Hegel on Love
As a friend reminded me today, we'd all be a lot less selfish and closed to others if we read our Hegel. And, as I plowed through The Philosophy of Right for my senior essay project on self-actualization, freedom, and ethical naturalism in Hegel and Marx, I came across this stunning passage:
"But we already possess this freedom in the form of feeling [Empfindung], for example in friendship and love. Here, we are not one-sidedly within ourselves, but willingly limit ourselves with reference to an other, even while knowing ourselves in this limitation as ourselves. In this determinacy, the human being should not feel determined; on the contrary, he attains self-awareness only by regarding the other as other" (ยง7).
"But we already possess this freedom in the form of feeling [Empfindung], for example in friendship and love. Here, we are not one-sidedly within ourselves, but willingly limit ourselves with reference to an other, even while knowing ourselves in this limitation as ourselves. In this determinacy, the human being should not feel determined; on the contrary, he attains self-awareness only by regarding the other as other" (ยง7).
posted by James at 12:32 AM
1 Comments:
You don't need Hegel to figure that shit out. And yes, I'm a philosophy student at an Ivy League and I've read plenty of Hegel. The best single philosophical work on love has been, is, and probably always will be Plato's "Symposium". Just can't be beat.
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