Hegel and The Philosophy of History

[DallasCowboys]

Hi Guys/ Gals,

Let me start by apologizing for not being able to give my input on some of the other threads I have started, my second year of college has just begun and I have been quite busy. In my seminar history class that I am required to take we were assigned Hegel's Philosophy of History for homework, and I must say I don't really understand it. It all comes off as nonsense to me. I have tried looking for simple summaries of his philosophy on history and haven't had much luck. If anyone can explain to me how he viewed history and why Ayn Rand disagreed with it, it would be very helpful to me.

Thank You,

David C.

[Jerry Biggers]

Assigned to read Hegel's Philosophy of History? Wow. What comes after that? Never mind.

Hegel is generally considered to be the philosophical forerunner of modern totalitarianism - both Naziism and of course he had a major infulence on Karl Marx who developed communist ideology based on a Hegelian dialectical foundation.One of the classic essays that tears Hegel's version of the dialectic to shreds, is "What is the Dialectic?," by Karl Popper, included in his collection of essays, Conjectures and Refutations. He also goes after Hegel in his monumental two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies, which focuses on Plato and Hegel as the forerunners to the establishment of the totalitarian state.

Hegel is also discussed, from an Objectivist viewpoint, in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1981). (Peikoff is the author, but Rand required him to make so many revisions that the book was delayed for about 14 years. On that basis, I think it would be fair to say that she is the co-author!) This book is about to be re-issued with a new title, The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

[DallasCowboys]

Assigned to read Hegel's Philosophy of History? Wow. What comes after that? Never mind.

Hegel is generally considered to be the philosophical forerunner of modern totalitarianism - both Naziism and of course he had a major infulence on Karl Marx who developed communist ideology based on a Hegelian dialectical foundation.One of the classic essays that tears Hegel's version of the dialectic to shreds, is "What is the Dialectic?," by Karl Popper, included in his collection of essays, Conjectures and Refutations. He also goes after Hegel in his monumental two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies, which focuses on Plato and Hegel as the forerunners to the establishment of the totalitarian state.

Hegel is also discussed, from an Objectivist viewpoint, in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1981). (Peikoff is the author, but Rand required him to make so many revisions that the book was delayed for about 14 years. On that basis, I think it would be fair to say that she is the co-author!) This book is about to be re-issued with a new title, The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

Thank you so much, we are reading Marx next if you were wondering. The whole point in this class is to show us how to study history properly.

[Jerry Biggers]

Re: "how to study history properly.": You may also wish to consider Popper's The Poverty of Historicism, considered by many to be one of the most important philosophical books of the 20th century. (Popper states that the title is a play - and answer to - Marx's "The Poverty of Philosophy").

At any rate, see the discussion of this book at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Historicism-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415278465/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410010039&sr=1-6&keywords=karl+popper

[Wolf DeVoon]

The whole point in this class is to show us how to study history properly.

Hegel and then Marx? -- that's an agenda, not remotely connected to history, unless it's a left-wing history of German idealism. History is supposed to look at documentary evidence. What else was going on at the time? Hegel lived 1770-1831, Marx 1818-1883. That century was bristling with industrial and commercial progress, especially in the United States. Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821). US Civil War (1860-65). British Raj (1858). Screw-propeller steamships (1839). Intercity railroads (1830). Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

Intellectual history: Voltaire (1694–1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Jefferson (1743-1826)

[Jerry Biggers]

Here is a link to an mp3 recording (the price is listed, I think, $19.95) of a lecture series surveying modern philosophy, by Leonard Peikoff. The course dates from at least the early 1970s, but may be the same as the course given at Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) in the late 1960s. Lecture 4 is specifically on Hegel, but the lectures preceding and following it may also reference Hegel. This course pre-dates the later book by Peikoff mentioned earlier (The Ominous Parallels), so some of the material may overlap:

(Note: the link below gives a brief summary of the philosophers covered in each lecture)

.https://estore.aynrand.org/p/96/modern-philosophy-kant-to-the-present-mp3-download.

[DallasCowboys]

Here is a link to an mp3 recording (the price is listed, I think, $19.95) of a lecture series surveying modern philosophy, by Leonard Peikoff. The course dates from at least the early 1970s, but may be the same as the course given at Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) in the late 1960s. Lecture 4 is specifically on Hegel, but the lectures preceding and following it may also reference Hegel. This course pre-dates the later book by Peikoff mentioned earlier (The Ominous Parallels), so some of the material may overlap:

.https://estore.aynrand.org/p/96/modern-philosophy-kant-to-the-present-mp3-download.

I will definitely listen to this, thanks so much. This is gonna be one brutal class to make it through.

[DallasCowboys]

The whole point in this class is to show us how to study history properly.

Hegel and then Marx? -- that's an agenda, not remotely connected to history, unless it's a left-wing history of German idealism. History is supposed to look at documentary evidence. What else was going on at the time? Hegel lived 1770-1831, Marx 1818-1883. That century was bristling with industrial and commercial progress, especially in the United States. Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821). US Civil War (1860-65). British Raj (1858). Screw-propeller steamships (1839). Intercity railroads (1830). Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

Intellectual history: Voltaire (1694–1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Jefferson (1743-1826)

It is so difficult to find someone who teaches history objectively. The whole point in reading Marx and Hegel, is we are going to use how they studied history and apply that method to the partisan of India.

[BaalChatzaf]

It is so difficult to find someone who teaches history objectively. The whole point in reading Marx and Hegel, is we are going to use how they studied history and apply that method to the partisan of India.

History as a study and discipline cannot be completely objective. Why? Prior to the current moment there are a trillion trillion or more events that brought about the conditions of the current motive. All we can do is select a very small subset of these events which have left traces in the present time and draw conclusion from this paltry sampling. The fact that we -must- pick and chose the events we study precludes completeness and objectivity in history.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[DallasCowboys]

It is so difficult to find someone who teaches history objectively. The whole point in reading Marx and Hegel, is we are going to use how they studied history and apply that method to the partisan of India.

History as a study and discipline cannot be completely objective. Why? Prior to the current moment there are a trillion trillion or more events that brought about the conditions of the current motive. All we can do is select a very small subset of these events which have left traces in the present time and draw conclusion from this paltry sampling. The fact that we -must- pick and chose the events we study precludes completeness and objectivity in history.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You are right, let me correct myself, I don't want my teachers opinion on the conclusions we draw from the "paltry sampling". If we conclude Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, I don't want my teachers opinion on his death. As students we should draw our own conclusions.

[Jerry Biggers]

David, I am curious regarding the course you are taking.. What other books (besides Hegel and Marx) and/or articles are being assigned? If your instructor is basing his course on "how to study history properly" on Hegel and Marx as his guides of choice (or their modern followers) then his intent ideologically, seems clear. If he is a Marxist (not unusual in academic history departments!), then he would not take kindly to mention of Rand. If he bristles at Popper, then I would be concerned.

Nevertheleess, many professors grade without regard to their students' ideological orientation. What he or she is up to will likely be clear early in the course.

[DallasCowboys]

David, I am curious regarding the course you are taking.. What other books (besides Hegel and Marx) and/or articles are being assigned? If your instructor is basing his course on "how to study history properly" on Hegel and Marx as his guides of choice (or their modern followers) then his intent ideologically, seems clear. If he is a Marxist (not unusual in academic history departments!), then he would not take kindly to mention of Rand. If he bristles at Popper, then I would be concerned.

Nevertheleess, many professors grade without regard to their students' ideological orientation. What he or she is up to will likely be clear early in the course.

We are reading several books pertaining to the partisan of India and we are going to use how Marx and Hegel study history and apply it to the partisan. I listed the books we are reading along with Hegel and Marx below,

Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, and Political Economy. 3rd

ed. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 2000.

Carr, E.H. What is History? New York: Vintage, 1961.

Pandey, Gyanendra. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India. New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. Kolkata: Ravi Dayal, 1988.

Talbot, Ian and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India. New York: Cambridge University Press,

2009.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Partition of India, a really crap subject.

In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab region, between 200,000 to 500,000 people were killed in the retributive genocide. UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history...

Late in 1946, the Labour government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948. However, with the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines in stark opposition to Gandhi's views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The communal violence that accompanied announcement of the Radcliffe Line, the line of partition, was even more horrific.

"Of the violence that accompanied the Partition of India, historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh write:

There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims. The catalogue of horrors includes the disembowelling of pregnant women, the slamming of babies' heads against brick walls, the cutting off of victims limbs and genitalia and the display of heads and corpses. While previous communal riots had been deadly, the scale and level of brutality was unprecedented.

[Wikipedia]

Nothing Hegelian or Marxist about the partition of India. Britain was flat broke at the end of WWI, unable to keep the peace.

[Peter]

Here is a quote I found from Karl Popper that mentions Hegel.

Peter

Popper has argued (I think successfully) that a scientific idea can never be proven true, because no matter how many observations seem to agree with it, it may still be wrong. On the other hand, a single contrary experiment can prove a theory forever false.

The Problem of Induction (1953, 1974)

Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition) by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not possess anything of the sort. My opinion is that we can readily admit that we possess something which may be described as 'intellectual intuition'; or more precisely, that certain of our intellectual experiences may be thus described Everybody who 'understands' an idea, or a point of view, or an arithmetical method, for instance, multiplication, in the sense that he has 'got the feel of it', might be said to understand that thing intuitively; and there are countless intellectual experiences of that kind. But I would insist, on the other hand, that these experiences, important as they may be for our scientific endeavours, can never serve to establish the truth of any idea or theory, however strongly somebody may feel, intuitively, that it must be true, or that it is 'self-evident'." Such intuitions cannot even serve as an argument, although they may encourage us to look for arguments. For somebody else may have just as strong an intuition that the same theory is false. The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident; Francis Bacon, for example, sneered at those who denied the self-evident truth that the sun and the stars rotated round the earth, which was obviously at rest. Intuition undoubtedly plays a great part in the life of a scientist, just as it does in the life of a poet. It leads him to his discoveries. But it may also lead him to his failures. And it always remains his private affair, as it were. Science does not ask how he has got his ideas, it is only interested in arguments that can be tested by everybody. The great mathematician, Gauss, described this situation very neatly once when he exclaimed: 'I have got my result; but I do not know yet how to get it.' All this applies, of course, to Aristotle's doctrine of intellectual intuition of so-called essences, which was propagated by Hegel and in our own time by E. Husserl and his numerous pupils; and it indicates that the 'intellectual intuition of essences' or 'pure phenomenology', as Husserl calls it, is a method of neither science nor philosophy . (The much debated question whether it is a new invention, as the pure phenomenologists think, or perhaps a version of Cartesianism or Hegelianism, can be easily decided; it is a version of Aristotelianism.) . . . .

Let us consider briefly how these two typical results of Aristotelianism have arisen. Aristotle insisted that demonstration or proof, and definition, are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge. Considering the doctrine of proof first, it cannot be denied that it has led to countless attempts to prove more than can be proved; medieval philosophy is full of this scholasticism and the same tendency can be observed, on the Continent, down to Kant. It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The new tendency is to discard proofs, and with them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as follows: 19 'The character of honesty that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works of all Previous philosophers, disappears here completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.'

[DallasCowboys]

Partition of India, a really crap subject.

In the riots which preceded the partition in the Punjab region, between 200,000 to 500,000 people were killed in the retributive genocide. UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history...

Late in 1946, the Labour government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948. However, with the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines in stark opposition to Gandhi's views. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned to the new India and predominantly Muslim areas to the new nation of Pakistan; the plan included a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. The communal violence that accompanied announcement of the Radcliffe Line, the line of partition, was even more horrific.

"Of the violence that accompanied the Partition of India, historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh write:

There are numerous eyewitness accounts of the maiming and mutilation of victims. The catalogue of horrors includes the disembowelling of pregnant women, the slamming of babies' heads against brick walls, the cutting off of victims limbs and genitalia and the display of heads and corpses. While previous communal riots had been deadly, the scale and level of brutality was unprecedented.

[Wikipedia]

Nothing Hegelian or Marxist about the partition of India. Britain was flat broke at the end of WWI, unable to keep the peace.

I agree it has nothing to do with Marx or Hegel that's why I find our reading of them rather out of place.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

David,

Hang in there.

Ayn Rand studied at the University of Leningrad. In 1924 she got her degree in history.

Imagine what that must have been like.

Michael

[Samson Corwell]

Assigned to read Hegel's Philosophy of History? Wow. What comes after that? Never mind.

Hegel is generally considered to be the philosophical forerunner of modern totalitarianism - both Naziism and of course he had a major infulence on Karl Marx who developed communist ideology based on a Hegelian dialectical foundation.One of the classic essays that tears Hegel's version of the dialectic to shreds, is "What is the Dialectic?," by Karl Popper, included in his collection of essays, Conjectures and Refutations. He also goes after Hegel in his monumental two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies, which focuses on Plato and Hegel as the forerunners to the establishment of the totalitarian state.

Hegel is also discussed, from an Objectivist viewpoint, in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1981). (Peikoff is the author, but Rand required him to make so many revisions that the book was delayed for about 14 years. On that basis, I think it would be fair to say that she is the co-author!) This book is about to be re-issued with a new title, The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

A contrary opinion on Popper from Voegelin: ""This Popper has been for years, not exactly a stone against which one stumbles, but a troublesome pebble that I must continually nudge from the path, in that he is constantly pushed upon me by people who insist that his work on the 'open society and its enemies' is one of the social science masterpieces of our times. … In that Popper violated this elementary vocational duty and stole several hours of my lifetime, which I devoted in fulfilling my vocational duty, I feel completely justified in saying without reservation that this book is impudent, dilettantish crap.".

I have heard most of those things are mischaracterizations.

[BaalChatzaf]

Assigned to read Hegel's Philosophy of History? Wow. What comes after that? Never mind.

Hegel is generally considered to be the philosophical forerunner of modern totalitarianism - both Naziism and of course he had a major infulence on Karl Marx who developed communist ideology based on a Hegelian dialectical foundation.One of the classic essays that tears Hegel's version of the dialectic to shreds, is "What is the Dialectic?," by Karl Popper, included in his collection of essays, Conjectures and Refutations. He also goes after Hegel in his monumental two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies, which focuses on Plato and Hegel as the forerunners to the establishment of the totalitarian state.

Hegel is also discussed, from an Objectivist viewpoint, in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1981). (Peikoff is the author, but Rand required him to make so many revisions that the book was delayed for about 14 years. On that basis, I think it would be fair to say that she is the co-author!) This book is about to be re-issued with a new title, The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

A contrary opinion on Popper from Voegelin: ""This Popper has been for years, not exactly a stone against which one stumbles, but a troublesome pebble that I must continually nudge from the path, in that he is constantly pushed upon me by people who insist that his work on the 'open society and its enemies' is one of the social science masterpieces of our times. … In that Popper violated this elementary vocational duty and stole several hours of my lifetime, which I devoted in fulfilling my vocational duty, I feel completely justified in saying without reservation that this book is impudent, dilettantish crap.".

I have heard most of those things are mischaracterizations.

He did not steal your hours. You donated them.

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is a quote I found from Karl Popper that mentions Hegel.

Peter

Popper has argued (I think successfully) that a scientific idea can never be proven true, because no matter how many observations seem to agree with it, it may still be wrong. On the other hand, a single contrary experiment can prove a theory forever false.

The Problem of Induction (1953, 1974)

Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition) by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not possess anything of the sort. My opinion is that we can readily admit that we possess something which may be described as 'intellectual intuition'; or more precisely, that certain of our intellectual experiences may be thus described Everybody who 'understands' an idea, or a point of view, or an arithmetical method, for instance, multiplication, in the sense that he has 'got the feel of it', might be said to understand that thing intuitively; and there are countless intellectual experiences of that kind. But I would insist, on the other hand, that these experiences, important as they may be for our scientific endeavours, can never serve to establish the truth of any idea or theory, however strongly somebody may feel, intuitively, that it must be true, or that it is 'self-evident'." Such intuitions cannot even serve as an argument, although they may encourage us to look for arguments. For somebody else may have just as strong an intuition that the same theory is false. The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident; Francis Bacon, for example, sneered at those who denied the self-evident truth that the sun and the stars rotated round the earth, which was obviously at rest. Intuition undoubtedly plays a great part in the life of a scientist, just as it does in the life of a poet. It leads him to his discoveries. But it may also lead him to his failures. And it always remains his private affair, as it were. Science does not ask how he has got his ideas, it is only interested in arguments that can be tested by everybody. The great mathematician, Gauss, described this situation very neatly once when he exclaimed: 'I have got my result; but I do not know yet how to get it.' All this applies, of course, to Aristotle's doctrine of intellectual intuition of so-called essences, which was propagated by Hegel and in our own time by E. Husserl and his numerous pupils; and it indicates that the 'intellectual intuition of essences' or 'pure phenomenology', as Husserl calls it, is a method of neither science nor philosophy . (The much debated question whether it is a new invention, as the pure phenomenologists think, or perhaps a version of Cartesianism or Hegelianism, can be easily decided; it is a version of Aristotelianism.) . . . .

Let us consider briefly how these two typical results of Aristotelianism have arisen. Aristotle insisted that demonstration or proof, and definition, are the two fundamental methods of obtaining knowledge. Considering the doctrine of proof first, it cannot be denied that it has led to countless attempts to prove more than can be proved; medieval philosophy is full of this scholasticism and the same tendency can be observed, on the Continent, down to Kant. It was Kant's criticism of all attempts to prove the existence of God which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The new tendency is to discard proofs, and with them, any kind of rational argument. With the romantics, a new kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer the 'age of dishonesty', is described by him as follows: 19 'The character of honesty that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works of all Previous philosophers, disappears here completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.'

Popper was right as rain on that one. No general universal proposition can be inferred from a finite set of instances, unless that finite set happens to be all the instances of the predicate being generalized. No matter how good a scientific theory is, there is no guarantee that a falsifying event will not occur sometime in the future. Newtonian Gravitation, an excellent theory was ultimately falsified by the anomalous precession of the perihelion of Mercury. This was something Newton could not have seen because telescope optics had not progressed sufficiently in Newton's day.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Samson Corwell]

Assigned to read Hegel's Philosophy of History? Wow. What comes after that? Never mind.

Hegel is generally considered to be the philosophical forerunner of modern totalitarianism - both Naziism and of course he had a major infulence on Karl Marx who developed communist ideology based on a Hegelian dialectical foundation.One of the classic essays that tears Hegel's version of the dialectic to shreds, is "What is the Dialectic?," by Karl Popper, included in his collection of essays, Conjectures and Refutations. He also goes after Hegel in his monumental two-volume The Open Society and Its Enemies, which focuses on Plato and Hegel as the forerunners to the establishment of the totalitarian state.

Hegel is also discussed, from an Objectivist viewpoint, in Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America (1981). (Peikoff is the author, but Rand required him to make so many revisions that the book was delayed for about 14 years. On that basis, I think it would be fair to say that she is the co-author!) This book is about to be re-issued with a new title, The Cause of Hitler's Germany.

A contrary opinion on Popper from Voegelin: ""This Popper has been for years, not exactly a stone against which one stumbles, but a troublesome pebble that I must continually nudge from the path, in that he is constantly pushed upon me by people who insist that his work on the 'open society and its enemies' is one of the social science masterpieces of our times. … In that Popper violated this elementary vocational duty and stole several hours of my lifetime, which I devoted in fulfilling my vocational duty, I feel completely justified in saying without reservation that this book is impudent, dilettantish crap.".

I have heard most of those things are mischaracterizations.

He did not steal your hours. You donated them.

Heh. Points for funny.

[syrakusos]

Hi Guys/ Gals,

If anyone can explain to me how he viewed history and why Ayn Rand disagreed with it, it would be very helpful to me.

Thank You,

David C.

I have a serious problem with "literature in translation." If you are not reading it in the original, all you are getting is a second-hand interpretation. Myself, my first class in German was before the 7th grade at an experimental summer school at Western Reserve University (now Case-Western) in Cleveland. My SAT scores in German were higher than my SAT scores in English. I last used German for work when employed by the Carl Zeiss Foundation 1997-1998. That being as it may, I never read Hegel in German.

Hegel believed that the Prussian state was the highest Idea of History.

He believed that History has a Goal. It achieves this Goal by a processes of Dialectic. Opposites become new Beginnings.

Ayn Rand never to my knowledge addressed Hegel directly.

It is true that his philosophy is the basis for both communism and fascism.

[DallasCowboys]

David,

Hang in there.

Ayn Rand studied at the University of Leningrad. In 1924 she got her degree in history.

Imagine what that must have been like.

Michael

I am certainly going to try my best. It would be easier if it was just this class but I also have a Vietnam class from a teacher who has to say how evil Fox News is in every sentence. For the record, I do plan on becoming a college professor and when I do I am going to teach history as objectivly as possible. We shall see what happens, my one fear is that I am not nearly as patient as Ayn Rand was.

David C

[DallasCowboys]

Hi Guys/ Gals,

If anyone can explain to me how he viewed history and why Ayn Rand disagreed with it, it would be very helpful to me.

Thank You,

David C.

I have a serious problem with "literature in translation." If you are not reading it in the original, all you are getting is a second-hand interpretation. Myself, my first class in German was before the 7th grade at an experimental summer school at Western Reserve University (now Case-Western) in Cleveland. My SAT scores in German were higher than my SAT scores in English. I last used German for work when employed by the Carl Zeiss Foundation 1997-1998. That being as it may, I never read Hegel in German.

Hegel believed that the Prussian state was the highest Idea of History.

He believed that History has a Goal. It achieves this Goal by a processes of Dialectic. Opposites become new Beginnings.

Ayn Rand never to my knowledge addressed Hegel directly.

It is true that his philosophy is the basis for both communism and fascism.

Thank you so much, I agree the best way to form an opinion is from the source. I sadly don't speak German, though I would love to, I have been interested in trying Rosetta stone. By the way, just so it is clear it wasn't out of left field, I asked what Ayn Rand's opinion on Hegel was because on her lexicon website she mentioned him once or twice in a not so positive light. Just so everyone who has posted in this thread knows I have been doing research on the Hegel Dialectic and this site http://www.therightplanet.com/2014/01/hegelian-dialectics-for-dummies/ was quite helpful, I suggest anyone interested give it a read.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In the age of Google, there is no excuse for not checking claims and doubts about what Rand wrote, at the very least on a superficial level. Especially a statement like the following:

Ayn Rand never to my knowledge addressed Hegel directly.

That didn't sound right to me. So I Googled it to see if there was something that would jar my memory.

Yup. There it was right there on the first page of Google results. From Philosophy: Who Needs It (my emphasis).

You might claim — as most people do — that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure — nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish." You got it from Kant. Have you heard the modern activists say: "Act first, think afterward"? They got it from John Dewey.

Some people might answer: "Sure, I've said those things at different times, but I don't have to believe that stuff all of the time. It may have been true yesterday, but it's not true today." They got it from Hegel. They might say: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." They got it from a very little mind, Emerson. They might say: "But can't one compromise and borrow different ideas from different philosophies according to the expediency of the moment?" They got it from Richard Nixon — who got it from William James.

. . .

There is a special reason why you, the future leaders of the United States Army, need to be philosophically armed today. You are the target of a special attack by the Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that dominates our cultural institutions at present.

The phrase "Hegelian universe" kept coming to mind when I thought of this and, on another Google search, I was gratified to find the following quote from a partial transcript of the interviews Barbara did with Ayn in preparation for Who is Ayn Rand? right here on OL (my emphasis):

Biographical Interview with AR; interview #18

. . .

... "And it’s only Nathan that kept a steady point in a Hegelian universe in the sense that he could judge the culture and the situation much better than I could at that time.”

I remember some other stuff, too, but these excerpts are good enough for a surface check.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

He believed that History has a Goal. It achieves this Goal by a processes of Dialectic. Opposites become new Beginnings.

History is one damned thing after another.

Ba'al Chatzaf