李榮添 : 歷史之理性 -- 黑格爾歷史哲學導論述析 ( Hoffmeister, Nisbet)

李榮添 : 歷史之理性 -- 黑格爾歷史哲學導論述析 ( Hoffmeister, Nisbet)
excerpted from Lectures on the Philosophy of World History : Introduction : Reason in History. Hoffmeister ed. tr. by Nisbet.
( Nisbet, page 54-55 )

page 54

1. Given this abstract definition, we can say that world history is the record of the spirit's EFFORT to attain knowledge of what it is in itself.

2. The Germanic nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realise that man is by nature FREE, and that FREEDOM of the spirit is his very essence.

3. World history is the progress of the consciousness of FREEDOM -- a progress whose necessity it is our business to comprehend.

4. ... Our own knowledge that ALL men as suce are FREE, and that man is by nature FREE.

page 55

5. The spirit's consciousness of its freedom ( which is the precondition of the reality of this freedom) has been defined as spiritual reason in its determinate form, hence as the destiny of the spiritual world, and --

since the latter is the substantial world and the physical world is subordinated to it ( or in speculative terminology) as the ULTIMATE END of the world in general.

6. For freedom in itself carries with it the infinite necessity of attaining consciousness -- for freedom, by definition, is self-knowledge-- and hence of realising itself : it is itself the end of its OWN operation, and the sole end of the spirit.

The substance of the spirit is FREEDOM.