HISTORICISM OR LOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM?

There are two strands of Criticism that takes place regarding Hegel's overall Philosophy. When we talk about Hegel's Philosophy, although it has many nuances and sub-structures, broadly, it can be described under three heads, namely, 

1. Phenomenological approach to Spirit, since we can approach spirit phenomenologically only. 

2. Dialectical Idealism which includes conflict and contradictions of ideas which leads to their movement in history. 

3. The Master-Slave Dialectic. 

Of all the three, there are two strands of Critique of Hegel, who does not understand Hegel, In my opinion, In fact, In the opinion of Slavoj Zizek. 

1. Teleological interpreters of Hegel: People like Liberal Hegelians who interpret Hegel in a teleological Fashion. Their Opinion about the Dialectic Idealism is that ideas have a single function of leading to its conflicting thought, namely the Anti-thesis. The Anti-thesis, in turn, has a function of conflicting with thesis to give the synthesis. 

As a matter of fact, this teleology out of Hegel is never found. In the Phenomenology of spirit, Hegel argues about nowhere about a single teleological function of ideas. Ideas are seldom created to serve the purpose of movement of History. In a way, they are never prospective, they are always Retrospective. 

2. Another one includes Karl Popper's critique of Hegel being a Historicist. Historicism is a way of approaching episteme through the sequence as it happened in history. To which, I agree. But It is not in following historicism does one act as agent of history. And hence, this argument also considers a teleological view out of Hegel that Hegel's ideas are a means to the absolute. Rather, opposite, Hegel's ideas occur only when the agents of history detach themselves from the past and the future and act "logically" in search of answers of the predicaments of the present. 

Hence, in a nutshell, to act logically of the present, is the way to be the agent of history. The rational being the real of history. 

For instance, suppose a man got hold of his destiny, that is, he somehow knows that he is going to be rich and retrospectively, in the present he decides to be lazy, he will precisely because of this "naive cunning" behavior of seeing event in a historical fashion and not logically, he will not become rich. 

One has to actively engage in wealth accumulation in order to be rich, that is the dictum of common sense. For this common sense to act, destiny should remain for all purposes hidden. So, for historicism to prevail, or for destiny to prevail, One must not know it, One must act accordingly as one deems fit. 

This is the way to be the agent of history, the agent of historical change. Not to be a historicist, but to be a logical constructivist. And Hegel is precisely that. His historical idealism is an attempt to logically decode the idea of historical progression of ideas themselves. As if, the dog chasing its own tail.