Hegelian Unity in Western Philosophy

In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel argues that “the history of philosophy is a
biography of the human spirit in its development over the course of the centuries (Haney 4)”.
Thus, successive philosophies do not conflict with previous ones; they grow and develop
them. In the philosophers that have been discussed in this course, there exists a unity with
regards to the subjects that they covered. This paper examines how this unity is exhibited in
the manner in which the philosophers that have been discussed in class dealt with the
concepts of truth, being, and morality.
Regarding truth, Plato holds that it is represented by abstract ideals called Forms.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle took an empirical approach of finding truth. Despite slight differences,
Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas believed that truth is acquired through exercise of intellect.
Descartes argued that everything should be doubted until there is conclusive evidence for
given truth. Thus, all of these philosophers extensively dealt with the subject of truth with
each succeeding philosopher examining points of agreement and disagreement with the
preceding philosopher.
The continuity of Western philosophy can also be seen in the treatment of the concept
of being and morality. On being, Plato held that unchanging world of ideas is the primary
kind of being. For Aristotle, the principle of all being is the changing world of substance. For
Thomas Aquinas, God is the primary being. On morality, Aristotle and Plato promoted virtue

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ethics founded on knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Kant developed duty-based
ethics whereby the wrongness or rightness of actions depends on whether one is fulfilling
their duty or not and not on consequences of actions. John Locke, like Kant, promoted duty-
based ethics.
The examples that have been provided in this paper prove that Hegel is right that there
is a unity of tradition in western philosophy. The philosophers that have been discussed in
class often worked on the same ideas, each building on ideas developed by a previous
philosopher.

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Works Cited

Haney, William S. “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel” Salem Press Biographical
Encyclopedia, 2020.