PHL318 (Hegel) Essay Questions
Write an essay in response to one question from each of the two sets of questions below, making a total of two essays. Each
essay should be around three pages of double-spaced typewritten text. Your essays should be written as clearly as possible,
with careful attention paid to precision of concept and especially of definition. If you borrow ideas, please cite your source.
Please do not slide exams under office doors or leave them in door boxes. Such exams disappear with disgusting regularity.
Please get your exam into the hands of a living person. If you turn it into the philosophy department sectary, please have her
time-stamp the exam to avoid any problems with possible late penalty.
Set I
1. Explain Hegel's distinction between the universal and the particular. For Hegel, what is important is the
universal and not the particular. Hegel's own view is the extreme one that only the universal has genuine
importance and that the particular is of no importance in itself. Make the strongest argument you can for
Hegel's position. Marx, in contrast, claims that only the particular has importance. Make the strongest
argument you can for Marx's position. Consider a third position: Both the universal and the particular
have importance. Make the strongest argument you can for this position. Critically evaluate these three
positions.
2. Explain what Hegel means by alienation. Make the strongest argument you can in favor of Hegel's
position. Make the strongest argument you can against Hegel's position. Critically evaluate the
disagreement. Marx criticizes "bourgeois" private property as a manifestation of a system of production
and productive relations that alienates workers from their labor and from each other. Compare Hegel’s
and Max’s doctrines of alienation. What is your examination of Hegel's views on freedom and
alienation?
3. In reading about Hegel's early attempts to formulate a conception of recognition and of ethical life, what
general philosophical assumptions or claims do you find to be most problematic? For example, are there
dubious metaphysical or epistemological ideas animating his theoretical claims? Explain how he is
correct or not. Do you see anything about the ideas of recognition he is trying to develop that are
essentially tied to such problematic assumptions or claims?
4. In the early Hegel Marx sees: “The appropriation of man's essential powers, which have become objects
... only an appropriation occurring in consciousness” while “the equally uncritical idealism of Hegel's
later works - that philosophic dissolution and restoration of the existing empirical world”. Can you
explain what is meant by these two criticisms?
5. Is Hegel's logic a transcendental ontology? Explain Hegel's metaphysical concept of the Absolute mind
or idealism or spirit. Select one of the components of the aspects of reality he discusses and explain
it. How valid does this seem to you? How did Hegel apply his dialectic concept (thesis, antithesis,
synthesis) to history in general and to German history in particular? Some say Hegel used the method of:
thesis-antithesis-synthesis (triplicity), and others deny this. Who is correct?
Set II
6. For Hegel, what is the essential purpose of history? What means brings about this purpose? In what form
is this purpose ultimately realized? How is Hegel's view in opposition to those who view community
(society/state) as a restriction of natural freedom? How would an origin myth (like the Christian
Genesis) fit into Hegel's system of recorded history? Why?
7. Explain Hegel's metaphysical concept of the Absolute mind or idealism or spirit. Select one of the
components of the aspects of reality he discusses and explain it. How valid does this seem to you? How
valid is the concept of the spirit of the people? Find examples from today's world to either support or
contradict this idea.
8. What is the difference between the social contract model of the State and Hegel's own model of it? What
is the importance of religion for the State, in Hegel's view? Didn't Hegel say that the State is Divine, or
even that the State is God? Between the individual and the state, which does Hegel feel should
be superior if our goal is to achieve human happiness? Why? Explain your view. How is Hegel's view
in opposition to those who view community (society/state) as a restriction of natural freedom?
9. In reading about Hegel's early attempts to formulate a conception of recognition and of ethical life, what
general philosophical assumptions or claims do you find to be most problematic? For example, are there
dubious metaphysical or epistemological ideas animating his theoretical claims? Do you see anything
about the ideas of recognition he is trying to develop that are essentially tied to such problematic
assumptions or claims?
10. Why, according to Hegel, is art superior to the works of nature? From what "universal and absolute
need" does it spring, and how, does that need link it to "all acting and knowing"? How does Hegel
moderate between those who say that art is merely a skill, and those who say that art is entirely a
production of genius and not "a product of general human activity"?
11. Nonetheless, what defect does Classical art's success in relating Idea and shape lead to? How does Hegel
define "spirit", and how, according to Hegel, must Classical artists have conceived of spirit when they
represented it in "sensuously concrete form"? Again, how does romantic art's success also lead it to
reach its point of failure? How is this problem similar to that of symbolic art? But what, according to
Hegel, is "the essential difference" between the respective failures?
12. Is the claim that Hegel's philosophy and Hegel's religion have the same content? Is Hegel's romantic
idealism another version of a "natural religion?" If so, does it have a cognitive as well as a moral
character? Can it be used to show a religious dimension of thought and feeling in literature and poetry?
How? Explain Hegel's theory of "alienation" as a result of "bad" religion. How and why did "bad
religion" project an idea of a heaven?
13. Explain Marx's critique of Hegel's claim to have religion completely understood. Why did Marx react so
strongly? What did Marx mean by “religion is the people’s opium,” "religious distress is the heart of a
heartless world, a sigh of an oppressed creature, a spirit in a spiritless situation?" What is cognitive here?
14. In his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel says: “Here in the Philosophy of Religion it is
more especially God, reason in fact, that is the object; for God is essentially rational, rationality, which
as Spirit is in and for itself. Now in speculating philosophically upon reason, we investigate knowledge,
only we do it in such a way as to imply that we do not suppose we would want to complete this
investigation beforehand outside of the object; on the contrary, the knowledge of reason is precisely the
object with which we are concerned. It is of the very essence of Spirit to be for Spirit. That is just what
Spirit is, and this consequently implies that finite spirit has been posited, and the relation of finite spirit,
of finite reason to the divine, originates of itself within the Philosophy of Religion itself, and must be
treated of there, and indeed in the very place where it first originates. It is this which constitutes the
difference between a science and conjectures about a science; the latter are accidental; in so far,
however, as they are thoughts, which relate to the matter itself, they must be included in its treatment,
and they are in this case no longer mere chance bubbles of thought.” Do you agree him? Explain.
15. If as Hegel says "philosophy is the history of philosophy", then are all philosophical claims historically
conditioned and liable to reevaluation? If you incline to an Hegelian or developmental view of
disagreement, how do you explain the fact that a very large majority of philosophers think they are
giving the truth once and for all? Are they all self-deceived? If so, how can this be explained? Or is it
not in fact true that most philosophers think they are giving the truth once and for all? Some scholars
indicate a wish to update Hegel for the 21st century. Does that mean removing all traces of his
(presumably) un-scientific objective idealism?