It was something that I had read up on concerning Hegel. Hegel influenced the late Wittgenstein, or at least thats what the source said. But I still have yet to see anything resembling Hegel in any of Wittgenstein's works. Maybe they did mean it in a negative way.

Well Hegel influenced me. I once began a course in Hegel, but after a short time, I became so nauseated, that I had to quit.

HA! Thats rich. Im almost done reading Hegel's Phenomenology. Im ready to move on to Schopenhauer after this. Hegel's going to be the death of me if I read anything else by him.

The difference between Hegel and Wittgenstein could not be greater. As Wittgenstein would have put it, Hegel is a slum landlord, and Wittgenstein want to get rid of the slums and let it fresh air. Anyone who thinks that Wittgenstein was a good philosopher could not possibly do anything but despise Hegel, so anyone who thinks they have anything in common probably understands neither one.

You are obviously a glutton for punishment. What next? Heidegger? Derrida? Lancan? Remember, you are putting IQ points at risk. Look what happened to those on the forum who claim to have read Hegel and Heidegger. It is a warning.

Aparently Wittgenstein was influenced by Hegel in his later years, but I doubt it. I have not seen anything resembling Hegel at all in Wittgensteins works. Would you believe there are those that claim Wittgenstein's TLP has certain aspects to it that are Hegelian? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Wit was a fan of Kierkegaard. Wit even learned Danish late in life to read K. Perhaps it was reading for pleasure. Of course K isn't Hegel and K disagreed with Hegel and his methods but K did not ignore Hegel or dismiss Hegel out of hand.

Wit was a fan of Kierkegaard. Wit even learned Danish late in life to read K. Perhaps it was reading for pleasure. Of course K isn't Hegel and K disagreed with Hegel and his methods but K did not ignore Hegel or dismiss Hegel out of hand.

Long ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, those who never bathed, and could not count past their 10 fingers, admired the indulgent scribbles of a fraud named Hegel. Somehow, they had wondered from the path of true philosophy. How could men that had first admired the genius of a Cant have fallen so low as to mistake such senseless rambling as sublimity, as an improvement on Cant? And Cant had written so very clearly, after all. When it came to Cant, they Could. Hegel they should have Heckled. Foolish enough were they to mistake a work by Fichte as a work by Cant. But Fichte was an absolute idealist. Go Figga!

Scoopenhauer knew better. Who wants a unity when a dualism is available?

Hegel is accused of being a mystifier, it seems. And yet he alienated a close friend by criticizing this friend's mystic-like dodge. "The night in which all cows are black." I like Hegel for sticking to the concept as the medium of philosophy. He refused the mystical, and strove to make philosophy scientific. Physical science can radically advance without a careful examination of its implicit metaphysics. And Hegel did try to extend to dialectic to the natural world, which was a mistake. He got carried away with his pretty toy. Too bad. Still, it was Hegel who could finally explain history in a cohesive, including the history of philosophy as a progress of self-consciousness, AKA the self-penetration of reality. Does this sound strange? Of course it does, at least to the ears of a dualist. Subject as substance? Whatever could it mean? And the all-too-clever skeptics clung to what was equivalent to the soul-superstition. Lord knows, right?, that the "self" and "reality" are oh so different....

Nevermind that they are never seen apart. Nevemind that the mysticism-protecting noumena was a place to hide God from reason. Nevermind that Kant was a puritan that could not tell a lie, who wanted to have God and Science simultaneously, and was quite acrobatic on the issue. (I once thought, as a child, that I had invented the PB&J sandwich.)

So maybe it's a matter of taste. Hegel's "God" is immanent, is nothing but man. Hegel could actually be accused of atheism, of narrowness, rather than mystification. He rejected the idea of a reality beyond the rational as irrational. And indeed, this is slick. For our notions of the trans-notional are obviously just still notions. What can transrational mean? Desire is key in Hegel's system, but it's a desire that evolved from the sort of thing men fight duels over. Desire, concept, nothing mystical required. Give man time, and he will evolve a complex culture. He will switch from pagan violence to a society that recognizes the individual as such as sacred. He does not, as most philosophers do, divorce philosophy from history. He presents truth in the context of motive. He presents the stoic and the skeptic as moments in the history of philosophy, as slaves who rationalize their cowardice. The slave, who refuses to risk his life for the prestige of mastery, is the driving force of history. He dreams up super-masters like God who are above both him and his worldly master. Still, he remains a slave, and the slave of a greater tyrant. Perhaps it's less shameful to be the slave of omnipotence. The stoic and the skeptic have their imaginary freedom, but the contradictions are fairly obvious. Can error evolve into truth? Is being finally accurately revealed by a self-evolving dialectic? Can enough disagreements, one improving on the other, finally add up to a cohesive and accurate picture of being? Is the way to accurately picture being the assertion that our picture of being was always the only being to begin with? And therefore not a picture? Was duality a necessary confusion on the way from a chaotic plurality? A useful confusion? A finally obsolete confusion?

Nevemind that synthesis and negation are notes and rests of the same music.

Hegel was not a mystifier, but an obscurantist. There is a reason why Im reading the Phenomenology, and it's not simply to read it; it's also to understand an important piece of philosophical history. The book itself is a living document, organic in a sense. The overall importance of Hegel should not be overlooked, even if one does not like him.

However, Hegel's thought I would consider nothing more than a pseudo-science, much like the rest of phenomenology today. There is a desire to look upon that world as rational from a Hegelian standpoint, but this completely neglects the irrational aspect of the world (and also by extension us).

History does not contradict itself at certain points, with the ultimate result being an absolute (this absolute good and knowing). This absolute will never be achieved due to the lack of conciousness on the part of most men.

Hegel was definetly and atheist (this is the man that said, "God is the sewer into which all contradictions flow"). Kant I am still questioning. I feel as though Kant was an atheist as well, but I am leaning more towards agnosticism for him.

I commend your endurance, and your willingness to accept pain. But why do you think that Hegel is an important piece of philosophical history? He has had, so far as I can tell, no particular influence on philosophy, although he has had a baleful influence on world history through Marx (who has been said to "stand Hegel on his head". I always wondered how they could tell which end of Hegel was up).

He is important because of his failure, at least to me. The whole enterprise of Hegel's Phenomenology is, while at times very spectacular and bewildering, nevertheless doomed from the start on the simple fact that the beginning pressupposes the end. From an epistemological standpoint its faulty. I do admire Hegel for his imagination (which is something that should be prized in philosophy), but I can't help but notice his lack of stability in his works. He's a sophist, but of the highest rank.

Marx was a fool. Thats all I am going to say about him.