A friend of mine recently used a quote from Georg Hegel to exemplify passion, “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” The problem does not lie in its contents, rather the context. You see, evil men can passionately speak as well. The following quote could be a powerful message of good will and hope:
The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.
Too bad it was said by Adolf Hitler! Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a was a German theological philosopher whose idealist account of reality as a whole helped lay the framework for Marxism. Clearly, a libertarian should not quote Hegel in a positive light. Georg Hegel wrote, “…the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.” It was irrational explanations for ideas like this that made Hegel a staple of communist theory. When the London Communist League met in 1847, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used Hegel’s theory of the dialectic to support their economic theory of communism.
Monument for Marx and Hegel in China
The bottom line is the Hegelian dialectic sets up the scene for state intervention, confiscation, and redistribution of wealth in the U.S., and this is against our ENTIRE constitutional based society. When applied with the proper morales and the ideology of liberty and freedom, passion can indeed be great. Our founders knew this, and it was one of the major differences between the American and the French Revolution’s. Thomas Jefferson had this to say of passion, “It is our sacred duty to SUPPRESS passion among ourselves, and not to blast the confidence we have inspired of proof that a government of reason is better than one of force.”
