Happy Birthday, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Schlesinger, G.W.F. Hegel, 1831

The familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, born on this day in 1770

Aspires.

Schlesinger, Portrait of Hegel (detail), 1831

A will which resolves on nothing is not an actual will; the characterless man can never resolve on anything. The reason for such indecision may also lie in an over-refined sensibility which knows that, in determining something, it enters the realm of finitude, imposing a limit on itself and relinquishing infinity; yet it does not wish to renounce the totality to which it intends. Such a disposition is dead, even if its aspiration is to be beautiful. “Whoever aspires to great things,” says Goethe, “must be able to limit himself.” Only by making resolutions can the human being enter actuality, however painful the process may be; for inertia would rather not emerge from that inward brooding in which it reserves a universal possibility for itself. But possibility is not yet actuality. The will which is sure of itself does not therefore lose itself in what it determines.

Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel from Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Happy Birthday, Hegel

Schlesinger, The Philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, 1831

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, from The Idea of Artistic Beauty, Or The Ideal

Happy Birthday, Hegel

Schlesinger, G.W.F. Hegel, 1831

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, born on this day in 1770

Unknown.

The familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Happy Birthday, Hegel

Schlesinger, Hegel, 1831

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this day in 1770.

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Courage.

Schlesinger, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1831

Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?  I have the courage to be mistaken.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Happy Birthday, Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this date in 1770.

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth. 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Unknown.

Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (detail), 1836

The familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Servant.

Art is still doubly a servant –- to higher aims no doubt, on the one hand, but nonetheless to vacuity and frivolity on the other.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Unknown.

Cuming, Morning Sea, Dymchurch, n/d

The familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown.

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Liberation

Rembrandt, Laughing Self-Portrait, 1628

If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophes by means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment, it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that ascent to freedom.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Happy birthday, Hegel.

Schlesinger, Hegel, 1831

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this day in 1770.

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.  Everybody allows that to know any other science you must have first studied it, and that you can only claim to express a judgment upon it in virtue of such knowledge. Everybody allows that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of the shoemaker, though every man has a model in his own foot, and possesses in his hands the natural endowments for the operations required. For philosophy alone, it seems to be imagined, such study, care, and application are not in the least requisite.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 

Remains.

The familiar,
Precisely because it is familiar,
Remains unknown.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel