I’m still plowing through Richardson’s biography of William James, and came across a comment on Hegel that really struck me. Hegel, in a gross oversimplification, believed that history is a series of conflicts, directed by the Geist (spirit) inentrixably toward freedom – thesis, antithesis, synthesis. All conflicts lead toward a positive end of global freedom. As Hegel wrote, “The history of the world [Zeitgeist] is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
Link: InfoWorld
