The Dialectic Process and World Spirit

 Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany  Study of philosophy and theology  Developed in the age of German Romanticism

 All thought was based upon pieces of a previous thought

Parmanides There is a constant stuff Change was impossible senses could not be trusted Heraclitus Nature flows Senses reliable Empedocles nothing changes AND Senses are reliable Late 1700s, early 1800s Thales: Its all water

 “I am nothing but a bundle of perceptions”

 Ideas are “faint images”  = Arise from our memory of impressions  Memories are associated in man’s imagination via: ◦ Resemblance ◦ Contiguity in time/place ◦ Cause and effect through principle of repetition  All these associative “principles” are learned, not innate!

 Descartes: an unalterable I, “Cogito ergo sum”  Hume ◦ The ego is a series of sense perceptions  “The mind is a kind of theater where several perceptions successively make their appearance: pass, re-pass, slide away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations” ◦ The so-called “I” is in perpetual flux ◦ Like the spoon, the self as an unchanging thing is an illusion

 Descartes ◦ the innate idea of a perfect being  The idea of a perfect, eternal, universal being is a concept without properties in this world  The idea must be given us from a source with such properties.  Hume ◦ God is not knowable through our senses ◦ …if in fact God is not just a false complex idea…

 Descartes 1.Outer reality could be fantasy 2.Mathematical properties confirm quantitative reality 3.Sense perceptions are subject to distortion and subjective – qualitative reality 4.But are we deceived completely about the world? 5.No: a perfect, universal, infinite being – which I’ve established must exist - would not, by definition, deceive us.

 According to David Hume ◦ Our senses are our source of knowledge ◦ A world is mediated through the senses… ◦ Big questions of ontology (study of being) are unanswerable…

Descartes Rationalism 1600s Hume Empiricism 1700s Kant’s blend Form of knowledge A priori and Content A posteriori Late 1700s, early 1800s

 Becomes an everlasting and continuous building on ideas  The strongest and most correct ideas survive through the dialectic process  The most rational and reasonable thinking survives as history

 Can history be viewed accurately in terms of the progress Hegel implies?  Is it true that the most correct or reasonable ideas survive and become the history we know today? Why or why not?

 The sum total of a state’s essence and personality; the sum total of the people who live in it

 “The spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."  The general cultural, intellectual, social and political climate within a nation in a given time

 A force that drives the progression of human history  This is the embodiment of all human culture, language, life, thought, and reason as humanity evolves  Through it man will be able to understand a teleological (purposeful) account of history

 Humanity advances toward a self-knowledge and self-development as it progresses in rationality and freedom  Human culture and human development have made the world spirit conscious of its intrinsic value  Developing toward an expanding knowledge of itself  History is the story of world spirit slowly gaining consciousness of itself  History is, therefore, both progressive and purposeful

 Unlike Descartes, Spinoza, Plato and other major philosophers, Hegel rejected the concept of inherited eternal truths  All truth is subjective and reflective of the time period in which it originated  Believed that human knowledge and cognition changed and evolved with each generation

 History can be seen as the equivalent to a flowing river  A river flows and is affected by tiny variables upstream  affected by the upstream variables, prior history  Eternal truths prove impossible to know in the middle because of positioning  No area of the river is the ‘truest’ part

 Do you believe that there is a reason for history? ◦ Why or why not?  Does man become more rational and more free as history progresses?  Are there any eternal truths?

 What is the difference between these two terms?  What is the reason for human history?

Being Nothing Becoming Reality

 The state is the highest embodiment of the dialectic process Thesis Antithesis Synthesis Family Individual State

 The state is seen as a complex spiritual organism as a realization of ethical ideas  It is in the state that the world spirit manifests itself in the world  That means that individuals are subservient to the greater progress of the nation

 In three stages 1.World spirit conscious of itself- subjective spirit 2.Higher consciousness of the family, civil society, and state- objective spirit 3.World spirit achieves self-realization – absolute spirit ◦  Absolute spirit is art, religion, and philosophy  Is the goal of history to reach absolutes  But there has been none during the course of history  Philosophy is the highest form of knowledge because the world spirit reflects on its own impact on history

 Does God develop? Does God grow through human history and become more…  Does God learn through human history?

 The universe is rational and directed by a dialectic toward one absolute truth embodied in the world spirit ◦ The world spirit may be called God  The truth exists only as a whole of history  The dialectic is the process through which the truth is realized

 Falcone, Vincent J. Great Thinkers, Great Ideas. Norwalk: Cranbury Publications,  Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World. New York: Berkley Books,  "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( )." The European Graduate School. The European Graduate School. 4 June  "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Quotes." BrainyQuote. 2 June  "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 13 Feb Stanford University. 30 May  Kreis, Steven. "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( )." Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. 28 Feb The History Guide. 4 June 2008.