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5 Preface On the threshold of new quests and achievements, in the struggle for spiritual purity,a for authenticity of experience and objectivity of cognition , it is natural for philosophy to turn to its past in order to find inspiration , and a valedictory, in its greatest works. The genuinely great and significant always remains a hearth for spirit, capable of lighting new fires and giving a true sign of new, forthcoming triumphs. A work of genius functions like a door for anyone seeking access to the object itself, but one must know how not to screen oneself off from the object with this door, but rather to open it for oneself and for others; to open it in order to begin the struggle for independent and authentic experience and for true, objective knowledge. In this lies the supreme and fundamental task of the history of philosophy. A “renaissance” of Hegelianism might appear strange and incomprehensible at first glance, especially to those who have not followed the fate of German idealism. Indeed, it could appear even to a knowledgeable mind that after the destructive work of Bachmann, Trendelenburg , Haym, Hartmann, and McTaggart; after that profound cooling of interest in Hegel’s philosophy that gradually came to prevail in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century; after the return to Kant took place; and in view of the clear tendency to divide a unified philosophy into a whole series of independent and special disciplines, it would have been difficult to expect a “renaissance” of Hegelianism. Nevertheless, there is such a renaissance, and moreover it is happening not in France, where its “nascence” remains in the future, nor in Italy or England, where interest in Hegel has been growing steadily and increasing in strength since the 1850s and 1860s, but precisely in Germany , which has entirely exhausted its philosophical heritage and is now searching for a creative way out of its objective emptiness. Having visited Germany a quarter of a century ago, the late Prince S. N. Trubetskoi, who placed a very great value on Hegel’s philosophy, pointed out that Hegel is little studied there and poorly understood. And it is hard not to recognize that even now little has changed for the better in this regard. Without even mentioning the multitude of wellknown scholars working in the field of philosophy to whom Hegel remains completely alien (such are the psychologists, the Kantians, the 6 T H E P H I L O S O P H Y O F H E G E L A S A D O C T R I N E O F T H E C O N C R E T E N E S S O F G O D A N D H U M A N I T Y Fichteans, the Friesians, the empiricists, the relativists, and others), but even among those who write about Hegel, and talk about him still more, there are extremely few who have really immersed themselves in the historical-philosophical study of his system. The older generation consciously chose not to deal with him, although it absorbed much from the philosophical atmosphere of his time; while the younger generation was not yet able to find an independent approach to his philosophy and work their way into the structure of his ideas. That is why a “renaissance” of Hegelianism finds everyone in a certain state of helplessness, as it were: a deep and inwardly motivated attraction is not matched by a sufficient knowledge of that to which spirit and thought are drawn. People talk and write about Hegel, but they do not have a precise knowledge of what he taught and sought. The literature about him is full of the most curious judgments and confusions; evidently, no one notices that something has been omitted here, that a certain precious entryway has been lost, which must be located again without fail. And only Windelband, with the profound vision and intellectual honesty characteristic of him, pointed out that the new generation has yet to grow into an understanding of this philosophy. What has been lost is an immediate feeling for Hegel’s thought, a vital seeing, together with him, of his world and in his speculative categories and terms. And without such feeling and seeing it is difficult to speak of his ideas and views. For such is one of the fundamental features of all thought of genius, that it cannot be understood by thought alone. And with...

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