every fucking time hegel comes up
>thinking that's what hegel meant
what the fuck did hegel mean. what is phenomenology. if you're so fucking cool, if you're such a good hegelian and it totally gets you laid, drop the elevator pitch you give to undergrads you're trying to bang when they ask you what you're studying.
why should I read this shit
He really is the final boss of philosophy.
Not even memeing, I picked up a philosophy major just so I can understand the Phenomenology of Spirit.
If you do end up reading his stuff, for God's sake don't pay much adherence to the so called modern day "Hegelians" like Zizek. They heavily distort and misinterpret Hegel for the sake of advancing their own perverse ideologies.
>That look of crazed sense of doom
Hegel is a charlatan, an intellectual Caliban. He's not worth reading at all.
insert quote of hagel saying only one person understands him and he's not sure he fully does actually
>an intellectual Caliban
see it just keeps happening. everyone memes a little bit but nobody has anything of substance to say. wikipedia articles are opaque. it seems to be philosophical mysticism par excellence, but when you mention marx or zizek a few hegelians come out from under their rocks to murmur and chant
>marx is bastardized hegel
>zizek has perverted hegel
and all I can take away from that is that hegel is a self-supported church of tautologies and syllogisms, and his priests want to shore up support and funding from shitty logic fetishist philosophy departments across the anglosphere rather than see him consigned to "literature" or humanities with the rest of those zany eurofags.
>everyone memes a little bit but nobody has anything of substance to say
this place in a nutshell. you can't come here and expect to learn about philosophy. all you have here is people who have a little bit of familiarity who can't explain anything but want to feel like they know stuff and spout memes. What I'm trying to say is, if you make conclusions about great philosophers based on Veeky Forums posts instead of at legit sources you're dumb.
I didn't think anyone in the modern age still identified as Hegelians.
Hegel just said that whatever happens at the end of history (ie. what the last society will look like) he will have predicted and will have been an extension of his philosophy.
What does he say the last society will look like? Well, it will have the perfect balance of public and private. It will be so awesome it will literally feel God-like. He says the Prussian state comes pretty damn close.
Basically his writing is intentionally obscure enough for anyone's vision of their ideal state to correspond with Hegel's prophecies. Which is why you can have any interpretation of Hegel and some douchebag Hegelian student will say "MUH HEGEL PRE-EMPTED THIS. S-STOP BEING MEAN TO HEGEL!"
Added to this is his idea that history will have big cataclysms but in the grand scheme of things everything gets better/more rational.
So when you're leading a revolution, kill a bunch of people, and then realize your newly created state is a piece of shit...well, that's just one step closer to the actual best/final state of society.
Hegel can never be falsified. Any society can qualify as the Absolute if you're good enough with language. And then you can always say "It's coming real soon, guys, just trust me" when your half-dozen failed states/revolution are shit.