The Historical Context
The Historical Context
This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s understanding of the history of European philosophy in order to elucidate the spirit or inner dynamic of his solution to the problem of traditional rationalism. More specifically, it analyzes Hegel’s doctrine of the coincidence of history and logic as part of his attempt to overcome modern nihilism. It looks at Hegel’s view of Plato and Aristotle, his reference to Immanuel Kant in his presentation of logic, and his argument that the crucial feature of the Cartesian revolution is the doctrine of subjectivity. The chapter discusses René Descartes’s account of the dualism of mind and body, as well as Hegel’s adaptation of the Kantian doctrine of pure reason and asymptotic development toward an infinitely distant historical resolution of human suffering. Finally, it considers the role of religion, particularly the Christian interpretation of divine and human history, in Hegel’s account of human experience.
Keywords: logic, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, history, philosophy, rationalism, nihilism, Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, religion
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