HCJ: Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer is known as a more contemporary Hegel. Both were students of Kant but disagreed with each other's philosophies; Hegel's ideas were more influential and recognised whereas Schopenhauer's ideas were more similar to Kant. 

He is an immaterialist; he believes that the world doesn't exist independently of perception but does believe that their must have be something to start the world; an uncaused cause or a formless matter. He agrees with Kant's philosophy of the dual nature of objects; the phenomena and the noumena. However, he doesn't agree everything can be seen as a thing in itself, the only actual thing that can be perceived as a thing in itself is existence. He describes this as the will.

The will, however, isn't God or a purpose. Schopenhauer believed there was no purpose for life and everything was arbitrary. The will was just the driving force of the universe which he believed was a curse; the constant need for fulfilment. He thought life was nothing but misery, pain and eventually death. In fact, he even thought suicide was the best thing a person could do in life. You could fight against the will but you could never win as he believed the will was evil. There was temporary eases of the pain such as drugs or music but they didn't last long, and suicide was the easiest and most permanent escape.

HCJ: Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"Everything happens for a reason" is a phrase we all know, as essentially comes from Hegelian beliefs. He was teleologist, he believed the world was moving to an end and everything in it had a purpose that was willed by The Geist; the Absolute.

It is hard to define what Hegel means by the Geist; it is never referred to as God but more of a ghost or spirit. He believes everything is connected as one whole but reject pantheist beliefs, that the world is one simple being, but sees everything in the world as part of one complex system.

One of Hegel's key ideas was the dialectical thesis. It backs up his view the world is moving towards an end.  The idea combines a thesis and it's anti-thesis in order to create a synthesis. For example, combining the rise of Greece, being the thesis, followed by the dark ages, being the anti-thesis, and finally being followed by the enlightenment, being the synthesis. In very basic terms, it's combining an idea with the opposite of the idea to reach to compromise in between the two.

Hegel believes knowledge as a whole is also a tripartite system; first it starts with sense perception, secondly there is raw data gathered is subjected to sceptical criticism in our minds and finally there is self knowledge.

He says war in necessary, he doesnt say he supports it in any way but he think it will naturally happen and is a fan of Machiavelli. His views on seem to be human nature are similar. However, unlike Machiavelli, he was the only philosopher that believed America was going to be very important. Hegel also thinks time is part of alienation and not knowing the true meaning of things.