Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The one kind of progression which represents the deduction of the forms, the necessity thought out and recognized, of the determinations, is the business of Philosophy; and because it is the pure Idea which is in question and not yet its mere particularized form as Nature and as Mind, that representation is, in the main, the business of logical Philosophy. But the other method, which represents the part played by the history of Philosophy, shows the different stages and moments in development in time, in manner of occurrence, in particular places, in particular people or political circumstances, the complications arising thus, and, in short, it shows us the empirical form. This point of view is the only one worthy of this science. From the very nature of the subject it is inherently the true one, and through the study of this history it will be made manifest that it actually shows and proves itself so.

Now in reference to this Idea, I maintain that the sequence in the systems of Philosophy in History is similar to the sequence in the logical deduction of the Notion-determinations in the Idea. I maintain that if the fundamental conceptions of the systems appearing in the history of Philosophy be entirely divested of what regards their outward form, their relation to the particular and the like, the various stages in the determination of the Idea are found in their logical Notion. Conversely in the logical progression taken for itself, there is, so far as its principal elements are concerned, the progression of historical manifestations; but it is necessary to have these pure Notions in order to know what the historical form contains. It may be thought that Philosophy must have another order as to the stages in the Idea than that in which these Notions have gone forth in time; but in the main the order is the same. This succession undoubtedly separates itself, on the one hand, into the sequence in time of History, and on the other into succession in the order of ideas. But to treat more fully of this last would divert us too far from our aim.

I would only remark this, that what has been said reveals that the study of the history of Philosophy is the study of Philosophy itself, for, indeed, it can be nothing else. Whoever studies the history of sciences such as Physics and Mathematics, makes himself acquainted with Physics and Mathematics themselves. But in order to obtain a knowledge of its progress as the development of the Idea in the empirical, external form in which Philosophy appears in History, a corresponding knowledge of the Idea is absolutely essential, just as in judging of human affairs one must have a conception of that which is right and fitting. Else, indeed, as in so many histories of Philosophy, there is presented to the vision devoid of idea, only a disarranged collection of opinions. To make you acquainted with this Idea, and consequently to explain the manifestations, is the business of the history of Philosophy, and to do this is my object in undertaking to lecture on the subject. Since the observer must bring with him the Notion of the subject in order to see it in its phenomenal aspect and in order to expose the object faithfully to view, we need not wonder at there being so many dull histories of Philosophy in which the succession of its systems are represented simply as a number of opinions, errors and freaks of thought. They are freaks of thought which, indeed, have been devised with a great pretension of acuteness and of mental exertion, and with everything else which can be said in admiration of what is merely formal. But, considering the absence of philosophic mind in such historians as these, how should they be able to comprehend and represent the content, which is reasoned thought?

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.

This Being in existence and therefore Being in time is a moment not only of the individual consciousness, which as such is essentially finite, but also of the development of the philosophical Idea in the element of Thought. For the Idea, thought of as being at rest, is, indeed, not in Time. To think of it as at rest, and to preserve it in the form of immediacy is equivalent to its inward perception. But the Idea as concrete, is, as has been shown, the unity of differences; it is not really rest, and its existence is not really sense-perception, but as differentiation within itself and therefore as development, it comes into existent Being and into externality in the element of Thought, and thus pure Philosophy appears in thought as a progressive existence in time. But this element of Thought is itself abstract and is the activity of a single consciousness. Mind is, however, not only to be considered as individual, finite consciousness, but as that Mind which is universal and concrete within itself; this concrete universality, however, comprehends all the various sides and modes evolved in which it is and becomes object to the Idea. Thus Mind’s thinking comprehension of self is at the same time the progression of the total actuality evolved. This progression is not one which takes its course through the thought of an individual and exhibits itself in a single consciousness, for it shows itself to be universal Mind presenting itself in the history of the world in all the richness of its form. The result of this development is that one form, one stage in the Idea comes to consciousness in one particular race, so that this race and this time expresses only this particular form, within which it constructs its universe and works out its conditions. The higher stage, on the other hand, centuries later reveals itself in another race of people.