The Father of All Pseudothinkers: Hegelian Philosophy as Pseudoscience
Hegel's philosophy is criticized as meaningless jargon that has been misapplied to history, leading to pseudo-scientific ideologies such as Marxism. The concept warns against using complex language to mask lack of empirical grounding and advocates for statistical literacy.
THE IDEA
Category: mental_model Secondary: ['heuristic'] Difficulty: intermediate Domains: philosophy, statistics, science
The Father of All Pseudothinkers
It is hard to resist discussion of artificial history without a comment on the father of all pseudothinkers, Hegel. Hegel writes a jargon that is meaningless outside of a chic Left Bank Parisian café or the humanities department of some university extremely well insulated from the real world. I suggest this passage from the German “philosopher” (this passage was detected, translated, and reviled by Karl Popper):
Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e.—heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten and or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound.
Even a Monte Carlo engine could not sound as random as the great philosophical master thinker (it would take plenty of sample runs to get the mixture of “heat” and “sound.” People call that philosophy and frequently finance it with taxpayer subsidies! Now consider that Hegelian thinking is generally linked to a “scientific” approach to history; it has produced such results as Marxist regimes and even a branch called “neo-Hegelian” thinking. These “thinkers” should be given an undergraduate-level class on statistical sampling theory prior to their release into the open world.
When to use it
When reading academic texts, use this concept to identify arguments that rely on complex vocabulary without clear meaning.
In political analysis, be wary of theories that claim to understand the direction of history without concrete data.
As a student, apply this concept to critically evaluate philosophical systems that are presented as scientific.
Use this concept to recognize when a thinker is using language that is not falsifiable or testable.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Hegel's Obscure Passage on Sound
The quoted text from Hegel's work is an example of language that seems profound but lacks clear, falsifiable meaning. It mixes abstract terms like 'ideality' and 'negation' with physical concepts like sound and heat in a way that is incoherent.
Marxist Regimes as a Consequence
Hegelian thinking, when applied to history as a 'scientific' theory, has been used to justify totalitarian regimes like Marxism. Using complex philosophical frameworks without empirical validation is dangerous.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you distinguish between meaningful philosophical discourse and jargon used to obscure lack of substance?
What are the risks of applying a philosophical framework to history without empirical validation?
How does the Hegelian approach to history compare to scientific approaches that rely on evidence and falsifiability?
Often confused with
References
- The Open Society and Its Enemies — Karl Popper (1945)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Fooled by Randomness The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)