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<blockquote>"The Germans, who have mastered the secret of being boring with ''esprit'', knowledge and feeling, and who have accustomed themselves to experience boredom as something moral, are afraid of French esprit because it might prick out the eyes of morality - and yet this dread is fused with tempation, as in the bird faced by the rattlesnake. Perhaps none of the famous Germans had more esprit than Hegel; but he also felt such a great German dread of it that this created his peculiar bad style. For the essence of this style is that a core is enveloped, and enveloped once more and again, until it scarcley peeks out, bashful and curious - as 'young women peek out of their veils', to speak with the old woman-hater Aeschylus. But this core is a witty, often saucy idea about the most intellectual matters, a subtle and daring connecting of words, such as belongs in the ''company of thinkers'', as a side dish of science - but in these wrappings it presents itself as abstruse science itself and by all means as supremely moral boredom. Thus the Germans had a form of ''esprit permitted'' to them, and they enjoyed it with such extravagant delight that Schopenhauer's good, very good intelligence came to a halt confronted with it: his life long, he blustered against the spectacle the Germans offered him, but he never was able to explain it to himself." <ref>Nietzsche, Dawn,p.193</ref><blockquote/>
== Reading Hegel ==
I have added the following under the reading hegel section. My intention is not to overload the article with references to Kaufmann. I feel he has unique insights and comments that are not expressed anywhere else. Hopefully we can find a place for the following if not under the reading hegel section.
According to [[Kaufmann]], the basic idea of Hegel's works, especially the ''Phenomenology of the Spirit'' is that a philosopher should not "confine him or herself to views that have been held but penetrate these to the human reality they reflect." In other words, it is not enough to consider propositions, or even the content of consciousness; "it is worthwhile to ask in every instance what kind of spirit would entertain such propositions, hold such views, and have such a consciousness. Every outlook in other words, is to be studied not merely as an academic possibility but as an existential reality."<ref>Kaufmann, ''Hegel: A Reinterpretation'', Anchor, p.115</ref>
Hegel is fascinated by the sequence [[Kaufmann]] writes:
<blockquote>How would a human being come to see the world this way or that? And to what extent does the road on which a point of view is reached color the view? Moreover, it should be possible to show how every single view in turn is one-sided and therefore untenable as soon as it is embraced consistently. Each must therefore give way to another, until finally the last and most comprehensive vision is attained in which all previous views are integrated. That way the reader would be compelled – not by rhetoric or by talk of compelling him, but by the successive examination of forms of consciousness – to rise from the lowest and least sophisticated level to the highest and most philosophical; and on the way he would recognize stoicism and skepticism, Christianity, and Enlightenment, Sophocles and Kant.<ref>Ibid., p.116</ref></blockquote>
Many sympathetic commentators have argued that this is surely one of the most imaginative and poetic conceptions ever to have occurred to any philosopher. Kaufmann even argues that the parallel between Hegel's ''Phenomenology'' and [[Dante]]'s journey "through hell and purgatory to the blessed vision meets the eye." He also makes a comparison with [[Goethe]]'s [[Faust]] claiming that "two quotations from ‘The First Part of the Tragedy’ could have served Hegel as mottoes." The first of these passages (lines 1770-75) Kaufmann argues Hegel knew from ''Faust: A Fragment'' (1790)": "And what is portioned out to all mankind, I shall enjoy deep in myself, contain; Within my spirit summit and abyss, Pile on my breast their agony and bliss, And thus let my own self grow into theirs, unfettered.<ref>''Faust'' cited in Kaufmann, ''Hegel: A Reinterpretation'', Anchor Books, p.118</ref>
These lines express much of the spirit of the book Kaufmann writes: "Hegel is not treating us to a spectacle, letting various forms of consciousness pass in review before our eyes to entertain us as he considers it necessary to re-experience what the human spirit has gone through in history and he challenges the reader to join him in this Faustian undertaking." <ref>Kaufmann, p.119</ref> Hegel asks readers not merely to read about such possibilities but according to Kaufmann, to "identify with each in turn until their own self has grown to the point where it is contemporary with world spirit. The reader, like the author, is meant to suffer through each position, and to be changed as he/she proceeds from one to the other. Mea res agitur: my own self is at stake. Or, as Rilke put it definitively in the last line of his great sonnet on an “Archaic Torso of Apollo”: du must dein Leben andern – you must change your life.” <ref>Kaufmann, p.119</ref>
Hegel's writing style and language has also been a source of criticism.[[Schopenhauer]] for example, called Hegel "this Caliban of the spirit." <ref>''Diesen geistigen Kaliban'' in the Preface to the second ed. of ''Die Welt alt Wille und Vorstellung''</ref> He also spoke of "Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense." <ref>In the Introduction to ''Uber den Willen in der Natur''</ref> ''Abserwitzig'' meaning insane is a word that recurs frequently in Schopenhauer's remarks about Hegel, along with the claims that Hegel had no ''Geist'' at all.<ref>Kaufmann, ''Discovery of the Mind Goethe, Kant, and Hegel'', p.199</ref>
[[Kaufmann]] claims that while it is "widely considered bad form to speak irreverently about Kant, disrespect for Hegel is still good form. Many writers and lecturers enjoy making scurrilous remarks about Hegel while others -- and sometimes actually the very same people -- make use of his ideas without giving credit to him."<ref>Ibid., p.200</ref>
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