xvii No one interested in the clash of ideas that is rending the world today
can afford to neglect the work of Hegel.
The problem which Hegel sought to answer is the problem of man's destiny, the problem of
the meaning of his existence.
xxvii But the most revealing of all is Hegel's almost complete lack of interest in the field of
mathematics which to him appears empty and devoid of any true relation to actuality.
xxviii It is interesting to hear Hegel himself on mathematics: "The evidentness of this defective kind of
knowledge upon which mathematics prides itself... results from the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its material;
it is therefore of a kind which philosophy must reject. The purpose or concept of mathematics is quantity. This is
precisely the non-essential, non-conceptual relationship. The activity of this kind of knowledge occurs on the surface, does
not touch the thing itself, not the essence nor the concept, and therefore it gives no comprehension..."
xxviii Philosophy, in Hegel's view, is not concerned then with the abstract and the non-real; its element,
its content is the actually real
xlviii War, he asserts, is not to be looked upon as an absolute evil, resulting from accidental causes,
such as the whims of princes, the interests of particular persons, etc. No, war is also the way in
which a state's ethical reality asserts itself against others... through war "the ethical health of nations is maintained."
xlviii-xlix "Wars take place where they are rooted in the nature of things; afterwards the seed sprouts
again..."
p.178 When logic is taken as the science of thinking in general, it is understood that this thinking constitutes
the bare form of cognition, that logic abstracts from all content, and that the (so-called) other constituent
of a cognition - that is, its matter - must come from a different source; that thus logic - as something
of which this matter is wholly and entirely independent - can provide only the formal conditions of true knowledge,
and cannot, in and by itself, contain real truth, nor even be the path to real truth, because just
that which is the essence of truth - that is, its content - lies outside logic.
p.181 since this knowledge knows itself to be knowledge only of appearances, its insufficiency is confessed,
yet at the same time it is supposed that things, though not rightly known known in themselves, still
are rightly known within the sphere of appearances [JLJ - knowledge of appearances can drive behavior, provided that
we probe to discover true content and that we establish margin, resilience and diagnostic performance testing. We also need
to develop the possible scenarios and where they appear to lead.]
p.224 Philosophy is, because it is the exploration of the rational, by that very fact the prehension
of the present and the actual
p.226 To understand that which exists is the task of philosophy... everyone is the son of his time,
and therefore philosophy is its time comprehended in thought.
p.322 War has the higher meaning that through it, as I have said elsewhere, "the ethical health of nations
is maintained, since such health does not require the stabilizing of finite arrangements... war prevents a corruption of nations
which a perpetual, let alone an eternal peace would produce."
p.322 [Hegel goes on to argue that the historical observation that successful wars reinforce a state's
internal constitutional order shows that the ideality of this internal order and of war are the same...] [JLJ - Hegel
appears to be saying that the demands of war force a nation to operate at a maximum efficiency and minimum of waste and corruption
- an ideal internal order. One could argue that the adaptive capacity of a nation at war must stretch to extreme limits due
to the unpredictability of future demands upon the economy and people of a nation]
p.527 The health of a state manifests itself generally not in the quietness of peace but in the
commotion of war. Peace is a state of enjoyment and activity in isolation, when the government is a wise paternalism,
which demands from the subjects only what is customary. In war, the strength of the cohesion of all with the whole
is demonstrated, how much the state can demand of them and how much that is worth which all my be willing to do for
it out of their own initiative and sentiment.
