Hegel - Introduction

 

Introduction

I read my first book by Hegel in 1973, under the guidance of Dr. R. Duane Thompson. Since then, I have returned to Hegel sporadically, reading and keeping his published books and lectures, though largely omitting the writings of the young Hegel. The persistence of my interest in him stems from a personal suspicion of easy answers. I resist having truth nailed down for the last time, in part because truth itself keeps moving. Hegel probes doubt and unsettles certainty. He persistently presses the question of what energizes human life beyond the merely instrumental—beyond money, power, and utility—toward the classical concerns of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, which find expression in the human activities of Art, Religion, and Philosophy.

The synthesis Hegel achieved—his speculative philosophy that sought to unite opposites within a system elevated through negation—can fairly be said to be dead. He stands as witness to a reality of modern culture. It resists any attempt at a unifying intellectual system, much like economic and political markets encourage difference that results in varying degrees of competition and cooperation within an overarching system of limited freedom. His ontological dialectic, which traced this movement through nature, the human psyche, history, and culture, is no longer a vision many can embrace without reservation. Modernity has moved in other directions. Utilitarianism in social relations and the romantic ideal of individual self‑fulfillment have combined in ways Hegel would not have welcomed. The Romantic and expressive traditions, long functioning as protests modernity itself, have consistently refused the kind of synthesis Hegel sought.

Yet there remains something deeply instructive in the way Hegel failed. His enduring influence—on the political Left through Marx, on atheism through Feuerbach, on process philosophy and theology, and even indirectly on scientific thought through evolutionary frameworks—ensures that Hegel cannot simply be left behind. He continues to shape the questions we ask, even where we reject his answers.

What follows, then, is not an attempt to rehabilitate Hegel’s system, nor to defend it. Rather, it is an effort to enter into a theological conversation with Hegel: to take him seriously as a thinker whose ambitions exceeded his conclusions, and whose failures remain as illuminating as his achievements.

I offer a brief biography that weaves his life with his thought together in a way that helps us see him as a person.

I offer an extensive consideration of the system Hegel built, following in logical rather than historical progression. This is a difficult and long section, this being especially true of the discussion of the Science of Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit. 

I offer a concluding reflection on Hegel for today, focusing on his theological import.