Great Throughts Treasury

"It is far more the case, again based on what has been said up to this point, that religion can probably exist without philosophy but philosophy cannot exist without religion, instead encompassing religion within itself."

"It is only after profounder acquaintance with the other sciences that logic ceases to be for subjective spirit a merely abstract universal and reveals itself as the universal which embraces within itself the wealth of the particular – just as the same proverb, in the mouth of a youth who understands it quite well, does not possess the wide range of meaning which it has in the mind of a man with the experience of a lifetime behind him, for who, the meaning is expressed in all its power."

"It is not the general idea that is implicated in opposition and combat, and that is exposed to danger. It remains in the background, untouched and uninjured. This may be called the cunning of reason, – that it sets the passions to work for itself, while that which develops its existence through such impulsion pays the penalty and suffers loss. Yet no lingering lies or make-believe strokes in the air can achieve anything against it. They can perhaps reach the shoelaces of this colossus, and smear on a bit of boot wax or mud, but they cannot untie the laces."

"It is not yet very long ago that the innocent and, by all appearances, fortunate condition obtained when philosophy proceeded hand in hand with the sciences and with culture, when enlightenment of the understanding was moderate and satisfied at once with the need for insight [Einsicht] and with religion, when a natural law was likewise in accord with the state and politics, and empirical physics bore the name of 'natural philosophy'."

"It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete.It is the fashion of youth to dash about in abstractions – but the man who has learnt to know life steers clear of the abstract ‘either-or’, and keeps to the concrete."

"It is the will whose potentialities have become fully explicit which is truly infinite, because its object is itself and so is not in its, eyes an 'other' or a barrier; on the contrary, in its object this will has simply turned backward into itself. Further this will is not mere potentiality, capacity, potency (potentia), but the infinite in actuality (infinitum acts), since the concept's existence or its objective externality is inwardness itself."

"It is only because right is the embodiment of the absolute concept or of self-conscious freedom that it is something sacrosanct. But the exclusively formal character of right (and duty also, as we shall see) arises at a distinct stage in the development of the concept of freedom. By contrast with the right which is comparatively formal (i.e. abstract) and so comparatively restricted, a higher right belongs to the sphere and stage of mind in which mind has determined and actualized within itself the further moments contained in its Idea; and it belongs to this sphere as the sphere which is concretes, intrinsically richer, and more genuinely universal."

"It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness."

"It is the right of heroes to found states."

"It may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."

"It is this self-construing method alone which enables philosophy to be an objective, demonstrated science. It is in this way that I have tried to expound consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Consciousness is spirit as a concrete knowing, a knowing too, in which externality is involved; but the development of this object, like the development of all natural and spiritual life, rests solely on the nature of the pure essentialities which constitute the content of logic."

"It is worthwhile to recall the older way of proceeding with regard to the freedom of the will. First of all, the idea of the will was assumed, and then an effort was made to deduce from it and establish a definition of the will. Next, the method of the older empirical psychology was adopted, and different perceptions and general phenomena of the ordinary consciousness were collected, such as remorse, guilt, and the like, on the ground that these could be explained only as proceeding out of a will that is free. [cf. Peter Strawson] Then from these phenomena was deduced the so-called proof that the will is free. But it is more convenient to take a short cut and hold that freedom is given as a 'fact of consciousness', and simply must be believed."

"Knowledge of the Idea of the absolute ethical order depends entirely on the establishment of perfect adequacy between intuition and concept, because the Idea itself is nothing other than the identity of the two. But if this identity is to be actually known, it must be thought as a made adequacy."

"Just as little is seen in pure light as in pure darkness."

"It shows an excessive tenderness for the world to remove contradiction from it and then to transfer the contradiction to reason, where it is allowed to remain unresolved."

"Life is essentially the concept which realizes itself only through self-division and reunification."

"Logic is usually treated without in the least touching the question whether anything is true. If the logical forms of the notion were really dead and inert receptacles of conceptions and thoughts, care of what they contained, knowledge about them would be an idle curiosity which the truth might dispense with."

"Logic shows that the subjective which is to be subjective only, the finite which would be finite only, the infinite which would be infinite only, and so on, have no truth, but contradict themselves, and pass over into their opposites"

"Mark this well, you proud men of action! You are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought."

"Logic, like grammar, appears in two different aspects or values. It is one thing for him who comes to it for the first time, but it is another thing for him who comes back to it from the sciences. He who begins the study of grammar finds in its forms and laws dry abstractions, arbitrary rules. On the other hand, he who has mastered a language and at the same time has a comparative knowledge of other languages, he alone can make contact with the spirit and culture of a people through the grammar of its language. Similarly, he who approaches this science at first finds in logic an isolated system of abstractions which, confined within itself, does not embrace within its scope the other knowledges and sciences."

"Man is an end in himself only by virtue of the divine in him – that which we designated at the outset as Reason, or, insofar as it has activity and power of self-determination, as Freedom."

"Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust.... What calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth."

"Man is free, this is certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it is first realized. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not anything real; for the state is the first realization of freedom."

"Mind is the nature of human beings en masse."

"Nature passes over into its truth, the subjectivity of the concept, whose objectivity is itself the suspended immediacy of individuality, the concrete generality, the concept which has the concept as its existence — into the Spirit."

"Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature."

"Necessity appears to itself in the shape of freedom."

"Necessity is blind only so long as it is not understood."

"Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true, but to his honor be it said he did not by any means obey his own warning."

"No man is a hero to his valet. This is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet."

"Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the Concept."

"Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without passion. It is only a dead, too often, indeed, a hypocritical moralizing which inveighs against the form of passion as such."

"On the stage on which we are observing it, — Universal History — Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality."

"Once the children have come of age, they become recognized as persons."

"Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions."

"No act of revenge is justified."

"Only in freedom of this kind is the will by itself without qualification, because then it is related to nothing except itself and so is released from every tie of dependence on anything else. The will is then true, or rather truth itself, because its self-determination consists in a correspondence between what it is in its existence (i.e. what it is as objective to itself) and its concept; or in other words, the pure concept of the will has the intuition of itself for its goal and its reality."

"One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it. As the thought of the world, it appears only when actuality is already there cut and dried after its process of formation has been completed... When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk."

"Only one man ever understood me, and he didn't understand me."

"Only the totality personifies the truth. Never, the totality simply represents the essential nature is reaching its full state through the process of its own development. It must be said that, basically, the Absolute is a result, and it is only at the end that represents it truly is."

"Only what is living feels a lack."

"Our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. The spirit of man has broken with the old order of things hitherto prevailing, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation."

"Person is essentially different from subject, since subject is only the possibility of personality; every living thing of any sort is a subject. A person, then, is a subject aware of this subjectivity, since in personality it is of myself alone that I am aware."

"Particularly where religious objects are treated, one can find that philosophizing has been explicitly put aside, as if by this means one had banned every evil and attained assurance against error and deception."

"People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away."

"Personality is that which struggles to lift itself above the restriction of being only subjective and to give itself reality."

"Philosophy itself, meanwhile, experiences its worst fate at the hands of those same individuals when they make it their business to meddle in philosophy, construing it and judging it [on their own terms]."

"Philosophy cannot teach the state what it should be, but only how it, the ethical universe, is to be known."

"Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob."

"Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people."