Hegel Takes the Easy Way Out?

While thumbing through Hegel’s thoughts concerning the dialectic, I was struck by the similarity they bear to a quote I came across in an anthropology class. The quote reads as follows: “One of the most significant facts about us may be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but in the end having lived only one” (Clifford Geertz, The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man). Geertz – and the whole of anthropology, for that matter – is trying to make a case for the equality of any given way of life – the rejection that one lifestyle is inherently better, more advance, etc. Hegel seems to share a similar idea, but applies it to a discussion of truth: according to Solomon, “our shared concepts are not in fact universal but quite particular and provincial, aspects of the truth…” (Solomon 57). Found in both is a respect for others, a humble understanding of place, and an embrace of diverse coexistence.

Hegel’s idea seems to resonate more universally than those previously studied in this course, and for good reason. His description of the process by which ideas are built upon each other, improved, and move toward a single idea is attractive because it draws comparisons to the scientific method. And his ideas of universality and the recognition of the relatively equal worth, which are based in humility and equally attractive, stand as a stark contrast to the polarizing theories of human nature and objective morality of previous thinkers. But as Solomon points out, there is a contradictory tension buried in Hegel’s philosophy, and I am beginning to wonder if perhaps his attempt to create a system that aims to justify everyone’s beliefs isn’t just taking the easy way out.

A tension arises between what Solomon calls “the conservative search for the Absolute,” and the “recognition that there may be no such Absolute, but only the possibly endless diversity of different forms of life and consciousness, each of them relative to and dependent upon its own historical, conceptual, and social epoch” (Solomon 59). There seems nothing inherently contradictory about his aforementioned process of idea improvement, so long as it applies to ideas, but the contradiction arises when each is labeled “equally true.” His intention is noble, but two conflicting statements cannot both be true at the same time.

For Hegel, the truths and moral values of one culture are just as valid as those embraced by the next. But is he simply taking the easy way out, failing to take a stance concerning these topics? He seems to be trying to simultaneously validate the subjective and objective approaches. And what are the implications of such an approach? Are ethical or moral rightness or truth determined circumstantially? Or is it objective, such as Kant suggests? Hegel doesn’t make a definitive case for either.