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Single Idea 21758

[filed under theme 23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 1. Existentialism ]

Full Idea

For Hegel, the absolute truth of humanity is that human beings have no fixed, given identity, but rather determine and produce their own identity and their world in history, and that they gradually come to the recognition of this fact in history.

Gist of Idea

Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history

Source

report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01

Book Ref

Houlgate,Stephen: 'An Introduction to Hegel' [Blackwell 2005], p.17


A Reaction

This quintessentially existentialist idea, most obvious in Sartre, seems to have originated with this view of Hegel's.


The 20 ideas from 'works'

Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton]
Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton]
For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H]
When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel]
Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham]
Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge]
Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton]
Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel]
Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran]
Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida]
Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel]
For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell]
On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel]
Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie]
Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux]