Berlin - Germany - 19th century
In 1818 Hegel accepted the renewed offer of the chair of philosophy at
Berlin, which had been vacant since Fichte's death.
Hegel's "Basic Outline of the Philosophy of Right (or of Law)" was published in 1821 for use in connection with his lectures: the problem in the modern world is to construct a social and political order that satisfies:
- law and rights as such: persons (i.e., men as men, quite independently of their individual characters) are the subject of rights, and what is required of them is mere obedience, no matter what the motives of obedience may be. Right is thus an abstract universal and therefore does justice only to the universal element in the human will.
- The individual, however, cannot be satisfied unless the act that he does accords not
merely with law but also with his own conscientious convictions.
After his publication of The Philosophy of Right (1821), Hegel seems to
have devoted himself almost entirely to his lectures. Between 1823 and 1827 his activity
reached its maximum. During these years hundreds of hearers from all
parts of Germany and beyond came under his influence; and his fame was carried abroad by
eager or intelligent disciples. 3 courses of
lectures are especially the product of his Berlin period:
1. those on aesthetics: In the years
preceding the revolution of 1830, public interest, excluded from
political life, turned to theatres, concert rooms, and picture galleries. At these
Hegel became a frequent and appreciative visitor, and he made extracts from the art notes
in the newspapers. Hegel and his wife frequented the theater and opera, and attended other
concerts. His three sons were all required to study music. Musical evenings were hosted at
their home, as were other social gatherings. Hegel liked to play cards with his friends,
and always read the daily newspapers. During his holiday excursions, his interest in the
fine arts more than once took him out of his way to see some old painting. This familiarity with the facts of art, though neither deep nor
historical, gave a freshness to his lectures on aesthetics, which, as put together
from the notes taken in different years from 1820 to 1829, are among his most successful
efforts.
2. The lectures on the philosophy of religion are another
application of his method, and shortly before his death he had prepared for the press a
course of lectures on the proofs for the existence of God. On
the one hand, he turned his weapons against the Rationalistic school, which reduced
religion to the modicum compatible with an ordinary worldly mind. On the other hand, he
criticized the school of Schleiermacher, who elevated feeling to a place in religion above
systematic theology. In his middle way, Hegel attempted to show that the dogmatic creed is
the rational development of what was implicit in religious feeling. To do so, of course,
philosophy must be made the interpreter and the superior discipline.
3. In his philosophy of history, Hegel presupposed that the
whole of human history is a process through which mankind has been making spiritual and
moral progress and advancing to self-knowledge. History has a plot, and the philosopher's
task is to discern it. Some historians have found its key in the operation of natural laws
of various kinds. Hegel's attitude, however, rested on the faith that history is the
enactment of God's purpose and that man had now advanced far enough to descry what that
purpose is: it is the gradual realization of human freedom.
The first step was to make the transition from a natural life of savagery to a state of
order and law. States had to be founded by force and violence; there is no other way to
make men law-abiding before they have advanced far enough mentally to accept the
rationality of an ordered life. There will be a stage at which some men have accepted the
law and become free, while others remain slaves. In the modern world man has come to
appreciate that all men, as minds, are free in essence, and his task is thus to frame
institutions under which they will be free in fact.
In 1830 he was rector of the university. In 1831 he received a decoration
from Frederick William III. The revolution of 1830
was a great blow to Hegel, and the prospect of mob
rule almost made him ill. In 1831
cholera entered Germany. Hegel and his family retired for the summer to the suburbs. Home
again for the winter session, on November 14, after one day's
illness, he died of cholera. His funeral was a dignified one
deserving of a person of his importance. He was buried next to Fichte and near Karl
Solger, in a place he had personally chosen at Solger's funeral.
When Shelling took the Chair of Natural Philosophy
at the University of Berlin, he could only present a doctrine which was
incomparably inferior to Hegel's treatment. Thus natural philosophy
soon after vanished from Berlin and with it the
age of Natural Science exerted its unrestrained influence. By the 1850's the triumphs
of empirical Natural Sciences became evident and the philosophies of materialism
prevalent. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, in
particular, was laughed at.
Hegel was born in Stuttgart in 1770 and died in Berlin in 1831.
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