Reality, declares Hegel, is inherently contradictory; it is a systematic progression of colliding contradictions organized in triads of thesis, antithesis, synthesis—and men must think accordingly.* They should not strive for old-fashioned, “static” consistency.
Hegel describes the above as a new conception of “reason,” and as a new, “dialectic” logic.
In Hegel’s version, reality is a dynamic cosmic mind or thought-process, which in various contexts is referred to as the Absolute, the Spirit, the World-Reason, God, etc. According to Hegel, it is in the essential nature of this entity to undergo a constant process of evolution or development, unfolding itself in various stages.
The ethics and politics which Hegel derives from his fundamental philosophy can be indicated by two sentences from his Philosophy of Right: “A single person, I need hardly say, is something subordinate, and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Hence if the state claims life, the individual must surrender it.”
Since everything is ultimately one, the group, he holds, has primacy over the individual. If each man learns to suppress his identity and coalesce with his fellows, the resulting collective entity, the state, will be a truer reflection of reality, a higher manifestation of the Absolute.
It [the collective State] is itself an individual, a mystic “person” that swallows up the citizens and transcends them, an independent, self-sustaining organism, made of human beings, with a will and purpose of its own.
As a manifestation of the Absolute, it [the State] is a creature of God, and thus demands not merely obedience from its citizens but reverential worship.
Source: Ominous Parallels.
*Karl Marx borrowed from this in his dialectic materialism theory.
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