The Life of Hegel

foreign [Music] let's talk a little bit about hegel's life hegel's full name is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel however he didn't go by gorg he went by Wilhelm among his family and maybe closest friends but most people who he associated with called him either just Hagel or hair Hagel he lived from 1770 to 1831 only 61 years old when he died and he's born in Stuttgart on August 22nd 1770. his father was a Bourgeois figure public official but his mother was probably the most important person for raising him because she's the one who insisted on and actually gave him the beginnings of a humanistic education so she was the really great influence on the early Hegel he as a young boy was a voracious reader and actually a model student when he was young at least and actually he was a model student his whole life he went to the Seminary and perhaps wanted to pursue a career in theology but it's more likely that the Seminary was just the place where you could get one could get the best education and this starts in 1788 had to begin one of the greatest coincidences in the history of philosophy takes place Hegel gets roomed with two figures who end up being incredibly important one more in poetry than in philosophy but in the history of thought that is hoderlin and shelling so they those three got to got to know each other because they were roommates they became incredible friends the friendships ended up not enduring their entire lives but nonetheless initially they provided a spark for each other's thinking in a way that I don't think I don't think the thinking of either any of the three would have blossomed in the way it did if they hadn't been roomed together and tubing and uh my friend Walter Davis likes to say I don't think a lot of video games were being played in that in that dormitory perhaps that's true maybe they did have a I mean they I think they did play cards or Wist or whatever but they had a they had a fine time I assume but they also did a lot of thinking what's interesting though is that holderlyn and Hegel are the same age shelling is five years younger so he's a bit more of a prodigy than Hagel and Hagel had the nickname at the Seminary of der Ulta which means in German the old man so he was already there was a sense that he was already not precocious but already had the habits of an older person even when he was at the Seminary maybe he didn't he drank but he didn't maybe party he wasn't as wild maybe didn't have as many uh women in his life as everyone else but he was he was their altar the old man uh so the the trajectory of these two roommates is fascinating so hortalin becomes one of the greatest poets in the history of Germany and then ends up going mad shelling becomes one of the most important philosophers in the history of Germany and ends up uh sort of retiring from philosophy at a very early age even though he did some lectures and some things but he stops publishing philosophy before he's at the age of 40. so the the trajectory of the Hegel is much more a late bloomer than the other two so the other two end up they start fast shelling even fast the fastest and and but but hegel's the one that ends up finishing one might argue I think clear this is clearly true the strongest so their accomplishments early on far outstripagles and it's only later that he gained celebrity so early on they didn't Meagan was not famous in the way that these other two were very famous they were all three totally radicalized by the French Revolution so the events of the French Revolution which took place while they were at the Seminary got all three thinking that the world is changing and we're going to be part of that changing world this emancipatory project that's taking place there's a legendary story and I emphasize the word Legend because it's likely not true that on the anniversary of the storming of the bestie so July 14th uh hold on shelling and Hegel planted a freedom tree in the middle of the night at the University and danced around it singing la Marseilles that's a nice story even if it's not true it should be true because it reflects how much the French Revolution and what a significant role it played in the lives of all three of them and in the thought of all three of them and what is true is that throughout his life Hegel drank every anniversary of the French Revolution a champagne toast to the revolution so he even when and he was critical of Robespierre and and the terror but even when it seemed to take a detour he was nonetheless still thought the French Revolution was this great moment in the history of humanity and he took the side of it he also took the side of the Haitian revolution so this is another he he thought this was another extension of the same kind of logic that's at work in the French Revolution and and thus he he celebrated it so despite this and I think that's probably why this Liberty Tree Theory isn't or story isn't true Hegel was a stayed guy at the University uh nonetheless he was even though it was politically dangerous he shared with his friends a secret affinity for the thought of Spinoza and the other thing is that Hegel was also funny he was one of the only he's one of the only thinkers philosophers of his time and and if you compare a Cod somewhat funny but hegel's really integrates comedy into his philosophy in a way in in his daily life too in a way that other thinkers other people that tend to be philosophers tend not to be comedians hago was a in a way I think a comedian philosopher and many people have noted this burchold Brack noticed it Ernst block noticed that Maladin delar has noticed it so a lot of people have paid attention to this but I think it's really it's important to point out because for him comedy is a way of enacting dialectical thinking and so that's that that's why he's I think that's why he's I mean maybe he's just a funny guy but I think that's why he's interested in it so this way that comedy has a bringing out contradiction that's exactly what hegel's doing in his thought as well which is why I think he's he's pretty funny uh so he leaves the seminary in 1793 in part because he was dissatisfied with the education that he was getting there because he thought it was too Christian so he's very early in his life so in his 20s he becomes pretty anti-christian or one could even say vigorously anti-christian but he doesn't say anything publicly because there's a real danger of being charged with atheism and in fact in 1798 ficta was canned from the University of yena precisely for suspicion he didn't come out and say God is dead or anything like that he just said they're just a hint that he was an atheist and then he's fired so that was uh because he wouldn't take back certain things as well so Hegel though the move he makes at this time in a little essay called the positivity of the Christian religion is that he says he contrasts Christianity unfavorably with the religion of the Greeks and he thought I'm going to help to bring out what he he called a folk religion which he thought the Greek religion was which is not beset by what he called positivity the the positive the group of the Christian religion in that essay is a negative thing so ironically if Hegel says call something positive he means that that the problem is that it's not it doesn't grasp the role of negativity in its its formulation of of of the Divine and instead thinks of God as just this positive entity that just exists outside of the world and he and that he thought that was the problem with Christianity as he understood it so the other thing that he thinks uh Greek religion did was that it created a public world and a public to inhabit that world whereas Christianity tends to be a private religion and that's for Hegel a real problem he thinks this is a way in which he's already anticipating Marx's critique of Bourgeois society that he thinks this liberal tendency to come into oneself and live privately which is how he's these Christianity manifesting itself he thinks that's a problem that's why he's in the 1790s takes up this anti-christian pro-greek religion attitude in 1793 so before that Christianity essay uh he he starts to work as a as a tutor or a Hofmeister so Hofmeister sounds cool because it has Meister or Master within it you're the master of the of the Garden or the yard uh it's not very cool so he's in the city of Byrne working and and it's really it's basically terrible it's a terrible job it's not much better than working as a babysitter and having to also instruct the people that you're watching so you can't just turn on the television and watch TV while they're doing whatever instead you have to watch the kids and instruct them at the same time as a result Hegel falls into a pretty deep depression at this time and well the reason is because he contrasts his life with that of his incredibly burgeoning successful friend shelling and then his other friend holyland who will become more successful than me although holderland starts out as a Hofmeister as well so Hegel oh throughout and then they commiserate a little bit about that hey in their letters Hegel feels very much like a failure in his young life at least after he leaves the seminarian before he starts to uh get some serious work as a flaw or some regular work as a philosopher so in 1795 Hagel reads Kant and starts to become kantian or more kantian let's say and just as he develops this happens just as he develops this critique of Christianity as a positive religion a religion what he likes about Kant is that Kant is able to sustain some notion of religion but base it in moral duty not base moral duty in religion and that reversal for Hegel is a really important one but again hegel's discovering Connie's excited about him but he's not able to find an Avenue for this because he's stuck at this position of being a Hofmeister contrasts with shelling who in 1799 so ficta got fired from the position at University of Vienna convenient for shelling because I mean he didn't cooperate he didn't he didn't collaborate on convictus firing but he got the he got this prestigious chair at the University of Vienna which Victor held prior to being fired for his atheism so that's showing he really arrives in 1799 he's a big star and he's he's only 20 in his early 20s 24 years old something so that's a it's pretty impressive and I think Hegel really again the contrast that he he doesn't have any seemingly any resentment for shelling he's just he thinks a lot of him as a thinker and he he looks up to him even but he's he the contrast between their situations is pretty painful however shelling then using his position at the University he's a chair he's got a secure position he helps Hegel pick up some teaching so just working as a part-time lecturer and he even allows Hegel to move in with him so shelling's got enough money for the rent I'm sure he'll contribute a little bit but but shelling's the main Breadwinner in this couple well he's at yena Hegel publishes his first real book which is called the difference between fictas and shelling systems of philosophy and it's it's completely on the side of shelling so it's a fascinating book because it's you start you can see little Embers of what will become hegel's own thought but basically he's trying to say this is why shelling has made a fundamental Advance over ficta as a thinker so it's really it's just an homage to his friend shelling with whom he's living so he and Shelly shelling together start a journal called the critical Journal of philosophy and this journal is the source that allows is the site sorry that allows Hegel to publish his second book faith and knowledge in 1802. so the these books are not they're they're worth reading but they're not they're not Hegel in his maturity yet he's still he's still very thinking in the way that shelling thinks not yet working out his own thinking both of these Works however criticize Kant and ficta from this shellingian perspective The Works attack what Hegel will call and or he'll come to call subjective idealism and he'll he'll be very critical of that he's critical of it here he'll be really critical of it later so he argues for an idealism that doesn't omit what's objective from its structure so I think Kant would think that's not a very fair critique of him he doesn't think he's a subjective thinker at all but Hegel believes that by by not moving from the transcendental outward con ends up being too subjective so in 1801 he's in Yana he meets the most famous German intellectual figure of the time which is Johann Wolfgang von Gerta and even though Hegel is Hegel has to kind of Finagle a a visit a meeting with Gerta obviously because he's he's young and Gerta is much much more famous but that said they they hit it off pretty well and hegel's thinking they talk and hegel's thinking moves Gerta and their friendship will last 30 years from the time that they met in 1801 till hegel's death in 1831 hegel's both younger than Gerta but he dies earlier so Gerta lived a much Fuller life than Hagel did uh in 1805 Hegel begins a regular Professor he becomes a professor at the University of Vienna has a regular teaching schedule uh he needs a book for his career but he refuses to publish before he's intellectually ready so he doesn't he doesn't just snap off a book he needs a book more substantial than the first two to really establish himself get himself respected as a as a professor at the University of yena and get himself some a permanence the position but he doesn't just snap it off in fact when he finally writes it so he finishes it in 1806 it gets to the printer in 1807 the book is the one we know of as the phenomenology of spirit and a lot of people think that this book that he wrote in finished in 1807 is the great work of hegel's life one of the real arguments that people who read Hegel have is which is the great book is it phenomenology of spirit or is it science of logic and that's people come down on either side of that divide but that's usually divide people the other two major works that he published are the encyclopedia and the philosophy of right and those I think are everyone thinks they're important but the people that read Hegel a lot are not gonna stake their flag on one of those they're going to stake their flag on one of the the first two interestingly I said stake their flag because when Hegel finishes the prophet he wrote the preface last to the phenomenology of Spirit uh on October 14th Napoleon this is exactly the time when Napoleon enters the city of Vienna with his army which isn't great news for Hegel although he's pretty happy about it so he he writes to his friend Friedrich Emmanuel neidheimer and very famously he says this Emperor this world soul I saw him riding through the city on reconnaissance in fact is a wonderful feeling to see such an individual who here concentrates in one point sitting on a horse conquer and master the world right Hegel so Hegel finds himself awed by Napoleon's invasion despite the fact that the damage to him is considerable so it destroys his apartment it threatens the only copy of the phenomenology of spirit which Hegel sends be a horseback to the publisher during The Invasion so if that if that if the person carrying the manuscript was killed and they just threw away the main script that's it no for not he'd have to reconstruct the phenomenology which if anyone's ever lost something on your computer you know that that's oh my God it's disaster uh in this case he wouldn't even have a computer version you just have his notes to himself the publication of the phenomenology of the spirit in 1807 you would he Hagel wrote the book to launch his University career ironically it brings an end to his University career and it also marks the beginning of the dissolution of the friendship with shelling so shelling had already left janeth he leaves jaina in 1803 and he and Hegel start to grow apart their letters become much more infrequent uh in the compared to the 1790s but the grade split between them starts with publication the publication of the phenomenology of spirit and and I think it's because there's a lot of debate about this because it's Hegel did not think that he was attacking shelling at all so he did not imagine that this was an attack on shelling in fact he sent shelling a copy of the book and wrote to him in a letter he said I do not need this one I think the one of the most moving things I've ever read up from a friend to a friend I do not need to tell you that if you approve of a few pages this means more to me than if others are satisfied or dissatisfied with the whole thing and I think that it's clear Hegel wants shelling's approbation not his animals he hasn't written this as an attack on shelling but as a as a as a work of a kind of homage to or part of their project that he sees them working out together nonetheless shelling ultimately takes offense so Hegel writes evinshelling says initially and says what'd you think of the book Hegel write something well I haven't got around to it yet and he was like what are you six months ago uh but when he finally starts to read it he doesn't respond in the positive manner that Hegel hopes for so Hegel thought he was attacking the position developed by certain Disciples of shelling but shelling took it misguided disciples shelling took it as a personal attack although I don't think that's the entire source of the break between them something else it's clear that something else is at work and it really chagrined Hegel and I think that the best way to capture what it did to him and how much this break in their relationship affected him is this is this little joke that Hegel loved to eat crab legs but he he gradually stopped eating them as he got older because shelling became more and more difficult for him foreign I love that joke because it's interesting about the way that shelling himself becomes hard for heygold so they they end up they they don't see each other for quite a long period of time but then they they they meet the couple times they stayed at each other's place and and they just never talk to philosophy so that's one thing that goes and then in 1829 near the end of hegel's life they meet and they walk and they talk together so they seem to get along okay but they don't talk about philosophy at all so my contention would be that the break is completely one-sided so Hegel continues to want the old relationship with shelling while shelling he doesn't have any desire for that in part because what he takes is a is a critique in the phenomenology or it's maybe just that Hegel who was once his follower in a sense even though they were at the Seminary they were they were fellow thinkers Hegel has written a book remember the difference between fictus and shelling systems of philosophy so he's he's he's sort of prostated himself to shelling and now he's written his own work that doesn't have an obvious debt to shelling so that's that I think that could account in some way for for shelling's hostility the other thing that I think is important is so shelling became famous in his early 20s as a philosopher then Hegel much later in his life were not to that period yet will become without any question the most famous philosopher in Germany so it seems to me that part of the Animus that shelling has to Hegel depends upon this this difference in their trajectories so shelling as to quote Orson Welles he started at the top but he went downhill from there uh Hegel starts at the bottom and goes trajectories up to of course death is a is a falling off for everyone uh but until he died Hegel was a very very significant and important the important philosopher in Germany so that's I think that accounts for a lot of this hostility on the part of shelling then in when shelling gives lectures in the 1840s on the history of philosophy and interestingly attended by Friedrich Engels and Soren Kierkegaard he continues to speak disparagingly about Hegel so hegel's already dead shelling is taking the opportunity to pour a little dirt on higgle's grave although I don't think it was that effect I mean Kierkegaard hated Hegel of course and and Engels thought that he was part of a way of thinking that was surpassing him but they both I think found uh shelling's teaching tendentious so I'm not sure that I mean ultimately maybe it worked but I don't think that it really rubbed off on them in the way that shelling thought it was gonna the effect they thought was going to have reviews of the phenomenology are really hostile so they single out the big thing is that they single out hegel's Pro style for the most intense criticism and you can kind of if you've tried to read the phenomenology or really anything by eagle you get it because he thinks he he tries to write in a way that is what in a way that he thinks is what he would call speculative so speculative as opposed speculative thinking as opposed to ordinary thinking includes otherness within it if you if you can imagine trying to write that way it it sounds impossible and and ego was really trying to accomplish an Impossible Project in this book and in all of his other books really so he thinks he's writing a book to really change the world but almost no one perceives it that way so the Battle of yena ends Napoleon conquers University of Vienna closed so disaster for Hegel and hegel's teaching career basically ends he thinks he's not going to even maybe ever get a job teaching again initially his friend needhammer who's who does a lot for him throughout his life gets him a job as a newspaper editor which he for the Baumberg zaitan uh and and that doesn't he doesn't really like that and then he works as a Rector so he's the head of a gymnasium basically a high school in Nuremberg and while he's there he's he's running the place but he's also teaching philosophy to high school students who clearly aren't ready for it and if it's hard enough for Engel to teach at the University one can imagine if you're a high school student getting someone teaching something like the phenomenology to you it would be it would be mind-boggling and that is how they've it wasn't like oh students were so smart then they could get Hegel in high school no they had a little trouble too and Hegel himself is really frustrating it's like what's the deal these students these are terrible and it's very unpleasant for him what most of us would do is try to bring the level down Hegel refused he's like I'm not dumbing down my thought for these people there I'm going to elevate them up with it they didn't get elevated this period of his life also includes an event a personal event that brings Hegel the greatest joy so in in 1811 in Nuremberg he marries the daughter of a local Noble and the woman's name is Marie fontucher and then he also so he is he's he thought he's in his he's 41 so he thought he would never he thought it's over for me I'm just not gonna be the kind of guy that gets married or has a nice long-term relationship even though he really really wanted it he thought in fact he thought what if you have a long-term partner and a post your your mission in life is over so it's interesting that he would think that because he still went on to do some pretty great things and write some pretty impressive books give some pretty great lecture courses influence the entire history of philosophy but he basically thought you've done your part if you've gotten a good that's what that's that enough to be satisfied with you got a good partner and you got a good job and he had a decent job he was this director of the ganasium he hated it but at least it it paid the rent right so in 1812 he begins the publication of the science logic so volume 1 is 1812 then Volume 2 and 1813 and then 1816. for the final volume so the phenomenology is different it starts with experience the logic shows the movement of thought within itself he famously says logic depicts the mind of God before the Act of Creation which what could that possibly mean but I think it's it's nice actually because his point is I'm not going to allow myself to be bedeviled by experience in the way that I was in the phenomenology here I'm just talking about the rules of thought however he thought that logic was the logic was the way in which ontology got expressed so let me just clarify that so so logic is not just this formal apparatus that we apply to thinking about things instead logic actually is the way that the entire structure of being is comprehended so he so he he put so much faith in logic in fact that he the the the the there's it's the absolute it's ontological it's the absolute way to understand being itself so there's a real that's a really important aspect of his his thinking in fact it came back to Biden at the end of his life because he got a curable he contracted her or developed I guess a curable form of cancer and he went to his oncologist and his oncologist was like look we can treat you and he's like uh you know what I don't really believe in oncology because I think oncology is reducible to logic so so I'm just kidding he didn't die of cancer or ever get cancer but uh he might have had it when he died but he died or something else uh anyway so that but that the the what I that joke is important because it tells the way in which the the emphasis that Hegel places on logic that logic trumps everything else politics he would think even politics so see all these things are species of logic right even though he's going to write a separate book on politics later the fall of Napoleon in 1814 disturbs him so he Hegel is it's odd so we think of Napoleon now rightfully so I think as a as a a a a dictator an emperor someone who's on the side of tyranny not on the side of emancipation but for hengel from the perspective of Germany he sees Napoleon as doing something emancipatory relative to Germany because he thinks what's happening in Germany the the resistance to Napoleon isn't some emancipatory resistance actually it's a nationalistic resistance that he is firmly opposed to so the the the investment in Napoleon for him is correlative to an anti-nationalism that is very really a strong thread in all of his thinking and his personal life and his politics so he he is absolutely never a nationalist thinker even though Carl Popper The Who wrote the open society and its enemies one of his bad guys at Hegel and he sees Hegel as a a precursor of German nationalism under Nazism so which is one can't imagine a crazier idea no single Nazi ever cited Hegel approvingly Nazi thinker uh certainly especially uh Carl Schmidt and Martin Heidegger they're very critical of Hegel uh okay so so his his son Carl was born in 18 to 13 so he has two sons pretty quickly and his son Emmanuel was born in 1814 but he has a third son which I didn't mention yet uh from yena so in 1807 with his landlady Johanna Burkhart he has an illegitimate son named Ludwig and Ludwig eventually when his mother dies will come and Hegel paid his child support and took care of Ludwig but he didn't treat Ludwig he did it wasn't he didn't go out of his way to make him feel part of his own family and I think a lot of it is because it's clear that there's tension between Marie fontucker or Marie she becomes Marie Hagel and and Hagel himself over this because it it's this past uh uh relationship that he had So eventually though uh Ludwig will come to live with them after his mother dies but that's a this this uh this illegitimate child is a sign maybe he wasn't always like the old man right like he had some kind of uh youth to him I guess and he also the other thing is interesting that he had a very or at least on the part of his sister his sister Christiane was very very close to him very invested him so much so that when Hegel dies she commits suicide just a couple months later so Christiana was very very attached to her brother and this is the one this is one of the areas where although Hegel doesn't Hagel does talk I mean one of the things that he doesn't talk about Christiana that much in his letters and in fact it seems like she's a little bit of a like he's worried about her she's he he it's not his investment in her but her investment in him that weighs on him however his a lot of people think that his the discussion of Antigone and his great love he Antigone was the greatest play ever written a lot of people think that that's because it shows reflects the sister's love of the brother and that's why he was invested in it because Christiana in a sense she's Antigone and Hegel would be polynesis so that that's that's a that's in the background and that's and that's that's the thing that he'll constantly think about throughout his life and she always wants to live near them come visit them and it so it's a it's a thing that that burden said he works at the gymnasium until 1816 when another great thing happens and this is not a coincidence this is because of the work that he's done he gets a job offer from the University of Heidelberg and then a couple months after he gets the job offer from Heidelberg which he accepts University of Berlin Humboldt University in Berlin offers him a position and he's like why did I why did I accept that other job when I I didn't know it so he ends up going to Heidelberg for a year and then the next year he's he has to he feels like he has to he's committed to them he has to go the next year he starts at University of Berlin so Heidelberg is where Hegel has his first salaried position but he still feels he doesn't think the students are great he doesn't think the school is great Berlin is the first time in his life where he feels like okay I've got good students I've got good colleagues things are this is a pretty good place to be but at the University of Heidelberg he published the Encyclopedia of the philosophical Sciences in 1817 which is basically the text he used to teach philosophy so it's divided into the logic and it's that first part is usually known as the Lesser logic so the science of logic is known as the greater Logic the encyclopedic logic the first of three parts of the Encyclopedia of human of philosophical Sciences is known as the Lesser logic and then the middle part is the philosophy of Nature and then philosophy of spirit and that that idea of spirit is will return us to phenomenology but phenomenology all everything takes place in phenomenology is a little part of philosophy of spirit and this time when encyclopedia comes out Hegel starts to be a popular success popular not in the sense of people at the newsstand picking up the encyclopedia but popular in the sense of all Intelligentsia in Germany are reading his work and people in other countries start to read it so that becomes important too once in Berlin it's pretty clear that Hegel is the most well-known and well thought of philosopher in Germany for the rest of his life so from 1818 to 1831 his lectures attract tons of people more and more as he goes along and he has devoted disciples this is fascinating who copy down there around they copy down his lecture notes and later collect them and publish them now what's interesting is these published things so he publishes his last book in 1820 which is the philosophy of right but then all these lecture notes that get taken by students without any Source text from Hegel get collated put together and turned into his later work so four of his later works so the history of philosophy I think an important thing a way of thinking about his how he thinks of the history of philosophy and I think actually that the introduction the history of philosophy one provides one of the best examples of or best explanations of dialectical thinking that Hegel ever gives so I think it's that's an important book but again it's not written by Hegel we don't know that did the students copy down correctly we don't know then there's the philosophy of religion which goes through and ends with and and by now and this starts in phenomenology by now Hegel has completely thrown aside his earlier suspicion of Christianity and become a full-fledged proponent of Christianity so now he sees Christianity as the emancipatory religion and in fact he sees there's something dialectical in Christianity what he likes about it is whereas in Judaism or in Islam God is just the god of the Beyond right God is we can't we in fact in Judaism we can't even say God's name we just have to say Adonai we can't say Yahweh I just said it so I shouldn't have said it we just say Adonai which is God's what's God's nickname in a sense you have to just use God's nickname this other name for God rather than the actual name for God to to indicate verbally God's distance from us right in Islam same kind of idea God is beyond totally outside of our reach we need the prophet to intercede for us to reach the level of God okay Christianity what Hegel likes about Christianity is all of a sudden God comes down and dies as the most based figure doesn't dies in the most humiliating way so total change of heart about Christianity now he thinks Christianity is actually an emancipatory religion and gives a in fact is the model for emancipation you could even say a lot of people criticize Marxism as being modeled on Christianity but Hagel would say yeah embrace it embrace it that's right and certain marxists have embraced it like Frederick Jameson yeah it's modeled in Christianity uh and that's and Hegel thinks all emancipation is modeling Christianity because Christianity takes the authority from the Beyond and brings it down gives it to us or as he might say the kingdom of God is on Main Street right so not don't search and beyond for the kingdom of God it's right here with us okay the next book also thought of as an important book again collated just from lecture notes is hegel's Aesthetics and this was the first one published and it's the one that among a lot of people have tried to build on hengel's Aesthetics and think because it thinks about the whole entire history all the different art forms although Hegel excludes dance because he doesn't think dance is worthy of being talked about uh but all the major art forms he also doesn't talk about the novel because the novel had yet to have been fully he he liked novels he read some novels but it had yet to become fully developed as an art form when Hegel wrote but he ends so he ends with romantic poetry and he loves he thought Shakespeare was a great a great poet even though he preferred again Antigone to Hamlet okay so so Aesthetics is published philosophy of religion uh history of philosophy but then the big one the the philosophy of History so history of philosophies earlier philosophy of History which ends up being the text that people know the most from Hegel it's the by far the most widely read and by far the one that's most Central to his Fame now this is as I just said is collated entirely from lecture notes so that's an incredible problem so everything that we know about Hegel or criticize about Hegel from the from the philosophy of History has to be taken maybe not with a grain of salt but with a little bit of Suspicion because it's just it's we have to have faith that the students took down the notes perfectly and I don't think we should have that kind of Faith because I've for one thing I've taken notes of other professors and I don't do a very good job and I've had students copy down notes in my class and I should they show them to me I'm like I didn't say that so there's a little bit of a problem with the fact that philosophy of History it's easier and I think that's one reason why it's the most widely read but it's not from Hegel so I think that's a problem and I think we should rethink the way that we read Hegel I think what we should read is the beginning of the encyclopedic logic because that's pretty easy I think that's almost as easy as the history of philosophy and that's a funny slip it's almost as easy as the philosophy of history but it's not misleading because Hegel actually wrote it himself he's a generous teacher he always allows more engaged students into his overflowing classes and he even waives the fees for poorer students as I said in 1820 he publishes his last book the last book he published in his lifetime philosophy of right which is his major contribution to political thinking although what it doesn't offer and and if you know Hegel law you would know that he he would be philosophically unable to offer this it doesn't offer a political plan so he doesn't have he doesn't even have he doesn't put his political philosophy in terms of a critique and idea to advance instead he just understands the structure of what he thinks political life is he doesn't try to he doesn't try to argue for a certain position that we should then take up and follow so he's not he doesn't see himself as someone to give advice for us how we should enact our our political will or how we should structure our world and in the preface of work he says very famously when philosophy paints its gray on Gray a shape of life has grown old and it cannot be rejuvenated but only recognized by the gray and gray of philosophy and then the most famous line The Owl of Minerva takes flight only with the falling of dusk right so the so philosophy only understands what's already happened not what's going to happen so it can't tell people how to organize Society it can't anticipate what kind of future we're going to have all it can do is frame what's already happened in the right way I mean he thinks that's important thing to do you have to frame things in the right way so it can only think through what underlies the social order and by doing so bring the contradictions to the surface and this is what he thinks he's doing in the philosophy of right interestingly both conservatives and liberals and Marxist left us attack Hegel for this book so conservatives and liberals thought this actually serves as a justification for the ruling Prussian Monarch so because Hegel does defend monarchy or constitutional monarchy at least in the book so a lot of people thought hegel's being here an apologist for the ruling order but one has to think about this with a couple of other factors hegel's also under constant suspicion in surveillance by the government police for subversion and his friends and students often run into trouble with the authorities for their leftist political activities and he does a lot to try to shelter and help students of his that get that get into trouble with the with the authorities because he has some influence so in 1821 Hegel approves the request of a young so hagel's the chair of the philosophy Department a young Arthur schopenhauer comes to teach at Berlin Hegel hires him schopenhauer wants to schedule his classes at the exact time as hegel's and Hegel says to him bad idea it's not I I don't think that's a good idea because clearly there's a lot of people coming to mind but schopenhauer institutionally schedules his lectures this time knowing no one would show up because of the the competing courses and given this situation schopenhauer ends up at one point giving a lecture to just one student as a result showman Howard hates Eagle but Hagel never reciprocated so Hegel did not it's again this kind of like the thing with shelling although he and shelling it's much worse for Hegel schopenhauer goes on long diatribes against Hegel his philosophy not just personally but he also hated him personally so Hegel also his he it's very difficult I think to think of Hegel as a conservative given the kind of students that populated his classes so his classes were very much populated by radical students that got in trouble and then his lectures themselves even arouse the suspicion of of State authorities they thought they were subversive they thought they were maybe atheistic and they thought look he's just attracting too much of a crowd he's got too much he's too popular and as such he represents a danger to us so I think there was some there was this real sense that Hegel was a dangerous thinker he his lecture style was fascinating so it wasn't great and and in fact I think most people feel like as a public speaker Hagel was one of the weakest philosophers but it's not just that he couldn't speak publicly he had this halting stop and start style why because he thought with every sentence I can't just assume anything I have to reconstruct the entire system that lies beyond Behind that sentence within the sentence itself so you can see this immense effort that has to go into every single sentence that he utters he doesn't ever just believe that one could just say something when you're giving a philosophical lecture so that's I think that's a really important aspect to this reputation of his is a terrible lecture I think it deserved but I feel like it also there's some there's a positive side to it too there's a there's a way in which he's a bad lecturer because he's a great thinker or something like that I'm not making the argument that every bad lecture is a great thinker but sometimes a great thinker is necessarily a bad lecturer so he has his his love of art really if you read his letters it really manifests itself during this final period this Berlin period of his life and he treasured the novel tristam Shandy which is interesting book by Lauren Stern it's fascinating because it's a novel with a lot of formal experimentation that anticipates the modern novel and one wonders how we could translate hegel's philosophy of art to modernism certain people like Robert Pippin have thought about Hegel in terms of impressionist painting but there hasn't been that much thinking about Hegel in terms of the modern novel say and I I because his his thought is much more structured like a Victor like Bleak House let's say like a Victorian novel but I think there is a way in which modernism maybe he's already anticipating modernism in a certain way he makes three tip three trips around Europe he never leaves Europe in his lifetime in the 1820s he goes to Belgium and the Netherlands in 1822 Vienna in 1824 and then Paris in 1827 where he sees his old friend Victor kuzan the great French philosopher who's very much influenced by Hegel as a thinker and and is responsible for getting his work translated into French while traveling Hegel usually did the same kind of thing so he would what would he do he would go visit Cathedrals and synagogues he loved to do that so he loved to look at the architecture and one of the things that he talks about in the Aesthetics is architecture that's the first form of art that he deals with and he used to love to go look at especially Gothic uh Cathedrals that was a favorite of his and he would also look at Great paintings in museums that was another thing but I think his favorite activity just judging from how he writes about it in his letters was going to the Opera he so he called Paris the capital of the world but he enjoyed his time most in Vienna because while he was there he saw Mozart's marriage and Figaro which he apprecially had the proper appreciation for but then he saw Rossini's prequel to Marriage of Figaro The Barber of Seville and he even I think he knew it was wrong in the larger aesthetic sense of ascetic importance but he much preferred Rossini's Barber of Seville to Marriage of Figaro and he even went to he wrote to Maria I'm going to see it a second time I'm so excited so he loved Barber of Seville during these trips I just mentioned this he REM he retains a constant he's in constant touch with Marie so he writes her letters almost every day sometimes twice a day and he tells her he gives his aesthetic evaluation of everything he's seen and heard so it's a great it's great to see this exchange between the two of them and when he's in Berlin he's able to renew Gerta has moved to Berlin by this time he's able to renew his friendship with Gerta they spend more time together and then he dies not by cancer as I suggested but he's killed most likely we're not exactly totally sure by an intestinal intestinal ailment even though there's a cholera epidemic ripping through Germany at the time this led a lot of people to initially suppose that Hegel died of Cholera but I think now most biographers think that it was this intestinal ailment not cholera he dies at age 61 and then nicely he always wanted this he wanted to be buried next to ficta in a Berlin Cemetery and he is indeed buried there so he he will spend until the Earth blows up or overheats I guess he'll still get to stay there he'll spend I know people like to say he'll spend eternity next to ficta which is I think philosophically important because they are they make two of the great leaps forward in the history of philosophy foreign

Channel: Todd McGowan

Views: 8,563

Keywords:

Id: wSSAf5So0MY

Length: 48min 58sec (2938 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023