Abstract

In this book the author aims to single out in Hegel’s work what is not speculative, what refers to phenomena found in interpersonal relationships, phenomena vindicated by our own experience. His main purpose is to criticize the onesided teleology of Hegel’s as well as of Marx’s philosophy of history; he attempts to show that both are based upon a wrong anthropology. The book covers phenomenology of the human predicament. The author analyses this predicament in terms of an open system of polarities: the subjective vs. the objective, subjectivism vs. objectivism, egoism vs. altruism, the private vs. the public spheres, etc. What is real is constituted in the ‘dimensions’ between these ‘poles’. We ‘live’ the dimensions, not the static, isolated extremes. The realistic meaning of ‘Dialectic’ is the critique of all radicalisms. The dynamic wholeness of man’s practical self–realization can be split into extremes only by faulty theories. The dangerous trend to actualize such extremist theories is based upon a deluded anthropology, i.e., on the delusion that one is able to ‘fix’, to ‘establish’ man in this or that onesided way. Philosophical anthropology supersedes Hegelian dialectical metaphysics and Marxist dialectical antimetaphysics. It is a science–in–the–making.