Hegel Preface Analysis

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In this essay, I will first proceed to contextualize the preface written by Hegel. The main crux of the argument will be to assess Hegel’s social and political life philosophy in tandem with his holistic and scientific outlook towards philosophy. The preface to Philosophy of Right is the most subjective part of his book. It is deeply rooted in the context in which Hegel was writing this book. Indeed, Hegel wanted to keep it that way, ‘As a preface it is its place to speak only externally and subjectively of the standpoint of the work which it introduces.’ The preface therefore serves as a rationalization for what the book aimed to do. Hegel was at a crossroads with philosophers like Jakob Fries and Johannes Müller, both of them being openly…show more content…
Perhaps, this is what has led me to question the popular narrative of Hegel being a holistic philosopher, since science necessitates a degree of reductionism to measurable objects. Although philosophy as a science doesn’t necessitate the same conditions, but reductionism does help make it more viable. I will defend the claim further when we analyze Hegel’s philosophy in line with his dialectic approach. Everything in Hegelian philosophy follows a dialectic pattern. The dialectic approach leads to advancement of human thought, science and society. Nothing is reduced to mere parts of itself, as would be done by a strong reductionist. Instead, Hegel takes a holistic approach to every idea and human alike. The master-slave dialectic, for example, explains how to individuals can attain self-consciousness only in recognition of eachother. None of the two are reduced to their parts, rather infact they complete a journey towards actualizing their self-consciousness. But the process of attaining self-consciousness is reduced into parts of…show more content…
It is transcendence from mere objective or subjective freedom. It is the sublation of both of them, to preserve them together. As such, any step towards sublation of particular and universal to create individuality is a step towards ethical life. In a broad dialectic of the emergence of state, the particularity is that of family, ‘ethical mind in its natural or immediate phase.’ The opposite universal is formed by the civil society, where unlike in a family, individuals have no conscious sense of unity or membership but are motivated purely by self-interest. To reconcile, ‘The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea,’ and the state secures the freedom of particularity of individual pursuits along with a sense of the importance of the whole or universal
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