I'll try to animate Hegel briefly because I really like the feeling of doing so, in the same way I like happiness.
Kierkegaard complains that so many things he says can be reduced to various paragraphs in Hegel's Logic and Encyclopedias, as though the whole strength of what he says is lost if that is true. It seems Kierkegaard is complaining that reducing his thinking to something systematic takes away a vital component of it, such as the place for faith. K. seems to adhere very fundamentally to a common and typically Christian dichotomy between reason on the one hand and faith on the other. The two are thought to be mutually exclusive, and this is exactly what Hegel would deny. K.'s complaint appears to be that reducing all matters of human activity to reason takes away the whole freedom and moral struggle associated with right action, and that the absence of this leads only toward determinism or fatalism. It is a common fear, even today, and we see that it is probably exactly this resistance which stopped Kant short of a true idealism, and left him still with a gap between ontology and phenomenology.
Yet somehow, for Hegel, clear rational thought is the very ground of freedom. We see that where there is unclear thinking, there is only a mind without mastery, which is instead fated to reaction against an unknown to it, which appears foreign and alien. Choice, ironically, can only appear where one is not compelled by forces which appear contingent and purely given limitation. Indeed, the
whole point of Hegel's philosophy is to undo the fixed and rigid and unrecognized in the mind, and this is also to say that the end of Hegel's philosophy is perfect knowledge. This must be a process of rational recognition, which in turn is nothing other than that of seeing with rational clarity.
The fundamental drive in Hegel's dialectic is the force of contradiction which appears in every thought which is NOT fixed. The fixed is purely given, as though indifferent to one's self, and in this respect, the relationship is one sided. To NOT be fixed is to resemble the self in that it is affected just as it affects. In this respect, it is reflective. The other finds it's negation by the self just as the self find its negation in the other. Hegel observes, taking from Kant, that consciousness is in fact entirely impossible without consciousness OF something. In other words, consciousness is that which returns to itself THROUGH what it is not. The self can be aware of itself ONLY IN CONTRAST to its other. But since this is the foundation of its existence, it is also the foundation of the OTHER'S existence, or else the self could never return to itself out of its other. It would only find the alien in which causation was only one directional.
So, if contrast or "negativity" is the foundation of consciousness, and, as Kant shows, the unitary "I", or self, then the self just IS negativity, and so too is everything before it. Everything IS, for the self, because it is negated by an other, and his just means that one's self is also IN what one is not, or that everything goes over into its opposite. But you see that this is a process of contradiction, but also a necessary and
ontological contradiction. So, as a genuine ontological force, for Hegel, the whole force of the temporal becomingness of the universe is set in motion. Again, everything is not merely
explained to rational consciousness as being, in itself, what is not something else, but this is also the very ground. A consequence is that Hegel must break from Kant's notion of the real noumenal world beyond thought which we can say nothing about. Nothing can stand in a one-directional relationship for Hegel, which affects, but is not affected and, importantly, for consciousness, because it will always manifest in contradiction. In fact, the mind cannot conceive without contradicting itself the existence of anything beyond it, yet this is so easily overlooked because so much of the alienness many insist on relies on their not comprehending this.
But you see that this contradiction in the mind is no different than the ontological force compelling temporal becomingness, and this is why Hegel ends up with a kind of philosophy of history too, because the consequence here is that philosophy and human thought itself is fueled by the force of contradiction in its eternal attempt to reconcile opposition in the same way the whole of the manifest universe is. In other words, the whole of history is explainable in terms of RATIONAL NECESSITY, and this is where Hegel draws his notion of fate ...
Anyway, the whole idea of the rejection of the alien (or passively "given" before consciousness), though, should make sense for our atheists here who so despise the Christian doctrine of a supernatural being, that God exists separate from and above the universe. This is a commonplace objection and it is forceful because it is rational. But now, if only they saw that the "realist's" idea of a world beyond objective thought which they so readily adopt is NO DIFFERENT in concept from the Christian doctrine they object to so fervently. The latter places a conceptually real entity into the beyond-class of concepts, namely, the world beyond the mind, just as the former does, namely, God beyond the universe. They appear different only because the contradiction of existence for the self of that which is not for the self is not seen so readily as the idea of an entity (God) beyond the sum of all entities (the universe). Our "realists" are ACTUALLY supernaturalists! How ironic! There IS no beyond because there can be no one-sidedness for consciousness! It is literally contradictory. As a consequence, reality truly appears before you because appearance is exactly what reality is.
Charles Taylor's book,
Hegel, is a magnificently accessible introduction to Hegel which I am currently reading. It is a wonderful wonderful book.
A world where nothing is alien, is a world where fear has been completely eradicated, and human bonds of community have taken in and embraced the universe whole. So strongly is my whole being united in the desire to forward this end that it is the same as saying that world-love is the meaning driving my existence of which I am an expression, and it is why Hegel excites me so much. Anyone will laugh in joy to see another dance to the same melody of theirs because singing is a song of sharing to begin with, and both are the instruments of each note and measure.
Hegel's philosophy derives from an astounding celebration of life. I love life too, and I want to celebrate it.
