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Shaw (Quintessence of Ibsenism): *
the quote (page 12)in full:
“In our own century the recognition of the will as distinct from the reasoning machinery began to spread. Schopenhauer was the first among the moderns.*”
further in a footnote:
*
”Schopenhauer's philosophy, like that of all pessimists, is really based on the old view of the will as original sin, and the 1750-1850 view that the intellect is the divine grace that is to save us from it. It is well to warn those who fancy that Schopenhauerism is one and indivisible, that acceptance of its metaphysics by no means involves endorsement of its philosophy.”
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Nietzsche (his metaphysics): *
In the first chapter of Human, All Too Human (titled “Of First And Last Things,”) he labels metaphysics & religion “the very worst methods of knowledge.” and is the result of the ancient distinction between “appearance” and “reality”. This arose from a primordial identification of the static world of words and grammar (the “metaphysics of the people”) with a “true” or “real” world. Words are imagined to be wholly separate and prior to simple sensory data, which becomes “less palpable.” Thus Nietzsche saw metaphysics as an unscientific, erroneous and ultimately frivolous mode of inquiry, inconsequential for flesh & blood humans and doomed to disappear. Some have interrupted his “death of god” doctrine found in The Gay Science (1882) & Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85) as meaning the death of metaphysics.
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Marx & Engels (and Hegelian philosophy): *
early influences of Hegel
In 1836, Marx joined the University of Berlin to study law & became fascinated by philosophy, he began attending lectures by the progressive Hegelian Eduard Gans. His interest in Hegel grew; he joined a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas & in 1837 became involved with the Young Hegelians. In 1840 working with Bauer he began editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. After leaving university he began writing for the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News); owing to government censorship in 1843 Marx left Germany for Paris; hebecame co-editor of a new, radical leftist Parisian newspaper, contributing work to the paper, one titled "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right". This paper soon collapsed, he began writing for the Forward! an uncensored left wing German newspaper in Paris. Here he refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical materialism, while also criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.
Engels acknowledged the influence of German philosophy on his intellectual development throughout his career. Whilst doing an apprenticeship he began reading Hegel whose teachings dominated German philosophy. While doing military service in Berlin he attended lectures & associated with groups of Young Hegelians. In Berlin he anonymously published articles in the radical Rheinische Zeitung (the editor was Marx), exposing the poor employment & poverty endured by factory workers. In 1844 Marx met Engels, who showed him The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. This began a lifelong friendship. Soon they were collaborating on a criticism of the philosophical ideas of Bauer. Published in 1845, their work, The Holy Family, attacked Bauer but also reflected the influence of Young Hegelian ideas.
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Marxist philosophy
His view of history (historical materialism), reflects Hegel's dialectical approach, but while Hegel put ideas in the forefront (Idealism), Marx gave primacy of matter & rewrote dialectics in materialist terms. Hegel saw the "spirit" as driving history, Marx saw this as obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical actions shaping the world. He wrote that Hegelianism stood reality on its head, and that one needed to set it back on its feet. His revision of Hegelianism was also influenced by Engels's book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution.
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Stirner (and Hegelian philosophy): *
In 1826 he began study at the University of Berlin (philology, philosophy & theology) & attended lectures by Hegel whom he acknowledged as a source of inspiration. He later transferred to the University of Erlangen, where Feuerbach was also attending. In Berlin in 1841 he participated in discussions with a group of young philosophers, The Free Ones (subsequently labelled the Young Hegelians, those involved included Marx & Engels among others).
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Labelled an anarchist, he argued that many social institutions (the state, property, natural rights) were illusions; he advocated egoism & a form of amoralism; individuals would unite only when it was in their self-interest; property was based on might (power) not rights (legal); moral constraint was meaningless & he denied any rational reason to consider the interests of others unless it furthered one's self-interest. He was anti-capitalist & pro-labour; he did not oppose socialism, Feuerbach's humanism or human rights but condemned their legalism & ideal abstractness. Although he opposed communism (a form of authority over the individual) he influenced many anarcho-communists & anarchists.
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Hebbel (and Hegelian philosophy): *
For Hebbel the ultimate philosophical problem was the incomprehensible escape of the individual from the Absolute or Idea, man's freedom in relation to God. The Absolute was a concept he took from Hegel (via Feuerbach). The Absolute for Hegel is a process through which consciousness (the idea) becomes aware of itself and recognizes its identity with the ultimate purpose of the universe. The Absolute is at once present in, and emerging from, every process. Philosophy needs to seek and find reason in every process, however apparently irrational and absurd; unsurprisingly Hegel was interested in history & urges man to seek the absolute in history.
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In Hebbel's dualism individual characters or forms exist only by virtue of having differentiated themselves from the Absolute. Their struggle to maintain themselves as separate entities is a rebellion, the primeval sin of individuation. He uses his historical drams to illustrate the Absolute. His plays are set at pivotal times in history, when the relation of the individual to the Whole is most poignantly manifested. In Judith, Maria Magdalene, Herodes und Mariamne, the prevailing form of the Idea is shown to be on the verge of breaking up. In other plays, Genoveva, Agnes Bernauer, Gyges und sein Ring, the prevailing form of the Idea, although threatened, affirms itself and persists. In both instances, whether the individual is opposed to the Idea or is an instrument of it, the end is tragic, and all individuals meet the same fate, they are crushed and absorbed by the Whole.