The development of freedom has to be accounted for in part as a response to real events in time, whether planned or unplanned. Roberts alotqua made of hegel minimizing societyis outside europe and china. What are the issues there, and are they fatal to his system? Hegel does distinguish between a sort of prehistorical period, which he associates mainly with africa, and then moves on to history proper beginning with china and soon. He talks about african and black people as human beings in an untamed and natural state who lack self control. And finally, just to mention that he relies prettyuncritical on various colonial british sources, for example, in his
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) on history. Hegel, one of the most influential of the modern philosophers, described history as the progress in the consciousness of freedom, asking whether we enjoy more freedom now than those who came before us. To explore this, he looked into the past to identify periods when freedom was moving from the one to the few to the all, arguing that once we understand the true nature of freedom we reach an endpoint in understanding. That end of history, as it's known, describes an understanding of freedom so far progressed, so profound, that it cannot be extended or deepened even if it can be lost.
With
Sally Sedgwick
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Boston University
Robert Stern
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
And
Stephen Houlgate
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson