The development of idealism after Kant reached its zenith in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who went down in history as the creator of the most widespread and proven system of dialectics of idealism.
Hegel's “Absolute Idea”
Calling the philosophical concept “absolute idealism”, G. Hegel stated that categories are real forms of reality based on “world reason”, “absolute idea”, in another way - “world spirit”.
It turns out that the “absolute idea” is something that gives impetus to the emergence and evolution of the natural and spiritual worlds, a kind of active principle. And a person needs to comprehend this “absolute idea” through reflection. This train of thought includes 3 steps.
First stage
Here, an absolute idea, being only a thought that existed before the definition of the subject and object, is positioned as ordered knowledge in principle. Thus, it is revealed through a system of categories of logic connected and flowing from each other.
In his philosophical theory, Hegel divided logic into three doctrines: about being, about essence and about concept. The starting point of his theory is the equality of thought and being, or, in other words, the perception of the world of reality as a visible action of the spirit of Idea. Initially, an absolute idea was an abstract idea of being. Then this thought of “pure being” was filled with concrete content: at the beginning, being was positioned as an indefinite something, then it was defined as being, then a certain being was formed and so on.
In this way, G. Hegel moves from an understanding of being - a phenomenon - to its essence, and then derives the concept. In addition, during the formation of the absolute idea, Hegel explains a number of dialectical laws.
Second phase
At the second stage of the formation of the concept of an absolute idea, it is abstracted into a natural part, a departure to nature. It is from here that Hegel's formulation of the principles of natural philosophy follows. For him, nature is only an outward expression, a manifestation of thought, but an independent progress of the categories of logic.
Third stage
The philosopher identifies three degrees of development of nature: mechanism, chemistry, the organism, between which he finds a certain connection. This connection will subsequently become the basis for studying the relationship between certain levels of organic and inorganic nature. Thus, Hegel's philosophy of the spirit is divided into three components: the doctrine of the subjective spirit, which includes the science of man; the doctrine of the objective spirit, which includes the study of moral problems, history, law; the doctrine of the absolute spirit, which finds itself in the cultural component of human life (religion, philosophy, art).
Therefore, according to Hegel, the evolution of an absolute idea goes in a circle, and it is tantamount to the progress of the material world, which is a direct result of this idea. Hegel led to the conclusion that the completion of this absolute idea (when it realizes itself and its path) is the formation of an absolute spirit. This is the very system of Hegel's philosophy.
Since then, the advancement of the absolute idea in increasing order stops and acquires a circular path, stopping the evolution of thought, condemning it to constant movement in a circle, without development. Thus, it turns out that Hegel's theory is closest to objective idealism, since it is the concept of “absolute idea”, being a pure thought, that gives rise to nature and man. As a result of this, a triad is formed on which the concept of Hegel's philosophy is built: the thesis - antithesis - synthesis, which gives it consistent consistency. After all, the categories of this theory are not blindly affirmed, but are generated by each other. Such an integrity of the system is a contradiction of its prevailing law - the principle of progress.
