The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes — John Shaqi
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
Philosophy
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
German literature -- 19th century -- Translations into English; German literature -- 20th century -- Translations into English
There is eternal and
total instability everywhere. But this unrest and instability is of a
necessary and uniform nature, according to the one eternally fixed
principle which renders the universe as a whole organic and orderly.
Organic Wholeness! This phrase contains the rationale of the restless
flow and the evanescent being of the Hegelian world. It is but from the
point of view of the whole that its countless conflicts, discrepancies,
and contradictions can be understood. As the members of the body find
only in the body as a whole their _raison d'être_, so the manifold
expressions of the world are the expressions of one organism. A hand
which is cut off, as Hegel somewhere remarks, still looks like a hand,
and exists; but it is not a real hand. Similarly any part of the world,
severed from its connection with the whole, any isolated historical
event, any one religious view, any particular scientific explanation,
any single social body, any mere individual person, is like an amputated
bodily organ. Hegel's view of the world as organic depends upon
exhibiting the partial and abstract nature of other views. In his
_Phenomenology_ a variety of interpretations of the world and of the
meaning and destiny of life are scrutinized as to their adequacy and
concreteness. When not challenged, the point of view of common sense,
for instance, seems concrete and natural. The reaction of common sense
to the world is direct and practical, it has few questions to ask, and
philosophic speculations appear to it abstract and barren. But, upon
analysis, it is the common sense view that stands revealed as abstract
and barren. For an abstract object is one that does not fully correspond
to the rich and manifold reality; it is incomplete and one-sided.
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