Chapter 21 Self-Quiz

. Hegel says that the problem of the criterion cannot be solved by the philosopher,

but that's all right, since it is in the process of solving itself.

so we have to resign ourselves to living without knowledge.

because we are caught in a circle that cannot be got out of.

and it's a good thing, too, since that makes room for progress and development.

. Phenomenology, as practiced by Hegel, is

a method of getting beyond mere phenomena to absolute reality.

a way of validating the phenomena experienced by the arbitrary individual.

a technique for observing consciousness as it develops.

irrelevant to reality, but significantly relevant to phenomena.

. At the stage of sense-certainty, consciousness

has absolute knowledge of its contents.

is wholly receptive and immediate.

is certain that it derives from the senses (eyes, ears, and so on).

can say with absolute certainty what is being experienced through the senses.

. The dialectic of master and slave

demonstrates the exploitation of slaves throughout history and condemns it.

shows how we are all slaves, even though some of us take ourselves to be masters.

constitutes a practical prescription for freeing slaves, no matter what stage of history they may be in.

describes a necessary stage in the progress toward self-consciousness.

. Christianity, according to Hegel,

is the genuine expression of one essential stage in the development of consciousness.

expresses an unhappy consciousness about which the best that can be done is to accept it.

is the culmination of the history of the Spirit.

is the stage toward which Absolute Spirit is tending.

. Hegel's philosophy is aptly characterized as absolute idealism because

the Absolute Spirit is an idealistic dreamer of dreams that could never be realized.

whatever is real has its reality only in relation to the Absolute.

without ideals, we are absolutely lost.

reality is constituted in the consciousness of each absolutely unique individual.

. In the stages of objective spirit, consciousness

objectifies itself in the world of nature.

understands itself as just one object in the natural world along with others.

moves from Stoic to skeptical to Christian consciousness.

develops toward a rational society.

. In Hegel's view,

individuals join together in a âcontractâ to create the state.

individuals are related to the state as the liver is to the body it serves.

because individual human beings are metaphysically prior to any community, the state is only a fiction.

history is tending toward a state that will be a âslaughter bench.â

. The goal of historical development, according to Hegel, is

unknowable.

absurd.

freedom.

insufficient to justify the horrors of history.

. The owl of Minerva, Hegel tells us, spreads its wings only at dusk. This means that

owls can see better at night than in the daytime.

Hegel believes in the old Greek gods.

philosophers are the only ones wise enough to give instruction as to what the world ought to be.

the world can be understood only retrospectively.

Quiz Content