Some objections i raised during a discussion with someone on the importance of Hegel and his "survival" in the contemporary philosophy. If there is any Hegelian reading this, i would like to know how Hegelians respond to these queries.
When you talk of the Hegelian philosophy surviving the vicissitudes of time, and still manifesting its truth even being ingrained into the philosophies that attempted to refute Hegel, which component of his philosophy are u referring to? I am sure you are not referring to his Idealism [which Stanford Encyclopedia describes as '...Hegel is seen as offering a metaphysico-religious view of God qua "Absolute Spirit"...] Hegelian Idealism is said to have been refuted by the analytical philosophers in the start of the 20th century; even Marx didn't accept it. So the Idealistic part of Hegel came to a dead end. Lets see the concept of Hegel's State. It doesn't matter if Hegel's conception of State is as tyrannical or totalitarian as Russell/Popper would have us believe, but the point is no one believes that anymore. Even Marxist conception of a government is far from that of Hegel's. So that too is a historical dead-end.
I assume the part of his philosophy that you think is valid is the Dialectics. Now, i have certain objections against it, which i will mention.
1. It attempts to give a God's eye view of the whole human intellectual process, while being a product of human mind itself, it too should be subject to dialectical change (by its own account) and hence not be immutable.
2. It says that the development of all human knowledge is dialectic in nature. But i believe many examples can be found to the contrary. For instance, the ancients believed that sun revolved around earth. Copernicus showed that it was wrong, that earth revolved around the sun. Forgive me, but i fail to see any dialectical progression in this. The geocentric view was refuted, it didn't not form any synthesis or any such thing with the heliocentric theory. It did not continue to exist in the scientific knowledge as dialectics would have us believe. Consider another example. Big Bang Theory verses Steady State Theory. Steady State was refuted; Big Bang accepted. End of story. No synthesis, no dialectics.
3. Dialectics propose that there is an ultimate Truth towards which scientific knowledge is moving. This conception of Truth in science has long been obsolete since the works of Popper and Kuhn. There is no ultimate metaphysical Truth that science can achieve.
4. A special focus of Hegel's dialectics has been history. Now, there are instances where merging of cultures can broadly be seen as following a dialectic pattern but otherwise i do not believe it can be treated as historical law. For instance, what would be the dialectical pattern seen in the history leading to the partition of subcontinent? Russell wrote abt it "It was an interesting thesis, giving unity and meaning to the revolutions of human affairs. Like other historical theories, it required, if it was to be made plausible, some distortion of facts and considerable ignorance."
5. The idea of history following a pattern is not unique. I am sure this concept was present among the Greeks too. First of all, it is subject to debate whether it is so. Even if there are such laws, then they should be discovered by the scientific method rather than being derived theoretically from a metaphysical philosophy. And furthermore, if any such 'laws' are discovered, then they would be subject to the same risk of being disproved by future historical events, just like any scientific theory is at the risk of being disapproved by future observations. Then there is the issue of history's objectivity. If history can never be objective, then how are any grand historical laws to be derived from it?
6. And as far as Hegel surviving in PoMo is concerned, let us consider Foucault. Foucault was highly critical of all philosophies which proposed that history can be neatly mapped out based on some law with a God's eye view. "Foucault's archeologies tend to identify discontinuities in history, and he insists that his cultural analyses are specifically directed against all notions of teleology or assumptions of transcendental vantage points." [Stuart Sim, One Hundred 20th century philosophers] This is a clear cut denial of Hegel's concept of history, and i cannot see any way in which it can be distorted so as to be in conformity with Hegelian view of history.
When you talk of the Hegelian philosophy surviving the vicissitudes of time, and still manifesting its truth even being ingrained into the philosophies that attempted to refute Hegel, which component of his philosophy are u referring to? I am sure you are not referring to his Idealism [which Stanford Encyclopedia describes as '...Hegel is seen as offering a metaphysico-religious view of God qua "Absolute Spirit"...] Hegelian Idealism is said to have been refuted by the analytical philosophers in the start of the 20th century; even Marx didn't accept it. So the Idealistic part of Hegel came to a dead end. Lets see the concept of Hegel's State. It doesn't matter if Hegel's conception of State is as tyrannical or totalitarian as Russell/Popper would have us believe, but the point is no one believes that anymore. Even Marxist conception of a government is far from that of Hegel's. So that too is a historical dead-end.
I assume the part of his philosophy that you think is valid is the Dialectics. Now, i have certain objections against it, which i will mention.
1. It attempts to give a God's eye view of the whole human intellectual process, while being a product of human mind itself, it too should be subject to dialectical change (by its own account) and hence not be immutable.
2. It says that the development of all human knowledge is dialectic in nature. But i believe many examples can be found to the contrary. For instance, the ancients believed that sun revolved around earth. Copernicus showed that it was wrong, that earth revolved around the sun. Forgive me, but i fail to see any dialectical progression in this. The geocentric view was refuted, it didn't not form any synthesis or any such thing with the heliocentric theory. It did not continue to exist in the scientific knowledge as dialectics would have us believe. Consider another example. Big Bang Theory verses Steady State Theory. Steady State was refuted; Big Bang accepted. End of story. No synthesis, no dialectics.
3. Dialectics propose that there is an ultimate Truth towards which scientific knowledge is moving. This conception of Truth in science has long been obsolete since the works of Popper and Kuhn. There is no ultimate metaphysical Truth that science can achieve.
4. A special focus of Hegel's dialectics has been history. Now, there are instances where merging of cultures can broadly be seen as following a dialectic pattern but otherwise i do not believe it can be treated as historical law. For instance, what would be the dialectical pattern seen in the history leading to the partition of subcontinent? Russell wrote abt it "It was an interesting thesis, giving unity and meaning to the revolutions of human affairs. Like other historical theories, it required, if it was to be made plausible, some distortion of facts and considerable ignorance."
5. The idea of history following a pattern is not unique. I am sure this concept was present among the Greeks too. First of all, it is subject to debate whether it is so. Even if there are such laws, then they should be discovered by the scientific method rather than being derived theoretically from a metaphysical philosophy. And furthermore, if any such 'laws' are discovered, then they would be subject to the same risk of being disproved by future historical events, just like any scientific theory is at the risk of being disapproved by future observations. Then there is the issue of history's objectivity. If history can never be objective, then how are any grand historical laws to be derived from it?
6. And as far as Hegel surviving in PoMo is concerned, let us consider Foucault. Foucault was highly critical of all philosophies which proposed that history can be neatly mapped out based on some law with a God's eye view. "Foucault's archeologies tend to identify discontinuities in history, and he insists that his cultural analyses are specifically directed against all notions of teleology or assumptions of transcendental vantage points." [Stuart Sim, One Hundred 20th century philosophers] This is a clear cut denial of Hegel's concept of history, and i cannot see any way in which it can be distorted so as to be in conformity with Hegelian view of history.
