<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>Questions about Hegel:
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I am unable to read more than a page of Hegel at a time, and then I have to
<BR>recover for a week or two; can someone tell me if he actually argued stone
<BR>plain dumb contradictions like "[M]embership in the state one of the
<BR>individual's highest duties. ... [T]he state is the manifestation of the
<BR>general will, which is the highest expression of the ethical spirit.
<BR>Obedience to this general will is the act of a free and rational
<BR>individual.... [But] the abridgment of freedom by any actual state is
<BR>morally unacceptable"? This kind of doubletalk seems like charlatanry, as
<BR>Popper says; and I hate to agree with Popper.
<BR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>Hegel is not a philosopher to read in brief excerpts. If you are going to
<BR>grapple with him, you have to immerse yourself in the texts in a pretty
<BR>serious way, because only when you figure out the general structure of the
<BR>argument do all of the particulars begin to make sense.
<BR>
<BR>Part of the problem here is that these terms do not necessarily mean the same
<BR>for Hegel as they do in contemporary Anglo-American usage. Thus, for Hegel,
<BR>the state as laid out in the _Philosophy of Right_, a state which he
<BR>understands to be an entirely rational construction [ie, is the rational
<BR>kernel of existing states] is the embodiment of freedom, and the expression
<BR>of the free will.
<BR>
<BR>I don't want to defend this Hegelian view, because I believe it is seriously
<BR>flawed in a number of ways, but it is also not easily understood. Popper's
<BR>critique is of a rather vulgar reading of Hegel.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
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