So, I have always had a reverence for German philosophy. I think this kind of reverence is very necessary. Of course, it does not mean that you worship others with reverence. Worship means that we can only think about philosophy in this way. From the perspective of conceptual thinking, we can truly grasp the fundamental key points of philosophers' thoughts and understand the problems discussed by philosophers.
Just like Kant when he was giving lectures to his students, when he was teaching in German, many Russian officers came to listen to his class and couldn't understand what he was talking about. Later, he said it was okay, you go learn German first, learn German well, and then come with me to study philosophy.
In other words, Kant used approachable and easy to understand language to convey his profound philosophical ideas to his students, so his lectures are much easier to understand than his books. Therefore, from Kant's complete works, we can now read that the part of his notes in Kant's complete works is easier to understand than his completed works, because he is aimed at intermediate level audiences, not high-level ones.
Hegel's thought not only involves the evaluation of Wolf, but also an understanding of philosophy itself, that is, a philosophical language. He is not discussing the external world that my language refers to, but considering the ideas that my language itself wants to express. Only then can this language be seen as a philosophical language.
A philosophical language that is not used to describe how the external world changes, but rather focuses more on how my thoughts themselves are expressed clearly through my language. This way of thinking is precisely what H ö lderlin later provided, that 'humans are language animals', and an important basis for the extensive discussions on language issues, including later linguists.
Of course, it can also be said that it is an important historical resource that we can provide when we come to study philosophy of language today.
Just now we introduced Wolf to everyone, which means that he had an important influence on the entire process of German philosophy. Hegel's positive evaluation of Wolf can also convey its historical significance.
Of course, Wolf was also strongly criticized by Hegel, and his criticism of Wolf mainly refers to:
It divides philosophy into rigid disciplines and applies geometric methods in a scholarly manner, treating philosophical research as governance regulations, and like British scholars, making rational metaphysical dogmatism the universal tone.
And this kind of dogmatism uses some mutually exclusive rational rules and relationships, such as one and many, or simple conformity, or finite infinite causal relationships, to define things that are absolutely reasonable.
——Hegel's Speeches on the History of Philosophy
We can see that the criticism of Wall here is based on Hegel himself, whose understanding of conceptual dialectics is based on Hegel's general understanding of philosophy, to criticize the Wolf system.
Because the entire classical philosophy has gone through a historical development thread from Kant, Fichte to Schelling, entering a Hegelian era, his understanding of Wolfe can basically be said to go beyond Kant, Fichte to Schelling's understanding of Wolfe.
So, what he emphasizes more is a philosophy that should focus on the dialectical development of a concept, rather than emphasizing that a concept should be fixed within a philosophical framework.
So, he would oppose such a Wolfian way of studying philosophy. Therefore, the basic overview of Wolfe's philosophical system that we just presented to you can be read from Wolfe's attempt to establish a systematic framework to illustrate that every aspect of human knowledge has its specific, definite, and fixed position, demonstrating that his philosophical ideas can already cover all human knowledge.
However, Hegel disagrees with this point, so for Hegel, it is precisely the development process of human thinking. Although it aims to pursue absolute spirit as its ultimate goal, in the process of pursuing decision, it always requires a continuous process of movement and change. It cannot accomplish a historical mission once and for all. It needs to be completed through evolution, development, or even through the process of negation of negation.
So, in this sense, it is easy to understand that he does not agree with Wolf's ideas. Therefore, for Hegel, the Wolf system has been seen as history, so he is not opposing Wolf, or rather, he is not starting his philosophy from Wolf.
However, for Kant, it can be said that the starting point of Kantian philosophy is indeed Wolf, because it directly faces the important influence of Wolf philosophy in the entire German intellectual community at that time.
As we just said, if we want to develop a new philosophy today, our main opponent should be Marxist philosophy, because if you cannot criticize Marxist philosophical theory, then you cannot establish your own philosophy,
So, the development of philosophy is always closely related to a dominant intellectual tradition of its time, and it can only be established on this basis. Therefore, Hegel's philosophy is not based on Wolf's philosophy, but Kant is. We need to have a clear understanding of this.
In addition to Thomasius and Wolf introduced earlier, there were also some important thinkers throughout the Enlightenment process in Germany. These thinkers were not necessarily philosophers, but they played an important role in the development of German thought and philosophy.
For example, here we list several important thinkers such as Lessing (1729-1781, German Enlightenment playwright, aesthetician, and literary critic), most of whom are mentioned in the history of literary criticism or aesthetics, considering him an aesthetician. This is because the book "Laocon" holds a very important and unique position in the entire history of foreign aesthetics and Western aesthetics, and this book provides us with an important clue on how to understand history. Therefore, Lessing is not a simple aesthetician.
Because the concept of aesthetics was first proposed and established by Baumgarten in the first half of the 18th century. Therefore, the aesthetic concept provided by Baumgarten is a critique of the aesthetic process of human sensory activity, which is established in this sense to determine the philosophy of aesthetics.
Therefore, Lessing's ideas can be said to have played an important and positive role in the Enlightenment movement at that time, to the extent that he became a model for later philosophers to emulate. For example, philosophers such as Mendelssohn and Jacob used Lessing as a model to emulate, because Lessing was passionate and had a reverence for nature, reflecting people's rebellion against religious theology, especially Christian theology, at that time.
So, in this sense, Lessing's ideas were seen as revolutionary, and Lessing's ideas became a model for later Mendelssohn and Jacob. Although Lessing is not much older than him, he is still their predecessor, so after Lessing's death, there were some debates about some of Lessing's philosophical ideas.
Lessing began to emphasize the distinction between rational truth and factual truth, and emphasized that history is a foundation for the realization of reason. When you hear this statement, you may feel that it is not a new thing, because philosophers have rationalized it since Hume, that is, since the 17th century. In fact, Leibniz had already distinguished between truth about facts and truth about reason.
However, Lessing approached the concept of truth in a unique way, as an aesthetician, a literary figure, and even as a historian, providing methods for examining it. Because the truth of reason is precisely the knowledge that empirical philosophy provides us with universal necessity, and only the truth of that fact can be described and provided by history. History is the proof of the true events that occur in the world.
So, he emphasized viewing our world through a historical perspective. The Enlightenment movement of French philosophers had an important ideological characteristic, which was romanticism and optimistic thinkers. They all believed that human society was constantly progressing and developing, rather than standing still or going back. Therefore, Rousseau's ideas were anti Enlightenment because he opposed the progressive ideas of the time.
And what is the basis for this progressive thinking?
It is based on the understanding of the world they faced at that time by French philosophers, such as Montesquieu's description of the history of the development of the Roman Empire and Voltaire's description of the secular landscapes of various countries. These philosophers' attention to history far exceeds their understanding of reality at that time. However, it is based on the relationship of history that they established an optimistic idea about the continuous progress of human civilization in the world, which was actually inherited in Germany.
So, German Enlightenment thinkers like Lessing emphasized the viewpoint of human social progress and even regarded religion as a product of historical development. This idea itself can be said to have earth shattering significance in the historical issues of that time, and such an important historical significance.
