-Caveat Lector-
HEGEL'S PLACE IN HISTORY
I.
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm HEGEL (1770-1831) has sometimes been
called "the greatest philosopher of the 19th Century" -- and with
good reason, as we can see in looking back across modern history,
because it was HIS philosophy, so-called German "Idealism," which
gave birth to the ideology which would dominate the next century,
TOTALITARIANISM, and which established the crossroads from which,
turning Left and Right, would emerge both Communism and Fascism.
"Communism" was born when economic conditions existing in
the period immediately following the philosopher's death were
interpreted according to the philosopher's Dialectic of History
by Hegel's disciple, Karl Marx.
"Fascism" [a modern term not coined until 1919] first came
into being, in effect, when Hegel's "World Spirit" --the GERMAN
collective Will, the protagonist in his "Philosophy of History"--
was embraced by Houston Chamberlain to define the "Pan-Germanic"
Volksgeist ("Aryan" collective consciousness) and used by the
architects of the new Prusso-German State, founded in 1870, to
justify idealizing the State -- the seed of what would flower
later into Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler's National Socialism.
Likewise, it was HEGEL's philosophy --the first permitting
men to interpret the concept of Collective Mind as RACIAL Will--
which was ultimately responsible --ironically-- for BOTH the
anti-Semitism AND "Semitism" that wreaked such havoc across the
next century, breaking out in pogroms all throughout Europe and
Russia and culminating in the Holocaust in World War II.
Both "Aryans" as a "Master Race" and (in the 19th Century)
Jews as a "Chosen People" --each possessing a supra-national,
RACIAL identity, along with a "Destiny"-- are almost entirely
products of HEGEL's philosophy, without any other antecedent,
because, just as Hegel played a central role in defining Pan-
Germanic (so-called "Aryan") consciousness, it was likewise a
disciple of HEGEL --Marx's mentor Moses Hess-- who must be
credited with envisioning world Jewry's identity in ZIONISM.
In 1841 (just ten years after Hegel's death) Hess wrote "The
European Triarchy," in which he weighed what changes were needed
in order to UNITE Europe. One conclusion he reached, announced
in "Rome and Jerusalem" published in 1862, was that the Jewish
people could never find freedom and equality within Christendom
without suffering loss of their identity AS Jews. The only way
they could be be free AND culturally distinct was to obtain a
geographical territory of their own and to resettle there.
Hess' argument was the first formal statement of "Zionism"
(advocating a homeland for the repatriation of the Jewish people)
and the original source of inspiration for the efforts of Theodor
Herzl, the man popularly viewed as "the founder of Zionism."
Not only that, but, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica,
Hess' "Rome and Jerusalem" helped define "ARYAN" (i.e., German)
identity as fundamentally ANTI-SEMITIC --in a sense CONDITIONED
by Jewish identity-- by portraying Semitic Jewry and "Aryan"
Christendom as polar opposites, reciprocally bound as Thesis and
Antithesis, in a game whose rules were defined by HEGEL.
In conclusion, then, it is HEGEL, "High Priest" of a German
philosophy --actually, as we shall see, an alternative THEOLOGY--
mislabelled "Idealism," we can thank for the scourge of quasi-
religious, totalitarian belief systems passing as "ideologies"
in the 20th Century -- both Communism and Fascism (and Hitler's
Nazism), not only Germany's "Aryan" imperialism but "Zionism,"
and, to lesser extent, the "racial" myth used to justify ALL
would-be Empires (including the British) from the mid-19th to
early 20th Century, "the AGE of Imperialism" and Colonialism.
(The "Social Darwinism" which is sometimes advanced to explain
the contest of rival Empires during that time was really not a
product of Darwin but, again, of HEGEL -- Hegel's philosophy
PRECEDED Darwin's doctrine by decades and gave it its MEANING.)
Finally, let us emphasize that Hegel's was a distinctly
GERMAN philosophy --particularly in its expressions on the Far
Right, more in accord with the German Will (as Hegel himself
would say)-- which goes far toward explaining why the central
battleground for all the ideologies he spawned has always been
Germany itself -- as if outwardly manifesting a spiritual war
occurring WITHIN the tortured German psyche.
The significance of that point will become clear later.
II.
If we wish to be perfectly accurate, however, we must note
that Hegel himself was not really the originator of this system
of thought identified with him, which has carved such a bloody
path through modern history. Hegel's distinction is only that he
gave VOICE to it again most recently, and that others heard and
responded to his particular communication of it.
Hegel's philosophy has its own "genealogy," which can be
traced backwards a century or more, through earlier stages in its
development through others -- for example, by way of philosophers
from whom Hegel learned: Fichte, Kant, Goethe, Rousseau and
Spinoza, "upon whose shoulders he stood," to use Newton's phrase.
The steps which led to "Idealism" can thus be retraced backward
into the Enlightenment (known in Germany as the "Aufklarung")
preceding and following the period of the French Revolution,
surviving in transmuted form into the post-Napoleonic era.
More importantly, they can be traced back to their point of
DIVERGENCE from the more "materialistic" utilitarian Rationalism
which became dominant elsewhere (particularly in England, and to
lesser degree in France), which gave Germany a UNIQUE worldview
that would have repercussions politically far into the future.
Due attention should be paid that divergence, because we will
fail to understand the GERMAN "World Spirit" otherwise, being
ourselves inclined to view Reality in Anglo-American terms.
Such a "genealogy" will indicate a "silent partner" to the
German consciousness expressed in Hegel's "Idealist" philosophy:
the so-called "Romantic" movement in German art and literature, a
product of the same "soil/soul" and closely parallelling it, the
more so in Hegel's case because his closest companions were not
famous philosophers but famous "artists," exploring the same
awareness although by way of a different medium.
Through them, primarily, and through those who influenced
them, we will discover more of what might be called the OCCULT
side of Hegel's philosophy, with one foot in Lutheran Pietism
(a native mystical development within the peculiarly German form
of Protestant Christianity) but the other more in PRE-Christian
visions, through Greco-Roman Neoplatonism -- the object of much
admiration among Romantics and key source of their inspiration.
(In fact, one would not be far from wrong in simply saying that
Idealism is Neoplatonism wearing Teutonic attire.)
Spanning the two we will find a form of German ESOTERICISM,
which seems to have influenced Hegel's tendency to make of
Idealism a kind of SUBSTITUTE for official Christianity, or an
ALTERNATIVE to it -- much as the Hegelian Marx is said to have
made from "Communism" a "Christianity without Christ," a secular
and allegedly "scientific" but quite subjective BELIEF SYSTEM ...
That esotericism, whose spirit may be seen to have flowed
intact through Hegel (who was secretive about it) into Nazism
(where it dares display itself, albeit mostly negatively), will
be shown to connect Hegel's philosophy with the influence of
secret societies such as the "Illuminati," with which Goethe was
affiliated, and lodges of Freemasonry touched by "Illumination,"
supported by the very rulers who were Hegel's patrons. But we
will consider these Masonic and "Illuminati" influences from the
point of view of historians of the Enlightenment, as a common
aspect of intellectual and political life during that period, not
from the biased point of view of "conspiracy theorists" basing
all their knowledge on a few REACTIONARY propaganda tracts.
In the process, we will call attention to the fact that,
just as the origins of Hegel's philosophy lead further backward
a century or more, so too do the real origins of "Communism"
before Marx, and "Fascism" too --plus something more fundamental
than either, which generally goes unnoticed in Conspiracy Theory:
TECHNOCRACY, explicitly comitted to SOCIAL ENGINEERING-- taking
us back, in fact, to the late 17th and early 18th Century, far
earlier than most would imagine.
Finally, we will discuss the ultimate source of Hegel's
"Idealism" and the origin of the ideologies or belief systems
directly born from Hegel's philosophy -- Neo-Platonism in its
DUALISTIC form, generally called "Gnosticism," which from the
beginning of the Christian era has constituted a thorn in the
side of the established Church, being an ALTERNATIVE theology --
"Manichaeanism," a sort of "evil twin" to Christianity wherein
there is believed to exist not ONE but TWO Gods --both EQUAL--
and "the Ruler of This World" (in St Paul's words) is EVIL.
To bring the subject back to the point, it will be shown
exactly how HEGEL incorporated an epistemological ERROR into his
philosophy, in effect opening once more the floodgates to this
ancient pre-Christian, even ANTI-Christian dualism.
Yet in so doing, it must be conceded, Hegel committed an
"error" that is a characteristically GERMAN one, reflecting a
long-enduring schism in what he would term the German "Spirit,"
because the same inclination (subjective, not intellectual)
resurfaces time and time again in the history of the German
culture, present as much in the belief systems of the Teutonic
Knights (converted to Christianity comparatively late) --as
displayed, for example, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's GERMAN "Grail
saga," in contrast to the FRENCH version of the same legend-- as
among the myths revered by the Nazi "black magicians," described
(melodramatically) by Trevor Ravenscroft in "Spear of Destiny"
or (more accurately) by Peter Levenda in "Unholy Alliance."
In any event, we should recognize HEGEL as a kind of LENS
through which something sinister that is ANCIENT, yet present in
the darkness of men's souls EVEN TODAY, can be comprehended in
rational terms, preparing us to confront its force EMOTIONALLY,
indeed SPIRITUALLY -- in the NON-Hegelian sense of the word.
====
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