Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(1770-1831)

Hegel was another disciple of Kant; he was of the Idealist school.

Born in Stuttgart; he died in Berlin. Teaching his way through Tübingen, Jena, and Heidelberg; Hegel eventually ended up, in 1815, at the University of Berlin. In 1818, Hegel took Immanuel Herman von Fichte's job at Berlin and to his death was "virtually dictator of German philosophical thinking." (Chambers.)

To come to Hegel's philosophy one starts with Kant and proceeds through Fichte and Schelling. Hegal departed from the Fichte-Schelling "Ego-nonEgo" analysis by stating that it was reason that should take over, not your reason or not my reason, but the World Reason, Universal Consciousness; an Absolute. This Absolute while it governs the individual (the Ego) and all the world around the individual (the nonEgo), it is, nonetheless part of, or synonymous with, Reason (Ego) and Reality (nonEgo). This, in my short study, is the best I can make of Hegel, and if these statements are confusing to you, - you have company: "Hegelian terminology is cumbersome and defies analysis, except on its own terms."

The dialectic is a branch of logic in the art of reasoning and\or disputing. It is a classic approach, one at which Socrates was a master. Through the use of it Socrates (and, in my experience, many a good cross-examining lawyer) would lead his adversary to make clear his position on the subject, then, often with the introduction of an absolutely contrary theory, the discussion would end with an admission, on the other side, of an inaccuracy. Now, the German philosophers of the idealist school were partial to the dialectic method. It was employed, as often it was, beginning with Plato, to set one theory in opposition with another, and thus to develop a subject in a comprehensive manner. First an idea (a Thesis) was thrown up against another theory (an Antithesis); from this, it was thought, one would advance to a third stage, and the truth would emerge. Often, - though not necessarily - there would come about a combination of both the ideas (a synthesis). From this process, it is thought, one would arrive at the truth of a proposition; this is not to be confused with a negotiation process whereby, usually, a compromise is wrought out. It must be remembered that while the truth may lie between one proposition or another, it may (I suggest more likely than not) lie fully with one thesis or the other (either the Thesis or the Antithesis). It is my impression that the German idealist school (for that matter, most any school of thought) through the dialectic, always came away with a synthesis, "a combo" of the the two ideas under review, "a remix" of ideas that likely have been mixed by the same process, over and over. The overall result is a hopeless maze of probabilities, which some souls would assert is exactly what reality is all about.

"We must analyze everything into what it now is, then analysis will show that it contains its opposite, which in turn will have to be harmonized into something that includes them both. But the resultant synthesis will itself be subject again to a negative element, this then, will be resolved into a still more comprehensive synthesis, which will be subjected once more to the principle of contradiction. The final solution, the ultimate harmony, the last synthesis, the step when it will no longer be necessary to go higher, will constitute the Absolute. The Universe as a whole harmonizes all contradictions, it is the perfect whole, it is the synthesis which we are seeking as our final solution. It, therefore, constitutes the true, the rational, the goal of the dialectic method. The conclusion is that only the whole of reality is rational, because that furnishes a complete view of all things; it is the Absolute, the World, Reason, God." (See Henry Alphern's An Outline History of Philosophy (Forum House, 1969), p. 162-3)