Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of History

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duquette
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
World History ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Rational Process ◽  
Modern Nation State

Hegel’s philosophy of history emphasizes the development of freedom and the consciousness of freedom over the course of world history. For G. W. F. Hegel (b. 1770–d. 1831), this development is marked by conflict and struggle, rather than smooth uninterrupted progress, and is manifested for the most part in political developments construed broadly, including world-historical events such as the French Revolution, in the significant actions of world-historical “heroes” such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the achievements of peoples and nations. According to Hegel, the end or goal of history is the actualization of freedom in the life of the modern nation-state. He claimed that history was a rational process of development and that it could be understood and made intelligible for anyone willing to look at it rationally, which means looking at it holistically and as an endeavor of the World Spirit with a discernible purpose. Moreover, he attempted to show that history exhibited real progress toward the ultimate goal of freedom and that the modern period, the time in which he lived up until his death in 1831, brought this development to fruition and, in a way, a culmination. This theory of history has been both highly influential and controversial—it is essential to any overall study of the philosophy of history.

The Role of Indian Textiles in Southeast Asian Trade in the Seventeenth Century

1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. P. Sen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
World History ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Asian History

The role of Indian textiles in Southeast Asian trade in the seventeenth century was important in three ways. First, there was a great, almost unlimited, demand for these goods in all the Southeast Asian markets; second, they constituted the principal medium of exchange for the trade of Southeast Asia with the outside world; and third, they shaped the pattern of Inter-Asian trade of the European Companies, which laid the foundation of their wealth and commerce and later political power in the eighteenth century. The first two were important for Southeast Asian history only, but the last was of very great importance from the point of view of world history, not less important, in its far-reaching effects, than the voyages of discovery at the beginning of the modern period or the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. The poor Indian weavers shaped the course of world history by unconsciously laying the foundation of British and Dutch colonial empires.

Bonaparte’s Bursting Buttons: A Thin Story

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Öhrström
Keyword(s):  
Science Teachers ◽  
Dense Material ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
Popular Book ◽  
The Town ◽  
Warm Clothing

On my way to Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, one late November I realized that I had not packed any winter clothes. It turns out that I was not the first to make this blunder. None of the half a million or so Germans, French, Swiss, Poles, Italians, and other nationalities who passed through the town or in its vicinity in June 1812 had packed any winter clothes, something many of them were to later regret. They were on their way, although they did not know it at the time, to Moscow. What they also did not know was that they were going to make what was arguably the world’s worst aller-retour journey ever: Vilna to Moscow and back (at that time the town was known under its Polish name and had recently been acquired by the Russians in the process of the annihilation of the Polish state). It was June, and they were in a good mood, as the Russian Tsar had recently fled Vilna followed by his quarrelling generals, and they were under the command of possibly the most competent military leader since Alexander the Great: Napoleon Bonaparte. The lack of warm clothing was not going to bother me, however. By the morning the snow had melted, and luckily I was not on my way to Moscow on foot. I was in Vilnius to search for some buttons, preferably made of tin. The story of Napoleon’s buttons and their allegedly fateful role in the disastrous 1812 campaign is widespread among scientists and science teachers. This is partly due to the popular book with the same name by the chemists Penny LeCouteur and Jay Burreson, and I wanted to find out whether there could be any truth in it, or whether it was just another of the legends and rumours that has formed around this war. Briefly, the story goes like this: metallic tin is a dense material (lots of atoms per cubic centimetre) and was supposedly the material used for many of the buttons of what was known as la Grande Armée. Unfortunately, metallic tin has a nasty Mr Hyde variation, known as grey tin.

Lauener, Michael, Schutz der Kirche und Stabilität des Staates durch Absenz von religiöser ,Seichtigkeit': die religionspolitischen Anschauungen von Jeremias Gotthelf und Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel aus dem Geist der Versöhnung

2019 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 280-349
Author(s):  
Michael Lauener
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

Abstract Protection of the church and state stability through the absence of religious 'shallowness': views on religion-policy of Jeremias Gotthelf and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel out of a spirit of reconciliation. The article re-examines a thesis of Paul Baumgartner published in 1945: "Jeremias Gotthelf's, 'Zeitgeist and Bernergeist', A Study on Introduction and Interpretation", that if the Swiss writer and keen Hegel-opponent Jeremias Gotthelf had read any book of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of this would have received his recognition. Both Gotthelf and Hegel see the Reformation to be the cause of the emergence of a strong state. For Gotthelf, this marks the beginning of a process of strengthening the state at the expense of the church. Hegel, on the other hand, considers the modern state to be the reality of freedom, produced by the Christian 'religion of freedom' (Rph, §270 Z., p. 430). In contrast to Gotthelf, for whom only Christ can reconcile the state and religion, Hegel praises the French Revolution as "reconciliation of the divine with the world". For Gotthelf, the French Revolution was only a poor imitation of the process of spiritual and political liberation initiated by the Reformation, through which Christ reduced people to their original liberty. Nevertheless, both Gotthelf and Hegel want to protect the state and the church from falling apart, they reject organizational unity of state – religion – church in the sense of a theocracy, and demand the protection of church communities.

Hegel's Critique of the Triumph of Verstand in Modernity

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (01) ◽  
pp. 54-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
The People ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Revolution

In his lectures on the philosophy of history Hegel passes this famous judgement on the French Revolution. “Anaxagoras had been the first to say that nous governs the world; but only now did humanity come to recognize that thought should rule spiritual actuality. This was thus a magnificent dawn”. What first gave rise to discontent in France, in Hegel's view, were the heavy burdens that pressed upon the people and the government's inability to procure for the Court the means of supporting its luxury and extravagance. But soon the new spirit of freedom and enlightenment began to stir in men's minds and carry them forward to revolution. “One should not, therefore, declare oneself against the assertion”, Hegel concludes, “that the Revolution received its first impulse from Philosophy” (VPW, p 924). However, Hegel points out that the legacy of the revolution is actually an ambiguous one. For, although the principles which guided the revolution were those of reason and were indeed magnificent – namely, that humanity is born to freedom and self-determination – they were held fast in their abstraction and turned “polemically”, and at times terribly, against the existing order (VPW, p 925). What ultimately triumphed in the revolution was thus not concrete reason itself, but abstract reason or understanding (VPW, p 923). In Hegel's view, the enduring legacy of such revolutionary understanding was, not so much the Terror, but the principle that “the subjective wills of the many should hold sway” (VPW, p 932). This principle, which Hegel calls the principle of “liberalism” and which we would call the principle of majority rule, has since spread from France to become one of the governing principles of modern stat. It has been used to justify granting universal suffrage, to justify depriving corporations and the nobility of the right to sit in the legislature, and in some cases to justify abolishing the monarchy. What is of crucial importance for Hegel, however, is that such measures have not rendered the state more modern and rational, but have in fact distorted the modern state.

Introduction to the essence of security and security strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (33) ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Jacek A. Piwowarski
Keyword(s):  
Development Strategy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
Sun Tzu ◽  
Strategic Actions ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Relationship

Ensuring freedom from threats to security subjects requires the elaboration of a security strategy. The relationship between security strategy and development strategy is the same as that between security and development themselves – one determines the other. For this reason, the purpose of this article is to discuss the essence of security and its basic conceptual categories, as well as the implementation of its provision through strategic efforts. At the beginning, the essence of the phenomenon of security is presented and the most important definitions are quoted. Similarly, the author discusses the concept of strategy and shows the evolution of its understanding. This allows to discuss the typology of security strategies and to mention the most important figures that became part of history thanks to their achievements in the theory of strategy, including Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte. A few of the most important principles formulated by these figures are recalled, which may be important hints for contemporary strategists as well. Finally, the author gives the most important definitions of ideas related to security: the security environment, the interests of the security subject, opportunities, challenges, risks, threats, rules and methods. Their essence is emphasized in the light of the considerations presented above. The author concludes that the strategic categories are superior to the respective political categories and distinguishes three types of contemporary strategic actions. He also recognizes that the biggest challenge in terms of security is the prevention of threats, e.g. by means of stabilization activities whose essence is to maintain and promote the stability of the security environment.

N.I. KAREEV ON THE GENERAL HUMANITARIAN CHARACTER OF F. SCHELLING'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
N.A. Soboleva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
World History ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The West ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
New Education

It is shown that the representative of the Russian positivist philosophy of history N.I. Kareev left behind a huge array of historiosophical reviews that are important for permanent understanding of the essence of world history. It is concluded that N.I. Kareev, as a thinker who stands on the platform of multi-factor analysis, was able to see the positive potential of various concepts of world history. In particular, in the metaphysical legacy of F. Schelling, N.I. Kareev found ideas that could unite seemingly dissimilar interpretations of world history. As such, N.I. Kareev highlights two ideas of the German thinker. The first idea: the merging of cultures that are opposite in their foundations can give rise to a new education and encourage a cultural dialogue. The second one: the world history is the duality and interdependence of the cultures of the West and the East.

The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908

1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selim Deringil
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
World History ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
National Foundation ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

The nineteenth century, a time when world history seemed to accelerate, was the epoch of the Risorgimento and the Unification of Germany. It was also an epoch which saw the last efforts of dynastic ancien régime empires (Habsburg, Romanov, Ottoman) to shore up their political systems with methods often borrowed from their adversaries, the nationalist liberals. Eric Hobsbawm's inspiring recent study has pointed out that, in the world after the French Revolution, it was no longer enough for monarchies to claim divine right; additional ideological reinforcement was required: “The need to provide a new, or at least a supplementary, ‘national’ foundation for this institution was felt in states as secure from revolution as George III's Britain and Nicholas I's Russia.”

The Uses of Tragedy: Reinhold Niebuhr's Theory of History and International Ethics

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
World Order ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Political Ethic ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
The Cold War

As Smith points out, Reinhold Niebuhr's political ethic is closely linked to his philosophy of history. This view of history blends a dualistic understanding of human nature and rigorous contingency of experience - all sobered by a creative sense of tragedy. Niebuhr's modest sensibility was forged amid the early catastrophes of the century and fell on fertile ground early in the Cold War. But in the ironic wake of that superpower struggle there is much in Niebuhr's anitriumphalism to commend to today's international relations theorists and practitioners. Following Augustine, Niebuhr offers no escape from the complexities and contingencies of history, but neither does he view history as gloomily fixed. Rather, Niebuhr's complex and often contradictory sense of historical destiny reflects a sober hope for a more just and peaceful world order.

The Third British Empire: Transplanting the English Shire to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and America

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron C. Noonkester
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Third ◽  
Simple Matter ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
As If

During their hegemony in world affairs, the English exported persons, commodities, and texts to regions that they absorbed into a widening pale of influence. Discussion of these ventures has consumed a vast literature. What once seemed to be a simple matter of transporting Protestantism (or convicts) into an overseas wilderness or making distant lands safe for English farming and trade now seems a matter too complex to be captured in a metaphor or an alliterative catchphrase. Yet it remains a matter of historical fascination that a relatively small archipelago off the coast of Europe not only could become the first “modern” nation-state but could then transform itself into a vast global empire, ultimately making it seem as if the affairs of this proverbial workshop encompassed world history itself. For many years, such success seemed too evident for investigation, and scholarly attention turned toward explaining how this achievement unraveled or declined. The result has been a quest for detailed precision and microhistorical reconstruction on the part of those who have adopted an “empirical,” geopolitical approach to imperialism and an outpouring of criticism from those who, on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, have penned polemical classics whose evocative, if not evidentiary, power envisioned revolution as historical destiny and a means of filling the intellectual and political void left by imperial evacuation. Their disagreements notwithstanding, however, both categories of imperial commentary display relative innocence of the paradox that imperial power represented: that, despite voluble criticism, it enjoyed eclipsing success for a time and produced effects whose mysteries continue to survive postcolonial deconstruction.

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