Hegel's View Of History

Hegel's philosophy of history is not only the peak and conclusion of his own system, but more importantly, it's a very critical turning-point in the Western history of philosophy:It expands and deepens the thought of the "identity of Thinking and Being" since Parmenides to the max, and becomes the precondition of all the Western philosophy after him. This philosophy of history in turn has an axis, namely his idea of history. The latter emphasizes the immanence of the Absolute and dynamic totality of the Logos. The motif of this dissertation is to research into the historical conditions, the main content and the essence of Hegel's idea of history in the context of the history of thought, and to probe into the crisis contained in this idea and its revealing meanings for contemporary thought.In the "Introduction", I will make clear of the motif of this dissertation, define preliminarily two important concepts, namely Absolute Spirit and time, and further, differentiate the four meanings of "history". Lastly, I will demonstrate the main construction of this dissertation.In chapter 1, I will outline the context of the history of thought. This chapter underlines the following viewpoint:The modern consciousness of history begins with the self-reflexion of Western civilization resulted from its contacting with other civilizations, and gets its first systematic-philosophical expession in Vico, not in antiquity. That is to say, Vico is the father of the philosophy of history. I will emphasize the course how the philosophy of history of Enlightenment culminates in the transcendental subjectivism of Kant, and then forms the dichotomy of individual-subject and substance-subject in Fichte and Schelling, and especially in Hegel, in order to describe preliminarily the status of Hegel's idea of history in the history of thought till him.In chapter 2,I will trace the genesis and foundation of Hegel's idea of history. I intend to stress the critical role the philosophy of history plays in the whole course of development of Hegel's thought, and investigate the course of forming and foundation of this philosophy. This investigation is very important for the whole dissertation. Hegel's idea of history begins to form itself gradually when he was still a student, gets a foundation in his Wissenschaft der Logik, and then outspreads in his Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte and other Berliner lectures. This chapter will refer to those works except the Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte.Chapter 3 will discuss his idea of history itself concretely and deeply. The main object of our work is Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. At first, I will clarify in brief that Hegel's Weltgeschichte is not a partial history, namely that of human things, not including the nature, but the Being itself. The following parts aim at sympathetic understanding of Hegel and start from Hegel's abstract analyse of freedom in the "introduction" of this book, go through his idea of individuals, nations, the course of history, and gradually to that of the ideal state. Basing on this, I will exclude some traditional misinterpretations by the way, mainly including that of archeology, eschatology and some popular theories about the "end of history". Hegel indeed views the history as ending in certain deep meaning, and this view plays the role of theoretical peak and conclusion at the same time. But that is different from the popular interpretations, such as the appellation "national philosopher of Germany" betitled by some older Hegelians, and the well-known interpretations of Alexandre Kojeve and Francis Fukuyama.Chapter 4 is an attempt to criticize, based on the difference between various ages. The object of this chapter is the course of history in Hegel's eyes, that is, the "progress" of history. We will start from the so-called "progress in the consciousness of freedom", and then analyse how this consciouness leaves the nature, the ancient city-state community, and the mediaeval community of religious life, in order to investigate the essence of this consciousness. That is to say, Hegel has in fact misread the past in the perspective of German idealism. Lastly, we will rethink the theory about the end of history, arguing for that Hegel's thought has ended the age of metaphysis, basing on theory and on practice. Although the consciousness of freedom has not discarded the previous ages, but absorbs and synthetizes them, we modern people is distanced from antiquity, and cannot revive the ancient arts and mediaeval religion. If we explain this phenomena in the name of the "change in the conditions of history", we can explain nothing. Because what we ask for is why the conditions of history changed as such. History is not some objective things indifferent to human beings, but the change of meaning of the Being itself. Is there any crisis immenant in the mode of the Western historical Being? This is the problem this chapter will concentrate on.In the "Conclusion", I will refer to the difficulties of the contemporary philosophy of history, conclude briefly Hegel's idea of history, and look about what this idea will reveal for our age.