Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Lectures on the
History of Philosophy
G. W. F. H.EGEL
TRANSLATED BY
T. M. KNOX
AND
A. V. MILLER
108
011
110
Introduction
/0
rf Phi/OJo/J/!y
point or view. The spirit is oTle and OIlC only; there is olle spirit
as the substance or an era, a people, an <lgc, hut il is shaped
and manifested in variolls ways; and these different manif('sta"
lions arc the
which have been adduced. Thus we must
not have the idea that politics, constitutions, religions, cle., are
the root or
of philosophy, or that, conversely, philosophv
is the basis of them. All these
have one single characte'r
which lies at their root and rUlls through them all. However
manifold all these different things are, there is no contradiction
between them. Not one of them contains anything different in
kind from their basis, no matter how much they seem to
tradict onC' another. They arC' only shoots from the sallle roo{,
and philosophy is one of {hern.
It is r?resupposed here that all this stands in one necessary
connection so that' only thix philosophy, this religion, can exist
along' with this political constitution I this state of the sciences.
There is only one spirit; its development is a single progressone principle, one Idea, one character expressed in the mosl
varied formations. This is what we call the spirit of an age.
This too is nothing superficial f149J or detennined from
side; knowledge of it must be drawn, not from petty externals,
but from its great formations in the world. Philosophy is one of
these and it is contemporary with a specific religion, political
constit ution, art, morals I science, etc . . . .
[152] Thus the historical shape of a philosophy stands in a
necessary connection with political history. Before there can be
a J).hilosophy at all, a people must have reached a certain stage
of mtellectual development. The necessities of life must have
been supplied [cf. Aristotle: Me!. 982"22 [K.]], the agony of
deSire must have vanished; the purely finite intcrests of mcn
must have been worked off, and their minds must have advanced
so far as to take an interest in universal matters. Philosophy is
free activity (hence the need for philosophy). So it can be
regarded as a luxury because luxury is the satisfaction derived
from things that are not directly necessary, and from this point
of view philosophy is of course dispensable. But all depends on
what you call necessary. f 1531 From the point of view of the
thinking spirit, however, philosophy must be regarded as the
most necessary thing of all .
! 154] T'hus philosophy as such only enters at a specific epoch
J-listorical
POJitiOll
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112
011
of what there is in that time. Neither does an indi Vidual transcend his time; he is a son of it ; it s substance is his
own essence, and he on ly manifests it in a particular form . No
one
escape from the su bstance of his tim e any more than he
can Jump out of his skin . Looked at fundamentally, no philosophy can ove rl eap it s own time.
(i3i3) But philosophy does also stand above its time, i .e .
makes It a n obj ect set over aga in st it self, its content is the same
the conte nt o f the time, but, as know ledge of this content it
IS
a bove it. This, however , is onl y formal, a nd in
ph il osoph y has no other cont e nt but that of the tim e.
(",,) T hi s ve ry knowledge is of course th e actualit y of spiritI am only to the extent that I know myself. [1 50 J SO the diffet:e nce of form IS also a real a nd ac tual difference . "rhus it is
thts knowl edge which produces a new form in the development
?fsplrIl. D.evelopments in this sphere are merely ways of knowmg. By thts self-knowledge the sp irit differentiates itself from
wha t it is; it makes it self an object to itself a nd develops itself
wIlhlll ; thl.s
a new
between wha t it is implicitly
an.d. wha t 11 IS actuall y, and In thiS way a new formati on of the
splnt em erges. Thus philosoph y in it self is already a further
spc.cific ch a racterization of the spirit; it is its inner birthplace
wh Ich appears later as actuality. The concrete character of this
eme rges in the history o f phil osophy it self. Thus we will see
tha t wha t Greek philosoph y had bee n , e nt ered act u alit y in th e
C hnsltan world.
. So this is the second po int, namely that philosophy is primaril y only the thlllklllg of what is substa nti ve in it s own time' it
does not tran scend its time but onl y brings out it s content'in
th ought.
(,,) The third point to notice in conn ect io n with philosoph y
a nd hIstory con ce rn s the da te at wh ich philosoph y emerges in
compariso n wIlh the e merge nce of the other fo rma tions of the
sp irit. Philosophy appears at a specific time, not contemporaneously with the other formati ons.
.. The spirit of an age is the substa nti ve life of tha t age. That
Ide IS thiS Immedi a te., '! VlIl g, and act ual spirit . For example, we
desc.ry the Greek Spirit at the time when Greek life was blossomlllg, was. fresh , forceful, a nd yo un g, befo re a n y corruption
had broken Ill , or we see the R oman spiri t at the time of the
113
Repub lic-and so on. The spirit of the age is thus the way in
which a specific spirit is present as actually living. But philosophy is the thinking of this sp irit , and the thought, however
mu ch it is a priori also, is essentiall y the result of the spirit ,
because the spirit is life , the activity of self-production; its procedure is to produce itsel f as a result, to emerge as a result.
This acti v it y [1511 contains a negation as a n essen ti al factor. If
somethin g is 10 be produced, then it must be produced from
some thin g else, and this som et hin g clse is precisely thereby
negated. Thus thinking is the negation of the n a tural mode of
life. For exa mplc, the child exis ts as a human being but st ill
immediately, directly, in a natural way; then education is the
negation o f this natural way, the discipline imposed by the spirit
on itself in order to rise out of its immediacy. Sim il arly, the
thinking spirit, at the start of its movement , exists in il s natural
sha pe; the n it becomes reflective a nd rises abovc tha t sha pe,
i.e. nega tes it; a nd finally, it realizes itself in comprehend in g
it self.
Thinking en le rs. The consequen ce is th a t the ex istin g world,
the sp irit realized in the mora ls a nd force of life a t that time, is
negated ; thought , spirit's substantive mode of existence, attacks
a nd weakens simple morals, simple religion etc., and this
ushers in a period of corruption . Then the nex t step is that
thought concentrates it self in itself, becom es concrete a nd so
produces for it self an ideal world in opposition to thi s real one .
T hus when philosophy is 10 e merge among a people, the re
must first have bee n a break in the real wo rld . At th a t point
philosophy is the reconciliation of the corruption which had
been begun by thought. This reconcilia tion happens in the ideal
wo rld , in the wo rld of the spirit into which me n ta ke night when
the earthly wo rld satisfies them no lo nger . Philosophy begin s
with the downfall of a real world. When philosophy ent ers,
' paints its grey in grey',lO disseminates its a bstractions, then
the fresh colour of youth and life has already perished. In that
event it is a reconciliation which philosophy produces, but only
in the intellectual world, not in the earthl y one. So too, the
Greeks when they began to think , withdrew from political life;
III See Ihe clus ing passage of Ihe Preface to Hegel's Philusof)}ry
Oxford, 1942. wil h nOles ad loe). IK.]
114
OJI
the
HistOl)'
(!l Phi/osop/!y
P?3]
WOl:
Possihly Hegel's
[K.J
115
to
it and
close. Thus the greatest care must be taken to settle [157] what
philosophy is. We could concern ourselves with possessors of
culture, and more particularly with scientifIc culture generally,