German Idealism of The 18th-19th Centuries

The Philosophical Doctrine of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770 into the family of a civil servant. After graduating from the Tübingen seminary, where he studied from 1788 to 1793 alongside future poet Friedrich Hölderlin and philosopher F. W. J. Schelling, he worked as a private tutor in Bern and Frankfurt. In 1801, Hegel became a privat-docent at the University of Jena after defending his dissertation titled "On the Orbits of Planets." Through his philosophy lectures, Hegel gradually overcame his dependence on transcendentalism, which had influenced him for a time, and began to develop his own philosophical system. In February 1805, he was appointed extraordinary professor but interrupted his teaching due to the war with France. From 1807 to 1808, Hegel published a newspaper in Bamberg, and from 1808 to 1816, he served as the director of a gymnasium in Nuremberg while continuing his philosophical pursuits.

In Jena in 1807, he wrote "The Phenomenology of Spirit," and in Nuremberg from 1812 to 1816, he composed the "Science of Logic." Finally, in Heidelberg, where he was invited as a professor at the university, he created the "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" (1817). In 1818, Hegel became a professor at the University of Berlin and served as its rector in 1829. His work "Foundations of the Philosophy of Right, or Science of Natural Law and the State" was published in 1821. On November 14, 1831, at the height of his fame and recognition, Hegel unexpectedly passed away from cholera.

In "The Phenomenology of Spirit," Hegel portrays the spiritual culture of humanity as a unified, law-governed process of development, the foundation and driving force of which is the objective and impersonal "World Spirit," which gradually manifests itself in successive cultural forms. Simultaneously, within this process, the World Spirit comes to know itself as its own creator. Knowledge begins with the naming of sensibly given things and culminates in "absolute knowledge," which represents a complete awareness of the laws guiding the process of spiritual development, finding expression in science, morality, religion, art, and politics. The primary stages of the development of the "World Spirit" are reflected in the spiritual growth of the individual.

The principle of the identity of thought and being, consistently applied in the "Phenomenology," interprets the world as the manifestation of spirit moving toward the awareness of its own essence and retains its significance thereafter. The universal scheme of the creative activity of the "World Spirit" is termed the absolute idea.

Hegel declares thought to be the "subject" and creator of all that exists in nature, history, and culture, attributing to it eternity and timelessness, thereby aligning the concept of the idea with that of God. However, unlike the theistic God, the idea finds consciousness, will, and personality only in humanity, while before this and beyond it, it operates as an internally law-like necessity.

According to Hegel, the first stage in the development of the absolute idea is logic. Logic is the movement in the form of concepts. The path of the concept is envisioned as a multi-stage ascent from the initial abstract definitions, through the realm of essence, to the concept in its highest, true understanding—the "concrete" concept, which encompasses the richness of all definitions. Throughout his life, Hegel presented these ideas in various texts, the most detailed and well-known of which is the "Science of Logic."

Hegel begins with the consideration of the simplest and most impoverished definition. The first step of knowledge asserts that the object of thought exists. Thus, the first of the logical categories that describe the movement of thought must be being. This being cannot be felt, observed, or imagined. It represents the most impoverished abstraction, something devoid of any properties or definitions. In essence, this being equates to nothingness, for nothingness is a complete absence of definitions. However, the identity (the coincidence) of these two (being and nothingness) is not empty; it signifies the transition from one to the other, that is, becoming.

This is the first concrete (substantive) definition. In becoming, pure being and pure nothingness are negated (simultaneously preserved and denied, according to Hegel). Their combination is contradictory and dynamic; it aspires, as its aim, to a certain equilibrium—peace, and upon achieving it, transforms into "actual being." In contrast to pure (and unlimited) being, "actual being" presents itself as limited, defined being—as a quality, as "this," distinct from "the other." Thus, in actual being, two aspects are clarified: "being-in-itself" and "being-for-another." Quality (that which the object is) unfolds initially only in relation to another, and only after that—through its "relations"—does it return to itself (the moment of negation, the denial of the other), becoming "being-for-itself." Conversely, the definition that has become indifferent to its being is quantity. The form of the relationship between quality and quantity is measure. It is the final category of Hegel's teaching on being. Everything that exists has its measure. Since quantity and quality are interconnected, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes.

In the form of negated moments of measure, quality and quantity still retain their nature; thus, within certain limits, quantity may change without affecting quality. However, measure imposes a qualitative limit on the increase and decrease of quantity. From this, Hegel derives the definition that measure is the relation of qualitatively determined quantities. Quality, quantity, and measure, according to Hegel, are not independent entities but merely states of a certain stable substrate (bearer). This substrate, which underlies all changes, is essence.

The concept of measure concludes the teaching on being. Following it is the doctrine of essence as a realm of "reflective definitions." Hegel designates this section as the most complex in logic. It begins with appearance, that is, "measure reflected as insubstantial and groundless being." The reflection of being into itself yields identity, in which, however, the seed of difference is embedded. The deepening of difference leads to "contradiction," which resolves in "ground." The ground justifies existence, while existence unfolds into "appearance," which then merges with essence in the totality of reality.

A significant feature of the categories of essence is that, unlike the categories of being, characterized by the co-presence of opposites, here there is a reflective interpenetration of opposites, in which phenomenon and essence, identity and difference, cause and effect, etc., "shine" into one another.

Essence, in its existence, is appearance. This means that essence cannot exist in "pure form," by itself; it is available only in the phenomena of the objective world. However, the latter also do not exist by themselves; they always serve as expressions of a certain essence. "Essence reveals itself, while the phenomenon is essential," Hegel writes. Essence is deeper, but the phenomenon is richer. The repeated, identical in phenomena forms the law. Like essence, the law is not something external to the phenomenon, but is directly inherent to it.

The unity of essence and appearance constitutes reality. Reality differs from existence in that it encompasses, firstly, possibility, and secondly, necessity. Reality is not only realized possibility but also the real possibilities for further development inherent in what exists today. Real possibility should be distinguished from abstract (formal) possibility. However, any abstract possibility, under changed conditions, can transform into a real one.

The realistically possible, according to Hegel, is necessary. Thus, necessity is a component of reality. What is real is only that which is inexorably brought to life by substantial, lawful factors. However, like essence, necessity does not present itself directly; it is always clad in its opposite—contingency. The contingent is that which may or may not occur, be this or that; its being is not based on itself but on something else. The task of science, and particularly philosophy, is to discern the necessity concealed beneath the appearance of contingency.

The teaching on essence concludes with an analysis of causality. A cause produces an effect equal to itself. In this sense, the causal relationship is tautological and direct. Hegel opposes the search for distant causes. If a person finds themselves in circumstances that foster the development of their talent due to the loss of a father killed in battle, then the fateful shot is not the cause of that person's mastery. For Hegel, the cause is not the entire set of factors that conditioned this phenomenon, but only what precedes and generates it. Causal connection is merely a fragment of the universal dependence of phenomena, artificially isolated from it.

Hegel referred to the doctrine of being and the doctrine of essence as "objective logic." The third part of logic—the doctrine of the concept—is "subjective logic." However, since the object and subject in Hegel's philosophy are identical, both objective and subjective logic turn out to be teachings, on the one hand, about the movement of things, and on the other, about the thought that comprehends them.

The doctrine of concepts begins with topics traditionally examined by formal logic: concepts, judgments, and inferences. Hegel aims to establish the epistemic value of these forms of thought, to construct a classification of them in accordance with the realities of knowledge development, and to explore their interrelations as a continuation of the relations of things, thereby depicting them in motion and development.

This doctrine is divided into three main sections: "Subjectivity," "Objectivity," and "Idea." In the logic of concepts, Hegel adheres to the categorical sequence characteristic of formal logic: he begins with concepts, proceeds to judgments, and then to inferences. However, this movement constitutes the external contour of a dialectical endeavor grounded in the ontologization of thought forms.

The true essence of the doctrine of concepts is as follows: formal logic, asserting "S is P," does not concern itself with the truth of the judgment, that is, whether S truly is P; instead, dialectical logic tests "is" for its truth. Hegel asserts that concepts "live" not in the human mind, but in the things themselves. Hegel's logic culminates in an analysis of the idea of truth.

Truth is the congruence of concept and objectivity. There is no abstract truth; truth is always concrete. Particular (partial) sciences reveal reality in an abstract manner, that is, one-sidedly, abstracting from its diversity, and thus do not contain truth. Truth is the subject of philosophy, where knowledge finds its multifacetedness and specificity. Moreover, this is no longer the specificity of the sensibly perceived individual object but a different, logical specificity achieved by considering concepts not in isolation but in their mutually contradictory relationships and transitions within a system. The world is an organic whole in development, and the only true knowledge of it is the system of categories of dialectics.

However, for Hegel, truth is not merely the correspondence of a concept to an object but also the correspondence of an object to its concept. In examining an object, we must determine whether it aligns with its concept and whether it contains truth within itself. Since truth is objective, it must not only be discovered but also realized. Thus, truth as the idea of knowledge manifests in two forms: theoretical and practical. The unity of theory and practice constitutes the "absolute idea." In it, the pinnacle of the logical self-development of spirit is achieved.

According to Hegel's design, the second part of his philosophical system is the philosophy of nature. Generally, nature, the material world, is conceived by Hegel as a form of other-being, a consequence of the self-alienation of the absolute idea. However, the logical development of the idea precedes nature not in time, for the latter exists only in nature; development in time pertains to the idea solely at the stage of "spirit," that is, in the life of humanity and society. Thus, Hegel believed that evolution is not inherent to nature. Nature (with its temporal coordinates) is limited and defined by the timeless and transcendent idea, thus coexisting in what appears to be "simultaneously" and in the interrelationship of all forms—from the highest to the lowest. While we may observe a series of sequential stages in the complexity of nature, the highest of which is life, the evolutionary view of nature proves clumsy—indeed, natural forms do not experience development. Nature is but a petrified spirit, an empty shell of genuine development that takes place within the realm of logical entities. It should neither be worshiped nor, especially, placed above humanity with its culture and history.

The third part of Hegel's system is the philosophy of spirit. When, in its self-development, the idea reaches the stage of spirit, it transitions to self-awareness. The philosophy of spirit encompasses the doctrine of subjective, objective, and absolute spirit. These concepts first appear in the "Phenomenology of Spirit." Hegel defines them, respectively, as personal consciousness, the history of society, and "objective forms" of law, morality, and ethical life, ultimately leading to forms of social consciousness—culture, art, religion, and philosophy (including aesthetics, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophical contemplation of philosophy itself and its history).

The doctrine of subjective spirit divides into anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. Anthropology studies the "soul"—that part of human spiritual activity directly connected to its physicality. Hegel considers the psyche to be naturally determined, citing racial and national differences as examples. However, since humanity can define itself through reason, he opposes racism, advocating for the equality of all people.

The soul is merely the "dream of spirit" (its possibility, precondition, but not cause). Spirit awakens in consciousness, which, in turn, is the subject of another science—phenomenology. Phenomenology examines consciousness as such, along with self-consciousness and reason. Initially, an individual views themselves as something opposed to an object. At the next stage, one comes to know oneself through another consciousness, perceiving their individuality through the personality of another. Ultimately, at the level of reason, an individual uncovers their identity with the spiritual substance of the world, "re-objects" the objective world.

Having traversed the stage of subjective spirit and subordinated its states, freeing itself internally and becoming a rational free spirit, the spirit realizes its free will in the objective world. At this stage, the individual spirit must grasp that all that is given externally, everything that opposes it, is spirit. Humanity subjugates nature, morally and politically overcoming its illusory separation from others and immersing itself in the concealed universal within its individuality. In this process, genuine individuality is achieved, identical to the national spirit. The objective spirit undergoes three stages of development. In the first, it realizes itself in legal relations. The stage of law is opposed by the stage of morality, which alters it as a demand of subjective conscious will. The synthesis of these stages is morality, manifested in the family, civil society, and the state. Since morality encompasses both the legal and the ethical, it becomes the highest form of the objective spirit. The ultimate stage of moral realization is the state that corresponds to its concept, synthesizing the subjective and objective in the national spirit and serving as the bearer of the absolute spirit, the final stage of the spirit's development.

Hegel's contribution to world philosophy lies in his first comprehensive consideration of the entire natural, historical, and spiritual world as a process, making an effort to reveal it in its internal connections. He systematically articulated a dialectical worldview and its corresponding dialectical method of inquiry. Hegel developed dialectics as a philosophical science that generalizes the entire history of knowledge and investigates the most general laws of the development of objective reality.

Thus, the absolute idea, revealing itself in the world, is not a static, immutable substance. It exists in motion and development. Everything real is a result of this process. Philosophy reflects its movement, manifesting as a system of organically interconnected concepts that necessarily arise from one another. The driving force of the development of thought is contradiction, that is, the presence of mutually implicating and negating aspects (relations, moments) within a single, holistic object, which must be elucidated in the movement of knowledge. Contradictory thinking is not erroneous. On the contrary, it has absorbed the contradictions of its object, transforming them into contradictions of thought (that is, into its own contradictions) and must inevitably resolve these contradictions in theoretical form, creating a genuine (correct, adequate) reflection of the object. Concepts that oppose each other are "sublated" (negated and preserved simultaneously) in a third, broader, more substantive, and more concrete concept, to which they are merely moments of its becoming. Once their contradiction is overcome, the new concept will inevitably become a moment of a new contradiction. The development is relentless. According to Hegel, the absolute, in its eternal self-creation, passes through all contradictions, forming and sublating them, and acquires clearer self-awareness at each step of this path. Only through such a movement of concepts can philosophy correspond to the living reality it is called to depict.

Later, Marxism generalized and systematized Hegelian dialectics in the form of the so-called "three laws of dialectics," which were not addressed by Hegel himself: the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, the law of the mutual transition of quantitative and qualitative changes, and the law of the negation of negation (or dialectical negation).

Thus, German idealism represents a significant stage in the history of world philosophical thought, spanning half a century of intense intellectual development, extraordinarily rich in content and fruitful in consequences for the entire cultural history of humanity.

The philosophers whose ideas have been examined above—Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel—are but the most prominent luminaries in the constellation of illustrious names. Alongside them lived and worked Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) and August Schlegel (1767-1845), Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), Friedrich Jacobi (1743-1819), and other brilliant thinkers. The diversity of ideas and doctrines they proposed, however, shares several significant common traits that allow us to interpret German idealism as a unified spiritual phenomenon:

— First and foremost, there is a shared understanding of the significance of philosophy in the history of humanity. Philosophy is conceived as both the quintessence and a critical self-reflection of culture.

— In the works of the German idealists, philosophy emerges as a specific domain of knowledge. It does not coincide with the standards of rationality established in the natural sciences; yet, it possesses qualities of precision, rigor, and systematicity.

— Through the efforts of the German idealists, philosophy took the form of an intricate system of specialized disciplines, complete with a clearly defined and deeply developed categorical apparatus of high levels of abstraction and generality.

— Dialectics became the universal method of philosophical inquiry.

— An important common trait among all representatives of German idealism is their adherence to the principles of freedom and humanistic values in their exploration of humanity and history.

— The development of humanity received scientific-theoretical interpretation. The thesis that the driving force of history lies not in the views and motivations of individuals but in objective laws (though the latter was conceived as derived from some ideal substance) subsequently engendered profound shifts in the understanding of the nature of social relations and their development.

German idealism sought to address the questions humanity has posed since the inception of philosophy. The answers it provided were shaped by its epoch. Nevertheless, its contribution to the evolution of philosophical thought remains an invaluable legacy that will forever be etched in the intellectual history of humankind.