Hegel’s Philosophy of History and Kierkegaard’s Concept of History: A Synthesis Instead of a Confrontation
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Reference18 articles.
1. Hegel’s ‘Reason’ is not a static logical activity. As Arthur Berndtson argues: ‘reason for Hegel is not fixed and detached; it is an immanent process, which creates the logic, nature and mind.’ Arthur Berndtson, ‘Hegel, Reason and Reality’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 20, No. 1 (September 1959), p. 44.
2. Reason then must fulfil this historical task: to direct human communi ties into a specific political state that will provide the necessary conditions for the members of these communities to become free. Hegel’s PR shows emphatically Hegel’s view on how people can be ‘free’ and what the exact meaning of their ‘freedom’ is. As J. A. Leighton states: ‘Freedom is the Idea of Spirit... All the struggles of nations and individuals are stepping-stones by which men rise to freedom. J. A. Leighton, ‘Hegel’s Conception of God’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 5, No. 6 (November 1896), p. 611.
3. Hegel believes that, if we try to view history purely as an activity of single human beings, we will eventually end in a totally chaotic and meaningless historical universe. Social and ethical institutions and mainly organised states can guarantee us (in Hegel’s view) the necessary ‘objectivity’. S. W. Dyde in ‘Hegel’s Conception of Freedom’, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 3, No. 6, (November 1894), p. 664
4. Donald J. Maletz in ‘History in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, The Review of Politics, Vol. 45, No. 2 (April 1983), p. 222
5. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, translated by T. M. Knox, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 13.