r/hegel

>Consciousness, as spirit which on the way of manifesting itself frees itself from its immediacy and external concretion, attains to the pure knowledge that takes these same pure essentialities for its subject matter as they are in and for themselves.

— from Science of Logic, Preface

It’s not “a consciousness” with an article, it’s “consciousness” like how God, thought or knowledge is uncountable, which could materially refer to Hegel himself or any human being on their philosophical journey following his manual.

But is this not a presupposition from the materialist perspective, in that consciousness exists as some predetermined background? How was he and how are we sure if it exists, same way as how we can be sure if there’s God at all?

Can a historian truly understand the past? Wilhelm Dilthey believed this was the central question of historical inquiry. Against the positivists of his age, he argued that history cannot be studied like nature because human actions are shaped by meanings, values, and lived experiences, not merely by causes.

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For Dilthey, the historian's task is not simply to explain the past but to understand it. Through interpretation and empathy, historians attempt to reconstruct how people experienced their world. But can we ever fully understand those who lived centuries before us?

There is Hegel's reason and dialectical movement and Schopenhauer's will. Hegel said we are and our history moves through dialectical movement and we heading towards ultimate reality and one day we'll achieve that, similarly Karl Marx is on Hegel side. But on the other hand, there is Schopenhauer's will and also Nietzsche's will to power later on and then post modernists. So which one is more powerful idea?

I'm starting to read Deleuze and i expect to read Hegel some point in the near future, but i just wnated to know what's the consensuses of hegelians on Deleuze take on dialectis as false movement, that maintains in the boundaries of what western philosophy think about difference, as something negative.

Has there been respones from a hegelian perspective against the delezian take on dialectis?

What is the impact of the deleuzian critique in hegelian studies?

Hello everyone.

Does the term "dialectical materialism" not assume what it ought to prove? For Hegelians, this term is perfectly reasonable, although reduces Hegel to a crude version of himself, but for the Marxists is it not problematic? Hegelians understand reality to be the unfolding of a Concept, so they should have no problem in asserting that matter does in fact unfold dialectically - but the Marxists can't do this (as far as I can see) because then they would be establishing an identity between thought and reality.

Can someone please explain - I may very well be wrong in my understanding, and any corrections would be most welcome. Thanks in advance!

Could you recommend secondary literature that would help me understand the relationship between Hegel and Habermas? I am a professional Hegel scholar myself, but I would not say that I am especially familiar with critical theory.

Deus do céu, existe algo pior do que começar um livro como Fenomenologia do Espírito sem saber o quanto de obscurantismo linguístico vai ser encontrado ali?

E ainda mais, ler Hegel a partir da perspectiva do conflito entre duas pessoas.

Sem buscar jamais criticar o ocultismo das coisas, mas quem começa a leitura de Fenomenologia de Hegel a partir da perspectiva narrativa entra numa espécie de inferno hegeliano.

Evidentemente Eu só existo no olhar do outro — como um livro de psicanálise, ou uma paráfrase do Lacan diz —, mas a primeira vez que li Fenomenologa do Espírito o impacto afetivo em mim foi absolutamente desnorteante.

O Eu=Outro antes da suprassunção e de se elevar a Espírito Universal, antes de chegar ao inferno do Espírito Absoluto em-si-e-para-si, foi p/ mim uma experiência que, decerto, me levou a momentos psicóticos ou com sintomas psicóticos leves e moderados.

I’m VERY new to Hegel (didn’t know who he was until like a week ago) and I’m really struggling to understand what exactly his views were on Indians and why he had them. My reading comprehension sucks so this is probably a silly question, the text I’m about to post is probably really self explanatory but I can’t understand it at all lol.

“Firstly, Bauer draws explicitly on the reality-distorting effects of opium consumption: the idea of the Christian after-world is construed on the basis of an opium vision. Hegel, on the other hand, seems to imply that the beliefs of Indian culture are natural underpinnings of the early state of the development of the world spirit. Secondly, Bauer and Hegel take different points of departure. Hegel views Indian culture as enmeshed in the sensuous and without means to separate between nature and spirit - according to Hegel, Indian culture has to be overcome.” … “According to Bauer, Christianity leaps into the opium frenzy of a dreamed-up world to cover its destructive deeds whereas Hegel describes Indian culture behaving as though it was a desolate man craving the delirious bliss of opium addiction. Hegel's image of Indian opium addiction is passive whereas Bauer's image of Christian opium use is active.” (Religion is the Opium of the People by E.O. Pedersen, page 365-366)

What exactly about Indian culture is it that he dislikes so much? I’m assuming when he talks about Indian culture he’s talking about Hinduism but I don’t understand what he’s getting at. What is meant by “enmeshed in the sensuous and without means to separate between nature and spirit”? (Sorry for using the thesis, antithesis, synthesis thing) but is he saying that Indian culture forces India to remain in the “antithesis” stage, and is unable to advance because of its beliefs? Is that why he thinks it needs to be “overcome”?

I’m genuinely so lost, I’m guessing it’s because I don’t really understand his idea of spirit 😭 Is there anywhere (or anyone) that could provide a simple explanation of what his qualms are with Indian culture and how this relates to the rest of his philosophical views? 🫠

In Hegel’s account of dialectical development, negation appears not merely as destruction but as a productive moment that propels consciousness toward higher determinations. Yet I struggle with whether this negation is ever fully aufgehoben in a way that resolves its tension, or whether it is instead continuously re-inscribed at each stage of Spirit’s self-unfolding.
If every synthesis preserves its prior contradictions in sublated form, can we still speak of “resolution” in any strong sense—or is Spirit fundamentally a structured repetition of mediated rupture?
Put differently: is absolute knowing the cessation of negation, or the full self-conscious embrace of negation as constitutive of identity itself?
Would appreciate interpretations that situate this within the Science of Logic as well as the Phenomenology.

When it comes to Hegel, I’m just wondering if anyone else finds it much simpler to read Hegel himself. I have read some secondary literature but find it immensely boring. Hegel’s lectures, for instance on the Philosophy of Spirit, or the History of Philosophy, have been much more helpful to me. After reading these, the Phenomenology and Logic became much more comprehensible. To be fair, I also have my BA in philosophy so the secondary literature (introductory books) seemed like a waste of time. Does anyone agree?

I’ve been listening to alot of ambient (some Aphex Twin and Stars Of The Lid) and some instrumental shoegaze.

According to Hegel, we are heading towards reality and everything is changing with dialectics but on the other hand, there is a concept in physics called entropy, according to second law of thermodynamics entropy always increases. so which one is correct?

I was wondering where to go next with philosophical readings. I am a student and I sort of did philosophy backwards in the sense of starting with Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, etc mostly because as a 21 year old a lot of their work spoke to the place in life I was in at the time. This lead into reading Nietzsche, who even at that moment in my life I was not the biggest fan of to say the least. However after a little while I found myself growing frustrated or disenfranchised with the post modernists of the 20th century because after a while it felt like critique with no solution, in the case of Deleuze for example let’s say he’s right about Freud and capital, he doesn’t offer that tangible of solutions at least in my opinion, and granted it has been sometime since I directly engaged with his work. This all made me want to backtrack and I read Marx and Engels and really fell in love with their work and after reading Dialectics of Nature by Engels I decided to try Hegel out. I read Phenomenology of Spirit early this year and intend on reading it again in the near future but other than that following completing it I took a break from philosophy and have been reading fiction mostly, on one hand it was to take a break but on the other it was not knowing where to go next. I had to read part of Being and Nothingness for a class and some Wittgenstein for another and remember liking both fine and one of my professors gave me a copy of Being and Time and it’s kinda just stared at me from my shelf, but I was also thinking about reading Kant sometime soon. Ultimately I was wondering where to go from here, and thought I’d ask. Thank you.

A thought I’ve been exploring is that Absolute Spirit should not be understood as a final state in which all contradictions are permanently resolved, but as an ongoing process of self-differentiation and self-reconciliation. Every synthesis eventually becomes a new thesis, generating fresh contradictions that drive Spirit toward deeper forms of self-knowledge.
On this reading, dialectic is not a path with a fixed destination but the very structure of reality’s self-unfolding. Absolute knowing would then consist not in the absence of contradiction, but in recognizing contradiction as an essential moment of Spirit’s perpetual self-development.
Would this interpretation remain faithful to Hegel, or does it move too far from his conception of Absolute Spirit?

Welcome to r/Ilyenkov.

This is a reading and research community for Evald Ilyenkov and related Soviet philosophy.

Core topics include dialectical logic, the problem of the ideal, activity and practice, Spinoza, Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky, philosophy of science, culture, education, personality, translation notes, bibliography, and archival leads.

Good posts include close readings, source questions, translation notes, bibliographies, and serious discussion grounded in texts and historical evidence.

Please cite sources where possible, mark rough translations or machine translations clearly, and keep discussion focused and civil. The sidebar has starting resources.