bull_shit pete "The sole aim of philosophical enquiry is to eliminate the contingent." Ok. "Contingency is the same as external necessity, that is, a necessity which originates in causes which are themselves no more than external circumstances." Not really. Contingency is the way the individual will internalises external stimuli and the unique way that will then externalises the internal resolution of those stimuli. So yes contingency begins outside the Self, but it embodies the Self in the moment that that Self creates itself through [in]action. "In history, we must look for a general design, the ultimate end of the world, and not a particular end of the subjective spirit or mind;" No. History is one of two things, depending on the context. First it is the lived experience of human beings in times past. Second it is the study of the lived experience of human beings in time past, focusing on change over time. History is by its nature (in both formulations) subjective. It is the internalisation of the external and its re-externalisation in a new form that we call living. "and we must comprehend it by means of reason, which cannot concern itself with particular and finite ends, but only with the absolute." Reason exists as the form that all individual reasons aspire to be. In that sense it doesn't exist at all as it is perfect. Thus, as Reason does not exist, only through the imperfect, finite, particular plethora of reasons can anything be known. "This absolute end is a content which speaks for itself and in which evetything of interest to man has its foundation." Basically he is referring to a Christian god. Or is he being more neoplatonic and pointing us towards to'hen. I can accept the latter but not the former. Moving on. "The rational is that which has being in and for itself, and from which everything else derives its value." To'hen it is. But value is determined socially (I'd say culturally but that is to much of an abstraction for it to be true). There is nothing eternal in any divided good, nor even in the changing "Good" of the neoplatonists. It is just a form that doesn't exist except as a unifying concept to the divided goods. We derive value amongst ourselves in our own ways, often irrationally. "It assumes varying shapes; but in none of them is it more obviously an end than in that whereby the spirit explicates and manifests itself in the endlessly varying forms which we call nations." Nations as in states or as in a culturally defined community? I choose the latter as that makes more sense. The translator and the author were not stupid, they would not say nation and mean state (or would they?). Nations cannot be personified. They are bodies of people, not an individual superstructure in and of itself. Nations are harder to play with than states, intellectually, as they are amorphous, neither ending nor beginning but merely existing in the collective consiousness of those who take part or observe them. But they exist through time and the author wishes us to assume that they exist rationally through time, but offers no reason for this. Intelligent but, unsupported, wrong. "We must bring to history the belief and conviction that the real of the will is not at the mercy of contingency." On the contrary, the will is the tool which the individual uses to resolve contingency. The will would not exist if there were no contingency for it to take part in. And the contingencies would not exist if there were no individual wills resolving similiar questions in very different ways. Its circular, yes, but not to the point of a chicken/egg argument. Physical forces create all the contingency an independent will needs to create more itself. :That wolrd history is governed by an ultimate design, that it is a rational process--whose rationality is not that of a particular subjet, but a divine and absolute reason--this is a proposition whose truth we must assume; its proof lies in the study of world history itself, which is the image and enactment of reason." Not being a world historian by trade, but also not being an idiot, I can't accept this. Nothing in this paragraph so far has leant itself to supporting this truth-claim and I cannot take this leap of faith, except to humour those who accept this truth-claim contingent on their personal experiences that allows them to do so. "The real proof, however, comes from a knowledge of reason itself; for reason appears in world history only in a mediate form. World history is merely a manifestation of this one original reason; it is one of the particular forms in which reason reveals itself, a reflection of the archetype in a particular element, in the life of nations." The internal logic is sound. But the author seems to be operating under a false opinion, not a self-evident truth. World history is an attempt to study the culmantive actions of all of humanity. To try and detect a pattern out of the contigent actions of the billions who have lived, and, in the author's case, project it forward to the billions to come, is an exercise in futility. It requires the application of some external principle, such as a divine reason, that will shape the way the author looks at the evidence before him. He enters into his discussion with the assumptions of Truth seeking to conform the contingent to his eternal principle. There is a broken gear in there somewhere, but though I am not dumb I am not intelligent enough to find and fix it. Thank you Mr. Hegel that was fun, but please save your shit. I can't take you seriously, I try but I end laughing, or frustrated, or just plain annoyed at the influence you have had over the past two hundred years. Your arrogance is clear, as is your intelligence. But you missed something, somewhere, and I don't care to find it. Some else will one, I'm sure, or else you'll be ignored and drift to the level of others from your time. Thierry, perhaps, with his theories of racial conquest (which make some sense, looking at England post 1066). Anyways thats all for now. 061010 what's it to you? who go blather from