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Hegel Belittles Abstract Thinking and the Abstract Thinker

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:32 am
by Jenna P
Hegel said, "Who thinks abstractly? The uneducated, not the educated."* This is really interesting because most people think that abstract thinking is the highest thinking there is. They think the whole world could be saved by abstract thinking, but this is false, abstract thinking is one of the main problems with the world because it's not comprehensive enough to grasp the dialectical nature of the world. Thus Hegel says, "This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality."**

This is exactly it, to see only the impression, only the dead image, to see an object, a being without cause or history. Dialectical thinking is so rightly and powerfully contrasted with this.



*Hegel, "Who Thinks Abstractly?," Kaufmann, Walter. Hegel: Texts and Commentary; Published: Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966, pp. 113-118.

**Ibid.