Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Although the roots of alienation lie far back in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the concept of alienation first gained prominence in the philosophy of Hegel, and particularly in his mature writings. There are signs of the idea in his earlier works, but it is not until the Phenomenology of Spirit(1807) that alienation occupies a central place in his writings.
In the opening sections of the Phenomenology, Hegel attacked the views of common sense and simplified natural science that the world consisted of discrete objects independent of man's consciousness. Truth, for Hegel, was not to be found in knowledge that was stripped of any influence from man's own desires and feelings. Ultimately, Hegel considered that there could be no truth that was not intimately linked with the ongoing process of human beings as thinking subjects; truth was their truth. The supposed objectivity of the world of nature was in fact an alienation, for man's task was to discover, behind these appearances, his own essential life and finally to view everything as a facet of his own self-consciousness. The same principle applied to the world of culture in which such spheres as art and religion, if viewed as independent of man, constituted so many alienations to be overcome by integration into the final understanding and recapitulation which was Absolute Knowledge.
Read more about this topic: Religious Alienation
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“To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“As high as mind stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a secular deity.... The march of God in the world, that is what the State is.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“World history is a court of judgment.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“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.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)