Hegel, writing in 1806, insisted that ‘own epoch is a time of birth and a transition to a new period’. But is his epoch our epoch? Or are we now in the ‘new period’ he refers to? And what in any case does it mean to speak of ‘our epoch’? How do we define what is ‘contemporary’?
In this talk I will consider what Hegel has to say or would say about these questions. In the process I hope to show why Hegel is still an essential philosopher for thinking about our place in historical time.
The Recording: Please note that, due to some unfortunate settings in Zoom, the video only shows people in the room and not Meade McCloughan while he was presenting, although you can hear him. Please download the support material as Meade does refer to it in his talk.
After Meade’s talk on Hegel, I had three questions – these were forwarded to Meade.
My questions, and Meade’s replies are shown below.
I am very grateful to Meade for his answers – they are both helpful and food for much thought.
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Patrick Dixon’s questions:
Meade’s talk today on Hegel was a wonderful start to what looks like a very interesting term to come. I was left with three thoughts. I’ll divide them up to make replying easier.
Q1) We had an entire talk about Hegel without any mention of Idealism at all (including Hegel’s Absolute Idealism.) How does the discussion today fit with, or sit alongside Idealism – if indeed it does?
Q2) I was surprised how much of the core topic today was about the Political Philosophy of the Enlightenment, and Freedom in particular. Was this a core part of Hegel’s work, or did it simply sit alongside his other projects?
Q3) Within the context of the term theme of “Philosophy For Our Time”, I was very struck by the quote at the bottom of page 2:
“It is a great obstinacy, the kind of obstinacy which does honour to human beings, that they are unwilling to acknowledge in their attitudes anything which has not been justified by thought.”
I wonder if this is reflective of the struggle of left-wing philosophers today to make appeals to emotional rather than logical arguments in their current battle against the dominant right-wing “Trumpian” philosophers of today, thereby losing the current “battle of ideas” of our time.
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Meade McCloughan’s replies:
Dear Patrick,
Thank you for your questions! Quick responses:
1. Couldn’t fit everything in! A talk about Hegel’s idealism would be a different affair. But everything I said fits with Hegel’s commitment to idealism. The kind of idealism he espouses amounts to the claim that everything is intelligible – that is, intelligible to / through reason, and reason = spirit, in which the “idea” is revealed. So spirit’s consciousness of itself as free is a pre-eminent realization of the truth of idealism. And freedom itself requires spirit being at home in the world, to use Hegel’s own locution, and for spirit to be at home in the world it must fully comprehend the world. This takes the idea of freedom beyond the more specifically social and political concerns I emphasized in my talk, taking me to your second point…
2. Freedom is the key value in Hegel. Even the Logic is understood as realizing freedom – because, as spirit, as thinking beings, we are freest when thinking purely and properly.
3. The obstinacy Hegel refers to is one which demands that everything be “justified by *thought*”, so is clearly keyed to argument rather than to emotion. But Hegel also recognizes that this can take pernicious forms, as in own time, when individual intellectual autonomy is regularly degraded to the level of conspiracy theorizing and “doing one’s own research”. But these are perversions of enlightenment values rather than an appeal to emotion over logic. So I think that Hegel would say that “obstinacy” can go either way. Which is why we need philosophy to put us on the right track!
Meade
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