{"id":903187,"date":"2026-09-17T16:04:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/?page_id=903187"},"modified":"2026-09-17T16:04:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:04:55","slug":"for-nihilists-everything-is-meaningless-can-hegel-be-ignored","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grundlinien.de\/en\/for-nihilists-everything-is-meaningless-can-hegel-be-ignored\/","title":{"rendered":"For nihilists everything is meaningless and null \u2013 can Hegel then be ignored?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In brief:<\/strong> One can ignore him \u2013 only not on the ground that he did not know the standpoint. Hegel puts it at the beginning: his logic starts with nothing, his Phenomenology<\/em> calls itself the path of despair, and the Groundlines<\/em> describe in \u00a7 5<\/a> precisely the freedom that lets nothing count. The dispute begins only afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hegel begins where nihilism ends<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Other philosophers evade nothingness and look for a new firm ground \u2013 utility, faith, the ought<\/a>. Hegel does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Science of Logic<\/a> begins with pure being<\/a> \u2013 and pure, indeterminate being is not to be distinguished from pure nothing. The whole system sets out from this identity. And the Phenomenology of Spirit<\/a> describes itself as the history in which consciousness loses every certainty it held to be true:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It can therefore be regarded as the path of doubt, or more properly as the path of despair; for what happens on it is not what is usually understood by doubting, a shaking of this or that supposed truth \u2026<\/p>\nPhenomenology of Spirit, Introduction<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The real point at issue: end or motor?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here the paths part. For nihilism, nothingness is the last thing: everything is meaningless, full stop. For Hegel it is negativity<\/a> \u2013 not dead emptiness but that which sets anything in motion at all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[Identity] is only the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; only in so far as something has a contradiction within itself does it move, have drive and activity.<\/p>\nScience of Logic II, Contradiction<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the Logic nothingness is not the last word; the movement between being and nothing is becoming. In Hegel\u2019s language: nihilism is the first half \u2013 the negation. What it overlooks is that this negation negates itself and becomes productive in doing so (determinate negation<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether that is an argument or a confidence is the open question. Hegel does not claim that nothingness is more bearable than it looks. He claims that it is not stable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the philosophy of right in particular<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Because there the standpoint is not merely described but worked through \u2013 and unkindly at that. \u00a7 5<\/a> determines the freedom that repels every content as a limit as \u201ethe boundless infinity of absolute abstraction<\/em>\u201c, and the note says where it leads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It is the freedom of emptiness, which is elevated to actual shape and passion \u2026 in the political as well as the religious sphere the fanaticism of the destruction of every existing social order and the removal of individuals suspected of favoring an order \u2026 Only by destroying something does this negative will have the sense of its own existence.<\/p>\nGroundlines, \u00a7 5<\/a> note<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That is the book\u2019s sharpest objection to its own starting point: the freedom that lets nothing count has no existence except in destroying. Whoever takes nihilism for a private attitude has to answer this passage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What follows is the proposal for how to go on. Abstract right<\/a> (\u00a7 34<\/a> ff.) is the first attempt to fix freedom onto something \u2013 in property<\/a>. Morality<\/a> (\u00a7 105<\/a> ff.) tries it inwardly, in conscience<\/a> \u2013 and fails on the arbitrariness of what conscience holds to be good. Only ethical life<\/a> (\u00a7 142<\/a> ff.) carries: institutions that are nothing other than freedom become objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state<\/a> is in this no given meaning that one is supposed to believe in. \u00a7 4<\/a> expressly calls the system of right \u201ethe world of spirit produced from within itself as a second nature<\/em>\u201c \u2013 made, not found. That is the point at which Hegel\u2019s proposal differs from a fallback on old authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What remains to be examined<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Reading Hegel does not mean giving up nihilism but thinking it through to the end. The question on which everything turns is easy to put and hard to answer: whether the reconciliation<\/a> that stands at the end follows from the course of the matter \u2013 or whether it was presupposed and the course arranged towards it. Whoever reads the book with this question reads it rightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources.<\/strong> Groundlines \u00a7 4<\/a>\u2013\u00a7 7<\/a> (the three moments of the will; \u00a7 5<\/a> note on negative freedom and terror), \u00a7 34<\/a> ff., \u00a7 105<\/a> ff., \u00a7 142<\/a> ff. \u2013 Science of Logic I, first chapter (being, nothing, becoming); Logic II, second book, Contradiction. \u2013 Phenomenology of Spirit, Introduction (the path of despair). \u2013 In the glossary: Negativity<\/a>, Determinate Negation<\/a>, Being<\/a>, Reconciliation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n