There were many important statements made throughout the text, some were interesting to read and others were difficult to read. In the introduction there were statements that explained different forms of history. There was original history, reflective history, and philosophical history. Original history would simply transfer what was passing in the world around them to the realm of representative intellect. Reflective history needed the investigator to gain view of the entire history of a people, country, or world. Philosophical history means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of history. Something interesting I found in the text was when Hegel stated that America has always shown itself physically and psychically powerless. This was …show more content…
There has been a lot of issues with police officers killing men of color during confrontations. Many times the men had been compliant and yet they were still shot at and killed. This is an event that shows that there may not be verbal attacks on African Americans, but there are actual acts that are shown where blacks are still being misjudged and it is not fair. The times have changed and our society has evolved, but sadly there is still this racism Hegel illustrates in his text towards people of color. While reading this text I felt that Africans were set up to be seen as inferior and therefore they had to be Christianized and Westernized. This did not make sense to me because the same type things do not work for everyone. This is why there are different religions, people are allowed to believe in whatever they choose to believe in. Hegel on the other hand made me look at him as an ignorant racist who only saw one right way of doing things through religion. For example, Hegel states that Africans used “magic” and offerings of rocks or animals as their form of sacrifice. He says that this is not right, that they need to believe in God not this “magic” they choose to believe in. I would not be proud if my social group was described by an outsider the way that Hegel described Africans. That is because Hegel made assumptions and went based off of his observations. He did not sit down with the people of Africa and actually listen to their reasoning, he instead just attacked them for being different. It would make me depressed if my social group was attacked in the same form Hegel attacked the innocent Africans. Racism is the program of mistreatment, discrimination, or segregation of other based on their membership in a race or ethnic group. Therefore, I believe that Hegel is a racist because he was being discriminatory towards these African people because of
...eferred to it as “the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom”. He argues that historicism rejects political philosophy and is entrenched in the belief that human thought including scientific thought, is based on the grounds that cannot be validated by reason and come from historical era. In his book, ‘Natural Right and History’ he offers a complete critique of historicism as it emerges in the works of Hegel and Marx. He believes that historicism grew out of Christianity and was a threat to civic participation, as well as understanding the classical philosophers and religions. In his books he warns that historicism, and the resulted perceived Progress can lead to totalitarianism and democratic extremism. In his book, ‘On Tyranny’ he blames historicism for Nazism and Communism. Many believe that the Strauss work is based on the Nietzsche's view of historicism.
In the 21st century, slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade are viewed as immoral and quite possibly the most horrifying treatment known to man by society and foreign leaders but, was the same view regarded in the 17th century? The short primary sources, “Nzinga Mbemba: Appeal to the King of Portugal”, and “Captain Thomas Phillips: Buying Slaves in 1639”, enables individuals to identify how foreign leaders, specifically the kings of African nations, conducted the issue of slavery and the slave trade. In the words of Nzinga Mbemba and Captain Phillips, the kings of Congo and Ouidah both knowingly accepted slavery in their country but, had strikingly opposing views concerning the Atlantic Slave Trade; King Mbemba prohibited the trading of slaves whereas the King of Ouidah welcomed slave trading.
...is an account of the birth of self-consciousness through intersubjectivity or the integration within culture. It is a dialectical interpretation that acts, for Hegel, as a form for perceiving the way in which the self comes to know itself through the other and through historical processes. The master/slave dialectic is an early account of intersubjectivity and also a lack of intersubjectivity because it is not based on equal recognition. Self-consciousness, for Hegel, is attained only through the recognition by another independent self. The human world is a world based on recognition, and the human being has within themselves the desire for recognition from other human beings. Hegel proposes that one cannot become a self-conscious individual without seeing oneself in another, and that each individual bases their existence on a world that is founded upon recognition.
From these convictions, the idea of black liberation theology was created. Blacks relate Christianity to the struggles they have endured, therefore it has to be black. “In a society where men are defined on the basis of color of the victims, proclaiming that the condition of the poor is incongruous with him who has come to liberate us.”
In 1806, nearly two hundred years before Fukuyama’s audacious historical stance, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel declared the end of history. Hegel bases his claim in that the Napoleonic Code, a preliminary, yet revolutionary replacement of previous feudal laws, was being promulgated and slowly implemented throughout Napoleon’s empire . Hegel believes, however, that the adoption of a particular code or set of standards for a civil society, like the Napoleonic Code or the Constitution of the United States, is stipulated on the rational evolution or progression of peoples towards the realization that they are free or equal. In short, a constitution that guarantees your freedom means nothing to those who do not possess the self-consciousness
The Western philosophy of history has as its primary concept the concept of development, and many scholars have thus distinguished between the Western linear view of history and the non-Western cyclical one. What appears to be the case is that the dominant philosophy of history – otherwise more chillingly referred to as the ‘master-narrative’ – conceives of the history of the world as beginning with Judaism and progressing through classical antiquity and Christianity to the Enlightenment and modern liberalism.[6] What such a master-narrative leaves out, of course, is the period of the European Middle Ages (from the fifth to the fifteenth-century A.D.), a historical fact that renders more plausible – because more representative – a cyclical view of history as alternating between the Dark and the Golden Ages. Master-narratives leave no room for competing narratives, a case in point being Trevor-Roper’s statement that black Africa had no history prior to contact with the West. Trevor-Roper’s statement draws on a Hegelian relation between the concept of history and the Western concept of development. It was this Hegelian relation that allowed Hegel to essentially declare the end of history in 1806, when the Battle of Jena led to Napoleon defeating the Prussian monarchy and what Hegel presumed to be the victory of liberal democracy.[7] By the same Hegelian logic, Fukuyama was able to out-Hegel Hegel and
Kung, Hans. The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought As Prolegomena to a Future Christology. T&T Clark, 2001. hard cover.
One of them main critiques of Hegel in regards to the liberalism view of freedom is that the view of liberalism is only a partial view of freedom. By referring to liberalism as a partial freedom, Hegel is referring to its subjectivity. To Hegel, liberal freedom is a subjective freedom. In other words, it is a negative freedom, it is a system of rights. To Hegel, freedom is the “the worthiest and the holiest thing in humanity”, where the core of freedom lies in free will (Par. 215). According to Hegel, without free will, individuals do not possess freedom. This is why Hegel refers to freedom as an abstract concept, as freedom by itself, is just an abstract right. As a result, when an individual think to himself “I will”, that is just the abstract thought, it
Through media, literature, and what a monumental amount of America has learned in grade school, the perception of Africa is immensely exaggerated (The African Executive | Africa: The Beautiful). Over time, images of famine and extreme poverty has shaped America’s idea of all that Africa entails (American Perceptions of Africa Based on Media Representations). Due to the fact that modern America heavily relies on what the media chooses to feed it, it is truly up to these newspapers, magazines, and evening news channels to be responsible in choosing what they portray Africa as. Unfortunately, this has been going on for a vast amount of time, and some cannot see the end to the misconceptions, even with Africa begging to be represented in the correct manner (Africa In The Western Media).
In his Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegel lays out a process by which one may come to know absolute truth. This process shows a gradual evolution from a state of "natural consciousness" (56) (1) to one of complete self-consciousness - which leads to an understanding of the "nature of absolute knowledge itself" (66). By understanding the relation between consciousness and truth, one may come to know the true nature of our existence. Hegel proposes to answer these questions in one bold stroke; he relates them in such a way as to make an infinitely complex and indiscernible universe a unitary whole. This process from a natural state to a kind of transcendence leads one from the chaos of the immediate to the sublimity of the universal.
Social scientists often reference Georg Hegel’s work in Phenomenology of Spirit, as he attempts to develop the notion of self and the limits of its autonomy in society. In it, he describes what is often termed the master-slave dialectic. The master-slave dialectic describes the internal, or if taken more literally, the external struggle of recognition between two figures, the master and the slave. Their relationship is at once both reflective and reflexive, as one begins to understand the other as the antithesis of his or herself, giving an identity not only to the other, but also to his or herself. This dialectic places the figures in conflict with one another, where the historically determined means for resolution is the social defeat of
Human beings have been struggling to learn the meaning of life since the first day. Ideologies are born as human’s interpretation of the world and belief system, also an endeavor to seek the truth of human nature. Ideologies emerge throughout the periods of great changes: the Enlightenment, the English “Glorious” Revolution, the American Revolution, etc. They have become the motivations, the standards, and the roots to modern political systems. Their roots are the philosophies developed by famous philosophers throughout the time. However, as each ideology is developed, its own contradiction also grows, takes place in the realm of actions. This, in turn, shows contradiction as human nature.
However, he did realize that no religion would be able to survive just based on the supposed experiences and ‘revelations’ of other people, which is what led him to understanding that it must be based on peoples understanding and personal interpretations of reality (Handout #1). Even though he did feel as though he was indebted to the Enlightenment, Hegel opposed many of its basic concepts even while protecting a lot of the developments that were brought by the Enlightenment (Handout #1). The views of religion that are offered by Hegel lean more positively to Christianity and religion in general since he does agree with the belief of God and he was Lutheran which is a sect of Christianity and also supports his acceptance of religion (Handout #1). He also frequently utilizes Christian terms in his writings, especially those of the Trinity which actually supports religion in general even though he thought that religion should be transformed into philosophy which proves that Hegel inspected and researched religion more as a philosophy which is more harmful to it since philosophies have never been proven. However, Hegel opposes a portion of orthodoxy because he believes that Evil was created by God and that humanity is nothing without the contrast between good and evil. Some of his views are also more harmful for Christianity because he
(a) Africans and Europeans have relations that date all the way back to the origins of humans and human migrations. Scholars have hypothesized that Homo erectus found in Europe about 800,000 years ago originated and migrated from Africa Europeans and Africans also had religious relations; which is evident from the spread of Christianity, introduced by the Byzantines, throughout Africa specifically in North Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Horn of Africa. Aside from religious relations, Africans and Europeans also had economic and political relations as a result of European colonization and conquest of the African regions. Economic relations were a result of Europeans coming into Africa and taking natural resources to benefit from in the production of goods and trade. Another specific example of economic relations between Europeans and Africans is the practice of mercantilism, in which European nations were the mother countries and countries of Africa were the colonies. As the mother country, Europeans, would take natural resources from the colony, African regions, to produce goods, which would then be sold back to the colony. This also attributed to the political relations between Africans and Europeans because the economic desires of the Europeans often led to them controlling the Africans to maximize profit and their own personal benefits; which is directly related to slavery, one of the biggest relations between Africans and Europeans. Slavery and the slave trade in turn created social relations because slaves were considered to be a class of their own. Another social relation that resulted from slavery was the creation a “new race” known as the...
Hegel’s dialectics is proved by philosophy itself, but also proved by nature. The development of mankind is always changing and progressing. Therefore, the history of human beings is “the process of evolution of man himself.” Furthermore, Engels believes that one of the limitations of Hegel is that Hegel is an idealist but not materialist that restricts him to resolve the problem: how to reveal the ‘inner law’ of the world. But modern materialism will solve this problem. According to Engels, human beings are products of nature; similarly, human’s consciousness is a product of his brain, which means it is also a product of nature. Kain also states that Engels believes, “the very same laws govern nature, history, and human mind.” Engels thinks that the human’s mind is a product of nature according to materialism and that it will be explained as “molecular and chemical motions in the brain” in the future. Therefore, idealism is ridiculous according to Engels. “Modern materialism is essentially dialectic, ” which is totally different from the old mechanical materialism. In other words, he combines ‘conscious dialectics’ and ‘materialist conception of nature and history’ together to develop materialistic conception of history.