Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
perception of the individual; for it really sets to work to find the
species, the universal, to discover laws. Now because it does this, it
comes within the territory of the Notion—it begets what pertains to the
region of the Idea; it thus prepares the empirical material for the
Notion, so that the latter can then receive it ready for its use. If
the science is perfected the Idea must certainly issue forth of itself;
science as such no longer commences from the empiric. But in order that
this science may come into existence, we must have the progression from
the individual and particular to the universal—an activity which is a
reaction on the given material of empiricism in order to bring about its
reconstruction. The demand of _a priori_ knowledge, which seems to imply
that the Idea should construct from itself, is thus a reconstruction
only, or what is in religion accomplished through sentiment and feeling.
Without the working out of the empirical sciences on their own account,
Philosophy could not have reached further than with the ancients. The
whole of the Idea in itself is science as perfected and complete; but
the other side is the beginning, the process of its origination. This
process of the origination of science is different from its process in
itself when it is complete, just as is the process of the history of
Philosophy and that of Philosophy itself. In every science principles are
commenced with; at the first these are the results of the particular,
but if the science is completed they are made the beginning. The case
is similar with Philosophy; the working out of the empirical side has
really become the conditioning of the Idea, so that this last may reach
its full development and determination. For instance, in order that the
history of the Philosophy of modern times may exist, we must have a
history of Philosophy in general, the process of Philosophy during so
many thousand years; mind must have followed this long road in order
that the Philosophy may be produced. In consciousness it then adopts the
attitude of having cut away the bridge from behind it; it appears to be
free to launch forth in its ether only, and to develop without resistance
in this medium; but it is another matter to attain to this ether and
to development in it. We must not overlook the fact that Philosophy
would not have come into existence without this process, for mind is
essentially a working upon something different.
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