Chapter 4

At the start of chapter four he goes into talking about historical change and that is always striving towards something better, something more perfect then the present state it is in. in this way it is unlike nature because nature is a never ending repeated cycle. And new things always remain in the realm of the spirit for history. Humanity is part of history, and we are what makes history what it is, the mere substance; humanity has the actual capacity for change and the drive toward perfecting itself.

Perfection only comes to be through development and he talks about perfectibility being part of the principle of development. This is without purpose or an end and there is no standard for judging itself. Is that because humanity is always, in the grand scheme of things, gaining ground on becoming perfect? He talks about how the spirit uses history and nothing happens due to chance, for the spirit determines history solely. But the spirit stands in the way of itself and strives toward knowing itself but it hides itself from itself. How? Why? And this process is not peaceful as compared to that of organic life.

This history Hegel is talking about comes into existence when rationality appears in consciousness, will, and action. Because from tribal traditions or family memories even though these may have survived, they created nothing substantial, compared to state, laws, and records. How is he talking about language and its relation to history? He says it is the activity of theoretical intelligence in true sense, what does this mean? And wouldn’t the existence of language be enough to take into consideration of what happened before there was a “state”?