Even if Hegel exaggerated (or doesn't satisfy us today), his idea that the plurality of apparently opposed philosophies constituted one living, evolving, distributed philosopher leaping from dying individual to dying individual through the medium of language is seemingly worth being exposed to.

This work of the spirit to know itself, this activity to find itself, is the life of the spirit and the spirit itself. Its result is the Notion which it takes up of itself; the history of philosophy is a revelation of what has been the aim of spirit throughout its history; it is therefore the world's history in its innermost signification. This work of the human spirit in the recesses of thought is parallel with all the stages of reality; and therefore no philosophy oversteps its own time.
...
We must, therefore, in the first place not esteem lightly what spirit has won, namely its gains up to the present day. Ancient Philosophy is to be reverenced as necessary, and as a link in this sacred chain, but all the same nothing more than a link. The present is the highest stage reached. In the second place, all the various philosophies are no mere fashionable theories of the time, or anything of a similar nature; they are neither chance products nor the blaze of a fire of straw, nor casual eruptions here and there, but a spiritual, reasonable, forward advance; they are of necessity one Philosophy in its development, the revelation of God, as He knows Himself to be.
...
At this point I bring this history of Philosophy to a close. It has been my desire that you should learn from it that the history of Philosophy is not a blind collection of fanciful ideas, nor a fortuitous progression. I have rather sought to show the necessary development of the successive philosophies from one another, so that the one of necessity presupposes another preceding it. The general result of the history of Philosophy is this: in the first place, that throughout all time there has been only one Philosophy, the contemporary differences of which constitute the necessary aspects of the one principle; in the second place, that the succession of philosophic systems is not due to chance, but represents the necessary succession of stages in the development of this science; in the third place, that the final philosophy of a period is the result of this development, and is truth in the highest form which the self-consciousness of spirit affords of itself. The latest philosophy contains therefore those which went before; it embraces in itself all the different stages thereof; it is the product and result of those that preceded it. We can now, for example, be Platonists no longer. Moreover we must raise ourselves once for all above the pettinesses of individual opinions, thoughts, objections, and difficulties; and also above our own vanity, as if our individual thoughts were of any particular value. For to apprehend the inward substantial spirit is the standpoint of the individual; as parts of the whole, individuals are like blind men, who are driven forward by the indwelling spirit of the whole. Our standpoint now is accordingly the knowledge of this Idea as spirit, as absolute Spirit, which in this way opposes to itself another spirit, the finite, the principle of which is to know absolute spirit, in order that absolute spirit may become existent for it. I have tried to develop and bring before your thoughts this series of successive spiritual forms pertaining to Philosophy in its progress, and to indicate the connection between them. This series is the true kingdom of spirits, the only kingdom of spirits that there is - it is a series which is not a multiplicity, nor does it even remain a series, if we understand thereby that one of its members merely follows on another; but in the very process of coming to the knowledge of itself it is transformed into the moments of the one Spirit, or the one self-present Spirit. This long procession of spirits is formed by the individual pulses which beat in its life; they are the organism of our substance, an absolutely necessary progression, which expresses nothing less than the nature of spirit itself, and which lives in us all. — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpfinal.htm

Metaphors like the Holy Spirit come to mind. Language is deeply and utterly social. We are great as individuals, one might say, to the degree that we can enter deeply into this social language and make our thinking relevant to what is highest in all us. To the degree that we think deeply or truly, it might be said that God is continuing his journey of self-knowledge in and through us. But maybe it's better to speak of God's self-invention through human history as well as through human concept. Desire drives the process. Work changes the world that changes us. Even or especially war plays a role here, as forms that oppose God's expansion and/or enrichment of Himself are violently destroyed.

Yet all this 'God' talk is arguably a mask for an unbounded humanism. The human thinker is the self-knowing essence of reality. Time works towards the god-man's complete self-consciousness, which is also the end of history.

Ideology, right? Yeah. But good stuff, even if only to taste and to spit out. The general shape of it applies IMV to the journey of individual self-consciousness. We work through various stages of understanding the world and our place in it. Do we ever really drop anything? Or do we add another layer? Recontextualize the past without forgetting it? We contain neutralized past selves with our present selves. I think of Shakespeare. He was and was not Hamlet and Falstaff. They lived in the theatre of his mind. Unseduced, he could nevertheless play with hundreds of perspectives --fundamentally a worldly man, no stranger to the usual lust and ambition, no saint --though he understood saints, I'd guess, without having to be one.

Been awhile, but yeah. I liked some of it, but never real fell in love with guy. I have a vague sense that he was a bit righteous and effete for my tastes.

Hegel has a reputation of being unreadable, but he could give quite a speech.

...
We must regard it as commendable that our generation has lived, acted, and worked in this feeling, a feeling in which all that is rightful, moral, and religious was concentrated. – In such profound and all-embracing activity, the spirit rises within itself to its [proper] dignity; the banality of life and the vacuity of its interests are confounded, and the superficiality of its attitudes and opinions is unmasked and dispelled. Now this deeper seriousness which has pervaded the soul [Gemüt] in general is also the true ground of philosophy. What is opposed to philosophy is, on the one hand, the spirit’s immersion in the interest of necessity [Not] and of everyday life, but on the other, the vanity of opinions; if the soul [Gemüt] is filled with the latter, it has no room left for reason – which does not, as such, pursue its own [interest]. This vanity must evaporate in its own nullity once it has become a necessity for people to work for a substantial content, and once the stage has been reached when only a content of this kind can achieve recognition. But we have seen this age in [possession of] just such a substantial content, and we have seen that nucleus once more take shape with whose further development, in all its aspects (i.e. political, ethical, religious, and scientific), our age is entrusted.[9]
...
But even in Germany, the banality of that earlier time before the country’s rebirth had gone so far as to believe and assert that it had discovered and proved that there is no cognition of truth, and that God and the essential being of the world and the spirit are incomprehensible and unintelligible. Spirit [, it was alleged,] should stick to religion, and religion to faith, feeling, and intuition [Ahnen] without rational knowledge.[12] Cognition [, it was said,] has nothing to do with the nature of the absolute (i.e. of God, and what is true and absolute in nature and spirit), but only, on the one hand, with the negative [conclusion] that nothing true can be recognized, and that only the untrue, the temporal, and the transient enjoy the privilege, so to speak, of recognition – and on the other hand, with its proper object, the external (namely the historical, i.e. the contingent circumstances in which the alleged or supposed cognition made its appearance); and this same cognition should be taken as [merely] historical, and examined in those external aspects [referred to above] in a critical and learned manner, whereas its content cannot be taken seriously.[13] They [i.e. the philosophers in question] got no further than Pilate, the Roman proconsul; for when he heard Christ utter the world ‘truth,’ he replied with the question ‘what is truth?’ in the manner of one who had had enough of such words and knew that there is no cognition of truth. Thus, what has been considered since time immemorial as utterly contemptible and unworthy – i.e. to renounce the knowledge of truth – was glorified before[103] our time as the supreme triumph of the spirit. Before it reached this point, this despair in reason had still been accompanied by pain and melancholy; but religious and ethical frivolity, along with that dull and superficial view of knowledge which described itself as Enlightenment, soon confessed its impotence frankly and openly, and arrogantly set about forgetting higher interests completely; and finally, the so-called critical philosophy provided this ignorance of the eternal and divine with a good conscience, by declaring that it [i.e. the critical philosophy] had proved that nothing can be known of the eternal and the divine, or of truth. This supposes cognition has even usurped the name of philosophy, and nothing was more welcome to superficial knowledge and to [those of] superficial character, and nothing was so eagerly seized upon by them, than this doctrine, which described this very ignorance, this superficiality and vapidity, as excellent and as the goal and result of all intellectual endeavor. Ignorance of truth, and knowledge only of appearances, of temporality and contingency, of vanity alone – this vanity has enlarged its influence in philosophy, and it continues to do so and still holds the floor today.[14
... — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/1818/inaugural.htm


But how seriously can we take the social question? If our voice is more or less lost in the noise and the world rolls on without us, are we not largely just posing for ourselves and others? Aging and dying or just getting sick or poor rips us away from our righteous and/or utopian cultural criticism.

That's when the dark passages in the old King James or the wild prose works of Samuel Beckett speak the moment's truth. Or the poets and novelists --the true phenomenologists?

Hegel purveys the fantasy in its undiluted form of being the supreme know-it-all, God Himself incarnated not as a carpenter but as a dude that reads a lot.

They also assume that God or Truth is a frozen already-finished entity. All they have to do is snap the right word-numbers together. But for Hegel the meanings of the words evolve as we do philosophy. Even more radical, we create God (or self-conscious Reality) as we do philosophy. Or God creates himself through us as we try to figure out the truth about God/Reality. God has to misunderstand himself as a fixed object. God has to misunderstand language as a sort of math. Such creative errors are the stairway to reality becoming fully conscious of itself. — ff0

I've had this kind of thought myself. It occurred to me at some point that my mind was bigger than anything it could contemplate. All the things I wanted to be and/or God were 'inside' this mind-self that wanted to be or know the holy or the sacred or the infinite. So I was chasing something smaller than the chase. Therefore only the chase itself could be God. 'I' was 'God.'

I got very high on this thought, because it put me above everything. It put me above every mere idea. It was the answer. I had untied the knot. I was myself what I was chasing --the last place I'd think to check. Indeed, 'it' was in the last place I looked, just like dad said it would me, the smartass.

But the high wears off, more or less, and it becomes clear why 'I' was the last place I looked. Because I am just some guy who woke up here. And I won't be here long. And I can't control (or only somewhat) how comfortable my stay will be. I am left 'beyond' ideology in a certain sense, but at all beyond the drama and trauma of life. And this same big thought also closes off for me the beliefs that others enjoy. I don't know if I'd trade it, complain as I might. The 'negative' path (left hand path?) leads to a kind of self-posession, it seems. Yet it's also beautiful to passionately believe, to find something worth worshipping. Dangerous, sure. But I feel a little old in my 'self-possesion.' I may have stumbled into this position a little early, chronologically speaking.

Its funny, I was always under the impression he was a idealist, but he is the total opposite, reading this text, which is a really good one.

Overall the idea is that experience is primary. At the beginning, we are only a potential, or a principle, and then end is but a desire, or purpose, and the middle is where things truly happen, what he calls the Spirit. So it is only when doing that you truly learn anything, and the notions or knowledge we get from it, are only moments in time. We create forms as we go along, but they are obsolete as soon as you move along. They become mere recollections of things past. An actuality of the potential, but what makes the self one, is that underlying principle, not the concrete forms it takes.

What happens today, is people have forgotten how to learn. They want the definite and "final" answer to things. In so doing, it becomes lifeless, and not understood properly. So he is against those Absolute ideas that are not integrated in experience.

So in order to get a good understanding of science, you would have to actually go through the process of it, just like it was done in the past, with errors and all. Its only then you can really grasp the truth. Same with morality, or put together, philosophy.

Just one example, some people will say God is good, but that is a kind of dogma, which is not obvious to experience. Its only by living existence, that you realize it is good, and in which way, and that it is a process, not a finality. If someone is simply taught God is good, then they will look around and find faults with the world, and say it is a lie, but the reason is because they haven't lived goodness, or don't realize they do. Putting it in the absolute like that, suggest that everything is perfect, while this perfection is not in the present, but in the future. Its only by taking the whole that it becomes perfect and good. Taking it as absolute stops the process of learning and living. You could say the same of any type of value or truth.

Its not dissimilar to what Plato was doing, taking his student where they are, and making them realize what they already knew, but had "forgotten". Or that they should have known if they had thought about it in the first place. They thought they knew, because some concepts were familiar, but what the dynamic of those concepts are, they didn't know until they lived it, or thought it.

Hegel adopts another approach though, which is more about narrative or stories. He is counting stories here, but they make his words live for those that follow it. Just in that preface, he is covering a lot of ground, but they are the beginning, and it is a beginning philosophy totally misses, the way it is taught today. It seems to cover the basics though, or what it is to learn. Quite classic, I like it.

Hegel purveys the fantasy in its undiluted form of being the supreme know-it-all, God Himself incarnated not as a carpenter but as a dude that reads a lot. — ff0

Would you say this about Buddhist or Hindu monks?

I'd say the atonement tradition of Christians is far more likely to be "Satanic" than Hegel. The Cross theology has God "cleaning" sinners who don't deserve it just because some other dude died ("someone better feel pain over this, ah!"). It's a theology made by sinners to make sinners feel better about not changing their lives.

And it's not just about what Hegel said, but the powerful method he used to bring the mind to an infinite state. He was as great as Buddha.

That said, the Britannica encyclopedia says that towards the end of his life he was going to give a talk about the "proofs for God" and had written out what he wanted to say. Has this survived history?

So in order to get a good understanding of science, you would have to actually go through the process of it, just like it was done in the past, with errors and all. Its only then you can really grasp the truth. Same with morality, or put together, philosophy.

Just one example, some people will say God is good, but that is a kind of dogma, which is not obvious to experience. Its only by living existence, that you realize it is good, and in which way, and that it is a process, not a finality. If someone is simply taught God is good, then they will look around and find faults with the world, and say it is a lie, but the reason is because they haven't lived goodness, or don't realize they do. Putting it in the absolute like that, suggest that everything is perfect, while this perfection is not in the present, but in the future. Its only by taking the whole that it becomes perfect and good. Taking it as absolute stops the process of learning and living. You could say the same of any type of value or truth. — Episthene

I agree with you on this. One of the things that always sticks with me from Hegel is his contempt for summaries. Philosophy doesn't offer some tidy result. Only the entire journey is the (temporary) truth. And what is familiarly known is not well known. It's what we take for granted that blinds and traps us.

Sort of related: As I get older, I understand that various moral prohibitions --the ones I rebelled against in my arrogant and sloppy youth -- turn out to be more positive than negative. I mean that they aren't so much prohibitions as expressions of priorities. (My changing attitude toward sexual promiscuity comes to mind, but the issue is broader than that. )