Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3) — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
It is shown from what has been said regarding the formal nature of the
Idea, that only a history of Philosophy thus regarded as a system of
development in Idea, is entitled to the name of Science: a collection
of facts constitutes no science. Only thus as a succession of phenomena
established through reason, and having as content just what is reason
and revealing it, does this history show that it is rational: it shows
that the events recorded are in reason. How should the whole of what
has taken place in reason not itself be rational? That faith must
surely be the more reasonable in which chance is not made ruler over
human affairs, and it is the business of Philosophy to recognize that
however much its own manifestations may be history likewise, it is yet
determined through the Idea alone.
Through these general preliminary conceptions the categories are now
determined, the more immediate application of which to the history of
Philosophy we have now to consider. This application will bring before
us the most significant aspects in this history.
a. _The development in Time of the various Philosophies._
The first question which may be asked in reference to this history,
concerns that distinction in regard to the manifestation of the Idea,
which has just been noticed. It is the question as to how it happens
that Philosophy appears to be a development in time and has a history.
The answer to this question encroaches on the metaphysics of Time, and
it would be a digression from our object to give here more than the
elements on which the answer rests.
It has been shown above in reference to the existence of Mind, that
its Being is its activity. Nature, on the contrary, is, as it is; its
changes are thus only repetitions, and its movements take the form of a
circle merely. To express this better, the activity of Mind is to know
itself. I am, immediately, but this I am only as a living organism;
as Mind I am only in so far as I know myself. _Γνῶθι σεαυτόν_, Know
thyself, the inscription over the temple of the oracle at Delphi,
is the absolute command which is expressed by Mind in its essential
character. But consciousness really implies that for myself, I am
object to myself. In forming this absolute division between what is
mine and myself, Mind constitutes its existence and establishes itself
as external to itself. It postulates itself in the externality which is
just the universal and the distinctive form of existence in Nature. But
one of the forms of externality is Time, and this form requires to be
further examined both in the Philosophy of Nature and the finite Mind.