Lectures on the Philosophy of History Imagery

Lectures on the Philosophy of History Imagery

Personal life on earth

The first imagery that Hegel institutes in his lectures is the appreciation of the individual human experience. Personal life is shown to be a full-blown sensory experience that starts at birth and ends at death, with unimaginable diversity and complex experience in the in-between. Hegel says that a person's individual perspective of life is sacred to them, since it constitutes their entire opinion of life. Life is shown to be a temporary subjection to sensory experience.

The God's eye perspective

Hegel invites his audience to consider life on earth from a timeless, limitless, God-like point of view, to try and imagine what humanity is comprehensively. The endeavor is infinite and therefore impossible, leading Hegel to admit that all human opinion is subjective, even his. In light of this imaginary imagery, Hegel concludes that technically, he cannot even be sure of his own beliefs, empirical though they might be. In some ways, human empiricism pales in comparison to what a human can imagine of God's hypothetical experience of reality.

The imagery of the West

Hegel invites his readers to consider some basic aesthetic differences between the East and the West. In general, when considering the broad history of the earth, the West can be seen for its value on the life of the individual. The West is seen for all its art, its narrative, its religious buildings and practices, the government buildings and fashions of each passing generation, the exploration of the New World, the hunger for independent gain, and the influence of the Abrahamic religions.

The imagery of the East

Contrarily, the imagery of the East can be observed for its mysticism and its community-oriented cultures. The philosophies of the East are seen as largely stagnant, meaning that they move forward in jarring, sometimes extreme ways. The East is also historically oriented not around the wealth or prestige of the individual, but around the group and the preservation of culture, so that ancient ways of life manage to survive for surprising swathes of time.

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