HEGEL IN 17 MINUTES

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In this video I explain the Philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 17 minutes. I outline who Hegel was, his philosophical influences, where to begin both with his works and reader's guides and his key Ideas.
▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Intro
0:28 - Who was Hegel?
1:41 - Brilliant
2:45 - Where to begin with Hegel
6:12 - Spirit
9:09 - Logic
11:15 - Right
16:14 - The Absolute
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[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/PerspectivePhilosophy/. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

[@thoughtraindrops]

You should turn this into a series!

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

That's the plan!

[@arrocoda3590]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy is it the plan pp? Hehehe

[@dylanhunter1561]

Holy shit, this is the fastest and most crystal explanation i have heard

[@alison9189]

This might sound strange, but when you repeated Hagel's last words at the end of the video... I got goosebumps

[@mudzee.]

Great video! As someone curious about philosophy but not yet started, I found this particularly helpful in directing me on where to start with Hegel. I think similar videos on other influential Philosophers would be great future video ideas!

[@victoriousvegan2291]

Love your videos! Thank you for all the work you have done & continue to do.

[@jdzentrist8711]

We got a taste of Hegel in the Rousseau-Nietzsche undergrad class. Ever since, I've tried to learn more about him. This seventeen minutes is EXCELLENT. The notion that "consciousness" is EVERYTHING has been my access to all meaning, including my faith. I've heard that Schelling also came to the conclusion that Consciousness is EVERYTHING. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel has a fascinating article about Hegel's intellectual-spiritual roots in the German mystics he grew up reading: Eckhart and Boehme. Overarching concepts like this will be helpful to me as I coninue my Hegel studies. In the meantime, the world Hegel describes is still helpful to anyone trying to come to terms with current events, current ideological battles, current wars, current hopes and actions towards preventing or stopping war. Hegel understood everything, including and especially the value of war (with all its horror) as a necessary part of the historical process. Nietzsche of course rejected all this, and advises instead a sober acceptance of "reality," with his notion of "amor fati." Come to think of it, "amor fati" shows the influence of Hegel upon Nietzsche. Hegel taught Nietzche a great deal. Among other things, he teaches Nietzche the virtue of ACCEPTANCE.

[@dead.poets.society101]

just some minutes into the video and i hope and i pray that my search has ended to make some good quality notes

[@marillion4th393]

I enjoyed very much your work o Hegel. I would like very much to hear your take on the Eneads of Plotinus. Thank you!

[@Adam.montef]

This is great. Thank you❤

[@SacClass650]

I look forward to this. Singer's Oxford Short Introduction on Hegel is good. Great series of books, Scruton's one on Spinoza is a highlight, and I'm enjoying Adamson's Philosophy in the Islamic World.

[@TheVeganVicar]

Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉

[@TheVeganVicar]

@@TheIndianTree, then they are ABSOLUTES? 🤔

[@marxwasright25]

Peter Singer's Very Short Introductions to both Hegel and Marx are widely regarded as erroneous and misleading by people working in both fields. Leiter has a thorough takedown of the Marx volume. Beiser, Houlgate, and many others are good commentators. I also recommend Pinkard.

[@x-b5516]

I am hyped 💜💜

[@LVArturs]

I have some off-topicky philosophy questions: what is dependent on complex modern philosophy in the society? Where does one see its impact? What are recent breakthroughs in philosophy and what are the current big questions that are being worked on towards answering?

[@sulamy1955]

Very nice video my friend, congratulations!

[@Un-TedxTalks]

1.Hegel basically is talking about Mind’s relation to reality 2.Categories help us to understand reality, according to kant 3. Hegel argued that these categories are not dependent on our mind but they exists in reality itself eg: Space and Time exist within the objective world 4.Matter doesn't exist in itself, no such thing as prime matter, matter is something with hold the concepts/form/ideas, and these ideas exits and we experience them as concrete reality, so we don't need to think of this as Material but as an idea( HERE he is not denying the matter, he is just giving more weightage to idea and seeing matter in the context of idea-social, historical, cultural idea) - objective idealism 5. basis of reality : consciousness coming to know each other 6. Unified reality that we exist in is, thing thinking of itself, all if its eternity = GOD 7. LOGIC which gives the material object their meaning

[@get9320]

Great mini-lecture and introduction to Hegel.

[@bogdanandone9022]

Awesome bro. You’ve saved my life would you think it’s better to read Science of Logic after the Encyclopaedias especially since I’ve Alta read the Phenomenology once. Ty !

[@CromulentEmbiggening]

THANK YOU! It's so damn hard to get into this topic!

[@emmaduffy-ul4tn]

Great video. Can you make a video specifically on a Hegelian justification for veganism?

[@lendrestapas2505]

Interested in hearing your interpretation

[@afgor1088]

i think one of the biggest things holding people back from trying to understand Hegel (other than it being incredibly complicated) is the community around it. there's obviously a general snobbishness problem in philosophy as a whole but it's ridiculous in Hegelian spaces and usually from people who have good reason to be humble, the amount of comments i saw on reddit saying this video was obviously wrong in some way with no explanation was unreal. thank you from a baby Hegel reader for making such an excellent video breaking down such a complicated philosophy without a hint of snobbishness or smug superiority ♥

[@ethandull8087]

I agree about the community around it. I keep hearing that "words can't have definitions in dialectics" recently amongst internet Hegelians. What an off-putting way to word your understanding of a philosophy. Luckily, PP is good at presentation and doesn't say things that just make me wanna dismiss Hegel outright.

[@Rico-Suave_]

Great video, thank you very much , note to self(nts) watched all of it 17:05

[@ArtisticLayman]

Are you familiar with James Lindsay's examinations of Hagel?

[@dreq5780]

Incredible

[@stevematthews4489]

Well done and very informative, but was wondering what's the story behind the 2 guys (twins) in that last picture where they both seem to have 6 fingers on each hand?

[@spiritpeacefulrevolution3523]

Great take! Your video is one of the closest summaries to the true Hegel. It is very often left out, but one of the sources not often recommended is Hegel's History of Philosophy. If a student wishes to know how Hegel arrived at his system before it formally existed (prior to the Science Of Logic) then the true beginning is not only the Philosophy Of History but the History of Philosophy. Minor point but it shows the true progression. 5:40: "Consciousness is the only thing that truly exists". Are you able to point where Hegel stated this? In the technical use of the term, consciousness as consciousness occurs far after the true beginning and existence of things. Hegel states we must negate our consciousness absolutely to arrive at truth which predates even the concept of existence itself. It seems the true root of everything is not yet consciousness but pure being. Although consciousness is a form of pure being and when being circles back unto itself confirms that all its forms are absolutely true, in the beginning the first certain truth comes far before consciousness formally forms. "The dialectic or Lord and Bondsman relationship" at 14:22 might be better clarified beyond its association with Lord and Bondsman as when talking of dialectic qua dialectic it is the precise mixing of the abstract with the concrete that causes the issues and what Hegel is trying to break us out of as genuine philosophers. When you begin the last section with its own slide of "Dialectic" it appeared like you were going to finish the presentation with dialectic as dialectic in its pure sense and not only as associated with Philosophy of Spirit, ethics and state. However technically Lord and Bondsman is not the immediate principle of Objective spirit but is the principle of phenomenology in Subjective Spirit. The principle of Objective Spirit is Abstract Right which is already higher and sublative of Lord and Bondsman conceptually: the way in which you present Lord and Bondsman is how we become objective to ourselves first and later repeat this dialectic in higher stages but now under a different form and principle (Objective Spirit where the rest of the video fits well). In this sense the "epistemological engine" you mention at around 16:00 would not yet be ethics but pure metaphysics of the Good of which ethics and politics come far later as only the most recent stages of contingent human history. It might be better to qualify this last part of the video this way as the true universality of dialectic might risk being lost. The dialectic section proper might better to have occurred at the beginning of your video prior to Spirit as spirit is a form of Being as well (formally mainly as you are speaking about the evolution of Hegel's true thought which means it would be more accurate to speak of it this way). The true tremendous metaphysical universality of dialectic is potentially not grasped in this final section where dialectic as dialectic is the negative moment of reason which drives all other stages (total history of the sensuous and supersensuous) through the infinite power of the inner contradiction of things. It risks repeating the ordinary understanding of Hegel in which World Spirit has not yet emerged. The power between being and non-being for instance is far greater than the sum total of all stars and supernova, or of all black holes combined, or of all dark matter/energy in not just our universe but of all universes. This one stage in the most abstract of abstracts seen properly beyond the sensuous minimalization of our backwards consciousness is mind-blowingly enormous and dialectic in its true universality is greater than them all. The sense of proportion is what starts to get us back into the intuitive gravity and feeling of the logic and not only the dead bones of its shrivelled reproduction or its uncertain and unjustified beginning. Hopefully this helps World Spirit come through you and your fantastic channel even more powerfully!

[@kyledurnof2622]

>says video is close to Hegel's views >goes on to show how far from Hegel's views it is you, sir, are a CHAD

[@spiritpeacefulrevolution3523]

@@kyledurnof2622 I think 3 things were out of place but compared to many other Hegel summaries, 3 is small. There is a lot of content packed into these 17 minutes. He did a brilliant job such as the smooth flow and ending on the most concrete forms of Hegel's system as ethical life. He gave a great history of Hegel in the beginning, and also recommends the Science Of Logic as the first major starting part. He also grasps the categories as "in themselves" and the supersensuousness of them which is extremely difficult for ordinary consciousness and ordinary commentators to do. Particularly apt that he makes this comparison with the categories of space and time which seem the closest in abstractness to the true logical categories but are still in a completely different realm. Lots of good stuff in this video but next time I make a comment I will try to unpack the good along first and hopefully make it a little less chadish

[@jordanv3323]

What does “itself” at 6:26 and 6:30 refer to?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Reason

[@Jersey-towncrier]

Ok now I have to bring something to your attention that has been on my mind lately about this subject. You and many others say that Hegel deemed Logos responsible for the development of reality. I once believed this notion too. However, having studied Hegel relatively intently lately, as well as other doctrines from other philosophers, my conceptions and conclusions have undergone some definite refinements. So tell me what you think about the following idea: Although Hegel surely placed his imprimatur on traditional Aristotelian logic, with its native reliance on the elimination of contradiction, Hegel also clearly stressed contradiction as the driving force behind the development of all history. Meanwhile, Kant--on whose heels Hegel followed--made the rather credible claim that our entire experience as conscious beings is organized around space and time. Now when it comes to the idea of space and time (I should note that in the zeitgeist of Kant and Hegel, space and time were strictly compartmentalized, in contrast to our modern space-time continuum), each of these ideas carries noteworthy connotations or associations: space has a certain sense of stability and fixity, more or less sturdy and static, whereas time is all about change and mutability. The word logic itself derives etymologically from the word Logos, which is also considered a masculine idea. Masculinity, meanwhile, carries a sense of stoic, geometric permanence and immutability, much in the way that space does. Thus we could easily tie the notion of masculinity to our spatial perceptions in accordance with the desire for non-contradiction. Where, then, does that leave femininity? Let's consider an old metaphor I've always used for helping friends to understand their opposite sex relationships. The way I explain it is by relating men to a large rock up against which the constant churning ocean waves crash, again and again. I always tell my male friends that they should think of themselves as rocks and their women as the ocean-deep, mysterious, constantly in motion internally, given to occasional upheavals of fierce power crashing against their rock, seeking always to dislodge their rock's weakest points. Moreover, I have also frequently quipped in a less than facetious mood that women possess an entirely different "logic" than men; it would be hardly a stretch to say that women can sometimes seem like the embodiment of a contradiction, since I have had numerous experiences in which women have stared me dead in the face, perfectly serious, and asked me to do two things that were completely contradictory. It's as though what seems like a clear contradiction to a man is perfectly sensible and rational to a woman. Anyway, my point is that if we can thus so easily tie Logos to our fixed spatial sensibilities, then by comparison we can easily tie the Eros of femininity to that sense of change intrinsic to the concept of time. For if by Logos we mean the eradication of contradictions, then plainly by Eros we mean the retention and deployment of contradictions for the purposes of change and development. Indeed, could it be that Hegel was trying through philosophy to demote Logos to a place of at least equal significance to that of Eros by demonstrating how the latter is the prime mover behind spatial reconfiguration and thus the source of History?

[@squallded7244]

Nice video man, i thought i was stupid for not understanding hegel as a beginner lol

[@braveintofuture]

This video triggered my Google assistant multiple times! It misunderstood "Hegel" as "hey Google".

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

😂

[@lendrestapas2505]

Interesting video, I would really like to know how you respond to the criticisms of Hegel brought forward by Adorno in his "Negative Dialectics".

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Sure, are you wanting a video on the topic specifically?

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

The issue is that Adorno took a Marxian Hegel and not a Hegelian Hegel. In other words, his judgement of Hegel was clouded by Marx's poor reading of Hegel's historical dialectic.

[@lendrestapas2505]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy If that‘s possible that would be really cool!

[@lendrestapas2505]

@@dissatisfiedphilosophy that‘s not true, Adorno is very much a hegelian thinker. He isn’t criticizing Hegel through Marx. From Marx he takes the materialist point of view in general and the critique of political economy.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@lendrestapas2505 Adorno’s critiques of Hegel in terms of the historical dialectic are due to a bad reading of Hegel through Marx. This is the same thing Zizek argues, I’m not making this up. Adorno sees Hegel as posting some sort of “end of history” which is an utterly wrong interpretation

[@quantaali543]

7:37 Aristotelian or Platonian??

[@jimmyfaulkner1855]

Everything I have learnt of Hegel’s philosophy has been from other people. I tried reading his work three times and each time I soon abandoned trying to read him. He really is such a bad writer. I hope this video illuminates the core tenets of Hegel’s beliefs and views so I can better understand him

[@lendrestapas2505]

You‘ll get used to his prose, just try again. Try to read the Philosophy of History

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Let me know if it helped!

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@lendrestapas2505 this is good advice! I started here, then moved to early theological writings, then Encyclopedia and so forth.

[@jimmyfaulkner1855]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy have just watched it and I did enjoy the video. I do feel like I learnt something about Hegel’s core tenets. I have some problems with Hegel’s philosophical views though: 1: Doesn’t his conception of God undermine his omniscience? This can be highlighted with his final words before death. It also seems to be a form of pantheism/monism. This, by extension, makes me worry how we can maintain free will and agency if everything is always participating within this so-called Absolute. 2: I find it hard to believe in historical progressivism or the idea that the dialectic is always positively evolving towards better things with ideas. Throughout history we have seen regression in civilised societies, cultures destroying themselves through bad ideas and we have seen nations even in the modern world adopt some of the most inhumane practices. Am I meant to believe the Holocaust was positive in the grand scheme of things? I would actually argue the dialectic doesn’t always evolve the spirit and can have the negative opposite effect. We are also in the modern world on the verge of nuclear disaster and unmitigated climate disaster. Is this really “progress?”

[@WalRUs1216]

I have the same jellyfish lamp

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

HUZZAH, A MAN OF QUALITY

[@quinndepatten4442]

Saying hegel is based feels like an understatement.

[@ivanbenisscott]

AI art is amazing and somehow describes philosophical ideas in such a complex but beautiful way

[@SeekingApatheia]

AI art creeps me out.

[@christianlima1993]

I really wish Hegel wrote about Islam in history of religion, the Hegelian idea that the universe is god remembering himself is similar to the Sufi idea that all is God.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

You are giving a Spirit Monist interpretation at least in the "Spirit" section of this. This interpretation has been rejected by scholars since the 1950's. Spirit in Hegel always means two inseparably connected terms: God and Man which are unified. As Man is developing himself in the world through material conditions such like the political economy, the culture man establishes; spirit is precisely this development. God is not separate from the world but through the sublation after the symbolization of Nature returning to Spirit: double negation (death of Christ) God is the community of believers itself. Hegel gives a proclamation at the end of "Spirit" in PoS: God is in our midst. When Hegel says that spirit must know itself as the origin and object of itself, he means that man must recognize his place in the world is inseparably lonely and lacking without recognition from the other. This is not recognition in the sense of the Liberal "mutual recognition" that Pittsburgh Hegelian School tries to posit as the "truth" of Hegel. This is recognition that we are all lacking since our singular self is the "night of the essence" (as he says in PoS). There is no hope for a complete identity of the self (and things) since the logical structure of any singular thing in the world posits its other and reflects that other into itself: positing an other of the other.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

essence for hegel is the inversion of Aristotle's term of accident. Hegel says that essence is the abstract negativity that the accidents occur in. In other words, essence is the negation of all particulars which in turn affirms an abstract negativity: that is, Kant's thing-in-itself (this is established in the Encyclopedia)

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

I'm just making critiques here. No particular order. I don't dislike the video overall there are just some glaring concerns.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

Your section on "Right" is pretty well done. For those who want to know more about Hegel's view of dialectic of history: Skipping Oriental and Egyptian society, Die sache selbst (the matter itself) is the singular thing I care about and this becomes the thing open to the universal (since it cannot be solely mine when I try to actualize it: others can take care or not care about it). From this, we get to the point of ethicality in the Law: Greek society. Greek society is contradicted by the struggle between the logical ends of family (Antigone) and the ends of the state (Creon). We move into Roman and the individual is posited as the absolute and law is denigrated. Three archetypes of consciousness arise: skeptic (contradictory), stoic (devolves into abstractions away from concreteness), unhappy consciousness. Unhappy consciousness yearns for a Beyond but this Beyond remains abstract and not concrete. Moving into Mediaeval life we see the institution of priesthood which promises the singular a mediated union with God through them. This falls to the wayside and we enter French spirit: the truth of absolute freedom is absolute terror (Robbespiere Terror) since there is no Big Other (God) to sanction since God was abstracted into a deistic God with empty content. Terror eventually turns on itself and self-destructs (Robbespiere beheaded). Spirit then looks for a way out since it has been utterly transposed into the individual, it must negate this and look towards Germany to find its new land. Spirit moves to Germany through the Protestant Reformation where spirit realizes this direct connection with God (no need for mediating Catholic priest) and spirit realizes a deeper sense of community which up to now was not realized for the fact that it, itself, is spirit.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

i shouldnt have said particulars, i meant to say accidents. In that, the essence is the negation of all accidents: abstract negativity or das an seich.

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

God and man become united in Hegel at the point of spirit. "God is in our midst." is not figurative but literal. Spirit is the logical unity of Universality, Particularity and Individuality. Which is why it shakes it's one-sidedness as it moves through history, it has a pre-ordained telos, which is absolute knowing. Quite the contrary. Hegel demonstrates why we must assume perfected self knowledge is not only possible but already happened. The retro causation Hegel argues for puts the end as the driving force of history. Which is why he says Absolute knowing is 'the movement of consciousness, and in that movement consciousness is the totality of its moments'. The activity which moves us through each one-sided iteration is the logical unity of the whole. Which is why man is moved by material conditions since they become aware of their "Lack" which can only be resolved in the other.

[@Person0fColor]

15:15 whats with the AI generated 7 fingered people?

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

Your understanding of mutual recognition is far too Kantian, specifically a Strawsonian interpretation of Kantian intersubjectivity. This is not Hegel. Mutual recognition is impossible, the gap remains. That gap being, for any intelligent Hegelian, the unconscious. The unconscious is the unsurpassable gap that prevents mutual recognition.

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Ironically I think you're the one arguing for a Kantian perspective since you are proposing that Self-knowledge cannot be absolutely obtained. When the whole point of the Hegel endeavor is to resolve the problem of the unknowable self which Kantian philosophy proposes. So not only can it be overcome in Hegel but it already has.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy This is true. Absolute Knowing is the recognition that we cannot extend beyond the "I."

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

@@dissatisfiedphilosophy Absolutely, but this "I" pertains to each individual "I" which is itself only a limitation of the Divine persons. The "I" in its absolute 'God in the Christian religion is also known as Love, because in his Son, who is one with him, he has revealed himself to men as a man among men, and thereby redeemed them. All of which is only another way of saying that the antithesis of subjective and objective is implicitly overcome, and that it is our affair to participate in this redemption by laying aside our immediate subjectivity (putting off the old Adam), and learning to know God as our true and essential self.' Logic, Encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy Yes I do agree with this. Hegel takes Kant’s (or rather Fichte’s) “I” or transcendental apperception that is devoid of any content on its own and the “I” is simply the identity of positing the self through action: othering the self.

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy I would submit the classic: “I becomes We” line for the implicit recognition that the “I” in singularity is precisely a limitation. The “I” is only realized when it becomes a “We.” Which seems to be from this passage, the recognition of the Divine Persons among us.

[@redflag4781]

Ahhhh the whiff of pretension.

[@sstuddert]

too much lsd for this right now tbh

[@sstuddert]

*I've read the first critique and, by God, I even nearly understood it

[@parsafakhar]

can you be hegelian and an atheist?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Yes, there are Atheist Hegelians most interpret him from a Humanist perspective.

[@parsafakhar]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy but how does that work? absolute is god and without god there is no absolute, the world is consciousness and it is coming into world to know itself through us (God is thinking and is trying to know itself) if we remove god what happens to absolute and spirit?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

​@@parsafakhar They take it to be the spirit essence of humanity made concrete in the state. Which is fair but I think lacks crucial elements of the absolutes relation to itself.

[@MarcosJ-mq4lk]

Foppish-barnet ..Smh!

[@noobslayeru]

This was a good overview but you left out religion!!!

[@Cernunnnos]

Phenomenology of Spirit is the only work I've read from Hegel. It is needlessly dense and poorly written. I'm sure most of that is probably because of things getting lost in translation. But it's still a muddled mess to get through. As far as I understand it, what he's talking about can pretty much just be disregarded in that he sees reason as being the means to absolute spirit. Which is sort of his word salad for enlightenment. But reason and rationality can definitionally only apply to a rational, thermodynamic interpretation of reality. Which does not appear to be the only perspective of reality that is true. So definitionally, you cannot use reason to _discover_ reality in its totality. This is why I don't put much stock in idealism. Consciousness and a mind make more sense as high order material phenomena. And don't make much sense when put into the context of the absolute. The totality of reality.

[@stevenhunter2843]

@Yahiro Senpai