Perhaps Hegel's politics were contradictory, in the Hegelian dialectical sense. For example, according to Frederick Engels "No philosophical propostiion has earned more gratitude form narrow-minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel's famous statement: "All that is real is rational: and all that is rational is real. " That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police-government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Fredrick William III and his subjects understood it." But Engels goes on to say that by Hegel's method this maxim turns into its opposite: All that is real in the sphere of human history becomes irrational in the process of time and is therefore and is therefore irrational already by its destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality.. resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deseves to perish." (_Ludwig Feuerbach'_) I always thought maybe Hegel had to be concerned about making a living, as your post below indicates, and that he put a revolutionary rational kernel in a shell which appealed to the reactionary Prussian state, making a lot of what he said a sort of pragmatic-subversive double entendre. Marx and Engels refer to him as the philosopher of the French Revolution. Just as Marx and Engels stood him on his feet and extracted the revolutionary rational kernel with respect to some issues, perhaps his racism and sexism can be separated from his incites. Perhaps, Hegelian dialectics is a modern version of the Egyptian concept of Ma'at, the ancient African philosophy. Oba T'Shaka 's discussion of Ma'at in _Return to the African Mother Principle of Male and Female Equality_ suggests a similarity to dialectics. Charles Brown >>> "Ricardo Duchesne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/02/99 02:37PM >>> I would urge you to read Jacques D'Hondt's book, Hegel In His Time. There he tells us that Hegel only started his university career at the age of 46; before that he was a poor scholar, travelling from place to place, without a permanent home, as tutor, private teacher, lecturer, editor, headmaster of a secondary schoool - an unusual, difficult career in comparison to other notable scholars at the time. D'Hondt writes: "The parental legacy was quickly exhausted, however, and until 1816, Hegel looked doggedly and almost -clip-
