Tag «Hegel»

Past and Present

Many Identities

Why is a pure deterministic or causal view wrong? Because, in many cases, it neglects the nature of results, or rather it neglects the fact that the results, in order to be understood, must be seen from a different level. What is a symphony or a musical piece in general? They are only bunches of …

On Hegel’s Philosophical System

On Hegel's Philosophical System: Library

Certainly, the concept of a system had a long history before Kant’s philosophical system, going back even to ancient philosophy and Greek language. Usually, it meant a whole in which the composing elements are integrated organically. Therefore, they depended on each other, as organs depend on each other in an organism. The representation of such …

A priori Knowledge in German Idealism

A Priori Knowledge: A sight of Earth

Despite the contradictions discovered in the theory of the Critique of Pure Reason, a few Kantian ideas became soon after its publishing philosophical commodities concerning a priori knowledge. First, the need to transform philosophy into a deductive science based on principles, a science that could ground all the other less abstract sciences, like Newtonian physics …

Idealism vs Realism in Modernity

Idealism vs realism: Statue of Immanuel Kant

We think of Hegel not only as one of the most important philosophers but also as one of the most important representatives of the philosophy of identity. I understand here by ‘philosophy of identity’ that type of philosophy that states the fundamental identity or correspondence between the human mind and external reality. Because of its …

Matter and Repulsion

Matter and Repulsion: Newton's Cradle

What is matter, and how can we think of matter? ‘Matter’ is not something real in the sense that it can be given in our experience. It is not something that we can feel, touch or see as we see this apple tree or this cat. Matter is an ‘abstraction,’ as they say, or an …

Time, Motion and Matter

Time, Motion and Matter: Skater

From the way in which time and space are given to us, we can also ‘deduce’ two other new necessary thought contents: motion and matter. If we come back to the initial content of our pure representations of space and time, they are magnitudes in which there is no difference. As an empty space, space …

Science and Rational Imagination

Science and Rational Imagination: Glass Sphere

Concrete observations come necessarily before any theoretical scientific modeling. One needs a large pool of empirically observed data on which a scientist builds his theory, that is to say, an imagined view of the world in which things are thought to be related mathematically. Science and rational imagination are a necessary conceptual pair. The principles …

On Hegel’s A Priori Approach

Hegel's A Priori Approach: Geometrical Figure

We must acknowledge that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori raises many difficulties for an understanding of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. Some interpreters have contended that the a priori character of this philosophy makes it completely senseless in that it claims the legitimacy to replace empirical research of science with the pure logical …

Philosophy as Science of First Principles

Philosophy as science of first Principles: Library

There is an interesting misunderstanding concerning Hegel: the idea that he wanted to explain everything through his philosophical system, that he tried to raise himself to the absolute knowledge of God. Of course, this is also based on his own words, concepts, or expressions like ‘absolute knowledge’ that accompany his explanations concerning his philosophy. But …

On Being and Non-Being within Time

Being and Non-Being: planets of solar system

Hegel describes very intuitively the essential conceptual features of each of the three dimensions of time (Hegel, 1970, p. 235): how do we think of the future, how do we think of the present, and how do we think of the past? Or rather, what the most elementary logical content is that we meet in …