#hegel

#hegel

When I was 16 years old, I sat in a crowded assembly hall on a wobbly plastic chair, and I listened to Mr. Smith tell me why I should study history. All of the teachers had to do it. "Sell your subject," the headmaster had said. "Make the kids want to pick it." Some teachers did so with the grudging monotone of the forced and underpaid employee. Some did it with the exhausting energy of a fanatic.

For Hegel, intelligence is always artificial, with nothing natural about understanding, consciousness, or intelligence itself, challenging the idea of innate behavior versus learned actions.