#Hegelian dialectic explained full#
#Hegelian dialectic explained series#

Likewise, American capitalism has also transformed the country from a broadly and competitively owned economy into an economy dominated by near monopolies. However, in 2020 homosexuality and abortion, nearly up until birth, are seen as great virtues in many of the U.S. For example, abortion and homosexuality were almost completely outlawed just one or two generations ago. After all, the United States is a country that has been observed to experience multiple ‘over corrections’ in the last several generations. The Hegelian dialectical theory is of great interest to me, as it seems highly relevant in critiquing the evolutionary processes of society. However, this class struggle theory has thus far faltered due to the growth of the middle class (petty bourgeois).

#Hegelian dialectic explained full#

Additionally, Marx established the oppression of the rich (bourgeois) as one dialectic, and the conditions of the poor (proletariat) as another dialectic that would eventually lead to rebellion and full communism. And previously, Marx had argued that a ‘historical materialism’ - a transition from feudalism to communism - could be explained according to Hegel’s ‘history of philosophy’. After all, Nietzsche argues that Judeo-Christian values stem from a slave morality that rationalized virtue with oppression, at the hands of the Romans, in On the Genealogy of Morality. The master-slave dialectic was high influential in the writings of both Nietzsche and Marx.

And it is the realization of this symbiotic relationship that allows the slave to eventually assert great independence - through bondage rather than through a risky escape attempt. Eventually, however, the slave beings to produce well-crafted products that the master relies on for his livelihood. In the Phenomenology of Spirit,Hegel’s master-slave dialectic tells of a lord who initially enslaves a prisoner, retaining custody over him under pain of death. Hegel is particularly important because his writing went on to influence later political and economic philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche, as well as German culture at large - introducing concepts to the popular lexicon such as the ‘master-slave’ dialectic, the concept of ‘zeitgeist’ (spirit of the age), and ‘volksgeist’ (national spirit).

#Hegelian dialectic explained series#

He also believed that history is defined by a series of revolutions that are constantly searching for a point of equilibrium - the synthesis aforementioned. Hegel was one of the first philosophers to propose cataloging history based upon key secular world events, rather than encouraging officials to interpret the present by continuing to refer to holy books or seasonal agricultural orientations. According to Hegelianism, two determinates create a synthesis that restores order and harmony to the universe. In classical philosophy, dialectics - according to the presumptions of Socrates and Plato - are characterized by a debate in which a thesis and an antithesis are presented in order to reach a new conclusion. One of Hegel’s core theories centered around the idea of the ‘dialectic’. Hegel is sometimes referred to as a ‘Protestant Thomas Aquinas’ for his idealistic, ontological belief system that was publicly professed during the age of enlightenment (prior to the realization of a unified German nation). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a nineteenth century German philosopher with his origins in the formerly disunified Holy Roman Empire’s northern Duchy of Württemberg.