September 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Dive into Hegels enlightening lectures on the philosophy of world history, crafted to ease students into his complex ideas. Hegels engaging discourse sheds light on accessible themes like world events while he intricately defines and explores the concept of Geist, or spirit. This notion reflects the evolving culture of humanity, continuously adapting to societal changes while simultaneously driving those transformations through what Hegel termed the cunning of reason. A significant focus of the text is on world history rather than confined regional narratives. Influenced by the enigmatic writings of Jakob Bhme and captivated by the thoughts of Spinoza, Kant, Rousseau, and Goethe, Hegel examined the contradictions of modern philosophy and society. He sought to interpret these tensions‚like those between knowledge and faith, freedom and authority‚as part of a comprehensive, evolving rational unity he called the absolute idea or absolute knowledge. This unity emerges through contradiction and negation, leading to an uplifting resolution that preserves these conflicts as integral phases of development. Ultimately, Hegel posits that this rational, self-conscious whole is realized through individual minds, culminating in a collective understanding of this intricate developmental process. (summary by Wikipedia and D.E. Wittkower)
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The course of the world's history subsection three. This is
the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Introduction to the Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
(00:30):
The course of the World's History subsection three. History in
general is therefore the development of spirit in time, as
nature is the development of the idea in space. If
(00:54):
then we cast a glance over the world's history, generally
we see a vast picture of changes and transactions of
infinitely manifold forms of people's states, individuals, in unresting succession.
Everything that can enter into and interest the soul of man,
(01:17):
all our sensibility to goodness, beauty, and greatness is called
into play. On every hand, aims are adopted and pursued,
which we recognize, whose accomplishment we desire, We hope and
fear for them. In all these occurrences and changes, we
(01:43):
behold human action and suffering predominant everywhere, something akin to ourselves,
and therefore everywhere something that excites our interest for or
against sometimes tracts us by beauty, freedom, and rich variety.
(02:03):
Sometimes by energy, such as enables even vice to make
itself interesting. Sometimes we see the more comprehensive mass of
some general interest advancing with comparative slowness, and subsequently sacrificed
to an infinite complication of trifling circumstances, and so dissipated
(02:28):
into atoms. Then again, with a vast expenditure of power,
a trivial result is produced, while from what appears unimportant
a tremendous issue proceeds. On every hand, there is the
motleyest throng of events drawing us within the circle of
(02:51):
its interest, and when one combination vanishes, another immediately appears
in its place. The general thought, the category which first
presents itself in this restless mutation of individuals and peoples,
existing for a time and then vanishing, is that of
(03:13):
change at large. The sight of the ruins of some
ancient sovereignty directly leads us to contemplate this thought of
change in its negative aspect. What traveler among the ruins
of Carthage, of Palmyra, Persepolis or Rome has not been
stimulated to reflections on the transiency of kingdoms and men,
(03:38):
and to sadness at the thought of a vigorous and
rich life now departed a sadness which does not expend
itself on personal losses and the uncertainty of one's own undertakings,
but is a disinterested sorrow at the decay of a
splendid and highly cultured national life. But the next consideration,
(04:04):
which allies itself with that of change, is that change,
while it imports dissolution, involves at the same time the
rise of a new life. That while death is the
issue of life, life is also the issue of death.
This is a grand conception, one which the Oriental thinkers attained,
(04:29):
and which is perhaps the highest in their metaphysics. In
the idea of metempsychosis, we find it evolved in its
relation to individual existence. But a myth more generally known
is that of the phoenix as a type of the
life of nature, eternally preparing for itself its funeral pile
(04:55):
and consuming itself upon it, but so that from its
ashes is produced the new, renovated, fresh life. But this
image is only asiatic, Oriental, not occidental. Spirit consuming the
envelope of its existence does not merely pass into another envelope,
(05:19):
nor rise rejuvenescent from the ashes of its previous form,
it comes forth exalted, glorified, a purer spirit. It certainly
makes war upon itself, consumes its own existence, but in
this very destruction it works up that existence into a
(05:41):
new form, and each successive phase becomes in its turn,
a material working on which it exalts itself to a
new grade. If we consider Spirit in this aspect, regarding
its changes not merely as rejuvenile transitions that returns to
(06:03):
the same form, but rather as manipulations of itself by
which it multiplies the material for future endeavors, we see
it exerting itself in a variety of modes and directions,
developing its powers and gratifying its desires in a variety
which is inexhaustible, because every one of its creations in
(06:26):
which it has already found gratification meets it anew as
material and is a new stimulus to plastic activity. The
abstract conception of mere change gives place to the thought
of Spirit manifesting, developing, and perfecting its powers in every
(06:48):
direction which its manifold nature can follow. What powers it
inherently possesses we learn from the variety of products and
formation which it originates in this pleasurable activity it has
to do only with itself as involved with the conditions
(07:09):
of mere nature, internal and external. It will indeed meet
in these not only opposition and hindrance, but will often
see its endeavors thereby fail, often sink under the complications
in which it is entangled, either by nature or by itself.
(07:31):
But in such case it perishes in fulfilling its own
destiny and proper function, and even thus exhibits the spectacle
of self demonstration as spiritual activity. The very essence of
spirit is activity. It realizes its potentiality, makes itself its
own deed, its own work, and thus it becomes an
(07:54):
object to itself, contemplates itself as an objective existence. Thus
is it with the spirit of a people. It is
a spirit having strictly defined characteristics, which erects itself into
an objective world that exists and persists in a particular
(08:17):
religious form of worship, customs, constitution, and political laws, in
the whole complex of its institutions, in the events and
transactions that make up its history. That is its work.
That is what this particular nation is. Nations are what
(08:40):
their deeds are. Every Englishman will say, we are the
men who navigate the ocean, and have the commerce of
the world to whom the East Indies belong, and their riches,
who have a parliament juris, et cetera. The relation of
the individual to that spirit is that he appropriates to
(09:01):
himself this substantial existence, that it becomes his character and capability,
enabling him to have a definite place in the world,
to be something for He finds the being of the
people to which he belongs, an already established, firm world
(09:25):
objectively present to him, with which he has to incorporate
himself in this its work, therefore its world. The spirit
of the people enjoys its existence and finds its satisfaction.
A nation is moral, virtuous, vigorous while it is engaged
(09:49):
in realizing its grand objects and defends its work against
external violence. During the process of giving to its purposes
an object to existence, the contradiction between its potential subjective being,
its inner aim and life, and its actual being is removed.
(10:12):
It has attained full reality, has itself objectively present to it.
But this having been attained, the activity displayed by the
spirit of the people in question is no longer needed.
It has its desire. The nation can still accomplish much
in war and peace at home and abroad. But the living,
(10:37):
substantial soul itself may be said to have ceased its activity.
The essential supreme interest has consequently vanished from its life,
for interest is present only where there is opposition. The
nation lives the same kind of life as the individual
(11:00):
when passing from maturity to old age, in the enjoyment
of itself, in the satisfaction of being exactly what it
desired and was able to attain. Although its imagination might
have transcended that limit, it nevertheless abandoned any such aspirations
(11:23):
as objects of actual endeavor, if the real world was
less than favorable to their attainment and restricted its aim
by the conditions thus imposed. This mere customary life, the
watch wound up and going on of itself, is that
(11:45):
which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition,
for which there remains only a formal duration in whatich
the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of
life is out of the question. A merely external, sensuous
(12:11):
existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its
object thus perish individuals, thus perish peoples by a natural death.
And though the latter may continue in being. It is
an existence without intellect or vitality, having no need of
(12:32):
its institutions, because the need for them is satisfied, a
political nullity and tedium. In order that a truly universal
interest may arise, the spirit of a people must advance
to the adoption of some new purpose. But whence can
this new purpose originate? It would be a higher, more
(12:57):
comprehensive conception of itself, a tree transcending of its principle.
But this very act would involve a principle of a
new order, a new national spirit. Such a new principle
does in fact enter into the spirit of a people
(13:17):
that has arrived at full development and self realization. It
dies not a simply natural death, for it is not
a mere single individual, but a spiritual generic life. In
its case, natural death appears to imply destruction through its
own agency. The reason of this difference from the single
(13:43):
natural individual is that the spirit of a people exists
as a genus and consequently carries within it its own
negation in the very generality which characterizes it. A can
only die a violent death when it has become naturally
(14:04):
dead in itself, as for example, the German Imperial cities
the German Imperial Constitution. It is not of the nature
of the all pervading spirit to die this merely natural death.
It does not simply sink into the senile life of
(14:26):
mere custom. But as being a national spirit belonging to
universal history, attains to the consciousness of what its work is,
it attains to a conception of itself. In fact, it
is world historical only in so far as a universal
(14:48):
principle has lain in its fundamental element, in its grand aim.
Only so far is the work which such a spirit
produces a moral polit organization. If it be mere desires
that impel nations to activities, such deeds pass over without
(15:09):
leaving a trace, or their traces are only ruin and destruction.
Thus it was first Chronos time that ruled the Golden
Age without moral products, and what was produced the offspring
(15:29):
of that Cronos was devoured by it. It was Jupiter,
from whose head Minerva sprang, and to whose circle of
divinities belongs Apollo and the Muses, that first put a
constraint upon time and set a bound to its principle
(15:52):
of decadence. He is the political god who produced a
moral work the state in the very element of an achievement.
The quality of generality of thought is contained without thought.
(16:13):
It has no objectivity, that is its basis. The highest
point in the development of a people is this to
have gained a conception of its life and condition, to
have reduced its laws, its ideas of justice and morality,
to a science. For in this unity of the objective
(16:36):
and subjective lies the most intimate unity that spirit can
attain to in and with itself. In its work, it
is employed in rendering itself an object of its own contemplation,
But it cannot develop itself objectively in its essential nature,
(16:57):
except in thinking itself. At this point, then spirit is
acquainted with its principles, the general character of its acts,
but at the same time in virtue of its very generality.
(17:17):
This work of thought is different in point of form
from the actual achievements of the national genius, and from
the vital agency by which those achievements have been performed.
We have then before us a real and an ideal
existence of the spirit of the nation. If we wish
(17:39):
to gain the general idea and conception of what the
Greeks were, we find it in Sophocles and Aristophanes, in
Thucydides and Plato. In these individuals the Greek spirit conceived
and thought itself. This is the profounder kind of satisfaction
(18:00):
which the spirit of a people attains, but it is
ideal and distinct from its real activity at such a time. Therefore,
we are sure to see a people finding satisfaction in
the idea of virtue, putting talk about virtue partly side
(18:23):
by side with actual virtue, but partly in the place
of it. On the other hand, pure universal thought, since
its nature is universality, is apt to bring the special
and spontaneous belief, trust, customary morality, to reflect upon itself
(18:47):
and its primitive simplicity, to show up the limitation with
which it is fettered, partly suggesting reasons for renouncing duties,
partly itself demand reasons and the connection of such requirement
with universal thought, and not finding that connection, seeking to
(19:10):
impeach the authority of duty generally as destitute of a
sound foundation. At the same time, the isolation of individuals
from each other and from the whole makes its appearance
their aggressive selfishness and vanity, their seeking personal advantage and
consulting this at the expense of the state. At large,
(19:34):
That inward principle, in transcending its outward manifestations, is subjective
also in form, namely selfishness and corruption in the unbound
passions and egotistic interests of men. Zeus, therefore, who is
(19:54):
represented as having put a limit to the devouring agency
of time, and so stayed this transiency by having established
something inherently and independently durable. Zeus and his race are
themselves swallowed up, and that by the very power that
produced them. The principle of thought, perception, reasoning, insight derived
(20:18):
from rational grounds and the requirement of such grounds. Time
is the negative element. In the sensuous world. Thought is
the same negativity, but it is the deepest the infinite
form of it, in which therefore all existence generally is dissolved. First,
(20:41):
finite existence determinate limited form, but existence generally in its
object of character is limited. It appears therefore as a
mere datum something immediate authority, and is either intrinsically finite
and limited, or presents itself as a limit for the
(21:04):
thinking subject and its infinite reflection on itself. But first
we must observe how the life which proceeds from death
is itself on the other hand, only individual life, so that,
regarding the species as the real and substantial, in this vicissitude,
(21:27):
the perishing of the individual is a regress of the
species into individuality. The perpetuation of the race is therefore
none other than the monotonous repetition of the same kind
of existence. Further, we must remark how perception, the comprehension
(21:50):
of being by thought, is the source and birthplace of
a new and in fact higher form in a principle which,
while it preserves, dignifies its material. For thought is that
universal that species which is immortal, which preserves identity with itself.
(22:15):
The particular form of spirit not merely passes away in
the world by natural causes in time, but is annulled
in the automatic self mirroring activity of consciousness. Because this
annulling is an activity of thought, it is at the
(22:36):
same time conservative and elevating in its operation. While then
on the one side, spirit annulls the reality the permanence
of that which it is, it gains on the other
side the essence the thought, the universal element of that
(22:58):
which it only was its transient conditions. Its principle is
no longer that immediate import and aim which it was previously,
but the essence of that import and aim. The result
(23:22):
of this process is then that spirit, in rendering itself
objective and making this its being an object of thought,
on the one hand, destroys the determinate form of its being,
on the other hand, gains a comprehension of the universal
element which it involves, and thereby gives a new form
(23:46):
to its inherent principle. In virtue of this, the substantial
character of the national Spirit has been altered, that is,
its principle has risen into another, and in fact, a
higher principle. It is of the highest importance in apprehending
(24:08):
and comprehending history to have and to understand the thought
involved in this transition. The individual traverses as a unity
various grades of development, and remains the same individual. In
like manner, also does a people, till the spirit which
(24:29):
it embodies reaches the grade of universality. In this point
lies the fundamental, the ideal necessity of transition. This is
the soul, the essential consideration of the philosophical comprehension of history.
(24:52):
Spirit is essentially the result of its own activity. Its
activity is the transcending of immediate, simple unrea flected existence,
the negation of that existence, and the returning into itself.
We may compare it with the seed, for with this
(25:14):
the plant begins. Yet it is also the result of
the plant's entire life. But the weak side of life
is exhibited in the fact that the commencement and the
result are disjoined from each other. Thus also is it
(25:34):
in the life of individuals and peoples. The life of
a people ripens a certain fruit. Its activity aims at
the complete manifestation of the principle which it embodies. But
this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of
the people that produced and matured it. On the contrary,
(25:57):
it becomes a poison draft to it. That poisoned draft
it cannot let alone, for it has an insatiable thirst
for it. The taste of the draft is its annihilation,
though at the same time the rise of a new principle.
(26:19):
We have already discussed the final aim of this progression.
The principles of the successive phases of spirit that animate
the nations in a necessitated gradation are themselves only steps
in the development of the one universal Spirit, which through
them elevates and completes itself to a self comprehending totality.
(26:47):
While we are thus concerned exclusively with the idea of Spirit,
and in the history of the world, regard everything as
only its manifestation. We have intra versing the past, however,
extens of its periods only to do with what is present.
(27:08):
For philosophy, as occupying itself with the true, has to
do with the eternally present. Nothing in the past is
lost for it, For the idea is ever present. Spirit
is immortal with it. There is no past, no future,
(27:31):
but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present
form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps. These
have indeed unfolded themselves in succession independently. But what Spirit
(27:53):
is It has always been essentially. Distinctions are only the
development of this essential nature. The life of the ever
present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments, which, looked
at in one aspect, still exists beside each other, and
(28:16):
only as looked at from another point of view, appear
as past. The grades which Spirit seems to have left
behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present.
And Introduction to the Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm
(28:42):
Friedrich Hegel, translated by J. Sibrey. This recording is in
the public domain.
The course of the world's history subsection three. This is
the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Introduction to the Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
(00:30):
The course of the World's History subsection three. History in
general is therefore the development of spirit in time, as
nature is the development of the idea in space. If
(00:54):
then we cast a glance over the world's history, generally
we see a vast picture of changes and transactions of
infinitely manifold forms of people's states, individuals, in unresting succession.
Everything that can enter into and interest the soul of man,
(01:17):
all our sensibility to goodness, beauty, and greatness is called
into play. On every hand, aims are adopted and pursued,
which we recognize, whose accomplishment we desire, We hope and
fear for them. In all these occurrences and changes, we
(01:43):
behold human action and suffering predominant everywhere, something akin to ourselves,
and therefore everywhere something that excites our interest for or
against sometimes tracts us by beauty, freedom, and rich variety.
(02:03):
Sometimes by energy, such as enables even vice to make
itself interesting. Sometimes we see the more comprehensive mass of
some general interest advancing with comparative slowness, and subsequently sacrificed
to an infinite complication of trifling circumstances, and so dissipated
(02:28):
into atoms. Then again, with a vast expenditure of power,
a trivial result is produced, while from what appears unimportant
a tremendous issue proceeds. On every hand, there is the
motleyest throng of events drawing us within the circle of
(02:51):
its interest, and when one combination vanishes, another immediately appears
in its place. The general thought, the category which first
presents itself in this restless mutation of individuals and peoples,
existing for a time and then vanishing, is that of
(03:13):
change at large. The sight of the ruins of some
ancient sovereignty directly leads us to contemplate this thought of
change in its negative aspect. What traveler among the ruins
of Carthage, of Palmyra, Persepolis or Rome has not been
stimulated to reflections on the transiency of kingdoms and men,
(03:38):
and to sadness at the thought of a vigorous and
rich life now departed a sadness which does not expend
itself on personal losses and the uncertainty of one's own undertakings,
but is a disinterested sorrow at the decay of a
splendid and highly cultured national life. But the next consideration,
(04:04):
which allies itself with that of change, is that change,
while it imports dissolution, involves at the same time the
rise of a new life. That while death is the
issue of life, life is also the issue of death.
This is a grand conception, one which the Oriental thinkers attained,
(04:29):
and which is perhaps the highest in their metaphysics. In
the idea of metempsychosis, we find it evolved in its
relation to individual existence. But a myth more generally known
is that of the phoenix as a type of the
life of nature, eternally preparing for itself its funeral pile
(04:55):
and consuming itself upon it, but so that from its
ashes is produced the new, renovated, fresh life. But this
image is only asiatic, Oriental, not occidental. Spirit consuming the
envelope of its existence does not merely pass into another envelope,
(05:19):
nor rise rejuvenescent from the ashes of its previous form,
it comes forth exalted, glorified, a purer spirit. It certainly
makes war upon itself, consumes its own existence, but in
this very destruction it works up that existence into a
(05:41):
new form, and each successive phase becomes in its turn,
a material working on which it exalts itself to a
new grade. If we consider Spirit in this aspect, regarding
its changes not merely as rejuvenile transitions that returns to
(06:03):
the same form, but rather as manipulations of itself by
which it multiplies the material for future endeavors, we see
it exerting itself in a variety of modes and directions,
developing its powers and gratifying its desires in a variety
which is inexhaustible, because every one of its creations in
(06:26):
which it has already found gratification meets it anew as
material and is a new stimulus to plastic activity. The
abstract conception of mere change gives place to the thought
of Spirit manifesting, developing, and perfecting its powers in every
(06:48):
direction which its manifold nature can follow. What powers it
inherently possesses we learn from the variety of products and
formation which it originates in this pleasurable activity it has
to do only with itself as involved with the conditions
(07:09):
of mere nature, internal and external. It will indeed meet
in these not only opposition and hindrance, but will often
see its endeavors thereby fail, often sink under the complications
in which it is entangled, either by nature or by itself.
(07:31):
But in such case it perishes in fulfilling its own
destiny and proper function, and even thus exhibits the spectacle
of self demonstration as spiritual activity. The very essence of
spirit is activity. It realizes its potentiality, makes itself its
own deed, its own work, and thus it becomes an
(07:54):
object to itself, contemplates itself as an objective existence. Thus
is it with the spirit of a people. It is
a spirit having strictly defined characteristics, which erects itself into
an objective world that exists and persists in a particular
(08:17):
religious form of worship, customs, constitution, and political laws, in
the whole complex of its institutions, in the events and
transactions that make up its history. That is its work.
That is what this particular nation is. Nations are what
(08:40):
their deeds are. Every Englishman will say, we are the
men who navigate the ocean, and have the commerce of
the world to whom the East Indies belong, and their riches,
who have a parliament juris, et cetera. The relation of
the individual to that spirit is that he appropriates to
(09:01):
himself this substantial existence, that it becomes his character and capability,
enabling him to have a definite place in the world,
to be something for He finds the being of the
people to which he belongs, an already established, firm world
(09:25):
objectively present to him, with which he has to incorporate
himself in this its work, therefore its world. The spirit
of the people enjoys its existence and finds its satisfaction.
A nation is moral, virtuous, vigorous while it is engaged
(09:49):
in realizing its grand objects and defends its work against
external violence. During the process of giving to its purposes
an object to existence, the contradiction between its potential subjective being,
its inner aim and life, and its actual being is removed.
(10:12):
It has attained full reality, has itself objectively present to it.
But this having been attained, the activity displayed by the
spirit of the people in question is no longer needed.
It has its desire. The nation can still accomplish much
in war and peace at home and abroad. But the living,
(10:37):
substantial soul itself may be said to have ceased its activity.
The essential supreme interest has consequently vanished from its life,
for interest is present only where there is opposition. The
nation lives the same kind of life as the individual
(11:00):
when passing from maturity to old age, in the enjoyment
of itself, in the satisfaction of being exactly what it
desired and was able to attain. Although its imagination might
have transcended that limit, it nevertheless abandoned any such aspirations
(11:23):
as objects of actual endeavor, if the real world was
less than favorable to their attainment and restricted its aim
by the conditions thus imposed. This mere customary life, the
watch wound up and going on of itself, is that
(11:45):
which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition,
for which there remains only a formal duration in whatich
the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of
life is out of the question. A merely external, sensuous
(12:11):
existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its
object thus perish individuals, thus perish peoples by a natural death.
And though the latter may continue in being. It is
an existence without intellect or vitality, having no need of
(12:32):
its institutions, because the need for them is satisfied, a
political nullity and tedium. In order that a truly universal
interest may arise, the spirit of a people must advance
to the adoption of some new purpose. But whence can
this new purpose originate? It would be a higher, more
(12:57):
comprehensive conception of itself, a tree transcending of its principle.
But this very act would involve a principle of a
new order, a new national spirit. Such a new principle
does in fact enter into the spirit of a people
(13:17):
that has arrived at full development and self realization. It
dies not a simply natural death, for it is not
a mere single individual, but a spiritual generic life. In
its case, natural death appears to imply destruction through its
own agency. The reason of this difference from the single
(13:43):
natural individual is that the spirit of a people exists
as a genus and consequently carries within it its own
negation in the very generality which characterizes it. A can
only die a violent death when it has become naturally
(14:04):
dead in itself, as for example, the German Imperial cities
the German Imperial Constitution. It is not of the nature
of the all pervading spirit to die this merely natural death.
It does not simply sink into the senile life of
(14:26):
mere custom. But as being a national spirit belonging to
universal history, attains to the consciousness of what its work is,
it attains to a conception of itself. In fact, it
is world historical only in so far as a universal
(14:48):
principle has lain in its fundamental element, in its grand aim.
Only so far is the work which such a spirit
produces a moral polit organization. If it be mere desires
that impel nations to activities, such deeds pass over without
(15:09):
leaving a trace, or their traces are only ruin and destruction.
Thus it was first Chronos time that ruled the Golden
Age without moral products, and what was produced the offspring
(15:29):
of that Cronos was devoured by it. It was Jupiter,
from whose head Minerva sprang, and to whose circle of
divinities belongs Apollo and the Muses, that first put a
constraint upon time and set a bound to its principle
(15:52):
of decadence. He is the political god who produced a
moral work the state in the very element of an achievement.
The quality of generality of thought is contained without thought.
(16:13):
It has no objectivity, that is its basis. The highest
point in the development of a people is this to
have gained a conception of its life and condition, to
have reduced its laws, its ideas of justice and morality,
to a science. For in this unity of the objective
(16:36):
and subjective lies the most intimate unity that spirit can
attain to in and with itself. In its work, it
is employed in rendering itself an object of its own contemplation,
But it cannot develop itself objectively in its essential nature,
(16:57):
except in thinking itself. At this point, then spirit is
acquainted with its principles, the general character of its acts,
but at the same time in virtue of its very generality.
(17:17):
This work of thought is different in point of form
from the actual achievements of the national genius, and from
the vital agency by which those achievements have been performed.
We have then before us a real and an ideal
existence of the spirit of the nation. If we wish
(17:39):
to gain the general idea and conception of what the
Greeks were, we find it in Sophocles and Aristophanes, in
Thucydides and Plato. In these individuals the Greek spirit conceived
and thought itself. This is the profounder kind of satisfaction
(18:00):
which the spirit of a people attains, but it is
ideal and distinct from its real activity at such a time. Therefore,
we are sure to see a people finding satisfaction in
the idea of virtue, putting talk about virtue partly side
(18:23):
by side with actual virtue, but partly in the place
of it. On the other hand, pure universal thought, since
its nature is universality, is apt to bring the special
and spontaneous belief, trust, customary morality, to reflect upon itself
(18:47):
and its primitive simplicity, to show up the limitation with
which it is fettered, partly suggesting reasons for renouncing duties,
partly itself demand reasons and the connection of such requirement
with universal thought, and not finding that connection, seeking to
(19:10):
impeach the authority of duty generally as destitute of a
sound foundation. At the same time, the isolation of individuals
from each other and from the whole makes its appearance
their aggressive selfishness and vanity, their seeking personal advantage and
consulting this at the expense of the state. At large,
(19:34):
That inward principle, in transcending its outward manifestations, is subjective
also in form, namely selfishness and corruption in the unbound
passions and egotistic interests of men. Zeus, therefore, who is
(19:54):
represented as having put a limit to the devouring agency
of time, and so stayed this transiency by having established
something inherently and independently durable. Zeus and his race are
themselves swallowed up, and that by the very power that
produced them. The principle of thought, perception, reasoning, insight derived
(20:18):
from rational grounds and the requirement of such grounds. Time
is the negative element. In the sensuous world. Thought is
the same negativity, but it is the deepest the infinite
form of it, in which therefore all existence generally is dissolved. First,
(20:41):
finite existence determinate limited form, but existence generally in its
object of character is limited. It appears therefore as a
mere datum something immediate authority, and is either intrinsically finite
and limited, or presents itself as a limit for the
(21:04):
thinking subject and its infinite reflection on itself. But first
we must observe how the life which proceeds from death
is itself on the other hand, only individual life, so that,
regarding the species as the real and substantial, in this vicissitude,
(21:27):
the perishing of the individual is a regress of the
species into individuality. The perpetuation of the race is therefore
none other than the monotonous repetition of the same kind
of existence. Further, we must remark how perception, the comprehension
(21:50):
of being by thought, is the source and birthplace of
a new and in fact higher form in a principle which,
while it preserves, dignifies its material. For thought is that
universal that species which is immortal, which preserves identity with itself.
(22:15):
The particular form of spirit not merely passes away in
the world by natural causes in time, but is annulled
in the automatic self mirroring activity of consciousness. Because this
annulling is an activity of thought, it is at the
(22:36):
same time conservative and elevating in its operation. While then
on the one side, spirit annulls the reality the permanence
of that which it is, it gains on the other
side the essence the thought, the universal element of that
(22:58):
which it only was its transient conditions. Its principle is
no longer that immediate import and aim which it was previously,
but the essence of that import and aim. The result
(23:22):
of this process is then that spirit, in rendering itself
objective and making this its being an object of thought,
on the one hand, destroys the determinate form of its being,
on the other hand, gains a comprehension of the universal
element which it involves, and thereby gives a new form
(23:46):
to its inherent principle. In virtue of this, the substantial
character of the national Spirit has been altered, that is,
its principle has risen into another, and in fact, a
higher principle. It is of the highest importance in apprehending
(24:08):
and comprehending history to have and to understand the thought
involved in this transition. The individual traverses as a unity
various grades of development, and remains the same individual. In
like manner, also does a people, till the spirit which
(24:29):
it embodies reaches the grade of universality. In this point
lies the fundamental, the ideal necessity of transition. This is
the soul, the essential consideration of the philosophical comprehension of history.
(24:52):
Spirit is essentially the result of its own activity. Its
activity is the transcending of immediate, simple unrea flected existence,
the negation of that existence, and the returning into itself.
We may compare it with the seed, for with this
(25:14):
the plant begins. Yet it is also the result of
the plant's entire life. But the weak side of life
is exhibited in the fact that the commencement and the
result are disjoined from each other. Thus also is it
(25:34):
in the life of individuals and peoples. The life of
a people ripens a certain fruit. Its activity aims at
the complete manifestation of the principle which it embodies. But
this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of
the people that produced and matured it. On the contrary,
(25:57):
it becomes a poison draft to it. That poisoned draft
it cannot let alone, for it has an insatiable thirst
for it. The taste of the draft is its annihilation,
though at the same time the rise of a new principle.
(26:19):
We have already discussed the final aim of this progression.
The principles of the successive phases of spirit that animate
the nations in a necessitated gradation are themselves only steps
in the development of the one universal Spirit, which through
them elevates and completes itself to a self comprehending totality.
(26:47):
While we are thus concerned exclusively with the idea of Spirit,
and in the history of the world, regard everything as
only its manifestation. We have intra versing the past, however,
extens of its periods only to do with what is present.
(27:08):
For philosophy, as occupying itself with the true, has to
do with the eternally present. Nothing in the past is
lost for it, For the idea is ever present. Spirit
is immortal with it. There is no past, no future,
(27:31):
but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present
form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps. These
have indeed unfolded themselves in succession independently. But what Spirit
(27:53):
is It has always been essentially. Distinctions are only the
development of this essential nature. The life of the ever
present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments, which, looked
at in one aspect, still exists beside each other, and
(28:16):
only as looked at from another point of view, appear
as past. The grades which Spirit seems to have left
behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present.
And Introduction to the Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm
(28:42):
Friedrich Hegel, translated by J. Sibrey. This recording is in
the public domain.
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