Hegel changes “truth”

Until Hegel, all philosophers had thought in terms of thesis and antithesis.  If a certain thing was true, then the opposite was not true.  In morals, if a thing was right, the opposite was wrong, and so on.  This “antithetical” thinking was the method by which people approached the question of truth and knowing.

Hegel suggested instead that philosophers should think in terms of thesis and antithesis, but with the answer always being a synthesis (or combination) of the two.  In doing so, he changed the very method by which rationalist philosophers tried to arrive at truth.  Moral truth, for example, would no longer be what is right, but an ever ‘progressing’ blend of right and wrong.  This Hegelian ‘dialectic’ was the basis of Marx’s ideas.  It is also the basis of what today is craftily called “progressive” politics.

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