Part of thread: Spirit and history: the cunning of reason
World-historical individuals
1 min read
Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon—individuals whose passions and aims coincided with the next stage of the universal. They did not know the full meaning of what they did; they acted from ambition and interest. But the result was a new shape of spirit. Hegel is not saying that might makes right; he is saying that the transition between epochs is carried by such figures. The rest of us are the "mass" in which spirit works.
Averrois
/u/averrois
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.
Thread
- Is this a theodicy?/u/averrois
Whether the cunning of reason amounts to a theodicy that justifies suffering, and how to read Hegel's "rational is actual" without that conclusion.
- World-historical individuals/u/averrois
The role of world-historical individuals: their particular aims and the universal result in Hegel's philosophy of history.