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" Hegel asserts that the real is rational, and the rational is real. But when he says this he does not mean by ‘the real’ what an empiricist would mean. He admits, and even urges, that what to the empiricist appear to be facts are, and must be, irrational; it is only after their apparent character has been transformed by viewing them as aspects of the whole that they are seen to be rational. Nevertheless, the identification of the real and the rational leads unavoidably to some of the complacency inseparable from the belief that ‘whatever is, is right’. "

Bertrand Russell , A History of Western Philosophy


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Bertrand Russell quote : Hegel asserts that the real is rational, and the rational is real. But when he says this he does not mean by ‘the real’ what an empiricist would mean. He admits, and even urges, that what to the empiricist appear to be facts are, and must be, irrational; it is only after their apparent character has been transformed by viewing them as aspects of the whole that they are seen to be rational. Nevertheless, the identification of the real and the rational leads unavoidably to some of the complacency inseparable from the belief that ‘whatever is, is right’.