Philosophical WI: No Hegel

[Makemakean]

The wrong sperm hits the egg, and on August 27 1770, a girl who is named Sophia Hegel is born in Stuttgart. The girl grows up to one day marry a wealthy lawyer in Württemberg, only to die in childbirth in 1796.

The historical figure of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel never is and never was.

How will this effect the future of human history and the future of human philosophy?

 

[BerryPick6]

The wrong sperm hits the egg, and on August 27 1770, a girl who is named Sophia Hegel is born in Stuttgart. The girl grows up to one day marry a wealthy lawyer in Württemberg, only to die in childbirth in 1796.

The historical figure of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel never is and never was.

How will this effect the future of human history and the future of human philosophy?

Everything looks completely different. The consequences of removing such a prolific and influential philosopher would be astounding, but off the top of my head I can think of:

Marxism either disappears or changes radically, Kierkegaard never develops what eventually became Existentialism, Russel and Moore don't have an antithetical punching bag, so maybe Logical Positivism is butterflied away, and Germany gets messed up bad.

 

[Roger II]

Good-bye german idealism! Also Nietzche has one less stick up his crotch, assuming he's even born. Probalby 1848 and the whole epoch of liberal nationalism looks very different without Hegel's attitude towards the Nation-state as the high point of history. Honestly this is the sort of question whose butterflies would be so enormous that it's hard to get a bead on specific differences.

 

[Fabilius]

Well, we have to wonder about the ZeitgeistD) here a little bit. What Hegelian ideas are likely to develop anyway?

Surely he´s not the only one who´s going to imagine the nation state as the height of development. Nor the only one to think of history in terms of thesis-antithesis-synthesis development.

Something akin to communism will develop as well, although it may not have Marx. It´s already there in the french revolution.

But it begs the question, what philosopher fill the void.

 

[Makemakean]

I must say that the merits of philosophy is really questioned if this is the overwhelming attitude, namely, if Hegel isn't there to invent it, it never will be thought out. It reduces the philosopher to the position of a mere author (butterfly away Dostoyevsky and the world will never read Crime and Punishment) rather than the lofty position of the scientist (butterfly away Einstein, and some other fellow will develop the theory of general relativity a few years later anyway).

If what philosophers work with are essential truths about the very nature of what is and isn't, then it seems odd that an entire philosophy would be completely erased forever by the departure of just one figure?

 

[Killer300]

Philosphy though isn't concrete, it is not something like science at all.

Philosophy is asking the questions that don't really have answers that are anywhere near absolute or even provable. In regards to something like morality, or in this case, political entities, it really is more just what can be best argued for, through logic or emotion.

 

[Makemakean]

Well, we have to wonder about the ZeitgeistD) here a little bit. What Hegelian ideas are likely to develop anyway?

Surely he´s not the only one who´s going to imagine the nation state as the height of development. Nor the only one to think of history in terms of thesis-antithesis-synthesis development.

Something akin to communism will develop as well, although it may not have Marx. It´s already there in the french revolution.

But it begs the question, what philosopher fill the void.

Yes, this is essentially what I'm looking at. I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of analogues to Communism and Marxism could develop and how they would differ from OTL. We might get similar movements taking on and adopting different aspects of Hegelianism as to speak.

 

[Killer300]

Yes, this is essentially what I'm looking at. I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of analogues to Communism and Marxism could develop and how they would differ from OTL. We might get similar movements taking on and adopting different aspects of Hegelianism as to speak.

Yes, however expect whatever it is to be completely alien in some ways to what we picture as Communism, or for that matter, even Liberalism may develop oddly.

Speaking of...

 

[Makemakean]

Yes, however expect whatever it is to be completely alien in some ways to what we picture as Communism, or for that matter, even Liberalism may develop oddly.

Speaking of...

One question at the time, old chap.

 

[Killer300]

One question at the time, old chap.

Yes, but I actually have an interesting question to ask you regarding a TL of mine. But, I'll PM you it, as yes, it would distract from here.

 

[Aelita]

Someone shined the Jello signal again. So here I am...

So...where to start? Egads, Hegel is huge, and it is really hard to underestimate the influence Hegel had not just on philosophy, but also on history and practical politics.

Which leads me to believe, paradoxically, that Hegel just happened to be a guy who grabbed at the pre-existing Zeitgeist the best, and simply developed the philosophical language to help everyone express what they had already been thinking.

So then the question, if not Hegel, then what? Well, the Young Hegelians almost as a rule had pretty strong reactions against Hegel later in their career. Perhaps without living in his shadow, they'd collectively develop a lot of the same concepts. Feuerbach had once been hooligan of the month in the Young Hegelians, and became notable in his own right. Perhaps a lot of what we attribute to Hegel IOTL might instead be developed by a Feuerbach who had no reason to leave the shadow of romantic idealism.

 

[Fabilius]

Yes, this is essentially what I'm looking at. I'm trying to figure out what other kinds of analogues to Communism and Marxism could develop and how they would differ from OTL. We might get similar movements taking on and adopting different aspects of Hegelianism as to speak.

Hegel´s great contribution is his view of history. It´s messianic, sort of. The world is on a certain path towards completion. It is completely Hegelian of Marx to see the history as a struggle between proletariat and patriarchs, with the final outcome a communistic society.

But that sort of thinking is also in the Zeitgeist (I´ll completely rape this word during this discussion ), I mean the 19th century idea of progress and rationality conquering all. Marxists weren´t the only ones who saw humanity heading towards a rational utopia.

One interesting idea pops up. What if the leading socialist thinker of the 19th century would be someone who saw history as a never ending struggle, with no final outcome, only brief periods of proletarian or patrician hegemony?

That kind of semi-dystopic history never ends way of thinking is maybe a little too 21st century, post-Hegelian

Nah, let´s see though. Maybe Marx´s idea of communist revolution, or Francis Fukuyama´s idea of liberal democracy´s final victory don´t have Hegel to blame for, but christianity? Seeing history as a vicious circle, or a circle is most definitely not very western way of thinking. (At least not 19th century western).

Of course Hegel doesn´t only influence political thought but also aesthetics. However, only question at a time.

 

[Fabilius]

Snip.

Tell me more about this Feuerbach. What would be the major divergence between him and Hegel?

 

[Aelita]

Tell me more about this Feuerbach. What would be the major divergence between him and Hegel?

Historically, Feuerbach went from being a romantic idealist to a sort-of materialist (Marx and other criticized him with good reason for kind of half-assing the transition).

His big thing IOTL was an anthropology of religion, which restated Hegel's dialectic in a more materialist form. Religion and God were created when people took the best things they saw in themselves, and projected it onto a supernatural being which they would worship in an inherently self-degrading prospect, denying those qualities to themselves. Christianity was a progressive development, then, because it took God and put him back into the body of a man via Jesus Christ.

The emerging next step was to take the divine and reincorporate it back into all people as a new humanist philosophy, which was essentially the Enlightenment project.

 

[Fabilius]

The emerging next step was to take the divine and reincorporate it back into all people as a new humanist philosophy, which was essentially the Enlightenment project.

It sounds like something Nietzche might get behind and beyond. If the next step were to become "god."

Edit: I´m really not well read enough to contribute a lot to a discussion on 19th century philosophy WI, but it´s still pretty interesting, and rare to see a good intellectual POD.

 

[Makemakean]

Someone shined the Jello signal again. So here I am...

Yeah, it was pretty damned expensive having them make this into a massive lamp to shine on clouds in such a way as to make it visible in Montana...

But enough about that.

So...where to start? Egads, Hegel is huge, and it is really hard to underestimate the influence Hegel had not just on philosophy, but also on history and practical politics.

Which leads me to believe, paradoxically, that Hegel just happened to be a guy who grabbed at the pre-existing Zeitgeist the best, and simply developed the philosophical language to help everyone express what they had already been thinking.

So then the question, if not Hegel, then what? Well, the Young Hegelians almost as a rule had pretty strong reactions against Hegel later in their career. Perhaps without living in his shadow, they'd collectively develop a lot of the same concepts. Feuerbach had once been hooligan of the month in the Young Hegelians, and became notable in his own right. Perhaps a lot of what we attribute to Hegel IOTL might instead be developed by a Feuerbach who had no reason to leave the shadow of romantic idealism.

Almost ironic. They confirmed Hegel by becoming the reaction to his action. And now Slavoj Zizek says that we must go back to Hegel. Synthesis, and the circle is complete.

Could this outright postpone the development of the perspective of historical materialism by as much as, say, half a century?

 

[Aelita]

Almost ironic. They confirmed Hegel by becoming the reaction to his action. And now Slavoj Zizek says that we must go back to Hegel. Synthesis, and the circle is complete.

Could this outright postpone the development of the perspective of historical materialism by as much as, say, half a century?

Indeed.

It would certainly delay things considerably, though there were non-Hegelians who had the rudiments of what would be called a historical materialist approach, who Marx acknowledged his indebtedness to. Who would pull those threads together is an open question, obviously.

It wouldn't necessarily prevent either Marx or Engels from becoming communists. They seemed to have attached to the movement for non-Hegelian, probably emotive reasons. But how their work would have developed I can't say.

 

[Aranfan]

Socialism is still going to exist. So will communism, those trends were already in motion before Hegel became prominent. Every political theory will look very different though without having to respond to Hegel. Possibly less collectivist.

 

[Makemakean]

Any chance of a greater French prominence in Continental philosophy? Or is that directly related to political prominence?

I am reminded that Marx with a bit of schadenfreude pronounced that the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War would ensure that Marxism (being a German theory) would grow while Proudhon's anarchism (being a French theory) would diminish in influence.

 

[Aranfan]

Possibly. Possibly not. But it is likely at least somewhat related to political prominence.