HEGELIANISM

The philosophy of the German philosopher Hegel that places ultimate reality in ideas rather than in things and that uses dialectic to comprehend absolute idea behind phenomenon. It is an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis). Hegelianism states that the speculative point of view, which transcends all particular and separate perspectives, must grasp one truth, bringing back to its proper center all of the problems of logic, of metaphysics (or the nature of Being), and of the philosophies of nature, law, history and culture. This philosophy puts forth the idea that appearance is never merely an illusion, but it is a temporal embodiment of essence. An appearance not only conceals its essence but also reveals it. According to Hegel, the relationship between self and otherness is the fundamental defining characteristic of human awareness and activity, being rooted as it is in the emotion of desire for objects as well as in the enstrangement from the objects, which is part of the primordial human experience of the world. Hegel claims that the will must be free because rational thought recognizes that it is responsible for determining its own content, and is therefore free with respect to it; it is in this sense that thought is will.