 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
Oddly enough, for some reason which Hegel never divulged, the temporal process of history repeats the logical development of the dialectic. It might be thought, since the metaphysic professes to apply to all Reality, that the temporal process which parallels it would be cosmic, but not a bit of it: it is purely terrestrial, confined to recorded history, and (incredible as this may seem) to the history that Hegel happened to know. Different nations, at different times, have embodied the stages of the Idea that the dialectic had reached at those times. ... The Greeks and Romans got rather further along the list of categories, but all the late stages have been left to the Germans, who, since the time of the fall of Rome, have been the sole standard-bearers of the Idea, and had already in 1830 very nearly realized the Absolute Idea.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Bertrand Russell: Philosophy and Politics, (1947)
Reprinted in: Unpopular Essays, 1950
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