Sparks Commentary: A review of “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel” (audiobook)

“What is rational is real; And what is real is rational.”

– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “Elements of the Philosophy of Right” (1821)

In his youth, Karl Marx described himself as a “Young Hegelian” (or follower of Hegel). He liked a number of things about Hegel – such as his “dialectic,” which influenced Marx’s theory of the evolution of societies, leading gradually towards communism. (This Marxist theory is sometimes known as “historical materialism,” an application of Marx’s version of the dialectic.) Marx would later break with Hegel on a number of issues, but Hegel’s influence upon him was nonetheless quite profound. More than any other thinker, Hegel helped to shape the thought of the young Karl Marx, who would in turn shape the future of socialism and communism.

But Hegelian philosophy can be almost incomprehensible at times. As this audiobook notes, he seems unwilling to help the reader to make any sense of his philosophy. For example, he was against including an introduction in any of his works. He found such introductions to be a waste of time, and preferred to “dive right in” to his discussions of philosophy (and I paraphrase him only slightly). I have found the introductions to many philosophical works to be quite helpful, and I don’t really understand why Hegel opposed them. But he may have preferred that his works seem “incomprehensible,” so that people would conclude that he was quite smart. Many academics seem to fall into this trap, and some can seem much smarter than they really are because of their inability to make themselves understood. Sometimes the fancy verbiage can conceal a lack of cogency in their arguments, protecting the author against a detection of their fallacies. Such detection is a real danger for writers like Hegel, since his ideas cannot withstand the scrutiny of actually being understood by their readers.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The most helpful part of this audiobook was their brief biography of Hegel himself. They try to find some insight into his philosophy by examining the course of his life. Sadly, they note that not much insight into Hegel appears from examining his life story. I would go a step further than that, and say that not much insight into Hegel comes from anything. But their biography is nonetheless valuable for those insights that it does provide, such as those into his personality. I had to listen to this twice before I appreciated the helpfulness of their biography. They elucidate his ideas much more clearly than any other source that I have ever listened to.

Hegel with his Berlin students

He wrote on a number of philosophy’s many subfields, and made a number of confusing statements. For example, he said that “What is rational is real; And what is real is rational.” People have often wondered what he meant when he said that “what is real is rational.” Does that mean that everything real – such as the existing status quo – must be “rational”? In fairness, it is not always easy to understand what Hegel meant. But it would seem that if he is just “hard to understand,” such confusion may be at least partly the fault of Hegel himself. If he’d exerted some efforts to express himself a little more clearly, philosophers wouldn’t be having such ongoing debates over what he could possibly have meant. But Hegel seems almost to have held the entire concept of “clarity” in contempt, rejecting the idea that the purpose of writing is to actually be understood by a reader. He was a little like Thorstein Veblen that way – a thinker that I have blogged about elsewhere.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

But most interesting to me personally was his political philosophy, which showed the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As mentioned earlier, Hegel would later influence Karl Marx in his turn. Some of Hegel’s ideas would today be considered pre-socialist (or even pre-communist). Time does not permit me to examine this topic in more depth, but suffice it to say that the young Karl Marx was “on fire” about these ideas. Marx is probably the most influential of all of Hegel’s disciples, as reflected by the number of self-described socialists and communists today.

Karl Marx

I don’t particularly want to read any of Hegel’s works, since I’d rather read people who help their readers to understand what they are trying to say. But this audiobook is the next best thing to actually reading Hegel, and helps to make some sense out of his twisted way of thinking. I still don’t understand Hegel, but I understand him better than I did before, thanks to the efforts of this audiobook to bring some clarity to his work. I much appreciate their efforts to make him a little more comprehensible.

Audiobook at AudiobooksNow.com

Wikipedia page on Hegelianism

A review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” (audiobook)

A review of Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” (audiobook)

A review of Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” (audiobook)

Part of the audiobook series

The Giants of Philosophy