• Political Science Notes

• prepared by : Maaz Ur Rahman PSP

• “To help bring philosophy closer to the form
of Science , to the goal where it can lay aside
the title “love of knowing” and be “actual
Knowing”– that is what I have set myself to
do.”

• “History ,is a conscious ,self-meditating

process—Spirit emptied out into Time.”

• “The true is the whole”

• The real story of human development is not
scientific advance ,or “discovery of the
world,” but rather awareness of
consciousness itself and the way it seeks
expression through people , politics , art ,
and institutions.
 Born Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1770-1831
• His works
• Science of Logic –1816
• The Phenomenology of Spirit
 The Phenomenology of Spirit
• Competing philosophies “the progressive
unfolding of truth”
• Tree example – buds , burst forth into blossom
–into fruit ,reveals the truth and purpose of
the tree.
• His aim is to free philosophy from its one-
sidedness and to show the truth of the whole
• Translated as “Phenomenology of Mind” not
about mystical “spirit” but consciousness
• Phenomenology is the study of things being
made manifest or appearing so in literal terms
the title means how consciousness manifest
itself in the real world
• Science not simply the study of natural
phenomena but the development of
consciousness over time
 A Larger View of Science
• Opposed every empiricist philosopher that the
project of knowledge not looking into the
phenomenal world but gaining knowledge of
the Absolute.
• Hegel's “Notion” means the essential nature
of something , not only the obvious
manifestation.
• True thoughts and scientific insight are only to
be won through the labour of the Notion. Only
the Notion can produce the universality of
knowledge which is neither common
vagueness nor the inadequacy of ordinary
common sense , but a fully developed
,perfected cognition.”
• To be truly scientific go beyond purely physical
and identify the unseen logic of something
• Consciousness as much a part of science as
the world of object
• Distinction of Absolute and Relative reality.
• Relative knowledge – knowledge of things in
their relation to other things
• Absolute – is of a reality exist of its own
• Science is about discerning absolute reality
through our consciousness
• True scientist to look at Absolute and Relative
• Called philosophy the science because it
enables consciousness of absolute knowledge
which comes before all kind of knowledge
• His aim is to bring philosophy from being mere
love of knowing to being actual knowing
 The Individual in Hegel's Worldview

• Unfolding of the world is the unfolding of

consciousness
• Offers a recipe for happiness – a person
becomes happy when they see that their
individuality is illusory , that the experience of
having a body is merely a temporary
“agreement …. With thinghood.” suffering is
nothing
• Self-consciousness – awareness of self as a
bundle of desire “being-for-self” but one is
part of a larger universality or consciousness
“being -in-itself”

• Virtue is to disregard individuality

• Drop of water example

 Hegel's view of Religion
• His main concern was reason
• The universe operates only according to
reason and speculative philosophy is equipped
for decoding it
• The idea that we live in a well-reasoned
universe
• Religion “ground of being” that gives rise to
the material world in religion becomes “God”
• Spirit has broken with the world it has hitherto
inhabited and imagined, and is of a mind to
submerge it in the past , and in the labour of
its own transformation. Spirit is indeed never
at rest but always engage in moving forward.”
• As consciousness (manifested in people ,
institutions, customs , and laws) grows it
destroys or transforms what it has made ,
making way for replacements that display ever
grater self-awareness.