[xmca] the young person and their fate

I am writing something about the "Young Hegel" at the moment and I have
come up against a difficulty which maybe one of you wonderful developmental
psychologists could help me with.
Hegel's youthful works, e.g. what he wrote before the age of 37, are much
more transparent in terms of his political and moral objectives, what he is
fighting for, who he is against and who he is for, etc., etc. His later
works are of course, notoriously arcane philosophical texts, that seem to
concern nothing but philosophy, and then his last works, directed to the
general public, appear quite conservative.
It seems self-evident to me that what he really valued, what was wanted to
change about the world, his ideals and so on, as a youth, did not go away
when he was older, even though his scientific ideas obviously did change.
Surely this true of all of us (apart form the occasional turn-coat); aren't
we all still trying to achieve the same things we wanted when we were
young? Doesn't a look into someone's youthful ideals tell us something
about what they are driving at in their later, more nuanced and mature work?
But I have no idea how such a claim can be justified?
Can it?

Andy

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Received on Wed May 30 23:16 PDT 2007