Before sampling some of the treasures, I must register three objections: one unessential, the other two less so. Bern, in the eighteenth century, was not a ‘Canton’ - it became that in 1848 - but a sovereign state. And the French spelling ‘Berne’ is not used in the German-speaking Bern. Many repetitions of the same mistake do not make it more correct. Secondly, the author has taken over from Theodor Haering his contention that the unifying interest of the young Hegel (...) was his concern for popular education. If there is one realm of value which Hegel did not cultivate, it would be just that. If one wants to know what it is for a man to concern himself with Volkserziehung, then he must get acquainted with Pestalozzi, who was at the height of his activity when Hegel resided in Switzerland. He did not notice him. In Glockner’s Hegel Lexicon there are only two references to Pestalozzi, both of them irrelevant. When Hegel speaks of education, it is always the humanistic and philosophical education of intellectuals. Finally, the author is aware of my criticism of the nineteenth century translation of ‘Verstand’ by ‘understanding’, and of ‘Vernunft’ by ‘reason’. But he ignores it and clings to the traditional nineteenth century mistake. But the equivalent of ‘understanding’ - hallowed perhaps by Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding - is nevertheless not ‘der Verstand’ but ‘das Verstehn’ - the felt apprehension of values or their lack in other souls. ‘Verstand’, in Hegel, is always ‘reason’, as defined by formal logic, and ‘Vernunft’ is never ‘reason’, but always self-conscious or reflective comprehensiveness. (shrink)

Becoming is interpreted by various sciences. The exact sciences, physics, and chemistry, interpret this universal becoming or change of all things on the model of mathematical equations. In such an equation of quantities or magnitudes, one side always balances the other. We call such a process “circular”. Numbers may be subdivided or contracted, they may change their places or positions, but the sum total of the whole equation remains immutably the same. In this manner mechanics constructs change as a change (...) of positions of unchanging particles in a continuous but divisible space and in a continuous but divisible time. Chemistry constructs qualitative change as a change of unchanging elements in such a fashion that the sum total of the elements involved in such transactions is always completely accounted for. But in the twentieth century becoming entered these closed systems. There are no unchanging atoms now, and no unchanging chemical elements. Both the physical atom and the chemical element, thought immutable before, are now seen to disintegrate, to radiate, to change their character according to their position in the “field” of energy in which they occur. (shrink)