself and acts in itself; it is infinite and has a goal in itself. Therefore, historical research can also be philosophical, since the real is rational, and the rational is real, and history is carried out in the mind, i.e. in the spirit, and therefore the historian can use his reasonable method in relation to the events of world history. According to Hegel, the reasonableness of history and the reasonableness of events and the regularity of history or the regularity of events are mutually replacing concepts, synonyms. The rationality of history is the regularity of history. We must contrast rationality with randomness, irregularity, and not rationality with unreasonableness.

The rationality of the world means that there are no random events in the world, the world is controlled by providence, controlled by reason, spirit, God. This is what Hegel had in mind. Hegel is, one might say, a fatalist. According to him, the world develops in accordance with the law, which, whether a person knows or does not know, leads him to a goal known only to reason. This fatalism must be accepted with some reservation, which will be understood later, because the rationality of the spirit, i.e. its necessity is not opposed to freedom.

Hegel gives the following definition of freedom: "Freedom is a necessity that exists in itself." According to Hegel, freedom is an internal necessity. From this side, people who act in the spirit, in the mind, are themselves free beings, and the more they are free, the more they recognize this necessity.

Therefore Hegel considers history first of all as a theodicy, i.e. as an explanation of how imperfection, evil and other outrages exist in the world, despite the fact that the world is ruled by reason, spirit and, in the end, God. Hegel must show that the world is harmonious, and harmony exists everywhere, including in history. Philosophical history must reconcile man with the world. This reconciliation is achieved through an understanding of history. And as we cognize the world, we cognize all its shortcomings, we cognize the negative, and thus this negative ceases to be negative. Knowing the negative insofar as it exists, we thus know the being of this negative, i.e. positive aspect of it. Therefore, the negative in this phenomenon takes on a subordinate character and disappears, becoming this subordinate. Comprehension of the negative in the world turns out to be an explanation and justification of the negative, i.e. some evil. Evil exists in the world insofar as evil is necessary for reason. Apparently the mind, i.e. the spirit, moving, developing history, considers it necessary to exist at certain stages of its imperfection. About the purpose of the mind - later.

Since history operates in a single substantive basis, i.e. in the spirit, to the extent that history is one. But the actors of history are the peoples, therefore this unity is realized as the unity of the people. Hegel introduces the concept of "folk spirit" or "spirit of the people"; this concept will become extremely popular in the 20th century, largely due to the work of Oswald Spengler and some social phenomena that occurred in the history of Europe in the 20th century. But for the first time this concept appears precisely in Hegel. The national spirit is the national unity of each people, and it manifests itself in the unity of the social formations of each people. The world spirit is embodied precisely in the spirit of the people. The peculiarity of the world spirit is that at each stage of development it is embodied in the spirit of one of the peoples. Such a people can be, say, Greek, Roman, and in the time of Hegel, such a people was, according to him, the German nation. If the spirit of the people and the plan of the world mind do not coincide, then the people freezes in its development; if they do, then it is this people that is the spokesman for historical progress. Such a people is called a world-historical people.

History takes place in the realm of the spirit, i.e. cognizing history, a person cognizes the objective spirit, cognizes that providence, which is realized through the world spirit, i.e. through the world mind, i.e. God. Therefore, knowing history, a person first of all knows God. Another aspect of this problem. The sphere of action of history is the spirit, and the substance of the spirit is freedom. Just as the substance, the essence of the body is gravity, as Hegel points out, so the essence of the spirit is its freedom. Therefore, the realization of history always follows the path of the realization of freedom. Spirit exists because it exists; according to Hegel, "spirit is being out of itself", i.e. the spirit is self-sufficient, it is conscious only of itself, therefore the spirit is absolutely free. Matter does not exist independently, it exists in the spirit, and therefore it is not free.

Therefore, the world-historical peoples are free peoples, because it is in the spirit of their peoples that they coincide with the world spirit, and the rest of the peoples, in which there is no such coincidence, freeze in slavery. Therefore, the development of history, according to Hegel, is the development and progress in the realization and in the realization of freedom. According to Hegel, there are four main periods of the existence of history - the Eastern world, where there is no freedom at all; Greek world, Roman and modern, i.e. a Christian world in which freedom is fully realized. In Christianity, any person is free, and therefore Christianity is the goal of the development of an objective spirit. As has been said, freedom is the essence of the spirit, just as the essence of matter is gravity, therefore freedom is the inner necessity of the spirit; spirit defines itself. Therefore, he is free to define himself to something. Necessity and freedom in the spirit coincide.

Man, as a being synthesizing mind and nature, consists of an absolutely free mind and a material principle that obeys it. A person must act as if in two worlds: on the one hand, he has an absolutely free mind, on the other, a body that obeys him. Therefore, a person must learn the laws of reason, its necessity. From the principle "freedom is a necessity inherent in the spirit", "freedom is the inner necessity of the spirit" follows the principle "freedom is a recognized necessity". A person learns the necessary laws of the spirit, the laws of the mind, he himself becomes free, because he unites with the plan of the mind and spirit and acts in exactly the same way.

But the mind acts all the same, in addition to human consciousness and understanding, the mind often acts in such a way that a person does not even notice its plan and the course of world history. Hegel introduces the concept of "cunning of reason", because the goal that the mind sets for itself, and the means by which it achieves this goal, are often so different from each other that a person may not notice it. One of the means of reason operating in history is human passions. A person, realizing his passionate desires, achieves, as it seems to him, some of his goals, small or global, but in fact, it turns out that this was some kind of cunning of the mind. Reason, the objective spirit, behaves as if it allows people to act in accordance with their own designs and purposes. But it turns out that these random human designs lead exactly to the goal that was intended by God. That is, God, as Hegel writes, is like a smart teacher who does not force the will of children, but allows them to do in the process of playing what the teacher had in mind at the beginning of the lesson, and it seemed to the children that they were left to their own devices and engaged in their own game.

But this action of God in the world is incompatible with the human understanding of happiness, for it turns out that a person, driven by his own passions, achieves his goal, and thus the plan of God is realized. After reaching the goal, it turns out that this person becomes unnecessary, he is deleted from the divine plan, and the person turns out to be unhappy. Such personalities, whom Hegel calls world-historical personalities, are, as a rule, unhappy. This irony of history, this cunning of the mind is manifested everywhere and always.

Why does the spirit, or rather God, act in this way? Why can't He explain His plan to this historical personality, so that a person, fulfilling God's plan, would be happy, could deserve some reward? According to Hegel, this cannot be, because a person must himself rise to the understanding of God, to his knowledge. A person only becomes free when he comprehends the activity of the mind, and not when something is given to him from above as a gift. God cannot make such concessions, He cannot give people freedom, freedom is achieved by people themselves. Therefore, God is forced to "cunning", carrying out His plan in the world. Hence the evil in the world, because people cannot understand the Divine plan and do not what God wants. People could well build an ideal state if they knew what the objective spirit wants, what the mind wants, and would act in accordance with this. But they act according to their passions, and God is forced to adjust their actions to the course of history and achieve His own purpose. Therefore, people themselves are to blame for the fact that there are many imperfections and atrocities in the world. God gave reason to people so that they comprehend His plan, divine providence in the world. People did not use this reason, therefore God did not give paradise to people, for this would be the defeat of man, his refusal to possess this paradise, thus it would be the defeat of God, God would not create His Own likeness.

History develops primarily in Europe. The arguments advanced by Hegel coincide in some places with those of Montesquieu. In particular, Hegel repeats that Europe has the most suitable climate, which is neither in Africa nor in Northern Europe. But he is forced to explain why Europe, and not North. America or East Asia, which share the same climate, does not, however, give rise to historical peoples. Hegel again resorts to the concept of the spirit of peoples, which in this case is rather a description of the psychology of peoples. He writes that the Indians of the Sev. America is too meek and servile; they are too close to nature and therefore not capable of development in society. Africans are not able to contemplate the essence of man, they are not capable of knowing the mind, they cannot exist in an independent state, they need to be controlled, therefore the colonization of African peoples is fully justified. The terrain also plays a big role. For example, the relief of America, according to Hegel, is a non-dynamic form of interaction of opposites. Elsewhere in the same book, Hegel points out that the future will belong to the American nation, not to Indians, but to immigrants from Europe, who will bring there the spirit of freedom and the spirit of reason, and therefore America is the country of the future. And the country of the present is Germany.

According to Hegel, history went through four stages: childhood (the stage of despotism that existed in the Eastern world - China, India, Persia); youth, democracy (Greek world); manhood, aristocracy (Ancient Rome) and maturity (German monarchy). Old age here is understood not in the ordinary sense, as weakness, but old age as maturity, as perfection. The engine of the progress of history is freedom, the degree of awareness and development of freedom. This idea is sound enough; at the beginning of the 20th century, Nikolai Berdyaev, who disagreed with Hegel in many respects, would put forward approximately the same criterion of progress. But such a criterion of history as the degree of freedom, he also unconditionally accepted.

In the Eastern world, in the world of despotism, one despot was free, all the rest were not free and were aware of it. Not that they are in bondage and dissatisfied with it; no, they understand that they are not free by definition, by nature. That is why this world is a childhood, and such countries that are not able to realize this freedom, such as China and India, are generally deleted by Hegel from the historical process, they are before history. They have no idea about the emergence, development and destruction of the state. Such myths first appear only in Persia, it is there that people realize a certain freedom. The Persian religion, the religion of dualism, the struggle between good and evil, shows that freedom exists in order to fight evil in the way that a good God does.

In ancient Greece, and then in ancient Rome, only a few are free. In democratic and aristocratic states comes the realization that some people are free. And only with the coming to earth of Jesus Christ and the establishment of Christianity does conviction arise and the idea of the freedom of each person is realized. In Christianity, all people are free.

Thus, the development of world history is carried out. This is how Hegel understands the philosophy of history - as the procession of the spirit, the procession of God on earth, as progress in the understanding of freedom. Understanding himself more and more free, comprehending the tasks and plans of God, a person comes to know God and contributes to his own salvation. Therefore, according to Hegel, this does not in the least contradict the ideas of Christianity. It is in this reasonable philosophical way that he cognizes the path of Christian salvation.

This is where Hegel ends his consideration of the objective spirit and proceeds to the absolute spirit. The triad of the philosophy of spirit is subjective spirit, objective spirit, and absolute spirit. The absolute spirit is a synthesis of the first two provisions, and it is realized in the form of a triad - art, religion of revelation and philosophy. It is in these three forms that the social self-knowledge of the mind is realized. The entire development of the idea is directed towards the self-knowledge of the absolute idea. It, demanding the otherness of itself, passes into nature, and then unites with it, continues its self-knowledge, and its highest achievement, the self-knowledge of the mind, occurs in the absolute spirit.

Initially, this self-knowledge is carried out as an art in which, firstly, there is a division into the subject of creation and the object, i.e. the creator-artist and his work are understood as opposed to each other, and on the other hand, creation always occurs as an individual creation. A work of art is always a work of an individual, some kind of genius, who often does not know what he is doing. The world mind works through the genius, and the genius is a certain transmitter of the idea of the world mind. Therefore, this singularity of art must have as its antithesis, its opposite, the universality of religion, not just religion, but the true religion, which is Christianity, the religion of revelation.

In Christianity, God reveals Himself to people as something Universal, existing absolutely for Himself and in Himself, and therefore there is an opposition between the individual and the universal, in the form of the existence of art and religion. This opposition between the individual and the universal is removed by philosophy, which crowns the entire pyramid of Hegel's system. It is in philosophy that the spirit comprehends itself in its entirety - in the unity of the individual, the particular and the general.

Hegel was often forced to justify himself, because here it is easy to get two types of objection, as in fact. On the one hand, the objections of the Church. Any normal believer will not be satisfied with such a subordinate position of religion in relation to philosophy. On the other hand, the philosophers of the early 19th century, the age of enlightenment, are dissatisfied with the fact that philosophy should be based on religion and remove some of its contradictions, leaving the positive out of it. Therefore, Hegel, considering himself a Christian Lutheran, pointed out that in his system there is no contradiction between the religion of revelation and philosophy. In this case, the content is the same. Here we can only talk about the fact that in religion God reveals Himself to people, and in philosophy a person cognizes God. Reverse direction. The scholastic thinkers understood this difference in much the same way; for example, Thomas Aquinas said that religion and philosophy have the same subject, the methods of cognition differ. If in religion God gives certain fundamentals, reveals himself in certain truths, and a person explains the world on the basis of these provisions, then in philosophy, on the contrary, a person, based on his mind, comprehends certain provisions and through them ascends to God. Thomas Aquinas, identifying philosophy and religion, nevertheless pointed out that in religion there is an irrational, super-rational moment, which cannot be known in philosophy. These elements of religion include all the sacraments and many essential characteristics of God, such as His Trinity, Incarnation, etc.

According to Hegel, the unknowability of God is absurd. God is mind, and therefore He is fully knowable, and therefore both philosophy and religion coincide. It is in the knowability of God that Hegel sees the criterion for the evolution of religion. Religion, according to Hegel, also undergoes various stages of its development from its formation, its emergence to the arrival of an absolutely true religion, Christianity.

The first form of the existence of religion is natural religion (called by Hegel "natural religiosity"), in which man identified God with nature, saw only some forces in nature, identified them with divine intervention, and understood his complete and absolute lack of freedom. Man is subject to the world, he is part of it. It is impossible to talk about religion in the proper sense of the word, about the connection between man and God at this initial stage.

The first religious form is preceded by witchcraft and fetishism, in which there is a naive idea of spirituality. A person thinks that by means of his own spells, his own mind, he can influence the world, or honor certain things as if they had a spiritual beginning existing outside of them. At this stage, there is already some idea of the world as a spiritual entity, so this is a transitional stage to the emergence of a proper religious idea, which is pantheism.

Pantheism takes many forms.

1. The religion of measure (as Hegel called the Chinese religion). In Chinese religion, God was identified with the sky, and the sky was identified with the Ruler of the Middle Kingdom. There was already a clear hierarchy here - heaven, earth, in the center of the earth - the Celestial Empire, i.e. China, in the center of China, is the Ruler of China, and he is a god on earth, and everyone else is his slave. Therefore, fear of God is fear of the Ruler, complete slavery, complete awareness of one's own lack of freedom - everything is regulated, a person lives according to long-established laws. The main thing for such a person is the measure, i.e. routine.

2. The religion of fantasy. In his classification, Hegel gave this name to Brahmanism, Indian monistic pantheism. In it, Brahman is the only God, and the goal of religion is the union of man and God, in which there is also no freedom of man, there is, as it were, a departure from one’s earthly state to the divine, subordination of oneself to God, dissolution in Brahman.

3. The next form of religion is Buddhism, which Hegel called "the religion of being in itself." God is pure abstraction, pure nothingness, and the aim of religion is to unite with this "nothingness", i.e. going to nirvana.

4. The transitional religion to the next form is the religion of good or light, Persian Zoroastrianism, which for the first time realizes the opposition of the warring forces of good and evil. Thus, preparations are being made for the fact that a person can also be a participant in the world struggle between a good and evil god, light and darkness, for a person to realize his freedom.

5. Another transitional form of religion is the Phoenician religion of suffering, the religion of the god Adonis, which Hegel called "the religion of life." Here, the opposition of good and evil, life and death is removed, because according to Phoenician beliefs, the god Adonis was in a dead state for two days and then he himself resurrected, i.e. good and evil, life and death are in one God. Therefore, by removing in oneself the opposition between two gods and bringing this opposition to one god, there is a removal of the opposition, there is a transition to the religion of spiritual individuality.

6. The Egyptian religion is a religion of mystery, which also prepares for a religion of spiritual individuality. The main merit of this religion is the realization of individual immortality. As Hegel writes, the ancient Egyptians were so absorbed in the idea of immortality that they considered it their main task to achieve an afterlife existence. What do we have now from their palaces and dwellings? Nothing but rocks and dirt. And the pyramids, i.e. tombs and shrines stand and will stand for centuries, as Hegel rightly remarks

7. The next form of development of religious conception is the religion of spiritual individuality, in which the next stage of religious cognition of God and cognition of man is carried out. The religion of spiritual individuality is, first of all, the Jewish, Old Testament religion. It rises radically above all previous religions. In the Jewish religion, which Hegel called the "religion of the sublime," two main ideas stand out. First, the idea of creating the world out of nothing. This idea alone can elevate this religion above all others, in which God can only order what exists outside of him and therefore is not God. In Judaism, for the first time, the concept of God proper arises. This idea, as it were, removes the disadvantage of this religion, which is the absence of the idea of the immortality of the individual soul. In this "religion of sublimity", as Hegel noted, much attention is paid to the human mind, for it was in this that Hegel saw the meaning of the fall of man. Man, having eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, became the same as God, and history began from there.

The disadvantage of the “religion of exaltation”, the Jewish religion, is also its national limitations, the idea of the Jews as the only bearers of true religiosity.

8. This national limitation is removed in subsequent religions, primarily in the "religion of beauty", in the ancient Greek religion. In this religion, anyone can participate in the knowledge of God. Man comprehends his own essence, cognizes himself as a free being, and this is manifested in the creation of gods similar to man. Therefore, the main thing for the religion of beauty is spiritual freedom.

9. The ancient Roman "religion of expediency" differs from the lively, bright, picturesque religiosity of ancient Greece. The gods of ancient Rome are dry and serious, one might say, severe. It is positive that in this religion its main goal is the state. But this understanding of the state as the main value, in the absence of an understanding of the freedom of one and all, was transferred to the emperor. Therefore, just like in ancient China, the emperor was a god on earth. A contradiction arose between a person's awareness of himself as free and the identification of one emperor as a god. This contradiction is removed in Christianity.

10. Christianity Hegel calls "absolute and infinite religion." In Christianity, a person fully cognizes his freedom, although not immediately. At first, a person cannot immediately fully comprehend the gift that has fallen on him. He creates the Church, to which he transfers a part of his own freedom. The world mind, in order to introduce some dialectical moment into this existence of unfreedom, creates Mohammedanism, the purpose of which is to oppose itself to Christianity. The Crusades and other forms of confrontation between Christianity and Mohammedanism serve this very purpose. Fully realizing people themselves as free in Christianity is carried out only with the advent of Martin Luther. Only Lutheranism is the absolutely perfect form of true Christianity.

God is the Trinity, and it is in the trinity of God that Hegel sees the most important proof of the truth of the triadic method of his philosophy. God the Father is the thesis that exists in Himself and for Himself, it is the existence of God before the creation of the world. Here Hegel carries out a popular idea, which is first found in Augustine, the idea of dividing the world into the realm of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God the Father is the kingdom before the creation of the world. The Kingdom of God the Son is the time before the coming of Jesus Christ, before His resurrection and ascension, for after the events of the Gospel, after Jesus Christ ascended to heaven and united again with His Father, the creation of the world returned to its Creator. And therefore, this is the removal of the opposite that arose before the coming of the Savior, this is the true existence of the world, this is the kingdom of the Spirit.

As already mentioned, the highest form of self-consciousness is philosophy. Hegel examines the development of philosophy in the same detail in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, but we will not dwell on this.

Hegelian philosophy had a very serious influence on subsequent philosophy. It is customary to say that there is a left and a right Hegelianism. It is also customary to say that someone adopted the method from Hegel, and someone else adopted the system. The Hegelian method - dialectics, was inherited by neo-Hegelians, primarily Marx, who criticized Hegel for the fact that his system and method contradict each other, the dialectical method contradicts a rigid triadic system in which everything has its own place. Marx, as it were, brought Hegel's dialectic to the point of absurdity. If Hegel had at least one sound idea about some kind of hierarchical state of the world, that there is a spiritual and material principle in it, there is some kind of subordination of these two principles, and this is not subjected to dialectical doubt by Hegel, then Marx introduced dialectics here too.

Berdyaev pointed out that Hegel's religion is atheistic, because to show that Christianity grows out of previous forms of religiosity means reducing Christianity to a pre-religious state. On the other hand, to subordinate Christianity to philosophy, reason - in the end, we can free ourselves from Christianity, trusting only our reason, which happened. Although Hegel himself thought about good goals, about the knowledge of God and about philosophical love for Him, it is known where the road is paved with good intentions.

Therefore, the fruits of Hegelian philosophy are very, very sad, although there were many followers of Hegel on the part of religious thinkers. First of all, it is necessary to note the English philosopher of the late 19th century, Francis Bradley, a representative of the idealistic current of neo-Hegelianism. Early Ilyin had a passion for Hegel (his doctoral dissertation), although Ilyin himself later abandoned his Hegelianism.

Hegel's student was Ludwig Feuerbach, who literally turned Hegelian philosophy on its head, did what critical dialecticians did not expect from him, namely, he abandoned the concept of God. Since in Hegel the human mind and the Divine mind are one and the same mind, therefore the knowledge of God is the knowledge of man himself. Feuerbach will brilliantly, clearly and logically implement this idea.