Schopenhauer on Hegel

<p>Schopenhauer expressed his dislike for the philosophy of his contemporary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel" title="Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel">Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel</a> many times in his published works. The following quotations are typical:</p>

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<dd>If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudophilosophy" title="Pseudophilosophy">pseudo-philosophy</a> paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right.</dd>

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<dd>Further, if I were to say that this summus philosophus [...] scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that whoever could read his most eulogized work, the so-called <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phenomenology_of_Spirit" title="The Phenomenology of Spirit">Phenomenology of the Mind</a></i>, without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital" title="Bethlem Royal Hospital">Bedlam</a>, I should be no less right.<sup id="cite_ref-115" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-115">[115]</a></sup></dd>

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<dd>At first Fichte and Schelling shine as the heroes of this epoch; to be followed by the man who is quite unworthy even of them, and greatly their inferior in point of talent --- I mean the stupid and clumsy charlatan Hegel.<sup id="cite_ref-116" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-116">[116]</a></sup></dd>

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<p>In his Foreword to the first edition of his work <i>Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik</i>, Schopenhauer suggested that he had shown Hegel to have fallen prey to the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc" title="Post hoc ergo propter hoc">Post hoc ergo propter hoc</a></i> fallacy.

Schopenhauer suggested that Hegel's works were filled with "castles of abstraction," and that Hegel used deliberately impressive but ultimately vacuous verbiage.<sup id="cite_ref-orientalia.org_117-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-orientalia.org-117">[117]</a></sup> He also thought that his glorification of church and state were designed for personal advantage and had little to do with the search for philosophical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth" title="Truth">truth</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-orientalia.org_117-1" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-orientalia.org-117">[117]</a></sup> For instance, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Hegelians" title="Right Hegelians">Right Hegelians</a> interpreted Hegel as viewing the Prussian state of his day as perfect and the goal of all history up until then.<sup id="cite_ref-118" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#cite_note-118">[118]</a></sup></p>