Abstract
Hegel's system is historically oriented. He dealt with the concrete, and subordinated the unhistorical antinomy of Being and Appearance. He indulged in philosophical speculation but never apprehended reality, and he identified freedom with inner necessity. Goethe could have concurred in Hegel's recognition of the eternal within the illusion of the temporal. Both men rejected historical pragmatism and relativism, as well as the abstract rationalism of the Enlightenment. Goethe did not attempt to grasp the totality of history systematically. He sensed that "the morphology of nature is not identical with the morphology of history" and that history was "a confusion of error and power." He refrained from placing Napoleon in a specific historical setting, because he saw great men in their intentions and impelling motives. Goethe was not concerned with history "as it was" nor with Hegel's Eternal.