What is the difference between kant and hegel

Whether in practice it is possible or not that not our concern. The concept of national state has assumed clear position in the hands of Hegel because in such a state there is a clear location of sovereignty—is an essential ingredient of state. He was of opinion that a free trade leads to commercial and economic rivalry among the states creating an atmosphere of war. For Kant, we can only come to know what is really beautiful when one has no agenda, concept, or comparison to measure the object with.

An Anthology of Changing Ideas. For Hegel, the classical period is characterized by the depiction of ideal beauty in the perfect human body in ancient Greek sculpture. This constant difference between beauty of art and beauty of nature is a vital point.

Though in his later writings Fichte wanted to make a state powerful, in his earlier works he made ample scope for individual volition. Particularly, Rousseau emphasized on morality and ethics. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. On the opposite, spirit is only the true, realizing everything in itself, and then one can say that all are truly beautiful only as distribution in this superior sphere and made by it.

The task of metaphysics theory of reality is to identify all the dimensions and limits of reality and to show how they are interconnected. Dialectic is one of the oldest philosophic concepts -- its earliest appearance was more than years before Socrates. This is the "four elements" theory that reality is composed of earth and air , in constant opposition, as are fire and water. Socrates : meant the use of argument to make the opponent contradict himself with the result that Socrates would then resolve the contradiction and form a true definition of the concept.

Plato : it was the highest level of knowledge where opposition or contradiction has been overcome. Every concept begins to show us limitations, and passes over into its opposite the very negation of itself. There is dialectical opposition, conflict, contradiction or polarity between Heraclitus and Parmenides. Hegel says that the conflict the opposition of the thesis and the antithesis can be overcome resolved.

The rational conceptual truths which underlie all the areas of human experience and knowledge are not static. The Absolute Mind which is the totality of these concepts is itself a process revealing its truths to us dialectically. In this work, Hegel attempts to understand the human spirit of the present time by looking back at its development and at its roots in the past.

He presents all the types of world views, religious faiths, philosophic visions that man has held. Hegel will also indicate how each philosophy reveals it own limitations, showing itself to be a partial truth, one-sided, distorted, and inadequate.

Philosophy will move dialectically until an all-embracing, all-inclusive vision of total reality is reached. Opposing philosophic systems have competed and struggled with each other claiming to be the exclusive truth.

Hegel believes that the followers of a particular philosopher believe they have received the one true philosophy from him. They exhibit the false notion that philosophic truth is capable of reaching a fixed, rigid, static, finished, and final form. Such individuals believed that one particular philosophy can achieve this final truth -- such a philosophy must be defended against an opposing view. These philosophers Hegel says do not understand that this dis - agreement between philosophies represents not conflict but the growth and development of truth.

Differing philosophic systems should be seen not as at war with one another but as "elements of an organic unity". Hegel viewed philosophy like all reality as organic in character, a functional interdependence of parts just like a living organism. Metaphor : the History of Philosophy may be compared to a living growing fruit tree.

Hegel was influenced by developments in biological sciences and the idea of the interdependent unity of parts. It claims that an organism, as a developing unity of hierarchial and interdependent parts serving the life of the whole,is the model for understanding the human personality, societies and their institutions, philosophy, and history.

From Hegel on, the rest of the 19th Century philosophic thought will be influenced by the concept of the unity and functional totality of the organism. Historicism is the claim that the understanding of any aspect of human life must be concerned primarily with its history, its evolution, its genesis, or its roots.

Philosophy must be understood as the evolving, changing historical development which it is its conflicts are part of the developmental process. Hegel says that truth is not only truth of substances, but it is the truth contributed by the knowing subject.

He maintains that any truth is truth only as it is created and understood by a subject living in his own time. Truth is living, growing, and changing -- it is the truth of the human spirit as it has dialectically developed over the centuries. To unify the changing attitudes, religious beliefs, and philosophies of Man into a single organic totality, a unity- in-diversity.

It also finds gratification in mastering objects -- making them serve the desires of the self. Hegel sees such mastering actions as the principle of negation, the power of the negative the principle of death. It produces a negating antithesis to every thesis -- and also a synthesis which negates every negating antithesis.

The desire of mastery produces the same principle of negation in Man's relation to objects. It is a desire to negate them, to overcome them in some way, to destroy them, to incorporate them, to cancel them out of existence. The desire to master, the principle of negation is present in Man's relationship to other human beings. The two selves now enter into what Hegel calls the " trial by death " or the " struggle unto death ".

The great satisfaction is not simply to overcome the object, but to have the other object acknowledge that it has been overcome, defeated, and negated. Hegel says that Man derives consummate satisfaction from this, the overcoming of an object which is capable of knowing that I have mastered it. I know that I am a self because I see you looking at me, responding to me, as a self.

The victor is brought to a new and more adequate viewpoint - the victor learns not to kill the other, but to make him his slave. The master-slave relationship is filled with contradictions and limitations which are the seeds of its own destruction. The slave is reduced to being a thing, and he is made to work on material things for the benefit of the master.

The master is dependent on the slave's recognition of him as master ie. The slave has as his mirror another self who is an independent person, while the master only has a dependent slave-self to relate to. The slave will find in his own labor the making of things that he is the independent self who crafted it. The slave discovers his own independent existence as a consciousness with a mind and will and power of his own.

For Karl Marx the master-slave chapter in the Phenomenology of Spirit is the most significant section of the pages of that book. Because of the contradictions and limitations contained within the master-slave relationship , it is left behind and the human spirit moves on in its development to a new viewpoint.

It is a reference to the Hellenistic philosophy, but here especially to Epictetus A. Hegel means stoic consciousness as the next development in the growth of human self-consciousness. Stoic Philosophy , as Hegel views it, asserts that in my thoughts I can be independent and free , whether I am an emperor or a slave. The stoic believes that by understanding and accepting the natural laws that govern the universe as necessary and unavoidable , one can become strong and self-sufficient, un-troubled by the world.

It is a time when there is a refuge and a place of safety in one's own mind and the understanding of universal and necessary truths. The stoic is a slave to the necessary laws governing nature and human life the physical-real world. Hegel says that the stoic has no actual freedom to enjoy life in the real world, but only retreats to an abstract idea of himself as being free. The stoic rejects the world to the point of withdrawing into the quiet refuge of his own rational mind.

It does not recognize that it is operating with a split self,a master with the power of doubt and the slave which is destroyed. Since Skepticism contains this contradiction which it is unaware of - it passes over into another world view. This new world view Hegel calls "unhappy consciousness" and he identifies it as the religious consciousness of medieval Christianity. The Medieval Christian has an unhappy consciousness because he is aware of himself as divided, as a split self in which there is an endless struggle between the true and false selves.

The religious consciousness is unhappy because it knows itself to be a divided self. The religious world view recognizes the truth , that what the true self longs for is God or Absolute Spirit. Although it knows the truth, it is only figurative truth that it offers, pictures and symbols of the truth.

Hegel maintains that religious consciousness must now pass over into the realm of reason and philosophy. The truth which the religious world view expressed in pictures and symbols must now be grasped by the rational concepts of the philosophy.

The self must learn that the true absolute is not a personal God but is absolute mind. It is the totality of truth which manifests itself dialectically in finite minds in human history.

This is also God's goal - for us not to be slaves but to freely receive and master His unfolding truth in history. The master-slave relationship will then be overcome -- there will be nothing more to overcome. He applies his own Absolute Idealism -- to penetrate the surface of existence to its rationally and dialectically developed conceptual truth. It is the scene in which the truth of the Absolute unfolds itself, reveals itself to the consciousness of humanity. Philosophically : history is the rational structure of the truth of Absolute -- being revealed in time to the finite spirit Man.

As this rational structure reveals itself dialectically in time, it exhibits God's Plan for the world. Hegel argues that it is teleological , that it has a purpose God's goal for humanity. Hegel acknowledges that history is the scene of evil and has brought about the ruin of the noblest of nations and human beings.

Hegel presents an image of history as a slaughter-bench, a place where victims are tied down to be killed as a human sacrifice. Hegel claims that his philosophy of history is a theodicy a theory to justify, to vindicate God against the charges he has permitted the existence of evil in the world.

The slaughter-bench view of history sees only the surface and not the latent and potential in history. World History is the process by which the Spirit manifests to finite man the meaning of his own freedom.

Question : How does the Absolute bring Man to a consciousness of his own freedom as a spiritual being. First reason, the rational concept of freedom which the Absolute the totality of rational truth seeks to express to finite man. The second is human passion: Hegel maintains this is the only element that can bring consciousness to a finite mind. Hegel says that Man is driven to action by his own private, subjective will to satisfy his natural instincts, needs, and interests.

Desires are much closer to the reality of human nature than laws of morality that attempt to restrain them. Hegel maintains that desires are expressions of the human will and that they may work for good. Hegel's point is that one's motivation toward any goal, whether it is consciously for my own benefit or for the benefit of others, has its source in desires.

Nothing is ever accomplished unless individuals desire it and find their satisfaction in bringing it about. The Absolute may be said to use human wills as a means to bring about the goal of its divine will. Hegel says that this is done by cunning: By the masterful shrewdness, cleverness, subtlety of the Absolute in bringing the rational truth of freedom to human minds.

Reason , in the form of Absolute, which is the totality of rational conceptual truth, governs the world. Any violation of this rule would result in a contradiction and, therefore, moral impossibility. The categorical imperative provides Kant with a valid procedure and a universal and necessary determination of what is morally obligatory.

Yet in order to determine the will, Kant thought human beings had to be free. Kant thinks freedom is necessary for any practical philosophy, because the moral worth and merit of human beings depends on the way they determine their own wills. Without freedom, they would not be able to determine their own wills to the good and we could not hold them responsible for their actions.

Things have been proven to me which I thought could never be proven, e. Unlike Kant, in other words, Fichte would not simply determine the form of the good will, but the ways in which moral and political principles are applied in action. In both works, Fichte emphasizes the applicability of moral and political principles to action. But he also emphasizes the social context in which these principles are applied.

Thus the freedom of the I and the relations between individuals and members of the community are governed by the principles of morality and right, which may be applied to all their actions and interactions. Hegel understands ethical life as the original unity of social life. While he thinks the unity of ethical life precedes any understanding of the community as a free association of individuals, Hegel also thinks the unity of ethical life is destined to break down.

As members of the community become conscious of themselves as individuals, through the conflicts that arise between family and city and between religious law and civil law, ethical life becomes more and more fragmented and the ties that bind the community become less and less immediate. Hegel provides a different account of ethical life in the Foundations of the Philosophy of Right.

In this work, he contrasts ethical life with morality and abstract right. Abstract right is the name Hegel gives to the idea that individuals are the sole bearers of right. The problem with this view is that it abstracts right from the social and political context in which individuals exercise their rights and realize their freedom.

Morality differs from abstract right, because morality recognizes the good as something universal rather than particular. Ethical life is not presented as the original unity of the habits and customs of the community, but, rather, as a dynamic system in which individuals, families, civil society, and the state come together to promote the realization of human freedom.

And while there was, to be sure, considerable disagreement about the relationship between art, aesthetics, and philosophy among the German idealists, the terms of their disagreement continue to be debated in philosophy and the arts. For most of his career, Kant regarded aesthetics as an empirical critique of taste. Kant changed his mind in , when he told Reinhold he had discovered the a priori principles of the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure.

According to Kant, it is the free yet harmonious play of our cognitive faculties in aesthetic judgment that is the source of the feeling of pleasure that we associate with beauty. In the System of Transcendental Idealism and Philosophy of Art , Schelling argues that the absolute is both revealed by and embodied in works of art.

According to Hegel, art is not the revelation and embodiment of philosophy, but an alienated form of self-consciousness. Nevertheless, Hegel acknowledges that the alienated and sensuous appearance of the idea can play an important role in the dialectical process through which we become conscious of the absolute in philosophy.

He distinguishes three kinds of art, symbolic art, classical art, and romantic art, corresponding to three different stages in the development of our consciousness of the absolute, which express different aspects of the idea in different ways. Hegel argues that the kind of art that corresponds to the first stage in the development of our understanding of spirit, symbolic art, fails to adequately represent the idea, but points to the idea as something beyond itself.

However, the art corresponding to the second stage in the development of our understanding of spirit, classical art, strives to reconcile the abstract and the concrete in an individual work. Yet the problem remains, inasmuch as the idea which is expressed by classical art is not, in itself, sensible. The sensible presentation of the idea remains external to the idea itself. Romantic art calls attention to this fact by emphasizing the sensuousness and individuality of the work.

Unlike symbolic art, however, romantic art supposes that the idea can be discovered within and through the work of art. In effect, the work of art tries to reveal the truth of the idea in itself.

Yet when the idea is grasped concretely, in itself, rather than through the work of art, we have achieved a philosophical understanding of the absolute, which does not require the supplement of sensible appearance. For this reason, Hegel speculated that the emergence of philosophical self-consciousness signaled the end of art. What purpose might art continue to serve, if we have already achieved philosophical self-consciousness?

These are important questions, but they are difficult to answer. To question the end of art in Hegel is, for that reason, to question the entire system and the degree to which it presents a true account of the absolute. Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling ended their careers in the same chair in Berlin.

Fichte spent his later years reformulating the Wissenschaftslehre in lectures and seminars, hoping to finally find an audience that understood him. Nor does the late Schelling think that thought can ground itself in its own activity. Whether or not this system is really idealist is, however, a matter of some dispute.

It is easier to distinguish Kierkegaard and Marx from the German idealists than Schopenhauer, though Kierkegaard and Marx are perhaps as different from one another as they could possibly be. Kierkegaard studied with the late Schelling, but, like Jacobi, rejected reason and philosophy in the name of faith.

Many of his works are elaborate parodies of the kind of reasoning to be found in the works of the German idealists, especially Hegel. Marx and Engels promoted their own historical materialism as an alternative to the ideology of idealism.

There is a tendency to overemphasize figures like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Marx in the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century, but this distorts our understanding of the developments taking place at the time. It was the rise of empirical methods in the natural sciences and historical-critical methods in the human sciences, as well as the growth of Neo-Kantianism and positivism that led to the eclipse of German idealism, not the blistering critiques of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche.