Hegel's Formula by Dean Gotcher

Hegel's Formula

"I could not of course imagine that the method which in the system of logic I have followed is not capable of much elaboration in detail, but at the same time I know that it is the only true method." "It is clear that no expositions can be regarded as scientific which do not follow the course of this method, and which are not conformable to its simple rhythm, for that is the course of the thing itself." (Georg Hegel in Carl Friedrich, The Philosophy of Hegel)

"The method which we have discussed here is a general method which can be applied to any problem of changing human behavior. It supplies a framework for problem solving . . . the method can be applied to problems of changing the curriculum, changing pupil behavior school-community relations, administrative problems, etc." (Kenneth Benne, Human Relations in Curriculum Change)

"The Method is no-way different from its object and content;—for it is the content in itself; the dialectic it has in itself, that move it on." (Georg Hegel, Reading Hegel, The Introduction) The "content," i.e., the "thing in itself" is dialogue, i.e., a persons dissatisfaction with the way the world "is," and the desire for 'change," i.e. for motion ("that move it on"), with him thinking (reflecting upon, i.e., dialoguing within himself) about how the world "ought" to be, in harmony with his carnal desires of the 'moment' which it (the world) stimulated: "For it is not what is that makes us impetuous and causes us distress, but the fact that it is not as it ought to be." (Georg Hegel, The German Constitution) The greater the distance between the "is" and "ought" (the parent's restraints and child's desires) the more the person will be motivated to 'change' the world, i.e. to 'change' the situation. The greater the negativity (dissatisfaction) the person has toward the world that "is," the more the person becomes an individual (hostile toward authority which prevents him from being his "self," thus coming closer to his carnal nature and the world which stimulates it): "a greater inner negativity and therefore a higher individuality" (Georg Hegel, System of Ethical Life). Losing identity with (hope in) the way the world "is," i.e., the parent's authority, the "is" looses meaning and value, with the "ought" itself becoming 'reality,' i.e., the child's carnal nature becomes the drive and the purpose of life. "What can no longer be related to a concept [begriffen] no longer exists." The method is therefore the "is" and the "ought" being posited (tossed back and forth in the mind) until the "ought" becomes the "is," i.e., becomes 'reality,' negating the world that "is," i.e., that was. In 'justifying' his "self," i.e., his carnal desires over and therefore against his parent's authority the child, in his mind at first and later in his actions, i.e., in defiance to authority, changes the world that is into the world of ought to be, i.e., a world 'liberated' from parental authority.

"Human reason [a persons dissatisfaction with the way the world "is," therefore thinking about how it "ought" to be]—the consciousness of one's being is indeed reason; it is the divine in man, and spirit. In so far as it is the Spirit of God, it is not a spirit beyond the stars, beyond the world. On the contrary, God is present, omnipresent, and exists as spirit in all spirits." (Georg Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion: A. The Relation of the Philosophy of Religion to its Presuppositions and to the Principles of the Time. I. — The Severance of Religion from the Free, Worldly Consciousness)

In this way of thinking, God is man 'discovering' himself, i.e. man is God 'discovering' Himself, i.e. the particular and universal becoming one through dialectic 'reasoning,' i.e., "self" 'justification.' According to dialectic 'reasoning,' without the God above man, restraining "human nature," i.e. engendering dissatisfaction in man, and therefore causing man to think about how the world "ought" to be, i.e., man could not come to know himself as he is, dialectic (reasoning) in nature, i.e. 'liberating' himself from the world that "is," i.e. 'liberating' man from God's authority (the child from the parent's authority). In this way the outcome itself is not the objective, the method is. It engenders the outcome "in and for itself."

As Tillich stated it: "The answer to man's predicament lies in the realization by individual man, that all men are essentially one and that the one is God. This self-realization is a 'return' to union: potential becomes actual ["ought" becomes "is"]." (Leonard Wheat, Paul Tillich's Dialectical Humanism: Unmasking the God above God)

Therefore, if you refuse to 'reason' dialectically, i.e. refuse to question God's (or your parent's) commands and rules, and question His facts and truth, i.e. challenge His authority in your feelings, thoughts, and actions, and in your relationship with others, i.e. you refuse to identify with and become a part of 'reality,' you are of no worth to the world that is "becoming."

"I remark here that the general principle to be laid down as a foundation for all judgments on the varying modifications, forms, and spirit of the Christian religion is this – that the aim and essence of all true religion, our religion included, is human morality [human nature], and that all the more detailed doctrines of Christianity, all means of propagating them, and all its obligations (whether obligations to believe or obligations to perform actions in themselves otherwise arbitrary) have their worth and their sanctity appraised according to their close or distant connection with that aim." (emphasis added Hegel, The Positivity of the Christian Religion; Part I. How Christianity became the Positive Religion of a Church)

[Positive Religion, according to Hegel, is man dividing himself from his nature, serving an alien God of his own making]

"This view of the relation between man and the Christian religion ... rests on the surely beautiful presupposition that everything high, noble, and good in man is divine, that it comes from God and is his spirit, issuing from himself." "But this view becomes glaringly positive if human nature is absolutely severed from the divine, if no mediation between the two is conceded except in one isolated individual, if all man's consciousness of the good and the divine is degraded to the dull and killing belief in a superior Being altogether alien to man." (Hegel, The Positivity of the Christian Religion; Part III: Revised form of Sections 1-4 of Part I

[Written: in 1795 (aged 25) while a private tutor in Berne, Switzerland; Source: Early Theological Writings, pp. 67-181, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971, excluding all notes; Translated: by T. M. Knox, 1947; First Published: Chicago University Press 1948; Copyright: reproduced here under "Fair Use" provisions; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, May 2007]

"The good life is not any fixed state. The good life is a process. The direction which constitutes the good life is psychological freedom to move in any direction [where] the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality." "When the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming." "The major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person, or the other group." "The whole emphasis is upon process, not upon end states of being … to value certain qualitative elements of the process of becoming, that we can find a pathway toward the open society." (Carl Rogers, on becoming a person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)

"Parents have no right upon their offspring. Literally the children belong to universality." (J. L. Moreno, Who Shall Survive)

Hegel believed that "the child, contrary to appearance, is the absolute, the rationality of the relationship; he is what is enduring and everlasting, the totality which produces itself once again as such [once his feelings, thoughts, and actions and relationship with others is 'liberated' from the father's/Father's authority 'system']." (Georg Hegel, System of Ethical Life) In regard to the parents, once the father and mother accept that the child's nature, i.e., "human nature," i.e., the child's desire ("lust") for pleasure and approval from others ("peace and affirmation") is the basis of reality, "human relationship" (becoming at-one-with the one's nature, the "community," and the world in pleasure) becomes the 'drive' and 'purpose' of life.

Hegel, sounding more like Karl Marx than Marx himself, wrote: "On account of the absolute and natural oneness of the husband, the wife, and the child, where there is no antithesis of person to person or of subject to object [no father's authority over the children (and husbands authority over the wife), restraining either, i.e., making them subject to his (or to God's) commands, rules, facts, and truth, i.e., making them accountable to him (or to God) for their thoughts and actions], the surplus is not the property of one of them [there is no private, as in private property or business, i.e., no "right" to say: "My family. Not yours." "My children. Not yours." "My wife, not yours."; "My property. Not yours."; "My business. Not yours"], since their indifference is not a formal or a legal one [established by God]." (ibid) In this way of thinking, through Hegel's dialectic 'reasoning' process, the husband's wife, children, property, business, are no longer his, as well as he himself, but belong to everyone, to be "enjoyed" for their pleasure, i.e., for their carnal purposes.

"When a man has finally reached the point where he does not think he knows it better than others, that is when he has become indifferent to what they have done badly and he is interested only in what they have done right, then peace and affirmation have come to him." (G. F. W. Hegel, in one of the casual notes preserved at Widener)

Since our "feelings," i.e., or desires and dissatisfactions of the 'moment' tie us to the world, we, according to dialectic 'reasoning' are of nature only, and therefore can be evaluated scientific, making all things, including us, material. Karl Marx, affirming the carnal nature of the child over and therefore against the father's/Father's authority, wrote: "Sense experience [sensuousness, i.e. the child's "feelings" of the 'moment" in response to the world] must be the basis of all science." "Science is only genuine science when it proceeds from sense experience, in the two forms of sense perception and sensuous need, that is, only when it proceeds from Nature." (Karl Marx MEGA I/3)

The Apostle Paul warned Timothy (and us) about taking this pathway. "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions [Gr, antithesis] of science falsely so called:" 1 Timothy 6:20

Benjamin Bloom ("Bloom's Taxonomies") was warned about taking this pathway of "so called science" as well, but took it anyway, applying it in the classroom. "It has been pointed out that we are attempting to classify phenomena which could not be observed or manipulated in the same concrete form as the phenomena of such fields as the physical and biological sciences." (Benjamin Bloom, et al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain) "Whether or not the classification scheme presented in Handbook I: Cognitive Domain is a true taxonomy is still far from clear." (David Krathwohl, Benjamin S. Bloom Book 2 Affective Domain) "Certainly the Taxonomy was unproved at the time it was developed and may well be 'unprovable.'" (Benjamin Bloom, Forty Year Evaluation) In applying this "scientific process" on children in the classroom, Benjamin Bloom's "Educational Objective" was the same as Karl Marx's, to produce children who were loyal to their carnal nature and the world only. Applying this "scientific process" in the natural sciences has wracked havoc as well. "Thomas S Kuhn spent the year 1958-1959 at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavior Sciences, directed by Ralph Tyler [who Benjamin Bloom dedicated his first Taxonomy to], where he finalized his 'paradigm shift' concept of 'Pre- and Post-paradigm periods.'" "Kuhn admitted problems with the schemata of his socio-psychological theory yet continued to urge its application into the scientific fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology." "Scientific knowledge, like language, is intrinsically the common property of a group or else nothing at all. To understand it we shall need to know the special characteristics of the groups that create and use it." "Kuhn states 'If a paradigm is ever to triumph it must gain some first supporters, men who will develop it to the point where hardheaded arguments can be produced and multiplied . . . (which eventuates in) an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances (where upon) the man who continues to resist after his whole profession has been converted is ipso facto ceased to be a scientist." "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; the last quotation is Max Planck's famous dictum)