Hegel’s View of Human History?
Question by johnbecker00001: Hegel’s view of human history?
Summarize Hegel’s view of human history and human progress
Best answer:
Answer by Yaoi Shonen-ai
Read it yourself. I did. I’d be an idiot for trying to “summarize” here.
Answer by joseph
Hegel’s lectures on the Philosophy of World History.
(1) The Oriental Realm (mind in its immediate substance)
Here Spirit exists in its substantiality (objectivity) without inward differentiation. Individuals have no self-consciousness of personality or of rights–they are still immersed in external nature (and their divinities are naturalistic as well). Hegel characterizes this stage as one of consciousness in its immediacy, where subjectivity and substantiality are unmediated. In his Philosophy of History Hegel discusses China, India, and Persia specifically and suggests that these cultures do not actually have a history but rather are subject to natural cyclical processes. The typical governments of these cultures are theocratic and more particularly despotism, aristocracy, and monarchy respectively. Persia and Egypt are seen as transitional from these “unhistorical” and “non-political” states. Hegel calls this period the “childhood” of Spirit.
(2) The Greek Realm (mind in the simple unity of subjective and objective)
In this realm, we have the mixing of subjective freedom and substantiality in the ethical life of the Greek polis, because the ancient Greek city-states give expression to personal individuality for those who are free and have status. However, the relation of individual to the state is not self-conscious but is unreflective and based on obedience to custom and tradition. Hence, the immediate union of subjectivity with the substantial mind is unstable and leads to fragmentation. This is the period of the “adolescence” of Spirit.
(3) The Roman Realm (mind in its abstract universality)
At this stage, individual personality is recognized in formal rights, thus including a level of reflection absent in the Greek realm of “beautiful freedom.” Here freedom is difficult because the universal subjugates individuals, i.e., the state becomes an abstraction over above its citizens who must be sacrificed to the severe demands of a state in which individuals form a homogeneous mass. A tension between the two principles of individuality and universality ensues, manifesting itself in the formation of political despotism and insurgency against it. This realm gives expression to the “manhood” of Spirit.
(4) The Germanic Realm (reconciled unity of subjective and objective mind)
This realm comprises along with Germany and the Nordic peoples the major European nations (France, Italy, Spain) along with England. The principle of subjective freedom comes to the fore in such a way as to be made explicit in the life of Spirit and also mediated with substantiality. This involves a gradual development that begins with the rise of Christianity and its spiritual reconciliation of inner and outer life and culminates in the appearance of the modern nation-state, the rational Idea of which is articulated in the Philosophy of Right. (Along the way there are several milestones Hegel discusses in his Philosophy of History that are especially important in the developing of the self-consciousness of freedom, in particular the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution.) One of the significant features of the modern world is the overcoming of the antithesis of church and state that developed in the Medieval period. This final stage of Spirit is mature “old age.”
In sum, for Hegel the modern nation-state can be said to manifest a “personality” and a self-consciousness of its inherent nature and goals, indeed a self-awareness of everything which is implicit in its concept, and is able to act rationally and in accordance with its self-awareness. The modern nation-state is a “spiritual individual,” the true historical individual, precisely because of the level of realization of self-consciousness that it actualizes. The development of the perfected nation-state is the end or goal of history because it provides an optimal level of realization of self-consciousness, a more comprehensive level of realization of freedom than mere natural individuals, or other forms of human organization, can produce.
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