George Freidrich Willhelm Hegel

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George Freidrich WillhelmHegel
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Philosophy of modernity

• On contradictory principles of Enlightenment
  thought
• Using principles immanent in modernity rather
  than abstract or universal
• Rational reconstruction of entirety of European
  thought from classical Greek philosophy to the
  Enlightenment
• Both history and the history of thought
  (philosophy) are part of a process unfolding
  towards a final end - the attainment of absolute
  knowledge
• Absolute knowledge a social world in which
  there is general awareness of the universal force
  by which everything is regulated
• Modernity commences with the c.16th Protestant
  Reformation, and the realization that Man is in
  his very essence destined to be free. (Lectures
  on the Philosophy of History)

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Contradictions of Modernity

• State vs. civil society
• Private market behaviour vs the common good
• Facts in the world vs. universal values from
  without
• Contingency vs. necessity

• Productive rather than problematic
• Contradiction is at the root of all movement
  and life, and it is only in so far as it contains
  a contradiction that anything moves and has
  impulse and activity.

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Critique of Enlightenment

• Abstract idea of Reason
• Undifferentiated and unconditioned Freedom
• Absolute freedom (Rousseaus General Will)