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Fiat vita, pereat veritas Nietzsche's Untimely Reflections on Hegel's Dialectic of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Ares Axiotis
Ares Axiotis*
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Abstract

You will indulge me if I begin with a commonplace. The term “history” is an ambiguous expression which can be taken either in the sense of res gestae or in the sense of rerum gestarum memoria. According to the former meaning, it refers to the phenomenon itself, the past course of human events, whereas, according to the latter meaning, it denotes the representation of this phenomenon.

German allows Hegel to mark the difference in terms of the relation between Geschichte and Historie. He also speaks of “objective” and “subjective” history in this connection. Yet by suppressing the brute opacity of language in favour of its teleological function, he is able to turn a blind eye to history's semiotic double game, the free play between literal and figural meaning within the linguistic sign. Hegel thus propounds the view that identity and difference at the level of the signifier are ultimately recuperated as expressive moments or alienations of the signified, the pure idea of History on its circular journey to itself. Linguistic signs are capable of meaning, according to Hegel, precisely because of their dialectical structure. The proliferation of meaning in language through the play of words is not random and anarchic but guided systematically by the invisible hand of spirit.

Type
Hegel and the End of History
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 12 , Issue 1-2: number 23/24 , 1991 , pp. 61 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1991

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References

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