So, you can feel Hegelian philosophy, its lively and vivid imagery. You can fully grasp the philosophical ideas he wants to express through his expression, without the need for explanation from people.
So, Hegel is not as obscure as we imagine. All the claims about the obscurity of Hegelian philosophy are because he read Hegel's translated version, and it is important to know this.
So, the most meaningful aspect of why we talk about Hegelian philosophy is not because it explains what kind of philosophy it gives us, or because it describes the absolute spirit and how to follow the roadmap it sets for us. Its most distinctive feature is precisely that it allows ordinary people to understand that philosophy can also be said the same way.
This is its characteristic, which is that there were almost no philosophers before who could explain philosophy so clearly and concisely. Explaining philosophy clearly is not a simple task. Because philosophy is originally the most abstract, profound, difficult to understand, and farthest from our experiential life.
We want everyone to understand philosophy, it's even harder than reaching the sky. However, if you read Hegel's philosophy, you will not feel like you are ascending to heaven, you will never feel like you are walking the impossible path. The characteristic of Hegelian philosophy lies precisely in its ability to vividly describe obscure ideas through formal language. In fact, when you read Phenomenology of Spirit, it is already considered the most difficult book to understand.
But when we read any of his sentences, we can easily discover some truths revealed to us in this book. We may feel that the difficulty of this book lies in our complete inability to understand existence or the spirit behind it, but only in our inability to fully understand the context and context in which it is spoken. The difficulty lies not in the language itself, but in the thought itself.
In other words, Hegel expressed his ideas in a language that people could understand as much as possible, because not everyone could comprehend his ideas, which made his language itself so difficult to understand. So, it's not the difficulty of his language itself, but the difficulty of his thinking.
So, I am willing to use his own words to express this meaning, to illustrate why Hegelian philosophy is not a completely obscure language?
We can easily find any sentence in "Phenomenology of Spirit", and when we come to read it, if you carefully ponder its thoughts, you will know. For example, he said, "Consciousness provides itself with a scale
Scale is a ruler or standard, a scale, and consciousness as a ruler to measure oneself. Then, as a result, investigation and research have become a comparison between consciousness and itself. So, when you read any of his words, you don't feel that the sentence itself is too difficult, but where is the difficulty?
In thought, that is to say, you need to ask why consciousness is using itself as a ruler. What we need to understand is precisely the thread of thought hidden behind it in the context. Only by grasping this thread of thought can you know what it is saying. In fact, this matter cannot be blamed on Hegel, why?
Because Hegel wrote this book with a strong cultural background of his own. Just like we take any ancient Chinese literature, you explain to foreigners that there are different opinions. Why Confucius said that? Foreigners still don't understand. He said I know my literal meaning, but he still doesn't understand why he said that, because every expression of our language has its own cultural factors.
So, you need to break free from its cultural background and extract a certain sentence to tell others what it means, which may not be fully understood by people from another culture. As we often say, if you don't go again, the yellow flowers will cool down. Foreigners say where is the yellow cabbage, why do they say it's cold and not mention anything else?
This is a culture, and we often see it in the West as well. All roads lead to Rome, so why should we go to Rome instead of Jerusalem? Language expressions like this imply a culture behind them. So, Mr. Deng Xiaomang means that when introducing Hegel's works to other students, he first does not introduce "Phenomenology of Spirit". He believes that this "Phenomenology of Spirit" is the most difficult to understand, not because the book itself is difficult to read, but because it contains too many Western elements such as culture, religion, society, history, and so on.
If you don't understand these elements, you won't know. For example, in the example just given, consciousness can use itself as a scale, but it's difficult to understand how consciousness can use itself as a scale. So, Westerners say it's very simple, that's how God does it. God only uses himself as a measure, so humans are shaped in the image of God, and therefore, humans can only be measured in the image of humans. So, Bamenis said that humans are the scale of all things, it is both the scale of the existence of things and the scale of the non existence of things.
With such a cultural background, you can understand what Western culture is really saying. The Chinese say, how can people become their own yardstick?
Everyone is built based on others, so they are my measure. Therefore, it is impossible for each person to be his own yardstick. Therefore, we have the concept of two people, we have the concept of ethics, and we have the concept of society. This is the Chinese way of thinking.
So, when you use this method to understand how Westerners say that people use themselves as a scale, or consciousness as a scale, it will be difficult for you to understand this idea. Just as we cannot understand Oscar Wilde, he would take art as a starting point for his ideas. Just as we cannot understand why Hegel took absolute spirit as the starting point of his thought.
According to Marx's theory, the world is our starting point. How can we bring absolute spirit to the starting point?
According to Mao Zedong, practice is our starting point, the world is not. So, different cultural backgrounds may have vastly different effects on the understanding of a philosophy.
So, when we understand a philosophy, we must delve into the cultural soil that its philosophy has produced, so that we can truly grasp where the ideas it provides us are pointing. Hegel's logic, as the foundation of his entire philosophy, constructed ontology, essentialism, and conceptualism, which are the three main contents.
And these three main contents form, or rather constitute, an absolute spirit, a prerequisite for entering nature and human spiritual activities. So, on this basis, we can understand why logic should become the foundation of natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy. After understanding this, you will be able to realize that Hegel's philosophy, all his statements about natural philosophy and spiritualism, are actually just a process of externalization of human understanding of pure ideas, or absolute ideas.
When we define logic as an internalized form, in reality, natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy are just externalized forms of absolute spirit. So, under this premise, let's understand Hegelian philosophy. Why do we call Hegelian philosophy a systematic philosophy?
It is not a fragmented philosophy, it is not a philosophy that relies entirely on the understanding of a specific problem, its philosophy is precisely built on a complete philosophical concept, a description of its own development process.
So, his philosophy is a systematic philosophy, with internalization and externalization, it becomes systematic. As a systematic philosophy, it must take into account the starting point, process, and foothold of its entire philosophy, which constitutes the framework of its entire philosophical system.
In this process, we can understand that Hegel actually regards the activity of consciousness, that is, the absolute spirit of humanity, as the soul and core of the entire philosophical system. In this context, we grasp Hegel's phenomenology of the spirit, which is actually the development of absolute spirit in such a historical context. Through logical regulations, that is, through a regulation of consciousness itself, it reaches a state of self-awareness, forms a rational formal requirement, and finally enters a state of spirit.
In addition to the formal regulations we just discussed, rationality also includes the requirements of history and nature. In other words, in Hegel's philosophy, the concept of reason is more commonly applied to society, history, and nature. Rationality is manifested in these three environments.
Why did Kant define the ability of human pure rational activity as the inability of humans to solve this contradiction? Because when we break through the intellectual form and enter into the questioning of pure reason, we will encounter contradictions logically, and the ultimate result of resolving this contradiction can only be to limit the scope of rational activity.
This is a conclusion given by Kant, but for Hegel, he said that there is no limit to reason as Kant suggested, because rational activity itself is only reflected in human natural society and historical activities. Therefore, there is no limit to rational activity as stipulated by Kant, so people do not need to guarantee that our rational activity can only be carried out in this aspect; But rather, as long as you master the human consciousness activity, that is, the requirements of logic, we can fully utilize this consciousness ability to unfold human rational ability in the dialects of nature and society that human intelligence makes.
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