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
which does not further reveal itself, does not beget the content from
itself, but receives it. The Spirit which bears witness is further
itself distinguished from me as an individual; my testifying spirit is
another, and there only remains to me the empty shell of passivity.
Conditioned by this inflexible standpoint, Philosophy had to go forth
once more. The first working up of this content, the inward operation of
universal thought in the same, is the task scholastic philosophy has to
undertake. The opposition between faith and reason forms the end arrived
at; reason, on the one hand, feels the necessity of setting to work on
nature in order to obtain immediate certainty, and on the other hand of
finding in genuine thought, in specific production out of self, this same
satisfaction.
We must now speak of the methods and manners of the scholastics. In this
scholastic activity thought pursues its work quite apart from all regard
to experience; we no longer hear anything of taking up actuality and
determining it through thought. Although the Notion came into recognition
earlier than this, in Aristotle, in the first place, the Notion was not
apprehended as the necessity of carrying the content further; for this
was received in its successive manifestations, and there was present
merely an intermingling of actuality accepted as truth and of thought.
Still less, in the second place, was the greater part of the content
permeated by Notions, for this content was taken up superficially into
the form of thought—more especially with the Stoics and Epicureans.
The scholastic philosophy altogether dissociates itself from any such
endeavours; it leaves actuality to exist alongside itself as if it were
despised and had no interest. For reason found its true existence, its
actualization, in another world and not in this; the whole progress of
the cultivated world goes, however, to the re-instalment of a faith in
the present world. Nevertheless, at first all knowledge and action, and
whatever relates to an interest in this world, were entirely banished.
Branches of knowledge that pertain to such ordinary matters as sight and
hearing, restful contemplation and occupation with ordinary actuality
here found no place; nor did such sciences as recognize a definite
sphere of actuality after their own particular fashion, and constitute
the material for genuine philosophy, nor arts which give to the Idea a
sensuous existence. Likewise law and right, the recognition of the actual
man, were not esteemed as pertaining to the social relationships of life,
but to some other sphere. In this absence of rationality in the actual,
or of rationality which has its actuality in ordinary existence, is found
the utter barbarism of thought, in that it keeps to another world, and
does not have the Notion of reason—the Notion that the certainty of self
is all truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account