Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic
Georg Hegel · en
But with the outward differentiation an inward went hand in hand. In
some cases the intellectual or scientific, in others the emotional, in
others the active faculties became predominant. Human nature in order
to attain all its completeness had first of all, as it were, to lose
its life in order to gain it. The individual had to sacrifice part of
his all-sided development in order that he might gain it again, and
in a larger measure, through the medium of society. This process is
the process of civilisation: the long and, as it often seems, weary
road by which man can only realise himself by self-sacrifice: can only
reach unity through the way of diversity, and must die to live. It is a
process in which it is but too easy to notice only one stage and speak
of it as if it were the whole. It is possible sometimes to identify
civilisation with the material increase in the means of producing
enjoyment, or with the progress of scientific teaching as to the laws
of those material phenomena on which material civilisation is largely
dependent. It is possible sometimes to take as its test the stores of
artistic works, and the extension of a lively and delicate love of all
that is beautiful and tasteful. One may identify it with a high-toned
moral life, and with an orderly social system. Or one may maintain that
the real civilisation of a country presupposes a lofty conception and
reverent attitude to the supreme source of all that is good, and true,
and beautiful.
The question is important as bearing on the relation of philosophy to
the special sciences. Philosophy is sometimes identified with the sum
of sciences: sometimes with their complete unification. Philosophy,
says a modern, is knowledge completely unified. It is of course to some
extent a question of words in what sense a term is to be defined. And
no one will dispute that the scientific element is in point of form the
most conspicuous aspect of philosophy. Yet if we look at the historical
use of the term, one or two considerations suggest themselves.
Philosophy, said an ancient, is the knowledge of things human and
divine. Again and again, it has claimed for its task to be a guide and
chart of human life--to reveal the form of good and of beauty. But to
do this, it must be more than a mere science, or than a mere system
of the sciences. Again, it has been urged by modern critics that Kant
at last discovered for philosophy her true province--the study of the
conditions and principles of human knowledge. But though epistemology
is all-important, the science of knowledge is not identical with
philosophy: nor did Kant himself think it was. Rather his view is on
the whole in accord with what he has called the 'world's (as opposed
to the scholar's) conception of philosophy[1],' as the science of the
bearing of all ascertainable truths on the essential aims of human
reason--_teleologia humanae rationis_,--in accord, too, with the
world's conception of the philosopher as no mere logician, but the