The young Hegel's conception of the unity of man
This dissertation focuses on the writings of the young Hegel up to and including the Jena period. The treatment of these writings is pursued under the theme of the unity of man. The issue was commonly known human experience: philosophically, it was expressed by the spirit of the Enlightenment, especially its radical side, the philosophes. This was complicated by the inherent difficulties of the Critical Philosophy. In religion it was manifested in the conception of God as transcendent. This led to a relation of alienation between God and man. In politics this was shown in the state of "particularism" and the separation between man and the political institutions. Hence the lack of participation in political life. All these dimensions of fragmentation led to the emergence of a non-expressive form of life. The young Hegel did not deal with the issue of the unity of man in any systematic manner since most of his writings are fragments. Our proposal to study them under such a theme is probably the most convenient way of approaching this unexplored area of his philosophy in order to make sense out of it. Such as choice explains our methodology which can be characterized as thematic for it approaches these fragmentary writings under one theme; it is interpretive and this is dictated by the nature of the theme itself. It is, finally, historical since it deals with a collection of writings through a span of time. As the development of our theme proceeds, we see that Hegel gradually became aware of the need for a system as the only way to deal with the fragmented situation of man. However, this does not mean that he was successful and thus our finding shows the limitation of his endeavor; nevertheless, what we can still learn from him is the importance and the relevance of the issues he raised and the insightful claims he made.