Why Schopenhauer Hated Hegel

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Schopenhauer and Hegel on Napoleon Bonaparte
Schopenhauer on History versus Philosophy

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Where does the hate come from?
04:05: The story of the horse
06:50 Hegel’s “science”
13:00 Hegel’s writing style
16:42 Hegel’s philosophy
23:05 Conclusion

SCHOPENHAUER'S WORKS:
Schopenhauer’s work is notoriously for constantly and repeatedly dunking on Hegel.

He said Hegel’s philosophy stupefied an entire generation, maintained that posterity would look down on Hegel as a “monument to German stupidity”, providing later generations with endless laughter. His “school of dulness”, “center of ignorance” was the greatest example of the corruption of academic philosophy.

Where does this hatred come from? Generally, it’s agreed that Schopenhauer hates Hegel for personal reasons, but also for philosophical reasons.

The two men had a bit of an altercation when Schopenhauer had to pass an exam in order to teach at the University of Berlin. Hegel asked him a question on “animal functions” but used the term wrongly. Schopenhauer corrected him, and the professor of medicine and biology concurred. This little incident proved to Schopenhauer that Hegel was a charlatan, unable to use a philosophical term in the correct manner.

Another possible source of hatred was Schopenhauer’s envy: we know he deeply desired fame but was largely ignored up until the very end of his life. Contrast this with Hegel, who was a philosophical superstar and world-famous almost immediately.

But philosophically, there are disagreements too. Hegel’s philosophy hinges too much upon history. For Schopenhauer, history was the polar opposite of philosophy: it focuses on the particular instead of on the general. For Schopenhauer, all of history is simply a manifestation through time of one underlying Will, with the Will itself being unchanging. Philosophy is the study of this Will. History is the study of the appearance, or manifestation. In this framework, Hegel makes an unforgivable category-error: he thinks he’s doing philosophy, but he’s actually a historian.
He also disagreed with Hegel’s general outlook. That history is the progressive realization of a fundamentally good ideal; history being the march of the Geist as it unfolds itself and comes to know itself, ultimately resulting in total human freedom. Schopenhauer disagreed that the world is going in a particular direction (being only a manifestation of something unchanging) but also he disagreed with the implied optimism of this philosophy of history. We’re not marching towards some ideal, we’re just here to suffer, forever and ever. Existence has no goal beyond this, let alone some rational Geist permeating everything.

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[erenozdemir]

To be honest, Schopenhauer is not the kind of a man who would "disagree" with someone just because he dislikes him/her. There are some examples where he praises people who he dislikes.

[michaelpastorkovich]

As Wittgenstein says: "Anything that can be said can be said clearly." Schopenhauer's critique of Hegel is spot-on.

[orktv]

A few years ago I decided to read some 19th century philosophy for the first time. I've always been interested in philosophy, and I don't mind reading through chapters of tough material, but when I got to Hegel I had to put it down after just a few pages. It was just too incomprehensible. This would have curbed my entire faith and interest in philosophy, if it wasn't that there was a text by Schopenhauer right afterwards. What a breath of fresh air. His thoughts are actually clear, and when I searched some background info on the guy and read about his beef with Hegel, I was laughing out loud.

[noah_d_turtle]

All geese have 2 legs, you have 2 legs, therefore you are a goose. Schopie was a comic genius, and I’m a goose. 😂

[nonserviam]

I can't help but actually laugh whenever I hear Schopenhauer on Hegel.
I don't know why I find it so hilarious.
A vivid and searing roasting.

[dimosthenistserikis]

Well to be fair, it was Hegel who ruined Schopenhauer’s academic career, be it that all students abandoned his classes to go attend Hegel’s. So there is definitely an element of personal resentment hidden in his critique. Ironically enough, Hegel ultimately died of a pandemic that Schopenhauer foresaw and abandoned the city.

[esmolol]

Hegel was important because he made us realize that there were real geniuses out there, schopenhauer was one of them.

[MustafaKulle]

I can sense Slavoj Zizek coming to Hegel's defense right now. XD

[christiangraulau]

I think it’s strange how Hegel being a bad writer was conflated with him being a bad thinker. Using logic itself it is self-evidently clear that even if he was ignorant on scientific issues, Hegel wasn’t just a sophist. And ironically Schopenhauer’s hatred of him was part of a dialectic.

The point of the dialectic is that it doesn’t even matter if Hegel was wrong on a bunch of stuff, because it is just part of the dialectical process

[eddiebeato]

Superb analysis! Thank you for explaining the reasonings behind Schopenhauer’s well-known acrimonious attacks on Hegel as a philosopher.

[mariocampos]

After trying to understand Hegel's philosophy, I acquired a deep sympathy for Schopenhauer.. If the hegelian philosophers are unable to reach a minimum concensus on what their master's writings really meant, it is completely fair to ask if they actually meant something. Moreover, if the purpose of the Geist is the realization of the human potential, our potential seems to be to become piles of ashes on black smoking ball nowdays known as Earth. Hegelianism seems the philosophy of wishful thinking. And if I had misunderstood it all, that's Ifault of his terrible writing.

[nicolaswhitehouse]

I've found Hegel very tough to read unlike Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. Perhaps, it has something to do with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who were inspired to write in the classical french way, which is to write an idea as concise as possible.

[Mahlerweber]

Liked video. Also, he/Schopenhauer indirectly prophesized in his writings he wouldn't make it until late in life. He mentions Locke and Hume (icons of his) as examples of philosophers whose writings weren't truly acknowledged until they were over 50.

[stefanb]

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Deleuze.... hating Hegel is just how you get into the philosophers' circle of cool kids.

[batbite_]

Hegel's view of natural science is expressed best in the second part of his encyclopedia and in the first part of the chapter on self-consciousness in his Phenomenology. His second book encyclopedia is generally disregarded and hardly read whereas the part on life in the Phenomenology is really well done and also well read.

[csdqrod]

Schopenhauer is only great philosopher for those, who do not understand philosophy at all. So it makes sense, that for him and his followers Hegel seems like a nonsense. Those people think, that if they have head on their shoulders and sometimes think, they should be able to grasp any philosophical idea or even create their own ideas without any effort at all. Contrary to that, everyone is sure, that in order to make a pair of shoes you need to learn to do it properly. Philosophy is a science. You need time, effort and patience to get a hold of it.

[MegaLuros]

Honestly I had the same problem with many eminent philosophers (Derrida, Nieztche, Camus, Lacan, Foucault and others) that Schoppenhauer had with Hegel. I just don't understand their sentences. And when I go read commentary on it, I keep up wondering if it's just not people trying to make sens of non-sens, just as religious people try to derive meaning from the their scriptures via Barnum effect. But at the same time, the sheer amount of respect that philosophers have for those big names make me question my own competence to assess them. After all, they spent more time reading them than I did, and it's really hard to find discordant voices on those names amongst philosophers. So I just come to the conclusion that I am wrong and I must need to spend more time reading them.

[charliebridges]

I don't understand why people say that Hegel is difficult to understand. After all, he is simply saying that the destruction of an idea generates a new idea when that same destruction is itself destroyed, and that this movement governs the forms through which being appears either as speculation or experience. Furthermore, this process is total, since the appearance of any idea whatever depends on the reality of the Absolute Idea, or the idea of idea itself, which can only be the idea of Total Reality. Total Reality must include not only all possible and actual forms of experience, but all possible thought. People get into trouble with Hegel because of a failure to understand the obvious fact that Total Reality must include not only all experience but all speculation. What Hegel is saying is, of necessity, abstract, since the correctly observes that speculation is part of reality. But its really pretty obvious and simple if anyone thinks about it for a moment.

[LaloVox]

Hey, man. I truly love your content. But... Is there anyway you can normalize the sound volume of the videos so it gets a little louder? That'd be awesome. Cheers! PD: And yes, of course I would personally like to see more videos on the Hegel vs Schopenhauer matter.

[_oshiri-]

Schopenhauer's hatred of Hegel was mainly because he confused the being-in-itself of things with concepts, concepts only have a mediate relationship to the essence of the world, as concepts are derived from intuitive perception. He was also far more accurate in his scientific anticipations, for example equating matter with causality, and principium individuations which both Schrodinger and Einstein took note of. Furthermore he first and foremost and saw the brain as a mechanism of survival rather then thinking as most german idealist dogmatists thought.