Hegel
In the wake of studying for my Modern Political Thought midterm, I have realized something.
I absolutely hate Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
To give everyone an example of just how painful he is to read and analyze, German students prefer to read him in English, because all of his sentences are so very long (and all verbs in German are at the end of sentences, making it quite confusing).
One of his sentences reads as such:
178. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is recognized. The conception of this its unity in its duplication, of infinitude realizing itself in self-consciousness, has many sides to it and encloses within it elements of varied significance. Thus its moments must on the one hand be strictly kept apart in detailed distinctiveness, and, on the other, in this distinction must, at the same time, also be taken as not distinguished, or must always be accepted and understood in their opposite sense. This double meaning of what is distinguished lies in the nature of self-consciousness: of its being infinite, or directly the opposite of the determinateness in which it is fixed. The detailed exposition of the notion of this spiritual unity in its duplication will bring before us the process of Recognition.
Confused? Me too. I like Machiavelli much better. More death, less confusion. Much simpler, no?