“Croce also indulged in a psychoanalytic speculation that Hegel’s 19th-century adversaries – Schopenhauer, Janet, and others – hated him because they saw him as the symbol of philosophy itself, ‘which is without heart and without compassion for the feeble-minded and for the lazy: Philosophy, which is not to be placated with the specious offerings of sentiment and of fancy, nor with the light foods of half-science’.”
“A phenomenon that would lead us to believe such a renaissance is in progress is the constant increase of books on Hegel in the last four decades. What are the reasons for this continually growing interest in Hegel? One obvious reason is pragmatic: the necessity for understanding Hegel in order to assess Kierkegaard’s reaction against him, Marx’s and Sartre’s use of Hegelian concepts in developing their own positions, Heidegger’s interpretation of Hegel, and Derrida’s attack on Hegelian ontotheology. A second reason is that in some quarters, interest in Hegel is concomitant with a reaction against analytic philosophy.” “[On the other hand,] Richard Bernstein broaches this third possibility, arguing that analytical philosophers are finding more and more that single and discrete analyses ‘spill over to other issues’ (as happens in Hegel’s analyses), that progress on epistemological issues requires confrontation with metaphysical issues (a requirement Hegel insisted on), that one can’t deal effectively with reference and denotation without getting into ontology (another Hegelian insight), and so forth. A fourth reason, also noted by Bernstein, has to do with developments in philosophy of science that seem to reflect Hegelian themes – e.g., theories about the evolution of scientific paradigms and recognition of the influence of social contexts on scientific theories (Bernstein, 39). A fifth reason has to do with Hegel’s political theory: in 1989, renewed interest in this aspect of his work was generated when Francis Fukuyama published an article in The National Interest, portraying Hegel as a prophet of the triumph of liberalism over communism.”
“A few decades ago, [Mortimer] Adler looked to scholastic realism as an anchor of sanity in a philosophical world gone adrift in sectarian rivalry and undisciplined individualism.” “For those still seeking a perennial philosophy but disenchanted with the scholastic model, Hegel may seem an improvement, if not the ultimate answer. For Hegel saw all philosophical schools and systems as the unfolding of one central problematic – the relationship of being to thought – and he also managed to synthesise the ‘transcendental turn’ (Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution’) into his overall schema (something scholastic realism was constitutionally unable to accomplish). The synthesising power of the Hegelian system is of course challenged to the utmost in an intellectual world grown accustomed to evolution, relativity, the demise of monarchical political systems, the decline of the west, and multi-valued logics.”
HISTORICISMO-HISTORIOGRAFIA: “This renewed interest in history may quite conceivably have been brought about by the very pluralism and factionalism of contemporary philosophy, much as a society in times of confusion or anarchy may grope for stability by studying its own history and heritage. Those who seek in the history of philosophy some illumination about contemporary philosophical goings-on will find a kindred spirit in G.W.F. Hegel; for Hegel, perhaps more than any other modern philosopher, emphasised the history of philosophy, and in a very real sense even identified philosophy with its history.”
“After all, philosophy, following the example of science, has become extremely specialised and compartmentalised, and in these days of a never-ending ‘knowledge explosion’, who would seriously lay claim to knowing ‘all things’ – the whole universe or even its infinite ‘areas of discourse’? But for one disgruntled underground species of philosophers, those who can’t quite give up that grandiose aspiration, the study of Hegel allows them to do something of this sort, with a certain degree of respectability and without having to put on airs of being geniuses.” “I should re-emphasise that Hegel himself did not claim to ‘know all things’; he claimed only to have uncovered the ‘absolute standpoint’ making possible a balanced, no longer one-sided perspective, on perennial philosophical issues.”
“The most serious and most important inducement to study Hegel, in my opinion, is an interest in, and a need for, metaphilosophy.” “For those who understand ‘metaphilosophy’ in the fourth sense [I exposed] – as a study of philosophical discourse – it becomes the study of philosophical discourse about ‘philosophical discourse’.”
“One salutary result of the study of Hegel has been a holistic view. One cannot read Hegel seriously and sympathetically without beginning to view the specialisation and prima facie autonomy of various branches of philosophy as unnecessary (ontologically or otherwise) and even counterproductive.”
“Hegel had no patience with the idea that the formula ‘one man, one vote would guarantee political self-determination’.” “At a time when Hitler’s election on the basis of the ‘one man, one vote’ is still a fairly recent memory – and when ‘control’ over the federal government by average American working people is often reduced to perilous choices, every few years, between congressional or presidential candidates neither of whom is thought satisfactory – it would be appropriate for us to ask whether there is any more natural way to ensure constant participation by and representation of citizens in a free state. Especially with today’s revolutionary advances in communication technologies, the possibilities of full democratic participation have to be rethought.”
“The existence of paradoxes puts to the test our linguistic and logical conventions regarding univocity and non-contradiction, but we should not dismiss them simply on this ground. Dismissing paradox for such a is reason would be analogous to, say, Einstein‘s dismissing the change of mass of subatomic particles at high speeds because it flouted Newtonian physics. It was by going beyond this apparent contradiction that Einstein arrived at new paradoxical insights; analogously, it may just so happen that some philosophical truths are apparent contradictions on the level of ordinary logic, but paradoxical truths nevertheless. When we think of the consensus among physicists, biologists, and chemists on many foundational issues and, by contrast, the lack of consensus – and the many contradictions – among philosophers on every issue, it may not seem unlikely that paradox, which incorporates oppositions and contradictions but also surpasses them, may be the most appropriate mode of expression in philosophy.”
“Hegel’s theology is speculative and patristic, rather than biblical or ‘systematic’ in the current theological sense; but it offers intensive examination of many important theological issues. Karl Barth suggests in one place that Hegel is the Thomas Aquinas of Protestantism; and the Catholic theologian Hans Küng devotes a book to a constructive elaboration of Hegel’s Christology. But the conflict between leftist and rightist interpretations of Hegel, begun after his death, is still going strong.”
“H.S. Harris suggests that Hegel’s description of his Philosophy of History as a ‘theodicy’ was a ploy to distract attention from the revolutionary social theory of the Phenomenology.”
“Let me now balance this account of the positive aspects of Hegelianism with an appraisal of some of Hegel’s more salient deficiencies and errors.”
“Marx tried to use Hegel’s dialectical methodology without succumbing to Hegel’s ontology; Kierkegaard in his ‘aesthetic’ works reinterprets or reapplies many ideas from Hegel’s phenomenology. Others exonerate Hegel’s system but consider his dialectic the drawback. I side with the former group. Hegel’s system is obviously patterned after Fichte’s and Schelling’s attempts to build systems and is thus ‘dated’. Although Hegel’s system provides a wealth of insights, it would not be worthwhile to follow in his footsteps by philosophising in sets of intertwining and nested triads.”
“For one thing, in line with the Hellenist sentiment of his era, he idolised the Greeks, but he saw fit to characterise the Romans – of the republic and the empire – as essentially a band of robbers who got together and then required strong, practical laws and eventually tyranny to keep them from turning on each other.”
“In the Philosophy of History, Hegel not only writes off China as being outside history but refuses to give any serious attention to Russia or the other Slavic countries because they contributed nothing important to (European) history.”
“Hegel, like Kant, seemed to think of Negroes as a definitely inferior race. He theorised that although they were stronger and more educable than American Indians, Negroes represented the inharmonious state of ‘natural man’, before humans’ attainment of consciousness of God and their own individuality”
“Hegel’s ideas of women similarly reflect ‘scientific’ attitudes that prevailed at the time but would now be considered sexist. For example, in his treatment of the family in the Philosophy of Right, he generalises that women are ruled by feeling, can be educated only by something like osmosis, and should never be put in charge of a state (PR, §166, Zusatz).
Hegel’s praise of war and overall militarism (PR, §324), even though it was tempered by his opposition to nationalism (Hösle 582n), strongly influenced 19th-and-20th-century war ideologies, up to and including Nazism (Hösle 581).”
“I am sure that Hegel himself, who insisted strongly on the historical and cultural limitations of any philosophy, would not be a Hegelian now – if by ‘Hegelian’ is meant someone who champions monarchy, systems built out of triads, outdated scientific ideas, and so forth.”
Seclusão Anagógica 