A few selections from Hegel, “Oldest System Programme of German Idealism” (1796; name given by Franz Rosenzweig in 1913); from Simon Critchley, Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy (Oxford, 2001)
“I should like to give wings again to our physics which is progressing slowly and laboriously via experiments. Thus – if philosophy gives the Ideas and experience the data we can finally achieve the grand physics which I expect from later epochs. It does not appear that our present physics could satisfy a creative spirit which is like ours, or like ours should be.”
“there is no Idea of the State because the state is something mechanical, just as little as there is an Idea of a machine. Only that which is an object of freedom is called an Idea . We must, then, also go beyond the state! - For every state must treat free people as a piece of machinery; and it should not do this; thus it must come to an end .”
“Finally the Idea which unites all, the idea of beauty, the word taken in the higher platonic sense. I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, which embraces all Ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are brothers only in beauty – The philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as the poet. People without aesthetic sense are our pedantic philosophers. The philosophy of spirit is an aesthetic philosophy. One cannot be spiritual in anything, one cannot even reason spiritually about history – without aesthetic sense. It should here become apparent what it is that people lack who understand no Ideas – and admit faithfully enough that everything is a mystery to them as soon as it goes beyond charts and resgisters.”
“Poetry thereby gains a higher dignity, at the end it again becomes what it was at the beginning – teacher of mankind; for there is no philosophy, no history any more, poetry alone will survive all the remaining sciences and arts.”
There is a need for a “sensuous religion”: “Not only the masses but also the philosopher needs monotheism of reason of the heart, polytheism of imagination and o art, this is what we need! First of all I shall speak of an Idea which, as far as I know, has never occurred to anyone – we must have a new mythology, but this mythology must be in the service of the Ideas, it must become a mythology of reason.”
“Before we make the Ideas aesthetic, i.e., mythological, they are of no interest to the people and on the other hand before mythology is reasonable the philosopher must be ashamed of it. Thus enlightened and unenlightened must finally shake hands, mythology must become philosophical and the people reasonable, and philosophy must become mythological in order to make the philosophers sensuous. Then eternal unity will reign among us. Never the despising gaze, never the blind trembling of the people before its wise men and priests. Only then can we expect the same development of all powers, of the individual as well as all individuals. No power will be suppressed any more, then general freedom and equality of spirits will reign! – A higher spirit sent from heaven must found this new religion among us, it will be the last, greatest work of mankind.”