Hegel

Hegel was born in 1770 and died in 1831. Looking at these dates in the context of time and history we discover that Hegel's influence and life work was during the French Revolution (1788 to 1804), the one year and two months of Great Terror (1793-1794), and the Napoleonic wars (1803 to 1815); this was the cultural, social and economic constraints with which he worked and formed his ideas. He wrote about human freedom, not utilitarianism (as J.S.Mill did), he was not interested in human rights, he had a new idea of freedom, not of liberty but of moral obligation and duty. If everyone obeys universal ideas such as 'I must not lie', 'I must not steal', 'I must not take my best mate's wife' then all will be well, no bad things, a free society of perfection.

Hegel was a German idealist. He was a devout Christian, very religious and interested in spirituality and mysticism which is a universal idea of all religions being connected to a consciousness oneness with or awareness of divinity. Some of his ideas are similar to those of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, that rights are given they are not universal or automatically given. Particular rights are age specific. Hegel is similar to Marx and Darwin in the idea of change and how everything is always changing or evolving. There is a self analysis and logical understanding for each individual which should become universal.

Private desires come into conflict with what a whole group may need or desire. Hegal looked at history and the current Prussian state to which he belonged and considered what was closest to a perfect society. He liked Ancient Greee in history and Prussia in his current time.

When you have a thought, you are thinking about something that steps towards change since everything according to Hegel is always changing. When you reach a conclusion about something that thing has already changed again, the thought might remain but the actual thing has moved on.

Geist is German word thats we cannot translate with absolute exactitude, but it is often thought of as mind, ghost or spirit. Because Hegel is a Christian, Geist can also mean God. There is the idea of paradise before Adam and Eve sinned and were sperated from God and that all history since then is the human attempt to re connect to God, one day there will be a reunion when Geist. Hegel is quite possibly the first philosopher of history.



Useful link that explains mysticism: http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/mysticism.html

The French Revolution Timeline: http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/timeline.htm

Change with meaning and pattern; dialectic based on the idea of the world being teleological: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic, and http://www.thefreedictionary.com/teleological