Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Pt. 1

It is amazing how so many philosophers have such strange ideas. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was one of these philosophers. He defied Aristotle's law of non-contradiction (something cannot be "A" and "not A" at the same time). He whole philosophy revolved around the idea of infinity, and the numerous contradictions in it (infinity meaning "everything" to Hegel). Because infinity includes everything, it IS everything, reasoned Hegel (for example, infinity includes both even and odd numbers, male and female, right and wrong, etc.). Another one of his beliefs was that because infinity has contradictions, infinity could be applied to the everyday. For example, when two political parties are opposed to each other, and one is obliterated, the remaining party (because it still contains contradictions) will separate into two parties. This will go on into... infinity! Therefore, everything was constantly improving (after all, half of the remaining contradictions in politics would be removed every time a political party vanished), but it would take forever to come to a perfect state, because the number of contradictions are infinite. One of the strangest things he believed in was the Weltgeist. Translated, the Weltgeist means "the universal mind at work in the world". Hegel believed that the universal mind was the thing that created history by "bodying forth... the entire content of itself in order to "become conscious of what itself was". Hegel himself believed that HE knew what the universal mind was, and said that the universal mind had just come to a knowledge of what itself was. He therefore believed that he was the embodyment of the universal mind. Strange. If only all these philosophers took a second (or even a first) look at the Bible for their answers...

The Louisiana Purchase

Although President Thomas Jefferson was extremely strict about being constitutional, and was against the Alien and Sedition acts, he overstepped his bounds as president more than once. Spain had unofficially given all their holdings in North America to France, and Napoleon Bonaparte, who had given up on colonies after his failed conquest of Haiti, offered the territory known as the Louisiana Purchase for $15,000,000. He made the offer to the president. However, within the constitution, it was not the duty of the executive, but of the legislative branch to decide the matter. Constitutional or not, Jefferson snatched up the deal, half-heartedly presenting it before both houses after the fact. He claimed that his actions came from necessity rather than principle. In truth, it seemed wise to do, and there are probably not many who would have not acted the same way in Jefferson's position, but we must stop and ask ourselves whether he was fulfilling his obligation to the people and the constitution under which he held office. Even though it gave America a great deal of land and opportunity to expand, it was a violation of the constitution, the document each president is bound to obey.

The Alien And Sedition Acts

At the beginning of the Adams administration, the Alien and Sedition acts were passed by Congress. These four acts (one of which, the Alien Enemies Act, is still in use today), enabled the presidents to deport any non-citizen and made it a crime to criticize the government. Although these acts may have seemed harmless (in a nation full of illegal aliens, they might even seem helpful), they were unconstitutional, limited freedom of speech, and gave the executive branch far too much power. Both Virginia and Kentucky responded, protesting that these acts were unconstitutional, and that the state governments (not the judiciary branch) should judge whether a law was constitutional or not. Even if a law is helpful in a specific situation, I still believe it should be checked against the guidelines set forth in our constitution, otherwise our freedoms given to us in this government will disintegrate. If only all our laws were in line with the constitution which we call our own.

Deism: A World of Inconsistency

As the world began to be discovered, a new worldview emerged. Deism. Because of the many natural laws that had just been discovered, deists believed that the world operated like a very large and intricate clock. This "clock" had been invented in the beginning by God, and then left. Alone. Deists believed that God was not sovereign, not providental and uncaring about human affairs. We are just "gears" in the clock, run completely by the laws of cause and effect.

At the same time as Deism was taking root, men began to rely more on their own reason to understand the world around them than ever before. Deism taught that man can know all about God and the universe by reason alone, with divine revelation being impossible and thus unreliable. Alexander Pope(a deist), unintentionally showed a flaw in deism in one of his poems. He stated that the world is like a vast piece of clockwork, but at the same time he says that we cannot discern it. How then can we know it works on its own like a clock? It is an inconsistency that can only be resolved if we truly can never know what the universe is like, or if there is another way to obtain knowledge.

In another of his poems, Pope reveals another flaw. Since God made the world as is, and God is good and just, all that happens must be just! Yet deists are very interested in ethics, which must cease to exist if all is good!

Deism, because it was so unstable, only lasted about 70 years. It was preceded by Theism and succeded by naturalism. Man had begun to fall away from God and rely on his own reason, and the result was a worldview that was inconsistent, confused and chaotic.

Kant

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher. A philosopher who had almost all the answers...almost. Today I read a bit about his beliefs and teachings. He believed that we are born knowing good and evil (moral law), that humans are meant (not are, but are meant) to be perfect, and that a perfectly just God must exist (he proclaimed it as a "postulate of his system", something necessary in order for him to exist). Kant was very close to the truth. Close, but not there. He believed that humans had to achieve perfection, not through a miracle, but through an eternity of trying, "an endless progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection". He further believed that when doing good, man should not do it because of promised reward, but because of hard, cold duty. Rack up another philosopher who knew all the right things but came to very wrong conclusions. If only he had stopped trying to figure things out on his own and went to the one source where he could have found all the answers.