ABSTRACT

This chapter considers Georg W. F. Hegel's understanding of the mind of man, for the mind, he believed, was simply a microcosm of the macrocosm of all reality. Accordingly, Hegel was an Idealist. He did not believe, however, that man's knowledge is directed toward an external Ideal. Instead, he held that man's ideas are a part of the Ideal itself. Just as the individual mind and the universal mind are one, so too is the leader and the situation in which he finds himself. Both are interconnected parts of the unfolding of an Absolute. Hegel observed that man's knowledge is always changing. It continuously moves from a state of unawareness to a state of consciousness. It affirms what it knows. Then it discovers the opposite of what it believes to be true, and a state of inner-conflict occurs.