Hegel myths: Hegel, the Anti-Empirist?

Someone wrote me:

I've got the two compliments this week: ascriptions to Leibnitz and Hegel, not a bad company indeed. If seriously, i do not buy intellectual utopias of both; my intellectual intention is alike, but my way of thinking, approach, method are absolutely different: much closer to such empiricist as Hume, than notable rationalists: L and H.

I think that you are wrong in your statement about Hegel and Leibniz when you want to imply that they were not scientific or ignoring facts or the like. Both were up-to-date with the science of their time (Leibniz was probably the last philosopher who worked productive in most sciences and Hegel was probably the last philosopher who knew most of the knowledge / science of his time).

They also share a similar fate in that both were victims of very successful bad mouth campaigns against their philosophy which were more backed by bad will and lack of knowledge of their philosophy than by facts.

Regarding Hegel, it is now state of the art of scientific Hegel research that Hegel was aware of the science of his day ( See for his Philosophy of Nature: Philosophy of Nature (Books), and, in more details, for all parts of the System: Bücher zu Hegel - 40 KB, but in German) and that he rightly criticized misconceptions in the thoughts of his days, e.g. the use of the Calculus by the Newtonians of his time.

Many myths exist about a supposed anti-empirical Hegel's.

a) in the literature of some bad informed scientists (in fact Neo Kantians) of the 19th century the key myth in this tradition is that Hegel in his habilitation proclaimed that the planet Ceres (between Mars and Jupiter) was not allowed to exist. Nearly all is wrong in this myth: Ceres was known in public only after Hegel's habilitation, which was in big parts a correct critique of some shaky aspects of the original Newton theory and only in its last two pages tried to find a formula which would meet the known planets of his days (For more details see Prof. Neuser's extensive comments on Hegel's habilitation). As Hösle rightly says (in Hegels System), Hegel's errors in his Philosophy of Nature usually are grounded in that he relied too much in the shaky state of the science of his days and their empirical data.

b) Marxist folklore / propaganda also claim to "know" the anti-empirical Hegel. The fact is that Marx at his best followed the same direction as Hegel: from the facts to the rational concept and from there back to the facts, as any good science will do.

He relied heavily on Hegel in his methodology while wrongly claiming he did "reverse him on his head" (IMHO Marx only made his mistakes by himself, every time when he ignored a key part of Hegel).

For a proof of this claim see Hegel's "epistemology" in his Encyclopedia part 3, paragraphs 440-468 in the 3rd edition of 1830, the part called "the theoretical spirit" within the "psychology" within the "subjective spirit". (There exists a good -German- comment from Güßbacher of that part)

Theoretical Marxism has suffered a lot when Marxists after Marx took his statement of "turning Hegel on his head" serious and developed much inferior epistemological and other philosophical theories (diamat, histomat, mirroring etc).

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