Quotes About Hegel

Patra was trying to read Hegel's Science of Logic. This is something no one should ever feel obliged to do.

Hitler claimed ideological forebears in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche;1 Stalin took his cues from Marx; the eugenicists took their ideas from Darwin and Comte.

The literature on Hegel is fond of representing him as someone who had very particular ideas and opinions. That is not only false; Hegel would have found it embarassing.

Die Hegelliteratur stellt Hegel gern als jemanden dar, der ganz eigene Ideen und Meinungen hat. Das ist nicht nur falsch; Hegel hätte es peinlich gefunden.

The idea of writing the history of philosophy as philosophy began with Hegel's influence in Germany, and then it spread to France and England, and histories of philosophies began to appear everywhere in Europe and America.

Libre no es para Hegel quien hace lo que quiere, sino quien hace lo que debe hacer para realizar su esencia. La libertad de la historia no es, por tanto, la mera contingencia, el azar, o el acaso; la libertad de la historia es cumplimiento inexorable del fin, sumisión a sí mismo.

La Fin de l'Histoire ce n'est pas le bonheur mais l'horreur. Ce n'est pas le premier matin mais le dernier. Ce n'est pas l'euphorie perpétuelle mais les flammes de l'enfer. (ch. 25 Hegel et Kojève africains)

This [Hegel's philosophy] illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

Even if (as I myself believe) almost all Hegel's doctrines are false, he still retains an importance which is not merely historical, as the best representative of a certain kind of philosophy which, in others, is less coherent and less comprehensive.

Hegel's philosophy is very difficult—he is, I should say, the hardest to understand of all the great philosophers. Before entering on any detail, a general characterization may prove helpful.

Hegel thought that, if enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all other things, then all its properties could be inferred by logic. This was a mistake, and from this mistake arose the whole imposing edifice of his system. This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

Hegel thought that, if enough was known about a thing to distinguish it from all other things, then all its properties could be inferred by logic. This was a mistake, and from this mistake arose the whole edifice of his system. This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences.

Hegel thought of the universe as a closely knit unity. His universe was like a jelly in the fact that, if you touched any one part of it, the whole quivered; but it was unlike a jelly in the fact that it could not really be cut up into parts. The appearance of consisting of parts, according to him, was a delusion.

To hold fast the positive in the negative, in the content of the presupposition, in the result, this is the most important feature in rational cognition.

The true is thus the bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunken; and because each, as soon as it detaches itself, dissolves immediately — the whirl is just as much transparent and simple repose.

El yo es por ello la existencia de la universalidad totalmente abstracta, lo abstractamente libre. Por eso, el yo es el pensar en cuanto sujeto y siendo así que yo estoy igualmente en todas mis sensaciones, representaciones y estados [subjetivos], resulta que el pensamiento está presente en todas partes y atraviesa como categoría todas estas determinaciones.

Hegel's thought is the most powerful thinking of modern times. ~heidegger

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

Hegel, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, maintained that the essence of tragedy derives not from one character being right and the other being wrong, or from the conflict of good versus evil, but from a conflict in which both characters are right, and thus the tragedy is one of right against right, being carried to its logical conclusion.

The desire for recognition, and the accompanying emotions of anger, shame, and pride, are parts of the human personality critical to political life. According to Hegel, they are what drives the whole historical process.

The young Hegel witnessed Napoleon riding through his university town after the Battle of Jena in 1806 and saw in that act the incipient universalization of recognition in the form of the principles of the French Revolution. This is the sense in which Hegel believed that history had come to an end: it culminated in the idea of universal recognition;

The philosopher Charles Taylor, following Hegel, points out that struggles over identity are inherently political because they involve demands for recognition.

Kojève, interpreting Hegel in the 1930s, suggested that the idea of the modern state, once unleashed in the world, would eventually universalize itself because it was so powerful: those facing it would either conform to its dictates or be swallowed up.