Hegel taught that history moved forward in something he called the 'Dialectic' (covered below), and that the Geist is the sum of human experience (since humans are the only things with spirit). Something socially acceptable in one culture may be a taboo in another (think wearing shoes in the house), and a truth in one era may be a crime in another (think slavery). As a tie-in to epistemology, Hegel wrote that truth was absolutely subjective and that there were no absolutes in any sense of the word when concerning truth. Hegel believed that our unwitting hero was used by the Geist and then was disposed of, not to be used again once his purpose was complete. In his The Phenomenology of Spirit ( Phänomenologie des Geistes), Hegel argues that the Geist ( ghost, spirit) is not a physical thing nor a transcendental thing, but a force that mediates in history through great men like Napoleon. The World Spirit is one of the main founders of woo-filled theories like the New Age movement. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the Geist increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value. According to Hegel, history is the story of the Geist gradually coming to the consciousness of itself. It's the same with rivers - they become ever broader as they get nearer the sea. “ ”Hegel claimed that the Geist is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself.
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