Isn Hegelian philosophy just another belief system for True Believers to hold onto absolutely, and without question?
No. Hegel’s philosophy is the philosophy of Reason, and Hegel himself presents his philosophy as a Science. There cannot be a system of thought less close to a “belief system” than the one of Hegel. If for “belief system” one means a form of reliance on an external, unchanging and eternal Truth, whose motto may be summarised as “credo quia absurdum est”, then Hegel’s philosophy offers thousands of proofs of its firm opposition to this sort of irrational fideism. According to Hegel, “the true is the whole” – Truth does not assume the shape of a incorruptible dogma, but it incorporates in itself the negativity of movement, instability, contradiction and change. This is the kernel of Hegel’s dialectical logic. Hegel’s system of thought limits the role of philosophy to the understanding of the present situation and rejects any possibility of predicting the future. It is an “open” system of thought. If for “belief system” one means the naive reliance on man’s immediate ability to interpret
