Complete the account of Hegel’s engine.
For Hegel the subject of history is ______, coming to know itself through time. Its motion is dialectical: a position generates its contradiction, and the clash resolves through ______ — cancelling, preserving, and elevating at once. Individuals serve the process without intending to, which Hegel called the ______ of reason.
Word bank: Geist · Aufhebung · cunning · praxis · the archive
Hints
- The engine has a subject, a motion and an alibi.
- The alibi explains how private motives serve the plot.
Show the answer
For Hegel the subject of history is Geist, coming to know itself through time. Its motion is dialectical: a position generates its contradiction, and the clash resolves through Aufhebung — cancelling, preserving, and elevating at once. Individuals serve the process without intending to, which Hegel called the cunning of reason.
Spirit, sublation, cunning, the subject, the motion, and the alibi. Learn the three and you can recognize the grammar wherever it resurfaces.
Practise Hegel and Historical Teleology
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Hegel and Historical Teleology
- Put Hegel’s stages of world history in his order, from earliest to latest.
- Match each Hegelian term to its meaning.
- For Hegel a synthesis preserves what was true in both thesis and antithesis rather than splitting the…
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