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Infinite Errors…

Hegel, Absolute Idealism, Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxism

Richard Schutte
8 min readSep 14, 2024

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“Hegel thought he was defending the Spirit, but caught himself in the most infinite errors ever seen, and incalculably harmed the cause of the Spirit” …

– Giuseppe Capograssi

The Theatre of the Absurd – our Modern and Post-Modern World, which is increasingly decoupled from Reality, can be traced back to the Age of Reason – the Cult of Reason – the emergence of – Temples of Reasonand — Cult of Supreme Being.

The Awakening of Man — a Nietzschean Übermensch and a Will to Power.

The death of God and the rise of the Phenomenon of the Will.

The endemic embracement by a Globalist Secular Liberal Orthodoxy of the Theology of Marxism.

“The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself”…

— Karl Marx

Hegel and Absolute Idealism

“Reason is negative and dialectical because it resolves determinations of understanding into nothing; it is positive because it generates the universal and comprehends the particular therein”…

— Hegel, Science of Logic

Hegel’s notion of Absolute Idealism was not only based on the rationality of Man but posits that Reality is an unfolding of a rational, universal process, the “Absolute.

The culmination of the journey of Spirit (Geist) toward self-consciousness (a certainty of unconditional self-knowing) and understanding of Reality as a unified, rational organic whole.

An all-encompassing emergent Reality that manifests itself through history, nature, and human consciousness.

An Absolute Knowing that Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit presents in three modes: art, religion, and philosophy.

Oneness between the experiencing Agent and the Ground of experience.

The Object known is the Subject who knows.

“Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer”…

— Heinz von Foerster

The integration of Idealism and Materialism – the Observer and the Observed .

“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality”…

— David Bohm

The emergence of an Absolute Self — an Actualisation of Existence.

The ultimate unification of mind and matter.

“The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe – even a positivist one – remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world” …

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Atheism, Secularism, Marxism, and the emergence of a New Totalitarianism

“Western society realises the essence of Marxism: radical atheism and materialism, internationalism and universal non-belonging, the primacy of praxis and the death of philosophy, the domination of production and the universal manipulation of nature”…

– Augusto del Noce

As outlined in Reality Beyond Thought – The Limits of Thought – the orientation of Western Philosophical thought towards the Primacy of Human Consciousness of Man not only ultimately led to the deconstruction of Modernity via the ideas of Post-Modernity (a contextual relativism that rejected concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth), but also led to Modern and Post-Modern Society redefining the nature of Reality.

“Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible” …

– Jean Baudrillard

“Eric Voegelin defined totalitarianism with the apparently very simple formula: “the prohibition of asking questions”…

-Augusto del Noce

A New Totalitarianism where questions that challenged the prevailing progressive liberal intellectual orthodoxy could no longer be asked.

“Totalitarianism and secularism are inseparable … the totalitarian danger can present itself today in a new form, more dangerous because it does not call itself such” …

- Augusto del Noce

A will to power and a Post-Truth Reality imposed by force and social, cultural and political transformation– the Simulacrum, HyperReality, HyperNormalisation, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality.

“The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought, whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility — based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men — is in danger whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion”…

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

A Reality where these Modern intellectual ideas would ultimately lead to the endemic embracement of a Theology of Marxism, Scientific Gnosticism (Scientism), the notion of Historical Materialism, the emergence of Trans Humanism, Artificial General Intelligence, Hegel’s Second Nature, Socialism, Communism, Fascism (Dengism and Corporatism), and ultimately a New Totalitarianism.

“Marx’s idea is that materialism, in order to be consistent, must forgo presenting itself as a philosophy of comprehension and must interpret thought not as revelation but as activity that transforms reality” …

-Augusto del Noce

The Fundamental Role of Truth

“Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question” …

– Charles Sanders Peirce

The emergence of a Post-Truth Society and Post-Truth Education anchored in the Theology of Marxism ( Man as God) and a Will to Power.

It also resulted in an emergent Legitimation Crisis as our leaders and institutions could no longer navigate a complex emergent World.

A Reality that was mind-dependent and grounded in the Primacy of Human Consciousness.

A failure to recognise the fundamental relationship between the Contingent Being of Man ( the created ) and the Necessary Being of God (the creator) – the Logos.

A failure to recognise that a serious education required God.

A failure to recognise the central role of Truth in revealing Reality.

Truth is the guiding north star that radiates outwards from the individual’s inner soul to the family to the city to the state.

Truth as the essence of just law.

“To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law”…

– Martin Luther King Jr.

“I believe in order to understand”…

– Saint Augustine

Truth is the recognition of Reality and it was through the Gift of Reason – a combination of Faith and Reason as explored by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas — that Man had the innate capacity to reveal the Truth, Knowledge and the essence of Reality.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is”…

St. Thomas Aquinas– St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

“Truth is exact correspondence with reality”…

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Metaphysics is the Science of Reality (the Study of Being) and Truth is the correspondence of one’s Beliefs to Reality.

Truth and the Nature of Reality — Laws, Legitimacy and Power

Giuseppe Capograssi – a distinguished 20th-century Italian philosopher of law – understood the fundamental role of truth in providing a Society with a sense of coherence as to the Nature of Being.

“Authority begins to live in the individual; as truth extends its domination, that is, puts its order in reality, authority rises, and, from the individual, extends its order to the family, and from the family to the city and the state” …

-Guiseppe Capograssi

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law”…

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Truth’s role in fostering a culture that provides the legitimacy of authority.

“Authority is truth as life and force of reality”…

– Guiseppe Capograssi

“It is modern times that need eternal ideas, not the other way around” …

- Augusto del Noce

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Richard Schutte
Richard Schutte

Written by Richard Schutte

Innovation, Intrapreneurship, Entrepreneurship, Complexity, Leadership & Community Twitter: @complexityvoid

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