As an obvious reference to Hegel, it might be interesting to compare briefly the respective views of Heidegger and Hegel on the history of philosophy. As for Heidegger's appreciation of the work of Hegel there can be no question. He refers to him as the only thinker in the West who really thoughtfully experienced the history of thought. Similarly he speaks of him as the first truly philosophical historian of philosophy. Unfortunately, however, in Heidegger's view Hegel understood all the fundamental word of Greek philosophy abstractedly. Hegel was also guilty of reading the pre-Socratics through the eyes of Plato.

In the end their respective views on the history of philosophy are fundamentally different. Hegel's Phänomenologie represents a restaged account of how man came to Spirit. History got Hegel, then, is the knowing, self-mediating (sich vermittelnde) becoming of Spirit as emptied into time. It is the presentation of the slow, staged, process, Galerie von Bildern, showing how men came to Spirit, with the Absolute already present at each and every stage of the process. In fact, history's task in the view of Hegel is to show this process (Bewegung) toward Spirit from the upper standpoint of absolute knowledge. Hegel's view of the history of thought thereby becomes a progressively higher mediation of lower positions in the movement toward the Absolute.

¶ 11:02 PM