an interesting philosopher was born today, 250 years ago, in Stuttgart, Germany. He is considered nowadays as the founder of modern dialectics.
Georg W.F. Hegel developed a new method to look at reality in general. Instead of seeing science in a linear way, he takes into consideration that conflicting aspects of a question or phenomenon can be seen as complementing factors to a general, whole “one”.
The applied steps in his dialectical model are named Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.
Several new researches came out of this new way to look at reality, as i.e. Karl Marx with his dialectical materialism taking Hegel’s method by putting if “back to the feet” in order to understand conflicting societal forces between the working-class and the capitalists, as being part of an unbridgeable societal contradiction.
Might be interesting to see how Hegelians today would analyze the current situation in countries as the US, western democracies or Russia by this principle, where one might think everything is totally out of control, the orientation between right and wrong lost, as if the moral compass of society, politics and individuals wouldn’t work no more.
Happy birthday, Georg Hegel – continue to help us better understand this world seemingly out of whack!