Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic — John Shaqi
Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His LogicWallace, William
Philosophy
Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic
Wallace, William
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831; Logic
'But,' it is urged, 'though it be well to let the stream of foreign
thought irrigate some of our philosophical pastures, though we should
not for ever entrench ourselves in our insularity--why try to introduce
Hegel, of all philosophers confessedly the most obscure? Why not be
content with the study and the "exploitation" of Kant, whom Germans
themselves still think so important as to expound him with endless
comment and criticism, and who has at length found, after some
skirmishes, a recognised place in the English philosophical curriculum?
Why seek for more Teutonic thinking that can be found in Schopenhauer,
and found there in a clear and noble style, luminous in the highest
degree, and touching with no merely academic abstruseness the problems
of life and death? Or--as that song is sweetest to men which is the
newest to ring in their ears--why not render accessible to English
readers the numerous and suggestive works of Eduard von Hartmann,
and of Friedrich Nietzsche--not to mention Robert Hamerling[1]? Or,
finally, why not give us more and ever more translations of the works
in logic, ethics, psychology, or metaphysics, of those many admirable
teachers in the German universities, whom it would be invidious to
try to single out by name? As for Hegel, his system, in the native
land of the philosopher, is utterly discredited; its influence is
extinct; it is dead as a door-nail. It is a pity to waste labour and
distract attention, and that in English lands, where there are plenty
of problems of our own to solve, by an attempt, which must perforce be
futile, to resuscitate these defunctitudes?'
That Hegelianism has been utterly discredited, in certain quarters, is
no discovery reserved for these later days. But on this matter perhaps
we may borrow an analogy. If the reader will be at the trouble to take
up two English newspapers of opposite partisanship and compare the
reports from their foreign correspondents on some question of home
politics, he may, if a novice, be surprised to learn that according
to one, the opinion e. g. of Vienna is wholly adverse to the measure,
while, according to the other, that opinion entirely approves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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