I found a section on debunking “hegelian myths” on, I think hegel.com. The myths include Hegel rejecting the law of excluded middle, his saying that we live at the end of arts, philosophy, times… And next to each myth were a few sentences explaining why it is not true.
I think such “debunking” does more harm than good. First of all only a petit bourgeois mentality would seriously engage in believing the above mentioned (by “believing” I mean taking it literally and stopping there: Hegel does say that we live at the end of philosophy, time, etc). Intellectual curiosity is precisely what would motivate a true seeker of knowledge to immerse himself in hegelian philosophy to try and answer for himself why one of the most influential thinkers in the history of mankind would allow himself the luxury of such superfluous nonsense. That would lead to many a wonderful discovery, and en route, these boring “myths” will be explicated.
It is the very attempt to dispel it that really creates this kind of drivel. Any universal thought taken out of its context and split into individual parts will display the same nature, just like in the famous tale about an elephant examined by several blind people. When sensations like “elephant is a cord”, or “elephant is a pillar” are expressed, we do not try to disprove them individually “heads on”. We just demonstrate the whole elephant and the falsehoods simply wither out and fall off. In order to do that we must also cure blindness. In this case – intellectual blindness.
