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Hegel
created a vast speculative and idealistic philosophy, where
truth is found not in the part but in the whole.
Nature is an organic whole shot through with rationality akin
to the reason in ourselves.
Hegel's
famous "dialectic" is an organic process of growth
and development in three stages: beginning, advance and resolution.
It has two sides: the rational patterns that determine all growth
in the world and the logical form of reason.
Each
person is both a one and a many, a coexistence of opposites
(unity and diversity). Self-consciousness (the self as subject
knowing the self as object) requires mutuality - social
interaction with others. And our minds have two functions: the
understanding distinguishes between things, and reason
synthesizes them.
There
are three stages of mind: subjective (concerned with the individual),
objective (including customs and beliefs of communities), and
absolute (Spirit expressing itself through art, religion, and
philosophy). All phases of the dialectical process are brought
together in the final unity of Absolute mind.
For
Hegel, history is a dynamic succession of novel and creative
events, the gradual unfolding of reason. In Hegel's words, "what
is rational is actual (real), and what is actual (real) is rational."
Great men express the spirit of their age. And God is an absolute
and living knower who apprehends the truth of all actuality.
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