![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Let's just say Arthur Schopenhauer wasn't impressed with GWF Hegel, to put it lightly:
I, myself am quite cautious to write Hegel off wholesale without having a better understanding of his work. But I can certainly say this: that I'm usually quite suspicious of philosophers, thinkers, and public intellectuals who are unwilling to express their ideas in something approaching clear language. It almost seems like when they write in a way that is turgid to a fault, they are (a) trying to hide the fact that their ideas are not fact not "all that," (b) they've simply restating the ideas and insights of other thinkers; without actually adding any unique insight of their own and they use garbled language to make their writing sound a lot more impressive (more like grandiose) than it actually is, or (c) they're peddling complete nonsense and they know it; the charlatan intellectual uses garbled prose to dazzle and mystify the credulous reader who is desperate to be in on the next big, great idea; in this sense the charlatan intellectual is the scribal counterpart to the stage magician. The so-called "continental philosophy" which followed Hegel's lead, totally ran with this obscurantist writing method, and then later, the postmodernist pseudo-intellectuals (i.e. mercenary sophists) took even that to a whole new level and created a full-fledged academic BS industry.
On a final note, we should frame this trend in its proper cultural-temporal context. Hegel was a Faustian (see: Spengler) thinker, bar-none. The Faustian psychology renders things like novelty and "progress" to be a virtues in and of themselves. And thus the Faustian intellectual must play this game of continuous verbal one-up-man-ship; the next greatest intellectual "discovery" is always around the corner, and you better be the first one to "find" it! In effect this sort of subconscious pathology ends up degrading both philosophy and the more concrete forms of scholarship. Among the small handful of (brutally) honest Faustian thinkers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, is a big sea of charlatans, hacks, fakers, and flunkies.
"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation."
I, myself am quite cautious to write Hegel off wholesale without having a better understanding of his work. But I can certainly say this: that I'm usually quite suspicious of philosophers, thinkers, and public intellectuals who are unwilling to express their ideas in something approaching clear language. It almost seems like when they write in a way that is turgid to a fault, they are (a) trying to hide the fact that their ideas are not fact not "all that," (b) they've simply restating the ideas and insights of other thinkers; without actually adding any unique insight of their own and they use garbled language to make their writing sound a lot more impressive (more like grandiose) than it actually is, or (c) they're peddling complete nonsense and they know it; the charlatan intellectual uses garbled prose to dazzle and mystify the credulous reader who is desperate to be in on the next big, great idea; in this sense the charlatan intellectual is the scribal counterpart to the stage magician. The so-called "continental philosophy" which followed Hegel's lead, totally ran with this obscurantist writing method, and then later, the postmodernist pseudo-intellectuals (i.e. mercenary sophists) took even that to a whole new level and created a full-fledged academic BS industry.
On a final note, we should frame this trend in its proper cultural-temporal context. Hegel was a Faustian (see: Spengler) thinker, bar-none. The Faustian psychology renders things like novelty and "progress" to be a virtues in and of themselves. And thus the Faustian intellectual must play this game of continuous verbal one-up-man-ship; the next greatest intellectual "discovery" is always around the corner, and you better be the first one to "find" it! In effect this sort of subconscious pathology ends up degrading both philosophy and the more concrete forms of scholarship. Among the small handful of (brutally) honest Faustian thinkers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, is a big sea of charlatans, hacks, fakers, and flunkies.
