Key elements from the philosophies of Hegel and Husserl - Essay Example

According to existentialism, existence comes before the essence of life. Hegel was also of the same opinion albeit he put forth certain conditions or situations when human beings have this kind of free will. According to his ‘Philosophy of Right’, human beings are free to act or decide for themselves only if they are part of any particular system or area concerning the free will. According to Hegel, freedom should not be linked with arbitrariness (doing whatever one pleases). Hegel believes that, “We are free only when we overcome ‘particularity’ and act ‘universally’ or ‘objectively’, according to the concept of the will” (Wood, 2003).

Usually people misinterpret the meaning of freedom; they feel that freedom means nonexistence of hurdles in doing anything of one’s choice. But when we view it with practicality, the situation is somewhat different. on the contrary, Hegel feels that human beings cannot be said to be free “unless social institutions provide considerable scope and protection for arbitrary freedom” (Woods, 2003). Another element of Hegel’s philosophy relates to the civil society. Hegel says that human beings are free to decide what work they choose for their livelihood but they cannot completely deny the fact that their actions will not affect the society.

It should be a give and take system where individuals contribute towards the society and in turn the society looks after the broader interests of all human beings. Any work that we do indirectly helps the society as a whole; “As members of this society, individuals have the duty to support themselves through labor which benefits the whole, while civil society as a whole owes each individual the opportunity to labor in a way which provides a secure, respected and self-fulfilling mode of life” (Woods, 2003).

Philosophy of Phenomenology Edmund Husserl was the founded the ‘Philosophy of Phenomenology’. He was a mathematician and all his anticipations and explanations were based on mathematic calculations or to be more precise, the inferential system. The motive of Husserl’s Theory of Phenomenology, “is to study the units of consciousness that the respective speaker presents himself as having – that he gives voice to – in expressing the proposition in question (for instance, while writing a mathematical textbook or giving a lecture)” (Beyer, 2011).

Husserl relates the actions of human beings to their perceptions. According to him, it is quite possible that while performing any action, a person is hallucinating. Means that he/she may think he/she is being watched while doing the act. Also, “from a first-person point of view, one cannot, of course, decide whether in a case of what one takes to be, say, an act of perception one is currently performing, there actually is an object that one is perceptually confronted with” (Beyer, 2011).

In Tel Asiado’s words Husserl’s philosophy claims that ‘consciousness is ‘directedness towards an object.’ The mental state and the object of the state exist together in consciousness without implying that there is any ‘material’ object answering to the call” (Asiado, 2009). Husserl’s apprehensions are more towards the doubts on the ‘information about self’ rather than the ‘information about things’. Husserl’s philosophy can be summarized to be “as both an early direct reference theorist (headword: