: : Hegel isn't even saying anything; he's simply babbling and attempting to sound deep and profound.: Erm, no, what he is attempting to do, beneath a very bad case of Deutchephilosophenkrankheit (German philospohers isease, apparently they train them to write that way, and Hegel was a bastard with Elegent Variation...), was construct a throughgoing philosophical system, what underlies the definition above, is not an attempt to sound deap, nor even an attempt at original definition, but rather an application of this system.
: : 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?)
: Erm, no, thats is a description of Dialectic, but i'll let that pass, however, it sounds fairly liek his view of history...
And immeasurably unlike my own.
: : 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.
: Now this is simply the philistine comment of someone who doesn't understand something, and has decided that therefore it is worthless, I could come up with similaraly incomprehensible paragraphs from most stanard science text books, if I take them and quote them partially. I'd imagine you'd say the same of Kant after a brief struggle with teh Critque of pure reason.
No. The Critique while written in laborious terminology and one of the most difficult things I've attempted actually did make sense. I haven't finished and probably won't for some time as I have more immediate tasks. Hegel's is not nearly the most difficult read I've had; I'd give this award to Wilfred Sellar's "empiricism and the philosophy of mind", which is immensely meaningful although more convoluted then Hegel.
: i understood what I posted, basically, translated, it said that there is no definitive truth,
Which itself claims definitive truth-content.
: and objects may only be known by their relation to others....erm, which is basically what you say.
I know exactly where you're going here and I'm certain you're incorrect. However, it's an arguement that I'm out of my depth discussing. Sorry, but we'll need to bring it up later. We may sound like we talking the same thing, but I'm reasonably certain we're not.
: btw- may I recomend Francis 'End of History' Fukuyama to you, his a neo-liberal hegelian, I'm sure you'd love him.
I'm familiar with his stuff, which cause quite a stir when it came out. Mostly, because most liberals don't think we live in very liberal times.
: : Hegel's whole philosophy in one sentence is "what happens, happens; what doesn't, doesn't". Well, no shit.
: No, what happens had to happen which, compared, say, with a Empiricist approach to history, is actually quite a statement.
That's the whole thing. What happened could have happened infinitely different. We all make choices and live with the consequences and mistakes we have made we could have resisted and knowledge of them allows us to modify our approach in the future.
None.
