RATIONAL VERSUS SOPHISTICAL HEGELIANISM
Christopher Richard Wade Dettling (2018)
It is now known that unlike Kant, Hegel was despised by the Nazis.¹
Modern sophists, especially at government controlled schools under the thumbs of nationalistic educational authorities, purposefully publish translations of Hegel in very stilted English (notably very key passages of his doctrine),² and they thereby teach the falsehood that Hegelianism is very hard to understand (which makes many of their pupils dislike Hegel, while making genuine Hegelianism very difficult to learn, and requiring far more effort, causing students to find their Hegel in the school textbooks, commentaries, encyclopedias and dictionaries): “[Hegel] is cloaked in a dense and obscure language that is virtually impenetrable to the uninitiated.”³ Meanwhile the selfsame irrationalists purposely translate Kant, their master, into an easier English idiom, which distorts his sophistry, and makes their sophistical interpretation of Kantianism appear rational.
“Hegel has abandoned the traditional conventions of arguments where we start from accepted premises and move on to justified conclusions. His narrative shifts from one concept to another, and the transitions are described so abstractly that it is hard to decipher what he actually has in mind … How can we appreciate how a concept is being applied, when we have not clearly understood it in the first place?”⁴
Hegel, in the Kantio–Hegelian eyes of John Burbidge, is “cloaked in a dense and obscure language that is virtually impenetrable to the uninitiated” : Burbidge cannot appreciate how Hegelian concepts are applied, because he has not “clearly understood” Hegel in the first place. Burbidge complains that Hegel has “abandoned the traditional conventions of arguments,” and his “transitions are described so abstractly” that it is hard to “decipher what he actually has in mind.” The cause of Burbidge’s mental troubles is not hard to find:
“I shall suggest how Hegel arrived at his conception of speculative logic from the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and from Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s proposal to complete Kant’s project.”⁵
Because John Burbidge has press–ganged Hegel into the Burbidgean project of Canadian Kantio–Hegelianism, inherited from Québec régimers such as Charles Margrave Taylor and ✝Henry Silton Harris, he has forced Hegel’s Logic into the Procrustean bed of modern unreason, and therefore he has completely misunderstood the genuine Hegelian conception of philosophical science: Instead of suggesting that Hegel arrived at his conception of speculative logic from the first edition of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Burbidge should prove this Kantio–Hegelian affiliation, — especially in a Commentary of Logic. Instead of implying that Hegel is a Kantian, Burbidge should instead advance a rational argument. Unfortunately for modern sophists, before one advances an argument, one first must understand the basis of logic, namely, possess the conception of reason.
Sophists blame Hegel, and then distort his teaching, because their “sophistical logic” is defective, and incapable of the elaboration of rational proof in the sphere of science, philosophy and history, as well as religion, literature and art. Instead of putting Hegel into the Procrustean bed of so–called scientific philosophy, Burbidge should have seriously studied the genuine Hegelian notion of philosophical science: This means first abandoning the sophistical distinction between genuine and corrupt Hegelianism.
“It would be bad enough if Hegel adopted a different meaning from one usage to the next, for we might then get the word’s meaning from the context. Unfortunately, Hegel often has all of the various and even contradictory meanings in mind when he uses such a word. He works with positive as well as negative connotations, and he exploits their ambiguities.”⁶
Hegel, according to Leo Rauch, has “contradictory meanings in mind,” and he “exploits … ambiguities.” Because Leo Rauch makes the Lectures and Addenda philologically equivalent to the Great Works that were published in Hegel’s lifetime, he makes their respective content hermeneutically and philosophically equivalent: This profound error of past Hegel philology has resulted in the Kantianized Hegel of Kantio–Hegelianism. In other words, Kantian and semi–Kantian meanings from the transzendentalphilosophie are attached to key Hegelian conceptions such as Aufhebung: “‘Aufhebung’ means not only ‘negation’ and ‘nullification’ but also ‘elevation,’ ‘transcendence.’” Such Kantio–Hegelian mistranslations of Hegel are therefore the result of philological sophistry, based upon the pseudo–Hegelianism of the Kantian influenced editors of the Berlin edition: The philological and hermeneutical sophistry of his editors, sometimes even unconscious, is therefore precisely the origin of the myth of Hegel, which depicts his philosophy as “clotted nonsense” (Stirling).
The sophistical philosophical basis of Kantio–Hegelianism is cast into disrepute, namely the Berlin edition of Hegel’s works, therefore our modern sophists seldom refer to the Lectures and Addenda, but they nonetheless cling to their sophistry.⁷ Even without textual evidence culled from the Great Works of Hegelianism, modern sophists wallow in the absurdity that Hegel followed unconsciously in the footsteps of Kant and transzendentalphilosophie, since their youthful pseudo–Hegelianism and anti–Hegelianism is still deeply embedded within their flabby minds: Because of its voluminous size, their favorite battleground these days, wherein they can entrench themselves unmolested for many years, is Hegel’s Greater Logic.
ENDNOTES
1. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Peter Thielke, “Hegelianism,” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Game Theory to Lysenkoism, vol. 3, Maryanne Cline Horowitz, editor in chief, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, 977. [Italics added]
See: Charles W. Mills, “Kant’s Untermenschen,” Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, Andrew Valls, editor, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2005, 169–193.
See finally: “It is the twentieth century that has at last shaken the [Kantio] Hegelian concept of the historical process whereby ‘everything real is rational.’ It was this concept, violently debated for decades, that Russian thinkers of the past century finally accepted. But now, at the height of the state’s triumph over individual freedom, Russian thinkers wearing padded camp jackets have dethroned and cast down the old Hegelian law.”
Vasily Grossman in Stéphane Courtois, editor & contributor, “Why?” The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Karel Bartošek, Sylvain Boulouque, Pascal Fontaine, Rémi Kauffer, Martin Malia, Jean–Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Jean–Louis Panné, Pierre Rigoulot, Yves Santamaria & Nicolas Werth, contributors; Jonathan Murphy & Mark Kramer, translators; Mark Kramer, consulting editor, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999, 756–757. [Italics added]
Remark: Thinkers wearing padded camp jackets have dethroned and cast down their sophistical interpretation of the old Hegelian law, but not in the name of young Hegelianism, — rather for the sake of American Liberty.
2. See: “This work was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada … and further subsidized by the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (Québec).”
George Di Giovanni, editor and translator, “Acknowledgements,” The Science of Logic, G.W.F. Hegel; Michael Baur, General editor, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, viii.
3. John W. Burbidge, The Logic of Hegel’s Logic: An Introduction, Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Press, 2006, 12.
Remark: Philosophers maintain thought of phenomena and noumena is real, matter, physical even if based on illusion and incomplete perception. Sophists maintain thought of phenomena is real, matter, physical even if based on illusion and incomplete perception. German Idealism elevates the Western conception of mind and matter, nature and spirit made popular since the time of Descartes: Obviously since the birth of Hegelianism what the philosophers name as thought based upon illusion and incomplete perception is very different from the German Idealism of the sophists. The same remark holds good of phenomena and noumena.
4. John W. Burbidge, The Logic of Hegel’s Logic: An Introduction,Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Press, 2006, 12.
5. Burbidge, Ibidem,15.
6. Leo Rauch, editor and translator, “Translator’s Introduction: Note on the Text and Translation,” Introduction to the Philosophy of History, With Selections From the Philosophy of Right, G.W.F. Hegel, Indianapolis, Indiana, Hackett Publishing Company, 1988, x–xiii; xi.
7. We do not reject the juvenilia, lecture transcripts, manuscripts, and lesser works of Hegel, which make for good reading, especially when properly translated, but we categorically reject any evaluation of the worth and authenticity of Hegelianism based on arguments composed of statements culled from these sources, which must always have circumstantial evidentiary value.
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