1. Hegelian Idealism. Hegel's philosophy is gener-
ally described as Absolute Idealism. Carl Michelet, one
of Hegel's leading nineteenth-century followers, said
that in Absolute Idealism, Subjective and Objective
Idealism are united. It is characteristic of Idealism, he
wrote, to regard thought as fundamental in the world,
but in the Subjective Idealism of Kant and Fichte the
objective world is neglected in favor of merely subjec-
tive mind, and in the Objective Idealism of Schelling
subjectivity is lost in an impersonal cosmic order.
Hegel, according to Michelet, reinstated Aristotle's
teaching that thought and its object are identical in
what is free from matter: “theoretical knowledge and
its object are the same” (De anima III. 4). According
to Michelet, Hegel combined Idealism with Realism
by means of his dialectical method in which the
thought of the philosopher becomes identical with the
objective development of reality (Geschichte der letzten
Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, I, Berlin
[1837], 34 and II, Berlin [1838], 602-11).
The central feature of the German Idealist philoso-
phy which began with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
(Riga, 1781) and culminated in Hegelianism, is its
defense of spontaneity and freedom against the empir-
icism and materialism that flourished during the En-
lightenment. Like Kant and Fichte, Hegel thought that
freedom is of the very essence of mind, but he devel-
oped this idea in a more systematic way than they had
done. Thought, he held, cannot be limited by fixed and
ready-made categories, and in the first part of his
system, the Logic, he tried to show that each limited
category gave rise to contradictions which can only
be resolved by advancing towards progressively less
limited ones until the Absolute Idea, the most compre-
hensive category of all, is reached. Using language
like that applied by Rousseau to the laws of the state
and by Kant to the moral law, Hegel wrote that
thought is “a self-developing totality of determinations
and laws which it gives to itself and does not find
already formed within itself” (
Encyclopedia, 3rd ed.
[1830], §19).
The second part of his system, the Philosophy of
Nature, is concerned with what is not free, with what
occurs as it must and yet might have been other than
it is. Even the wickedness of men, he says, “is infinitely
superior to the law-like turning of the stars or to the
innocence of the plants; something that goes astray is
nevertheless mind” (Encyclopedia, §248).
The third part of Hegel's system is called by him
the Philosophy of Mind. Mind (Geist), he says, is essen-
tially freedom, but is manifested at various levels.
There is first the level, which Hegel calls “subjective
mind,” at which mind turns from the natural world
and finds freedom in itself. Then there is an opposite
stage where a world of artifacts and institutions has
been produced in which particular minds can recognize
both their own achievements and the constraints they
impose. This, says Hegel, is the world of “objective
mind” in which “freedom lies before it as necessity”
(Encyclopedia, §385). The third and highest stage of
mind Hegel calls “absolute mind.” This is the sphere
of art, religion, and philosophy, in which man is taken
beyond his particular social milieu, and even beyond
the international order and the course of human his-
tory. In art the Absolute is manifested in sense-objects,
in religion it is revealed in forms of consciousness that
need no philosophical training, and in philosophy it
becomes thought aware of itself, and, as Aristotle put
it (Metaphysics, XII. 7), on the occasions when men
think philosophically they are fitfully enjoying what
God enjoys eternally.
We can now understand the philosophical context
within which Hegel's views on politics and religion
are presented. It is within the context of a philosophy
in which mind is fundamental to the world, in which
freedom is of the essence of mind, and in which free-
dom shows itself in thought as self-development by
contrast with mere conformity to fixed and uncriticized
categories. Men, as thinking beings, do not submit to
natural necessity but transform nature and create insti-
tutions which do not merely constrain individuals but
also give expression to their thoughts. Political activity
has its place in this sphere of objective mind. Art and
religion, however, elevate man to the sphere of Abso-
lute Mind where religion is the stage that prefigures
the highest achievement of mind, which is that of
self-conscious philosophical thought.
