Welcome to The Debate. Today, we are taking on
what you might call the final boss of philosophy.
We are standing at the edge of the modern world,
looking back at the man who claimed, in a sense,
to have finished the job of thinking. We are
talking about George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
A man whose ambition was so terrifyingly vast
that he didn't just want to understand the world.
He wanted to, well, swallow it whole. Art, religion,
science, history. politics. He wanted to grind
it all down into one single unified logical system.
Grind it down is a violent way to put it. I would
say he wanted to reveal the architecture of reality
itself. I mean, Hegel, writing in the early 19th
century, isn't just another philosopher in the
canon. He is the pivot point. Before him, we
have the scattered fragments of the Enlightenment.
After him, we have, well, everything from Marxism
to existentialism. My argument today is that
Hegel offers us the only tool that can actually
make sense of the chaos we live in. He shows
us that history isn't just one damn thing after
another. It's a rational progression toward freedom.
And that is exactly the problem for me. Because
when you look at the slaughter bench of history,
the wars, the plagues, the oppression, and you
try to tell me it's all rational, You aren't
just doing philosophy anymore. You're justifying
suffering. My position is that Hegel's absolute
idealism is a magnificent, crystalline cage.
It's a totalizing system that suffocates the
individual in favor of the whole. I think you're
judging the building before you've even walked
through the door. Let's ground this. The year
is 1806. Hegel is in Jena. He's finishing his
first masterpiece, The Phenomenology of Spirit.
Outside his window, the French army is dismantling
the old Prussian order. The Battle of Jena, right?
Exactly. And Hegel sees Napoleon riding through
the city on reconnaissance. He writes this letter
to his friend Niekmar, and he says he saw the
world's soul on horseback. It's the perfect hook,
you know? Hegel didn't see a tyrant or a celebrity.
He saw an individual who, in that specific moment,
embodied the driving force of history. He saw
the universal concept of the age packed into
a single human being. And this is the core of
his thought. The true is the whole. You cannot
understand the individual, Napoleon, you, me,
without understanding the entire historical system
that produced us. But notice what happens in
that story. Napoleon is the active agent, the
world soul. Hegel is just the guy watching from
the window, writing a letter about it. And that
brings me to my main critique. Hegel himself
admitted that philosophy always comes too late.
He used the metaphor of the owl of Minerva. The
bird of wisdom. Yes, the bird that only takes
flight at dusk. Hegel explicitly says philosophy
paints its gray in gray. It can only understand
a shape of life when it has grown old and is
ready to die. This implies that his system is
fundamentally retrospective. It's an autopsy.
It explains why the patient died, but it offers
zero guidance on how the living should live.
I mean, if he's right, we are just puppets of
this world spirit, and philosophy is just a scorecard
we read after the game is over. That is a very
cynical reading. Of a profound insight. Hegel
isn't saying we're helpless. He's saying you
cannot step outside of your own time. You can't
play God. To understand your future, you must
first understand the logic of your past. And
this brings us to the engine of that logic. We
have to talk about Geist. The concept that scares
everyone away. Only because it's mistranslated.
People hear spirit. And they think of ghosts
or some kind of mystical deity. But Geist implies
mind, culture, spirit, and intellect all at once.
It's the collective structure of human consciousness.
It's the us that is bigger than any me. Hegel's
revolutionary idea is that this mind isn't static.
It learns. It develops through history. And how
does it learn? This is where we have to get into
the weeds of the dialectic. We do. And we need
to perform an exorcism right now. If you took
a Philosophy 101 class, you were probably taught
that Hegel's method is thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
And you're going to tell me that's wrong? It's
not just wrong. It's a fabrication. Hegel almost
never used those terms. That was a simplification
by a critic named Chalibas. Hegel's actual movement
is much more organic. And frankly, much more
dangerous to your worldview. It centers on the
German concept of Aufhebel. Which is untranslatable,
but give it a shot. Aufhebung means three things
simultaneously. To cancel, to preserve, and to
lift up. That sounds like a paradox. It's how
life works. Think about the process of learning
a complex skill, like playing the piano. When
you first start, you have to consciously think
about where every finger goes. That's the first
stage. As you get better, you cancel that awkward,
conscious effort. You don't think about your
fingers anymore. But you preserve the skill.
The technique is still there, embedded in your
muscles. And you are lifted up to the level of
making music, where you can express emotion.
You couldn't get to the music without the drills,
but the music supersedes the drills. That's a
lovely aesthetic metaphor. But Hegel applies
this logic to history and to human suffering.
He argues that truth emerges from error. He says
in The Phenomenology that you can't learn to
swim without getting in the water. You have to
risk being wrong to find the truth. Is that not
the scientific method? We fail our way to success?
In science, yes. In history, failing means wars,
genocides, and slavery. My issue with Alf Habing
is that it functions like a philosophical magic
trick. It allows Hegel to look at any atrocity
and say, ah, well, that was just a necessary
contradiction that the spirit had to work through
to get to the next level. It justifies the means
by the ends. It treats individual human lives
as fuel for the engine of history. You're focusing
on the coast, but you are ignoring the purchase.
What is being bought with that struggle? Freedom.
Hegel argues that without that friction, without
that collision of opposing forces, we would be
stagnant. We would be innocent, perhaps, but
we would be unconscious. The true is the whole.
You cannot separate the result from the process.
But the process he describes relies on a very
grim view of human nature. I mean, we need to
talk about his most famous example of this friction,
the Lord and Bondsman. Or master and servant,
Herrschaft und Kneckschaft. Right. This is chapter
four of the phenomenology. It's the section that
set Marx and the existentialists on fire. Hegel
is trying to explain how we become self -conscious.
How do I know I am an I? And he doesn't say it
happens by sitting in a chair and thinking, I
think, therefore I am. He says it happens through
a fight to the death. It happens through the
desire for recognition. Honor keno. But look
at the scenario. Two consciousnesses meet in
the wild. They don't wave. They don't trade.
They immediately try to destroy one another.
Why? To prove that they are free. To prove that
they value their self more than their mere biological
survival. It implies that the fundamental atom
of society is violence. No, it implies that the
fundamental atom is social. That's the key. You're
missing the twist. Yes, they fight. One gets
scared of dying and submits. He becomes the bondsman.
The winner becomes the Lord. But Hegel shows
us that the Lord actually loses. He wins the
fight but loses the war. Exactly. The Lord wants
recognition. He wants to be acknowledged as a
superior being. But who acknowledges him? The
slave. A person he doesn't respect. A person
he treats as a thing. So his victory is hollow.
He's looking in a mirror that is broken. And
the slave? The slave is forced to work. He has
to suppress his own desires and obey. But through
that work, he transforms nature. He builds a
house. He plants a field. He crafts an object.
He looks at the world and sees the product of
his own mind standing there. He realizes that
he is the one with the power to shape reality.
Hegel's arguing that the path to freedom goes
through service and labor, not empty domination.
I agree that the psychological insight is brilliant.
The idea that we need reciprocal recognition,
that I can only be free if I acknowledge you
are free, is the basis of all modern rights.
But Hegel frames this as a historical necessity.
He seems to say that slavery was a necessary
phase we had to go through to learn this lesson.
He says it was a phase that happened and that
we learned from it. And that leads us directly
to politics. Because Hegel didn't stop at two
guys fighting in a field. He scaled this up to
the state. And this is where he gets into, well,
a lot of trouble. The philosophy of right. Yes.
the book where he allegedly becomes the PR agent
for the king of Prussia. He famously wrote, what
is rational is actual, and what is actual is
rational. One of the most maligned sentences
in the history of ideas. Is it? It sounds remarkably
like a command to obey. If the state exists,
it is actual. If it is actual, it is rational.
Therefore, if you rebel against the state, you
are rebelling against reason itself. It's the
ultimate conservative silencer. That is the interpretation
of someone who hasn't read the rest of the book.
You have to understand his terminology. For Hegel,
there is a difference between existence, existence,
and actuality, Wirklichkeit. A passing cloud
exists. A typo in a book exists. But they aren't
actual, in Hegel's sense. Actuality is the synthesis
of essence and existence. It is something that
is fully at work staying itself, fulfilling its
purpose. When Hegel says the state is rational,
he isn't talking about the specific flawed government
of 1820 Berlin. He is talking about the idea
of the state, the institutions, laws, and norms
that make freedom possible. But he was writing
checks that the Prussian reality couldn't cash.
He claims the state is the actuality of the ethical
idea. He distinguishes this from abstract right.
Yes, abstract right is just property and contract.
It's libertarianism. Stay off my lawn. Morality
is subjective. I mean well. But ethical life,
or sitlischkeit, is the family, civil society,
and the state. Hegel argues that you cannot be
free alone. You can only be free inside a rational
community that gives you laws to obey. Freedom
isn't the absence of constraints. It is the presence
of rational constraints that you self -legislate.
That is a very slippery slope. Freedom is the
presence of constraints. That is the language
of every authoritarian who ever lived. And let's
look at who Hegel thought was capable of this
rational freedom. We have to address the end
of history problem. It is a schematic view of
progress, yes. It's a schematic that creates
a hierarchy of humanity. Hegel divides history
into three big clunky epics. The Oriental world,
where only one is free, the despot. The Greco
-Roman world, where some are free, the citizens
but not the slaves. And the Germanic Christian
world, where all are free. And is that not the
trajectory of history? The expansion of the circle
of rights? It's a trajectory that conveniently
ends with him. It suggests that 19th century
Europe was the pinnacle of human development.
In his anthropology, he makes claims about climate
determining potential. He dismisses entire continents.
And regarding slavery, while you defend his endpoint,
we have to acknowledge that he viewed ancient
slavery as a transitional phase that was necessary
to discipline the human spirit. We have to be
precise here. Heidel was writing at a time of
limited anthropological knowledge, and I won't
defend his prejudices, but on the philosophical
point of slavery in the modern world, he was
unequivocal. In The Philosophy of Right, he states
that slavery is incompatible with the rational
state. He didn't say it was good, he said it
was a wrong, but, and this is the hard part,
he viewed it as a wrong that history had to work
through. Work through? Again, that cold mechanical
language. My objection isn't that he was a man
of his time. It's that his system provides a
retroactive license for atrocity. It tells the
victims of history, your suffering was just a
stepping stone for our enlightenment. It is easy
to say that when you're the professor in the
lecture hall, not the person in the hull of the
ship. I feel the weight of that. But I ask you,
what is the alternative? If we reject the idea
that there is reason in history, what are we
left with? A slaughter bench. A pile of meaningless
tragedies. Hegel offers the difficult hope that
humanity is actually going somewhere. That we
are learning. That the arc of the moral universe
is long, but it bends towards justice. Or maybe
it just bends toward power. And speaking of power,
let's look at the ultimate power, God. Hegel
claims to be a Lutheran. He talks about providence
constantly. But I would argue his system dissolves
religion entirely. Dissolves it? He places it
near the very top. He places it below philosophy.
And that is the kill shot. Hegel argues that
absolute spirit has three modes, art, religion,
and philosophy. They all look at the same truth.
Art sees it in stone and paint. Religion sees
it in representation, stories, images, metaphors.
But philosophy? Philosophy sees it in the concept.
Pure thought. Exactly. He argues that Christianity
is the consummate religion because the Trinity
maps onto a dialectic. God the Father is the
universal. The Son is the particular. The Holy
Spirit is the synthesis. He translates the mystery
of faith into the logic of a syllogism. He doesn't
destroy the mystery. He penetrates it. Hegel
saw that the modern world was becoming disenchanted.
We couldn't just believe because a priest told
us to anymore. We needed to understand. He elevates
religion by showing that its core dogmas are
rational. The incarnation isn't just a magic
trick. It's the profound truth that the infinite
must become finite to know itself. God needs
man just as much as man needs God. But once you
explain the concept of the joke, it isn't funny.
And once you explain the concept of God, it isn't
worship. It's a seminar. It becomes an intellectual
exercise. He rejects the Lutheran sola scriptura,
scripture alone, and replaces it with ratification
by thought. The system becomes the new God. I
disagree. I think he saves faith for the modern
intellectual. He allows you to be a believer
without checking your brain at the door. I think
he turns the believer into a philosopher, which
is a demotion. But this brings us back to the
central tension of his legacy. You have this
massive totalizing system. And yet the moment
he died, his followers split into two warring
camps. The right Hegelians and the left Hegelians.
The right Hegelians looked at the system and
said, the real is the rational, so let's support
the Prussian state and the church. The left Hegelians,
people like Feuerbach and Marx, looked at the
dialectic and said, everything that exists is
doomed to perish. The dialectic demands revolution.
Which proves my point. The fact that his system
could spawn both conservatism and Marxism shows
that it captured the total dynamic of reality.
It didn't break. It evolved. The conflict between
right and left is the history of the last two
centuries. We are still living in the world Hegel
described. Or we are still trapped in the cage
he built. I don't see a cage. I see a ladder.
Hegel teaches us that we are not isolated atoms.
We are social historical beings. We are shaped
by institutions, and we shape them in return.
Reason itself has a history. If we want to understand
our freedom, we have to understand the whole
process that got us here. And I see a warning.
I see a brilliant attempt to make sense of the
world that ends up explaining away the individual.
The owl of Minerva taking flight at dusk is a
confession of impotence. It suggests we can only
understand our cage, not break it. As Marx famously
critiqued, the philosophers have only interpreted
the world. The point is to change it. But you
cannot change what you do not understand. That
is the final lesson. Action without comprehension
is just blind chaos. Hegel asks us to open our
eyes to the structure of reality before we try
to smash it. And he asks us to trust that the
structure is benevolent. That is a leap of faith
I am not willing to take. Well, whether the owl
has truly taken flight or if we're still stumbling
in the dark is something our listeners will have
to decide. Indeed. And for those brave enough
to try, the phenomenology is waiting. It's a
path of despair, but it's a hell of a ride. Thank
you for listening to The Debate.