The philosophies of Hegel and Kierkegaard differed in many ways, as Kierkegaard's is often seen as largely a response to or critique of Hegel's. They disagreed on the role of the individual vs. that of society, what comprises truth, and the place of Christianity in history. However, they also complemented each other in subtle ways, as well.
Perhaps their single greatest disagreement lay in the debate of the importance of the individual and society. Hegel zoomed out as much as possible, trying to describe everything within one narrative: society, institutions, mind, reality. His "world spirit" is the recognition that consciousness is ultimately non-individual. The cultural backgrounds that underlie human thought imply that understanding and …show more content…
The thing that since then has come to be viewed as most “Kierkegaardian” is that which could be categorized under the header of his third stage, the religious. It is the idea that at the core of every human there is something undefinable, either as a personal need or as a blunt fact. There is something essential for every single human which cannot be defined by the rules and logic of the public sphere. For Kierkegaard, some aspects of human behavior simply cannot be rationally justified in order to make a decision, and that goes beyond Hegel’s ideal of conforming to reason and …show more content…
But more likely he is describing the progress of reason and setting this absolute orderly state as the utopian goal which you must always strive towards. Hegel calls his description of progress dialectical which means that you have one idea of how things are or should be (thesis), you then develop some idea which conflicts with the first one (antithesis), which allows for the synthesizing of those two ideas creating something third. That’s how history and reason evolve according to Hegel, it isn’t simply fitting the pieces into a big puzzle to have some great coherent scheme in the end. This dialectical ping pong between two ideas that might never give you a clear yes/no answer is a core thought in Hegel’s work, and to me that comes very close to Kierkegaard’s description of the undefinable human
Perhaps their single greatest disagreement lay in the debate of the importance of the individual and society. Hegel zoomed out as much as possible, trying to describe everything within one narrative: society, institutions, mind, reality. His "world spirit" is the recognition that consciousness is ultimately non-individual. The cultural backgrounds that underlie human thought imply that understanding and …show more content…
The thing that since then has come to be viewed as most “Kierkegaardian” is that which could be categorized under the header of his third stage, the religious. It is the idea that at the core of every human there is something undefinable, either as a personal need or as a blunt fact. There is something essential for every single human which cannot be defined by the rules and logic of the public sphere. For Kierkegaard, some aspects of human behavior simply cannot be rationally justified in order to make a decision, and that goes beyond Hegel’s ideal of conforming to reason and …show more content…
But more likely he is describing the progress of reason and setting this absolute orderly state as the utopian goal which you must always strive towards. Hegel calls his description of progress dialectical which means that you have one idea of how things are or should be (thesis), you then develop some idea which conflicts with the first one (antithesis), which allows for the synthesizing of those two ideas creating something third. That’s how history and reason evolve according to Hegel, it isn’t simply fitting the pieces into a big puzzle to have some great coherent scheme in the end. This dialectical ping pong between two ideas that might never give you a clear yes/no answer is a core thought in Hegel’s work, and to me that comes very close to Kierkegaard’s description of the undefinable human