What Hegel is Not

CU Course on Hegel, 02

G W F Hegel, 1770-1831

What Hegel is Not

The 1996 Introduction to “The Hegel Myths and Legends” by Jon Stewart (download linked below) does not give a complete description of the downright deceptions that surround the work of Hegel, and it launches a few myths of its own.

But what this text can do is to give us an idea of how exceptionally plagued is the work of Hegel with misrepresentation, in a field, philosophy, where misrepresentation and vulgarisation is common. Jon Stewart writes categorically: “…the reputation of no other major philosopher has suffered such universal opprobrium on such a broad spectrum of issues as Hegel’s has.”

In this piece Stewart gives no indication that he is other than a bourgeois academic. For example, he is happy to relieve Hegel of the “wooden triad”, and then to hang the same “wooden triad” around Karl Marx’s neck. So we are not reading Stewart for Marxism.

The “wooden triad” is the series “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” that is wrongly attributed to Hegel, according to Stewart. So why pass it on to Marx? Karl Marx was a brilliant student of philosophy in Berlin, beginning at the height of Hegel-mania just five years after the death of Hegel. We will not presume that Marx’s understanding of Hegel was any less than Stewart’s.

But Stewart is correct to point out “the extremely difficult nature of Hegel’s own texts.”

Stewart continues: “His complex philosophical system, couched in a stilted, abstract, and idiosyncratic language, has certainly been one of the major causes for the disparity of opinion. Where some see profundity and originality in the obscurity, others see simply gibberish and nonsense. The result of Hegel’s opaque writing style and neologistic vocabulary is that his works remain largely inaccessible to the nonspecialist.”

A neologism is a newly-invented word. An example from South Africa in 2010 would be “tenderpreneur”. Hegel invented words and gave his own peculiar meaning to existing words.

Stewart’s round-up of information gives a good indication of the place of Hegel within bourgeois philosophy up to today. Hegel’s work was a catalyst, not just for the eruption of Marxism, but also of many strains of bourgeois philosophy. Stewart writes that Hegel’s philosophy [which] “marks the crossroads in the modern intellectual tradition, has given birth to virtually all of the major schools of contemporary thought: phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, critical theory, structuralism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and so on.”

Between these strands there has been antagonism from time to time. One of the consequences has been the use of Hegel as a kind of whipping-boy. Stewart gives examples of this. A consequence of the calumnies that people have laid on Hegel in this way is that people come out of nowhere to attack Hegel, even today, because they are carrying grudges.

Therefore we will hold fast in this course to the Marxist understanding of Hegel, not only because we are Marxists, but also because Marxism will give us a steady vantage point and measuring-stick with which to size up Hegel. The warring factions of bourgeois philosophy will not provide such a steady standpoint or scale.

In the next item, we will examine the legacy of Kojève, Edward Said, and the case of “The Other”, and then we will take a first look at Hegel’s version of dialectics.

• Time is getting short now. This trial run of the new Hegel course will be posted as frequently as possible so that it can be completed before Christmas. The “official” first run of this course is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2011, again on this Communist University channel. Please post your feedback so that the course can be improved.

Please download and read this text via the link:

Hegel Myths and Legends, Introduction, 1996, Stewart (6643 words)

Further reading:

The ‘Death of the Subject’ explained, 2002, C3, The Other, James Heartfield (3476 words)

The System of Ethical Life, 1802-3, Hegel (521 words)