Just Curious

"What ought I to do"?

Finished reading Hegel's intro to the philosophy of history yesterday, and skipped all the crap toward the end (mostly racist theory re human origin, etc.)

I came to realize that due to the obscure language in the "Phenomenology of the Spirit," many readers had come to regard Hegel's teleological view of history as a positive theory (of "historical inevitability"). But now that I've thought it over and over, I think he probably meant it as something normative. Or at least that's what a right-minded person should treat it as. Otherwise it becomes highly speculative, for no one could be so sure as to whether history really has beeb "progressing" all along; and a patently absurd one too, for as my friend John pointed out such a view might force us to accept all kinds of violent/absurd event as something "historically inevitable" and therefore "rational"...

The question then is not, "has the Spirit been realizing itself through past history?" but rather "how might I participate in the realization of the Spirit, through hope for the future?"

Personally I think this understanding of the Hegel's philosophy of history as a normative theory is not an unreasonable one, since Hegel essentially built his theory on the German classicals, like Kant, who first systemized what one might call the philosophy of right.

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Last night's St. Patty's day celebration had been very successful. Ben, John, Matt, Mike, Derek, Polly, Jessica, Emma, Anna, myself and a whole host of other people went out, and I did get dressed up in this lush green Austrian jacket...

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Hope. I'm still not quite sure if I get the essence of this cardinal virtue of "Hope." Can we equate it with the Hegelian notion of "desire"? Or the more general notion of self-consciousness? I'll have to work more on it...

posted by James Chang @ 6:18 PM