2024-12-02
19 分钟Hegel is a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand. Here Richard Bourke gives a clear route through his key ideas about history and how it unfolds in conversation with Nigel Warburton.
This is Philosophy Bytes with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
Philosophy Bytes is available at www.philosophybytes.com.
the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is often said to have believed that history is determined, that its inevitable course was laid out from the start.
But Richard Burke, professor of the history of political thought at Cambridge, says this is a misconception about Hegel's view of history.
And it's not the only one.
Richard Burke, welcome to Philosophy Bites.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
The topic we're going to look at today is Hegel's philosophy of history.
Now, obviously, that's a big subject, and Hegel is not an easy thinker to get a handle on.
Could you begin by just saying a little bit about who Hegel was before we get onto his philosophy of history?
Yes, well, you're right, it's a very large topic.
But to say something generally about Hegel.
Hegel was born in Wrtemberg in 1770, and he died in Prussia in 1831.
Two really dominant events in his life.
A, the fact that he was 19 at the outbreak of the French Revolution, and its complicated course dominated much of his life.
That's number one.
But number two, he was a late contemporary of Immanuel Kant, and Kant's own philosophical project was itself regarded by him, let's just say Hegel and his contemporaries, as itself a massive revolutionary event.
And I think these two historical happenings, Kant and the French Revolution, cast, if you like, a shadow over his career.