Review of The Philosophy of History by Tugrul Keskin
Hegel attempts to elucidate his theory regarding the historical development of the human spirit. Hegel uses two levels of explanation for his approach; the level of individual self-consciousness, and the global level of human freedom. Hegel views reason as equal to God. He furthermore defines reason as “the infinite content, the very stuff of all essence and truth.” His lemmatic explanation of truth is based upon theological philosophy, and as such he believes there exists only one truth. On the other hand, some philosophers claim that there are multiple truths. One can argue that the truth may change from time to time, or from one condition to another. The truth of the oppressor and the truth of oppressed will represent different realities; they are different. The consciousness of freedom is the ultimate goal in the development of human freedom. Hegel implied that one cannot be free without God. However, he does not talk directly about God, he elaborates on the idea of reason, instead of God. For Hegel, God is reason, and spirit is the freedom of man or thought. According to Hegel, reason is an infinite power that represents God; therefore, reason has ruled the world. Hegel attempts to establish a link between the ‘final goal’ and reason, and ultimately finds the relationship between these two phenomenons within religious message.
Hegel writes that, “I am free when I exist independently, all by my self.” In this issue regarding the independence of human beings from despotic thought, Hegel is in conflict with himself, because on the one hand, what he desires is to free man from his dependences, on the other hand he brings man into the different dogmatic structure that is called religion. Religion is a dogmatic structure and conflicts with freedom.
Hegel employs a very conservative thought process in his approach to social action and structure. Accordingly, the realm of spirit is placed within a religious framework.
In the first chapter in the book, The Methods of History, Hegel employs the methodology of historical approach to the problem of human development. In “Reason in History,” he provides a definition for his basic argument regarding reason and its relationship to both infinite power and God. This analysis also involves spirit and its development in the context of human freedom, and the individual and his/her relationship to the state structure. In the chapter titled, “History in its development,” Hegel focuses on the larger picture, in which change is what leads to the perfectibility of human development. World history corresponds to the development of self-consciousness that brings with it “the development of Spirit’s consciousness of its freedom.” In Chapter 5, “The Geographical basis of history,” Hegel holds an ethnocentric perspective, which can be seen through his division of the world between the old and new world. In the last chapter, titled “The Division of history,” Hegel defines Europe as representing the absolute end of world history, in comparison to the East. In the Hegelian view, the East is only a relative term.
In short, the secularization process in Western Christian World cannot be understood without first examining Hegel’s argument regarding reason and spirit. Hegel’s ideas have influenced and shaped conservative social structures and philosophies. In the book, Hegel reminds us of the Weberian perspective of ethno-Christian centrism, in which religion is the center of reason and spirit. Hegel claims that man cannot be free unless he employs God’s will in his own life and freedom. It is interesting to see that in the Enlightenment of Europe, religion was a dominant factor even in the philosophical sense. For Hegel, universal truth is reason, more clearly it is God. On the other hand, perhaps a more useful perspective might view man as unable to be truly free, unless he dismisses God from public life, because religion is in fact a creation of the human mind. Humankind shouldn’t act as a slave of his own creation as is the case today. On the other hand, Hegelian philosphy is very similar to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Islamic thinker who lived in the 12th century.
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