I don't have the time right now to fully respond; I'll try to do so later. However, let me quote Hegel from the Philosophy of Nature on sound and heat:"Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts,a dn in teh negation of this condition ;--merely and abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e.--heat. The heating up of shounding bodies, just as of beaten or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating concptually together with sound." and "Heat is the self-restoration of matter in its formlessness, its liquidity the triumph of its abstract homogeneity over specific definiteness, its abstract, purely self-existing continuity, as negation of negation, is here set as activity". And The Philosophy of Nature is full of such definitions.
Hegel isn't even saying anything; he's simply babbling and attempting to sound deep and profound.
And the philosophy of history always comes down to, although I'm sure Hegel would try and dialectically find a way out, the following:
Each age has its necessary developments and philosophies for its particular age. Since real=ideal then whatever is real is ideal and, hence, rational. Thus, any development, any change, any possible future is in itself absolutely rational as the world-spirit moves humanity towards Absolute Knowledge. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini . . . each and every one a necessary development given the stages humanity was passing through at the time. Anything that ever happens does so because 'it occurs in its ideal reality within the absolute pervading continuity of advancing conceptuality of the absolute subjectivity of the objective world-spirit' (am I dialectical enough, yet?)
Marx made rational, although flawed and incorrect, assertions regarding humanity and its progress. Hegel just babbled. In fact, most of what I saw posted didn't even mean anything; it was simply profundity intertwined with profundity. On the most abstract level, even my denial of any validity of Hegel's thought should fall within Hegel's absolute dialectic. It produces it's own negation, as Hegel would have said, and is completely self-defeating and contradictory. Such philosophy takes a few true observations (see below)and then mixes it with insane babble to produce profound nonsense.
Hegel's whole philosophy in one sentence is "what happens, happens; what doesn't, doesn't". Well, no shit. While this may be completely true it says aboslutely nothing about how we, as human beings, can operate in this world and it therefore is completely irrelevant and void of any real (or is it ideal? heh heh) meaning. Hegel's philosophy is the most insane, irrational, and nonsensical system ever developed in history, but it truisms make it sound deep and profound and this accounts for its prevasive and utter corruption of thought.
More later.
