In this chapter, the author presents the Marx-Hegel dialogue, a retracing of Hegel's system of philosophy and Marx's criticism of the absolute notion of Hegel's system of philosophy. Of particular importance is the emphasis placed on the nature of historical reality and the essence of alienation which arises in humans during periods of societal change. In this chapter, attention is drawn to the important role of philosophy in guiding the society to rethink the ontological and anthropological importance of human beings and the creation of new forms of life with a unique non-biological ontological basis.
TopBackground
The discussion on the philosophical aspects of cyborgization of man and social relations in the era of scientific humanism as naturalism stems from the New Age understanding of thought and being of entities and Hegel’s synthesis of both this relation and the overall philosophical tradition into systematic knowledge of the absolute idea as the substance-subject of world events and thought. The philosophers operating in the post-Hegel era, following Hegel’s philosophy as the absolute science of absolute spirit (the absolute idea) which encompasses everything in its essence and existence, were faced with the question of whether it is possible to think in philosophical terms after Hegel. In order to answer this question, this book will seek to establish a dialogue of post-Hegel scholars trying to make a radical departure from the tradition of metaphysically-based thought, preparing for its end and the inception of a possible transmetaphysical thought. Marx’s expectations that the abolition of form and realization of Hegel’s philosophy in a non-philosophical reality of the world will elevate this reality onto the level of a self-aware subject of world history who enables freedom, humanism and naturalism of man, perpetuating into scientific history1, in which being means to be established by the scientific work as the subject, which is its own subject-object, whose form is the substance-subject and man, an item and the means of its self-confirmation.
The philosophical dialogue about the final frontiers of philosophy as metaphysics leads us to two questions:
- 1.
When will the supply of human beings and natural resources run out?; and
- 2.
When will we stop to passively accept the ubiquity of the world of science and technology and its rationalizing mind and awaken from the deep slumber of metaphysics to reach an epoch of new, other and different kind of thinking and living?
In the depths of philosophy as metaphysics there lingers a “solution” of the current problems of civilization of science and technology, of scientific humanism as naturalism. As we shall see in our research, the powers of the scientific and technological mind can be opposed by a way of thinking which illuminates the very essence of cyborgizing realization of life, man, nature, and society, as well as the ideologized anthropocentric and transhumanist ethics.
Top2.1 Hegel’S System Of Philosophy
We begin the discussion about Hegel's philosophy with his thoughts from the foreword to the second edition of Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences:
Free and genuine thought is inwardly concrete; hence it is Idea, and in all its universality it is the Idea or the Absolute. The science of it is essentially a system, since what is concretely true is so only in its inward self-unfolding and in taking and holding itself together in unity, i.e., as totality. Only through the distinguishing, and determination of its distinctions, can what is concretely true be the necessity of these distinctions and the freedom of the whole. (Hegel, 1991, pp. 38-39)
From his earliest works, Hegel has focused on the issues of methodology, truth, freedom, and the philosophy of history, through The Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic, to his more mature approaches to philosophy as systematic knowledge in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. In this monograph, we are interested in those aspects of Hegel’s philosophy which approach the ontological structure of history as the immanent structure of historical action, through which the absolute spirit as the substance subject of everything reaches self-consciousness, the absolute truth and freedom in the scientific history. We shall use the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences to map out Hegel’s system of philosophy, as it contains all key ingredients of Hegel’s entire system.
In §14 of the Encyclopaedia, Hegel claims: