Crimson 786’s Reviews > The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers > Status Update

Comte's Positivism & Darwin's Evolution... overlapped by Derby's lazy and uneducated Herbert Spencer, who ran away 48 miles on first day, 47 on the second & 20 on third.. only to return for three yrs education, without remembering what exactly did he learn.
An exaggerated urge for symmetry and order.

O' Schopenhauer; the great pessimist! how could you arrive at such a great conclusion: fear of death is the beginning of Philosophy and the final cause of religion.

Mind; indispensable organ for the perception of dialectical process
Mind & philosophy; to discover the unity that lies potential in diversity
Ethics;unify character & conduct
Politics;unify individuals into a state
Religion;reach hat absolute where all opposites are resolved into unity - matter & mind, subject & object, good & evil, are one
God; system of relationship in which all things move & beings hv significance

Life is not made for happiness, but for achievement.History is not the theatre of happiness; periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they're periods of harmony & this dull content is unworthy of a man

Struggle is the law of growth; character is built in the storm&stress of the world;man reaches his full height only through compulsion, responsibilities&suffering. Rationale of Pain; stimulus to reconstruction

Great men are not so much begetters, as midwives, of the future; what they bring forth is murdered by the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). The genius merely place another stone on the pile, as others have done; somehow his has a good fortune to come last, and when he places his stone, the arch stands self supported

Hegel: continues..

"identity of opposites " Thesis, antithesis & synthesis constitute the formula and secret of all development and all reality (Fichte)

Diversity in Unity: dialectical progression

The deepest law of politics, is freedom and open avenue to change; history is the growth of freedom, and the state is, or should be, freedom organised

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel;Stuttgart 1770-Berlin 1831

Contemporary of Goethe, Napoleon & Beethoven, Mocked as "the official philosopher"
Inspired Hegelian right & left including Karl Marx

• Zeitgeist
• Idea; a group of relations
• Dialectical Movement; contrast/ opposition leading to complex whole. Identity of opposites, the golden mean (Aristotle)
• Culture begins with resolute self effacement

"Dialectical movement" - Of all relations, the most universal is that of contrast or opposition. Every thought, or thing, or idea, or situation-leads irresistibly to its opposite, and then unites with it to form a higher or more complex whole.

"identity of opposites " Thesis, antithesis and synthesis constitute the formula and secret of all development and all reality (Fichte)